EMP security

China Has ‘First-Strike’ Capability To Melt U.S. Power Grid With Electromagnetic Pulse Weapon

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security issued a scary report on China’s ability to conduct an Electromagnetic Pulse attack on the United States. The key takeaway, according to Dr. Peter Pry, executive director of the department’s EMP task force, is that China now has super-EMP weapons, knows how to protect itself against an EMP attack, and has developed protocols to conduct a first-strike attack, even as they deny they would ever do so.

According to the Center for Strategic International Studies, China has the most active ballistic missile development program in the world, so this is doubly troubling. China used stolen U.S. technology to develop at least three types of high-tech weapons to attack the electric grid and key technologies that could cause a surprise “Pearl Harbor” attack that could produce a deadly blackout to the entire country.

EMP security

Pentagon Works On Detecting Electromagnetic Pulse Weapons

The Pentagon is researching better ways to detect and respond to electromagnetic pulse weapons, which can disable or destroy electronic devices in a devastating sneak attack.

The Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency is working on sensors to detect and analyze EMP attacks under its Conventional Nuclear Integration/Battlefield Nuclear Warfare program.

EMPs can range in size from narrowly targeted cannons that could disable an aircraft to massive atmospheric nuclear blasts that could wipe out the entire nation’s electricity grid.

Increasingly, war planners fear an EMP sneak attack that could cripple key capabilities, with China, North Korea, Russia and Iran known to be developing such weapons.

In 2017, the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs reported: ‘A successful nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack against the United States could cause the death of approximately 90 percent of the American population.’

EMP security

The Threat of EMP Attack is Very Real

As we commemorate the 78th anniversary of the Japanese surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, which heralded America’s formal entry into the Second World War, we must remember that the threat of a far more devastating surprise attack upon the U.S. homeland remains very real. The Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP Attack, also known as the Congressional EMP Commission, comprising the foremost experts in the Free World, warned in 2004 that “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…It has the capability to produce significant damage to critical infrastructure and thus to the very fabric of U.S. society, as well as to the ability of the United States and Western nations to project influence and military power.” This author previously warned about this catastrophic threat to the U.S. in an article entitled “America’s Achilles’ Heel: An EMP Attack” published in the National Interest back in June 2018...

EMP security

Countering EMP threat now in law

The latest defense authorization bill signed into law by President Trump on Dec. 20 contains new measures requiring the federal government to protect the nation from the danger of nuclear-blast-produced electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks and similar solar-produced electronic disruptions.

The law’s language gives legal authority to Mr. Trump’s March 2019 executive order directing the government to harden critical infrastructure against an EMP strike.

Under the law, the Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator is in charge of coordinating responses to and recovery from EMP attacks or major solar storms that are capable of disrupting all electronic devices over wide areas.

EMP security

Newt Gingrich: What if we lost electric power … for years?

Imagine the power just went out. How would your life be immediately affected? Likely, in the short term, you’d be minorly inconvenienced. You’d have to find a candle or a flashlight to read or do household tasks. You might have to change your dinner plan, because you can’t use your electric stove to cook.

But now imagine that the power didn’t come back on – for weeks, months, or years – and imagine the outage is everywhere.

Now, all the food in your fridge (and your grocery store) will go bad. Your cell phone will become useless. Your car might not start – and if it does, gas station fuel pumps will not operate. If you require medication that needs to be refrigerated, it will be ruined – and replacements will be unavailable. (If you require dialysis or some other regular procedure that requires electricity, you will likely die.) The same goes for all of your neighbors and loved ones.

This the scenario we might face if the United States is attacked (or naturally suffers from) an electromagnetic pulse (or EMP) – the topic of this week’s episode of "Newt’s World."

EMP security

Scientists Are Zapping Fake Electrical Grids to Help Us Survive an EMP Attack

If you’re a doomsday prepper or were alive during the Cold War you may already be aware – and fearful – of an imminent electromagnetic pulse (EMP) event. It’s a disaster scenario that’s captured the imaginations of filmmakers and video game creators, as well as legitimate organizations, like the United States government.

EMPs are brief but powerful jolts of high-frequency electromagnetic waves that can fry electronics – and on a grander scale may have the capability to cripple power grids, leaving millions of people without electricity. It’s been theorized that we’d plunge back into the dark ages, or worse — in 2017, representatives from the now defunct EMP Commission cited comments that a worst-case scenario could lead to millions of deaths.  

EMP disasters are the stuff of science fiction, but they’re not beyond reality. We’ve seen massive solar flares — like the one during the 1859 Carrington event — cause electronic systems  nationwide to fail (although telegraph lines were the main casualty back then). And knowing how powerful these blasts can be, the United States and Russia found ways to weaponize EMPs during the Cold War via nuclear bombs.

