Life After An EMP Attack: No Power, No Food, No Transportation, No Banking And No Internet

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/life-after-an-emp-attack-no-power-no-food-no-transportation-no-banking-and-no-internet ^

[chessplayer]

Most Americans do not know this, but a single EMP attack could potentially wipe out most of the electronics in the United States and instantly send this nation back to the 1800s. If a nuclear bomb was exploded high enough in the atmosphere over the middle part of the country, the electromagnetic pulse would fry electronic devices from coast to coast. The damage would be millions of times worse than 9/11. Just imagine a world where nobody has power, most cars will not start, the Internet has been fried, the financial system is offline indefinitely, nobody can make any phone calls and virtually all commerce across the entire country is brought to a complete stop. A nation that does not know how to live without technology would be almost entirely stripped of it at that point. Yes, this could really happen. An EMP attack is America's "Achilles heel", and everyone around the world knows it. It is only a matter of time before someone uses an EMP weapon against us, and at this point we are pretty much completely unprepared.

[JRandomFreeper]

It's not a matter of belief. It's a matter of what the industry itself says about the grid.

The Report Card for America's Infrastructure, prepared by the American Society of Civil Engineers, gives the US Electric Grid a rating of D. Its summary says the following:

The U.S. power transmission system is in urgent need of modernization. Growth in electricity demand and investment in new power plants has not been matched by investment in new transmission facilities. Maintenance expenditures have decreased 1% per year since 1992. Existing transmission facilities were not designed for the current level of demand, resulting in an increased number of "bottlenecks," which increase costs to consumers and elevate the risk of blackouts."

ERCOT in Texas is trying to put 3 billion into infrastructure upgrade.

/johnny

[bigbob]

A late second to this - please tell your friend Mr. Forstchen I found his book to be chilling as you say, and really an eye-opener. I’m honestly not sure this is not the #1 threat, when you do an objective analysis (and ignore the ignorant comments here and elsewhere). It’s a case of bang for the buck, and all an enemy has to go is detonate one nuclear EMP weapon successfully to basically sent us back to the 1850s “one second after”. Not only is the gov’t not preparing for this, but I’m afraid there is not much that they COULD do to prepare. It would quickly come down to survival, not based on how much stuff you’ve accumulated, but on how much knowledge a person possesses.

[dfwgator]

Not by the EMP, by the resulting breakdown in society.

Exactly, just look at what happened in NYC in 1977, in just minutes after the blackout.

[Iron Munro]

Has the EMP bomb actually been tested over a large area?

An "EMP Bomb" is really just a nuclear or thermonuclear bomb.

It is a documented and well known fact that nuclear and thermonuclear explosions create an EMP effect. In fact, the man-made version of the phenomena became known by observing the aftereffects of nuclear explosions.

An EMP event, manmade or natural, is a very real threat.

The military and government has, and is, spending untold millions trying to sheild critical systems from EMP effects.

[bigbob]

Anyone who believes what post #101 says is true should go to the links below and do their own independent research:

http://www.empcommission.org/

[OldMissileer]

EMP is real, however its effect is exaggerated.

Yep. I worked with the DoD and DoE in regards to both weapons development and weapons effects. I am REAL familiar with EMP and all other effects as my job was to be the "expert" for the big wigs at the Pentagon and the political class, including the White House.

EMP can do major damage but the Chicken Little's who run around claiming the sky is going to fall have another agenda.

I say "follow the money."

[discostu]

But if Denver and Ohio aren’t effected by the EMP there isn’t going to be a breakdown in society. You know how much people west of the Mississippi were effected by that big north eastern black out? We weren’t. It was a curiosity on the news, anybody that had relatives in the area maybe spent a few minutes worrying, other than that life went on. If Kansas loses its electronic brain that’s not going to effect much of the rest of the country in any way.

[Kartographer]

In 2011 Texas a power exporter had blackouts due to just a couple plants going off line due to the weather and that’s nothing compared to what is being discussed here.

[PA Engineer]

Forgive me for being skeptical about all alarmist potential. These days, I don't trust "studies".

There are three components to EMP. The rise time is what will damage many components. Wikipedia has a decent article on it:

Electromagnetic Pulse.

It is important to remember that many homes have significant antennas running in the walls. These are your power circuits. Something to think about.

[RinaseaofDs]

They actually have built and detonated one in the 1960’s, and it worked pretty well. It knocked power out in Hawaii, I think and caused various and sundry issues.

Like anything else, a SINGLE EMP detonation (discharge?) likely wouldn’t wipe it all out, but it would do damage.

Irreversable damage? No.

Best place for EMP in the order of battle is to move it up front and use it while blinding the other guy’s comms satellites using something that isn’t going to pollute low-earth orbit with millions of bits of high speed junk that will eventually take out your satellites.

After that, you pretty much have to invade at that point. If not, then don’t bother and just start making neutron bombs in sufficient quantities that you aim to depopulate the US so that you can invade them. The neutron bombs have the EMP effect you are looking for as well.

Nobody’s going to set of a supermassive EMP device and then leave us alone in the 17th century. They’ll use it and then invade.

You’d have to want to take us for just the mineral goods, and then discount all the intellectual property and human capital to zero. To much cost and too little return.

You’d have to take us intact and convince our scientists that there’s a new boss and they are better being alive and productive than brave and dead.

Colonialism is an anachronism. If China had enough water to cut loose Tibet, they likely would. It’s a pain in the neck. So much cheaper to control nations through debt instruments than through force of arms.

[Ellendra]

A boogie man the sewing fear crowd has been waving around for 40+ years,

EMPers are afraid of needles? What?

[rockrr]

Fortunately the sequential taillights are motorized, not electronic so they’ll continue to impress. ;-)

[discostu]

Got the wrong sow, much like an EMP I’m sure you’ll survive.

