I’m falling more and more in love with the prompts that Plinky.com has to offer. Today’s prompt, as the post title suggests, is: what keeps you up at night?
I perused through some of the responses and found that the two most prevalent answers were either the computer or the darkness. Those are both perfectly reasonable, but I think I’ve got something that trumps those two by far. What keeps me up is an electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States of America. That may seem a bit science-fictiony, but rest assured that it is both highly possible and increasingly likely that this will be attempted.
You’re probably vaguely familiar with the concept of EMP’s, but I’ll give you a bit more of a background on the technology. Scientists first witnessed this phenomenon during testing of the atomic bombs. When the bombs were released, scientists detected a brief, massive spike in energy levels and often lost equipment and information do to this burst of energy. The idea of using this side effect of an atomic bomb as a weapon was not particularly important because of the massive devastation already caused by the nuclear device itself. But, in recent years, we have found that you could detonate an EMP device, without a nuclear warhead, to cause massive damage to a large area. Recent increases in technology have also made this device more devastating because our electronics have become more susceptible to interference. Scientists have also found that if you detonate an EMP in the atmosphere, there is an increase in amplification and area. This means that the bomb becomes more powerful and can damage a much larger swath of land mass.
Ok, enough history and background. The scary fact about these bombs is that they can be made for an extremely low amount of money. We’re talking a few thousand dollars at most. The device would just need to be propelled to a high enough altitude to cause the maximum damage possible. In the blink of an eye, our entire civilization and country would be wiped out because every electrical device would be destroyed. The circuitry would be absolutely fried.
The Attack
Scientists and defense specialists agree that the worst possible place to be hit would be over Kansas. This means that some sort of ship (it could be anything) could launch this missile from the Gulf of Mexico set to detonate above Kansas. At the proper altitude, the burst from the EMP would hit the entire country because of the cascading effect of the weapon. Immediately, power would go out nationwide. Transformers, cars, refrigerators, cell phones, t.v.’s, computers, medical equipment, everything electronic would cease to function. If that doesn’t sound bad, think about this. Not only would it take at least a year to repair even a fraction of this damage to our infrastructure, we would be forced back in civilization roughly 200 years. Most people don’t know how to farm, hunt, or survive without a grocery store. These massive cities that we’ve created are impossible to sustain large amounts of people without technology. Can you imagine 9,000,000 people without food in New York City? It would be absolute chaos. Everyone in every town across America will immediately hit the grocery stores and steal all the food. Even without a disaster, our grocery stores are only meant to last a few days without being restocked. Harvests would go without being picked and the food would be wasted. Cattle would be killed, but not properly butchered so hundreds of pounds per animal would be wasted. People that need medical attention would immediately start dying off, and the list goes on and on. Put very simply, our country would be destroyed in the blink of an eye. People would do everything they could to just stay alive, and even that won’t be good enough for most.
The scariest part of all, is that its a difficult attack to prevent, even when you are keeping an eye out for it. Even scarier is the fact that our military is prepared for this kind of attack, but the civilian sector is not. The above scenario will still take place even though our military will be protected against it. We will be absolutely helpless. Even more frustrating is that this kind of mass chaos could be avoided if we would only spend a couple of billion of dollars a year to fix our infrastructure. Billions of dollars is a lot of money, but a drop in the bucket when you compare how much is spent each year and how much is on the line.
I recently contacted my university’s risk management office to discuss ways that they could prepare for this kind of attack. I have never received a call back. I am in the process of trying to speak with the mayor and city council to bring this problem to their attention, so that at the very least, a plan is in place. Next, I’ll be calling my Senators and congressman to push them to enact legislation that will improve our infrastructure to guard against this type of attack. I beg you to please do the same. The U.S. government is aware of this problem, but they are not taking it seriously. Together, we can and will make the changes that we need to. Contact your representative immediately. The link at the bottom of the page is a white paper written by a subcommittee of Congress about this type of attack. I implore you to read it. An excellent novel about this is William R. Forstchen’s “One Second After”. He takes a look into what life would be like in a remote town and the struggles that they face. A must read.
http://homeland.house.gov/SiteDocuments/20090721141607-36330.pdf
http://www.fas.org/man/crs/RL32544.pdf
Posted by Mike 
