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!
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.
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”.
I actually *did* the math for an EMP strike in post #56.
“....... 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”!
Thank you!
The “Carrington Event”... In 1859 the wires were exposed copper (no insulating sheath), and they more than likely didn’t have anything grounded.
The power grid back in 1962 is not the same as today. Today there are multiple layers of redundancy in switches, surge protection, enhanced grounding, capacitors, solid state controls, etc, etc.
Your comment is too long and conflates high and low frequencies. There are very few natural high frequency sources, all of which would come from outside the solar system. The likelihood is close to zero. The low frequency events, whether manmade or solar, are only going to affect long lines and mainly transformers. The manmade high frequency sources are difficult to create, and unlikely to be done effectively.