Posted on 09/06/2009 7:04:14 PM PDT by immadashell
I have just finished reading William R. Forstchen's new novel One Second After. Briefly, it is about the instantaneous breakdown of American way of life as the result of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) which disables the nation's electrical grid as well as all sophisticated electrical components in cars (they stop), planes (they crash), telecomunications of every sort, etc. leaving the population in a world similar to that of the Eighteenth Century. Shortages of every variety create societal strains, chaos, death and destruction in a matter of weeks and months. Forstchen's book (with a forward written by Newt Gingrich), while fiction, creates a scenario which can happen to us today, since the technology already exists. The possibility of this devastation has been largely ignored by our politicians and media, and, to a lesser extent, by the military. Only a very small proportion of our citizens has ever heard about EMP. Even fewer have taken measures to deal with it. Experts on the subject have no doubt about whether we will have to eventually face such an attack. They only question when it will occur.
After reading this book, my first thought was we spend billions (potentially trillions) of dollars preparing for a hypothetical calamity we are powerless over like global warming and yet ignore preparing for this ultimate weapon of asymmetrical warfare.
I highly recommend this very frightening but readable new book. It is science fiction (#1 on Amazon) today but could be reality One Second After.
God Bless our Navy and Country.
I learned about EMP in the 80s while on active duty. A 1MT device detonated 400 miles over Kansas would take out every computer chip from Maine to Baja California, not to mention the power grid and most of the stuff connected to it. Tens of millions would be dead of starvation within a couple months. This is the ultimate doomsday scenario for our miserable “what about me” culture. Not very many positives in the scenario. And with nuclear proliferation ... and many who feel they “have nothing to lose”... it will happen eventually.
The Congress was briefed EMP in the 80s, and it was after the briefing that they passed a unanimous resolution to proceed with ABM (anti-ballistic missile). That’s the way I heard it, anyway.
Unsurprisingly, Zero wants to kill the ABM program, the only thing that could prevent the EMP attack.
Extraordinary book. Hopefully for future printings they figure out that “would of,” “should of,” and “might of” are not correct. It’s an error made throughout the entire book, which is odd because it’s otherwise well-proofread.
Permanent.
A 1MT device detonated 400 miles over Kansas would take out every computer chip from Maine to Baja CaliforniaI beg to differ. Present thinking has a different perspective on this ...
Damage would be permanent. Small wires/traces/pathways melted. Anything requiring surge protection would be internally surged to death by the pulse wave, unless inside a significant ferrous metal enclosure.
Yup, that’s our guy... on a side note my old John Deere tractor with points will run OK I think.
Fried completely, forever.
I had repressed that memory. It drove me half insane reading it.
I found it in the library.
If any women like Christian novels, Terry Blackstock wrote a four book series about the same type catastrophe. It is the Restoration series and the setting is Birmingham Al and suburbs to the south. The families were trying to survive in their neighborhoods as society broke down around them.
As a woman, it was interesting to see how the various members of the families coped with the hardships and the fears caused by this. Since all communications and most means of travel were wiped out they had no idea what had happened or how wide spread it was for a long time.
EMP is a tad overblown IMO. It can happen and it can affect limited areas, inversely proportional to the SQUARE OF THE DISTANCE from the event (i.e. the apparent strength drops off real fast).
The One and his progressive machine is for real. And everywhere.
Problem with library books, you can’t mark in them and you aren’t supposed to keep them.
which disables the nation's electrical gridBzzzzt!
Any aggressors able to 'hurl' a device as high and central as it would need to be are going to have had that 'launch' detected and the necessary precautions THEN executed to 'island' the various service areas into independent generation-load centers ... the biggest problem is the highly interconnected 'grid' system we have today that tend to collapse if any big upsets hit them. Independent, "islanded", they can survive, and there will be time to execute that maneuver.
Old car's with mechanical ignition systems will be unaffected. The radio would be shot, unless it is really old and has tube type radio.
Sounds real uplifting ... read it before bed and never sleep again.
**EMP is a tad overblown IMO. It can happen and it can affect limited areas, inversely proportional to the SQUARE OF THE DISTANCE from the event (i.e. the apparent strength drops off real fast).**
I don’t this is so with exo-atmospheric EMP. It is a line-of- sight effect and the inverse square law does not apply.
That would be the one, yeah. And in a six degrees kind of thing, he played a villain in one of the earliest Man From UNCLE episodes, a show which during its Batman-influenced silly season 3 had an episode called “The Super-Colossal Affair,” the climax of which had Illya Kuryakin similarly riding a bomb dropped on Las Vegas.
I have, however, worked with military equipment that is designed to work in an EMP environment so I do have some background in this area. In the case of a military radio the only thing that is required to provide EMP protection is a couple of diodes shunting the antenna and possibly other inputs. That's it. That's all you need.
Also, the way an EMP pulse is delivered is via a high altitude nuclear blast and the effectiveness of the pulse will fall off as the square of the distance from the point of detonation. I'm really doubtful that a single weapon could affect unprotected electronic equipment over the whole United States.
And lastly, it is not in the cards that the North Koreans or the Iranians or their like are going to have the technology to actually build and deliver an EMP weapon that would have to be detonated high over the U.S. The Chinese could do it. They probably have EMP weapons. The Russians could as well. But we are (or were) well on our way to building a defense system that can protect us against such an attack. And also note that much of our military gear is designed to withstand an EMP attack.
Bottom line: Relax. Have a beer. Enjoy watching Van Jones and his former boss squirm and starting thinking about which Czar will be next.
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