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Got a new EMP question???

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  • Got a new EMP question???

    OK, thought of this the other day and was not sure about batteries and electrical systems. I have a 1967 Mustang that obviously has no computer. Will an EMP kill the battery and electrical system??? Now at 9mpg on premium it is definitly not an ideal bug out vehicle, but I thought of it the other day and figured it was a pretty valid question.
    All of you with EMP knowledge, chime in and let me know.

    It is at least green (white top, but I'll just put that down), so somewhat camo'ed.
    He who lives with the most toys, wins.

  • #2
    it should be fine. If it stops, which it shouldn't, it should restart.

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by monet861 View Post
      OK, thought of this the other day and was not sure about batteries and electrical systems. I have a 1967 Mustang that obviously has no computer. Will an EMP kill the battery and electrical system??? Now at 9mpg on premium it is definitly not an ideal bug out vehicle, but I thought of it the other day and figured it was a pretty valid question.
      All of you with EMP knowledge, chime in and let me know.

      It is at least green (white top, but I'll just put that down), so somewhat camo'ed.
      Right on... I have a 1968.. According to the folks that study EMP effects, your stang (mine too) should be good to go. EMP will have an effect on your radio, especcially if you have a new system.. I don't now if the Petronix ignition system upgrade that many of us have on the old stangs would fry... If it does, I can still put the old points back in.. I have a spare set. I also have an extra coil,,,just in case..BTW... Muscle cars are great BOV's.... At least they were in the Mad Max movies...LOL..

      Comment


      • #4
        Sorry for the length..

        12 August 2005
        Source: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/multidb.cgi

        -----------------------------------------------------------------------


        [Congressional Record: June 9, 2005 (House)]
        [Page H4340-H4345]
        From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
        [DOCID:cr09jn05-129]



        {time} 1630

        NUCLEAR ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE

        The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Mack). Under the Speaker's announced
        policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett)
        is recognized for 60 minutes.
        Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland. Mr. Speaker, the subject that I want to
        spend a few moments talking about this afternoon really began for our
        country in 1962. We were still testing nuclear weapons then, and for
        the first time the United States tested a weapon above the atmosphere.
        This weapon was detonated over Johnston Island in the Pacific. This was
        a part of a series of tests called the Fishbowl Series, and this was
        Operation Starfish in 1962. We had no prior experience with the
        detonation of a weapon above the atmosphere. We prepared for this test
        with airplanes and ships using radar and theodelites and
        instrumentation to measure the effects on the ground from a blast that
        was some 400 kilometers in altitude.
        In conversations just today with Dr. Lowell Wood from Lawrence
        Livermore Laboratory, I learned more of the details of the results of
        that test. They had not anticipated the magnitude of the effects at the
        ground under the blast; so many of their instruments simply pegged and
        they were not able to get a clear indication of the effects. I might
        note that the Soviets had extensive testing experience with EMP over
        their own territory. They had a much larger territory than we and some
        of it quite remote; so they were able to instrument more extensively
        and had a lot more experience than we have had. This was our first and
        only experience with a superatmospheric detonation of a nuclear weapon.
        The effects over Hawaii, which was about 800 miles away, included
        several totally unexpected things; so there was no instrumentation on
        Hawaii to record the effects.
        So all they can divine from the effects is what happened. Some street
        lights went out, and analysis after the fact indicated that these were
        the street lights that were oriented so that there was a very long line
        effect. In other words, the wires feeding the street lights constituted
        a very long antenna which received the signals from the detonation in
        space such that there was arcing and some of the street lights went
        out. This was investigated, and some of the failures were retained and
        were shown to a commission that I will talk about in a few minutes, Mr.
        Speaker, that spent 2 years studying these effects and the risk to our
        military and to our country.
        There were other effects in communications and so forth. As I said,
        none of this was expected; so there was no instrumentation. We have
        since tried to determine the effects of what is called electromagnetic
        pulse produced by a nuclear detonation. We have done that with
        laboratory devices, some of them quite large that could expose a whole
        airplane, but none of them obviously large enough to include miles and
        miles of long-line effect.
        The EMP pulse at that distance was estimated to be about five
        kilovolts per meter. We will have occasion in a little bit to talk
        about that in light of present capabilities. Because there was intense
        activity above the atmosphere, the Van Allen belts were pumped up; so
        there were a number of low Earth orbit satellites that decayed very
        rapidly as they passed through the Van Allen belts.
        Mr. Speaker, I want to kind of put what we are going to say in
        context. So I want to indicate here some of the seriousness of EMP and
        its implications. In 1999, I sat in a hotel room in Vienna, Austria. I
        was there with 10 other Members of Congress and several staff members.
        We had there three members of the Russian Duma and a representative of
        Slobodan Milosevic. This was just prior to the resolution of the Kosovo
        conflict. We developed with them a framework agreement that was adopted
        about 5 days later by the G-8, which the Members may remember ended the
        Kosovo conflict.
        One of the members of the Russian Duma was Vladimir Lukin, who was
        well known to this country because he was the ambassador here at the
        end of Bush I and the beginning of the Clinton administration. At that
        time he was a very senior member of the Russian Duma. He was very angry
        and sat for 2 days in that hotel room with his arms crossed looking at
        the ceiling. We had not early asked the Russians for help and they felt
        offended about that, and the statement he made expressing that
        sentiment was that ``you spit on us. Now why should we help you?'' And
        then he made a statement that stunned us. The leader of that delegation
        was the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. *Weldon*), who speaks and
        understands some Russian. And when Vladimir Lukin was speaking, he
        turned to me and he said, ``Did you hear what he said?''
        Of course I heard what he said, but I did not understand it because I
        do not understand Russian.
        But then it was translated, and this is what he said: ``If we really
        wanted to hurt you with no fear of retaliation, we would launch an
        SLBM,'' which if it was launched in a submarine at sea, we really would
        not know for certain where it came from. ``We would launch an SLBM, we
        would detonate a nuclear weapon high above your country, and we would
        shut down your power grid and your communications for 6 months or so.''

