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Expert Warns: Civilian World Not Ready For Massive EMP-Caused Blackout
schwit1 (797399) writes "An electromagnetic pulse is a burst of electromagnetic energy strong enough to disable, and even destroy, nearby electronic devices. In the first few minutes of an EMP, nearly half a million people would die. That's the worst-case scenario that author William R. Forstchen estimated would be the result of an EMP on the electric grid. 'If you do a smart plan — the Congressional EMP Commission estimated that you could protect the whole country for about $2 billion,' Peter Vincent Pry, executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and director of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, told Watchdog.org. 'That's what we give away in foreign aid to Pakistan every year.' He said the more officials plan, the lower the estimated cost gets. 'The problem is not the technology,' Pry said. 'We know how to protect against it. It's not the money, it doesn't cost that much. The problem is the politics. It always seems to be the politics that gets in the way.'"
Reading summary: this seems pretty stupid and a little fear-mongery for slashdot.
Click link: Fox news, figures. Usual shit reporting and lack of detail. Obamacare not mentioned anywhere in article.
Click link in article to watchdog.org: not much more detail, more zomg fear crap, still no mention of obamacare.
Read comments on watchdog.org: ok, I’m out
Not saying there isn’t something to talk about here, but linking to fox news for this kind of topic is like linking to a local news report on heartbleed. We aren’t the audience for this level of reporting.
That's what we give away in foreign aid to Pakistan every year.
...Is he implying America is giving that aid from the kindness of their heart?
really? why not more reputable sources like infowars of CNS?
See subject.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...
The degeneration of society seems to be pretty plausible. Kind of ties in with the "post-apocalyptic skills" thread of a few weeks ago.
"The problem is the politics. It always seems to be the politics that gets in the way." Yeah except for the NSA, they seem to always get their way and continue their way even afterwards. Just do what they do, claim mass terror is coming all the time and people will listen and vote for it. There simple right? btw, throw is something about women and children, that helps too I hear.
Leaving out that there is no way to protect what is essentially a massive antenna some several hundred thousand miles long, we'd have bigger problems.
I just happen to sell asteroid repellent and giant lizard repellent. If you order before midnight, you can get some ginsu knives too.
I've been getting -1 for saying some posts are BS.
I'd be worried if people start giving me positive scores and nothing gets corrected.
I'm not saying it's not a bad thing. But 500K people in a few minutes? Yeah, right.
Change "die" to "get injured" and we might have a discussion. IMHO, news stories from non-GOP supporting sites also carry higher credibility.
BTW, and please correct me if I'm wrong, isn't Fox the network to which was granted the right to lie?
http://foxnewsboycott.com/resources/fox-can-lie-lawsuit/
PS: Feel free to downvote this post. I assure you I'll find it quite normal. Alas, I don't want positive scores here... I don't to be seen in bad company.
This isn't anything new. We have heard all this before.
But I damn well am against Homeland security doing anything to counter it, because they always twist things around to use it against the American people and support the fascist oligarchy.
... for his pet project?
And then what? 40 billion to protect ourselves from the alien invasion?
Well, the EMP guys are more persuasive.
Compare their worst-case scenario here versus that of the anti-NSA crowd: "They'll catch everybody stashing pot and pirating porn!"
Nuclear detonation? We'd have worse things to worry about then (like ionizing radiation killing us all). Solar flare activity? How the hell would you even protect the entire planet from something that powerful in the first place? Don't we have more immediate things to worry about than something as unlikely as this?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
As we've learned, just because we spend that money doesn't mean we get shit for it in return. A few select people will just get richer pocketing that money and us commoners will continue to get shafted.
The worst case scenario of the NSA is that the government will use the information to target anyone who does something it doesn't like, such as criticize it. They'll be able to find out who to target, and they'll be able to more effectively screw them over. Do not belittle the danger of tyranny.
I know it would vary based on the yield of the nuke and the relative shielding of the device, but let's say...
1) "Rogue" small-yield nuke detonated at ground-level (eg, snuck onto a shipping container or other similar delivery).
2) Standard-size ICBM delivered to target intended for ground destruction.
3) Standard sized ICBM delivered for maximum EMP yield.
