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The EMP Threat: Sending America Back To The 1800s
Previously, Elliott Management's Paul Singer has explained that he believes "there is one risk that stands way above the rest in terms of the scope of potential damage adjusted for the likelihood of occurrence" - an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Today we dig deeper into that risk...
Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
Our entire way of life can be ended in a single day. And it wouldn’t even take a nuclear war to do it. All it would take for a rogue nation or terror organization to bring us to our knees is the explosion of a couple well-placed nuclear devices high up in our atmosphere. The resulting electromagnetic pulses would fry electronics from coast to coast. Of course this could also be accomplished without any attack. Scientists tell us that massive solar storms have hit our planet before, and that it is inevitable that there will be more in the future. As you will read about below, the most recent example of this was “the Carrington Event” in 1859. If a similar burst from the sun hit us today, experts tell us that life in America could suddenly resemble life in the 1800s, and the economic damage caused could potentially be in the trillions of dollars. This is one of the greatest potential threats that we are facing as a nation, and yet Barack Obama has essentially done nothing to get us prepared.
The technology necessary to conduct such an electromagnetic pulse attack against the United States has become much more accessible in recent years. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, even rogue nations such as North Korea and Iran either already have or will soon have the capability to hurt us in this way…
Rogue nations such as North Korea (and possibly Iran) will soon match Russia and China and have the primary ingredients for an EMP attack: simple ballistic missiles such as Scuds that could be launched from a freighter near our shores; space-launch vehicles able to loft low-earth-orbit satellites; and simple low-yield nuclear weapons that can generate gamma rays and fireballs.
If a successful, large scale EMP attack ever did take place, it would be a catastrophe beyond anything that the United States has ever seen before. The EMP Commission, which was established by Congress, says that it is likely that most of us would end up dead…
What would a successful EMP attack look like? The EMP Commission, in 2008, estimated that within 12 months of a nationwide blackout, up to 90% of the U.S. population could possibly perish from starvation, disease and societal breakdown.
In 2009 the congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, whose co-chairmen were former Secretaries of Defense William Perry and James Schlesinger, concurred with the findings of the EMP Commission and urged immediate action to protect the electric grid. Studies by the National Academy of Sciences, the Department of Energy, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the National Intelligence Council reached similar conclusions.
If you are a terrorist, a dictator or a fanatic that is looking for a “killshot” for the United States, those kinds of numbers would certainly get your attention.
And it was recently reported by WND that the Iranian military has already been playing around with such a scenario…
Peter Vincent Pry, who is executive director of a congressional advisory group called the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, raised the alarm as the agreement is about to be finalized.
He said U.S. military officials have confirmed such an Iranian plan.
“Iranian military documents describe such a scenario – including a recently translated Iranian military textbook that endorses nuclear EMP attack against the United States,” Pry wrote in a recent column in Israel’s main online media network, Aruz Sheva.
“Iran with a small number of nuclear missiles can by EMP attack threaten the existence of modernity and be the death knell of Western principles of international law, humanism and freedom,” he said.
Very chilling stuff.
And of course there are many, many others out there that would love to see the U.S. taken down other than just the Iranians.
Meanwhile, our power grid is far more vulnerable than most Americans would dare to imagine.
In previous articles, I discussed a recent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report which stated the following…
“Destroy nine interconnection substations and a transformer manufacturer and the entire United States grid would be down for at least 18 months, probably longer.”
Are you starting to get the picture?
Our entire way of life depends upon electricity. If you take away that electricity, our society is transformed literally overnight.
A successful EMP would be an utter nightmare for this nation. Just consider what U.S. Representative Scott Perry had to say about a potential attack last year…
“The consequences of such an attack could be catastrophic; all electronics, power systems, and information systems could be shut down,” Rep. Scott Perry said in prepared remarks during an EMP hearing in May held by the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security. “This could then cascade into interdependent infrastructures such as water, gas, and telecommunications.
While we understand this is an extreme case, we must always be prepared in case a rogue state decides to utilize this technology.”
In essence, suddenly nothing would work and just about everything that we take for granted would suddenly be gone.
