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The EMP Threat: All It Would Take Is A Couple Of Explosions To Send America Back To The 1800s
TEC ^ | 04/07/2015 | Michael Snyder

Posted on 04/07/2015 7:40:59 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

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To: SeekAndFind
The US is about 4400 km wide.

Let's say a 1 MT nuke went off in the center of the US. One megaton is about 4 * 10^15 joules. Over a circle with a 2200 km radius (area 1.5 * 10^7 sq km), that's 2.7 * 10^8 joules per sq km, or 266 joules per meter. This assumes even distribution of energy, which won't happen -- much more than half the energy will be radiated into space.

I'm not sure how much actual damage that will do.

41 posted on 04/07/2015 8:45:59 AM PDT by PapaBear3625 (You don't notice it's a police state until the police come for you.)
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To: Kartographer

“The giant ball of fire that we revolve around has started to behave very erratically ...”

The answer to all the hoopla about climate change.


42 posted on 04/07/2015 8:46:20 AM PDT by Flavious_Maximus
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To: discostu

“serious part in either our or the USSR’s “nuclear exchange” plans.”

Not true. It is a big part of military planning. There is a big effort to harden military command and control facilities.

The area of influence of an emp is in fact as big as has been discussed in the article. But there is more to the story.

look up Mil-std-188-125-1 and check your own logic about emp not being part of military doctrine


43 posted on 04/07/2015 8:46:46 AM PDT by RFEngineer
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To: Kartographer

I didn’t recognize it as sarcasm. I thought you were one of the enlightened ones. It is interesting to read all of the old FR Y2K threads. There always has to be some something out there that will take us back to the 1800’s....


44 posted on 04/07/2015 8:48:25 AM PDT by kjam22 (my music video "If My People" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74b20RjILy4)
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To: AppyPappy
The Soviets already did an EMP attack on their own people. It did very little damage.

Really hard to fry one of these suckers.



45 posted on 04/07/2015 8:51:23 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: SeekAndFind

I am more worried about the fireballs over our cities then a voltage spike.


46 posted on 04/07/2015 8:53:30 AM PDT by minnesota_bound
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To: RFEngineer

Hardening targets you expect to get hit is one thing. But EMP wasn’t part of our attack plans, If it was really that effective we wouldn’t have needed to invent the neutron bomb.


47 posted on 04/07/2015 8:59:13 AM PDT by discostu (Bobby, I'm sorry you have a head like a potato.)
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To: SeekAndFind
Reading the various posts of this thread. Some say it is hysteria, some say it is true. Lets say sometime in the future, there is a collapse in our society, and America becomes a dystopian wasteland. Here are my thoughts, for what it is worth.

People talk about the low information crowd, those on food stamps, welfare, and such. The way I look at it, most of those people are too lazy or inept to make it on their own and need - desperately - someone to take care of them.

Than there are those who do know how to survive when the shinola hits the fan. I firmly believe these types live more in the outer suburbs to the country.

Those who need someone to look after them will gravitate to those who they think will take care of them. In the urban areas of the cities, the thugs and gangsters will take charge and use these people as cannon fodder. In the outlying areas, those who have the knowledge and skills to survive can afford to pick and choose.

The survivors can pick those who can work - the able-bodied and so on. They will teach these people to survive, to hunt, fish, shoot, cook, fix things, mend, trap, track, ambush, kill, etc. They will discard the less able-bodied - send them back or kill them outright. If you can't work, you can't live here. Also, they will teach people what made the country worked in the first place - hard work, Christian beliefs, charity.

The gangsters will hold up in the cities and meagerly exist. They will at times make excursions into the country for supplies and people - slaves. But they will fail because they will not have the knowledge - or tactical knowledge - in how to fight and win.

Just thoughts off the top of my head.

48 posted on 04/07/2015 8:59:24 AM PDT by 7thson (I've got a seat at the big conference table! I'm gonna paint my logo on it!)
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To: 7thson

I always go back to one of my favorite shows of all time, Connections, and this scenario....I remember watching this back in the early 80s and it really was sobering to comtemplate, and that trap is now even tighter than ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKELMR6wACw


49 posted on 04/07/2015 9:01:39 AM PDT by dfwgator
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To: PapaBear3625

EMP lenses off of the ionosphere. The EMP itself shakes electrons loose and lenses them back down to the earth in massive quantities. There are three aspects to the attack, which include a ‘long wave’ that uses long conductors to transmit the energy to transformers and generators which can melt the windings.

This wouldn’t be all that bad, but we don’t make the transformers and generators here in the US that can replace them. They come from Asia now.

And the locomotives used to move them? Diesel electric now.

Also, there are nukes and their are nukes designed to maximize gamma yield.

You can design a fairly small nuke to maximize the gamma yield. The less high explosive you can get away with, the better. It’s the gamma yield that shakes the electrons loose.

The only damage that counts it the damage done to the electrical grid, particularly to transformers and generators. We already know it’s going to be hell on capacitors and IC’s.

We live in a ‘just-in-time’ supply chain now. Let the local Safeway run out of food and see what happens in a week.

ULF comms were justified particularly because you can harden them against EMP. The nuke triad ensured that if you did try to take us out with EMP, our subs would do the same, and worse. We could use ULF to communicate with the subs to ensure it happened. They’d be the eyes and ears figuring out who did what to whom.