        The third-ranking communist was there in the country. His name is
        Alexander Shurbanov, and he smiled and said, ``And if one weapon would
        not do it, we have some spares.'' I think the number of those spares
        now is something like 6,000 weapons.
        This likely consequence of a high-altitude nuclear burst was
        corroborated by Dr. Lowell Wood, who in a field hearing at the Johns
        Hopkins University applied physics laboratory, made the observation
        that a burst like this above our atmosphere creating this
        electromagnetic pulse would be like a giant continental time machine
        turning us back to the technology of 100 years ago. It is very obvious
        that the population of today in its distribution could not be supported
        by the technology of 100 years ago. And I asked Dr. Wood, I said, ``Dr.
        Wood, clearly the technology of 100 years ago could not support our
        present population in its distribution,'' and his unemotional response
        was, ``Yes, I know. The population will shrink until it can be
        supported by the technology.''
        Just a word, Mr. Speaker, about what this EMP is. It is very much
        like a really giant solar storm. All of us are familiar with solar
        storms and with the disruption to our communication systems. And this
        is like a really giant solar storm. It is kind of like really intense
        static electricity everywhere all at once, all over the whole country.
        It

        [[Page H4341]]

        is sort of like a lightning strike that is not just isolated to one
        spot. Different than a lightning strike in terms of the intensities and
        so forth and the spectrum, but it would be everywhere all at once over
        a very large area.
        I have here in front of me the report, and I will have occasion to
        refer to that again a little later, the report of the Commission to
        Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP)
        Attack. This is the executive summary. The report itself is very thick
        and there is a big classified addendum to the big report. And I just
        want to turn to one page here, and this is page 4, and it says: ``What
        is significant about an EMP attack is that one or a few high-altitude
        nuclear detonations can produce EMP effects that can potentially
        disrupt or damage electronic and electrical systems over much of the
        United States virtually simultaneously at a time determined by an
        adversary.''
        I talked a little bit about what EMP is. It produces a large number
        of Compton electrons above our atmosphere which are trapped by the
        magnetic fields around the Earth. They move at the speed of light. The
        prompt effects are such that if the voltage is high enough, all
        electronic equipment within line of sight is damaged or destroyed.
        These are called prompt effects. And, of course, satellites are very
        soft because it costs about $10,000 a pound to launch a satellite; so
        they do not launch a lot of hardening on the satellite if they do not
        need to.
        So all of the satellites within line of sight would be taken out by
        prompt effects. It would not go so high, by the way, as the satellites
        that are 22,500 miles above the Earth. And it would pump up the Van
        Allen belts so that satellites that were not in line of sight would die
        very quickly and one could not reconstitute the satellite network by
        launching new ones because they also would die quickly.
        Let me show a chart here that shows the effects of this bomb
        exploding over the United States, and this shows a single weapon. This
        shows a single weapon detonated at the northwest corner of Iowa, and it
        shows it at about 600 kilometers high, and this would blanket all of
        the United States. And the concentric circles here, not true circles
        because there is a little distortion of the electrical fields by the
        magnetic waves around the Earth, but these represent the intensity of
        the field that is produced by this. At the center we can see it is 100
        percent. But even out at the margins of our country, it is down to 50
        percent.
        Now, a little later I will show a statement from some Russian
        generals that were reviewed by the people who put together this report,
        and they said that the Russians had developed weapons that produced 200
        kilovolts per meter. Remember, the effects in Hawaii were judged to be
        the result of five kilovolts per meter. So this is a force about 200
        times higher. The Russian generals said that they believed that to be
        several times higher than the hardening that we had provided for our
        military platforms that they could resist EMP.
        Others know about EMP. I did not want anybody to believe that we were
        letting the genie out of the bottle and others did not know about that.
        I mentioned earlier the statement by Vladimir Lukin, the Russian member
        of their Duma, and this is the statement that I referred to here, and
        that was in May 2, 1999: ``Chinese military writings described EMP as
        the key to victory and described scenarios where EMP is used against
        U.S. aircraft carriers in the conflict over Taiwan.'' So it is not like
        our potential enemies do not know that this exists. The Soviets had
        very wide experience with this, and there is a lot of information in
        the public domain relative to this.
        ``A survey of worldwide military and scientific literature sponsored
        by the commission,'' that is the commission that wrote this report,
        ``found widespread knowledge about EMP and its potential military
        utility including in Taiwan, Israel, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Iran, and
        North Korea.

