EMP-- Say goodbye to life as we know it

I wouldn't take Iran lightly! Like some one else respoded, it only took a few planes to do what Bin Laden did. They have been testing this scenario of EMP for some time. Some one else stated all it would take is a small ship with a scud 1 well placed explosion. Now add a couple of dirty bombs. (joe blow can make a dirty bomb out of medical waste, or material from a university)

The US government has plans inplace for such a scenario, only against the Soviets. This info is dated. http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/1988/CM2.htm

Look some people might think this sort of stuff is funny, Look what the guy and the kid in a car did to the East Coast. How long did take to figure this one out?

Now emagine that a couple of networks that hate each other come together with the purpose of take out a common enemy in the name of religion. They took on the great Satan!

Iran has already issued Bush the ultimatum, convert or perish. I think we should consider them seriously! It's about religion, a true belief.

As for investigating? Wont need to, they will be bragging.

 

What nobody seems to have taken into account, perhaps because of our North American ignorance of the outside world, is that the Iranians are far more intelligent than the public imagines. Al Qaeda would probably delight in setting off an EMP nuke over the U.S., but the leaders of Iran, for all their religious fanaticism, are far more pragmatic and a very great deal more intelligent.

Iran may be an economic and diplomatic threat to the crooks who run our economy and the morons who run our government, but they are not going to take us on militarily.

I don't watch TV, but Jessica Alba is welcome to save me any time she likes.

 

That would *not* happen. Modern aircraft systems are designed to a much stricter standard than home electronics. Even during exoatmospheric nuclear testing, the test aircraft laden with instruments (U2, B-52, etc) had AT MOST minor glitches. Such as the intercom system making popping sounds until reset

Modern fly-by-wire aircraft are put through rigerous testing to ensure that even after direct multiple lightning strikes, no critical system is affected. Military aircraft are also subject to MIL-STD-2169 HAEMP testing

The Prius will be just as vulnerable to EMP as any other modern vehicle, no more and no less. Unfortunately, the test regime for HAEMP is still Classified, so we will never know how a Prius does

 

Actually, TEMPEST is covered by NSA 65-6. There are a wide range of military and NSA specifications – such as MIL STD 285 - that deal with controlling radiated energy to minimize electronic eavesdropping. The 65-6 has been updated by NSA 94-106. NSA 73-2A specifically covers foil-shielded equipment enclosures.

Unless the equipment is specifically designed to withstand HAEMP (High Altitude Electro Magnetic Pulse), just meeting a noise conformal rating like NSA 65-6 TEMPEST will do little to prevent latchup or damage

 

EMP shielding is exotically expensive, that is if you actually test to the standards and want it to pass.

Our understanding of EMP is relatively late in the game, so to speak. Although it was surmised that a fission weapon or a thermonuclear weapon would generate enormous amounts of prompt radiation, little was known about electrical effects

An eccentric Greek immigrant by the name of Dr. Nicholas Christofilos appeared to understand HAEMP effects back in the mid 1950’s. Dr Christofilos also appeared to understand about the existence of the Van Allen Radiation Belts, before Dr Van Allen “discovered†them. Dr. Christofilos has been called the Tesla and Einstein of the 1950’s

He wrote a now-infamous memo to Dr HF York, who was Dr. Christofilos’s superior at Livermore. The memo, written Nov 19, 1957, is titled “Ideas for a possible anti-missile and anti-satellite defense.†As a direct result of this still heavily censored report, Project Argus in August of 1958 was launched

Argus was conducted off the coast of South Africa, in a part of the Atlantic Ocean called the South Atlantic Anomaly. As part of the test, hastily prepared and launched satellites were also placed into orbit near this area. The test launched rather small warheads, yield of about 1 KT, up to 4,000 miles above the test armada. Just as Christofilos predicted, the prompt radiation from the warheads generated HAEMP

Dr Christofilos also developed the ELF system to communicate with tactical submarines. Project Sanguine is a direct result of his theories on ELF communications. This system is still Classified, and improved aspects of it are still in use today

There have been a series of high altitude – or “exoatmospheric†- nuclear detonations carried out in the Pacific proving area. Under Operation Hardtack, Shot Teak was launched in 1958, with almost 4 MT yield. It was barely exoatmospheric, reaching about 50 miles straight up.

Even so, Teak knocked out all normal radio communication throughout the Pacific Ocean area for a few hours. Teak had disrupted the Ionosphere. Hardtack, Shot Orange, was a similar warhead but detonated about 35 miles straight up. The HAEMP effects were less intense

In 1962, the most famous – and most destructive – HAEMP test occurred with Starfish Prime. A 1 MT warhead was detonated 250 miles above Johnston Island. The Starfish Prime test was multi-faceted: satellites had been launched to detect the MeV electrons and to gauge the effectiveness of hardened electronics, radar installations had been set up on Johnston Island and on ships to determine radar jitter and radar blackout, a city-scale power grid was set up and operated through a dummy load to test the effects of HAEMP on electrical generators and substations, and many others

Starfish Prime knocked out around 1/3 of all known satellites in orbit. One satellite damaged by the MeV belt of radiation was Telstar, the first communications relay satellite.

