Thursday, June 9, 2005

The EMP Threat

Some months ago we wrote about increasing fears in the defense community about this nation's vulnerability to EMP. EMP stands for Electromagnetic Pulse and refers to the powerful surge of radio waves produced by a nuclear detonation. These waves have the potential to overwhelm any electrical/electronic system within a line of sight of the blast so that a detonation about 300 miles over the center of the U.S. could conceivably shut down everything in the country that runs on electrical power. This would take months or years to repair and in the meantime the nation would probably be thrown into chaos.

Winds of Change has a piece by Frank Gaffney which describes the nature of the threat and discusses what must be done to prevent what would certainly be a national catastrophe should even a single nuclear weapon be detonated in space above the United States.