        {time} 1645

        Terrorist information warfare includes using the technology of
        directed energy weapons. These are little weapons that produce an EMP-
        like effect, but over a very much more restricted area, and also
        electromagnetic pulse produced from nuclear weapons.
        By the way, an enemy no more sophisticated than Saddam Hussein would
        need no more than a tramp steamer, a Scud missile and a crude nuclear
        weapon like is probably available in North Korea or might be bought or
        stolen from some Russian source. That would not shut down the whole
        United States, because the Scud missile could not carry it high enough,
        but it would certainly shut down the whole Northeast.
        By the way, this is not like the Northeast blackout that we had a
        couple of years ago. This would produce damage that you would not
        recover from simply by turning a switch. It would probably destroy
        large transformers. These very large transformers are made to order,
        and if you need one, they will build you one, not in this country, we
        do not build the big ones anymore, they will build you one over in
        Europe or Scandinavia, and it will take maybe a year-and-a-half to 2
        years to get it. So it is not like you are going to recover from this
        tomorrow.
        Iran has tested launching of a Scud missile from a surface vessel, a
        launch mode that could support a national or transnational EMP attack
        against the United States.
        We have a second chart which shows more of the evidence that
        potential enemies out there know that this is a potential weapon.
        ``If the world's industrial countries fail to devise effective ways
        to defend themselves against dangerous electronic assaults, then they
        will disintegrate within a few years. 150,000 computers belong to the
        U.S. Army. If the enemy forces succeed in infiltrating the information
        network of the U.S. Army, then the whole organization would collapse,
        the American soldiers could not find food to eat, nor would they be
        able to fire a single shot.''
        I kind of think they would be able to find food to eat. This is from
        an Iranian journal, so you know they know about this and they are
        thinking about this.
        ``Terrorist information warfare includes using the technology of
        directed energy weapons, magnetic pulse.'' I referred to that earlier.
        Iran has conducted tests with its Shahab-3 missile that have been
        described as failures by the Western media because the missiles did not
        complete their ballistic trajectories, but were deliberately exploded
        at high altitude. This, of course, would be exactly what you would want
        to do if you were going to use an EMP weapon.
        Today we are very much concerned, Mr. Speaker, about asymmetric
        weapons. We are a big, powerful country. Nobody can contend with us
        shoulder-to-shoulder, face-to-face. So all of our potential adversaries
        are looking for what we refer to as asymmetric weapons. That is a
        weapon that overcomes our superior capabilities. There is no asymmetric
        weapon that has anywhere near the potential of EMP.
        Iran described these tests as successful. We said they were a failure
        because they blew up in flight. They described them as successful. Of
        course, they would be, if Iran's intent was practicing for an EMP
        attack.
        Iran's Shahab-3 is a medium-range mobile missile that could be driven
        on to a freighter and transported to a point near the United States for
        an EMP attack. I might state that an early use of EMP is a common
        occurrence in Russia and Chinese war games.
        I just would like to spend a moment or two talking about kind of the
        history of how we got here and why the big concern about EMP and the
        risk that it poses to us. I mentioned Operation Starfish in 1962.

        Then we really had a scary event which we did not know about for
        quite some time that happened in 1995 when there was a Norwegian
        weather rocket that was set off. The Norwegians had told the Russians
        that they were going to fire this weapon, but that did not get to the
        proper level. When the weapon was fired, it was interpreted by the
        Russians as a potential first strike of the United States against them
        and they had alerted their nuclear missile response. They came very
        close to launching that, and we did not know about that until some time
        after.
        In 1997 I had a very interesting experience. I am on the Committee on
        Armed Services. This was during the Clinton administration, and he had
        set up a Commission on Critical Infrastructure. General Marsh, retired,
        was

        [[Page H4342]]

        chairing that Commission on Critical Infrastructure. This was
        infrastructure that was so critical that if an enemy could take it out,
        we would be very much disadvantaged by it. I asked him about EMP, had
        they looked at that?
        His answer was, yes, they looked at it.
        Well?
        He said, well, we did not think there was a high probability that
        would happen, so we did not continue to look at it anymore.
        I told him, gee, with that attitude, if you have not already, I am
        sure when you go home tonight you are going to cancel the fire
        insurance on your home.
        What one needs when there is the potential for a very high-impact,
        low-probability event, is what we call insurance. I think that every
        American citizen has the right to ask their government, have you made
        the proper insurance investment to protect me, to protect my country,
        in the event, which we hope is not a high probability, in the event
        that there is an EMP attack against our country?
        Your home burning, by the way, is not a high probability event. You
        may have a $300,000 home and it may cost you $300 for fire insurance
        for the year. So you can do the simple arithmetic that tells you the
        insurance company does not expect very many homes to burn that year.
        Then the next event in this little timeline was my trip to Vienna,
        Austria, when I met there in that hotel room with Members of the
        Russian Duma. In 2001 we had some tests at Aberdeen with a device that
        was made using only the equipment that a terrorist might buy from Radio
        Shack or a place like that to see if you could put together a directed
        energy weapon, a weapon, by the way, that if sophisticated enough one
        might drive down Wall Street and take out all the computers in the
        financial market. It would not go further than that, but if it did
        that, that would, of course, be an enormous blow.
        In 2001, the Commission was set up and then in 2004, last year, we
        have the report of the Commission.
        I just would like to show you a chart now of the commissioners. We
        will not have time to talk about the capabilities of all of these
        commissioners, but I will assure you that these are all giants in their
        area. They were appointed from among the foremost scientists, experts
        and military officers in the United States to achieve a mix of talent
        on scientific aspects of EMP, nuclear weapon design, military
        implications of EMP and the effects of EMP on civilian and military
        infrastructures.
        Dr. William Graham, the Commission chairman, was science advisor to
        President Reagan. He ran NASA and was one of the first scientists to
        study the EMP phenomenon when it was first discovered by its United
        States in 1962.
        Commissioner John Foster, Johnny Foster, who designed most of the
        nuclear weapons in the inventory the United States today, was a
        director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and for decades
        has been a close adviser to the Department of Defense on nuclear
        matters.
        Dr. Lowell Wood is a member of the director's staff at Lawrence
        Livermore National Laboratory where he inherited the scientific mantel
        of Dr. Edward Teller, the inventor of the hydrogen bomb.
        I had a very interesting personal experience related to Dr. Lowell
        Wood. When I became interested a number of years ago in EMP and the
        potential implications, I knew that Tom Clancy, who lives in Maryland
        and he has come to do several events for me, I knew that he had a novel
        in which EMP was one of the sequences in his novel. I know that Tom
        Clancy does very good research. So I called to ask him about EMP and
        its implications.
        He said that if I had read his book, I probably knew as much about
        EMP as he knew, but he was going to refer me to what he said was in his
        view was the smartest person hired by the U.S. Government, and that was
        Dr. Lowell Wood. So Dr. Lowell Wood comes with great recommendations.
        Commissioner Richard Lawson was a USAF general, served on the Joint
        Chiefs of Staff and was Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the U.S.-European
        Command.

