Israeli EMP Attack Could Throw Iran 'Back to Stone Age'

Arutz Sheva ^ | 9/9/12 | Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

[Eleutheria5]

Israel might attack Iran by using electromagnetic impulses (EMP) that could cripple the country by shutting down its electronics and sending the Islamic Republic “back to the Stone Age,” The London Sunday Times reported.

EMP causes non-lethal gamma energy to react with the magnetic field and produces a powerful electromagnetic shock wave that can destroy electronic devices, especially those used in Iran’s nuclear plants.

The shock wave would knock out Iran’s power grid and communications systems for transport and financial services, leading to economic collapse.

The “back to the Stone Age” tactic was proposed in the right-wing publication Israel National News by Joe Tuzara, a US writer who said signs that Iran was speeding up development of nuclear weapons should be met with a pre-emptive EMP strike.

The idea previously was published by Dr. Joe Tuzara in Arutz Sheva. A former clinical research-physician-general surgeon for Saudi Arabian, Philippine and American healthcare systems, he wrote, “The wild card is in Israel’s hand - with Electronic Magnetic Pulse (EMP) inscribed on it. If Israel chooses one of its Jericho III missiles to detonate a single EMP warhead at high altitude over north central Iran, there will be with no blast or radiation effects on the ground.”

He explained that one effect of the EMP attack would be that, “Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges in Fordo, Natanz and widely scattered elsewhere, would freeze for decades.”

The WorldNetDaily reported three weeks ago, “Israelis have not ruled out a Jericho III missile launch to detonate a single electromagnetic pulse warhead at high altitude over central Iran."

.....

[Eleutheria5]

Now just a cotton pickin' minute here. Didn't gamma rays create the Incredible Hulk? Do we really want a squadron of green, super-strong mujahidoon leaping towards Israel, really PO'd because they can't watch El Jazeera anymore on account of an EMP bomb? I remember how ticked off I was that we didn't have hardly any TV reception for weeks after 9/11. Think how mad the Iranians will be, and now they'll be big, green and superhumanly strong.

[fso301]

These are fanciful wishes that require the Iranians to not be aware of such attack possibility and to have not taken taken measures to provide EMP protection to their nuclear projects.

[sten]

all the way back...

to february

[American Constitutionalist]

Perhaps that explains NBCs new show called : Revolution when all electrical power is useless.

[PittsburghAfterDark]

What good is a nuclear program that’s 50% capable if the country is only 10% capable?

[MagnoliaB]

When did they leave the stone age?

[USCG SimTech]

These are fanciful wishes that require the Iranians to not be aware of such attack possibility and to have not taken taken measures to provide EMP protection to their nuclear projects

A well devised EMP device causes ground current. Even shielded and "grounded" systems can be reached for an event unless they are grounded in a very deep counterpoise design. The ferric nature of the geography dictates the shielding requirements and sometime, possibility or improbability of a defense.

Most EMP knowledge has been acquired through testing in the 1950s and still holds true for the most part today.

[Mamzelle]

If they can’t protect some of the grid, they can’t protect any of it.

[Gene Eric]

>> These are fancifur wishes that require the Iranians to not be aware of such attack possibirity

Ya’ don’t say, Confucius.

[Terry L Smith]

It would neutralize every cellphone, every computer, and oh, yes, Gameboy, consumer radios, automobile electronics, mama’s washing machines, and, of course, every microwave oven that exists over there. It could blank every videotape in existence.

So, there would be no communications, in or out!
There would be no power grid, and no remedy, other than to replace and start all over.

Once things have EMP’d, they don’t ‘switch back’ after a while, it’s permanent!

[ronnie raygun]

Could throw Iran back to the stoneage............now thats comedy!

[fso301]

A well devised EMP device causes ground current. Even shielded and "grounded" systems can be reached for an event unless they are grounded in a very deep counterpoise design. The ferric nature of the geography dictates the shielding requirements and sometime, possibility or improbability of a defense.

If the electronics of modern automobiles are largely immune to EMP, so too can other electronics be protected.

[Eleutheria5]

HULKS SMASH!

[WashStateGirl]

Of course something that would produce an EMP pulse of the needed magnitude is called a “hydrogen bomb”

[RightOnline]

Forward!..........“back to the Stone Age”

[Eleutheria5]

Will Ringo Starr be in the movie?

[2nd Bn, 11th Mar]

I’ll give three guesses as to who the world would expect to provide relief/rebuiding money.

