Life After An EMP Attack: No Power, No Food, No Transportation, No Banking And No Internet

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/life-after-an-emp-attack-no-power-no-food-no-transportation-no-banking-and-no-internet ^

[chessplayer]

Most Americans do not know this, but a single EMP attack could potentially wipe out most of the electronics in the United States and instantly send this nation back to the 1800s. If a nuclear bomb was exploded high enough in the atmosphere over the middle part of the country, the electromagnetic pulse would fry electronic devices from coast to coast. The damage would be millions of times worse than 9/11. Just imagine a world where nobody has power, most cars will not start, the Internet has been fried, the financial system is offline indefinitely, nobody can make any phone calls and virtually all commerce across the entire country is brought to a complete stop. A nation that does not know how to live without technology would be almost entirely stripped of it at that point. Yes, this could really happen. An EMP attack is America's "Achilles heel", and everyone around the world knows it. It is only a matter of time before someone uses an EMP weapon against us, and at this point we are pretty much completely unprepared.

[Kartographer]

Correct.

I just meant that a strike can be made without a full blown ballist missle.

My position has always been that EMP big or EMP effect small the terror and confusion created woukld be as bad or worse than the EMP effect itself.

Yes the damage would more and likely be ‘fixable’, but imagine the LA/SD or the BosNYWash corridor without power for 60 to 90 days? What kind of chaos would result?

[driftdiver]

EMP blast radius is line of sight. So areas behind mountains might be more protected than those which are not.

The map in question takes into account the curvature of the earth.

Iran currently has missiles with a range of 2500km able to carry a 1 ton payload. Those certainly won’t reach the high orbital altitude but are a threat.

Currently reports have them orbiting a 65kg payload into orbit.

[driftdiver]

yeah and a coup would make us less of a target /s

ha

[Kartographer]

Or they can get their hands on one of these:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/7632543/A-cruise-missile-in-a-shipping-box-on-sale-to-rogue-bidders.html

[bgill]

In 2011 Texas a power exporter had blackouts due to just a couple plants going off line due to the weather

Just them turning off the power and turning it back on blew several tranformers. That was supposed to have been in a controlled manner.

[EEGator]

"It's Lord now actually..."

[PA Engineer]

The points in the distributor cap may make it but I think the the condenser will fry. The ignition coil- it takes 12v DC from your car and “transforms” it to a high enough voltage (30k to 60k) to get a spark at the plugs. Say that 12v DC increases to 36v. What voltage would you get to the plugs? Yor condenser wouldn't make the cut at 36volts let alone the saturation in the coil. It's not much current but the volts will kill it. Alternators have electronics too- Rectifiers. Zap.

I agree with all of your post and would like to add another failure point in both old and new vehicles based on the Russian tests. They found failure points in generator and vehicle windings from breakdown in the varnish. This is of particular concern for older "safe" autos.

[GonzoGOP]

My position has always been that EMP big or EMP effect small the terror and confusion created would be as bad or worse than the EMP effect itself.

But if all you are looking for is terror, why bother with EMP? Just set off the little cheap fission bomb in the container and blow LA to hell (not a long trip). Now you not only flatten a good chunk of LA, but you close every container port and rail hub in the country as ever single stinking box has to be opened and inspected. The transportation system is wrecked, chaos is caused and you don't have to pay $10,000 a pound to launch your bomb.

More importantly unlike an ICBM or FOBS launch, that tells everybody who sent it, the bomb-in-a-box has no return address. Or if it does you can arrange to have it blamed on someone else. For example let traces in place so that a bomb sent by the Saudis gets blamed on Iran and take out two birds with one nuke.

An EMP attack on the US isn't worth the cost. And is beyond the ability of countries like Iran in any case. The countries that could deliver a high altitude EMP have better ways of trashing us.

EMP only makes sense where you want to take some location in one piece. Hitting the US with no ability for follow up and certainty of retaliation makes no sense.

[bgill]

I also know that it will take more than that to drive us back into the stone age

Let the east and west coasts wake up tomorrow without working iPhones and see what happens.

[Kartographer]

I see your point.

But who knows the mind of a terrorist? Not me.

[GonzoGOP]

But who knows the mind of a terrorist? Not me.

The point is terrorists are cheap. Real evil, reasonably priced. Every terrorist attack has been on the cheap. Think bout 9/11, box cutters. Oklahoma City fertilizer, diesel fuel and some 55 gallon drums. USS Cole, a rubber raft and some plastic explosive. Terrorists don't do James Bond super weapons, they do IEDs. Millions of dollars may sound expensive but ICBMs are priced in the billions. Heck Russia can currently only deploy only three new ICBMs a year! There is a reason that only the US, China and Russia have any ICBMs at all. Pakistan, India, Israel, France, England only have IRBMs or SLBMs. And England's SLBMs come stamped Made in the USA.