In a previous article, I spelled out some of the implications of such an event…
-There would be no heat for your home.
-Water would no longer be pumped into most homes.
-Your computer would not work.
-There would be no Internet.
-Your phones would not work.
-There would be no television.
-There would be no radio.
-ATM machines would be shut down.
-There would be no banking.
-Your debit cards and credit cards would not work.
-Without electricity, most gas stations would not be functioning.
-Most people would be unable to do their jobs without electricity and employment would collapse.
-Commerce would be brought to a standstill.
-Hospitals would not be able to function normally.
-You would quickly start running out of medicine.
-All refrigeration would shut down and frozen foods in our homes and supermarkets would start to go bad.
And as I mentioned above, all of this can happen even without an attack.
A direct hit from a major solar storm can cause the exact same thing.
In fact, NASA says that there is a 12 percent chance that such a storm will hit us during the next ten years…
NASA is warning that there’s a 12 percent chance an extreme solar storm will hit Earth in the next decade, sending out massive shock waves that would knock out grids across the world.
The economic impact of this doomsday scenario could exceed $2 trillion — or 20 times the cost of Hurricane Katrina, according to the National Academy of Sciences.
In recent years, we have been really lucky.
There was a close call in 2012 and another one in 2013.
The following is an excerpt from an upcoming book that I have co-authored with Barbara Fix that will soon be published entitled “Get Prepared Now”…
Most people have absolutely no idea that the Earth barely missed being fried by a massive EMP burst from the sun in 2012 and in 2013. And earlier in 2014 there was another huge solar storm which would have caused tremendous damage if it had been directed at our planet. If any of those storms would have directly hit us, the result would have been catastrophic. Electrical transformers would have burst into flames, power grids would have gone down and much of our technology would have been fried. In essence, life as we know it would have ceased to exist – at least for a time. These kinds of solar storms have hit the Earth many times before, and experts tell us that it is inevitable that it will happen again. The most famous one happened in 1859, and was known as the Carrington Event. But other than the telegraph, humanity had very little dependence on technology at the time. If another Carrington Event happened today, it would be a complete and utter nightmare. A study by Lloyd’s of London has concluded that it would have taken a $2,600,000,000,000 chunk out of the global economy, and it would take up to a decade to repair the damage. Unfortunately, scientists insist that it is going to happen at some point. The only question is when.
So keep an eye on the sun.
The giant ball of fire that we revolve around has started to behave very erratically, and it has the power to end our way of life at any time.
In fact, scientists tell us that we are about to get hit with a “glancing blow” on April 7th…
A filament of magnetism stretching halfway across the sun erupted during the late hours of April 4th (22:00-23:00 UT). The eruption split the sun’s atmosphere, hurling a CME into space and creating a “canyon of fire,” shown in a movie recorded by the Solar Dynamics Observatory: The glowing walls of the canyon trace the original channel where the filament was suspended by magnetic forces above the sun’s surface. From end to end, the structure stretches more than 300,000 km–a real Grand Canyon.
Fragments of the exploding filament formed the core of a CME that raced away from the sun at approximately 900 km/s (2 million mph): image. Most of the CME will miss Earth, but not all. The cloud is expected to deliver a a glancing blow to our planet’s magnetic field could on April 7th. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.
The event of April 7th is not going to cause us major problems. But someday there will be a solar storm that will.
Personally, I cannot even imagine what life would be like without electricity.
Because we have become so deeply dependent on technology, most of us would have absolutely no idea how to live without it.
An electromagnetic pulse attack would be one of the fastest ways to cripple America and end the dominance of the United States in world affairs. And in this day and age, there are hundreds of millions of people around the planet that would love to see that happen.
So to not take steps to protect our power grid from such an attack is very foolish. But that is precisely what Barack Obama (and presidents before him) have chosen to do. We have technology which would mitigate the damage from an electromagnetic pulse, but rather than spend the money Obama has decided to just hope that it will never happen.
Up to this point, we have been fortunate.
But someday, our luck may run out.
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I'm so thoroughly scared right now that I'm going to call my congressman first thing and demand he fund the MIC.
