A real expert talking about an EMP attack !

a reply to: blend57

Simply put, our 'grid' is developed. No one, domestically, was going to buy them as 'spares' are an added expense. No profit, no motive to continue making them.

The ammo analogy doesn't work because there's a constant need for replacement ammo. Not so with Transformers.

On the other hand, there is so much disinformation out there about this subject it's "shocking" (see what I did there?).

Most of the published data out there is around the absolute worst case scenarios. Things like altitude, weapon size and weapon design all play an "explosive" role in the actual effects of an EMP. For example, the E1 and E2 pulses are the most catastrophic to computers and semiconductors, but these are also the hardest weapons to design. Coincidentally, they're also the heaviest ones to launch into space. Thermo's are much easier to make and launch, but have far smaller E1 and E2 effects.

People also need to consider EMP effects on the 'other guy'. He might have an EMP weapon, but he also might be dealing with the effects of a preemptive EMP strike, so if all his stuff isn't fully hardened (which itself is extraordinarily difficult), he ain't launchin' nothin'! Then there's the whole MAD doctrine thing; an EMP is considered a nuclear strike and therefore MAD comes into play. "He" better not be thinking he's gonna' just rain on your 4th of July festivities with a fun little EMP strike as a practical joke with no repercussions! No, there's a pretty good chance his little practical joke will result in his whole nation being turned into a sea of glass and ashes for citizens.

I swear, sometimes it seems like people talk about an EMP like any old person can launch one, that it can be launched in a complete vacuum of resistance and nobody can do anything about it.

Lastly, the very LAST person I'd ever listen to about this, or any other kind of defense (for that matter), is a "former" DHS guy! DHS couldn't find their ass with both hands if their life depended on it!!!

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I remember seeing this one, it was weird and we didn't know at the time what it was.

Operation Argus

I only heard about these when they were declassified. Starfish Prime was the one that did the EMP that affected Hawaii.

Operation Fishbowl

a reply to: NightFlight

So you were aboard one of the ships during these tests?

Didn't all the odd preparations seem strange?

originally posted by: enlightenedservant
How is this any different from the fearmongering last October about the same thing? Here's the ATS thread about it, complete with the "90% of the population dying within a year" BS.

Congress warned North Korean EMP attack would kill '90% of all Americans'

Actually, anything that caused a nation wide long term outage of electricity and transportation would end in a large % of the US population becoming deceased due to the big 5 (Temp, Water, Food, Disease, & Violence).

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Saw it off a pier at Charleston fishing at night with my father. I believe it was higher than 200 miles, though. It was just above the water and looked like really bright sheet lightning that lasted longer than sheet lightning does. Its been 60 years, but I thought it was really strange at the time.

If you aren't into reading, or you are just actively trying to pretend this can't happen, the prediction is that after the dust settles, and society starts to try to form again, money won't be the currency, bullets will. .22lr to be exact.

My real worries are without electricity, how in the world will I keep my beer as cold as I like it.

originally posted by: DrumsRfun
a reply to: one4all

there are a LOT OF DUMBS out there

Correct...and you or I won't be welcome in any of them.



Gunpoint is the only way you get me or mine into a D.U.M.B....they are all cemetaries....there are worse things than an EMP that can happen at or around the same time as one.....any true futurist has a complete set of tools needed to operate off-grid the olde fashioned ways...and the related trade industry education medicine and other books as well....so an EMP is nowhere as devestating as people think....livestock do not die...crops do not disappear ...rivers to transport goods do not stop flowing....maybe methods of transportation would change but within 24 hours there would be organised focused enterprises began that would be forming major transportation routes....yes medicine losses would force us to lose all those dependant on such for a large variety of diseases and over several generations due to lack of medicines and treatment many family lines will cease to reproduce and carry forward because there will be no respite to natures ways....we have Teslas work understood and some are beginning to use forms of it...we would not need to rebuild the old wat we woud be using wireless energy transmission.The video is good and the guy seems informed but he is a bit on the worried side ...Humanity has been through worse things.

Truth be told in reality every Superpower must as we speak have a Post-EMP plan to strike at EVERY OTHER SUPERPOWER to level the playing field globally no matter what the collateral price......I would be more worried about a country like China spending a decade building Ships that are conventional in mode that could be utilised post-EMP to ship say troops across Oceans.....then self-immolating and goig after everyone at once looking ahead to attack quickly Post-EMPs using conventional methods and simple numbers...its always been a tech edge people have held over china....in one fell swoop they could change 5000 years of bad luck and dominate the globe.