[Bratch]

---

Didn't gamma rays create the Incredible Hulk? Do we really want a squadron of green, super-strong mujahidoon

---

Comic Book Resources

COMIC URBAN LEGEND: The Hulk is green because of poor color separations.

STATUS: True

One of the interesting aspects of the direct market is that the guaranteed sales of the individual comics enables publishers to spend more money on the individual comic books. Before the direct market existed, comic book companies were forced to publish, when sales were GOOD, twice as many copies of any given issue than they actually sold. Therefore, if it cost two cents to make a comic, it effectively cost FOUR cents, as the company had to publish four copies to sell two (with the unsold copies simply being trashed). With this in mind, companies had to be as stingy as they possibly could. We have addressed previous manisfestations of this before, where we saw comic companies keep the same numbering on a comic although the content changed dramatically, simply to avoid having to register a new #1 and pay an additional registration fee with the post office.

A symptom of this cost-cutting is evident in the coloring process. The four-color separations and newsprint-esque pages in Marvel comics did not always bode well for certain color schemes.

One such color was grey.

It was not that comics could not use the color grey – they could. It simply wouldn’t come out the same way each time.

Therefore, when 1962′s Incredible Hulk #1 rolled around, Marvel had a problem. Dr. Bruce Banner is transformed into a monster called the Hulk by Gamma Radiation. The giant behemoth known as the Hulk is grey…but as you can see, the grey-coloring is far from consistent within the issue. Just compare this interior pages with the cover (thanks to H, from the Comic Treadmill, for the scans of the interior pages).

Thus, in a decisive move, as of the second issue of the Hulk, the Hulk was now a color Marvel COULD color consistently – green.

The rest, as they say, is history.

[vanilla swirl]

rule of thumb; if we are talking about it it won’t happen.

My guess is Israel will target specific areas with conventional weapons. That would probably prevent the most political backlash. EMP would put them back to the stone age killing many innocent civilians. Direct nuke strike....well, you know. Either one of these would bring huge opposition from the “world community”.
Whatever they do, it will be in the next few days and they will be alone.

[mdmathis6]

Things are never over enveloping though when it comes to EMP planning. A lot of devices will still survive, there will be gaps in field strengths ect.

A device strong enough to fry every device would have to be placed high enough to make use of the magnetosphere and the van allen belts on the planet’s dark side(the solar radiation on the light side thins out the belts on the light side making them thicker on the dark side which is why am radio transmission is enhanced at night.) A small kiloton weapon won’t do it, and it would have to be placed just right. Think hundreds of kilotons. The again you have to ensure that the weapon would just do Iran and not 1/2 of Asia, eastern Europe, southern parts of Russia, and all the way east to India.

The best emps for targeting iran will have to be multiple and localized targeting critical infrastructures with the expectation that these won’t be able to fry everything. They will be high speed inductor/capacitor saturation type devices which when they oversaturate and “break or snap”, they give off a very strong burst of low frequecy high amplitude magnetic energy over a localized defined area which declines squarely with distance.

[trebb]

If the electronics of modern automobiles are largely immune to EMP, so too can other electronics be protected.

I would imagine that a close-range targeted EMP would have quite a stronger effect than a "general" high-altitude type event.

[listenhillary]

Nuclear projects might be protected. Their electrical distribution system? Not likely.

[762X51]

But if you’re already in the stone age would it throw you back into the Cretaceous period? Is the back throwing a fixed amount of time? Would this be localized time travel? So may questions, so few EMP guns.

[fso301]

Nuclear projects might be protected. Their electrical distribution system? Not likely.

All the Iranians really care about is protection of their nuclear program. That widespread damage exists elsewhere merely allows them to come on the World stage and cry victimhood.

[RightOnline]

Only if he brings the little woman along with 'im...

[nuconvert]

stone age? I don't think so

metro station

cinema complex

[nuconvert]

cinema complex

I guess that website doesn't like others to post their pics. You can visit the site yourself for more pics

[Tallguy]

I would also wonder about how ‘focused’ an EMP attack could be made. We’ve all seen power system failures and it’s like watching dominoes drop. Could such a failure jump national borders involving other countries besides Iran?

[neveralib]

These are fanciful wishes that require the Iranians to not be aware of such attack possibility and to have not taken taken measures to provide EMP protection to their nuclear projects.

Really? And you are an "authority" on this subject?

Would you not agree that the US is a little more "advanced" than Iran?