        Dr. Joan Woodard, I had a very interesting experience with Dr.
        Woodard. I was visiting my son and daughter and children out in
        Albuquerque, he works at the Sandia Labs, and he brought home a little
        note talking about a seminar they were having which was exploring some
        issues that I thought would be relevant to the work that the Commission
        was doing. I did not know at that time that she was a member of the
        Commission.
        So I asked for a briefing, and I spent 5 hours in a classified
        briefing at Sandia Labs. And it was not just Dr. Joan Woodard, it was a
        large number of people at the labs there that were focusing primarily
        on the national infrastructure consequences of this.
        What I would like to do now is go through some of the statements and
        recommendations of the report. The next chart shows the threat and the
        nature and magnitude of EMP threats within the next 15 years.
        On the right you see the coverage that is produced by weapons
        detonated at various altitudes. I mentioned 600 kilometers. Actually
        500 kilometers pretty much covers the margins of our country and, of
        course, the lower the altitude you detonate it, the less area that it
        covers, but the higher will be the intensity of the pulse that is
        produced.
        This is a direct quote from the EMP Commission report: ``EMP is one
        of a small number of threats that may hold at risk the continued
        existence of today's U.S. civil society.''
        Now, that is couched in the careful kind of scientific terms, but
        what that really means is that a really robust EMP laydown, which, as
        Vladimir Lukin in that hotel room in Vienna, Austria said, would shut
        down our power grid and communications for 6 months or so. And if one
        weapon would not do it, as Alexander Shaponov said, four absolutely
        would do it, particularly with the power of the weapons that the
        Russian generals say that they have developed.
        What this would do is to produce a society in which the only person
        you could talk to was the person next to you, unless you happened to be
        a ham operator with a vacuum tube set, which, by the way, is 1 million
        times less susceptible to EMP than your present equipment that the hams
        use. And the only way you could get anywhere was to walk, because, you
        see, if the pulse is intense enough, it turns off all the computers in
        your car. There will be no electricity, so even if the car ran, you
        could not get gas.
        By the way, if you have a car that still has a coil and distributor,
        you are probably okay, because those are pretty robust structures
        compared to today's cars with so much microelectronics in them.
        It would disrupt our military forces and our ability to project
        military power. For the last decade, Mr. Speaker, we have been waiving
        hardening on essentially all of our military platforms because it costs
        maybe as little as 1 percent, maybe like 5 percent more to harden. It
        can be done. That is the good news story. If you do not harden, you can
        get 5 percent more weapons systems. And since we have had so little
        money during those years, the Pentagon opted to run this risk. With
        terrorists about, I think that is probably a risk we do not want to
        continue to run.
        The number of U.S. adversaries capable of EMP attack is greater than
        during the Cold War. We may look back with some fondness on the Cold
        War. We then had only one potential adversary. We knew him quite well.

        {time} 1700

        Now we have who knows how many potential adversaries, and they come
        from very different cultures than we, and we have a great deal of
        difficulty in understanding them and communicating with them.
        Potential adversaries are aware of the EMP's strategic attack option.
        I started, Mr. Speaker, with talking about the fact that I was not
        letting the genie out of the bottle. Ninety-nine percent of Americans
        may not know very much about EMP, but I will assure you, Mr. Speaker,
        that 100 percent of our potential enemies know all about EMP. I think
        that the American people need to know about EMP because they need to
        demand that their government do the prudent thing so that we will be
        less and less susceptible, less and less at risk to an EMP attack year
        by year. The threat is not adequately addressed in U.S. national

