Posted on 05/26/2009 5:56:11 PM PDT by LiveFreeOrDieUSA
Sunlight fills the bedroom. It's past 8 a.m., and it's cold. Why didn't the alarm go off? The bathroom lights are out. The house is without power. The battery-operated radio plays nothing but static. The phone is dead. What on earth has happened?
In fact, what happened was not on Earth. It was above it. A nuclear weapon has detonated high over North America, an explosion so far up that neither the flash nor bang disturbed anyone slumbering in darkened bedrooms across the United States. Electrical systems and computers from New York City to San Francisco cease to function. City streets turn into chaos. Fires break out, and no communications are available to send trucks to fight them. The sick and injured perish in overwhelmed, energy-sapped hospitals. Survivors, unable to fill their gas tanks, slowly walk away from the dead zone, unsure where to go or what they will find.
This scenario may sound like the plot of a science-fiction movie, but Bill Graham, former science adviser to President Reagan, says it's a realistic portrayal of what would happen to the United States after a massive electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear explosion.
(Excerpt) Read more at heritage.org ...
News about 50 years old...
Not wanting to be a kill-joy, but I think US infrastructure is a bit tougher than a single nuke in orbit.
russia? china? france?
A nuclear explosion in space will only release prisoners in the Phantom Zone.
This is a theory without a good test. I think the impact of a EMP nuke would destroy some electronics and electrics but not most, and maybe not even more than few percent. I’ve worked in places where we had some much smaller pulses, yet much closer up. Didn’t lose anything except for some CRT browning, and in some places didn’t take and special precautions.
You can argue about the impact, but there is no doubt that China has or got the technology to build both a neutron bomb and an EMT device. Many pieces of equipment..civilian and military are tested to EMT specs, but no one really knows what the impact might be.
This is one reason a “star wars defense is needed”..even a small nuclear power might figure out how to do this..like N. Korea.
Also, they have identified what it would require to harden our grid against EMP or solar "influence"... and it's not a lot. Not that the O will spend a dime for that...
None of my firearms are computer operated. Trust me, they will work.
Oh goodie, I’ll have a chance to test all my Y2K food!
/sarc
I think we should test this hypothesis...over Iran.
Not only that, from what I have read it would take more than a Hiroshima-type fission weapon to do real damage. It would take at least a thermonuclear/fusion device to inflict measurable harm to the contintal US, something with a megaton-class yield. NK and Iran are nowhere close to having that capability.
Our power grids are pretty fragile. A few years ago, tree branches in Ohio blacked out the entire Northeast from Ontario to NYC. EMP will fry them.
Anyone interested in this possibility should read “One Second After.” A VG quick read about a community in the US during the year following an EMT attack.
Several countries probably have the capability. I doubt any have the capability of doing it without being able to tell where it came from.
The question is, who has the capability, and doesn't care about the retaliatory strike from the SLBMs that's going to come right after it?
But Obama is president now. Everyone loves us.
The messiah will protect us by being nice to terrorists.
“Not wanting to be a kill-joy, but I think US infrastructure is a bit tougher than a single nuke in orbit.”
No the opposite is true. The more high tech we have become, the more vulnerable to EMP we are. We have known about the effects of EMP since high altitude tests were done in the early 60s in the Pacific. The “Teak” test was, I believe, over 500 miles away from Hawaii, but when this “in space” explosion occured it blew out power in Hawaii. This was the more rugged technology of that day. By the 70s the concern over EMP had grown so that a DoD publication in the late 70s said that a 1 megaton burst 200 miles above the continental U.S. would blanket the entire mainland with EMP that would be extremely disruptive. That was in the “transistor” days. Now that we are in the micro transistor times the danger is much, much greater. That same burst would paralize the entire 48 contiguous states. There would be zero communications, no power, no internet, nada. Only EMP shielded equipment would survive. This would be some military things, that’s about it.
Such an EMP attack would probably precede a conventional one.
Are you sure they don’t have that capability?
“I think we should test this hypothesis...over Iran.”
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Haha, there is nothing to test there, just tents and goats?
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