[metmom]

We ought to test out the effects of an EMP attack over the nuclear facilities in Iran.

Works for me. That's the best idea I've heard yet.

[LibLieSlayer]

I am not laughing but I am aware of reality and what an EMP attack will do... and I also know that it will take more than that to drive us back into the stone age as many of you preach. Electronics can and have been hardened against this form of attack. The Military has hardened communications and computer systems. Yes, we will suffer and quite a bit... but we will survive and our world will not slip into darkness. BTW... to do it correctly and to cause maximum damage is not as easy as many make it out to be. If we can get the muslim bastard out of the White House then retaliation for any attack will be viable by destroying those that harm us. Nukes can fly in more than one direction.

LLS

[driftdiver]

We saw a breakdown of society in New Orleans. The same did not happen in other areas.

Saw the upper east coast was attacked by nuke or EMP. Sure the west would not be immediately impacted but the economy would collapse. Martial law would probably be declared.

depends on the attack, to say EMP isn’t real is wrong. Are there other threats which are possibly greater? Yes, but its wise to consider EMP as a possibility in your plans.

[LibLieSlayer]

Shhhhhhhh... you are inviting attack here on Apocalypse Central.

LLS

[Tenacious 1]

Not by the EMP, by the resulting breakdown in society.

I can't argue that. People can be pretty unpredictable, especially in large population centers where fear begets fear and there are mob tendencies.

I live in the suburbs and could feed the family with rabits and canadian geese for a while anyway. :o) Any neighbor who complains about hunting at the retention pond doesn't get any of the take.

[tarawa]

Read the book Lights Out for an interesting take on life after an EMP attack. Some of it is a little over the top and requires a bit of suspension of disbelief, but it is an interesting read.

[hiredhand]

Yeah... what about that Cobalt Bomb?! :-) Sheesh... people wait on hilltops for the Mother Ship, and then commit suicide when it doesn't show. Y2K was going to be "the big one", then Planet-X, and Nibiru... a super-volcano at Yellow Stone.... the end of the Mayan calendar... financial destruction... a killer asteroid, bird flu, or EMP!!! :-) There's a new term coined lately for people who live wrapped up in these things. They're called "DoomTards" :-)

We've been watching a National Geographic series called "Doomsday Preppers". We can relate to some of the people they interview. Some are just coo-coo for cocoa-puffs though. :-) But they've ALL got their own theories about how the end is going to come, and they all have cataclysmic theories.

EMP is on their list though, but there is a lot of disinformation about this subject. It's "relatively" easy to build an EMP weapon out of used microwave oven parts. Reaching peak oscillation and power output is tricky though because the device self-destructs as a result (they ALL do!). It "could" damage a LOT of ESD sensitive equipment in a populated area, but it's limited to a couple of hundred feet in a relatively narrow beam. Directing EMP is a problem. It's the same problem as with directing microwave transmissions for telecom applications. It's tough to "contain" and direct. It's why microwave transmitters and receivers have a "tuned" waveguide in the mix.

The thing that most people don't know about though is exactly WHY our gov't gets their panties in a wad every time some unfriendly nation creates a little dinky missile delivery platform with only a few hundred mile range. I mean why be concerned at all? Especially if it's too small to carry a "substantial" warhead? I'll tell you why. A relatively low yield (in the kiloton range) warhead on one of these missiles could do a LOT more damage if used appropriately than if simply aimed at something and permitted to "go bang"... so to speak. At "about" 32 miles above the surface of the earth, the earth's atmosphere changes in composition and structure. This was observed during testing back in the 1950s in the Pacific when we detonated test nuclear weapons (google "hardtack") at altitude. One of the phenomena observed was defined by a man named Compton and the phenomenon has since been called "The Compton Effect".

The basic principle behind the Compton Effect is that the resulting high frequency magnetic pulse is greatly magnified by certain particles in the ionosphere, and generally travels along the earth's magnetic field lines. The Compton Effect causes a small nuke detonated at altitude to be a HUGE problem on the surface because it permits the electromagnetic wave to go a LOT farther and be a LOT stronger.

The reason the gov't gets worried about small delivery systems (such as the one that N. Korea paraded a couple of years ago) is because it could be used to put a low yield nuke at altitude and then detonate. Depending on how small it was, and time of day, we possibly might not even see or hear it. A cargo ship could carry it to somewhere outside the international boundary and let-her-go! Then scuttle the ship...of course. :-)

Imagine if you will a cargo ship at 18S 524352.03 E 3872886.87 N...which is "about" 50 miles east of NC. A 15KT yield weapon detonated at altitude at approximately 17S 767649.57 E 3937923.23 N...which is "about" over Raleigh NC...would have traveled WELL under 200 miles using these locations. The estimated area of damage would range from central to northern Georgia, up to northern Virginia, and "possibly" over into Ohio. VA, NC, and SC pretty much get "toasted", or at least so does everything with a doped semiconductor inside of it. Not even the early 1950s transistors will survive it, much less the milivolt and microvolt sensitive MOSFETs and JFETs. You can damage those things simply by handling them incorrectly! Remember, the electromagnetic wave will "tend" to follow magnetic lines of the earth. Something like this would also severely damage or destroy satellites over a lesser radius. The actual extent of the damage would be determined by the yield of the weapon and atmospheric conditions at the time.

EMP is a valid concern. But not one I'm willing to lose sleep over. If you want to read something that will make you wonder, read about CINC (Cigarboy In Chief) William Jefferson Clinton tearing down the DoD TEMPEST program back around 1996.

As for me, I'll be holed up in my bunker with a stockpile of beans and weenies, my chainsaw and a goodly supply of fuel...waiting for the ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE. :-)