“An EMP attack is not one from which America could recover as we did after Pearl Harbor. Such an attack might mean the end of the United States and most likely the Free World.”
The article, which being in the Wall Street Journal must have some credibility, lays out a senerio where one nuclear missle exploded over the middle of the U.S. would “effectively throw America back technologically into the early 19th century.”
First is this possible? Are the results depicted reasonable? Is the statement that the U.S. possibly would not recover from such an attack realistic? Or is this neocon, military, industrial, complex fantasy?
Early 19th century? Thats like 1820’s right? Would early 20th century be more accurate?
Now that the cat’s out of the bag, as it were, wasn’t it on this board in another thread where I read that you could also just make an EMP bomb, that Popular Mechanics showed how to make one, and that it was cheap and easy?
Anyway, the link is from an editorial, not an article, and the person writing it has his reasons for doing so. Not that it means he’s wrong, but it certainly must be taken into account. Also, the stuff I mentioned above seems to be a more likely scenario than the one in the editorial - taking out the entire US seems to me more difficult than a few major cities.
Right, EMP, that’s why the airplanes deploying the bombs over Japan in 1945 both crashed immediately after the bomb exploded… oh, wait, they didn’t. Nor did their radios cease to function although there’s no question those airplanes were subjected to EMP effects from a nuclear explosion.
I don’t doubt that some electronics would cease to function after such a pulse, but I disagree that EVERYTHING would cease to function.
Well considering the entire point of the internet and other such technological systems developed during the Cold War was to give the US redundant systems to survive such an attack. I somehow doubt it.
This is such an old idea, it was actually used as the justification for the Soviet domination of America in the 1987 TV miniseries Amerika.
The old Fox Jessica Alba sci-fi series Dark Angel also had the technological regression caused by an EMP bomb as one of its backstory elements, though on a smaller scale.
Back in the early 80s, the American Association for the Advancement of Science put out a magazine called Science 8x (Science 80, Science 81, Science 82, etc. for the year). As I recall, there was an article about EMPs, and how it (an EMP) would fry all but hardened electronics, and the US had precious few hardened grids.
So unless the US has hardened its grid, I think the circuitry would be destroyed, even if the actual products wouldn’t be. In other words, we’d be screwed, and virtually all communication would stop. How widespread the damage would be depends on how interconnected grids in different cities and states are.
Actually, I think the bigger effect was the economic havoc caused when the banking data got wiped out. To quote the first episode, “All those ones and zeroes became just zeroes”.
Wow, that article sure conveyed a sense of ‘you think the financial crisis is scary? Well let’s not forget what you’re really supposed to be scared off! Terrorists! They can kill you even deader than you think!’.
As has been observed - everything about that article smacked of a new round of lobbying for the fiction of missile defence. Another appeal for corporate welfare.
Not really their point, I don’t think… it wasn’t to put a specific name on the attack, but to say that the attack could happen. And it could.
Somebody could also label all the beer bottles in America as screw-top bottles when they weren’t in time for the 4th of July and cripple the american workforce. Possible? Maybe. Likely? No.
I’m more worried about plain old mechanical failure of the computers used to keep track of all the banking data on Wall Street. No need for an EMP there when you can just lose a few critical systems and suddenly everybody’s hoping the disaster recovery plan actually works.
Haven’t read the article, but know a little about the issue. It’s not a paranoid fantasy. Vacuum tubes are much less vulnerable than transistors, not that you see many of them these days (except in, say, the final output transmitter of a commercial TV station).
One issue that may be reassuring: generally, the equipment has to be on. If it’s shut off, it’s much less vulnerable.
Sounds like shit to me. Assuming the worst case scenario, that the Wall Street et. al. were shizzled, doesn’t mean the end of the US as such. We have oodles of military hardware designed to during the Cold War to remain functional during a Hot War. So they fuck up my bank records and I can’t access internet porn for a while (maybe)…they still aren’t in a position to exploit the “opening” they created. We’ll all still be here. Our stuff will all still be here. All kinds of nasty, explosive shit will be on its way there…
Admittedly, my knowledge of this is a bit sketchy, but what mechanism are attributing the damage to be from? I can’t envision any that requires the power to be on before damage occurs.