Lights Out: EMP Warfare

No, and no

What happened to Hydro Quebec wasn't at all like HAEMP. A weak Coronal Mass Ejection - CME- from the sun managed to hit the earth at just the right polarity and location, to induce Geomagnetically Induced Current or GIC.

GIC is a complex topic. A lot of it has to do with how the earths magnetic field interacts with the earth at extreme northern - and southern - lattitudes. As an example, the Alaska Pipeline, and long pipelines in Scandinavian countries and Siberian areas, normally have induced current from tens of amps, on up

A large CME in 1859, the Carrington's Flare, knocked out the high tech technology of the day, telegraph. Telegraph lines glowed red hot, sparks flew off the equipment, starting fires. Long fences also began to glow red hot.

HAEMP has a very short risetime, the event is typically over in <1 ms, with peak risetime typically 5-15 ns. A good read on this, if you're not afraid of a bit of calculus, is "EMP Environment and System Hardness Design," By Dr Rabindra Ghose

http://www.amazon.com/EMP-Environment-System-Hardness-Design/dp/093226316X

Solar and extrasolar events of the type that would cause severe GIC, can last for HOURS. Even railways would start to heat up and some may even soften/glow, as also happened in 1859

About the only way we could protect ourselves from a CME/GIC event would be if we had advanced warning. Maybe purposely having blackouts, with HV/MV transformers disconnected, might save them.

This topic has been discussed by the power transmission industry. Long story short: there isn't much if anything we could do about it

 

No, that would not protect from HAEMP or GIC.

Considering that an improper jump start can fry thousands of dollars worth of Prius parts, I would have to answer "no" to this question as well

 

That was a VERY important public service.
And one helluva good TEST run of the system that we need online to prevent this scenario!!!

I suppose if I have to go through a EMP scenario for real, at least there could be a bright side!

 

I expect that the public service was secondary to the test of interceptor capability. Notice the interception occurred in the Pacific Ocean, where any rocket launched by North Korea would have to fly over and at an altitude that would have to be achieved by the rocket to be able to reach the U.S.....

 

The Amish would be the only civilization here up & running after an EMP.

 

Anyone up for an "Hand Rubbed Electric Fireplace"???

 

Aluminium foil. I found it at the dollar store. Enough to wrap the Prius and the TV. :madgrin:

 

Yes, a purpose-built HAEMP weapon is designed to detonate exoatmospheric. There are tested exoatmospheric kill vehicles, a kinetic kill vehicle, but their test performance usually has very low probability of success. Raytheon makes one such exoatmospheric kill vehicle

http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/ekv/

Obviously, the kinetic kill vehicle eliminates the danger of self-induced HAEMP, as the abandoned Safeguard system had. Safeguard was like using a .44 mag handgun to remove a woodtick from your ear, not only do you remove the woodtick, you also blow your brains out.

I should mention that when early development on kinetic kill vehicles was announced, the Soviets and presumably others developed new class of ICBM's that would automatically fire decoys during boost and coast phases. The decoys were to ensure any kinetic kill vehicle would have to aim for many targets, increasing the probability of the warhead surviving to time-on-target

Another catch is that it was presumed - never officially acknowledged of course - that the latest MIRV warheads had proximity radars built in. So in the event of detecting a kill vehicle inbound, the warhead detonates exoatmospheric, instead at time-on-target. This generates intense HAEMP that very effectively knocks out the radar (Radar jitter, scatter, blackout, etc) used to aim the kill vehicle.

That's a good question. First of all, technically it's a Coronal Mass Ejection that causes the intense Geomagnetically Induced Current.

The flare in 1989 that knocked out Hydro Quebec was probably 1/5 as strong as the historic 1859 Carrington' Flare

Coronal Mass Ejections

It's thought that the 1859 Carrington's Flare could repeat itself, with devastating consequences

Solar Superstorm

There are also areas of earth that have unique properties that enhance the effects of GIC. The long haul power lines that Hydro Quebec use transit one such anomoly. I live in an area known as the NACP (North American Central Plains) anomaly

http://homepages.dias.ie/~ajones/nacp.html

A very interesting read

http://mahi.ucsd.edu/Steve/bio/Coprod2.pdf

It's thought that the conductive graphite and sulphides are 1,000 times more conductive than "normal" ground, which places any vulnerable infrastructure (Long haul power lines, pipelines, etc) at much increased risk

I suppose we cross our pinkies and hope for the best

 

It was a successful test, but by no means is assured success all the time

 

Yep, frankly I'm more worried about the stray asteroid strike that we also can't do anything about.

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_Crater]Chicxulub crater - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

All of the components of the test are 'production ready'. My understanding of the objective of the test was to see if the components worked together as a whole. How many successful tests do you need to be assured of success going forward?

 

I hope you're joking, or genuinely ignorant of the test process

Overall, kinetic kill vehicles have had a dismal test record of achieving the stated goals. Even something as simple as circular error probability is hard to meet when the target is stationary.

With both target and interceptor in motion, especially with a target that may include decoys, chaff, jammers, and proximity systems - as most modern ICBMs do - everything depends on the interceptor radar system. Once the radar becomes hopelessly confused, all bets are off

A lot of folks are unaware that by the mid 1960's, when the Soviets were doing their own exoatmospheric testing, they had developed reentry vehicles that were designed to go ahead of the pack. The leading reentry vehicle would detonate exoatmospheric, to blind the defensive and offensive radar systems tracking the inbounds

They had to do a lot of work to harden the reentry vehicle guidance so it wouldn't fry. We also had to do a lot of work and development to keep the guidance system from frying in such an environment

One result of the Soviets doing all that work is that their reentry vehicles had pretty dismal circular error probability. When you're aiming a 20 MT weapon at a city you don't need pinpoint accuracy

It's one thing to hit a simple drone or space garbage with a kinetic kill vehicle. It's something else entirely to hit a target that may be equipped with the counter measures I listed above. We really have no idea what - or if any - counter measures the North Koreans have put in.

I'm afraid we may find out the hard way

 

The interception was over the Pacific because that was the largest piece of mostly unoccupied territory under the orbit of the satellite. If you are going to knock something out of orbit, you don't want it to land on a house.

Tom

 

When the kill vehicle misses, as it usually did in initial testing, you also don't want pieces of kill vehicle landing on a house either.