But besides theorizing about the threats that EMPs could pose to civilization, little research has been done on what the actual impact of an EMP event would be, and what we can do to prepare in the event of a disaster.

EMP security

Feds fear EMP 'meltdown' of nuclear power plants

The federal government’s new focus on preventing disaster in a natural or terrorist electromagnetic pulse attack is drawing attention to a lack of testing and preparation at the nation’s nuclear power plants, where a resulting meltdown could cause radiation deaths.

Tucked into the back of a new report from the Electromagnetic Defense Task Force compiled to highlight the EMP threat to U.S. infrastructure and military installations, the nation’s nuclear regulators admitted that the electric generating plants are not prepared for an attack.

What’s more, they don’t know how deadly an attack would be or how far the radioactive “plume” from a meltdown would extend and suggested instead that deaths would first come from an inability to find food and clean water.

“If all engineered and proceduralized mitigation measures failed and a meltdown were to occur, there is a very large uncertainty in off-site consequences,” said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in response to the concerns raised in the report, provided to Secrets.

EMP security

The Weaponization Of The Electromagnetic Spectrum

The information age is evolving the very nature of warfare. Today, each nation increasingly depends on closely integrated, high-speed electronic systems across cyberspace, geospace, and space (CGS).  But, it’s a cause of great concern if an enemy can easily use a weapon like a small, inexpensive EMP device. An EMP weapon can deny any individual or entity across a nation the ability to use electromagnetic waves for their digital infrastructure and digital connectivity, e.g. radio, infrared, and radar. Moreover, a nuclear blast can also trigger an EMP effect, as can a solar storm. Individually and collectively, this emerging reality understandably changes the nature of warfare, the focus of the war, and the target of warfare, shaking up the very foundation of security.

Electronic warfare is on our doorstep, and no nation seems to be fully prepared. Since electronic warfare appears to already be on our doorstep, in order to meet the complex EMP warfare challenges that are seriously threatening the very progress and advances nations have made in CGS, it is essential to evaluate how prepared each nation is today in their defensive as well as offensive capabilities. How are nations addressing the security challenges to their CGS?

EMP security

OPINION: Finally, at last, protection against EMP

For years now, we have been warned that rogue states - particularly North Korea - could turn our country into a living hell by exploding a nuclear bomb in the atmosphere over America. The electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) from such a blast would fry our electrical circuits and transistors and put much of our grid out of operation. A Caracas-style blackout would descend on our nation and last, potentially, for weeks or even months.

Hospitals would not be able to function. Food could not be delivered to urban areas. The water supply would be disrupted. Mass death and starvation would ensue.

Despite the scientific consensus that this catastrophe is quite possible, our government has done little to nothing to protect us. Until now. President Donald Trump has acted. Finally.

After years of pressure from Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Democrats such as Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts and former Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, Trump issued an executive order to protect us against EMP.

The order centralizes anti-EMP planning in the White House, taking it away from the departments of Energy and Homeland Security, which have underestimated the importance of anti-EMP measures.

EMP security

WHITE HOUSE RELEASES NATIONAL EMP STRATEGY

President Donald Trump has directed the federal government to enhance the country’s preparedness for EMP attacks and “space weather” events, such as solar storms and flares.

In announcing the release of the National Space Weather Strategy and Action Plan, the White House noted the historical record that firmly establishes the dangerous impact these phenomena can have on Earth:

“In 1859, the largest solar storm on record created a dangerously powerful electromagnetic pulse event, or EMP, that short-circuited telegraph wires and started fires. In 1989, the Earth again experienced a major space weather event, resulting in a nine-hour power outage in Quebec and causing damage to power grid components in the United States. More recently, in Sweden, space weather events in 2003 and 2015 resulted in electric power blackouts, rerouting of commercial flights, and closure of Swedish airspace for more than an hour.”

The National Space Weather Strategy and Action Plan will better prepare the nation’s critical infrastructure and security for future space weather events through three main objectives:

• Enhancing the Protection of National Security, Homeland Security, and Commercial Assets and Operations. In order to protect against space weather events, we must first understand how these events might affect critical infrastructure and national security assets. This understanding can inform the development and deployment of technologies and other approaches to limit the consequences of these events. Activities to increase the resilience of homeland and national security critical assets and systems are key to protecting the Nation from the most potentially devastating effects of space weather...

EMP security

Trump orders feds to prep for EMP attack

President Trump has ordered federal government agencies to harden the nation’s infrastructure against potentially devastating attacks by a nuclear-bomb-produced electromagnetic pulse, or EMP.

“The federal government must foster sustainable, efficient, and cost-effective approaches to improving the nation’s resilience to the effects of EMPs,” Mr. Trump stated in an executive order signed Tuesday.

EMP is produced from nuclear blasts, special electronic weapons or solar storms and can damage or disrupt critical infrastructure.