I watched this live. It's a rerun from a couple weeks back.

Peter Prye is pretty spot-on in a general sense, although there is a bit of fear-mongering mixed in. Airplanes would likely be severely damaged since they are not magnetically shielded, but most cars would survive.

The damage from an EMP is magnetic induction in conductors, the same thing that causes electrical transformers to work. In a transformer, the magnetic field is produced by input power, but in an EMP it would be produced by the external magnetic field. The damage comes from the fact that a changing magnetic field across a conductor produces an induced current proportional to the derivative (rate of change) of the magnetic field. An EMP is, by definition, a sudden high-powered pulse of electromagnetic energy with a tremendously high derivative.

In an EMP, unprotected wiring becomes a series of high-voltage batteries, quite capable of producing enough voltage to burn out sensitive electronics almost instantaneously. CMOS circuitry, the type used inside computers and most high-tech electronics, is primarily CMOS.

Those who don't care about the inner workings can skip this paragraph. Inside each transistor in CMOS circuitry is a capacitor that controls the flow of current based on the applied voltage. A typical transistor can handle +/- 20 volts on that capacitor, no more. Any more and the capacitor dielectric burns out, which turns the transistor into a resistor and starts allowing so much current through that it will typically reach temperatures outside those it was designed to operate out very quickly. I have personally seen circuit boards overheat from a blown MOSFET to the point of melting the solder off them within under a minute. Any voltage produced by unshielded wires can easily 'pop' a transistor, and once that happens it does not revert to normal after the EMP passes.

Ferromagnetic shields work well, like car bodies and steel boxes used to contain components. Airplanes are more susceptible than cars because they are primarily made of aluminum, not steel. Aluminum is electrically conductive, but not magnetically conductive; the magnetic wave passes right through it.

The electrical grid is especially sensitive because it is composed of long stretches of wires and there is really no way to prevent them from being affected by a magnetic pulse. It's not the wires that are at risk; it is the transformers those wires are attached to. The extremely high voltages and currents induced in a wire miles long can easily be quite capable of burning out a transformer. Electrical transformers are not an off-the-shelf item; while most power companies have a couple sitting around, that is nothing compared to how many are operating.

Here's what I consider a likely scenario in case of a nuclear EMP:

Airlines would be immediately affected, as their control systems would fry in midair. I am not completely sure what precautions, if any, are built into the computer I/O connections, but I would be surprised if, at the minimum, all automatic control was not lost. Perhaps a few would survive to make an emergency landing at the hands of an experienced pilot able to fly without the instrumentation, but I expect many would simply fall from the sky.

Automobiles would likely stop functioning during the attack, but most of their electronics would recover afterwards. Batteries would be in high demand, since the EMP would likely drain batteries.

Household voltages would suddenly spike, to the level of perhaps a few thousand volts for a fraction of a second. Anything not surge protected, and many things protected by lower-quality surge protectors, would be fried immediately. Even turning off a switch would not be sure protection; electronic switches themselves would be damaged and mechanical switches could easily arc inside, supplying dangerous voltage to the components beyond. I would estimate 75% of all televisions and computers would be gone within a few milliseconds.

Some homes with poor wiring would short out and likely ignite. We would probably see a sudden surge in house fires.

Electric motors, especially large, industrial electric motors, would likely survive. Their inherent inductance would act as a low-pass filter and block the worst of the surge. They would all need new capacitors installed, because those would not survive. There would be nuclear accidents, but not widespread among PWR reactors. The motors used to insert the control rods are usually shielded well, and the diesel generators would likely survive as well. SCRAMs would be successful, but the plants would shut down due to main generators burning out.

Electrical power would be gone. The sudden surge would either destroy or trip every breaker in the system, and burn out most if not all transformers. It could be years before power is restored, even in metropolitan areas. Government and military installations would have first choice on what transformers were available after transformer manufacturing plants. Transformer availability would be severely limited in the US, because most transformers are manufactured overseas and those countries will want their transformers for themselves.

