“...what do you suppose the response would be?”
You know, I’m sure that the 250 million Americans that would die in the ensuing 12 months would die with a great, big smile on their emaciated, diseased faces knowing that North Korea or Iran (or both) had been turned into smoking, radioactive parking lots...not.
Fact is, if you are dealing with a dying madman with nothing to lose, or a religious fanatic who believes that he will usher in the messianic era, by destroying the US as a functioning society, the deterrence is a meaningless concept.
I guess if the bad guys can kill 83% of us with a Hiroshima-sized device with no warning and we have no defense or hope of recovery, we should surrender. What’s the point? They have won.
Actually, I think that IS the point of these EMP articles that show up every three or four months.