While EMP effects are real, that book was enormously exaggerated on purpose to support lobbying for a few groups
While the Russians and probably china could certainly take down the power grid this way it would take more than a couple and it would be immediately obvious who did it
While that may be true, the thing I found most alarming about the books, is the aftermath, the breakdown of society and the die offs of people and their causes he portrayed.
And how long the effects ofmit would be.
Many people would die in waves in that case, where the power grid went down.
And the time of year would play a role. He set it in the spring in the mid-Atlantic states. Imagine the death toll in the dead of winter when so many people would not have access to heat, and food was running out and the growing season would still be just starting, maybe. People could starve to death before the first garden harvest could come in.
I love to garden and am good at it, but every year, I think God that this only supplements our diets, that our survival does not depend on what i can grow by myself. Gardening and preserving food for the year is very labor intensive.
And not a lot of people are blessed to,live in an area where food from the wild can be harvested so abundantly. Nor would they have any idea what they can safely eat.
“While the Russians and probably china could certainly take down the power grid...”
Hell, small bands of trained marksmen could take down the grid.
a dry run perhaps??
I disagree. The only testing done that I’m aware of was done with so many constraints that it wasn’t accurate. Theoretically, it would be be utterly catastrophic, and the military is quietly hardening their devices against it. It also would have to be done with a modified nuke that could sit in orbit before being used so not only would it not be immediately obvious who did it, it would be hard to determine who did it period.
Look at what shooters can do NOW with substations UNPROTECTED!