One Second After is an excellent novel based on very good research on the topic. What’s funny about it is that it is likely optimistic. Good book.


50 posted on 04/07/2015 9:01:47 AM PDT by RinaseaofDs
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To: dfwgator

I think it was less skills, than that it was the way of life, all of life, shops, utensils and tools, and supply systems, manufacturing, the food industry, transportation, communications, medicine, was geared to living in the 1800s.

If you sent a car back to the 1800s it would be useless, because there was no infrastructure to support it. In the 1800s you didn’t need to know how to build an oil lamp, or a harness for a horse, or a plow, instead you just went to the store, and the selling and caring of horses was like everything that takes care of cars today, horse feed filling stations, horse dealers and horse factories breeding new horses, horse repair shops, horse related shops making fine saddles, every household and every business designed for you to walk up with your horse and need to water and tie it up.

To suddenly be thrust into the 1800s today, means something totally different, where would people shop for a two man saw, or a horse, or a plow, or a manual coffee grinder, or coffee for that matter, since the long distance haulers no longer have the same methods of transporting goods from origin or farm, to market, that they had in the 1800s.

Today people should have enough food and the means to get water, to keep themselves going for a long time, while society would figure out work arounds to find a new way of dealing with things.


51 posted on 04/07/2015 9:02:58 AM PDT by ansel12 (Palin--Mr President, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.)
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To: All
could possibly

Government speak for "we have no idea".

52 posted on 04/07/2015 9:03:25 AM PDT by Turbo Pig (...to close with and destroy the enemy...)
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To: discostu

“Hardening targets you expect to get hit is one thing. But EMP wasn’t part of our attack plans, If it was really that effective we wouldn’t have needed to invent the neutron bomb.”

You are very much technically misguided On many fronts. You don’t appear to have any actual knowledge on the subject of emp. I sent you a reference. Please look it up and then if you would like to have a serious discussion about the topic, I would be pleased to do so. Until then nobody should take anything you post on the subject seriously.


53 posted on 04/07/2015 9:05:52 AM PDT by RFEngineer
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To: RFEngineer

I’ve done enough research to know it’s quite simply not the threat people keep insisting it is. If it was that dangerous we’d have gotten nuclear tests out of Nevada almost immediately.


54 posted on 04/07/2015 9:08:13 AM PDT by discostu (Bobby, I'm sorry you have a head like a potato.)
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To: Kartographer

I have learned the hard way that sarcasm in print can be exceptionally difficult to detect. Even in speech it can be elusive to some. I have said outrageous things, secure in my belief that no one could possibly take me literally, only to be met with scorn and derision from someone who took me seriously. Such people usually consider themselves too intelligent to fall for that absurd statement they just heard without realizing that the fact that they took it as an attempt to make them believe something so absurd rather than recognizing it as sarcasm only proves their own gullibility.


55 posted on 04/07/2015 9:09:21 AM PDT by RipSawyer (Racism is racism, regardless of the race of the racist.)
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To: RFEngineer

I do agree that EMP is no the 800 lbs gorilla it is made out to be but more like the 500 lbs one. Yes, it might not take out your car, transistor radio, home generator and even your computer but the downside is it will affect the grid and we have so many people depended on that, that is the true problem we have. As an individual, you could ride it out with preparation and enough gas/diesel or perhaps solar/wind, but the key here is society itself. Just think if the system goes down ,the EBT cards will not work and it will be Katy bar the door.


56 posted on 04/07/2015 9:10:43 AM PDT by Nowhere Man (Mom I miss you! (8-20-1938 to 11-18-2013) Cancer sucks)
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To: discostu

“I’ve done enough research to know it’s quite simply not the threat people keep insisting it is.”

You need to do still more research. There is lots of unclassified data out there that you should read. Until then, you are simply spreading wholly incorrect information for reasons only you understand.


57 posted on 04/07/2015 9:14:09 AM PDT by RFEngineer
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To: RFEngineer

Nothing shows you have no facts like going after the person. Since that’s all you’ve done for multiple posts now we both know the facts don’t back you.


58 posted on 04/07/2015 9:16:19 AM PDT by discostu (Bobby, I'm sorry you have a head like a potato.)
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To: kjam22

Y2K is like someone warning of a potential devastating flood people skeptical at first, but after a while they get it and a damn is build, sure enough the flooding rains come, but because the damn was built no real damage is done, so does that mean no damn needed to be built?

Y2K didn’t happen because it couldn’t it didn’t happen because business took it serious and at the cost of millions of dollars they had programmers rewrite millions of lines of code.


59 posted on 04/07/2015 9:19:30 AM PDT by Kartographer ("We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.")
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To: minnesota_bound

The goal is to minimize the damage and the long term effects and total casualties from those fireballs, and to maximize survival, and minimize recovery time.

Recovery is all important after any catastrophe, and not only is it important for the people needing water, food, and medical treatment, and a recovered economy and work, but it is needed for our military. If America is weakened in a major nuclear/EMP strike, then enemy ground troops could be following.


60 posted on 04/07/2015 9:19:58 AM PDT by ansel12 (Palin--Mr President, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.)
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