EMP Commission warns ‘blackout’ of electricity, food, water to last ‘year or longer,’ (TR)

Washington Examiner ^ | May 9, 2018 | Paul Bedard

[Perseverando]

In this May 21, 1956, file photo, the stem of a hydrogen bomb, the first such nuclear device dropped from a U.S. aircraft, moves upward through a heavy cloud and comes through the top of the cloud, after the bomb was detonated over Namu Island in the Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands. North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said his country may conduct a "historic" hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific Ocean. Many experts think North Korea wouldn't do something so risky, but it's hard to rule out given North Korea's steadily expanding nuclear and missile tests. AP

Parts of the United States would be starved of electricity, water, food, internet service and transportation for a year or longer by the smallest electromagnetic pulse attack on the electric grid, according to a newly declassified report from a federal commission.

The so-called EMP Commission report said that the threat is real, jeopardizes “modern civilization,” and would set back living conditions to those last seen in the 1800s.

And as a result of the chaos, millions would likely die, according to the report titled “Assessing the Threat from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP),” from the recently re-established Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack.

“A long-term outage owing to EMP could disable most critical supply chains, leaving the U.S. population living in conditions similar to centuries past, prior to the advent of electric power,” said the July 2017 report provided Secrets.

“In the 1800s, the U.S. population was less than 60 million, and those people had many skills and assets necessary for survival without today’s infrastructure. An extended blackout today could result in the death of a large fraction of the American people through the effects of societal collapse, disease, and starvation. While national planning and preparation for such events could help mitigate the damage, few such actions are currently underway or even being contemplated,” added the executive summary.

Three reports on the issue have been declassified by the Pentagon and seven more are awaiting clearance.

The warnings in the report somewhat echo those made a similar commission a decade ago. But this time the feared attacks aren’t just from a solar event but a potential atmospheric nuclear blast or cyber hit launched by North Korea, China or Russia.

What’s more, the report warns that despite President Trump’s focus on the issue and demand for action, federal agencies are fighting over the issue and the Defense Department, which is factoring in EMP protection into its plans, isn’t sharing critical information to help civilian agencies and private firms make similar protections.

Also declassified was a report from Peter Vincent Pry, who served on a prior EMP Commission and is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, spelling out the human toll of an EMP attack on the electric grid. He also advises the current commission.

In “Life Without Electricity,” he said the results would be:

Social Order: Looting requires dusk to dawn curfew. People become refugees as they flee powerless homes. Work force becomes differently employed at scavenging for basics, including water, food, and shelter.

Communications: No TV, radio, or phone service.

Transportation: Gas pumps inoperable. Failure of signal lights and street lights impedes traffic, stops traffic after dark. No mass transit metro service. Airlines stopped.

Water and Food: No running water. Stoves and refrigerators inoperable. People melt snow, boil water, and cook over open fires. Local food supplies exhausted. Most stores close due to blackout.

Energy: Oil and natural gas flows stop.

Emergency Medical: Hospitals operate in dark. Patients on dialysis and other life support threatened. Medications administered and babies born by flashlight.

Death and Injury: Casualties from exposure, carbon dioxide poisoning and house fires increase.

“President Trump’s withdrawal from the bogus Iran nuclear deal, and his determination to denuclearize North Korea, are all the more important because even a single nuclear weapon possessed by these rogue states would pose an existential threat to North America by EMP attack,” Pry told Secrets.

He also praised Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s focus on the issue in his role as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Reform Committee, but slammed “Obama-holdovers and Deep State bureaucrats” for ignoring the report.

The report warned that the type of conditions spelled out by Pry could last a long time due to the difficulties fixing the electric grid, which many have testified would be fairly cheap to harden against an attack.

“The United States -- and modern civilization more generally -- faces a present and continuing existential threat from naturally occurring and man-made electromagnetic pulse assault and related attacks on military and critical national infrastructures. A nationwide blackout of the electric power grid and grid-dependent critical infrastructures -- communications, transportation, sanitation, food and water supply -- could plausibly last a year or longer. Many of the systems designed to provide renewable, stand-alone power in case of an emergency, such as generators, uninterruptible power supplies, and renewable energy grid components, are also vulnerable to EMP attack,” said the 27-page report.

It called for a new wave of cooperation among government agencies to set protection standards, an EMP czar, and called for testing current systems against a simulated EMP attack.

“With the development of small nuclear arsenals and long-range missiles by new, radical U.S. adversaries, the threat of a nuclear EMP attack against the U.S. becomes one of the few ways that such a country could inflict devastating damage to the United States,” concluded the report. It added, “It is critical, therefore, that the U.S. national leadership address the EMP threat as a critical and existential issue, and give a high priority to assuring the leadership is engaged and the necessary steps are taken to protect the country from EMP.”

[CottonBall]

Absolutely. Our house on the outside is as white-trash as they get (without the cars on blocks in the yard or the upholstered sagging furniture on the porch - gotta draw the line somewhere!)

The inside is comfy for us - the paneling is gone and we’ve spent a small fortune making it ‘home’. But nobody would know looking at the outside.