Yeah. Those 100 Abrams tanks the US sent to the Baltics. Money well spent. Maybe they can use them to shoot at the sun.
The 1800s was fun. Back then a guy could just fuck 'n fart all day - and usually at the same time. If an EMP frees up my time for that, well then....bring it. And at least it would boil all my worries down into one thing - I can focus on that.
No ZH, man. Careful what you wish for.
No air conditioning can be pretty tough...especially in Texas.
And after you fuck and fart all day, yer gonna want a nice cold beer. What fridge are you gonna open to get it?
Yeah, I'm sure it was great fun, especially when people only bathed once a month. Kind of like what I imagine India to be like.
As Peter Griffen would say: "Nobody has better sex, than a country that doesn't use toilet paper."
Iran has started any war in over 200 years
but has much dirty done to them
Peter Vincent Pry, who is executive director of a congressional advisory group called the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, raised the alarm as the agreement is about to be finalized
“Iran with a small number of nuclear missiles can by EMP attack threaten the existence of modernity and be the death knell of Western principles of international law, humanism and freedom,” he said
This is a problem for Iranian Jarrett and the bamster how again Mr. Singer??? Keep going, flesh it out, don't be afraid...
Have to agree. Operation Ajax and the Shah with his secret police called the Savak.
Winning!
Peter Vincent Pry, who is executive director of a congressional advisory group called the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, raised the alarm as the agreement is about to be finalized.
He said U.S. military officials have confirmed such an Iranian plan.
Is this an attempt to scupper the recent deal with Iran by making it seem Iran is poised to destroy our way of life at any second!!!! sounds like a Terror attack on the US Public by the US Military.
"The economic impact of this doomsday scenario could exceed $2 trillion"
Not a problem, the Fed can print that in a heartbeat.
http://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/tech/science/environment/2015/04/0...
Seafood is pre-cooked?
Well, the expiration date on my pre-fukishima tuna is about up.
I will enjoy the last tuna salad of my life.
Quick!
Someone tell us how bitcoin will save us from this disaster!
PS
Well, the founders of Bitcoin sites get to run away to Caribbean countries with all the loot and therefore insulate themselves from the effects of an EMP pulse by living the simple life of lying on the beach and sipping pina coladas, winning!!
He, he, he, ha, ha, ha.
I thought I had a few 64-digit codes written on paper towel in my pocket.
What do you mean my SSH-Code is no good?
EMP is a true Black Swan event. NASA gives us a 12% chance of a Carrington event within the next decade. The 2008 EMP Commission Report asserts that we will lose 90% of our population within the first year. Imagine what it will be like when our reactors start to melt down and the Golden Horde spills out of the cities looking for something to eat.
http://empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP_Commission-7MB.pdf
I guess the chance of a financial black swan is more than 50% in the next five years. An EMP is a laughable threat compared to that.
And imagine, people buy lottery tickets thinking they will win. Well, they'll win the Carrington event first by a longshot.
What's the problem? They'll all have SNAP cards. Those of us who don't have SNAP cards will be taken in and fed by those who find themselves, oddly now, more fortunate than us.
Isn't that human nature? When all those on SNAP benefits find they are able to eat, and all the people who have been paying taxes forever are now starving, that they come to our rescue?
Oh, shit, no, that's right, they're 'entitled' to those. A government reserve fund would be what we needed. So, thank God we have $18 Trillion saved in the 250 years or so we've been a republic.
Wait, what, no, you're shitting me - we are considered to be the most productive country in the history of mankind and we owe $18 trillion dollars and our homeland has never been attacked? WTF?
"Country Boy Will Survive" is starting to sound more and more like a national anthem every day.
Hmmm,
I wonder how they made AC electrical generators before there was electricity?
I think it was the knights of the roundtable.
The huge ones that make the grid work require a pretty serious industrial set up to make. And no one in north america makes them here currently. No chance of making any with all communications down and apocalyptic conditions burning through the population from coast to coast. All supply chains blind and down. Food. Water. Fuels. Ciao.
There are machine shops in SE Asia that are driven off a single cylinder diesel engine that could do repairs to smaller units as a start. Some enterprising individual could do the same here.
