…is brought to you by William R. Forstchen, author of One Second After — a novel about an electromagnetic pulse that plunges America into third-world chaos (with a foreward by Newt Gingrich!) — who offers this helpful step-by-step guide to how we’re all completely screwed if (nay, when!) terrorists unleash E.M.P. hell. And you were worried about swine flu?
(Hat tip: InstaPundit.)
P.S. Don’t take the title of this post the wrong way. Sometimes, panic & alarmism are justified! And sometimes not. I offer no editorial comment, at present, on which category this falls into.
Forstchen is one of my favorite authors. I’ve read almost all of his books. He’s written quite a bit of fantasy and sci fi, and frequently deals with alternate history.
He wrote a couple of books that are quite reminescent of Heinlein’s Space Cadet or Feintuch’s Midshipman books.
His has a series called the Lost Regiment in which a civil war regiment from Maine gets transported to another planet when humans are confined to medieval technology and are cattle (food) to a race of 8 foot aliens who live like Mongols.
He has also co-written several novels with Newt Gingrich. The first series is alternate history dealing with the Civil War and the second is alternate history dealing with WW II in the Pacific.
One Second After is a good read, and definitely provides food for thought. People who have read and enjoyed Stirling’s Emberverse books will probably enjoy it.
Wow. Is there any opposing view on this topic out there? I guess what I’m asking is, just how believeable/likely/accurate is the scenario described by Forstchen?
/stocking up on ammo
BK, in order to unleash an EMP pulse to damage all of the United State you’d need to launch and detonate a nuclear payload somewhere between 100 and 300 miles above the center of the U.S. It would also have to be of sufficient yield, although I am not sure what that is. Is it possible? Sure. Is it likely? Not really, its a complex scenario and would require extensive planning and equipment plus you’d have to hope and pray we don’t detect it before hand. Terrorists are more likely to commit direct attacks using dirty bombs and such, they are just easier to do.
Small EMP devices are possible, likely is another matter. As David mentions, an EMP of sufficient power to impact the entire United States at one go? That seems quite far fetched. I think even the US government would have difficulty building something that could have an impact on that kind of geographic scale. EMPs require a rather extreme amount of power. And if terrorists were to go about building a sufficient power source, well I doubt they would build a nuclear bomb without the bomb part just to get an EMP. On a relative scale, obviously, it is a lot easier to build a nuclear bomb capable of destroying the island of Manhattan than it is to build and EMP capable of turning off the entire United States at one go—you need at least an order of magnitude or three more power. So if you are a terrorists, which option would you pick.
I should add, EMPs are significantly impacted by where they are detonated. Both altitude and latitude have a tremendous impact on their effectiveness. The limitations of using an EMP with a non-nuclear power source are such that optimal positioning of the EMP is likely to be impossible. A ground level EMP would need to be absolutely massive with a power source to match to get the whole US. An EMP hundreds of miles over Minnesota would need to be much smaller, but to build something with enough power small enough to get there you would need an EMP with a nuclear power source. Which gets us back to, if you are going to build a nuclear power source do you build an EMP with it or do you build a nuclear bomb? Especially considering that if you build just the bomb, you don’t necessarily need to build a rocket capable of reaching the edge of space. I think it is fairly safe to say we have bigger issues than EMPs.
IIRC, in the book there are two EMP pulses, one on the east coast and one on the west coast.
The book ends with China occupying the US west coast, leaving the impression that the emp pulses were the work of a nationstate (China) rather than a terrorist.
Hmm, that seems even stranger. Admittedly I’ve not done a lot of research into how EMPs work, but I’m under the impression that their effects can be amplified or reduced base on where the device is detonated because of differences in the earth’s magnetic field. If you were going to detonate two devices, one would think you would want to detonate them about a quarter the way in from the coast not at the coast. At a high latitude and a few hundred miles above the surface for optimum impact. All of this seems like a lot of trouble to go to. Of course if the goal is attack from a foreign nation? I suppose the idea then is plunge the US into darkness let the US wipe itself out from internal strife and then colonize due to over population in China? Still it all seems like rather a far fetched scenario. Not impossible, just seems like a less likely scenario that a lot of other possible vectors of attack.
I wrote about Forstchen’s EMP idea in a couple of blog posts (I’ve not read the book, I was responding to an article he wrote). I found that the argument he made was very unconvincing, at least for a single warhead attack to the whole of the USA, and was very disappointed that some of your politicians are taking it seriously. My articles are here:
http://my-own-doubts.blogspot.com/2009/07/catastrophe-postponed.html
http://my-own-doubts.blogspot.com/2009/07/update-on-apocalypse.html
The congressionally-chartered “Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack” ( http://www.empcommission.org/ ) produced a rather scary Executive Report in 2004 — http://www.empcommission.org/docs/empc_exec_rpt.pdf — followed by a massive Critical Infrastructures analysis (i.e., all our systems slated to Meet their Doom in the mighty EMP 😉 in July 2008: http://www.empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP_Commission-7MB.pdf
Now I do not claim to have exhaustively Scrutinized these estimable documents. Nevertheless, typing through my Hat (which is damned awkward, believe you me :), my Take is as follows:
[1] An EMP attack via well-placed high-altitude nuclear detonation(s) could destroy the United States as a modern economy & society for an indefinite, but lengthy, period of time.
[2] The potentially-adversarial entities now presumably capable of launching such an attack — State Actors, i.e., Russia & China — are strongly Disincentivized (albeit perhaps occasionally Tempted 🙂 to do so: because, retaliation aside, the ruination of the US economy would be highly detrimental to such attacker (in the case of China, disastrous). And what’s the point in Occupying a wrecked country with little left to Plunder?
[3] The Stateless enemy entities which would be More than happy to smash our decadent infidel society with one mighty blow, and who wouldn’t give a Hoot about the global economic effect (indeed, might Welcome it) — the jihadi Terrorists — haven’t got the Wherewithal. Yet. / Their bigger challenge is probably not so much the acquisition of the necessary Nuke(s), as procurement of the requisite Rocket(s) & launch platform(s), to loft the warhead into outer space correctly positioned over the USA, and there light up the EMPulsating blast.
[4] And then, of course, there are the relevant Rogue States: those which, like the Mujihadeen, wouldn’t (or mightn’t) Fret over the economic blowback from knocking us off, but are much further along towards obtaining the Means to our End. Yes, it’s North Korea & Iran that give me the EMP Willies. / The Korean Reds worry me even more than the renascent Persian Empire, actually. The NK Commies have already got ‘The Bomb, Kim Jong’ ;> (albeit a pretty Little one :); and doubtless they are Hard at work on the next-generation taep o’ Dong for to Deliver it to the High skies above our Heartland; and — unlike Iran — the couldn’t care Less about anybody else’s Economy because they haven’t Got one themselves, anyway.
[4a.] But Speaking of relevant Rogue states: Venezuela. / I mention it in Passing. ;>
North Korea is more likely to attack their closer neighbors like Japan and South Korea, and Iran would probably go after Israel first.
Linked below is a striking map that reinforces Joe’s point that the North Koreans haven’t an economy. If the first instinct of an attacked country is to retaliate in kind, such instinct would be unnecessary if we were EMP’ed by NKorea. Someone appears already to have so attacked them. Every day.
In all seriousness, if you’re trying to come up with proportionate response against the country that has caused mass casualties by instantly turning out the lights, does it matter that that your attacker….has no lights?
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/12/16/218-koreas-dark-half/