        [[Page H4343]]

        and homeland security programs. Not only is it not adequately
        addressed; it is usually ignored, not even mentioned, and it certainly
        needs to be considered.
        I might note that Senator John Kyl, with whom I served in the House
        on the Committee on Armed Services, wrote just a couple of weeks ago a
        very nice editorial in the Washington Post, and we will have his quote
        a little later, on EMP effects and how we need to be about preparing
        ourselves for that.
        Terrorists could steal, purchase, or be provided a nuclear weapon and
        perform an EMP attack against the United States simply by launching a
        primitive Scud missile off a freighter near our shores. We do not need
        to be thinking about missiles coming over the Pole. There are thousands
        of ships out there, particularly in the North Atlantic shipping lanes,
        and any one of them could have a Scud missile on board. If you put a
        canvas over it, we cannot see through the thinnest canvas. We would not
        know whether it was bailed hay or bananas or a Scud launcher. You
        cannot see through any cover on ship. The Commission on the Emerging
        Ballistic Missile Threat chaired by Secretary Rumsfeld before he was
        Secretary, and Dr. Bill Graham, the chairman of this commission was his
        vice-chair, found that ships had been modified so that they had
        missile-launching tubes in ordinary freighters. You can read that in
        their report.
        Scud missiles can be purchased on the world market today for less
        than $100,000. Al Qaeda is estimated to own about 80 freighters, so all
        they need, Mr. Speaker, is $100,000, which I am sure they can get, for
        the missile and a crude nuclear weapon.
        Certain types of low-yield nuclear weapons can generate potentially
        catastrophic EMP effects. These certain types of weapons are weapons
        that have been designed for enhanced EMP effects. They may have little
        explosive effect, but very high EMP effects over wide geographic areas,
        and designs for various such weapons may have been illicitly trafficked
        for a quarter of a century. We are certain that the Chinese have them.
        Of course the Russians have them; they developed probably better or at
        least as good designs as we developed. We designed them, by the way,
        but never built them. The Russians we understand have both designed and
        built them, and we now believe those designs to be pretty widespread
        out around the world.
        The next chart shows the comments from the Russian generals, and to
        protect the Russian generals we have redacted their names. But the
        commission met with Russian generals, and they claim that Russia has
        designed a super-EMP nuclear weapon capable of generating 200 kilovolts
        per meter. And the Russian generals told our commission people that
        they believe that to be several times higher than the level two, which
        we had hardened our weapons systems; even those that are hardened and,
        as I mentioned, Mr. Speaker, most of our weapons systems now procured
        are not hardened.
        Russian, Chinese, and Pakistani scientists are working in North Korea
        and could enable that country to develop an EMP weapon in the near
        future. Now, this is not what the commission said; this is what the
        commission reported the Russian generals to have said.
        The next chart shows additional comments from the EMP Commission
        report. States or terrorists may well calculate that using a nuclear
        weapon for EMP attack offers the greatest utility. Mr. Speaker, there
        is no way that a country could use a nuclear weapon against the United
        States that would be as devastating as using it to produce an EMP lay-
        down. I had not noted, but I should note, Mr. Speaker, that there is no
        effect on you or me from this weapon. We are quite immune to that. We
        will not be damaged by that. Buildings will not be damaged by that. It
        will affect only electric and electronic equipment.
        EMP offers a bigger bang for the buck. Now, this is from their
        report; I am not saying this. EMP offers a bigger bang for the buck
        against U.S. military forces in a regional conflict or a means of
        damaging the U.S. homeland. EMP may be less provocative of U.S. massive
        retaliation compared to a nuclear attack on a U.S. city that inflicts
        many prompt calories.
        Just a couple of words about this. As Vladimir Lukin said, if it were
        launched from the ocean, we would not know who launched it. So against
        whom would we retaliate? Even if we knew who launched it, Mr. Speaker,
        if all they have done is to disable our computers, do we respond in
        kind, or do you incinerate their grandmothers and their babies? This
        would be a really tough call. Responding in kind might do very little
        good. There is no other country in the world that has anything like our
        sophistication in electronic equipment, and no other country in the
        world is so dependent as we are on our national infrastructure. So this
        is a real problem and a big incentive to use this weapon without fear
        of retaliation, as Vladimir Lukin says, with no fear of retaliation.
        EMP could, compared to a nuclear attack on the city, kill many more
        Americans in the long run from indirect effects of collapsed
        infrastructures of power, communications, transportation, food, and
        water. Can you imagine our country, Mr. Speaker, with 285 million
        people, no electricity, and there will be no electricity, no
        transportation, no communication? The only way you can go anywhere is
        to walk, and the only person you can talk to is the person next to you.
        What would we do? How many of our people might not survive the
        transition from that situation to where you had established a sort of
        infrastructure that could support civil society as we know it today.
        Strategically and politically, an EMP attack can threaten entire
        regional or national infrastructures that are vital to U.S. military
        strength and societal survival, challenge the integrity of allied
        regional coalitions, and pose an asymmetrical threat more dangerous to
        the high-tech West than to rogue states. This makes the point that I
        was making that because we are the most sophisticated, we are the most
        vulnerable.
        Technically and operationally, EMP attacks can compensate for
        deficiencies in missile accuracy, fusing range, reentry, velocity
        design, target location, *intelligence*, and missile defense penetration.
        We are really superior in all of these areas, and none of our enemies
        out there, except for Russia and China, and we would not expect an
        attack like this from either of them, but there is nobody else out
        there who really can be very good shots with their missiles.
        But what the EMP Commission report is pointing out is, they do not
        need to be. Anywhere over the northeastern United States will shut down
        all of the northeastern United States, and anywhere near the middle of
        our country, you can miss it by 100 miles and it really will not
        matter. Anything near the middle of our country detonated high enough
        with the right kind of weapon will blanket the whole country with an
        EMP force that could knock out all of our electronic equipment.

