Posted on 04/26/2017 8:02:05 AM PDT by rktman
While the total wipeout depicted in One Second After is probably exaggerated, the effects could knock out our power grid for months, and destroy critical communications and computer systems. As former CIA chief James Woolsey recently said:
If you look at the electric grid and what it's susceptible to, we would be moving into a world with no food delivery, no water purification, no banking, no telecommunications, no medicine. All of these things depend on electricity in one way or another.
In such a situation, there simply is no way to rule out the possibility that hundreds of millions could die.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
“Whether it’s an EMP attack, a kinetic attack, a cyber attack, or a solar ejecta, electricity has evolved into becoming our life support system.
I laugh when folks say it would take months to fix everything back to okie-dokie. In weeks our cities would be in flames and only cannibals would be left.”
It might take weeks/months to repair the grid (and other damage, and there will be a LOT of that) after an EMP attack, but only if said attack was very limited in scope (i.e. a failure, which only affected a relatively small area). Otherwise, prepare to live in the world of the Walking Dead.
You’re not going to make it past 3 days without clean water
So boiling water is really more like plan C or D
Sometimes it is the greatest honor to be excluded from certain clubs.
Because it’s not bunk.
Excecpt maybe in the minds of a few uninformed FReepers.
That’s right.
“However none of his delivery systems have proven to navigate past a distance of a few hundred miles. I highly doubt that another nation would do N Korea a nice cordial favor and launch an attack upon the US for fear of retaliation. “
Never underestimate your enemies - this is a cardinal rule of statecraft and warfare, ignored at the peril of the ignorant or arrogant.
For later.
Matt, you are (as usual) right again. We’re looking at high levels of normalcy bias, compounded with arrogance and intellectual laziness, in this thread. People won’t believe this because they don’t WANT to believe it is possible. Well, guess what, wishing something away does actually MAKE it go away.
It might take weeks/months to repair the grid (and other damage, and there will be a LOT of that) after an EMP attack, but only if said attack was very limited in scope (i.e. a failure, which only affected a relatively small area). Otherwise, prepare to live in the world of the Walking Dead.
Exactly right.
And I see that none of the skeptics responded to you.
Normalcy bias is very dangerous.
The thing that concerns me is the Northeast Power blackout of 2003.
For those who don’t think there could be far reaching consequences from an EMP, all we have to do is see what should have been a manageable local blackout turned into cause it cascade through the system.
My son has a friend who is aware of the issues of overloading the grid and warns that things like the Earth hour, where everyone turns off their lights for an hour and then they would naturally turn them back on all about the same time, could theoretically overload the system causing stations to trip and then the other stations would also trip from their increased load, and so it goes.
If that Northeast Power black out happened from just that, then I would consider it feasible that an EMP could take down a chunk of the grid and cause the same problem.
One Second After is a good book as well as One Year after.
They are both very plausible, IMO.
b) The largest fission-only bomb known to have been constructed yielded 500 kilotons: this was probably close to the maximum deliverable size for such a weapon;
It's not clear to me then whether a fission weapon, even with greater efficiency at creating EMP effects, can generate an EMP effect as large as a fusion weapon; or one sufficiently large to cause nationwide EMP.
“So then we do nothing and let him hit us again?”
I would, absolutely, make sure that all North Korean cities and military facilities would be part of the atmosphere, replaced on the ground with glowing, radioactive slag pits...while still retaining 90% of our nuclear stockpile. No use taking chances on a 2nd wave, nor missing the chance to warn everyone else to stay the F away from us if they have any hostile intentions of their own.
Yield on Starfish Prime was I think 1.4MT detonated at 400 miles.
The warhead itself was probably a two stage thermonuclear weighing around 10klbs.
Way beyond NK technology.
“Plan B is to just boil the water. If I’ve made it 6 mo. to a year then I’ve obviously got fire.”
Necessity strips away morality and civility - when people are willing to trample each other to get $50 off of a big-screen TV on Black Friday, what do you think that they’ll do when their kids are starving to death and there are no cops?
Invest a bit of money in a new Plan B - the peace of mind will be worth it, even if you never need to use it.
Yep.
What isn’t commonly known is the 500k atomic device was so dangerous that no one would ever use it in a real weapon.
It contained (I think) 4-10x critical mass of U235.
Just dropping it could have triggered a nuclear detonation.
http://modernsurvivalblog.com/survival-kitchen/bleach-water-ratio-for-drinking-water/
(I recommend boiling AND bleach if that’s what you have)
Also, dry bleach is sold for well treatments.
Regards,
HLB
I’ve read all of the 3-book series. The first book is most directly about the EMP effects. The second and third book delve more into the potential politics of recovery. Interesting POV but less about EMP and recovery from that specific attack. I highly recommend the reading as I do all of the “Enemies Foreign and Domestic” series by Matthew Bracken (FReeper Travis McGee). Stimulates all kinds of “what-if” thinking, a good thing, IMO.
The EMP from Starfish Prime was not expected. So we have a 1.4 megaton nuke, the percentage of which yield was from fission I don’t know, and which WASN’T “tuned” to put more of its energy into gamma rays than explosive force and heat.
I wouldn’t be lulled into a false sense of security by those facts.
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