ICBMs and worse yet FOBS are monstrously expensive. H-Bombs are even more expensive. Simple fission bombs and a container are cheap in comparison. If there is one thing terrorists have been absolutely consistent on is that they are tight with money and will use the least expensive way available to cause terror.

[driftdiver]

Yeah those saudi’s are dirt poor.

[bgill]

What would happen if an EMP hit near the Tennessee Valley Authority?

A few summers ago, our tv cable was constantly messed up. The company swore it was solar flares. I don’t know if they were cya but if true then it’s something to think about.

[bgill]

Yes, I want a galvenized garbage can since the neighbors stole ours (and the brand new never used garden rake) but being on a budget I was thinking of what I had on hand already.

[Kartographer]

Well what Iran is doing isn't cheap. They are bankrupting themselves and causing a lot of misery with thier nuke program spending.

[RFEngineer]

“What are the consequences of EMP or severe solar storm on these devices? It is theorized, but I don’t believe that is known.”

It’s important to clear up this confusion. A Solar EMP is very low frequency - geomagnetic in nature. There is no danger to electronics directly from the solar storm EMP.

But, that’s not the end of the story. Solar Storm EMP manifests itself as a DC current on power transmission lines. This DC offset, if significant enough causes transformers to saturate their ferromagnetic cores every half-cycle. One of the effects of this is the imposition of apparent reactive load on a power system - to compensate, a system may switch on capacitor banks. They may switch the on and off repeatedly as they try to compensate - this can cause significant out-of-spec voltage spikes on power systems that can damage electronics.

If the transformer saturation is really bad, they will quickly overheat and potentially go “boom”. This can also have potentially bad effects on connected electronics downstream from that transformer.

For a nuclear EMP, The military standards have been developed with solid state devices in mind. They recommend a 10,000 fold EMP reduction in most frequency ranges.

[GonzoGOP]

They are bankrupting themselves and causing a lot of misery with thier nuke program spending.

Again making my point by another avenue. They are going bankrupt to build a low yield fission bomb and short range low lift missiles. Yet to do the high altitude EMP they need high yield low mass fusion weapons and high mass capable launch systems. If they are going bankrupt building the former, how are they going to build the latter when it is orders of magnitudes more expensive.

As for the Saudis. Why launch an EMP weapon when they can buy the US President for a fraction of the cost?

[BigpapaBo]

Honestly, I can’t say. Any facility or home will be affected in one way or another. Mostly inconvenience or bad in some cases. Think of what wires do. They convey energy of some sort. If that energy is increased to the point of conductor failure, (degradation of wiring insulation or melting the conductor) well something is going to happen. It doesn’t matter the size of the conductor.
I met one of our fine WI state troopers out on the road early this morning. I couldn’t see him but I knew he was there. My radar detector went nuts. The radar sets in their cruisers operate at a power of 1-3 watts of directed radar microwave energy, (If I remember correctly). Imagine/hypothetically that the microwave energy going up to say 100-300 watts. It might not burn out my radar detector but I know the amout of energy has increased because my detector is screaming at me. Move up to 1000 watts and on and on. Then instead of a radar detector, direct that energy to a conductor. Something will happen eventually. EMP/Carrington event = orders of magnitude greater than a troopers radar gun.
Now, we directed microwave energy/EMP/solar flare to a conductor wasn’t designed to carry alot of energy (Cable TV signals/low voltage). When the conductor “picks up” that higher energy, it will degrade the signal to your TV and most likely will fry them both.
In the case of your cable getting squirrelly, IDUNNO. Most cable TV signals travel on coax cable that is shielded from external interference. If there is a bad connection or broken shielding anywhere in the cable run it will cause interference. High voltage power lines (at 5k-12k volts,higher EMF radiation) sometimes run near cable tv coax on the poles. Look at your power poles on the street. Did the cable TV crew replace the coaxial cable run when you had the signal interference?
On the solar flare/storm side, an S4 or S5 solar storm that hits the earth directly (NOAA spaceweather.gov), we won’t be watching much TV. A solar event like we recently experienced didn’t do much to us terrestrials. I believe they affected some satelites and data repeater facilities.
TVA? As before, if it has a wire connected to it or electronics control it. Assume Zap. The nuke plants, they have systems that are designed with fail safes and back-ups galore. I’m not a nuke operator and haven’t been around them much. I do not know if they have “hardened” control systems or “hardened “ back-ups for emergencies. I do know they can scramble the reactor pretty quickly and I have read most newer nukes can cool themselves down without any external power. If someone can expand on that information i’d be interested in knowing.
We do not have “hardened” control systems at the facility I operate. If the electric grid goes down, I can’t generate either. That and a lack of fuel (NG in my case).

[The Duke]

Here's the next piece of gear I've got my eye on (solar-powered Kindle):

http://www.solarmio.com/en/

[Brad’s Gramma]

Placemark