Readers of this blog are, no doubt, generally aware of the threats of what an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) can do. It can “fry” electric infrastructures in a large or small area, rendering electric power non-functional in the affected area. It is a threat that can originate with a solar flare if it discharges directly at the earth, if it is used as a weapon by a national enemy of the USA, if such a weapon is used by terrorists or even if cyber terrorists “fry” a region’s electrical infrastructure as part of a terrorist attack. This is a severe threat to American national security and a major threat to the lives of all Americans (as the recent best-selling book, One Second After, detailed).
In spite of this well-known and well-documented threat to national security, the US federal government has done virtually nothing to protect American citizens from this danger. Some military systems have been “hardened” against an EMP pulse, but it is not really known how many US military systems could function after an EMP pulse was used against them (see first link). It is widely-accepted that virtually no civilian electrical system would function. Amazingly, the second link relates that the electrical industry itself has opposed protecting America’s electrical infrastructure from the EMP threat. That amazes me as those same electrical companies will almost surely go bankrupt if their systems are down for a long time and their firms can generate no power or income. Since this danger is well-known by the industry, the lawsuits against the industry for its inaction if such events occurred from injured corporations and individuals would be endless.
In an extraordinary move, the state of Maine has passed legislation “ordering” that its electrical grid be “hardened” against an EMP pulse threat (second link). Given the inaction by both President Obama and the US Congress to meet this threat, the state of Maine has taken an action which every American state ought to quickly emulate. I urge readers to contact their state legislators about the action taken in Maine, and to urge them to pass similar legislation. As the aforementioned book documents very well, your life may depend on how well your state or region is equipped to defend its electrical infrastructure against an EMP attack or solar EMP event. Given the interconnectivity of each state’s electrical systems to those of other states, it behooves states to act together to ensure that contiguous states can survive such an EMP blast.
As a personal aside, I was once told by a retired US Air Force colonel that the US military has known perhaps as far back as the late 1970s or 1980s that Soviet (Russian) war-fighting strategy was based on using EMP weapons on a target nation in the opening round of an attack to disable as much of the attacked nation’s military and communications abilities as possible as well as to throw its civilian population into immediate danger and panic. What would happen is described very well in the aforementioned book, which you should be able to find at your local library (I highly recommend that you read it and I did a post on it when the book was new). This retired USAF colonel also told me a story which is anecdotal, but I believed the source was reliable. He told me that when the USA stole a then-current state of the art Soviet-era fighter jet, the US engineers laughed at the Soviet’s backwardness because their warplane was equipped with vacuum-tube technology (the same kind the USA went to the moon with in its NASA program). The laughing stopped when it was realized that the Russian warplanes, because of their vacuum-tube equipment on board, could survive and fight during an EMP attack (vacuum tube technology is generally not harmed by an EMP blast as it does not have digital circuitry) and American warplanes would all be useless. That is when the USA reportedly developed a crash-course to protect critical US military systems under President Reagan. Whether subsequent American presidents have taken this threat as seriously remains to be seen.
It seems obvious to me that a focused EMP beam from even a hand-held, EMP-generating device could disable all kinds of military hardware and systems. Russia already has apparently built and used small EMP devices that can be used in a very localized area. I did a previous post on this very subject which you will find as the third-most recommended link re: the subject on a Google search I did for this post (see last link).
Obviously, any military contract should require that the weaponry being purchases be “hardened” vs. an EMP attack. If a military contract is set out for bids without that requirement, the staff who let the bids should be fired automatically for dereliction of duty, in my opinion. Civilian electrical and electronic infrastructures should also be similarly-protected.
The USA seems to be significantly lagging behind the Russians in preparing for EMP warfare, which could have very negative implications for the USA in the climactic Gog-Magog war which is prophesied to end this age before decisive Divine intervention occurs in mankind’s affairs (Ezekiel 38-39). See my article re: Ezekiel 38-39 for a full discussion of this war described prophetically in great detail in Ezekiel 38-39 to occur during the “latter days” of our current age.
My thanks to a friend for alerting me to the second link.
