Could North Korea Wipe out the U.S. with and EMP?

Good book, and chilling in its accuracy
here's an interesting synopsis of the die off of the population
en.wikipedia.org...

The book's premise sets the stage for a series of "die-offs". The first takes place within a week (those in hospitals and assisted living). After about 15 days, salmonella-induced typhoid fever and cholera set in from eating tainted food, drinking tainted water, and generally poor sanitation. Americans have lived in an environment of easy hygiene, sterilization, and antibiotics, making them prime targets for third-world diseases. The lack of bathing and poor diet will lead to rampant feminine hygiene infections; deep cuts, rusty nail punctures, and dog bites go untreated with antibiotics, tetanus shots, or rabies treatment as more die from common infections. Critical medical supply and food thieves and others are executed in public as enforcement of martial law. In 30 days, cardiac and other drug-dependent patients die off. In 60 or so days, the pacemaker and Type I diabetics patients begin to die off (although John's young daughter manages to survive until Day 163). The 5% of population having severe psychotic disorders that no longer have medication will re-create bedlam. Jury-rigged wood-burning stoves lead to carbon monoxide deaths and fires that cannot be controlled due to the lack of a fire department. Then, refugees from the cities show up looking for food and shelter and the fight over scarce resources leads to confrontation, home invasion, and more violence-related die-offs. The community becomes an inviting target for escaped prisoners and organized gangs and more violence-related die-off. Ration cards are issued to conserve the little remaining food; regardless, the community slowly starves, with the elderly the first to die off. Next, parents starve themselves to save their children. Throughout this period suicides are common. After a year, approximately 20% of the initial population has "survived". The "average" die-off for the country was 90% leaving 30 million surviving out of original 300 million US population. The food-rich Midwest had the highest survival rate with a 50% die-off. New York City and Florida had a 95% die-off from infighting among their large populations, low levels of cultivated land, high elderly population, a lack of air conditioning, rampant transmission of disease, and natural disasters such as hurricanes. [edit]Non-fiction afterword

Let us hope this never happens

We use EMP resistant chips and electronics in our defense platforms of all shapes and sizes and we have since the early 70's you should see the size of an EMP resistant chip like a like an 8080 compared to that of a standard off the shelf 8080 and they are used in a redundant fashion so if one fails another one steps in to take its place kinda like primary domain controller secondary domain controller

Sorry to say that but most of you guys are crazy...

War needs funding and state of NK is penniless, then the most important thing comes to its place.

“The aftermath of such a scenario is more important than the scenario itself.”


Do you think that the people of NK are stupid..?



My two cents….

Hawaii maybe but not the mainland and even if they could (future longer range icbms) then we have nukes in South Korea and ready to be deployed on B-52s in Guam that will level what civilization and industry there is in that country.

Originally posted by winterkill

If you have nothing better to do some time, maybe give that little book a read on the vulnerability of the U.S. to an electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear weapon. Maybe that's the real reason the U.S. is so worried that North Korea is about to run a nuclear test, and has space launch capacity.
?

If you're looking for a book to read about EMP's in the US might I recommend " One Second After". www.amazon.com... It's fiction obviously but its more about the survival of society after an EMP. Its not really an action packed book but includes a lot of factors that most people don't consider. Everyone thinks about their own food and water, but what are you going to do when the crackhead's supply dries up, when the fathers of type 1 diabetic children run low on meds and your type 2 diabetic kid still has some, when good people do what they have to do... which might be to turn on you.

Ha I see others have already recommended it We'll I second that recommendation.

reply to post by winterkill


This books statements and calculations appear to be more aimed at what the results would be should the U.S. be hit by numerous numbers of Thermonuclear Warheads.

North Korea only has Fission Bombs and they don't even have the capability yet to make one small enough to be placed atop an ICBM.

As well...that piece of junk that is a North Korean ICBM...most likely cannot even carry such a Nuclear Payload as even without a real Warhead...this missile keeps malfunctioning and being so off target as to make it laughable.

Even in the almost ZERO possibility that a Fission detonation occured on the U.S. mainland...such a small detonation would be managable...and since the U.S. has a Very Good ABM system that is active and deployed...it is also highly unlikely that any Missile...North Korean or otherwise...would ever make it though U.S. Missile Defense.

