Free Republic

Exploding A Nuclear Bomb In The Sky Creates An Interesting Phenomenon In 1962, during the depths of the Cold War, the U.S. military exploded a nuclear weapon high above an atoll in the Pacific Ocean. Dubbed Operation Starfish, this exercise was part of a larger project to evaluate the impacts of nuclear explosions in space. The missile, launched from Johnson Island, 900 miles from Hawaii, was armed with a 1.4 megaton warhead, programmed to explode at 240 miles above the earth. It detonated as expected. What was not entirely expected was the magnitude of the resulting electromagnetic pulse (EMP). The...

“Lack of transparency was really critical to getting it passed,” former Obamacare consultant Jonathan Gruber explained. The Democrats cleverly exploited the American voters’ “lack of economic understanding.” Now President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is using secretive, duplicitous science, and exploiting people’s lack of scientific understanding, to impose punitive regulations cleverly labeled the “clean power plan.” The agency claims the clean power plan will prevent “dangerous manmade climate change” by reducing carbon dioxide and “encouraging” greater use of renewable energy. Its real goal is forcing coal-fired power plants to reduce operations significantly or shut down entirely. The EPA also claims that...

WASHINGTON — A persistent failure by federal lawmakers to protect the nation’s electric grid from attack isn’t stopping private sector efforts to prevent damage from a nuclear blast.An Obama administration initiative to spend $7 billion on the development of the electric grid in six African nations, as Watchdog reported, earned a stern rebuke from a security expert concerned about the administration’s priorities.But state level efforts are under way to protect the grid against solar flares and electromagnetic pulses.As security experts work to raise awareness about surviving the potential destruction — caused by a shockwave after an explosion on the surface...

As Worries Over the Power Grid Rise, a Drill Will Simulate a Knockout Blow MATTHEW L. WALD, August 16, 2013 WASHINGTON — The electric grid, as government and private experts describe it, is the glass jaw of American industry. If an adversary lands a knockout blow, they fear, it could black out vast areas of the continent for weeks; interrupt supplies of water, gasoline, diesel fuel and fresh food; shut down communications; and create disruptions of a scale that was only hinted at by Hurricane Sandy and the attacks of Sept. 11. This is why thousands of utility workers,...

American Blackout imagines the story of a national power failure in the United States caused by a cyberattack — told in real time, over 10 days, by those who kept filming on cameras and phones. You’ll learn what it means to be absolutely powerless. Gritty, visceral and totally immersive, see what it might take to survive from day one, and who would be left standing when the lights come back on.

Over coming weeks millions of Americans will be tuning in to NatGeo’s new American Blackout film about surviving in a post-power grid collapse environment that lacks electricity, fresh water and the normal flow of commerce. For most it will be nothing more than standard evening entertainment, but what if such an event turns out to be a future American reality? Such a scenario may seem improbable, but just in the last several years we’ve seen it play out time and again all over the world, albeit in situations limited in time and scope. Hurricane Katrina and over 50,000 people stranded...

Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) returned home to Georgia on Sunday from a triumphant weekend at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, where an award-winning documentary about her life premiered. Her mood quickly soured, however, when she found the front yard of her district home littered with VCR tape in an apparent act of vandalism. “Obviously, someone wants to send a message that they know where I live and can have access to my front yard to do unkind things,” she said in a statement released by her office. The incident has been reported to police. According to a release from...