Not Ready for This Attack

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gilliam

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Recently a Senate Judiciary subcommittee of which I am chairman held a hearing on a major threat to the American people, one that could come not only from terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda but from rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea.

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the American homeland, said one of the distinguished scientists who testified at the hearing, is one of only a few ways that the United States could be defeated by its enemies – terrorist or otherwise. And it is probably the easiest. A single Scud missile, carrying a single nuclear weapon, detonated at the appropriate altitude, would interact with the Earth’s atmosphere, producing an electromagnetic pulse radiating down to the surface at the speed of light.

Depending on the location and size of the blast, the effect would be to knock out already stressed power grids and other electrical systems across much or even all of the continental United States, for months if not years.

Few if any people would die right away. But the loss of power would have a cascading effect on all aspects of U.S. society. Communication would be largely impossible. Lack of refrigeration would leave food rotting in warehouses, exacerbated by a lack of transportation as those vehicles still working simply ran out of gas (which is pumped with electricity). The inability to sanitize and distribute water would quickly threaten public health, not to mention the safety of anyone in the path of the inevitable fires, which would rage unchecked. And as we have seen in areas of natural and other disasters, such circumstances often result in a fairly rapid breakdown of social order.

(Sen. Jon Kyl) Read more at washingtonpost.com …
 
Weirdly enough…

I read this book last year, and an EMP attack occurred in the story. I thought it was really interesting that it proposed what had seemed to me a likely event - condisering what an EMP will do to computer systems, I find it hard to believe there aren’t people employing this brand of attack on us already.

I think I read something about the government beginning an electrical system shielding program for major/critical military and financial installations a few years ago, but I can’t quote a source.
 
If terrorists can obtain a nuke, why they don’t make it explode on the ground to cause some casualties as well?

If this is a nation-levelled war where civilian casualties are heavily lamented, this tactic maybe be deployed
 
Actually the committee has missed a point… There will be great casualties because every unshielded engine in the affected area will come to a dead stop…planes will drop and cars will stop and all the power will go out. They are downplaying the “collateral damage” of such an attack. Right behind all that will come the pandemonium when the food trucks and trains don’t move and there is no pumps for fuel and so the food runs out…and of course the water which isn’t gonna pump any more… this is how you nuke someone back into the stone age without destroying the whole place off hand.

Welcome to the new reality America…
 
this sounds too twilight zone to me. we don’t have some way of re-establishing our systems at least eneogh to get by? no backup systems available just in case?
 
Nope…only some of the miltary are shielded enough to handle this but the civilian pop is anything but shielded. Too expensive…
 
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Benadam:
I pray we continue to head them off at the pass.
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Me, too, Benadam. This is horrific and nightmarish news…:gopray2:
 
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abcdefg:
If terrorists can obtain a nuke, why they don’t make it explode on the ground to cause some casualties as well?

If this is a nation-levelled war where civilian casualties are heavily lamented, this tactic maybe be deployed
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Ground burst? Nope, even the military has cited the effectiveness of an air burst. Air bursts cause more damage and more casualties. The radiation is emitted from the burst like light from the sun. And, just like raising a light to the ceiling instead of having it on the floor, an air burst can emit the radiation further and possibly over some obsticles that would have provided shielding. A ground burst will put more contamination up into the air, but it will spread out alot and enter the jetstream, missing the intended target area.

Contamination from the accident at Chernobyl was detected in the Mediteranean (sp?) a day after the accident, after it had circled the earth in the jetstream.
 
Umm…the size of warhead they could place on a scud would affect a very small area with EMP. EMP weapons don’t really have that long of a range…the atmosphere has a degrading effect upon the electro-magnetic radiation.

Also, electrical devices that are non-powered at the moment of the blast are totally unaffected (i.e. no battery at all, capacitor discharged).
It would be abnormal for such a nuke to shut down anything bigger than a city…it MAY shut down the power grid across large portions of the country, but emergency generators should be unaffected.

Many military vehicles are hardened against EMP attacks, its not nearly as hard as people think. Just a matter of shielding the electronics.

If our enemies can launch enough nukes at us to EMP large portions of the country, then we have bigger problems…
 
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Isidore_AK:
Umm…the size of warhead they could place on a scud would affect a very small area with EMP. EMP weapons don’t really have that long of a range…the atmosphere has a degrading effect upon the electro-magnetic radiation.

