Monday, June 29, 2009

America is Vulnerable to An Electromagnetic Pulse Attack

(Click Image to Enlarge)
A map showing the extent of the 1998 Ice Storm that affected eastern Ontario, southwest Quebec, New Brunswick, and parts of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. The map shows the accumulation of ice in millimetres from January 4 to January 10, 1998. Image from Wikipedia.

From Human Events:

If a small atomic bomb were to explode 400km above Chicago it could fry all electronically-based technology from Chicago to Dallas affecting the infrastructure of all major cities on the east coast and as far as South Dakota.

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack is as instantaneous as an atomic bomb blast. It moves like a wall of energy overloading, and destroying all computer based technology. Such an attack would shut down the power grid. Air traffic would be grounded, telephone, internet and other communications would be shut down. America would be reduced to the agricultural economy we had in the 1800s.

Read more ....

My Comment: This is an exaggeration of the worse degree .... I should know, because I live in a city of 2.5 million that had its power cut off for a week (in the middle of winter) .... and there was no disaster.

In 1998 Quebec experienced an ice storm that destroyed the electrical infrastructure for Montreal (I live in Montreal), southern Quebec, Eastern Ontario, and parts of New England. It was in the middle of winter, and the temperature inside my house reached -5 C (it was -20C outside).

So what happened during this disaster.

In Montreal, a city with over 2 million people, everyone pitched in. Emergency shelters were opened. Food distributed. Hospitals and old age homes were prioritized. Candles, generators, batteries .... everyone helped everyone. During this period, there was no crime .... I repeat .... crime dropped to nothing. There were few if any fatalities, and the economic costs were serious, but we recovered very quickly after. It took months to repair the grid .... but they did.

If the U.S. gets hit with an EMP attack, the consequences will be serious, but nowhere near the disaster that some are saying it will be.

1 comment:

  1. It is very dangerous to make comments without proper knowledge. Read U.S. Emp Commission reports for proper knowledge. 1n 1998, a solar storm shut down Canadian grid and it was like the HEMP E3 effect. Bottom line, if we get hit with HEMP over upper U.S. at 400 KM, U.S. and Canadian grids are out for a year or more and 80% to 90% of the people die of starvation and disease. The key factor is the loss of large generators which take one to four years to custom order in the present time! However, we have built our high-tech society on a highly vulnerable solid-state technology and all devices will be damaged or destroyed. Our old vacuum tubes will be fine and that is why the Soviets never switched to solid-state!

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