Posted on 02/29/2012 7:54:36 PM PST by U-238
EMPs!!! You know, the big electronics-frying pulses that accompany nuclear blasts. We’re back to worrying about them again. In particular how does the military protect its electrical infrastructure from an EMP attack.
“Yeah, we have issues there [with the EMP threat] and we have to look at those and we seriously have to understand that in the Army in particular, because we have an awful lot of bases that we look at,” said Marilyn Freeman assistant secretary of the Army for research and technology during a House Armed Services emerging threats subcomittee hearing today. “I work very closely and the folks in my office and accross the laboratory system of the Army work very close with the installations folks as we assess what our vulnerabilities are to power and energy issues and one of the things we’re trying to do is actually set up the ability for our various bases to be more energy self sufficient, more energy secure and to have the ability, not only to be more efficient and effective, but also to be safe and not vulnerable” to attacks from EMPs that would shut down a bases power systems.
If you think it’s easy to harden a base connected to the civilian power grid from an EMP blast, think again, one of Freeman’s fellow Pentagon science officials said in when a lawmaker asked how soon the nation can protect its bases and power infrastructure from EMP attack.
(Excerpt) Read more at defensetech.org ...
As a civil defense issue, that probably is one of the few things our modern federales are involved in that makes constitutional sense. I can think of very few complaints about that.
One must become one with the lead alloy. Allow one's thoughts to grow heavy, yet hard edged...
And have a butt-load of time to screw around with it.
/johnny
Non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NNEMP) is an electromagnetic pulse generated without use of nuclear weapons. There are a number of devices that can achieve this objective.NNEMP generators also include large structures built to generate EMP for testing of electronics to determine how well it survives EMP
Apparently I achieved the requisite zen with a piece of galena when I had a cat whisker radio kit as a kid. It only brought in one station, however. The slider on the coil was useless. Later radios built with a packaged germanium diode performed better and even tuned in multiple stations. I was never able to get the “safety pin point on a tarnished penny” detector system to work, though it would have looked cool as heck if it did.
Unless somebody has actually been to a blast and done that I would take their pontifications with a large accretion of salt.
In Operation Orange in 1958,was a 3.8 megaton explosion that was launched by a Redstone rocket that occured 250,000 feet However, due to a programming failure it burst directly over the island at the desired elevation making the island the effective ground-zero. It caused temporary blindnes on the island. Wehrner Von Braun was present at that test.
Oh... and I believe galena isn’t an alloy, it’s a compound. Lead sulfide. (II) to be technical about it (there are sulfides with various valences). It itself looks leaden grey, so it’s easy to confuse with an alloy.
Blindness how? From the brilliance of the visible light emitted? Blinding radios through damage? Some interaction between the bursts of ionizing and non ionizing radiation and optic nerves, even of those whose eyes got none of the visible light?
The brilliance of the light. Its like the sun exploding. I have nuclear flash goggles.
If the bomb burst close to the ground and nobody expected that to happen, then that would be understandable. They got a burst of light at a low angle when all precautions were against a burst of light overhead. That must have been a “DAYUMN!” moment.
If you look at a nuclear explosion you will burn the retina’s in your eyes.
/johnny
Hey, thanks for the heads up. Don’t want to burn your eyes out while looking at the nuke explode down the road. :(
Why of course... it’s just odd how that happened at that test. The bomb was dropped, and didn’t burst high up like it was expected to. So what did people do... start and keep on a-staring as the “dud” plunged? Stupid.
You might melt your cooking pot if you didn’t allow for the heat released from the reaction.
Not too many people know that an explosion will cause permanent damage to your eyes.
/johnny
Other than 90% or more of the country’s population starving to death after a successful EMP attack, I have NO CLUE why people are panicking about it.
I’m much more mature than that, and don’t have a problem with a slight disruption to my daily lifestyle.
BTW: Welding glasses will make good eye protection against a nuclear explosion.
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