I'm sure glad I got one of those engines for my genset before the good ole EPA banned them form import...
So, we'll eat out.
Nothing wrong with the barbecue
Except the only protien that will be available after two weeks will be your neighbors.
Long on long pork.
Its the white meat that walks on two legs.
:)))))
Bon apitite.
Get a few big three-ring binders with sheet protectors, and plenty of printer paper.
Go online and print out how to do all types of basic things like make soap, preserve food, clean animals, plant crops, etc.
Print them out, and make a survival library.
Read and try to memorize / practice as much as you can before it's too late.
Then buy lots of bullets and Bic lighters so you can take what you need, and use the books you made for kindling.
Werekoala - Bamm - EMP ATTACK - You're fucked! You are too late on your three-ring binders and everything else you mentioned - unless you've done it already. (That was just a test. In real life, actual outcomes may be different.)
On another note, having grown up in the 1970s and 1980s, we were taught about the "Neutron Bomb". Our teachers called it, 'very similar to getting nuked, but the nuke hits, all the buildings stand, no fallout, but enough radiation is pumped out to kill every living thing within miles.'
This seems similar, but opposite - 'Well, your not going to get killed - at first - but you'll be really screwed.'
I'll get to the point:
It almost seems that so much about EMP attacks has been written lately that it is in the playbook for the next False Flag attack. Am I crazy? Doesn't it seem like we've been warned about this for about a decade and told, 'well, nobody has done anything to protect from it - so when it happens you gonna die.'
I'm thinking, "OK, thanks for the warning, will someone take a portion of the trillions of dollars we spend each year and put an aluminum cover over our electric stations, and have someone come by and make sure the third hole in all my plugs are actually grounded, or something? We are paying a couple hundred billion into our government each year to help solve negative externalities."
Now, also, attribution to Iran seems like the call for our next president to invade, after Obama leaves office. I despise our CIC, but the only thing I admire him for is not kow-towing to the Israelis. It almost makes me think he doesn't fuck other men in bathhouses in Chicago. By now, the Mossad probably would've started sending out slide shows.
Hmm. Who knows?
California want to spend 100Billion on medium speed rail, but doesnt have much of plan to exist beyond the year of water left in storage, nevermind meeting obligations to lavish pension promjses, and forget about shoring up the grid. The eco tards in Sacramento have us importing power, so difficult and expensive they've made it to do anything here.
i wont have to go to work anymore and be part of the ponzi scheme financial system
id probably get some exercise!
bullish on africa
On one hand, I'd be glad to see all these 'smart' phone addicts going cold turkey, but on the other hand... Well, it'd make 'preppers' look way too smart...
Scary! 'nuff said.
If the USA was EMP attacked tomorrow, all it would mean for me tomorrow is that I get a few extra hours of sleep.
I could give a fuck, but I don't.
Do me a favor.
You board up the windows, and pull out the candles and scotch.
On that note, the obesity rate would plummet, maybe its just what this country needs.
Chicken for sale: one daughter or pair of good boots....
As far as frozen food in the fridge, just microwave it before it goes bad..........
Oh, you have one of those bicycle-driven microwave machines! Cool!
Gort Lives!
Klaatu Borada Niktu......
Can't wait to see the look on people's faces when they pick up the phone to complain the elevator isn't working. But I guess I'll never see that, being the TV won't be working either.
Pump up that Fear Porn. If there is any attack regardong EMP, it will be from our own people 100%.
The Elite's are funny like that. They have been doing it for years & WE continue to allow them to kill us off & make whitty liitle quibs & think it's funny. It's not. FUBAR.
The stoopid it burns...
Cool. I live just outside the affected area. Good thing guns don't need electricity to work.
finally a reason to get an Apple watch, oh wait
Someday we'll run out of fossil fuels (game over)
Someday another ice age will take hold (game over for large chunk of population)
Yellowstone (game over for N hemisphere...watch "The Road"...)
Do you mean oil? swimming in the damn stuff at the moment, I blame the Dinosaurs,
For the Amish it will be just another day.
They'd be murdered within weeks of detonation for their food, and might even disappear into various black holes located between the nose and chin of their murderers. That pacifism stuff will get you killed.
