EMP Sends U.S. back to 'Stone Age'

A Low-tech EMP Nuclear Device detonated above the U.S. could kill millions, and we've done almost nothing to prepare. 

"In a recent letter to investors, billionaire hedge-fund manager Paul Singer warned that an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, is "the most significant threat" to the U.S. and our allies in the world. He's right. Our food and water supplies, communications, banking, hospitals, law enforcement, etc., all depend on the electric grid. Yet until recently little attention has been paid to the ease of generating EMPs by detonating a nuclear weapon in orbit above the U.S., and thus bringing our civilization to a cold, dark halt."

"Recent declassification of EMP studies by the U.S. government has begun to draw attention to this dire threat. 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.

"Fritz Ermarth, former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, said EMP has changed the face of modern warfare adding, “While the Cold War strategy of blasting cities is still in portfolio,” EMP is getting new emphasis. A major advantage they have is that they are cheap and easy to produce." He went on to say that because of its lack of preparation, the United States is way behind in terms of defense against an EMP threat.

With a nuclear device in hand, either produced locally or purchased from North Korea, all Iran would need is a delivery system. As former CIA Director under Clinton, James Woolsey noted that the common 50 year old technology SCUD missiles would do the job, the same ones that were routinely lobbed back and forth in the last Gulf War. Since an EMP only affects electronics within its line of sight, the higher the detonation, the larger the affected area. Any SCUD missile could be launched from a small fishing boat off the East Coast. A device detonated 100 miles over Indianapolis would put 70 percent of the population of the United States in the dark. 

Our Aegis missile system is designed to only fire at a target at mid-course or in its terminal, or reentry, phase. CIA Director James Woolsey claims President Obama has made it harder to design the Aegis missile system to strike targets in the ascent phase due to promises he has made to the Soviet Union.

In October 2013, Rep. Trent Franks (R., Ariz.) and Rep. Pete Sessions (R., Texas) introduced the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act. CIPA directs the Department of Homeland Security to adopt a new National Planning Scenario focused on federal, state and local emergency planning, training and resource allocation for survival and recovery from an EMP catastrophe. Yet this important legislation hasn't come to a vote.

What is lacking in Washington is a sense of urgency. Lawmakers and the administration need to move rapidly to build resilience into our electric grid and defend against an EMP attack that could deliver a devastating blow to the U.S. economy and the American people. Congress should pass and the president should sign into law the Shield Act and CIPA as soon as possible. Literally millions of American lives could depend on it.

FACTOID: The effects of EMP are known, because the nation already has experienced them. The missile “need not be accurate, it just needs altitude” to be successful. 

“Starfish Prime” was a high-altitude nuclear test conducted by the U.S. on July 9, 1962, before the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban treaty banned nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere. A two megaton nuclear device approximately 100 times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was launched via a Thor rocket and exploded 250 miles above a point 19 miles southwest of Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean.

The results included surprises and raised still-unanswered questions. William Graham, another member of the panel, said the EMP was 100 times larger than predicted and no one understood why. Sophisticated electronic equipment on the island of Oahu, almost 900 miles away, was severely damaged, but vacuum-tube based devices were unharmed. Over 300 streetlights stopped working, burglar alarms were activated and one telephone company’s microwave link was destroyed.