A Massive Electromagnetic Pulse Could Collapse The Economy In A Single Moment By Michael, on December 31st, 2012
What would you do if all the lights went out and they never came back on? That is a question that the new NBC series "
Revolution"
asks, but most people have no idea that a similar thing could happen in
real life at any moment. A single gigantic electromagnetic pulse over
the central United States could potentially fry most of the electronics
from coast to coast if it was powerful enough. This could occur in a
couple of different ways. If a powerful nuclear weapon was exploded at a
high enough altitude, it could produce an electromagnetic pulse
powerful enough to knock out electronics all over the country.
Alternatively, a massive
solar storm could potentially cause a similar phenomenon to happen just about
anywhere on the planet without much warning. Of course not all EMP
events are created equal. An electromagnetic pulse can range from a
minor inconvenience to a civilization-killing event. It just depends on
how powerful it is. But in the worst case scenario, we could be facing
a situation where our electrical grids have been fried, there is no
heat for our homes, our computers don't work, the Internet does not
work, our cell phones do not work, there are no more banking records,
nobody can use credit cards anymore, hospitals are unable to function,
nobody can pump gas, and supermarkets cannot operate because there is no
power and no refrigeration. Basically, we would witness the complete
and total collapse of the economy. According to a government commission
that looked into these things, approximately
two-thirds of the U.S. population would die from starvation, disease and societal chaos within one year
of a massive EMP attack. It would be a disaster unlike anything we have
ever seen before in U.S. history.
Most Americans are totally clueless about what an EMP attack could do
to this nation, but the threat is very real. There was even a
congressional commission that studied the potential effects of an EMP
attack on the United States
for eight years...
<blockquote>The US Congress in 2000 established the Congressional
Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from
Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack. In 2004, the committee produced a
70-page executive summary on the EMP threat, and it issued a final
report on the matter in 2008. According to the report, “several
potential adversaries have or can acquire the capability to attack the
United States with a high-altitude nuclear weapon-generated
electromagnetic pulse (EMP). A determined adversary can achieve an EMP
attack capability without having a high level of sophistication.”
</blockquote>
Dr. William Graham was the chairman of that commission, and he says
that an EMP attack could knock the United States back into the 1800s
in just a single moment...
<blockquote>An EMP attack “could not only take down power grids,
which are fragile anyway in this country, and telecommunications
networks, and financial networks, and traffic controls and many other
things, but in addition, there is a very close interrelationship among
those national infrastructure capabilities,” Graham says.
“So, for example, we need telecommunications to re-establish the
power network, and we need the power network to keep telecommunications
going for more than a few hours. And we need the financial network to
continue to operate to maintain the economy, we need the transportation
system, roads, street lights, control systems, to operate just to get
people to the failed power, telecommunication and other systems,” he
adds.
Life after an EMP attack “would probably be something that you might
imagine life to be like around the late 1800s but with several times the
population we had in those days, and without the ability of the country
to support and sustain all those people,” Graham says. “They wouldn’t
have power. Food supplies would be greatly taken out by the lack of
transportation, telecommunication, power for refrigeration and so on.”
</blockquote>
Unfortunately, very few of us are equipped to survive in such an
environment. We have become incredibly dependent on technology, and
most Americans would have no idea how to do something as simple as
growing their own food. Most people would be in a very serious amount
of trouble in a very short period of time.
An article
by Mac Slavo detailed some of the things that we could expect in the aftermath of a massive electromagnetic pulse...
<blockquote>The first 24 – 48 hours after such an occurrence will
lead to confusion among the general population as traditional news
acquisition sources like television, radio and cell phone networks will
be non-functional.
Within a matter of days, once people realize the power might not be
coming back on and grocery store shelves start emptying, the entire
system will begin to delve into chaos.
Within 30 days a mass die off will have begun as food supplies
dwindle, looters and gangs turn to violent extremes, medicine can’t be
restocked and water pump stations fail.
</blockquote>
Are you prepared for
such an event?
If not, why not?
And actually, high altitude nuclear explosions and solar storms are not the only things that could produce sizable EMP bursts.