Also, electrical devices that are non-powered at the moment of the blast are totally unaffected (i.e. no battery at all, capacitor discharged).
It would be abnormal for such a nuke to shut down anything bigger than a city…it MAY shut down the power grid across large portions of the country, but emergency generators should be unaffected.

Many military vehicles are hardened against EMP attacks, its not nearly as hard as people think. Just a matter of shielding the electronics.

If our enemies can launch enough nukes at us to EMP large portions of the country, then we have bigger problems…
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I believe that your statement that unpower equipment not being affected by an EMP event is incorrect. I believe that the effect is similar to a static discharge on microcircuits. It will distroy them. I’ve been searching for info on this particular aspect, but have not located it yet. Here is an article that discusses EMP that anyone may find interesting.
 
Just in case you lot weren’t frightened enough to let your politicians follow whatever agenda they like already, we now have THE MATRIX!!!

Is Sen. Jon Kyl Neo or Morpheus*?*

:rotfl:
 
2-5. Equipment susceptibility. System damage or upset from EMP is caused by currents and voltages induced in conductors exposed to a free-field or a partly attenuated EM pulse coupled to circuits. External conductors, structures, and internal conductors act as unintentional receiving antennas and “coupling” paths. They can deliver the resulting EMP-induced currents and voltages to sensitive components of electronic equipment. The HEMP-induced currents on exterior long-line penetrators, such as power and telephone lines, can have amplitudes as high as thousands of amperes. Currents induced on
internal cable runs can be as high as hundreds of amperes for most structures and even higher in facilities with lower SE. It is important to note that exterior voltage transients can be in the megavolt range, and it would be normal to expect an order of thousands of volts from internal coupling.
Transients of these magnitudes can be delivered to electronic circuits, such as integrated semiconductor circuits, which can be damaged by only a few tens
of volts, a few amperes, or less. These circuits also operate at relatively low levels (e.g., 5 volts and tens of milliamperes) and can be upset by EMP currents of similar values. If the large exterior coupled transients were
allowed to enter a structure that had no HEMP protection treatment, even relatively “hard” devices, such as relay coils and radio frequency interference (RFI) filters, would likely be damaged. Figure 2-28 shows this
potential EMP interaction leading to mission degradation.
–Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) and Tempest Protection for Facilities

While this does not specifically say that the circuits need not be energized, it does show that it is coupling to or exposure to the EMP that is the cause of damage and it shows that it is the surge in energy in the circuit that causes the damage. Such surges can be induced in the circuit regardless of whether the circuit is energized. It is just like a lighting strike. All that is needed is connection to the strike.
 
I’ve always been fascinated with EMP, ever since watching The Day the Earth Stood Still when I was little. Remember the scene where Klaatu/“Christopher Carpenter” stopped all electronic devices for a half hour at lunch time? That was EMP. And, yes, EMP would wreak untold havoc on the country. Heck, that power outage in August 2003 brought us to a standstill!

Good movie, by the way. The cinematographer was Catholic and snuck a lot of Christian imagery into the movie.

'thann
 
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abcdefg:
If terrorists can obtain a nuke, why they don’t make it explode on the ground to cause some casualties as well?

If this is a nation-levelled war where civilian casualties are heavily lamented, this tactic maybe be deployed
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Why cause a ground burst and kill only a few million when they could create an EMP burst and incapacitate the nation for years and potentially kill tens of millions and completely disrupt our economy. They only electronics that could survive would be Fiber Optics, which are impervious to EMP. Any system designed around copper wire would be rendered useless.
 
The nuke will most likely never really burst close enough to do any blast or rad damage to the ground…it is not intended to be more than a flash in the upper atmosphere and as such it will blanket an area with the EMP burst. That’s all it’s supposed to do… The effect will be wide spread because of that altitude, and would be crippling to the affected area. It doesn’t take a very big one and in fact the scenario I read about was of about 3 or 4 small ones burst over the continental US and they’d turn the lights out right then and there. I suggest that you read “House of Gold” by Bud Macfarlane (along with his other two novels…all Catholic) that are free from the Mary Foundation,
catholicity.com/ His is a scenario of the millenium bug (yeah…I know) but the effect would be the same.
Pax vobiscum,
 
Thank you Michael. I will order the books. This all makes the world seem so fragile.
 
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