While Category 5 hurricanes are rare, they do occur. Can a Cat 5 rip through central Florida? Certainly. Do I thnk it will happen? Not likely.
What I think is more likely than that is an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack on the US by an Islamic nation or a sympathetic Islamic organization. High tech is not required. Means, motive, and opportunity are required. Current technology, existing rockets and available nukes, make it possible. Motive certainly exists since we are Islam’s “great Satan.” The opporutnity has to be just right, but how do when know?
Take a look at the following article to see how this event has a better than remote chance of playing out, and its consequences:
Courtesy ow World Net Daily: http://www.wnd.com/2012/08/emp-would-give-america-government-by-disaster/
LOW-TECH EMP TO SEND U.S. BACK TO 'STONE AGE'?
Experts: Attack with 50-year-old SCUD would turn America into 'government by disaster'
Published: 2 days ago
by STEVE ELWARTEmail | ArchiveSteve Elwart, P.E. is the Senior Research Analyst with the Koinonia Institute and a Subject Matter Expert for the Department of Homeland Security. He can be contacted at steve.elwart@studycenter.com.More ↓
Eid-ul-Fitr, the Muslim holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan, was an appropriate setting for a panel discussion today on the threat of an Electromagnetic Pulse, or EMP, attack on the United States.
The live event, hosted by Florida-based The United West, was held to raise awareness of the looming threat.
The warning presented was startling: A crude nuclear device placed on top of a 50-year-old SCUD missile and launched by a tramp steamer could cause the collective collapse of the nation’s power grid in a matter of minutes.
It is estimated that Iran could launched such an attack in just a few years, and it would leave the U.S. essentially in the “Stone Age.”
Tom Trento, founder of The United West, called an EMP attack the equivalent of an “Electronic Armageddon.”
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, both believe that the coming of the last Islamic messiah, the Shiites’ 12th Imam Mahdi, is near and that Iran is called upon to bring about his arrival.
They believe Iran must lead the way for a worldwide Islamic revolution. Leaders in the Iranian government have stated that the Islamic revolution is moving forward, advanced by the Arab Spring, and will reach the shores of America for an eventual takeover.
Intelligence sources have indicated Iran is within two years of bringing the revolution to the United States in the form of an EMP attack.
Ambassador R. James Woolsey, former director of the CIA during the Clinton administration, told the conference that an Iranian nuclear attack would not have to be sophisticated or complicated. He cited the estimated damage from a crude device mounted atop a SCUD and launched from somewhere near the U.S. shores.
R. James Woolsey
The missile “need not be accurate, it just needs altitude” to be successful. He went on to say that the effects of EMP are known, because the nation already has experienced them.
“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.
William Graham
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.
“The street lights on Ferdinand Street in Manoa and Kawainui Street in Kailua went out at the instant the bomb went off, according to several persons who called police last night,” as reported July 9, 1962, in the Honolulu Advertiser.
The same article reported that a brilliant flash turned Hawaii’s night into day, with the “spectacular pyrotechnic aftermath” lasting seven minutes.
“It was like turning on all the lights all over the Hawaiian Islands for a super-super athletic contest.”
A city-county streetlight department official in Honolulu also attributed blown circuit fuses in nine areas to the energy released from the bomb.
Today’s worldwide nuclear arsenal is much more powerful.
According to the Brookings Institution, nuclear bombs have been constructed that range in size of 0.02 megatons to 15 megatons, seven times larger than the Starfish Prime warhead.
Iran would not need anything nearly as large as a 15 megaton bomb to destroy the U.S. infrastructure. A nuclear device built using 1940s technology would suffice. Iran’s nuclear program is already capable of building such a device.
Woolsey said, “All this discussion about whether [the Iranians] have a (nuclear) program ignores the fact that in enriching uranium up to 20 percent (purity), you have done 85-90 percent of the work you need.”
He went on to note that when Iranians say they are not interested in nuclear weapons, they are “lying through their teeth.”
With a nuclear device in hand, either produced locally or purchased from North Korea, all Iran would need is a delivery system.
As Woolsey noted, a SCUD would do the job.
Since an EMP only affects electronics within its line of sight, the higher the detonation, the larger the affected area. A device detonated 100 miles over Indianapolis would put 70 percent of the population of the United States in the dark.