ZH. The fear zone
Power blackout in DC on April 7th.
The event of April 7th is not going to cause us major problems. But someday there will be a solar storm that will.
Related???
Just a matter of time... 'Things that quit working after an EMP attack' http://www.prepsite.org/2014/10/things-that-quit-working-after-emp.html?...
There surely must be a few tech people here to comment on this. I was in the radio tech business (and in other electronic projects) for about 30 years. The EMF disaster questions are surprisingly controversial, even among electronics engineers. (A favorite story, OT; I went to the top of the U.N. building with 300 pounds of microwave survey equipment. And the was ZERO security there to stop me. No funny little badges for me either. Easy as walking into a Target store. When they're REALLY watching you...)
EMP pulses actually have different frequencies; wide low frequency pulses and narrow high ones. And I assume no one can predict what troubles they will create. Like waves on the ocean, sometimes a rogue, or even a tsunami. So I have little knowledge of what they might do, but there are some useful rules of thumb. I cringe at hearing the ubiquitous comments about Faraday cages. This probably works, but I would never ground one (symmetry, here, is your friend). Smaller devices are generally more likely to survive than large ones. So disconnect or tuck down radio aerials.
Here are some more practical ideas. If (God forbid) a nuclear exchange starts, I am sure that the first warning for us will be a power outage. And we won't know if it's Armageddon or a solar flare. (Smart to assume it's Armageddon.) But even if it's "just" EMP, the big power lines (which we are to cheap to try to protect) will go down. Then, nuclear power plants will have nowhere to dump their output, and will scram (go into an emergency shutdown). But they still will produce a 5% thermal output, and so will require cooling pumps. But those pumps will run out of emergency power in hours. Then it's Fukushima hundreds of times over. Not good if you are located near even a decommissioned one.
So that, I think, is the real deal.
You are correct, its the nuclear plants that are VERY vulnerable with the current reactor types.
They require external diesel generators for the pumps, maybe 18-36 hours of fuel. The plants typically have no way of operating at limited few KW output which is what is required for the pumps, its either 100-500MW or nothing...HUGE problem. Even with all the cadnium rods jammed into the reactor and fission at zero, the latent heat of the past fission will keep the core hot for up to 36 months. Once the pumps fail, the remaining water in the core will boil away and you have fukishima.
At this stage it might be better to just open the ractor core to the air and conduct a semi-controlled melt down. Let the core melt (its gong to do it anyway once the pumps stop) and dissipate the heat by melting the steel and concrete of the containment vessel/building and vent straight into the air....which is better than attempting to keep it sealed and then get Fukishima style explosions that destroy the reactor buildings. Once enough concrete has melted that "blob" that used to be the core should have cooled. The cadnium will be in the blob so its unlikely fission can or will start up again.
The only problem will al off this is that the blob will be VERY poisonous. Will take 148 years fot he cesium levels to drop 1/16 the initial level. Iodine will drop within 5 years. Yuk!
VERY messy.
Squid
Been telling peeps this for years.. EMP is a world ending event, so do not worry about it if the russians attack it will be limited to asshole cities NY etc, the norks or Iranians well thats a bit different class..
Stupid question:
So a nuclear reactor produces heat. The heat is absorbed by water, producing steam. The steam turns a turbine that runs electric generators.
Who is the genius that didn't let the cooling pumps run from the power output of the steam turbine in the reactor???
Obviously the cooling pump power can be switched between sources, because it already is - grid and generator.
Why can't the reactor power its own pumps???? Who is the engineer who made that impossible???
Throw that guy into the cooling pool.
DON'T TOUCH the lever...
You'll blow us all to atoms.
Stack those hundred can cases of sardines deep and wide.
No Enemy would dare bomb this place and Ruin all this Confusion...
I'm going to run with that. please send a list of all Americans that have a pass to get into the Bunkers..
Now that my friend would be an Interesting ZH article for sure
Was at a defense exhibition and I saw a Mercedes Benz SUV (the 500 crossover...can't think what it is called...the vendor was mybe KRUP who make tanks and guns in addition to coffee makers in case you didn't know) on the exhibition floor. entire backseat and cargo area was filled with a mobile EMP device used to kill cars behind you.
so if you ever see a Big ass black SUV with tinted windows, a sealed off front cockpit, EU diplomatic plates, and two assholes driving it, stay in front of it.
