“If one high altitude burst was really that big a threat it would have become the primary nuclear strategy of both us and the USSR. It didn’t, that proves the point.”
I stand corrected. There actually is some common sense on these EMP threads. You are dead right. If EMP was that big a killer we and the Soviet Union would have made it our central plan. We didn’t. They didn’t.
The EMP would not be the killer, in either case. Oh, maybe a few, but the real bloodbath would come when the lights stayed off, whe no one could find out why and for how long.
At present, we have a situation where the population is primed to riot and fight, between the class warfare angle to the racial one. Put that in urban environs with a rapidly shrinking food supply, and major cities will be trashed within a week or two.
Recall, the opening shots in Serbia were graphite filament bombs (BLU-114/B) aimed at taking down the power grid.
Our angle during the Cold War was to take out the population and military of any aggressor. We even developed a bomb designed to preserve infrastructure and eliminate people, not the other way around.
However, we have become increasingly dependent on electronic devices, from waking up, to keeping time, to inventory, shipping (barcodes/readers) from rail cars to envelopes, and in the virtual regulation of processes from HVAC to electrical generation. Points of exposure exceed anything the Y2K problem could have impacted, because even 'dumb' devices would be affected in a cascade of failures--IF the systems are vulnerable.
For a third-worlder, it would mean they would have only to deliver two or three effective devices to bring down the US, a major coup for a third world wannabe strongman.
Better to have them pursue this than a bioweapon (which just might get the job done and could be far tougher to interdict of control.
Hopefully, your assessment of the actual vulnerabilities is on target, and our enemies are chasing a worthless goal.
Usually I let the doom and gloom crowd have their fun. But once in a while I just gotta come in and point out the simple math. I doubt I talk sense into any of them, but maybe a couple of lurkers stop and think.