        The next chart shows some other comments in the EMP report. One or a
        few high-altitude nuclear detonations can produce EMP simultaneously
        over wide geographical areas. As the chart we showed earlier, the whole
        country can be blanketed with one about 600 kilometers high.
        The thing they were really concerned about, because we have a very
        sophisticated infrastructure with lots of interdependencies, they were
        really concerned about the cascading failure, unprecedented cascading
        failure of our electronics-based infrastructures, which could result in
        power, energy, transport, telecom, and financial systems and are
        particularly vulnerable and interdependent. And if one of them comes
        down, if you bring down the power grid, Mr. Speaker, you have brought
        down all of these other parts of our national infrastructure. EMP
        disruption of these sectors could cause large-scale infrastructure
        failures for all aspects of the Nation's life.
        Now, these are not my words; these are taken from the EMP Commission
        report. This commission was set up as a part of public law, and that is
        noted here on this chart. Both civilian and military capabilities
        depend on these infrastructures. Without adequate protection, recovery
        could be prolonged months to years for recovery. And here on the right
        is a little depiction showing some, and there are more than that,
        showing some of the interrelationships. For instance, electric power is
        not shown as important for water or for banking and finance, and

        [[Page H4344]]

        for government services; and of course it is. So if you do not have
        electric power, for instance, you do not have any of these other
        things.
        There was a number of years ago a scientist by the name of Harrison
        Scott Brown. I think that he worked at CalTech, and he offered a series
        of seminars called the ``Next 100 Years.'' This was during the Cold
        War. And one of the questions that it was appropriate to ask during the
        Cold War was, What would you do after the nuclear attack? You may
        remember, Mr. Speaker, your parents talking about the backyard shelters
        that were built during the 1960s. Sometime after that I went to work
        for IBM and they were still talking about the fact that IBM had loaned
        its employees money interest-free to build a backyard shelter. There
        was a real concern that there could be a bolt out of the blue and that
        we could have a nuclear attack. We had a big civil defense organization
        with lots of shelters. They were stocked, and you were given pamphlets
        and you were told where to go.
        I think, Mr. Speaker, that today, with the potential for terrorist
        attack, we need to turn back a few pages and learn from our experience
        during the Cold War when we recognized that the more prepared an
        individual and a family was to be self-sufficient during that attack,
        the stronger we would be as a whole; and I think that we could profit,
        at least have a more intense focus on civil defense in our homeland
        security efforts.
        Harrison Scott Brown was concerned about what you would do after you
        came out of the fallout shelter and how you would reconstitute your
        society to reestablish the kind of an infrastructure that you had
        before the attack. His concern was that in the United States, and this
        was a number of years ago, his concern would be even greater were he
        alive today, his concern then was that we had developed such a
        sophisticated, interrelated infrastructure, that if it came down like a
        house of cards, that it might be very difficult, maybe, he thought, and
        I will explain in a moment why, maybe impossible to reestablish that
        infrastructure. Because, he noted, that this infrastructure was built
        up gradually from very simple to very complex, when there was available
        to us a rich resource of raw materials, high-quality iron ore. That is
        all gone. Our best ores now, I think, are \1/2\ of 1 percent taconite
        ores.