Starfish Prime damaged the power grid on Hawaii and even New Zealand, almost 1,000 miles away. It also damaged vacuum tube radios hooked up to outdoor antennas – although small built-in antennas with tube radios were undamaged. Microwave telephone repeater systems failed. All radio communication failed.

Only an exoatmospheric detonation can produce the kind of EMP - HAEMP - that can render thousands of square miles in the dark. This is due to pair-production and Compton Effect

EMP is produced by surface blast, but is generally limited to the immediate blast area. It's assumed the interaction of the prompt gamma radiation with the atmosphere, and the interaction with the earth's magnetic field, produces it. No sense in worrying about the EMP as there will be a crater and a completely leveled landscape from ground zero

Underground test shots also produce EMP. This is thought to be due to a magnetohydrodynamic interaction between the immediate shot cavity plasma and the earth's magnetic field

 

That does not follow. Do you mean an altitude of 1,000 km?

I suggest you read "EMP Environment and System Hardness Design," By Dr Rabindra N Ghose. It's not too technical, anybody comfortable with college Calculus should be able to follow the concepts

 

Nonsense. We've understood HAEMP and system hardness design since the mid 1960's. Exoatmospheric tests like Starfish Prime had extensive testing to determine the impact on many systems.

The reason why the Soviet's had to use vacuum tubes was that they couldn't afford to develop an electronics industry that was "dual purpose." After all, they were Communist. We had "dual purpose" industries, such as electronics

An amazing true fact: the worlds largest supplier of obsolete vacuum tubes for old radios is the former Soviet Union! Especially the Svetlana company. If you have an old vacuum radio set with a dead tube, odds are Svetlana makes that tube

 

Get in line, buddy. I saw her first

 

That is very optimistic. First of all, if every large HV transformer was cooked, it would takea *long* time to replace all of them. The cost of the propsed HVDC substation for a new Manitoba Hydro power line is almost $1 billion. Those huge transformers are made to order, nobody sticks a multi-million dollar transformer in a warehouse

Personally, I think it’s criminal that nothing is done to protect our civilian infrastructure from HAEMP. Remember that various electromagnetic effects can be generated by solar and extrasolar events, you don’t need an exoatmospheric nuclear weapon

An intense solar storm in 1989 knocked out Hydro Quebec’s long distance power transmission grid. With a solar event, we refer to it as GIC or Geomagnetically Induced Current. It’s ironic that most of our modern infrastructure – power grids, telephones, especially wireless communication – was developed and built during a period of relatively calm solar weather

GIC will even impact long distance natural gas and crude oil pipelines. There hasn’t been much said about the unusual “corrosion†suddenly affecting the Alaska Pipeline. Pipeline operators in Scandinavia are well aware of the impact of solar weather, and GIC, on their operations. Over 100 amps have been measured in ground blocks on some of their pipelines, that can become very dangerous

If a repeat of the infamous 1859 Carrington’s Flare were to occur, estimated 5-9 times stronger than the 1989 flare, we could very well end up with a serious problem. Historical reports indicate that telegraph station ground wires glowed red hot, and telegraph operators couldn’t operate the equipment due to sparks flying off the transmitter key.

It probably wouldn’t be Doomsday for us, but it would cause a lot of catastrophic and expensive damage. Pipelines could explode. It’s certain all the long distance grids would be damaged; that is, the transformers would be wrecked, just as some were wrecked in 1989.

The effects on our transportation are hard to estimate. HAEMP purposely caused by an exoatmospheric nuclear weapon would render most automobiles dead. Even diesel powered vehicles now use sophisticated electronics, they would also be dead. A solar storm or extrasolar event may or may not damage vehicles, but would most certainly damage our grid

Not sure what could be done to protect our infrastructure. This is something that has to be built in. The cost to retrofit is usually more than building it that way to start with

 

I should have mentioned more technical standards:

HAEMP standards are covered under MIL HDBK 423 "High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) Protection for Fixed and Transportable Ground-Based Facilities, Volume I: Fixed Facilities." This standard covers C4I, or Command, Control, Communications, Computer, and Intelligence missions for fixed ground facilities. Mobile facilities are covered by MIL STD 188-125-2

MIL STD 2169 covers the EMP environment in detail, but unfortunately it is still classified. As far as the various HAEMP standards discussed above, there is NO commercial “off the shelf” system I know of that passes the testing criteria, including vehicles. The only way to meet the test criteria is to purposely build the system to withstand the EMP

 

Jayman, you've done your home work. Very impressive! The nuclear scenario, high altitude EMP or solar event would raise holly hell for some time.

