You are badly mistaken.
http://www.empcommission.org/docs/empc_exec_rpt.pdf
And to the naysayers - you don’t have to wipe out the “whole electrical grid” or anything remotely close to it. Let’s just say you scramble the brains of 10% of the ATM machines, or make it impossible for 10% of credit card transactions to be validated. Think about how many cars are going to be backed-up at gas stations, how quickly people are going to panic with even that level of inconvenience after what happened with Katrina and Sandy.
EMP itself isn’t the killer, it’s what will happen in a developed nation afterward. What we do to each other.
Yes, read “One Second After” rather than watch crap like Red Dawn.
“10% of the ATM machines”
OK that is more like it. The damage will not be predictable. Depends on pulse duration, peak impulse, height above ground. And it is a point emitter and distance and incidence to ground will vary with at each point. The idea that you have a cone of destruction that covers 1/3 of the US is nonsense.
Yes, large cities near the pulse source would be a nightmare.
Didn’t 9/11 come close to sending us to an economic brink, or at least to within sight of the possibility of one?
Agree 110%. We see this in the knee-jerk reactions by our gubmint to a few small incidents nationwide. Overreact, over-regulate, etc. They make small victories just on this.