Experts say EMP blast could cripple country

[unhappycamper]

Experts say EMP blast could cripple country
By Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, July 12, 2008

WASHINGTON — A well-placed nuclear blast miles above Iowa could knock out much of America’s electrical grid and cripple the country, security experts warned Congress on Thursday.

Lawmakers admitted the unlikely scenario sounds more like a movie plot than a real-life attack plan, but added that the country needs to be thinking about those kinds of unusual threats as they work to secure the country.

"I’m very concerned that we don’t have the equivalent of an insurance policy for this," said Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., who has pushed the issue in the House Armed Services Committee. "The initial report on this came out four years ago, and we’ve had four years where we could have been doing something."

Nuclear blasts and some modified conventional weapons push out an electromagnetic pulse in addition to their destructive blasts. That energy burst carries the ability to damage and destroy electronic equipment, short-circuiting critical components.

William Graham, chairman of a congressional commission examining the threat of electromagnetic pulse attacks, said the EMP attacks were first discussed during the Cold War, as a way to knock out opponent’s critical response systems. A blast just 25 miles above the Earth has the potential to affect a ground area hundreds of miles wide.


Rest of terra article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=56112



uhc comment: No shit, Roscoe. Perhaps we should call you Capt. Obvious.

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. Better off to worry about earthquakes, floods & poverty.

[eyesroll]

2. Been watching too much Dark Angel, Congressman?

:shrug:

[pretzel4gore]

3. the entire world, old boss

does anyone think the destructive capacity of nukes aren't vital to reactionarky stategy? A better investigation would be: how do stupid arses wipe their...arses when they're so goddam stupid they don't know to wipe their ass?

[Fumesucker]

4. This has been known for many decades...

In other news, water still wet.

[Canuckistanian]

5. The HEMP effect is well-understood. I don't think this should surprise anyone

A high altitude test in the South Pacific once knocked out power and set off alarms in Hawaii, hundreds of miles away.

It's another reason NOT to use nuclear devices, even so-called "tactical" nukes. The threat to human safety and damaged equipment will propagate FAR beyond the target area.

[awoke_in_2003]

7. "The HEMP effect is well-understood"

Well, I don't quite understand it. Can you tell me where I can get some "research" material? :)

[Canuckistanian]

9. Sure

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/intro/emp.htm

http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/emp.htm

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/intro/sim-rad.htm

And a really good article here:
http://infobunker.com/HERFandEMPthreats.htm

[awoke_in_2003]

14. Sorry, I was just swinging for a Duzy

you know hemp (the smokable kind)

[Gold Metal Flake]

15. Hemp won't get you stoned.

It contains so little of the psychoactive chemical THC as to be completely harmless. It's lack of narcotic effects is just one way to distinguish it from Marajuana. It also looks different. So, hemp should never be confused for marajuana. Hemp is a very beneficial plant with many uses that could be a boon to our economy and our environment.

This message brought to you by humourless stick-up-the-butt liberals for hemp cultivation. :D Seriously (again), hemp is good. Hemp is your friend, even if it will not get you buzzed.

[awoke_in_2003]

18. Thanks for the info

a curse you for your avatar- now I have that damn Badger song running through my head :)

[dysfunctional press]

21. some of it will. marijuana is hemp. but not all hemp is good marijuana.

nt

[Canuckistanian]

16. Oy. I should have caught that

My first clue should have been googling "HEMP" and getting all the wrong kind of results.
:rofl:

[FarCenter]

6. Confused article

While there are both conventional and nuclear EMP weapons, they are quite different. Conventional explosives are only powerful enough to have effects in a limited area.

Nuclear explosions above most of the atmosphere can generate EMP with regional or continental effects, and have been observed in high-altitude atmospheric nuclear tests.

An attacker faces with an anti-missile defense would allocate some percentage of warheads to explode at high altitudes in order to create both pulse effects to disable ground-based infrastructure and to create a hostile radar propagation environment. If nuclear warheads are also used on the terminal defense missile interceptors, they can contribute to the problems.

For example, if anti-missile missiles installed in Poland have nuclear warheads to intercept Iranian missiles, the EMP effects may be felt over wide areas of Central Europe.

[tanyev]

8. "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we.

They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." GWB, 2005

[Flabbergasted]

27. Always Makes me Laugh. nt

[lonestarnot]

10. O 4 shit sakes.

:eyes:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. Oh, Dear!! Pass the smellin' salts and send more money to the Pentagon!!

