“Bad guys explode nuclear weapons miles above U.S. soil, sending out an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that fries the electronic guts of everything in America.
The nation’s financial and transportation systems collapse, hospitals and the Internet go dark, water and electrical grids freeze and runaway Toyota’s with electronic throttles are finally brought to a stop.
“The EMP resulting from the blast would cause widespread damage, devastating the economy and resulting in the deaths of millions of Americans” Read the rest of the story here.
Can you say One Second After
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My friends and I were talking seriously about this when One Second After came out… last year. It’s amazing to me that Time actually caught up to the Blogcycle so quickly. Considering how long it took them to crack the John Edwards/ Rielle Hunter affair, this is lightning fast!
Couldn’t one protect their stuff in a home with the use of metal siding, metal roof and metal soffit and fascia? Of course anything plugged in might be toast from a surge. However, with metal exterior finishing I think a lot of stuff would still work. I was looking and thinking about my shed the only entry points that are line of sight are the window and the door frames since they are wood. I also thought about doing one room in the basement. I would use foil backed ceiling tiles and foil backed insulation. The ceiling would be grounded through the can lights and the walls could be grounded through a strap to the water meter. The problem is no one really knows what would happen until after it happened.
my q is if the power plant isn’t protected won’t it all turn out the same even if metal roofs would protect your home? I don’t really know much about EMP stuff, so really I’m just asking.
Pretty much. There would be no grid power. That said I would hope that my laptop (even though the internet would be out) would work and my car would start. All I really understand is line of sight and a cage should help. Part of the problem is that no one has first hand knowledge since air bursting nuke stopped 40 some years ago and I don’t think that the test equipment that we do have can mirror the power of a nuke.
I think another great “book” is: Lights out (ebook) For me, much more realistic detail.
wow. It never ceases to amaze me how condecending an article can be about something like this. Sure, the probability of an actual EMP attack is still fairly low, but on 9/10 I’m sure the same guy would have scoffed at the chances that terrorists would commendeer 3 aircraft and succeed in running two of them into the world trade center. You see… things don’t happen until they do. Once it’s all over, it’s too late to prepare.
Since an EMP burst would cause so much damage and would be reletively easy to do for anyone with any nuke capabilities to speak of, maybe it isn’t so far-fetched after all. America has a number of enemies who have/could create EMP capabilities.
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For a moment there I was surprised. Time? Doing a serious article on the EMP threat? It didn’t take long to realize that the message of the article was thus: “Ha ha! In’t it funny that those conservatives would worry about EMPs? What a bunch of buffoons. Everyone who’s smart knows that would never happen, so there’s no reason to prepare for it. What a waste of money.”
Sad indeed. While I agree that the chance of an EMP attack is slim, so is the chance of terrorists flying planes into buildings (as Stuart pointed out), or a hurricane destroying a US city, or a tsunami devastating a whole global region. I’d give an EMP attack as much probability as any of the others. In fact, on Sept. 10, 2001, I would have said an EMP was more likely than some of these.
As Time so eloquently states: “There’s something almost pathetic about cowering in the shadow of such a threat, instead of shrugging it off with the resilience that was typical on the American frontier.” It’s been a while since I’ve read the accounts of my pioneer ancestor’s, but I’m pretty sure they carried food, tools and firearms with them as preparation against the dangers that surrounded them. No, they didn’t cower in fear, but they also didn’t shrug off their duty to prepare for the potential threats that faced them. Preparation is not cowering. Rather, it is the unprepared who will cower when disaster strikes.
The ironic thing about preparedness is that it often seems needless. That is because the act of preparation for a disasteroften prevents the disaster from occurring. For example, if we harden key infrastructure against EMP attack, terrorists who otherwise would have employed such an attack will decide not to waste their efforts. The preparations look wasteful; we would never know that we avoided being blasted to the 19th century. For all we know, LA would be a radioactive crater right now had Reagan not implemented his missile defense system.
The other thing that the intellectual lightweights at time apparently haven’t heard (or didn’t have a decent argument against) is that electromagnetic radiation from solar storms poses a threat very similar to that of EMPs. We don’t know when the next major solar storm will hit, but we know that the sun has been fairly dormant for the last decade or do, during which time we have enjoyed immense technological advances that are all at risk of interference and damage from increased solar activity. As recently as 1989, Quebec suffered a major blackout due to solar activity. This solar storm was relatively minor compared to the one that occurred in 1859.
While I wouldn’t demand massive deficits and the restructuring of our society to prepare for the still relatively low chance of an EMP attack, we can do quite a bit to harden key military and civilian infrastructure against an EMP attack or solar storm for a relatively modest cost. This would go a long way to minimize the effects of such an event (or even prevent it altogether), thereby minimizing the pain, loss of life and recovery time. It would also comfort those who take this threat seriously. The other threat we have is that in such an event, we can be confident that Time Magazine will not have prepared and will therefore be purged from this Earth.
Bottom line – if there is an EMP attack, we are screwed pure and simple.
The only preparation I can see for an EMP attack is tanning lotion, ear plugs, sunglasses and a comfy chair.
Let us prepare for more probable scenarios, like a Zombie invasion.
Somehow, I’m more offended by the snotty liberal tone of the TIMES article than I am by the threat of an EMP strike…
The only serious EMP threats are Russia and possibly China. EMP bursts must occur at very high altitudes and above the designated target area. Iran, North Korea, Pakistan nor India have the capability of launching a large enough warhead far enough nor high enough to pose any threat to the U.S. Even China’s threat is minimal and limited to a handful of DF-41A ICBM’s. That threat is mitigated by the certainty that if they ever used their < 30 DF-41A's, we would respond with far, far more destruction to their own homeland.
Previous Bill has it right.
You need a multi-megaton fission-fusion device (not merely a crude Hiroshima-style fission weapon) exploded at an altitude of several hundred miles to produce continent-wide EMP over the U.S.
Only China and Russia currently have both the compact thermonuclear devices and the ICBM technology required.
Worry about real threats like the current economic depression.
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