Split Infinity

"Thinking out side of the Box" the answer is yes N Korea or DPRK would and could hit us with and EMP , if they stole. took or copied a DF31 missile, had the tech know how to make an EMP and was able too hit as well as target Kansas see link for details www.fas.org... brief but to the point, from the link

The pulse can easily span continent-sized areas, and this radiation can affect systems on land, sea, and air. The first recorded EMP incident accompanied a high-altitude nuclear test over the South Pacific and resulted in power system failures as far away as Hawaii. A large device detonated at 400�500 km over Kansas would affect all of CONUS. The signal from such an event extends to the visual horizon as seen from the burst point.

could the next test by DPRK be just that, a EMP burst test??

reply to post by bekod


This power of detonation could only be generated by a Thermonuclear device not a Fission Bomb as they are talking in the multiple hundreds of kilotons.

North Korea does not have Thermonuclear Tech...just basic Fission tech. and they are not even really good at that.

Any North Korean Nuke would be tiny in yeild and thus not that much of an issue if used as an EMP.

Split Infinity

reply to post by SplitInfinity
what if and it is a big if they are getting tech help from China or Russia?? Could this not lead them to a Fusion Bomb? or the tech to build a neutron bomb chemistry.about.com... Now if Un is revengeful enough [reading what is being stated by DPRK ] what would you want to test, build and develop? Fission, Fusion or Neutron

reply to post by bekod


Well...obviously if I were the North I would want a Fusion device but unless someone else makes this for them...even if they had the specs...such a thing needs to be calibrated very specifically and the North does not have such a level of tech.

If one day soon we found out they had such a device...I would think that there would be some VERY hot conversation going on at the U.N. as well as at the Pentagon.

Split Infinity

reply to post by SplitInfinity
Well now there lies the rub, if the test they do, does prove to be a Fusion and not fission but being under ground test there is no way that i know of knowing if it is or is not one from the other, there are ways of detecting the detonation but not of type.

reply to post by bekod


If I can remember I believe they can tell the difference given the ground movement as a Fusion reaction first needs a Fission reaction to allow it to take place.

Split Infinity

reply to post by bekod


I doubt that China or Russia would do more than provide basic knowledge to the DPRK regime; assisting them to attack the US would be virtually economic, if not national, suicide. They would know that we would respond quickly and dramatically, most likely with nuclear missiles from our submarines. As already stated, if we use stated weapons on the Korean Peninsula, the fallout would almost certainly cause problems for the surrounding nations.

reply to post by RidgeWalker


The only realistic Military option for North Korea would be an attack upon the South. Still even this would be suicide as if the North was to do this the U.S. Military would destroy the North once and for all.

China would do nothing if it was the North that started such a fight and China is just as worried as other powers that have an interest in the region as China right now wishes that they did not even have a relationship with North Korea.

The actual reality is that North Korea has a very poor, unreliable and inaccurate ICBM which they have not even as yet been able to build a Nuclear Warhead small enough to place atop of it. Even if the North was able to improve the accuracy of their ICBM and place a nuke atop it...such a missile would have a very small probability of reaching any U.S. State or Territory given the High Tech. level and reliability of U.S. ABM's or Anti-Ballistic Missiles which are the best in the World by far.

Something is going to happen in North Korea VERY soon as I have just read a report that states that CANIBALISM is becoming ramped in North Korea as their population starves and North Koreans are resorting to killing a child and cooking that child just to survive.

When a population is placed in such circumstances as those the North Korean leadership has done with their people...REVOLUTION is not far behind.

Split Infinity

North Korea wouldn't be able to pull it off, and to the theory of china helping. Unlike North Koreans, Chinese ppl aren't suicidal. It would be economic and political suicide...besides china would attack Japan WAY before the US, now there's a real grudge match

If I was china though and wanted to take over the U.S. land mass cheaply, the scenario in the book
one second after presents interesting possibilities.

Even more if the U.S. and Russia jointly did the deed.

Maybe blaming North Korea for the action, or Islamic Jihads.

Originally posted by PlatinumShatinum
All of our nuclear response capabilities are EMP hardened.

Yes thats true....................but what if theres no immediate target such as would exist if warhead was launched from a ship using MRBM or SRBM vehicles which North Korea has in its existing aresenal.

How do you prove whodunnit in that case?