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 ...
I would still like to see someone knowledgable about the math actually crank out some numbers and give us an idea about the range and power of an EMP pulse.
Kiloton blast measurement is a measurement of TNT equivalent. Which if my chemistry is correct quite a bit less gram per gram than coal because the oxidizer weight is included. Considering the tens of thousands of tons per day of coal burned, the only thing that makes the EMP wave particularly dangerous is the attack rate which should decrease as distance spreads the wave out as distance increases.
The pulse will also be grounded out as lightening brakes across the country short out.
The most likely scenario is that if one of these things goes off, it will be over California and knock out power over the west coast. Sorry to the west coast freepers out there but if anybody deserves their power out for months it’s Hollywood, San Francisco and LA. The effects will be mitigated by the earth quake plans in effect.
I guess I’m an optimist.
Keep in perspective that a 1.4 MT device is pretty heavy, and the rocket needed to boost it to an altitude of 250 miles over the US is pretty big. The Russians could do it. The Chinese could probably do it. The Iranians and Koreans do not yet have anywhere close to the ability.
The US grid is also not that fragile. Remember, it has to deal with lightning strikes every day.
Some have... but not all. We’d be in deep trouble.
People wonder why I own military vehicles that don’t rely on computer technology...
Mike
“Not wanting to be a kill-joy, but I think US infrastructure is a bit tougher than a single nuke in orbit.”
no,it’s not
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse
http://www.empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP_Commission-7MB.pdf
be afraid, be very afraid.......
according to this government report, (and I think reality) 90% of the population would be dead in a year......
http://www.empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP_Commission-7MB.pdf
military yes, but the entire power grid infrastructure no.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvu08Y9XJ0U
“A nuke over the US is cause for retaliation by Strategic Command.”
in the “one second after” book scenario a scud-like missile could be launched in the gulf of Mexico from a container ship, then the ship would be sunk. We wouldn’t find out who would be responsible for a long time. Yes, all the nuke subs would survive but....what are you gonna shoot at?
“but I can’t imagine who would have the balls to start something like that”
not really a question of balls. Did it take balls to fly into the twin towers?
Thanks. I just finished it this weekend. Pretty good read and not nearly as dire a prediction as One Second After.
Emps will not work that far out in space. Electromagnetic waves get weaker the farther they travel, the higher up the blast the weaker the EMP.
will check the suggested novel at borders during lunch
ty
The key words in this article are "could" and "possibly". Also, the higher the blast the weaker the EMP, electromagnetic waves get weaker as they travel, the farther they travel the weaker. When you say a bomb a 100 miles above earth, you are talking a lot further than 100 miles, you are talking thousands of miles to the end of line of sight. A lightning strike on a hill will damage some electronics on houses close the them but other houses in the line of sight that are farther away will not be damaged. An EMP will be limited to what it can take out. There is no chance what so ever of one nuke taking out the whole of CONUS.
Let's now look at the other statements by some FReepers that someone(wouldn't be NK though, they only have one!)would use EMP to disable and then strike with ground nukes in the cities. Why would they bother with the EMP if they are going to all out nuke us anyway? Kind of silly considering they can't take out our military with an EMP.
Some one else said that an EMP will take out satellites, this would be self defeating for most other countries since they rely on satellites also.
While I am glad our military and a few other agencies are gearing up against an EMP, if they were such a threat the Soviets would have used them years ago to take us out. They didn't and you have to ask yourself why. The fact is an EMP won't stop our military and they would retaliate and destroy the country that launched an EMP, the rest of the world knows this.
excellent document and very helpful for future planning.
TY for posting it
Rise time of lightning is much longer than rise time of a nuke-induced EMP. IIRC. So, breakers designed to protect against lightning might not trip in time to protect against EMP.
I'm an EE, but power grids are not my specialty.
Zod in 2012!
“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.”
I think this is a bit overblown. Most telephone networks are hardened in a number of ways from earthquakes to emp and lightening. The grid takes literally 10s of thousands of lightning strike every year, each with the power of a small nuclear bomb with only local minor disturbances if any. (Lightning causes real problems, but those are direct hits.) (Yes, I do know the difference between a static discharge and electro-motive (magnetic) impulse.
And speaking of EMP, it’s “energy” (force), like all other transmitted forces decreases by the square of the distance, and to some extent (because it is a wave) can be self-canceling. The math just does not support the kind of enormous electro magnetic energy suggested. (Lightning produces an EMP too, but it doesn’t do much except cause static.) EMP, by the way, does not damage anything directly, it only damages electronics by inducing a large surge current in wires and it is that current that damages any circuits that are damaged. Anything designed to dissapate large surge currents is already EMP hardened.
Sheilding against it is also quite easy (unlike sheilding against radiation) because it is only a magnetic wave. It also has no effect at all on fiber-optics, which is what almost all telephone trunks in this country now are.
A lot more needs to be learned about emp before everyone moves into panic mode on this, I think.
Hank
A nuke in space? A big enough solar flare could do the exact same thing.
“Even a circuit board not plugged in could have blown components; after all, even handling it while not being properly grounded can blow up a PCB.”
What damages a PCB is static discharge. An emp induces a current in a conductor. It will have no effect at all on transistors not connected to something in which a current can be induced electro-magnetically.
Hank
“If you build a proper Faraday cage to surround electronic devices, it SHOULD protect them in an EMP attack.”
Couple of things to think about. A Faraday cage offers no protection against EMP. A Faraday cage only protects against static discharge (like lightning) which is totally different from EMP. Here’s an experiment you can use to test this. If you have a large enough magnet, place it outside, but near the cage. Inside the cage bring a magnetic compass as close as you can to where the magnet is outside the cage. EMP is a “magnetic” pulse, like turning the largest magnet you can imagine on and off in a few nano-seconds. A Faraday cage does not shield against magnetic flux.
Also, even if you shield things like your radio (which can be done with a soft iron shield) if your have an external antenna, the current will be produced in that, so you will want to be sure it can discharge a huge surge current to ground.
I think you get the idea.
Hank
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