By
William R. Forstchen Ph.D.
Author of “One Second After”
WHAT IS AN EMP?
EMP is shorthand for Electro Magnetic Pulse. It is a rather unusual and frightening by-product when a nuclear bomb is detonated above the earth’s atmosphere. We
all know that our atmosphere and the magnetic field which surrounds our
planet is a thin layer which not only keeps us alive, but also protects
us from dangerous radiation from the sun. On a fairly regular basis there are huge solar storms on the sun’s surface which emit powerful jets of deadly radiation. If not for the protective layer of our atmosphere and magnetic field, those storms would fry us. At
times though, the storm is so power that enough disruptive energy
reaches the earth’s surface that it drowns out radio waves and even
shorts electrical power grids. . .this happened seve ral years back in
Canada.
View
the detonation of a nuclear bomb, two hundred miles straight up as the
same thing, but infinitely more powerful since it is so close by.
As the bomb explodes it emits a powerful wave of gamma rays. As this energy release hits the upper atmosphere it creates a electrical disturbance know as the Compton Effect. The intensity is magnified. View
it as a small pebble rolling down a slope, hitting a larger one,
setting that in motion, until finally you have an avalanche.
At the speed of light this disturbance races to the earth surface. It
is not something you can see or hear, in the same way you don’t feel
the electrical disturbance in the atmosphere during20a large solar
storm.
For all electrical systems though, it is deadly.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THIS “PULSE” HITS THE SURFACE?
Those
who might remember ham radio operators, or even the old CB radios of
the 1970s can recall that if you ran out a wire as an antenna you could
send and receive a better signal. The
wire not only transmitted the very faint power of a few watts of
electricity from your radio, it could receive even fainted signals in
return. As the Pulse strikes
the earths surface, with a power that could range up to hundreds of amps
per square yard, it will not affect you directly, at most you’ll feel a
slight tingling, the s ame as when lightning is about to strike close
by, and nearly all the energy will just be absorbed into the ground and
dissipate. The bad news,
however, is wherever it strikes wires, metal surfaces, antennas, power
lines it will now travel along those metal surfaces (in the same way a
lightning bolt will always follow the metal of a lightning rod, or the
power line into your house.) The
longer the wire, the more energy is absorbed, a high tension wire miles
long will absorb tens of thousands of amps, and here is where the
destruction begins as it slams into any delicate electronic circuits,
meaning computer chips, relays, etc. In that instant, they are overloaded by the massive energy surge, short circuit, and fry. Your house via electric, phone and cable wires is connected, like all the rest of us into the power and communications grids. This
energy surge will destroy all delicate electronics in your home, even
as it destroys all the major components all the way back to the power
company’s generators and the phone company’s main relays. In far less than a milli second the entire power grid of the United States, and all that it supports will be destroyed.
WOULDN”T CIRCUIT BREAKERS AND SURGE PROTECTORS STOP IT?
This is where the effect of EMP starts to get complex. All electricity travels, of course, at the speed of light. The
circuit breakers that are built into our electrical system or the ones
you buy to plug your own computer in to, are designed to “read’ the flow
of current. If it suddenly exceeds a certain level, the breaker snaps and takes you off line, thus protecting everything beyond it. More
than a few of us have found out that when you buy a cheap surge
protector for ten or twenty bucks sure it will snap off, but the surge
has already passed through and fried your expensive pla sma television
or new computer. Unlike a lightning strike, or other power surge, an EMP surge is “front loaded.” Meaning
it doesn’t do a build up for a couple of mirco-seconds, allowing enough
time for the circuit breaker to “read” that trouble is on the way and
shut down. It comes instead like a wall of energy, without any advance wave building up as a warning. It
therefore slams through nearly all commercial and even military surge
protectors already in place, and is past the “safety barrier” and into
the delicate electronics before the system has time to react.
WHAT ABOUT CARS?
