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UK In Danger From Electromagnetic Bomb, Says Defense Secretary

judgecorp writes "Britain must build defenses against an EMP bomb, the UK Secretary of Defense Phillip Hammond told a conference today. Electromagnetic Pulse devices mimic the result of a solar flare or a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere, creating a storm of electromagnetic radiation, which can break mobile networks and satellite systems. Any preparation for solar storms must also consider the possibility of deliberate electromagnetic events, warns Hammond."

13 of 268 comments (clear)

  1. Re:US and UK, best friends forever by jimmydevice · · Score: 5, Funny

    This will take needed money from the initiatives to protect the country from zombies, aliens and robots.

  2. We're in danger from everything and we need by GauteL · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ..an infinite amount of money to protect us.

    Seriously. If the ministry of defence thinks we need to protect from this they can evaluate it up against other threats and spend their existing money accordingly.

    1. Re:We're in danger from everything and we need by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Let me explain something to you.

      A few years ago a substantial part of the research division of the Ministry of Defence was privatised (!) as a mysterious firm called "Qinetiq" and now much of it belongs to US businesses (!!). This research arm then sells back to the MoD at a profit.

      The absurd arrangement means that a great part of the MoD's remit is now to provide corporate welfare to the US "defense" industry. If the MoD say they need something, what they actually mean is that one of their friends is selling something.

      If you thought that the US government was corrupt, they are nothing on the UK. Over the last fifteen years our government's only progress has been a year on year increase in the amount of money it channels to private businesses.

  3. Non nuclear by Dupple · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's possible to generate an EMP without nuclear detonation using an 'explosively pumped flux compression generator'. It's range is limited compared that of an nuclear generated EMP.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse#Non-nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse

    --
    Watch those corners
  4. Re:US and UK, best friends forever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Especially robots. The threat of an electromagnetic bomb is the only reason they haven't attacked yet. They'll revolt the moment this threat is neutralized.

  5. Re:US and UK, best friends forever by captainpanic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What is your supporting evidence that the rest of the world is living in peace? Syria? Libya? North Korea? Iran? Or some combination of all of them?

    There are other countries too. Cherrypicking the 4 unsafest countries is not going to convince me that the world is at war.

    Anyway, I am not buying the latest scaremongering story that demands we spend more on defense.

  6. Re:I expect typical british responce... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    In the event of an EMP disaster all lamp posts will be manned by a government sketch artist...

  7. Re:US and UK, best friends forever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The rest of the world lives in peace?

    You're delusional, my good chap.

    There are genocides in Africa, civil unrest and brutal crushing of riots across the largely dictator-led Middle East and North Africa, Israel-Palestine conflict, drug fueled organized crime in Central and South America threatening to tear countries apart, China and India crushing and slowly eradicating Tibet and Nepal, tribal warfare, civil war in tribal areas of Pakistan, in South Philippines, genocide in West Papua.

  8. Re:New Country Same Shit by Technician · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Proper surge protection, spark gaps, low pass filters, etc provide a high degree of protection. Narrow band antennas of a grounded design such as a yagi, will recieve power within it's passband.

    Unshielded electronics such as your clock radio are hard to protect. Shielded equipment with power filtering, metal cases, over voltage protection, etc are relatively safe. Your desk top computer has an antenna wire attached to the keyboard and mouse, so these are vunerable. A traditional RFI metal case tower PC with all external cables removed would make a nice spare that can be quickly deployed after an attack.

    A single point ground at the utility power and telcom entry into a building provides high levels of protection against the lower frequency components of an EMP as MOV, Spark Gap, and other protection is fast enough to ground it. A noise filter for the house power will block the higher frequencies so the over voltage devices can protect the load.

    http://www.ese.upenn.edu/detkin/instruments/misctutorials/Ground/grd.html

    Proper grounding, noise filtering, shielding, and overvoltage protection will provide a high degree of protection to EMP.

    --
    The truth shall set you free!
  9. Re:US and UK, best friends forever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's see:

    * Syria hasn't started any wars that I know of. It is, however, being threatened with war by the US, UK, and France.
    * Libya didn't start any wars, either. It was attacked by the US, UK, and France.
    * North Korea is ruled by a dictator who oppresses his people but hasn't started any wars.
    * Iran hasn't started any wars but has certainly been attacked by a US proxy.

    So what does that tell us about which countries want to live in peace, and which ones don't?

  10. Re:US and UK, best friends forever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What's unsafe about Iran? And why is it not peaceful? I don't remember Iran invading other countries and building military bases all over the world.

    Get a fucking clue.

  11. Re:EMP Bombs? Really? by semi-extrinsic · · Score: 5, Informative
    Maybe you should read what you linked?

    The range of NNEMP weapons (non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse bombs) is severely limited compared to nuclear EMP. This is because nearly all NNEMP devices used as weapons require chemical explosives as their initial energy source, but nuclear explosives have an energy yield on the order of one million times that of a chemical explosive.

    In fact, weaponized NNEMPs are only possible for surgical strikes at strategic locations. These are typically hard to access; if terrorists can get to them, EMPs are the least of your worries.

    To paraphrase: if terrorists in a western country had 1000 kg of explosives sitting around, they wouldn't use it as an EMP.

    --
    for i in `facebook friends "=bday" 2>/dev/null | cut -d " " -f 3-`; do facebook wallpost $i "Happy birthday!"; done
  12. Re:US and UK, best friends forever by geekymachoman · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ok, parental advisory ahead. Might be modded as troll, because people here really piss me off with their ignorance and fucking opinions that are nothing more then text-book propaganda, and I'm reading it every god damn day, and keeping silent about it.

    Yeah. Civil wars because "your" Government wants it, and initiates such things through NED and other organizations in foreign states. I'm Serbian btw, you did same here (in Yugoslavia). Your government (with a blessing of its people) systematically destroyed lives of countless generations in just one state. Now go to google and search for all the wars you initiated, then think of all those people living in those states, that have done nothing wrong in their life. Fuck you if you say it's collateral damage, because everything is not black and white and if you can't figure that out on yourself, then I won't bother wasting my time explaining and discussing anything with people like you.

    Every fucking war in last whatever years has been initiated in some way by western powers, for their own interests / or when the banana state stops obeying your governments or when corporate interests are there, and many other reasons.

    And you're clueless about such things. Which is why you're country is constantly at war with someone, and killing off people of some country (when you kill people it's in the name of "democracy" and "freedom " - fucking hypocritical lying fascist bastards).

    You should all be ashamed of yourself for letting these thing happen. But you'll run away and stick your head into the sand and behave like nothing is happening (again), because you either don't care or you're too dumb to "figure it out". You'll come here to comment about it, and then in few months/years go vote for next war mongering overlord which is gonna continue killing people in the name of above mentioned freedom and democracy.