 

Send us pic after you have it installed. Will it be removable or are you giong to have is implanted.

 

Yeah--unfortunately the USA is filled with people who can't see us as others do. If they could, they would be surprised. Our media provides only an inside-out view of the World--part of the problem. The other part is geography--we are isolated by two oceans--and it shows in the parochial attitudes exhibited here--especially of those in rural areas who never get out of their small towns. And these shortcomings are reflected in our politics and morality.

 

Have been 2/3 rds of the way around and seems like if you're not a local you are an outsider, even in the US. Not that there aren't good people every where! But people are leery of you even after they warm up to you.

We gave the (Baser's-Wing nuts) people from the Air base alot of crap when I was a kid. Got the pay back when I joined and went out West! Hated it. Might seem a bit sarcastic here, but not a lone. Doesn't make it right, but at least I am willing to admit it.

It goes back to proeple in need! It seems like it takes a tragedy before the US Cowboy Ups.

You are right about the media, if it isn't gloom and doom they aren't happy. Sensationalism sells!

As for politics, was raised a Dem, but vote for the person. (notice I said Person)

 

Some of my clients require that level of testing, to meet those very narrow and strict standards. You can probably guess who they are.

Personally, I'd worry a lot more about a solar or extrasolar event causing GIC, then about an exoatmospheric weapon. The infrastructure damage is about the same, but the odds greatly favor the solar/extrasolar event

 

Where are you working out of now?

Don't know if I agree on the odds though? Too many people to do dumb things vs a natural event. Not that a natural event couldn't happen first. Some natural events have had huge gaps of time in between and man isn't that old.

This thing with bin Laden isn't going to go away any time soon. Wouldn't be surprised if we weren't less than 30 years into a 100 year religious problem?

All a person can do is get the facts, implement, adjust, adjust, adjust.

 

I have a variety of clients. You can guess the rest

I'm hoping you're wrong. You just never know. When the first satellite weapon detection systems were operational, they were detecting gamma pulses, but at the "wrong" location. This was published in 1973. The pulse had the signature of an exoatmospheric event, but there were no known events near that location

A bit of tweaking, and it was discovered the gamma pulses were actually coming from deep space. Absolutely an extrasolar event. Some of those gamma pulses have been so strong that - very briefly - they drown out all other sources.

Some possible sources may be "magnetars" or neutron stars with enormous magnetic fields. They may also be collimated emissions from a black hole that "eats" a very high mass, rapidly spinning star.

Some events, like the "Vela Incident" of 1979, off the Southern coast of South Africa, are more vague. It may have been a secret small scale nuclear test by South Africa, it may have been a gamma ray pulse, who knows

The PBS show NOVA had a good episode on gamma ray pulse

NOVA Online | Death Star

Most gamma ray pulses appear to be thousands to even billions of light years away. Apparently, if one were to happen in our own galaxy, pfffft!

Not sure how to solve that issue. We appear to have made it worse. Like a bull in a china shop

 

Could be wrong as far as the event. We really have only been here a short time and our record keeping isn't the greatest. Part of why I wonder if global warming isn't one of such events.

I wonder some times if the US leaves bin Laden be, they owe him for the fight against the Soviets. But now I read about the NW part of Pakistan and maybe they just can't coordinate it with that gov. It seems like Pakistan embraces the militants. The militants are now being diverted from the war with india to the this region and makes you think they have a hand in this too! Playing both end against the middle.

It would be a big mess if they took over Pakistan.

 

It's very ironic that Pakistan is considered one of our Big Buddies - much like how Iraq and Saddam were about 25 years ago - all while appearing to protect/shelter that sort of activity.

Remember that Pakastani nuclear scientist who received what amounted to house "arrest" for selling/smuggling secrets? Both the US and Canada "assisted" India and Pakistan in developing nuclear weapons

Canada's Role in the Atomic Bomb Programs of the US, UK, France & India

Of course, the original aim was to give them "cheap" nuclear power. The nuclear power plants in India and Pakistan are versions of the CANDU design, courtesy of the Canadian taxpayer funding AECL (Atomic Energy Canada Ltd) and CAMECO.

Canadian Nuclear Cooperation with India and Pakistan

AECL is a Crown Corporation that was behind the engineering and production of the original CANDU design. This is a very efficient "breeder" design, it yields a lot of plutonium. A lot of Canadian plutonium ended up in American, British, and French nuclear weapons

Canada and the Bomb: Past and Future

Canadian Plutonium Sold For American Bombs

CAMECO is another Crown Corp that mines uranium in Canada, primarily in northern Saskatchewan.

Map of Uranium Mining Activities in Canada

How Uranium from Great Bear Lake Ended Up in A-Bombs

Cameco Corporation --- Uranium - Fuel - Electricity - Mining - Milling - Refining