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H.L. Mencken

[high density]

12. Uh, How are we supposed to "protect" ourselves from that?

It's like being worried about somebody blowing up the local supermarket or something. There's nothing you can do about it. If it happens, it happens.

[TexasProgresive]

17. The land line telco companies years ago put ring grounds

and other grounding to bleed off the emf pulse should that occur. The problem is that any semiconductors (transistors, integrated circuits and so forth) would be fried. A number of years ago there was a mini series called "America" that this was the premise to the take over of the United States by China I think. They really didn't refer to it in the series but there was a book based on the series that explained it.

The real concern during the cold war period is that the Soviet technology was behind our and that was a plus as vacuum tube equipment would recover soon after the pulse passed by whereas solid state devices would be ruined. We get an Electro Magnetic pulse from a high altitude nuclear device and you can kiss your IPOD goodbye.:sarcasm: as well as your car or anything that uses computer controls.

[Trillo]

24. Your second paragraph questions

the so-called "advanced technology" of semi-conductors versus vacuum tubes. If semi-conductors are more advanced, wouldn't they be more resistant to EMP rather than less?

[conscious evolution]

25. You would think so

But it is not the case.
Semi conductors have very little tolerance for surges.Can't remember why though.Sorry.
Also,old school tubes would not fair much better.
The key to anything surviving an EMP is sheilding and grounding.Gives the pulse somewhere to go besides the components.Almost all military equipment is sheilded to a degree.Very little civilian stuff is though.

One of my biggest geopolitical fears is an EMP attack.IMO the aftermath would be worse than if major cities were nuked.

[TexasProgresive]

26. The advances of silicon semiconductor technology has

given us low power use, miniaturization and low heat. However the trade off is that the junctions of silicon (pnp or npn) are extremely small and make these devises sensitive to surges. And then there is CMOS which has the advantages of using even less power but is static sensitive. You can destroy these chips with the static electricity in your body.

I don't agree with the reply by conscious evolution that tubes are vulnerable to EMT. These devices are robust and can take a lot of electrical abuse as long as the filaments are not subjected to high current. A big surge would shut them down temporarily and would likely shorten life but not immediately

1962.7.8 High altitude nuclear test, 400 km high Johnston island of a 1.4MT H-bomb. A large power loss in Oahu island, Hawaii, due to malfunction of electric supply control device caused by electromagnetic pulse wave emitted during bombardment of ionosphere by X-ray and gamma-ray of nuclear explosion. The fact that nuclear explosion destroyed own communication system.

http://www.ask.ne.jp/~hankaku/english/np9y.html

The theory is that a high megaton weapon detonated at very high altitude would create a continental pulse that would at least temporarily stop electrical production and destroy electronic devices.

[Ioo]

13. Lots of things can cripple country... Bush did, and he is almost "special"

[kenny blankenship]

19. Therefore we must draw up a list of the 1 million people most likely to explode an EMP bomb

and detain them without counsel or hearing, until such time as we determine -through exhaustive waterboarding and other enhanced interrorgation techniques- that we have made a mistake about them, and really, we got the wrong 1 million people. The bad news will be that accidents happen still, even with the best computer data mining applications, but the good news will be that we've proven that we can process and detain 1 million EMP suspects, and it's just a matter of time before we run down and catch the right 1 million bad guys. Hoo-ah!

[unhappycamper]

31. Your reply was Gold Star DUzy material.

:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[kenny blankenship]

32. thank you!

although, for a homeland protection project this large -and potentially profitable- I'm kind of hoping for a Presidential Medal of Freedom. And preferred shares.

[Clear Blue Sky]

20. Need to get a nuke in the air above the US.

Not so easy for a terror group. Dirty bomb or suitcase nuke on the ground far easier and more likely.

[Danger Mouse]

22. Haha, if we're having to worry about an EMP...we'll also be worrying about...

nuclear radiation, millions dead from nuclear bombs, and you know, the end of the fucking world?
so, in the end, the EMP ends up being just about the least of our worries...

[pscot]

23. This has been out there since Jimmy Carter

was President.It's just another lame justification of star wars and the militarization of space. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Only the national security state can save us.

[NNN0LHI]

28. I wonder how Osama is going to get a nuclear weapon 25 miles above the earth?

Last time I checked he was still trying to manufacture a nuke using a vacuum cleaner.

Don

[Solly Mack]

29. Ooo.Ooo.Ooo. I know. I know. Broken Arrow, right?

This is guess the movie by plot hints, yes?

[Disturbed]

30. An attack on Iran by Israel then backed by the US will

cripple America. Now that is an actual threat.