Then you should reconsider after reading the following:

Kennedy on the Effects of EMP Attack

http://www.missilethreat.com/archives/id.16/subject_detail.asp

November 24, 2008

Brian T. Kennedy, president of the Claremont Institute, writes in today's Wall Street Journal on the widespread effects a single nuclear weapon could have on the United States, if Russia, China, or Iran were to use it as electromagnetic pulse weapon. An excerpt from the piece:

Think about this scenario: An ordinary-looking freighter ship heading toward New York or Los Angeles launches a missile from its hull or from a canister lowered into the sea. It hits a densely populated area. A million people are incinerated. The ship is then sunk. No one claims responsibility. There is no firm evidence as to who sponsored the attack, and thus no one against whom to launch a counterstrike.

But as terrible as that scenario sounds, there is one that is worse. Let us say the freighter ship launches a nuclear-armed Shahab-3 missile off the coast of the U.S. and the missile explodes 300 miles over Chicago. The nuclear detonation in space creates an electromagnetic pulse (EMP).

Gamma rays from the explosion, through the Compton Effect, generate three classes of disruptive electromagnetic pulses, which permanently destroy consumer electronics, the electronics in some automobiles and, most importantly, the hundreds of large transformers that distribute power throughout the U.S. All of our lights, refrigerators, water-pumping stations, TVs and radios stop running. We have no communication and no ability to provide food and water to 300 million Americans.

This is what is referred to as an EMP attack, and such an attack would effectively throw America back technologically into the early 19th century.

It would require the Iranians to be able to produce a warhead as sophisticated as we expect the Russians or the Chinese to possess. But that is certainly attainable. Common sense would suggest that, absent food and water, the number of people who could die of deprivation and as a result of social breakdown might run well into the millions.

Let us be clear. A successful EMP attack on the U.S. would have a dramatic effect on the country, to say the least. Even one that only affected part of the country would cripple the economy for years.

Dropping nuclear weapons on or retaliating against whoever caused the attack would not help. And an EMP attack is not far-fetched.

[Joe Boucher]

Makes NO sense to me as Iran has the best educated lot of the damned mooselimbs. Yet they are allowing themselves to be placed in harms way for No reason cept the religion of peace.
Smoke em.

[Bobloblaw2012]

Someone help me with this. From 1958-62 the USA did numerous high altitude nuclear tests (Trinity and Beyond) and while some shots over Johnston island did impact electrical circuits from Hawaii to New Zealand, there was no permanent damage. So what’s the difference between this Israeli threat and the USA tests?

[knarf]

I am SO looking forward to see how an NBC program titled "Revolution" is going to be scripted.

The vehicle of an EMP disaster is plausable, though I'm not sure on a global scale.

Whatever.

Question to any and all geeks;

If I know an EMP strike would take out my anti-frizzle bearing, without which my ATM machine won't spit out money, wouldn't it be wise of me to have a stockpile of spare anti-frizzle bearings so that a US certified, qualified union worker could replace the fried one with a one less saute'd, thus relieving me of my angst for my bank balance ??

[diverteach]

“Either one of these would bring huge opposition from the “world community”.”

Zechariah 14:2-3, says, “For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle and the city shall be taken then shall the Lord go forth to fight against those nations.”

[nuconvert]

“Makes NO sense to me as Iran has the best educated lot of the damned mooselimbs.”

Just to let you know, the supreme leader (Khamenei) is NOT educated and what he says, goes.

[knarf]

I don't know if you know what you're talking about, but you sure SOUND like it.

I have suspected a long time that the all encompassing EMP thingy wasn't as magical as it too often was portrayed.

Not to discount it ... I just didn't think it was as easy as exploding at a given altitude to cover a certain area ... the altitude adjusted for different footprints.

Thanx, mdmathis6

[fso301]

Really? And you are an "authority" on this subject?

Maybe, maybe not but I can tell from your post that you are not.

Would you not agree that the US is a little more "advanced" than Iran?

Yes but what does the US being more advanced than Iran have to do with anything?

[varon]

There would be no power grid, and no remedy, other than to replace and start all over.

I can just visualize the "nation building" contractors salivating with anticipation of juicy contracts.........now, that's what I call REAL shovel ready job creation :-)

[knarf]

Why would it be permanent?

I don't understand.

So you fry my circuit board ... why can't I take one from my lead-lined bunker deep underground and replace it?

Why isn't there a power supply (nuke?) in that same bunker providing the electricity?

Do EMP gremlins travel to and fro upon the earth after being released to wreak havoc on any electron ... ala PacMan ?