People would be forced to live without light, without the ability to cook, and often without heat or cooling. Communication would stop. Transportation would be severely limited, as gasoline supplies would be interrupted (pumps require electricity). A few people would have generators that survived, but those would be completely insufficient to power the grid, or even a semblance of it.

The first thing to happen would be rioting. In April of 2011, tornadoes took out the power plants in this area. While rural areas managed to survive fairly well for the week or so there was no power, the cities were rioting. Brutal fights among people trying to pump gas from the few service stations that were still operating on generators caused the stations to close. Stores were simply abandoned until power could be restored, and even then purchases were limited to cash because there was no power to verify card purchases.

Starvation would be next. Frozen foods would quickly thaw and spoil. Since fuel would be so limited, truck deliveries would be cancelled. Stores with enough power to operate at all would see empty shelves within hours. With no way to preserve foodstuffs, people would be limited to eating foods which are pre-preserved, and those are very limited. Fresh milk, meats, produce, dairy... all of these would quickly become unobtainable luxuries.

Gang activity in the cities would explode. With little food and no money, people would quickly band together to take what they needed, or join those already banded together. People would be killed over a meal or a car with some gas in the tank.

Depending on the time of year and location, exposure would claim more lives. Gas heat would still be available initially, but would quickly become exhausted. Once gas heat ran out, we would see a major rise in deaths from freezing.

Let's face it; as a society, we are tremendously dependent on ready access to products and on electricity. Take away those advantages, and most simply do not have the ability to survive. Those that do will face waves of people escaping the cities and looking to take whatever they can to survive themselves. Law enforcement will become a thing of the past, as it requires transportation and support that will no longer be available.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

If I'm not mistaken there are (3) pulse components; E1, E2 and E3. E1 and E2 are consecutive, and I'm not 100% sure but I believe E3 is simultaneous, much longer and geographically at a different location. Power transmission infrastructure is damaged by E3, not E1 and E2 so much.

Most of the modern electrical distribution transformers are pretty well protected from over-current/over-volt conditions now, so the connected transmission lines wouldn't likely be the source of damage from and EMP. You make a good point though, I wonder what the damage to these devices would be from induction from the pulse alone. The E3 pulse is quite long, up to several minutes. This would definitely open all over-volt/over-curent protection devices from the lines. And while the transformers themselves are theoretically shielded, the input and output terminals are not and would be exposed.

E1 and E2 take out electronics due to over-volt conditions which cause the symptoms you describe.

Regarding aircraft, I would think most modern fly by wire and glass cockpit aircraft would be in for some really bad ju-ju. Traditional stick and rudder aircraft would still be able to maintain control of their control surfaces so they might have a chance of landing (likely engine-out). I think most military aircraft are hardened against EMP, I can't speak for the newer commercial aircraft hardening against EMP (although I probably should be able to address this better than I can).

Oh, and a "fun" factoid (if there is such a thing in this grim topic)...just about everyone in developed countries has a EMP shield in their house, but most don't know it...it's their microwave oven. It's not real big, but it might be big enough to save the hard drive with the family photo album on it (and maybe some of the financials).

ETA...Here's a good synopsis of the things to expect with aircraft from an Aerospace Engineer. (note: it ain't pretty! Worse than I thought).

747 and EMP

Build a Faraday cage and store a set of important stuff. You just have to remember to replace things like batteries, etc.
Buy MRE's on Google - enough for a few months.

Here's the problem: As soon as the folks who aren't prepared know you have food and electronics, you better have your guns locked and loaded. The government will take care of their own first. Everyone else is at the bottom of the list. A well planned attack will include insurance that grids and other hardware will be unrecoverable.

Best protection: get a license to carry in a gun-friendly state. Learn how to shoot and take care of a gun. At the end of the day, that's all we'll have for protection regardless the propaganda spewed by gurus.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I looked up the different components, and yes, they are classified into E1, E2, and E3. That's a roughly chronological order.

The pulse that I was speaking of is classified as E1; it is the initial pulse of electrical and magnetic energy that accompanies a nuclear blast, lasting for about a nanosecond. E2 is no worse than a good old fashioned lightning storm, but it lasts for about a second and immediately follows E1. E3 is something else entirely, a general shifting of the earth's magnetic field in the area due to the blast.

