I can’t believe this silly shit finds it way to Congressional testimony, much less Free Republic.
EMP doesn’t have that much range to take out everything over thousands of miles.
It’s ability to create electrical surge declines exponentially with distance.
Was this House hearing chaired by Mad Max Waters?
Well the sun could do it.
Ummmm. No.
Don’t be so skeptical.
With as much of the population so slavishly tied to existing on the internet, it is very plausible that even a mild disruption in the power grid would send a lot of these into a panic, and won’t be able to feed or care for themselves.
It’s not just the interruption in the power grid that would be the direct threat, any disruption would spur the ferals in society to ramp up their anarchy like never before. When their EBT cards no longer function, you can bet that they’ll be killing whoever they think has what they want.
>>I can’t believe this silly shit finds it way to Congressional testimony, much less Free Republic.
There are people here who take that dumb Forstchen novel as gospel.
But then again, judging how people act when threatened by a silly hurricane, I think they’d just kill each other even in the unaffected areas if just 1/4 of the country was affected and the media was still operating to whip up a panic.
Inverse of the distance squared to be exact.
Agree as the inverse-square law also applies for EMP bursts.
Congress could easily protect much of the grid by requiring power transmission lines that cross state boundaries pass through an AC-DC-AC conversion with trip/trigger active on those lines (basically and industrial scale surge protection). This would stop the power surge from an EMP blast at the state boundaries limiting the damage to roughly a 4 state region for one, even massive, EMP. I should point out that the solution would not be cheap.
However, it is possible for multiple EMPs in the right locations to take out the entire grid even with the above design.
Much cheaper to shoot down the missiles though.
I don’t know if exponentially is the correct term, but you are right. It has to be line-of-sight. You can get the distance to the horizon at some altitude on google, and if I remember correctly, it has to be 250 miles or so to encompass the whole country.
Combine that with the fact that the intensity of the pulse decreases with the square of the distance and it would have to be a HUGE thermonuclear EMP device to effect the continental U.S.. NK cant come close.
It ain’t going to happen...
An EMP would disrupt the electrical grid for a diameter of several hundred miles. Certainly not the whole country.
Operation Fishbowl.
That law has to do with static electric discharge through an atmospheric dielectric. EMP is different. Think of snow, lots of snow, being shaken off a roof suddenly, pummeling what walks beneath the eaves.
Inverse square law DOES NOT apply to EMP generated by a nuclear device detonated by a nuclear device, this is because an EMP creates a very large “antenna” out of the atmosphere. The surface of the earth is in the “near field” region where the normal inverse square law DOES not strictly apply.
An EMP can bring down the grid, and probably would according to utilities themselves.
I agree that 90% is hyperbole. But many millions could die in my opinion.
stated: “I can’t believe this silly shit finds it way to Congressional testimony, much less Free Republic.” Yep we should CENSOR stuff like this. he he