Posted on 12/02/2010 5:57:26 AM PST by scottfactor
read the book “One Second After”
How did we ever get over the thousands of nuclear explosions, many hundred of which were high altitude, from the late 40s until the 80s?! EMP is overhyped, unless it bursts overhead;)
If you want a good book to read on the matter, read “One Second After”. It’s fiction. The author did get the science right, though as he had the author of the US Army’s manual on EMP Effects assist him; apparently they know each other. He tells a rather plausible tale of what would happen in the US after the fact. It’s an enjoyable action yarn, to boot.
blogpimp sniff....
Those tests were conducted under or near ground level. Historically, nuclear weapons have been used to inflict physical damage, and designed and tested for that. Setting one off at high altitute wouldn't give you much in the way of useful data to asses it's shock wave potential.
“Regardless, the Heritage EMP report advises swift action now to prevent the threat of EMP attacks.”
We currently prevent EMP attacks by assuring the nuclear destruction of any country that launches one against us.
Wouldn’t a massive solar flare while the magnetosphere was weak (say during a polar shift) do pretty much the same thing?
Yes.
An EMP attack will have us partying like it was 1899!!!
(Over-hyped)
As someone who has actually touched special weapons as a nuclear materials courier for NNSA/OST there have been LOTS of exploded nukes at high altitude.
Research Operations Hardtack, Argus, and Dominic(sp), and all the Soviet tests at Kapustin Yar or Novaya Zemlya (sp).
In and of itself, EMP may be a 500 lb. gorilla, but do you really think this administration would let a crisis like that go to waste?
Also, the ability for most communities to pump water. This would create a crisis of immense proportions almost immediately. Shutting done the power gird is akin to shutting down the heart. It will matter little how healthy the rest of the body is at the time of the shutdown--the collective devastating impacts would quickly multiply and spread throughout society. Virtually all the dominoes would fall.
And the 1,000 or so main transformers that form the power grid? We have no replacements sitting in a warehouse, we no longer manufacture them domestically,and they take considerable time to manufacture.
The science is well-proven. Paradoxically, our evolution from robust and primitive vacuum tubes to microelectronic circuitry has made us orders of magnitude MORE susceptible to complete devastation via EMP than we were even 20 or 30 years ago.
I did! I now never leave the house without my backpack of essentials and good walking boots in the trunk. Scared straight I guess.
And who do you nuke if a container ship with a Liberian flag lights one off 50 miles off the NJ shore and air bursts it over south Jersey taking out the Northeast corridor?
So repair or replace the broken stuff. But first, use the neutron bomb on the rag head country that did it and use their oil to pay for it all.
Hardtack I&II, Argus, and most of Dominic I&II were conducted far out to sea, and EMP wasn’t the focus of the test. The landbound tests in Nevada were small.
(H)EMP will be a much bigger problem than most people want to admit, if someone decides to hit us. The actual damage done will be very hard to fix in a timely manner. Taking out the power grid of much or all of the US would pretty much slide us into 2nd or 3rd world status in a very short amount of time.
As far as this nuclear attack I pray to God it doesn't happen, those NYers would fan out across the country. (Just kidding ya’ll)
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