Posted on 05/03/2018 8:35:00 AM PDT by rktman
A congressional committee report states that a large electromagnetic pulse (EMP) inundating America could cause 90% of Americans to die. The EMP is inevitable. The dead Americans are not.
Pry explained that an EMP can happen in a few different ways: if an adversary attacks America using nuclear weapons, or naturally via a large solar storm. The reason why a large EMP hitting Earth is inevitable is that solar storms are inevitable. They happen regularly. The only question is when a large one will cross Earth's path. For instance, NASA reported that if a solar superstorm from 2012 had happened just one week earlier, it would have blasted the Earth with a catastrophic EMP. We are playing this slot machine every day. Eventually, we're going to hit the jackpot.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
So you don’t think Russia and China would applaud if Iran or N. Korea hit us with a nuclear EMP.
A country is going to start a nuclear war with us just to shutdown some of our electronics?
Where is the detailed documentation about these tests?
[shrug] The herd needs thinning.
Read One Second After by William R. Forstchen. Get back to me afterwards and let me know what you think. Please?
Automobiles were subjected to EMP environments under both engine turned off and engine turned on conditions. No effects were subsequently observed in those automobiles that were not turned on during EMP exposure. The most serious effect observed on running automobiles was that the motors in three cars stopped at field strengths of approximately 30 kV/m or above. In an actual EMP exposure, these vehicles would glide to a stop and require the driver to restart them. Electronics in the dashboard of one automobile were damaged and required repair. Other effects were relatively . Twenty-five automobiles exhibited malfunctions that could be considered only a nuisance (e.g., blinking dashboard lights) and did not require driver intervention to correct. Eight of the 37 cars tested did not exhibit any anomalous response.
Based on these test results, we expect few automobile effects at EMP field levels below 25 kV/m. Approximately 10 percent or more of the automobiles exposed to higher field levels may experience serious EMP effects, including engine stall, that require driver intervention to correct. We further expect that at least two out of three automobiles on the road will manifest some nuisance response at these higher field levels. The serious malfunctions could trigger car crashes on U.S. highways; the nuisance malfunctions could exacerbate this condition. The ultimate result of automobile EMP exposure could be triggered crashes that damage many more vehicles than are damaged by the EMP, the consequent loss of life, and multiple injuries.
Google Solid State Circuit Breaker. Then do some reading
Carrington event was a CME producing charged particles which is a vastly different form of EMP than say a gamma ray burst. Unfortunately, both are types of EMP and public conflation of the two is rampant.
Do you think a CME can impart a higher charge to a piece of electrical transmission equipment than a lightening strike?
In the event of a CME people may have to replace their power strips and some electronics. I keep most of my valuable electronics connected via $140 UPSs which incorporate a solid state circuit breaker. Any UPS with line conditioning has one. “Click-click” and it’s over.
The worst thing that can happen in a CME is ppls houses will catch fire as their power strips blow past all their breaker wires and catch fire. I saw that happen to a cheap, Chinese power strip during a 2004 CME event.
Missed the 2 most important.. Cigs and booze ;-)
Your post is the only joke here.
Only stupid people believe man-made EMP, more than several miles from the source, will cause any damage whatsoever.
The pulse’s ability to create a current in a conductor decreases exponentially as distance increases.
While a nuke above a city would likely take out electrical devices in that city, the idea that it would take out everything for hundreds of miles...even if exploded at a VERY high altitude, is ludicrous.
That the US needs to import electric transformers is a problem. Instead of wasting billions on worthless windmills and solar panel farms, we should be investing in developing that manufacturing capability here and improving our electric grid system. In the not too distant past we have had regional blackouts covering large portions of the US caused by simple transformer failures. As part of improvements in our grid should be protections against EMP whether it comes from cosmic or nuclear attack threats.
Rktman, thanks for posting this.
For those who think that EMP is a joke: just because something hasn’t happened before, doesn’t mean that it cannot happen. You are suffering from what is known as confirmation bias.
EMP has, however, occurred before. WRT natural events, the seminal event was in 1859 - the Carrington Event. We had few electrical lines (mostly telegraphs), and many of those burst into flames as a result of the power of the burst. As the article mentioned, we dodged a bullet in 2012. There have been other glancing blows that only resulted in temporary power outages in limited areas...but that’s just plain dumb luck.
