The Biggest Threat

Over the years I've done several posts on the threat posed to our very survival by the deployment of Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) weapons. These pose the most frightening dangers to our nation first, because we seem totally unprepared to counter them and second, because almost any nation with a modest nuclear capability can use them to essentially cripple our ability to defend ourselves and throw us economically back to the 19th century.

The collateral effect of this would be catastrophic, unleashing total social chaos.

The nature of these weapons is explained in this post from 2016, but the gist of it is that a single nuclear warhead launched from space, or even from a ship at sea, and detonated high in the atmosphere over the center of the country, would unleash a pulse of electromagnetic energy that could completely fry all electrical grids and electronic devices within a vast area of the U.S.

All banks, hospitals, financial institutions, vehicles and most industries would be knocked out of commission for an indefinite period of time. There'd be no way to access financial resources, no jobs, no medical care, no food, no water, no sanitation.

Millions would perish, not from the blast itself, but from its aftereffects. The same effects could result from a solar superstorm such as occurred in 1859 before there was an electrical infrastructure to be damaged by it.

Readers are urged to go to the above link to learn more about EMP. Awareness of this threat is especially important in light of a recent report issued by the congressional Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack. An article on this report by Bill Gertz in the Washington Free Beacon reveals that:

China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran are preparing nuclear electronic pulse attacks from space in a future conflict to cripple the U.S. military and plunge the United States into darkness, according to a declassified study.

"The United States critical national infrastructure faces a present and continuing existential threat from combined-arms warfare, including cyber and manmade electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, and natural EMP from a solar superstorm."

"Within the last decade, newly nuclear-armed adversaries, including North Korea, have been developing the ability and threatening to carry out an EMP attack against the U.S.," the report said.

"Such an attack would give countries that have only a small number of nuclear weapons the ability to cause widespread, long-lasting damage to U.S. critical national infrastructures, to the United States itself as a viable country, and to the survival of a majority of its population."

I don't like sounding like the guy wearing the sandwich board shouting that "The End Is Near", but on the other hand, there's a distressing lack of awareness in the West about the nature of this threat and how vulnerable we are to it. Near the end of his essay Gertz writes that:

The report also criticizes the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corp. and the electric power industry for failing to address the EMP danger from either attack or solar storm. Private industry also has failed to understand the threat posed by EMP to high-voltage transformers.

An informed citizenry is essential to confounding this threat. We can do our part by voting in November for the candidates most likely to push for and fund the necessary counter-measures if they're elected to the House of Representatives or the Senate.

I'll let you decide under which party's auspices such candidates are most likely to be running.