Iran at our Doorstep - Part II, The EMP Threat

Townhall.com ^ | September 24, 2011 | Bob Beauprez

[Uncledave]

The other thing to keep in mind is that our allies in unaffected Europe and Asia would help. Fleets of ships and planes would be here pronto to move food, rebuild, etc. Plus I imagine our military assets are hardened properly.

It would suck, and many would die, but it wouldn’t be devastating is my guess.

[redpoll]

I was thinking along these lines myself.

An EMP attack would be bold and in your face. It would also provoke a powerful response. However, “the death by a thousand cuts” would eventually bleed out the victim before they’re aware of it. The communists in the Frankfurt School pioneered the effort; the Islamists are using the strategy by setting up schools within the enemy camp and slowly establishing shari’a. I fear that kind of subversion far more than a nuclear blast over Kansas.

[Gandalf_The_Gray]

I think the map given in this post is very misleading. Let's assume a bomb of yield X is detonated at 30 miles altitude. Further let's assume all the electrons leave in a spherical shell with the same velocity (worst case scenario). When the shell first touches the ground, the surface area of the 30 mile radius sphere is 11,310 miles². We shall use this as our maximum electron flux at ground zero. When the sphere of electrons has expanded to the specified 480 mile radius (measured on the ground) the radius relative to the 30 mile altitude is 480.9 miles giving a surface area of 2,906,159 miles². Dividing through by the base line gives an effective value of 0.038 relative to the 1 at ground zero.

If the same bomb is detonated at 120 miles altitude, the surface area of the electron shell at ground zero is 180,955 miles². Dividing by the base line gives an effectiveness of 0.0625. Moving out to the specified radius of 1000 miles, the line of sight to the point of detonation is 1007.2 Miles with a surface area of 12,747,977 miles² and an effectiveness of 0.000887 (if you could call that effective!)

Moving up to 300 miles with the same bomb you get 1,130,977 miles² and an effectiveness of 0.0100 at ground zero. At 1470 ground miles, the line of sight is 1500.3 miles and the surface area of the shell is 28,285,644 miles² with an effectiveness of 0.000399.

For the sake of argument lets assume X equals a 20 kiloton yield detonation which gives an effectiveness of 1 at 30 miles. To get the same effect at ground zero with a three hundred mile burst you would need a 2 megaton bomb. To cover the whole country coast to coast with an effective electron density of 1 would require a 50 megaton weapon (on 10 July 1961, the USSR tested the Царь-бомба 'Tsar Bomba' at 57 megaton, the largest nuclear weapon ever tested, I think they even scared themselves with that one!).

I picked 20 kiloton as a probable weapon because that is just a bit more then our original WWII designs. That is certainly greater then anything that North Korea has demonstrated. I believe that Pakistan's arsenal is about there as would be the Iranian's. I believe that India has turned the corner and has developed fission technology although they have not demonstrated that capability as yet. (Memo to Pakistan: Mind your P's & Q's!)

Implicit in the map are threats that defy the laws of physics. You can only spread so much energy over so much area and remain effective. The inverse square law rules!

Regards,
GtG

PS I ignored the curvature of the earth because my spherical trigonometry is a bit rusty and it doesn't change things all that much (decimal dust!)

[Nowhere Man]

For starters, the destruction of electronic equipment would not be complete. There would places where geography (living on the right side of a mountain, maybe) or happenspace (stuff in the basement, for instance) would prevent damage. I live in Alaska, and I our state isn’t anywhere near the initial pulse on the map.

True, not everything would be destroyed either plus the EMP would be channeled more to the south, not as much as east or west from what studies I have read. EMP is a bit overrated, it is not an 800 lbs gorilla, more like a 500 lbs one. Yes it will disrupt a lot of things but your car should still start and your transistor radio should still work. The Navy did EMP tests on cars and only a couple did not start afterwards. A few more did sustain damage to the dashboard where the gauges did not work or did not work correctly but they still started up and were driveable. The big problem is the power grid though and the circuit breakers at various points, those will have to be reset or replaced. Maybe eve then, there will be islands of electricity and so on. The big problem is getting gas afterwards, unless the gas station has a generator, a 12 volt pump or a hand pump, it will be hard getting gas.

[redpoll]

Interesting information. Thanks for posting it. My fear, stated elsewhere, is the slow erosion of our culture by our enemies. I think they learned after Flight 93 a lot of us would be willing to fight and die if provoked, so the preferred method would have to be subversion. God help us.

[Nowhere Man]

Interesting information. Thanks for posting it. My fear, stated elsewhere, is the slow erosion of our culture by our enemies. I think they learned after Flight 93 a lot of us would be willing to fight and die if provoked, so the preferred method would have to be subversion. God help us.

Yeah, with the EMP issue, it will be a hardship but it will not destroy everything although life will be hard for a while. Still, it is good to have some stuff protected. As to destroying us from within, it has been going on for a long time although with all of these things we did since 9-11 with the airports and security and so on, there are times I think the terrorists have won. I can understand having metal detectors and so on, but I think a lot of people are being harrassed because of political correctness, I mean, it would be better if we profiled and so on. Instead, we are getting wrong answers because we are not defining the problem correctly, this is known as a category error.If you add in what we have in the White House now, the Kenyan Witchdoctor, that have really succeeded. Still at least on an individual and small group basis, we are willing to fight back, all we need is some sort of coordination.

[TEXOKIE]

NwM, I agree with redpoll. Thanks for the info. Do you have any sources that go over this in more detail?

[TEXOKIE]

I just found this. It has an explanation and strategy for handling preparations. I’ve only skimmed it so far, but I’m posting it for discussion as well as for others to see who are concerned about this.

http://www.futurescience.com/emp/emp-protection.html

[mondonico]

Yes the infrastructure can be rebuilt. The problem is that itbwill take months or even years to replace the 300 or so heavy transformers that form the backbone of the electrical grid. We don’t make them here—they are manufactured abroad to order, and it takes months of lead time to procure them. Six months with no power will devastate the U.S.

We need to obtain and deploy spares now.

[redpoll]

Now that’s interesting information.

[mondonico]

I may have understated the problem.

From p.49 of the
Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack (2008):

“Recovery from transmission system damage and power plant damage will be impeded primarily by the manufacture and delivery of long lead-time components. Delivery time for a single, large transformer today is typically one to two years and some very large special transformers, critical to the system, are even longer. There are roughly 2,000 transformers in use in the transmission system today at 345 kV and above with many more at lesser voltages that are only slightly less critical. No transformers above 100 kV are produced in the United States any longer. The current U.S. replacement rate for the 345 kV and higher voltage units is 10 per year; worldwide production capacity of these units is less than 100 per year. Spare transformers are available in some areas and systems, but because of the unique requirements of each transformer, there are no standard spares. The spares also are owned by individual utilities and not generally available to others due to the risk over the long lead time if they are being used. Transformers that will cover several options are very expensive and are both large and hard to move. NERC keeps a record of all spare transformers.”

http://www.empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP_Commission-7MB.pdf