Can you use a single nuke to EMP the entire continental US?
What kind of shielding is necessary to block EMPs? Is my TV in the top floor of my house junk but maybe my PC in the basement likely unaffected? Is there a shared risk from the electric grid?
Yeah... considering *everything* has a processor in it and it not protected against EMP... Yeah. It would be a shit show.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Details are light and scary claims heavy. I can't see half a million dying unless all the planes fall out of the sky and all hospital equipment fries. Maybe a few thousand on the roads as confused old people find themselves without power steering and brakes.
Just two billion to harden the commercial air fleet and hospital equipment? Please.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This will be the epitaph of our civilization.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The people who die in the first few minutes are going to be those who's lives are dependent on technology. That's list contains almost exclusively those in planes and those dependent on medical devices. How's a power grid update going to protect those people? Hospitals already have backup generators and you can't do anything about fried equipment.
TFA is kinda small on any details, but what do you expect from Fox News. How exactly does 2 Billion "protect" everyone from an EMP weapon? Have we found something as good a what we currently use, but won't break? Old Vacuum tubes are a nice protection against a system that could go down, but you never want it to go down. You can't really use the good vacuum tubes ether so you're stuck in 1940's tech for a lot of stuff. How exactly does this 2 Billion stop the pace makers from breaking, the planes from falling, and every hospital patient from dying in those few initial hours. That money might help for long term protection by setting up a process to recover from such an event, but I don't really see anything that says it will protect us from the massive initial death toll.
Isn't that much when you consider all of the nation's electric utilities. It'll be interesting to see how Congress spins this: As a requirement to be imposed upon each utility as a part of their normal maintenance and reliability obligations. Or as Impending Doom, requiring the immediate transfer of federal funds into the coffers of the nations' utilities. Including the investor-owned outfits.
I'm placing my bet on the "Doom" option.
Have gnu, will travel.
...whether Cold War-flavored (so very 1980s) or terrorist-flavored (so very 9/11), wouldn't these relatively straightforward precautions LIKEWISE buffer us against the effects of the sorts of solar activity that randomly seems to popup every 100 years or so?
It seems that as our society becomes more and more DEPENDENT on the interwebs, we'd want to invest a little to protect that.
(Then again, one might assume that because our entire economy runs on the roadways, we'd want to invest in them too...)
Yet the Republicans are too wedded to utter prohibition on taxation, and the Democrats are too busy taking the tax revenues we do get and pouring great gobs of cash onto various interest groups for either of them give a shit about the ACTUAL public weal.
-Styopa
Does anyone know what the so-called "politics" are that get in the way of just going and doing it, or is this doublespeak for the idea that it's going to be hard and not particularly rewarding work that nobody ultimately really wants to do?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This "civilian world" is sitting fat, dumb and happy watching reality TV shows about the people who are more ready than they are. Those "crazy preppers" who are trying to prepare for such things are probably going to see the zombie masses looking not for a pound of flesh, but for the food and supplies that they made fun of preppers for stockpiling.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
If people start exploding megaton class warheads 200 km above our soil, I would say that we have other things to worry about.
Or, to put it another way, that $ 2 billion is being spent, and it's being spent several times over, just not here.
I guess my grandma reads /. now. Since that seems to be the demographic you're targeting.
/.. I enjoyed the topics and the discussions were often as informative as the stories, sometimes more. This is just not the case anymore. /. has degraded to just an old grocery store check out line rag. Very little actual content. Scare tactic headlines. You know the drill.
There was once a time that I got about 65% of my news from
"Politics" in this case means that they haven't convinced the government that this money needs to be spent on them. Given that in these cases the government tends to have a bias towards spending money, I would regard that as telling.
Some people live in the clouds...which is exactly where an EMP would need to be to be effective.
If that were to happen, it would mean someone with a delivery system fired on the US and there would be a lot more on the way. Those latter ones would physically take out the infrastructure, so protecting from EMP is kind of redundant.
Context is critical when assessing vulnerability...otherwise you just sound like an idiot that needs to be fired.
Fox News hysteria, now available on slashdot!
Starfish prime is interesting, though.