The order notes that a high-altitude EMP can be set off by a nuclear detonation at about 24 miles above Earth or higher. Another danger is an EMP caused by a natural sun-caused geomagnetic storm. Both can affect electronics over large geographic areas.

The directive sets U.S. policy to prepare for the EMP incidents through governmentwide efforts and encouraging the private sector, which owns much of the electrical infrastructure, to adopt protective measures.

EMP security

North Korea's Satellites Could Unleash Electromagnetic Pulse Attack

North Korea reportedly is rebuilding its Sohae satellite launch facility, widely interpreted as threatening to resume intercontinental missile development — ignoring the greater immediate threat from North Korea’s satellites and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack.

Dr. William Graham, EMP Commission Chairman, in "North Korea Nuclear EMP Attack: An Existential Threat," on Oct. 12, 2017, warned Congress:

"While most analysts are fixated on when in the future North Korea will develop highly reliable intercontinental missiles, guidance systems, and reentry vehicles capable of striking a U.S. city, the threat here and now from EMP is largely ignored. EMP attack does not require an accurate guidance system because the area of effect, having a radius of hundreds or thousands of kilometers, is so large.

"No reentry vehicle is needed because the warhead is detonated at high-altitude, above the atmosphere. Missile reliability matters little because only one missile has to work to make an EMP attack against an entire nation."

EMP security

US would be crippled by an EMP attack, which we pioneered nearly 60 years ago

...Our telephone systems are no longer copper wire and circuit-based. They are computer networks moving voice, video and data on fiber strands at the speed of light. However, just like in 1960, they are vulnerable to a single strike. This time a single EMP weapon could fry the electronics and devices carrying our network and internet traffic — among other, more destructive, things.

An EMP attack sends an electromagnetic shock. According to The Heritage Foundation, this shock “…disrupts electronics, such as sensors, communications systems, protective systems, computers, and other similar devices.” The insidious scheme of an EMP attack is that it doesn’t destroy buildings or kill people directly — It doesn’t have to. And the effects are both immediate and long-term.

The very first victim of an EMP attack — or its lingering effects, at least — was the United States. It was self-inflicted. One day after the detonation of Starfish Prime, AT&T launched the communications satellite Telstar, which relayed the very first transatlantic television signal between the United States and France. During its brief life, Telstar transmitted telephone calls and faxes in addition to television signals. 

EMP security

China, Other Regimes Developing EMP Bombs That Can Wipe Out 90 Percent of Populations

A newly released U.S. congressional study says that China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are developing powerful weapons that won’t kill people directly but can cripple critical life-sustaining infrastructure and cause mass populations to eventually die out.

The study, titled “Nuclear EMP Attack Scenarios and Combined-arms Cyber Warfare” was written in July 2017 by Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, an expert on national and homeland security and director of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, a congressional advisory board. It was only cleared for public release by the U.S. Department of Defense in July 2018.

Last week, the report was published for the first time, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.

Any nuclear weapon can generate electromagnetic pulses (EMP). But EMP bombs, sometimes referred to as sixth-generation weapons, can generate strong gamma rays and other radiation that spread very quickly. The radiation interacts with the oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the air to generate an extremely strong electromagnetic pulse. These pulses can damage all electrical and electronic equipment within the radius of the bomb.

Meanwhile, a super-EMP bomb, also known as a nuclear EMP, causes a nuclear explosion through electromagnetic radiation, the study noted.

EMP security

America’s Achilles’ Heel: Electromagnetic Pulse Weapons

America is the greatest superpower in world history. Achilles was the greatest mythical warrior in the Trojan War. But even he had a fatal vulnerability.

Editor in chief Gerald Flurry emphasized in the January 1995 Philadelphia Trumpet that the Achilles’ heel of the United States military is its dependence on information technology. If an enemy of the U.S. could sabotage this technology, it could conquer the nation. One of the main ways to sabotage information systems is cyberwarfare. But there are others.

The U.S. Air Force released an Electromagnetic Defense Task Force report on November 28. It concluded that an electromagnetic pulse generated by solar flare or a nuclear weapon could cripple communication systems that the military desperately needs. Such an eventuality would fulfill a major Bible prophecy.

EMP security

Our enemies could use nuclear weapons to create EMP attack

While the threat of aggression by North Korea or the Islamic State lingers, the basic existence of our civilization is not threatened as much as it has been in prior generations.

During the Cold War the Soviet Union was poised to launch thousands of nuclear weapons at a moment’s notice toward our homeland and our allies. Combined with our massive retaliation, this could have spelled the end of modern life. We now know that several close calls nearly resulted in this unthinkable destruction of human civilization.

While we are living in a time of relative peace, it is the job of the government to assess various threats and make plans to prepare for them. One potential threat currently being debated is the risk of an attack by a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP). In fact, on Jan. 30, the House Homeland Security Committee is going to discuss the risks posed by such an attack. 

