Posted on 09/29/2011 1:21:40 PM PDT by george76
It's bewildering. Pathetic. Frightening. And it seems that the mainstream media avoids talking about it for fear that Americans will panic. Well, Americans ought to be panicking -- anything to get them to bang on Congress's door and force our representatives to immediately act on the pending legislature now in Congress called the SHIELD Act -- a bill based on the previous HR 5026 -- that unanimously passed in the House of Representatives on June 9, 2010.
The disaster I am referring to is an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), which can easily be caused either by Mother Nature as a geomagnetic solar storm or by an enemy with a low-cost, short range, ship-launched missile armed with a nuclear warhead. The national consequences of an EMP destroying our electrical grid are far-reaching, with long-lasting, continent-wide crippling effects to our electricity-dependant infrastructure.
At the press conference organized by EMPactAmerica on September 23, 2011, this dangerous threat to our national security was exposed for what it truly is -- the most likely event to happen to the U.S., naturally or man-made, that has the potential to bring the country to its knees.
The National Academy of Science points out that protecting the grid against this threat is critical, and getting a bill passed is necessary to do that. An EMP, if not deflected, will shut down and paralyze our country. Just think about the role electricity plays in water, food, heating and cooling, communications, transportation, distribution, the economy and banking.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Suppose a terrorist parks his EMP near the system operations center for the electric grid for NYC or some other large city.
The grid goes down and is likely to stay that way for a while.
The US and Soviet leaderships were composed of sane men. That is not the case in Iran.
If it would be an effective attack it’s a good attack for sane men to plan to use. 1 nuke blown high takes out your enemy, with actually fairly low bloodshed, sounds very sane; especially when compared to the nuclear war plans that actually did exist. But they never came up with this plan. So clearly it’s got issues in the execution portion. So maybe it does take an insane man to plan for it, but not insane because it’s so destructive, insane because it wouldn’t work.
OK so NYC has yet another big black out. It’s happened before, recently even, with a death toll in the negligible.
That thing has more computerized gadgets and gizmo's than any vehicle I have owned.
I finally got the 'check engine' light to go off -- had to replace the fuel cap that had some tiny cracks in the seal.
Any country capable of detonating an EMP should be put on notice that we will retaliate with a couple of boomers’ load.
Well Our Nuke subs will then have to respond in Kind,then the whole world will not be able to do anything against anyone else except slingshots. We wont have to listen to the Morons in the Middle east,,Africa, europe. Just think No More Obama on TV! Geez this is starting to sound pretty good. Hell Obama will be out of Business no teleprompter. I dont think we have anything to worry about Now,Mooochelle will have to stay at Home
A blackout that last a few hours for most it very different than a blackout that last for weeks.
The blackout of 2003 that shutdown the Northeast was simple cascade of controlled breaker trips. All of the systems remained intact.
Take out the central control system and bringing the grid backup will be extremely difficult.
Imagine if the terrorist coordinated attacks on several system operations centers in the Northeast.
Imagine if they did it in January.
Some other ideas set off an EMP near a major Airport. Set off a coordinated EMP attack airports in Boston/Philadelphia/Washington area. How about setting off EMPs near oil refineries.
Yes you wont have big body counts but there will be deaths and their will be huge cost.
It probably wouldn’t last for weeks, part of the reason the grid system exists is to overlap control as well as flow. If one control center evaporates others can still take over the routing. Plus of course they have replacement parts, electronics that aren’t powered won’t get spiked by an EMP, so working around it while it’s brought back up isn’t that big a deal.
Much of the airports and airplanes are shielded, and even if it wasn’t the only real risk is planes actually actively landing or taking off at that moment, anybody sitting waiting will just turn off on the ground and be safe, those flying will be out of range, yeah they’d have to go elsewhere but that’s what fuel is for.
Really if it was half as big a deal as you think somebody would have done it already. It would be part of our battle plans. Non-nuke EMPs are easy to make, and transportable, give them to the SEALs take stuff out behind the lines.
China just launched a new space station with an orbit at 207 miles. No problem parking a nuke inside for detonation at a later point in time.
Thanks for the ping.
I'm with you - that one doesn't pass the smell test...
Actually the Army has developed just such a weapon. The EMP devices I am referring to needs a fairly large truck to transport. The reason the terrorist have not used these weapons is probably the reason you discussed earlier. Not enough bodies, blood and graphic gore. But I dont think you can count on that to remain their on going strategy.
Much of the airports and airplanes are shielded,
At the very least an airport is going to loose its radios and radars which by necessity of operations can not be shielded. They could be hardened but at this point I dont believe they are.
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Think the dead of winter, think of no electricity for the next two years (current period of the waiting list of Scandinavian generator manufactures)
Your circle that covers the entire continental US is a burst altitude of 300 miles
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Iran’s ship-launched missile test - reached an altitude of 700 miles where it was detonated. Roughly the distance from a launch point 200 miles off Altantic coast to the detonation point over Chicago.
That’s a DISTANCE of 700 miles, an altitude of 700 miles puts you in the exosphere twice as far from the earth as the international space station. And 700 miles distance only gets you from Chicago to a bit past Philly, not 200 miles into the Atlantic.
True. But detonate it over Pittsburg and you would wipe out the entire grid east of the Mississippi River and affect the majority of Americans.
Terrorists’ love of blood isn’t part of their strategy, it’s part of their identity.
The airports can shutdown. And the planes that are in pattern can figure it out themselves. I’ve been to untowered airfields, a fairly busy one even, everybody talks to each other. It’s a little scary at first but it can be done.
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