[elcid1970]

Here’s my two cents: fifty years ago computer technology & solid state circuitry were in their infancy. Infrastructure was mostly electromechanical & not chip-dependent like today. Nothing there to be fried.

An example: when Soviet pilot Lt. Belenko landed his state of the art MiG-25 in Japan in 1976, those who examined it found the avionics were vacuum tube based which was thought primitive at the time. Later they realized that the old fashioned radios in the MiG were not affected by EMP.

Make sense?

[bigbob]

Next thing you know they’ll blast Afghanistan to rubble, lol

[Hardraade]

Forget about EMP. Just go for the population. You get EMP on top, like a bonus.

Sheesh. Does nobody know what a nuke *is* anymore?

[RFEngineer]

“Things are never over enveloping though when it comes to EMP planning. A lot of devices will still survive, there will be gaps in field strengths ect.”

True....

“A small kiloton weapon won’t do it, and it would have to be placed just right. Think hundreds of kilotons. “

Actually, according to research an EMP is not so much dependent upon yield - 100kT doesn’t produce 10 x what a 10kT produces. The altitude required is 50km -> 400km which is more a factor of atmospheric density than anything else.

“The best emps for targeting iran will have to be multiple and localized targeting critical infrastructures with the expectation that these won’t be able to fry everything. They will be high speed inductor/capacitor saturation type devices which when they oversaturate and “break or snap”, they give off a very strong burst of low frequecy high amplitude magnetic energy over a localized defined area which declines squarely with distance.”

This won’t be the case. If you are already on the ground with the logistics to carry multiple of these types of devices, you may as well carry a conventional bomb and blow stuff up with it.

[Joe Boucher]

Thanks for the heads up/

[bigbob]

Mostly yes, vacuum tubes are very “hard” when it comes to EMP type impulses, and even a momentary arc-over typically won’t cause permanent damage. In contrast, solid-state devices will fail permanently if the voltage limits (typically less than 1 volts) are exceeded.

EMP survivability depends on a number of factors, including the base technology “hardness” as you refer to, and others. For example, a solid state device like a tablet or laptop might survive if it were laying on the table by itself, but not if it had power, internet, or even an external monitor connected, as those interconnecting wires would act as “antennas” that would greatly increase the amount of energy coupled into the device. (The same reason you remember people disconnecting their TV sets from the outside antenna or not using the landline phones during lightning storms). The real target of EMP is not to kill every iPhone or Gameboy, but to disable the electrical grid, which present a massive “antenna” that unlike years ago, is now connected to and controlled by, computers having all the vulnerabilities of solid-state devices. When this trend began in the Cold War era, critical systems were hardened to give them at least a chance of withstanding and EM pulse, but nowadays it’s mostly COTS (commericial off-the-shelf) hardware. Of course, it’s very expensive to add EMP shielding and in normal times, no one (such as electrical utility ratepayers) wants to pay for it. If an attack ever happens anywhere on earth, those not directly affected will scramble to do so like we’ve never seen before in history.

EMP is science, not politics, yet every time the topic comes up on FR, it becomes an opportunity for some to demonstrate their ignorance. So thanks for an intelligent posting that elevates the discussion!

[Da Coyote]

“...and sending the Islamic Republic “back to the Stone Age,” ...”

But - as an Islamic Republic...it is by definition always in a stone age.

[Aevery_Freeman]

What, we are going to miss the chance to obtain this experimental data just because of common sense?

What a waste!

PS. Just watched Dr. Strangelove again last night - what a hoot.

[mdmathis6]

Such an Attack would cripple much of Canada and Northern Mexico as well!

[mdmathis6]

Which is part of the reason why I don’t hold with an emp attack per se over Iran. You can’t predict how things would go with too high of an EMP and too low and you might as well bomb stuff. Now an emp near transformers and hightension wires can cascade effects over hundreds of miles and knock out power systems...like a Solar flare might do. If an EMP is positioned to destroy sensitive stuff without damaging civilian structures near bye, that would be a useful tool. So yeah, I agree with you.

[montag813]

Israel would never do this. Millions would die in Tehran alone and Israel would be an international pariah. Moreover, it is likely that Iran has hardened facilities that could withstand such an attack. Our military has extensive infrastructures so equipped, as does Israel.

[Johnny B.]

FWIW...

My brother builds electrically shielded rooms, mainly used to hold medical scanners (CAT, PET, etc.). They are also used as "bug-proof" rooms for the government.

They have been getting a lot of business lately from companies that want "emp-proof" rooms for their data centers.