Posted on 12/11/2011 10:46:20 PM PST by Arthurio
Newt Gingrich, the Republican presidential hopeful, wants you to know that as commander in chief he is ready to confront one of the most nightmarish of doomsday scenarios: a nuclear blast high above the United States that would instantly throw the nation into a dark age.
In debates and speeches, interviews and a popular book, he is ringing alarm bells over what experts call the electromagnetic pulse, or EMP — a poorly understood phenomenon of the nuclear age.
The idea is that if a nuclear weapon, lofted by a missile, were detonated in outer space high above the American heartland, it would set off a huge and crippling shockwave of electricity. Mr. Gingrich warns that it would fry electrical circuits from coast to coast, knocking out computers, electrical power and cellphones. Everything from cars to hospitals would be knocked out.
“Millions would die in the first week alone,” he wrote in the foreword to a science-fiction thriller published in 2009 that describes an imaginary EMP attack on the United States. A number of scientists say they consider Mr. Gingrich’s alarms far-fetched.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
bfl
“I did a college internship at the Fort Belvoir Engineering Development Laboratories in 1965. We conducted research on the EMP effects upon Army vehicles. I have since tracked R&D on the subject. The military is well prepared to handle EMP on critical systems. The civilian world...not so much.”
Sounds like you have some value in this discussion!
“One Second After” was one of those books that changed my life. Whether it is an EMP or not there are other things just as likely such as hackers taking down the power grid ala stuxnet or the 1859 Carrington Event (solar action with similar effects). Our “grid of life”, because it depends on computers (not hardened military) so much it wouldn’t take much to take us back a couple of centuries. And with the results noted in the book; 90% of population dead in a year.
>> I can envision the federal govt spending some dough on EMP research. After all, it’s constitutional - Article 1 Section 8-wise, as it’s part of defending America.
Curiously, one kind of federal stimulus that really DOES work to create jobs — lots of jobs, GOOD jobs, jobs in remote areas — is well-targeted defense research spending.
The payoff in increased security and practical applications outside of defense is worth the investment.
Scared the he!! out of my wife. She had no idea and is now on a campaign to tell everyone she knows.
As a member of the Army Electronic Proving Grounds in the mid 70's, we were working on stuff to counter EMP effects on communications equipment. I have protected certain spare devices that would make life a bit easier but still it would be like Mad Max.
Solar power will go poof. The only way to survive is to have EMP-protected spares. The other part of the EMP story is that sooner or later the sun will take us out with a blast of x-rays (just ask the Neanderthals).
Back in 1975 I attended some courses at the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright Patterson AFB.
One of the topics discussed was “hardened” solid state electronic parts and the effects an EMP would do to disable them. It was quite an eye opener.
The professor then went on to say that vacuum tubes were not affected by EMP and that the Russians were still using them in some critical equipment that was specifically designed for an EMP attack.
The most interesting thing discussed was the fact that glass envelopes for vacuum tubes are no longer made in the U.S. and that the Air Force logistics system had warehouses of glass envelopes stored in case of an EMP attack and these envelopes were kept to support special vacuum tube equipment that the Air Force still had in reserve in case some critical solid state transmission equipment failed if under attack.
It was an “eye opener.”
We don’t have money for EMP protection......
....we need that money to put shrimp on a treadmill!
should also read “Patriots, Surviving...”, Lights Out, Unintended Consequences and Atlas Shrugged. All good reads and very relevant for our times.
Deja vu all over again. Looks exactly like the attacks against Reagan in 1979-1980. Trying to make Newt look like a nutcase and a warmonger.
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