There's a better and bigger Faraday cage that almost everyone owns at least one of: a car trunk. Most car bodies are sheet steel, and the trunk is an enclosed area surrounded by the body. I anyone is unsure, just place a magnet on your trunk lid... if it sticks, you have a Faraday cage. If not, you need a better car.

I checked out the article you linked... pretty thorough. He does seem to gloss over the magnetic component for the most part; most engineers tend to. I consider the magnetic component the most important, because it is the hardest to shield against. A roll of duct tape will protect against electrical particles, but nothing we know can stop magnetism... the best we can do is divert it using a Faraday cage.

TheRedneck

a reply to: network dude

When I lived in Oregon and went camping on Mt Hood, we used the glacial fed rivers for refridgeration...worked great!

originally posted by: network dude

originally posted by: enlightenedservant
a reply to: 727Sky

90% of the American population within a year? Really? We're supposed to believe that around 300 million Americans are going to die within a year after EMP attacks?

I posted that other ATS thread because the arguments in it obliterate this fearmongering. I don't feel like retyping it all, so here's one post of mine that I'm referring to that breaks down why this is baloney. (HERE)

And just for the record, there's a thing called the "appeal to authority fallacy". If this dude's current political position means that we should blindly accept his conclusions, then why should we question any politician or bureaucrat's opinions? And on the other hand, if it's ok to question and outright reject the opinions of other politicians & bureaucrats, then why should this dude be immune?

read One Second After. The ugly stuff will start week two.

That was a great book. I've read a bunch of others in the genre. They really do a good job of explaining how society starts to breakdown after a couple of weeks. There are only about three days of food on the shelves in stores and most homes probably don't have more than a weeks worth of food. No food or gas will be delivered. The sick and infirm will die as medicine will run out (and some needs refrigeration).

Then once society realizes government is powerless, you get the gangs and pyschopaths taking advantage of the situation.

I think people really don't understand that there is a very thin veneer of civility in society. Something like an EMP would soon become every man for himself and good will not always prevail. Civility and law and order go out the window when desperation sets in.

a reply to: TheRedneck

So the "good" news is, E1 is the hardest to weaponize, and it requires very specialized weapon design to employ with any effectiveness. It is also the quickest to be absorbed and of the shortest duration. I would love to see some tests with circuitry and E1, I'm not sure how heat could develop sufficiently to cause damage over that short of a duration. And, in the end, it is heat which is ultimately the real enemy in an EMP.

And yes, E2 is similar in many respects to lightning. The problem with E2 is, it follows E1 in time. So something which survives E1 is rendered vulnerable to the E2 pulse following it. Like an electrical one-two punch.

But it is the E3 pulse which causes all the heavy infrastructure damage. And E3 is the absolute hardest of all to test (for pretty obvious reasons). E1 and E2 can be isolated, but E3 cannot. So, in order to fully test it, well, someone would have to light one of these bad boys off in the atmosphere, and as we already saw during Fishbowl the effects are not fully understood and could be far worse than imagined. I think we know enough to understand the effects won't be any "less", but they very much could be worse, much worse. We just don't know.

a reply to: 727Sky

90% of government wouldnt survive. Humanity can survive incredible distress.

There is ample "un thought of" food that people could eat for YEARS in the USA

Not going to starve. Hell right behind my house in the freaking bronx river I can hunt duck, geese, go cray fishing, frog fishing, snail harvesting and turtle fishing. There are small fish that I dont know the name of but they can grow sizeable in a short time. Small clams that geese teach how to dig up. etc.

I have deer all over Westchester and upstate. Squirrel everywhere, and all sorts of berries, nuts and edible grasses.

Lots of mushrooms too. Half are edible for those who know.

double

a reply to: 727Sky

Fascinating interview. I would say the negative response made by one member in particular, is incredibly short sighted. Just listening to the expert for a few minutes would change any skeptics mind.

I easily see 90% as a pretty solid figure regarding loss of life within a year, but a figure of 2/3s say the 2 coasts and the major large cities within the fly-over would be decimated in short order. The fly over would fare much better, with a great many small farms and many like my own having manually capable deep wells and distillation apparatus...dont get me wrong, it would suck, but outside of violent gangs of looters attempting to rob those who have and maintain the aforementioned...a lot of us would get by.

a reply to: BlueJacket

Heh, and we got ammo too! Lots of it!

Food, water and ammo!!

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

yes we do....lots and lots.