"An Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack on the United States, whether man made or naturally occurring, could result in the deaths of nine out of ten Americans through starvation, disease and the collapse of modern society, warned Dr. Vincent Peter Pry, a member of the congressional EMP Commission and executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security.
“A natural EMP catastrophe or nuclear EMP attack could blackout the national electric grid for months or years and collapse all the other critical infrastructures -- communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water -- necessary to sustain modern society and the lives of 310 million Americans,” Pry this week told the House Committee on Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection and Security Technologies."
"Active from 2001 to 2009, the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack (EMP Commission) was initially established by the U.S. House Armed Services Committee under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2001. Sponsored by Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), the EMP Commission served as a cornerstone of right-wing advocacy on national defense policy. Advocates seeking to spread alarm about the purported threat of EMP attacks, which would involve the detonation of nuclear weapons in the upper atmosphere to generate a pulse that would knock out electronics-based infrastructure, have repeatedly used the findings of this commission to advocate increased funding for costly weapons programs such as missile defense and push alarmist notions that "rogue states" like Iran and North Korea pose an existential threat to the United States."