Such a missile could be launched from a fishing boat off the East Coast.
The Aegis missile system is designed to only fire at a target at mid-course or in its terminal, or reentry, phase.
Woolsey claims President Obama has made it harder to design the missile system to strike targets in the ascent phase due to promises he has made to the Soviet Union.
Graham, a member of the Department of Defense’s Defense Science Board and President Reagan’ science adviser, saw firsthand the effects of an EMP on critical infrastructure.
In 1962, Graham went on active duty to look at the data generated from the last of the above-ground nuclear tests. He concluded that an “EMP super-weapon” would not need to generate a large blast. It could be a small weapon that would effectively neutralize conventional forces.
He concluded that an EMP attack would result in “Government by Disaster.”
At the conference, Fritz Ermarth, former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, said EMP has changed the face of modern warfare.
“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.
He claims that the U.S. is “tremendously vulnerable to catastrophic blackmail.”
Ermarth painted the following scenario: President Ahmadinejad calls the United States president and says Iran has enough nuclear material to make several bombs and they have deployed them in ships and trucks around the country. He then goes on to say that Iran intends to destroy Israel and then invade Saudi Arabia. He threatens the American president that if the United States responds, Iran will launch its missiles. Ahmadinejad claims that at least two or three missiles will get through.
Even without a demonstration, Iran’s threat has to be taken seriously, he said.
The president would ask his advisers, “Is it a plausible threat?” To which the advisers would have to say “yes,” given the state of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and access to ballistic delivery systems.
This would also hold true for any bioweapon which could be transmitted by air.
“What do you think the U.S. will do?”
Ermarth concluded his remarks by saying, “Don’t discount coercion and blackmail as a weapon.”
Ambassador Henry F. Cooper, director of the Department of Defense’s Strategic Defense Initiative Organization under President Reagan, concluded his own remarks by saying that EMP is an “existential problem,” and it is “ludicrous that our representatives are not providing comprehensive defenses that are needed.”
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My own observation is this. Just as we might prepare for the remote possibility of a category 5 hurricane, we are capable of preparing for an EMP attack that may even be more likely. Water storage and filtering capabilities, food storage, sanitation, and personal defense are all measure we are perfectly capable of taking. We should not wait for the government to save us. We are capable of preparing for our own benefit and with our own resources.
2 comments:
The debate over the EMP attack threat makes better sense if you see graphics. When we started researching this, we we frustrated by the extreme language used by both sides. It took a lot of research, but we found out important facts and converted them to graphics.
Please take a look at our EMP simulator. Some things you'll see:
1) A coast-to-coast EMP attack requires a multi-megaton bomb. Only the major powers have those, so that kind of attack would be most likely as part of a global thermonuclear war.
2) The more likely scenario is some sort of regional attack. You can see the EMP range of small nuclear bombs by looking at our EMP simulator.
3) The EMP energy pattern is not that of a radio signal. Instead of an even pattern that diminishes evenly away from the central point, the peak fields in an EMP have a horseshoe like shape. That dramatically increases the threat for some areas.
4) There is also the possibility of local attacks using non-nuclear EMPs, which are a growing threat.
It is also helpful to know the odds. We estimate:
--The chance of a solar super-storm is about double the risk of a house fire.
--The chance of a nuclear EMP is about the same as the risk of a fire at your house.
--The chance of terrorists using a non-nuclear EMP for a local EMP attack is about the same as the house fire risk, but the odds are growing as the devices become easier to build and smaller.
The pictures and and graphics on our site really help explain the threat. For example, we have pictures of EMP devices built into the back of truck trailers. The US Military uses these for testing. (Real stuff, not some crazy ranting. Click on the link and you can read the US military brochure that explains the test systems.)
Finally, let me say that we feel the country can survive an EMP attack. There are things people can do to protect their families and businesses.
Even if someone was able to hit us with a single multi-megaton EMP blast, power systems would slowly come back. It might be days or even weeks, but the United States would come back.
Those who are most likely to execute an attack on us (rogue or nation-sponsored Islamists) seem to enjoy the simultaneous multiple strike technique. Three low yield devices, one over western Maryland, one over Arkansas, and one over Nevada would likely toast the great majority of the nation.
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