3M-TA3 submitted a new resource: Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP Attack - 2008 EMP Commission Report Read more about this resource...
Welcome to 1861 and the second (un)civil war, but this time with modern weapons and not a lot of food. Or anything else for that matter.
Not as much as dystopian novels would suggest, but significant damage to communications and the electrical grid would be expected. Your car and other machinery would likely not be affected. Keep your handhelds in an old microwave or other EMP hardened container and keep antennas to other devices (mobile, base) disconnected when not in use. Infrastructure damage will be significant, but not total. What that means to recovery time is uncertain. The best thing is to never find out.
I'm not gambling on a single EMP, or that any cars survive it . I anticipate that if some one is going to attack, it will be coordinated event and more than one EMP detonated, not just in the US but over any one else that might come to our aid. Further more , if an enemy has successfully detonated one , another may fallow ,just to pick up those things having been hidden in protection . They who can communicate can organize .
Within minutes of the first detonation of an EMP over the US no hostile nations involved will have the capability of sending a second strike of anything . Ever. I would worry about late model vehicles with bluetooth and On Star type services that can potentially bring an impulse to the vehicle's computer.
Not if the US desn't know who to target. Let's say a device is smuggled into the US. How big an EMP device is or whether smuggling one in is doable I have no idea (I am sure that logistically it could be done...my doubts are because I don't know what the physical size of a device would be). Then, the perpetrator simply launches it high up in a balloon. This part is very doable I believe. How many GoPro videos have you seen of people launching hamburgers, or LEGO ships or whatever up into the air and then recovering the item after the balloon bursts and it falls back to the ground. The balloon part of this scenario is completely within reason and the cost is absurdly cheap.
Know EMP Information says that to requires an AIRBurst, at Altitude, so unless ALL the SAT Based, and Ground Based Radars are disabled, the USA will know EXACTLY where this device came from, and who sent it.....
A professional meteorological balloon can go as high as 30 km, so best is just within the 30-50 km required for an EMP, however those balloons don't carry a payload anywhere near the size of a nuclear device (the largest carry a payload of 2 1/2 kg), so around 50 of the largest balloons would be required to lift a "small" 110 kg warhead. The real challenge would be getting the balloon to drift as it rose 30 km to a position that would ensure maximum coverage. So, the EMP affected area would be less than optimal and aim would be bad. We would still figure out who it came from (the list is pretty short) and send them back past the stone age to the time when the earth was still molten within a few minutes.
A SCUD missile launched from a container vessel off the East coast, West coast and Gulf coast at the same time and then the ships blown up might make figuring out who did it more difficult. I do believe Iran is working on something like that as we speak. May be an advanced SCUD capable of carrying a larger warhead, but all it has to do is go up 200 miles and it won't matter.
Nope, that doesn't work any more.... ALL Cargo Ships must have AIS Transponders operating, while Navigating, and they are tracked by SAT, on both Radar, and via AIS... Especially ships inside our 200Mile Exclusion Zone....
They wouldn't do that unless they were going to do it to everyone else at the same time. Otherwise they would be open to invasion masquerading as relief efforts from other countries. The question is what would be in it for the US government to do this? I do not doubt that there are ultra rich and ultra powerful people who see us as cattle and at some point will want to cull the herd, but they could do that without bloodshed. It's easier and less risky to cull us by effing with reproduction and family "planning".
Yeah, well, that is so for them to be legally operating. If there was a ship detected by any means that did not have the AIS lit off, I betcha there would be some curious patrol vessels getting close up and personal PDQ. BTW, the recent collisions between US warships and commercial cargo ships in and near the Straights of Malacca were partially because the warships are NOT required to operate their AIS transponders, which they usually don't when on military exercises, but should the rest of the time. Another aside, plug any commercial ship's name into your browser, and there will be a website that will give you the current location, no matter where on the high (or low) seas she may be.
I wonder if there was a retaliatory strike if there would be ANY thought to the aftermath? If North Korea gets bombed "back past the stone age to the time when the earth was still molten" would anyone think about whether Japan and possibly South Korea would want all that fallout heading toward them?
I think our counter to North Korea would be conventional (massively conventional, but still conventional) unless it was very massive.