Here is more bad news regarding EMP. =2 0If
you own a 1965 Volkswagen bug or Mustange you’re ok. . .there are no
solid state electronics under the hood, it still has an old fashion
carburetor, the radio still might even have tubes rather than
transistors. However, even that is in question. In
1962 both we and the Soviets detonated nuclear weapons in space (saber
rattling during the Cuban Missile Crisis) and it is reported that a
number of cars. . .their ignition systems a thousand miles away from the
detonation were fried because of EMP. (Check out a few of the more “tech head” links on this site for detailed explanations). From about 1980 on, cars increasingly went solid state and by the 1990s were getting ever more complex computers installed. Consider a visit to the mechanic today. He
runs a wire in under the hood, plugs it into his computer and within
seconds has a full diagnostic, types in what his computer is suppose to
do, the problem is solved and you are handed a rather large bill. Great modern conveniences from airbag sensors, to fuel injectors and all of it more and more dependent on computers. At
the instant the “Pulse” strikes, the body of your car and the radio
antenna will feed the overload into your vehicle’s computer and short it
out.
Some police departments are even now experimenting with using a specially designed bumper on their car for high speed chases. If
they can brush up against the car they are pursuing the officer just
hits a button, and through his bumper a high energy surge will be
released, flooding into the car being pursued and shorting out its
computer system. Result. .
.whether you are being chased by the police with this new device, or an
EMP burst has been fired off. . .your car will essentially be a useless
hunk of metal that will slowly roll to a stop. In that instant, most of America will be on foot again.
AND PLANES?
This
is a terrifying aspect of an attack that no government report has
publicly discussed along with the potential casualty rate in the first
seconds after an attack. Commercial airliners today are all computer driven. In fact, from lift off to landing, a pilot no longer even needs to be in the cockpit, a computer can do all of it if need be. When
the pilot pulls back on the “stick” it is no longer connect by wires
stretching all the way back to the tail and the elevator assembly. Instead,
his motion is read by a computer which sends a signal to an electrical
servo-motor in the tail, which then moves the tail. In short, the entire plane is computer driven. It
is estimated that at any given moment during regular business hours,
somewhere between three to four thousand commercial airliners are
crisscrossing the skies. (There
is a fascinating site you can find via Goggle that shows typical air
traffic around the world during a twenty four hour period. From dawn til way after dusk, the entire USA is one glowing blob of commercial flights crisscrossing our sky). All
of them would be doomed, the pilots sitting impotent, staring at blank
computer screens, pulling on controls that no longer respond as the
plane finally noses over and heads in.
Somewhere
between 250,000 to 500,000 people will die in the first few minutes. .
.more than all our battle casualties across four years of World War II
AREN”T WE PREPARING? ISN’T THERE REPLACEMENT EQUIPMENT IN PLACE AND TRAINED PERSONNEL READY TO REACT?
The frightening answer is no.
This author has spent over four years researching this topic,
interviewing scores of personnel from Congressmen and Generals, to your
local police chief and sheriff. At
your local level, since 9/11, first responders have received hundreds
of hours of training and briefings on all sorts of terrorist scenarios. Only a few have told me that they even discussed the topic for more than a few minutes at an official level. As to emergency stockpiles of supplies and crucial replacement parts, there is nothing in place.
WHY NOT?
EMP,
has managed to “stealth” its way on to the highly dangerous list and
few, except for a small number of personnel in the Pentagon, various
research labs, and men like Congressman Bartlett (R., MD) who heads the
Congressional Investigative Committee on EMP, are aware of it. For one it has a certain “sci-fi” sound to it, which makes many dismiss the potential before the discussion has even started. Second,
the only way to truly evaluate the threat and demonstrate it is to
detonate a nuclear weapon, something we have not done since the full
test ban went into effect decades ago. It
is therefore not “visible” to us, the way another airliner smashing
into a skyscraper is now forever imprinted on our national psyche,
feared, and prepared for. Next, with all the competing issues and threats in the world, EMP simply does not have a “constituency” of influence. Only a few members of Congress, our military and scientific community are issuing the warnings. There are no Hollywood
stars placing themselves in front of cameras with this as their cause,
the few times it has been used in popular movies, it has been portrayed
inaccurately, often absurdly.