WRT hostile actions, we KNOW (as do the Russians) what the potential power of an EMP generated by a nuke can be. We generated one in 1962 in the Starfish Prime nuclear test over the Pacific; the (then) Soviets had their Test 184. Read about them HERE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse Starfish Prime knocked out street lights and had other effects in Hawaii - 900 miles away. Note that this was NOT a test that tried to magnify the EMP effect, and that bombs can be tuned to significantly enhance the effect (and if your nation can build a nuke, it also has the technology to tune it in this fashion). The Soviet test used a smaller bomb, but took place near populated areas, and the effects were well beyond what Soviet scientists had expected.
WRT the tests of automobiles vs. an EMP pulse, the very few results so far are inconclusive. The EMP Commission obtained cars from several government agencies for testing, but had to return them in working order - so they did NOT generate EMP up to the levels that the equipment they had could produce. Further, none of these vehicles was made after the 2002 model year...and there has been a significantly increased reliance upon microelectronics since then. Here is an article analyzing these tests: http://www.futurescience.com/emp/vehicles.html
For anyone actually interested in the FACTS of the matter, there is this study: https://www.ferc.gov/industries/electric/indus-act/reliability/cybersecurity/ferc_meta-r-320.pdf Section 8 has the conclusions...among which are that:
“The EMP Commission specifically was tasked to look at the impacts on general society from an EMP assault on the U.S. It noted that this is not just a power system issue – all of the other important legs of the infrastructure are also intertwined with each other and the power system, with the power grid probably being the most significant. Note also that E1 HEMP often cannot be isolated from other effects. E2 and E3 are also important, and possibly would have worse effects than E1 for some parts of the infrastructure, such as the effect of E3 on the power transmission system. Also there can be synergistic effects, such as E1 setting up a system to be further damaged by the following E2 or E3 pulse.”
The bottom line here is:
1) The EMP threat from either hostile action or natural phenomenon is certainly not zero. If there was only a 0.5% chance of such an event happening in any given year, that would equate to about a 9.5% chance over 20 years, and about a 22.2% chance over 50 years.
2) The effects of such an EMP ARE bad enough (and will get worse as we become more and more dependent upon microelectronics and just-in-time delivery systems) that the probabilities above are just too high to ignore. Granted, in any given year the probability is low, but with potentially catastrophic effects (and we just don’t know), you have the Perfect Storm for a “low probability, high impact” event (much like a 5-mile wide asteroid hitting the Earth). We, as a society, would be incredibly stupid to NOT prepare to significantly ameliorate EMP effects.
3) Given 1 and 2, above, the relatively small investment in measures intended to significantly ameliorate the effects of a hostile or natural EMP event are definitely worth it. In fact, the more such preparations are implemented, the lower the odds of a hostile attack (because it won’t have the desired effect, and any perpetrator(s) would then be faced with a very pissed off, and nuclear-armed, America).
4) WRT the odds of any disaster, and the advisability of preparing for it, there was a VERY instructive article posted on FR yesterday. The original article is here: https://medium.com/s/story/the-surprisingly-solid-mathematical-case-of-the-tin-foil-hat-gun-prepper-15fce7d10437
I’d suggest that before anyone spouts off again with such ingenious statements as “Ah, not this $hit again!” or “this is a big nothing” or similar UNINFORMED statements, that they read all four of the articles/studies linked to in this post. Once you’ve gotten informed, then come back to the rest of us with INFORMED doubts, rather than just ridicule (like the Alinskyites). Come on, folks, you’re better than that!
There will be a slight inconvenience at most.
Someplace I read or heard that the lead time on some of the replacement equipment (from China) is two years. But that could be a longer time if it’s a solar storm hitting the planet. And who says anyone would help us out anyway?
I look at it like meteor strikes or catastrophic earthquakes.
i.e. sure it could happen and actually might. I invoke the serenity prayer.
We have been warned about the electric grid for years, if not decades.
Nothing has been done. Not by the electric companies. Not by the regulators. Not by the state or federal government.
Seems to me either there really isn’t anything we can do to protect ourselves from an attack on the electric grid, or the powers-that-be don’t care if it happens (or prefer it happens).
Or we are not nearly as vulnerable as they say.
BTW, at least I have a 1960 tractor and a lot of gas, just in case.:)
This thing reminds me of the end of “Knowing”.
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