Essentially, a HEMP is the use of a nuclear device exploded high above the earth that does not destroy targets and kill people with blast, fire and radiation. Instead, the HEMP attack sends a powerful burst of electromagnetic energy towards its target that has the capability to destroy electrical systems and high technology microcircuits, such as electricity transmission lines. A HEMP attack could take down the electric grid that we all use to power our homes, businesses and nearly every aspect of modern life.

EMP security

Official Washington flocking to Doomsday Camps

A building network of backwoods doomsday camps around the country are pulling in members from affluent areas and even Washington national security officials as the threats grow from nuclear war, an EMP or virus attack.

Called Fortitude Ranch, the outposts promise protection and a year’s supply of food for those unable to build their own bunker. What’s more, until a crisis strikes, they are being used for prepper training and vacations.

“We’re seeing members from all the three letter agencies,” said Fortitude creator Drew Miller, a retired Air Force colonel and intelligence officer, in a reference to the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

He called an attack or even a weather-related electromagnetic pulse shutdown of the electric grid “inevitable,” and a driving force in his project.

One of his members from the Baltimore area, speaking on background, said that he and others joined after “waking up” to the potential of a national crisis from an attack, financial meltdown or political violence. “For most of us, something rattled our cages and woke us up,” he said.

EMP security

The Left Continues to Downplay EMP Threat

While Americans debate the Second Amendment “right to bear arms” the First Amendment “freedom of speech” imperils national existence when any fool can publish an article belittling the threat from electromagnetic pulse (EMP).

“The Hype and the Reality of the EMP Threat” (Geopolitical Futures: February 15, 2018) purports to take a “middle view” on EMP, but really bends over backwards to dismiss or minimize the EMP threat, especially from North Korea. The author is clearly a non-expert on EMP as he makes many mistakes:

— Contrary to the author, the short-wavelength E1 EMP, not the long-wavelength E3 EMP, is the more dangerous and damaging form of EMP, as it can destroy small electronics, such as computers, cause cars to stall, make airplanes fall out of the sky, and cause more widespread and deeper damage to the electric power grid and other critical infrastructures than E3 EMP.

— Contrary to the author, an EMP attack from a low-yield 10 KT warhead would cause an E1 EMP field on the ground about 600 kilometers in radius, but the damage will not be confined to the field. Such an attack would assuredly cause cascading failures and a prolonged blackout of the Eastern Grid, that supports most of the U.S. population and generates 75 percent of U.S. electricity...

EMP security

Electromagnetic Pulse A triggering catastrophe that could prompt nationwide blackout, civil war

...Electromagnetic pulse [EMP] can take two forms: the first comes from, he explains, the results of a natural or man-made EMP and would be very extreme solar activity;  the second from an enemy detonated nuclear weapon above the atmosphere in the purposive attempt to create an EMP. different, but either could be catastrophic for the U.S.

” Research also determined that our systems are unable to respond effectively to an event that knocks out power to a large region or the nation as a whole… Because virtually all financial transactions and communications are now conducted electronically, without electricity regions would lose the ability to buy, sell,and communicate instantly… Most individuals would lose access to food and medicine after around three days. Law enforcement would cease to exist in most localities within a week… Over a year the effects of a nationwide blackout would approach the level of a limited nuclear war.”

Prof.Andres concludes that because the Grid is owned and regulated by so many different companies and groups, it is the individual states rather than the federal government, that are responsible for protecting against EMP.

It is not easy to assess the probability of EMP occurring in the future, and no one likes to imagine the effects. So it is probably easy, with so many other detectable problems, to ignore this disaster possibility. It is also not hard to recognize that this could be an enormous mistake.

What are the implications for action? First and foremost, as the National Defense University analysis contends, it is up to state and local governments to enact regulations to protect against EMP threats to the Grid. Companies should be required by law to protect themselves.

EMP security

Expert: EMP Weapons Are a "Loony Idea"

If a war were to breakout on the Korean peninsula over Pyongyang’s development of long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and its thermonuclear weapons development efforts, the resulting conflict would be catastrophic even if it remained purely conventional. Worse still would be if nuclear weapons were used—which could ultimately escalate into Armageddon.

While the devastation that nuclear weapons can wrought on to cities and other population centers is obvious, the use of tactical nuclear weapons is often overlooked. In the case of Pyongyang using tactical nuclear weapons to defeat a U.S.-led military intervention, American and allied forces might suffer more damage than many might expect—particularly from the effects of electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) generated by such weapons. EMPs can do serious damage of electrical systems that are not specifically hardened to withstand such events. Indeed, U.S. forces are particularly vulnerable due to America’s reliance on networks and advanced sensor system—many of which were developed after the end of the Cold War.