EMPs are real weapons systems. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't getout much.
the bankers will protect us from a massive emp attack. that is way too disruptive. lloyd is doing god's work so maybe we are protected from the sun, too.
And as soon as you see the "rogue nations such as ,,,,Iran"
You know it's gullible drivel from a tool of the terrorist state: the US.
Put the epicenter a little further Southeast and you're saying the same thing Guccifer did last year when he was interviewed by the NYT at the end of 2014
He alleged there was a conspiracy plan in the works for Chicago in 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/world/europe/for-guccifer-hacking-was-...
If there IS an EMP over America, anyone wanna give me odds that the US government or the Langley Gang will be the ones who set it off????
ever seen the show Jericho?
just keep trying to ru(i)n the world your way and someone is going to do it. FUUSA
and by the way you exceptional amis have already accomplished this:
"and be the death knell of Western principles of international law, humanism and freedom,” he said."
so who gives a s*it what happens to you.
When I saw "Iran nuclear missile" metioned, I stopped reading this piece of propaganda garbage.
Both the US and Russia had this technology a long time ago. There was a test which effected the Island of Hawaii and badly effected their grid back in 1962. It's well documented and there have been many scientific discussions on the effects of a solar flare or nuclear EMP. In fact it's worked it's way into many childrens comic book stories. But you don't need a bomb to make an EMP. A researcher in California has an EMP generator parked in his garage. It's a truck and he keeps it there for his amusement. If terrorists are only now hearing about it, it's because they haven't been paying attention but broadcasting it here certainly will.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime
What's wrong with the 1800's? We could bring back slavery, hoop skirts, and Red Butler.
"Rhett" Butler was awesome.
Maybe my candle business would finally take off! With the money I will invest in horses.
Nothing will be done until we get clobbered. The hope, and it is usually a good one, is that we will get mildly clobbered before we get clobbered big time.
Actually, Niobium (Nb)is a are metal that if one uses it in electronics for transistors EMP will not affect electronics.
It is really surprising how monumentally stupid you are. Sending USA back in 1800 would be a benefice for the world. And not, I would not be loving it, as the ignorant anglosax is saying above - I would be completely indifferent.
As for Obama. What would a South-side Chicago muslim shithead know about EMP. He's too busy supporting Iran build the bomb that will create the pulse.
EMP ? Maybe
Hyperinflation ? A sure thing
Results ? Basically the same (total breakdown, mass starvation)
So was yesterdays power outage a result of the CME?
If it blows face fuck up, and kills all the moronic tweeting cunts and they all fucking die I think on balance I am 100% for it. Maybe a little more than that.
As all the fucking retarded neocons are figuring out how the fuck to start spying on everyone again I think I would take the enormous opportunity presented to relieve the atmosphere, of the dubious pleasure of them breathing it too.
Rouge states aka no western bankster syndicate controlled states.. or what defines them as rouge?
When they wear their clothes too tight and their hair is dyed?
A few years ago Iran successfully launched and detonated a high altitude missile/rocket at apogee from a ship that looked like nothing more than a worn out old freighter.
The tech' to accomplish this is no small task - they have been patient with their advancement technologically and I believe using a nuclear weapon as an EMP strike is exactly what they are working toward.
You say this like its a baaaddd thing. Kill the grid you kill the hegemony. My ancestors did very well in the 18th & 19th centuries, before the rise of the central parasites. Blow the grid, adios big brother.
Is this ZH or Above Top Secret? I R confused
The national solar observatory in a worst case scenario would give power grids 48 hours advance notice to shut down safely until a super flair had passed. Such a sutdown would protect the transformers and other critical power grid structures. This article is alarmist with regard to solar flairs.
Survivalists never talk about how attractive young women have their own survival kit buit in.
And don't forget the coast to coast Fukashimas should the back up generators be unable to run due to fried electronics.
If you can kill American military satellites , you can win.