        {time} 1715

        When oil essentially oozed out of the ground, when the water washed
        the dirt away, you could see coal exposed in some of the hills of
        Pennsylvania. The oil now is deep and hard to get or offshore or in the
        Arctic. All the good coal has been burned. Now, to get oil and to get
        coal, we have to have the infrastructure. You have to have diesel fuel
        shipped to you. You have to have large excavators.
        His concern was that if our infrastructure collapsed as a result of a
        nuclear attack, today we are talking about an EMP attack, which does
        not blow up buildings, but it shuts down the infrastructure because it
        would destroy, disrupt all of the electronic equipment if the pulse was
        high enough; and a determined, sophisticated enemy could make sure that
        it was high enough.
        So he was concerned that maybe it would not be possible now without
        that high-quality, readily available resource of raw materials that
        might be very difficult without massive help from other parts of the
        world that we could reconstitute our society.
        I think, Mr. Speaker, that we need to be looking at that threat to
        our country today. I am sure it is no less a threat now than it was
        when Harrison Scott Brown was holding those seminars.
        In 2004, the EMP Commission met with very senior Russian officers,
        and we showed that on the sign. They warned that the knowledge and
        technology to develop what they called super EMP weapons had been
        transferred to North Korea and that North Korea could probably develop
        these weapons in the near future, within a few years.
        The Russian officers said that the threat that would be posed to
        global security by a North Korean armed with super EMP weapons was, in
        their view, and I am sure, Mr. Speaker, in your view and mine,
        unacceptable.
        You know, why use EMP, as we noted in a previous chart? A terrorist
        or rogue state might be so inaccurate that they could not even use a
        nuclear weapon to take out New York City. They might hit the
        countryside somewhere near. But it would not really matter with that
        low accuracy if they were doing an EMP laydown. Because anywhere over
        New England would be quite good enough, and there is no way that they
        could do as much damage to our country by a ground burst, even if it
        hit the city, than if they could do a high altitude burst, which
        produced EMP and took down, if it was intense enough, all of our
        infrastructure.
        EMP has such a wide area of effect that if the weapon is large enough
        or several are used, covering potentially an entire continent, that
        even a highly inaccurate missile could not miss its target in an EMP
        effect. EMP attack involves exoatmospheric detonation, meaning that
        attack, this is really interesting, Mr. Speaker, this attack would
        occur before the weapon ever reentered the atmosphere. So even if we
        were really good at taking out weapons before they hit us, it really
        would not matter, because this is detonated before it starts to
        reenter. So any weapon that would take out a missile on its final
        descent would be useless, because it has already detonated and the
        damage is done at altitude.
        Increased dependence on advanced electronic systems results in the
        potential for an increased EMP vulnerability. And what this does is to
        make that attack more attractive to our assailants. The fact that we
        are ever more sophisticated and therefore ever more vulnerable makes it
        ever more attractive to our adversaries, because this really becomes
        the ultimate asymmetric weapon.
        EMP threatens the ability of the United States and western nations to
        project influence and military power, because a third-world country
        with a crude missile and a crude nuclear weapon could, in effect, hold
        us hostage. This is why it is so important that we stop the spread of
        nuclear weapons.
        EMP can cause catastrophic damage to the Nation by destroying the
        electric power infrastructure, causing cascading failures in the
        infrastructure for everything: telecommunications, energy,
        transportation, finance, food, and water.
        I live on a farm. I cannot even get a drink of water without
        electricity, because the pump in my well that supplies my water has to
        have electricity. So we are all really dependent on this
        infrastructure.
        Degradation, and this is really minimized, degradation of the
        infrastructures could have irreversible effects on the country's
        ability to support its population, and then millions could die. That is
        true.
        In the final analysis, Mr. Speaker, the EMP Commission report is
        really a good news story. So far what we have been talking about does
        not really sound like good news, does it? It sounds like the worst of
        all news that you could get. But there really is good news here, and
        the good news is that we do not have to be this vulnerable. It is
        really not all that expensive to protect our systems against EMP. You
        just have to do it.
        But we have a problem, and that is the cheapest way to do it is when
        you are making them, if you design it in. Then it may cost as little as
        1 percent more. For really sophisticated electronic stuff, probably not
        more than 10 percent more. But if you are trying to add it after it is
        built, then it can cost you as much as the device itself, which means
        that we need to start, you can only do what you can do, and we need to
        start in our national infrastructure by deciding what is most essential
        to protect and then expeditiously protecting that as fast as we can.
        Every new water system we put in, every new sewage system we put in,
        every new power line we run, every new distribution system we put in
        needs to be hardened. It is not all that expensive to do. You just need
        to do it.
        Now we have hardened in the military our command and control. We are
        pretty sure that we can talk to each other after an EMP laydown. But
        that does not give me much solace, Mr. Speaker, because that is the
        equivalent of me having my brain and spinal cord work, but my arms and
        my hands will not work. I am not sure just having the capability of my
        brain communicating

        [[Page H4345]]

        with my spinal cord does me much good if my arms and my legs will not
        respond to those signals.
        The EMP Commission has proposed a 5-year plan that, if implemented,
        would protect the United States from the catastrophic consequences of
        EMP attack and make recovery possible at surprisingly modest cost.
        I would like now to turn to a statement that was made by Dr. John
        Kyl. I mentioned his name earlier. Last week, the Senate Judiciary
        Committee Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security,
        which I chair, his words in his op-ed piece, held a hearing on a major
        threat to the United States not only from terrorists but from rogue
        nations like North Korea.
        An EMP attack is one of only a few ways that America could be
        essentially defeated by our enemies, terrorists or otherwise. Few if
        any people would die right away, but the long-term loss of electricity
        would essentially bring our society to a halt. Few can conceive of the
        possibility that terrorists could bring American society to its knees
        by knocking out our power supply from several miles in the atmosphere.
        But this time we have been warned, and we better be prepared to
        respond. We really do need to respond.
        Here is another statement from Major Franz Gayl.
        The impact that EMP is asymmetric in relation to our adversaries, now
        these are all in the public domain. I want to be very careful, Mr.
        Speaker, that I do not leave the impression that I am letting the genie
        out of the bottle. Ninety-nine percent of Americans may not know about
        EMP, but I will guarantee you 100 percent of our adversaries know about
        EMP. And we need to know about EMP, because to be forewarned is to be
        forearmed, and we need to do something about that.
        The impact that EMP is asymmetric in relation to our adversaries, the
        less developed societies in North Korea, Iran and other potential EMP
        attack perpetrators are less electronically dependent and less
        specialized, while more capable of continued functionality in the
        absence of modern conveniences.
        I do not know that outside of Pyongyang that many people in North
        Korea would even know if electricity went out. I am not sure they
        depend much on electricity.
        Conversely, the United States would be subject to widespread
        paralysis and doubtful recovery following a surprise EMP attack.
        Therefore, terrorists and their coincidentally allied state sponsors
        may determine that, given just a few nuclear weapons and delivery
        vehicles, that subjecting the United States to a potentially non-
        attributable EMP attack, we would not even know where it came from if
        it came from the oceans, is more desirable than the destruction of
        selected cities. Delayed mass lethality is assured over time through
        the cascade of EMPs' indirect effects that would bring our highly
        specialized and urbanized society to a disorderly halt.
        The vulnerability of the United States to EMP attack serves as the
        latest revelation that societal protections associated with our
        national security can no longer be assured by traditional nuclear
        deterrence and battlefield preparations on their own.
        Let me put up now a conclusion chart. The EMP threat is one of a few
        potentially catastrophic threats to the United States. By taking
        action, the EMP threat can be reduced to manageable levels, but we
        should have started yesterday, Mr. Speaker. We just must start today.
        U.S. strategy to address the EMP threat should balance prevention,
        preparation, protection and recovery. We need to be studying all four
        of these. Critical military capabilities must be survivable and
        endurable to underwrite U.S. strategy. If they can bring down our
        military, that really puts us at risk.
        The 2006 Defense Authorization Bill contains a provision extending
        the EMP Commission to ensure that their recommendations will be
        implemented. We need to have them around to make sure that we are
        following through on their recommendations. Terrorists are looking for
        vulnerabilities to attack, and our civilian infrastructure is
        particularly susceptible to this kind of attack. It needs to be
        hardened.
        When you have a weak underbelly, you are inviting attack there. They
        are going to attack at the weakest link, and our infrastructure
        complexity is certainly our weakest link. The Department of Homeland
        Security needs to identify critical infrastructures. What do we need to
        protect first?
        Then we need to have a plan for what would we do if we had the EMP
        attack tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the next year, 5 years from
        now. How far along would we be in protecting ourselves? But we need to
        have a plan for what we would do in the event that that happens.
        The Department of Homeland Security also needs to develop a plan, I
        really want to emphasize this, Mr. Speaker, to help citizens deal with
        such an attack should it occur. Each of us as individuals, each of us
        as families, each of us as a church group, each of us as a community,
        needs to have plans for what we would do in the event of an EMP attack.
        We need to know what we need to do to prepare so that we are not going
        to be a liability on the system. Our strength as a Nation is going to
        be greatly increased if each of us as a family, a church group, a
        community, is prepared so that we will be less susceptible to the loss
        of these infrastructure supports.
        Mr. Speaker, this is really a good news story. We know about this
        problem. It has not happened yet. We have a great study with great
        detailed recommendations of what we need to be doing. The good news is
        that if we do these things we will have reduced our vulnerability and
        we will have now taken from the enemy an enormous strategic capability
        that they now have because we are such a sophisticated society, depend
        so much on our infrastructure, and if they can bring down an
        infrastructure they can bring us down.
        We have a mighty Army. It will not be much good if the folks back
        home do not have anything to eat.
        Mr. Speaker, to be forewarned is to be forearmed. I am sure Americans
        will respond to this challenge. And challenges are really exhilarating.
        You feel really good at night if you have met a challenge and you have
        had some successes in meeting that challenge.
        Mr. Speaker, I think we have a bright future ahead, and it is going
        to be even brighter if we respond appropriately to the warnings that
        are here.

