Posted on 04/07/2015 7:40:59 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
“A direct hit from a major solar storm can cause the exact same thing.”
Not true. Your electronics will be unharmed from solar storm effects.
As for a nuclear emp, we know it will destroy some electronics. The grid will go down. How long it will stay down is unknown. We have no idea what the civil infrastructure impact will be.
This is an important topic. Emphasis should be placed on figuring out what will be destroyed and what will not. Hysteria about 90% mortality and 1800s life is just that.
Utilities are starting to stir on this topic....late, better than never.
What happens when EBT cards and Social Security transfers stop flowing; when traffic lights and the neighborhood power grids cease to function; when TV, radio and the Internet are no longer occupying the brains of the masses; when hospitals have only generator power to function, and people are dragging their sick/injured relatives and gang members to the ER; when gangs realize there is zero citizen potential to call for the police in order to stop raids, etc?
“The problem is that unless you use a pretty powerful nuclear device (at least in the 300+ KT range), EMP is not as effective as people think.”
This is incorrect. Emp is remarkably consistent. A 10kt nuke provides only a marginally smaller emp than a 300kt. Gamma yield is what drives emp. A hydrogen fusion weapons. Does not have a gamma yield greater than a smaller fission weapon.
No it wouldn’t. The EMP threat is grossly overblown. The range isn’t actually very good, to achieve the altitude necessary to blanket the country is actually very tough, plus of course you just put a bunch of the country out of range, and a lot of electronics just won’t be effected for various reasons. The paranoid love ringing this bell every few months, and they’re wrong every single time.
At least in the 1800s people had the skills to cope, today society would fall completely apart within hours.
There is little doubt that social unrest would quickly occur. But it would take much more than that to get a 90% mortality event.
Yes, no one really knows how much damage an EMP would do.
The grid going down is my numero uno fear. There are 9 major substations that if taken out would put the grid down. I’m more worried about that and a cyber hack than any EMP. The grid will likely go down at some point but EMP is way down on the list of causes.
Plus if the grid does go down it will likely be the NE grid. That would leave the other two in place. But even a few mos without electricity would be pretty bad.
I’m assuming we need world socialism to avoid this threat?
EMP is my personal favorite choice for dealing with a near nuclear Iran.
I think an EMP would take out the power grid in a lot of areas, as for cars I think it wouls take out about 1/2 of them, some ov the newer ones might make it just due to the fact that most cars are metal shells and most would reflect a large amount of the EMP discharge, also if they were in a grage at the time and the hosue was insulated with that foil backed insulation they would fare better.
‘Social unrest’? Bwahahaha, your penchant for under statement is amusing ... or not, in this instance.
Yes, it’s always more impressive to express hyperbole and hysteria. It makes it seem like you care more.
“The EMP threat is grossly overblown”
The threat is real. We just don’t have any idea of the actual impact. It could be minor to catastrophic. We don’t know
I agree with you. Sometimes I wonder if the people worried about EMP today, are the same ones that were telling us about Y2K.
Actually we’ve got a pretty good idea of the actual. We know the range, we know the intensity, and we know that it’s ineffective enough to have never played a serious part in either our or the USSR’s “nuclear exchange” plans.
We might be going down in that scenario, but the perps would be obvious from the isotopic signature and we would nuke the s*** out of them just to make sure the follow up didn’t occur...
Just curious - if an EMP attack is that easy and so thoroughly disables the opponent, why hasn’t anyone tried one? Or, has someone tried one and the effect wasn’t as expected?
The Soviets already did an EMP attack on their own people. It did very little damage.
I guess I need to sharpen my sarcasm skills as I don’t agree with you on either.
Operation Fishbowl.
You should bing it up and see what’s what.
EMP is real as the nose on your face. The Russians knew that before we did, actually.
Anyway, fascinating stuff.
By the way, EMP produces a sort of ‘sideband’ effect, where in you see an aurora of a nuclear blast on the other side of the equator at a distance equal to the distance between the blast and the equator.
That’s the other thing Fishbowl revealed.
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