The Electromagnetic Pulse Commission Warns of an Old Threat with a New Face [from 2004]

[Granted, this article is 4 years old, but it seems to cover the issue in pretty good detail. I post it as a follow-up to the 7/1/08 FrontPageMag article I put up yesterday. Since that one received so many varied responses (~60) and close to 1000 views, I thought it would be interesting to see what folks had to say about this one. Some people seemed to dismiss or greatly minimize the threat. Others said there was nothing new about it (~50 yrs old), suggesting many people today were already aware of the details (many people today can't find Iraq and Iran on a map, or even Texas for that matter). In any case, in this 2004 Heritage.org article, they describe it as "an old threat with a new face".-ETL]

A nuclear-generated electromagnetic pulse "is one of a small number of threats that has the potential to hold our society seriously at risk and might result in defeat of our military forces." The Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack announced this startling conclusion in a July 22 [2204] report to Congress.1 This alarming report clears the way for Congress to debate more seriously the most effective measures to meet the threat of an EMP attack.

Protecting the United States against the evolving EMP threat will require a mix of active defenses, passive defenses, and policy changes. Specifically, the United States should:

* Develop a clear policy about how it will respond to an EMP attack;
* Assess which assets of the nation's power grid and telecommunications infrastructure are most critical to the overall system;
* Harden those critical assets against EMP;
* Retrofit at least a portion of U.S. military assets to protect against EMP;
* Engineer EMP protections into a greater percentage of future military capabilities; and
* Deploy an effective ballistic missile defense.

And as I said yesterday this IS an old threat, it’s nothing new. It’s been around since nuclear weapons were first detonated.

The article is by a liberal idiot who attacks Bush for “doing nothing” in “all these years”.

Well, for your information eleven sitting Presidents have been in office since electromagnetic pulse was discovered in conjunction with nuclear devices.

So, let’s set the record straight and if you’re going to blame one President (not you, the author) then you blame them all for doing nothing.

However, let me point out something we called “TEMPEST” in the military, the hardening of communications facilities around the country (including folks, telephone systems).

So, something HAS been DONE, but there’s no way to completely mitigate the problem at this point.

And as I said yesterday this IS an old threat, it’s nothing new. It’s been around since nuclear weapons were first detonated.

I, myself, knew it was an old threat, but not nearly as long as you and others have pointed out (thank you). I just thought there would be *some* updated information contained here, especially for those of us not too familiar with the subject. We need to always keep in mind that there's a constant stream of people just now coming into politics, including the next generation of FReepers. So we shouldn't assume that just because we know something about one thing or another, that everyone else does too. A lot of people here seem to do that, a foolish mistake in my view, particularly on the demonRat-commie connection.

Anyway, thanks again for the information. I think many at least now know more than they did before. And that's never a bad thing. :)

And you’re correct.

One of the reasons I posted what I did yesterday was simply because people DO NOT KNOW things.

I am probably one of the few people here that really digs into a lot of things. My background in the sciences gives me a wide background in many subjects. My real field is physics and radio theory. But, I’m pretty good in a lot of other things too and I’m not so specialized as some folks are, that I can’t put two and two together.

An example is a fight I watched take place once about “Positive and Negative” lightning strikes.

There’s no such thing.

ALL electrical discharges, every single one of them, take place when a large quantity of electrons move from a negatively charged surface to a positively (or less negatively) charges surface. Essentially, a surplus of electrons tries to equalize the charges between two surfaces.

Meteorologists will say “positive strikes” and ‘negative strikes’ which throws people off. What they are ACTUALLY referring to is the direction of current flow, but to them there’s no real physics involved, but more of a vernacular, or a lingo that between them means something. To me, or a real physicist it means nothing.

(by way of explanation, electrons can be stripped from the out valence shells of atoms causing charges, this is easy to demonstrate in static electricity experiments. To remove a PROTON from the nucleus of an atom takes a nuclear reaction.... think about that)

Positive Streamers and Exploding Air

As the step leaders approach the earth, objects on the surface begin responding to the strong electric field. The objects reach out to the cloud by "growing" positive streamers. These streamers also have a purplish color and appear to be more prominent on sharp edges. The human body can and does produce these positive streamers when subjected to a strong electric field such as that of a storm cloud. In actuality, anything on the surface of the earth has the potential to send a streamer. Once produced, the streamers do not continue to grow toward the clouds; bridging the gap is the job of the step leaders as they stage their way down. The streamers wait patiently, stretching upward as the step leaders approach.

Next to occur is the actual meeting of a step leader and a streamer. As discussed earlier, the streamer that the step leader reaches is not necessarily the closest streamer to the cloud. It's very common for lightning to strike the ground even though there is a tree or a light pole or any other tall object in the vicinity. The fact that the step leader does not take the path of a straight line allows for this to occur.

After the step leader and the streamer meet, the ionized air (plasma) has completed its journey to the earth, leaving a conductive path from the cloud to the earth. With this path complete, current flows between the earth and the cloud. This discharge of current is nature's way of trying to neutralize the charge separation. The flash we see when this discharge occurs is not the strike -- it is the local effects of the strike.

Any time there is an electrical current, there is also heat associated with the current. Since there is an enormous amount of current in a lightning strike, there is also an enormous amount of heat. In fact, a bolt of lightning is hotter than the surface of the sun. This heat is the actual cause of the brilliant white-blue flash that we see.

When a leader and a streamer meet and the current flows (the strike), the air around the strike becomes extremely hot. So hot that it actually explodes because the heat causes the air to expand so rapidly. The explosion is soon followed by what we all know as thunder.

Thunder is the shockwave radiating away from the strike path. When the air heats up, it expands rapidly, creating a compression wave that propagates through the surrounding air. This compression wave manifests itself in the form of a sound wave. That does not mean that thunder is harmless. On the contrary, if you are close enough, you can feel the shockwave as it shakes the surroundings. Keep in mind that when a nuclear explosion occurs, typically the most destruction is caused by the energy of the rapidly moving shockwave. In fact, the shockwave that produces the thunder from a lightning strike can most certainly damage structures and people. This danger is more prominent when you are close to the strike, because the shockwave is stronger there and will dampen (decrease) with distance. Physics teaches us that sound travels much slower than light, so we see the flash before we hear the thunder. In air, sound travels roughly 1 mile every 4.5 seconds. Light travels at a blazing 186,000 miles (299,000 kilometers) per second.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/lightning4.htm

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