For example, the U.S. military has developed "a directed
electromagnetic pulse gun" that can take out all electronics within a
limited area. This kind of weapon can be fired from a plane, a cruise
missile or even a drone. The following is from a recent
WND article...
<blockquote>A pre-programmed cruise missile not too different from a
drone has been proven to be capable of blasting out an EMP-type
microwave that was able to destroy personal computers and electrical
systems inside a building over which it was flying.
The U.S. Air Force and its contractor Boeing have created the
High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project, or CHAMP, which was
just tested over a Utah desert.
</blockquote>
Other nations such as Russia and China are busy developing similar
weapons. The ability to instantly take out the electronics of the enemy
would be a very powerful advantage.
Even North Korea has been working on this kind of technology.
According to Newsmax, it is believed that they may have tested a
"Super-EMP" weapon
back in 2009…
<blockquote>North Korea’s last round of tests, conducted in May 2009,
appear to have included a “super-EMP” weapon, capable of emitting
enough gamma rays to disable the electric power grid across most of the
lower 48 states
</blockquote>
As this technology becomes more widespread, it will soon be
accessible to just about everyone. You don't actually need a nuclear
weapon to set off a massive electromagnetic pulse. A non-nuclear pulse
generator can do the same thing. If you set one off next to a power
station you could potentially take out the electrical grid for an entire
region.
Terrorist groups and lone wolf crazies could even use portable radio
frequency weapons to do a tremendous amount of electromagnetic damage
over a more limited area. The following is from a recent article
by F. Michael Maloof...
<blockquote>Such an individual with a penchant for electronics can
pull together components from a Radio Shack or electronic store – even
order the components off of selected Internet websites – and fashion a
radio frequency, or RF, weapon.
As microprocessors become smaller but more sophisticated, they are
even more susceptible to an RF pulse. The high power microwave from an
RF weapon produces a short, very high power pulse, said to be billions
of watts in a nanosecond, or billionths of a second.
This so-called burst of electromagnetic waves in the gigahertz
microwave frequency band can melt electrical circuitry and damage
integrated circuits, causing them to fail.
</blockquote>
Constructing a radio frequency weapon is not that difficult. In fact, you can find instructions for how to build them
on the Internet.
People need to realize that we live in a world where technology is
absolutely exploding and we are dealing with threats that previous
generations never even dreamed of. As the world becomes increasingly
unstable, it is inevitable that these kinds of weapons will be used.
It is only a matter of time.
What will life look like
after an EMP weapon is used?
That is something to think about.
And we also need to keep watching the sun. It could produce a
massive electromagnetic pulse at literally any moment. As I have
written about
previously, scientists tell us that it is only a matter of time before we are hit with a technology-crippling solar super storm.
Most people don't even realize that
the massive solar storm of 1859 fried telegraph machines all over Europe and North America. If such a
storm hit us today, the damage would potentially be in the trillions of
dollars. The following is from a recent
New York Times article…
<blockquote>
A powerful solar (or “geomagnetic”) storm has the
potential to simultaneously damage multiple transformers in the
electricity grid and perhaps even bring down large sections of it,
affecting upwards of a hundred million people in the United States for
many months, if not years.These huge transformers are expensive and difficult to replace,
and not many are stockpiled in the United States for an emergency. In
the worst case, the impact would be devastating: An outage could cost a
few trillion dollars, with full recovery taking years. Not only would
parts of the grid be compromised, but telephone networks, undersea
cables, satellites and railroads also would be affected.A 2008 National Academy of Sciences study
warned that “because of the interconnectedness of critical
infrastructures in modern society,” the “collateral effects of a
longer-term outage” would likely include “disruption of the
transportation, communication, banking and finance systems, and
government services; the breakdown of the distribution of potable water
owing to pump failure; and the loss of perishable foods and medications
because of lack of refrigeration.”</blockquote>
By the way, 2013 is the peak of the current solar cycle. So we are
moving into a time period when conditions will be very favorable for
solar storms.
Let us hope that we are never hit with a massive electromagnetic pulse that is strong enough to take out all of our electronics.
But if it did happen, and all the lights went out for good, what would you do?
Please feel free to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below...
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