Listening to a radio talk show, I heard an “expert” making some dire comments about a potential EMP attack on the US. While I don’t think Iran or any other country in the world will be launching any such attack on the United States, I did google EMP and it really comes up with some darn interesting stuff. Its not as complicated as a large scale dirty bomb attack, and the potential impact is devastating. Some times I just scratch my head about how easily Americans are themselves willing to give important pointers to the enemies. :smack:
Also check out this link for more links
Unready For This Attack (washingtonpost.com)
Unready For This Attack
By Jon Kyl
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Recently a Senate Judiciary subcommittee of which I am chairman held a hearing on a major threat to the American people, one that could come not only from terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda but from rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea.
An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the American homeland, said one of the distinguished scientists who testified at the hearing, is one of only a few ways that the United States could be defeated by its enemies – terrorist or otherwise. And it is probably the easiest. A single Scud missile, carrying a single nuclear weapon, detonated at the appropriate altitude, would interact with the Earth’s atmosphere, producing an electromagnetic pulse radiating down to the surface at the speed of light. Depending on the location and size of the blast, the effect would be to knock out already stressed power grids and other electrical systems across much or even all of the continental United States, for months if not years.
Few if any people would die right away. But the loss of power would have a cascading effect on all aspects of U.S. society. Communication would be largely impossible. Lack of refrigeration would leave food rotting in warehouses, exacerbated by a lack of transportation as those vehicles still working simply ran out of gas (which is pumped with electricity). The inability to sanitize and distribute water would quickly threaten public health, not to mention the safety of anyone in the path of the inevitable fires, which would rage unchecked. And as we have seen in areas of natural and other disasters, such circumstances often result in a fairly rapid breakdown of social order.
A terrorist organization might have trouble putting a nuclear warhead “on target” with a Scud, but it would be much easier to simply launch and detonate in the atmosphere. No need for the risk and difficulty of trying to smuggle a nuclear weapon over the border or hit a particular city. Just launch a cheap missile from a freighter in international waters – al Qaeda is believed to own about 80 such vessels – and make sure to get it a few miles in the air.
The writer is a Republican senator from Arizona and chairman of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism, technology and homeland security.
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