Funny, the neighbors are living with paneling and old appliances and even just window A/C. BUT everyone has a VERY nice tractor, LOL! Priorities, ya know. I love them.

[RegulatorCountry]

Do the farmers splurge on a really nice John Deere lawn tractor for their wives there like they do here? It’s “woman’s work.” That’s always struck me funny, that and the personal space. You can’t even tell who’s on line for the register and who isn’t at the local country store, they’re so far apart.

[palmer]

In my link it said that it took 18 months to replace the transformers that were shot by snipers although the power blackout was averted by switching load to another grid. Contrast with the Quebec blackout where the generators went down, fuses blew, etc. The transformers were fine and electricity was back for most custoers within a few hours. The point is that the generators are safe from surges and they are not safe from snipers.

[laplata]

Thanks for the info.

[oldasrocks]

Wasn’t it in 1972 or something that the telegraph wires melted from a solar EMP? One that bad would do a lot of damage.

[laplata]

The Carrington event in 1859:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=12&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjkir_N04bbAhXr6oMKHQ5kB_8QFgheMAs&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FSolar_storm_of_1859&usg=AOvVaw2oPzjbzLHdNUWDHgi_cfU0

[RFEngineer]

“It would take several dozen such explosions to come close to the effect described.”

No. You are misinformed. It would only take one. The physics was decided, tested and validated more than 50 years ago, so I’m not accepting any rebuttal posts from you.

[RFEngineer]

“A major solar event could potentially cause some huge damage and chaos and death but not to the extent of what they are hyping.”

I agree with you on this.

[CottonBall]

lol, Our neighbor just retired and her husband got her a Rototiller. She didn’t act terribly excited about it, but he was thrilled. And obviously put a lot of thought into it, is because he talked about how it was light enough for a woman and that the salesman swore that his own wife loved her Rototiller.

[RFEngineer]

“The E1 and E2 pulses are mainly speculative”

Not so. They are well understood, modeled and verified with actual nuclear tests.

What is not known is how the E1 will affect modern integrated and complex systems.

[RFEngineer]

“Puerto Rico is still in bad shape and huge resources have been spent on fixing that minor disruption.”

The disaster that befell Puerto Ricos power grid was not a minor disruption. It took literally decades of lack of effort in maintaining their grid to get it to the decrepit state it was in before the hurricane so that when the breeze blew it almost literally pushed the whole thing down.

[RFEngineer]

“Way more, in my analysis”

Your analysis is wrong. Who showed you how to analyze this?

[RFEngineer]

Just read the introduction:
http://ece-research.unm.edu/summa/notes/TheoreticalPDFs/TN368.pdf

and they say engineers don’t have a sense of humor....

[RFEngineer]

Just admit you don’t know what will happen to modern electronics and quit pretending you do know.

The real answer is “it depends”. Turbines are not necessarily primitive, nor are the support electronics.

Solar Panels could partially survive, but their support electronics (inverters, battery chargers) very likely would not survive undamaged.

[RFEngineer]

“This is just a rehash of a very old report, long ago dismissed as nothing but a bunch of people in search of grant money.”

No it isn’t. It’s true that there is some level of hysteria in the mix here, but as I’ve pointed out to you many times before, it’s not “fake news” it actually is something to be taken seriously. Nobody should listen to you. I’ve taken you to school on this topic several times, even posted research papers (actual research papers from folks who worked on nuclear testing) that used actual data. Yet here you are still pretending you know what you are talking about.

[RegulatorCountry]

There’s farm work which is man’s work, and there’s household work which is woman’s work to that way of thinking. Household extends to the yard and vegetable garden. On larger farms where the husband could be gone all day plowing, mending fences, what have you, with larger families I’m sure that was about the only way it could work. Now it’s just a holdover, a throwback to family subsistence farming that was the norm up until the sixties or so.

[palmer]

My answer about electronics was about E3 and your “it depends” answer is about the other components. I readily admit I do not know what will happen with modern electronics in all those cases. As for your other post about E1 and E2, you are right, there are models for how they are created and propagate.

[laplata]

That’s a valid, good point.

[RFEngineer]

“My answer about electronics was about E3”

My mistake then, I apologize.

E1 is on the order of 50,000 volts per meter in field strength on the unclassified pulse. Very problematic for electronics.

E3 is on the order of 40 volts per KILOMETER, or .04 volts per meter. This field will not impact any electronics.

However, those field levels can generate a current in the earth hundreds of kilometers deep. This can cause a large current to flow as geologic conditions vary and this is what kills unmonitored and unprotected transformers. E3 does not meaningfully couple to any wires to generate currents.

[CodeToad]

“but as I’ve pointed out to you many times before, it’s not “fake news” it actually is something to be taken seriously.”

You pointing anything out is a nothing burger.

You haven’t taken me or anyone else “to school”, boy.

Yet, here you are blathering on how EMP is so real and will kill us all. You with your Internet nerd EMP and the global warming nuts are all alike.