        Comment


        • #5
          Oy vey! I'll read this after work, today. Thanks for posting.
          "If Howdy Doody runs against him, I'm voting for the puppet." - SkyOwl's Wife, 2012

          Comment


          • #6
            Well I was going to add my .02 but after that post I got nothing..

            Comment


            • #7
              Postponed until tomorrow, I had a hot date after work!
              "If Howdy Doody runs against him, I'm voting for the puppet." - SkyOwl's Wife, 2012

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by Skyowl's Wife View Post
                Postponed until tomorrow, I had a hot date after work!
                Modesty, Mrs. Skyowl!!!! :)

                It was a bit repetitive, but a very good read. My fear is that our elite and politicians have spent and structured us into such dire straits... that last thing they're going to spend money on is a sh!t load of aluminum foil and 29 million faraday cages to keep the lights on. In the face of financial meltdown, they can't even balance their big check book or cut their premium cable package, even with disaster staring them in the face.

                Keep prepping folks. Rely on yourselves.

                RA

                Comment


                • #9
                  Well most wiring and ignition parts are MSD. I have LED gauges, so I might not know how fast I'm going or how much fuel, but typically I have to get gas every 2 hours anyway.

                  Great article, need to upgrade glasses after that.

                  The other problem is our newer trucks would be blocking the garage, so getting it out could be a pain.

                  As for The Road Warrior, I just need to weld spikes and barbed wire all over it and spray paint it black and I'm all set, awesome, now I have a weekend project...;-)
                  He who lives with the most toys, wins.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Right on bro.. "I am the Nightrider. I'm a fuel injected suicide machine. I am the rocker, I am the roller, I am the out-of-controller!"

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      I am going to plug an old thread from a while ago.

                      http://www.survivalmagazine.org/surv...Know-About-EMP

                      It is long and in some points degenerates into a "heated discussion" but the links I think are the best part and they are in the first post. Enjoy!
                      As Zombie Axe would say...
                      "Someday someone may kill you with your own gun, but they should have to beat you to death with it because it is empty."

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Skyowl View Post
                        I am going to plug an old thread from a while ago.

                        http://www.survivalmagazine.org/surv...Know-About-EMP

                        It is long and in some points degenerates into a "heated discussion" but the links I think are the best part and they are in the first post. Enjoy!
                        Aren't you supposed to be on a date with Mrs Skyowl?...;)
                        Live like you'll die tomorrow, learn like you'll live forever.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Echo2 View Post
                          Aren't you supposed to be on a date with Mrs Skyowl?...;)
                          LOL we didn't go until a couple hours later. Went to "My Big Fat Greek Restaurant". Food was so-so, service sucked, bill was hideous, company was great!
                          "If Howdy Doody runs against him, I'm voting for the puppet." - SkyOwl's Wife, 2012

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            EMP would in all likelyhood make a quicker end to the US than a financial catastrophe would.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              this just in:

                              Space,electronic,solar,magnetic,tagoptions,storms,space,severe,devices,navigation,travel,daily,telegraph,satellites,technological,fisher,agency,earth,superstorm,violence,report


                              I have not been able to confirm it yet..

                              Comment

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