This "civilian world" is sitting fat, dumb and happy watching reality TV shows about the people who are more ready than they are. Those "crazy preppers" who are trying to prepare for such things are probably going to see the zombie masses looking not for a pound of flesh, but for the food and supplies that they made fun of preppers for stockpiling.
You've made one rather large assumption about the "civilian world', at least in the US. The masses are armed.
When it comes to stockpiling, one must wonder what will ultimately be more valuable in the apocalypse. Food, or bullets to take or defend food.
I don't know which is more amazing
- Republi-tarian Fox News bitching because we're not spending *enough* on public infrastructure, coordinated by the Fed, or
- That anybody's surprised that Fox is running an article to appeal to apocalypse-hungry preppers.
I really expect another Carrington Event (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_event/) first. No enemy necessary but the results would be the same.
No hour on a horse is ever wasted. Winston Churchill
Yes, the article is sensationalist. While EMP could be a real problem, a bigger problem is that any attack that could generate a big enough EMP to knock out the electronics over half a continent would likely cause much worse problems, like World War III and Nuclear Winter. Even if it only costs a little bit, is it worth the effort to guard against EMP? Computer security is another area that you have to constantly ask if it's worth the trouble, and will proposed measures actually help? Yes, we've had many embarrassing security breaches, but that could be better if the alternative is to spend so much on security that it's cheaper to suffer the occasional breach. However I think the consensus is that we would spend less if we invested a little more in security.
Also, we have a lot of other, worse problems we're not doing much about either. Climate Disruption. Asteroid impact. And as for healthcare, how about the AIDS denial in South Africa?
We have also noted for some time that we have a lot of infrastructure that's vulnerable to terrorism. Terrorists could blow up a few critical bridges (or maybe just close a couple of lanes), poison water supplies (maybe by peeing in them), bomb stadiums when a big game is on, torch oil refineries and terminals, and no doubt many other things. Why hasn't this happened? Is it that they're trying but our security services are unsung heroes who have already foiled dozens of plots we never heard about? Or more like that the threat isn't that big, as the effort it takes to pull off something like that is more than is appreciated?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Would .5 million people die?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
If NBCCBSABCCNN are busy abusing their "Breaking News" banners and fauning over Michelle Obama's dress, then the alternatives are where you're going to hear about this stuff. In fact, The Blaze and Drudge have been linking to this stuff for a long time because for the people who actually care about this stuff this isn't news.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
Bring it on, I have real paper books to read. Zap all those devices. I don't care.
Here is the link to the actual article without going through Fox and Watchdog.
Error reading device 'Signature'. (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?
The people who die in the first few minutes are going to be those who's lives are dependent on technology. That's list contains almost exclusively those in planes and those dependent on medical devices.
You forgot automobile drivers who are caught off guard by their engines stalling at the same time as those in the vehicles around them stall. There will be some car crashes and some who die as a direct result or as a result of not being able to get immediate access to adequate medical care.
If you extend "minutes" to "the first 59 minutes" then you can add more people to the list.
Interestingly, some older, non-fly-by-wire planes can be landed after a complete electrical shutdown if there is no other damage to the plane, the pilot knows what he's doing, and there is a landing strip available.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The 1859 solar flare resulted in anaurora visible at the equator. It damaged telegraph lines and lighning rods. If it happened today it would be expected to fry most power line transformers and cell phone towers. there are only 5% enough spare transformers at most. Plus industrial production could have come to a halt.
This extra radiation appears to have created extra C14 from atmospheric nitrogen) at that time. Scientist have exampled tree rings, ice cores, and lake sediments for other such super storms. There is a hint of one in 774 AD . The historical records and istopes have not been studied enough to determine the recurrance of large storms.
Because, you know: If somebody could produce a massive EMP blackout in the US, he could just as well nuke Los Angeles. So it's best to spend trillions of dollars on nuclear shelters now. And constructing a doomsday world destruction device might also be a good idea, because this would act as a deterrent against the terrorists ...
The blurb clearly states "an EMP on the electric grid." Not airplanes, not cars. Essentially, Fox (ahem) "News" is spreading the BS that this guy wrote that a blackout would kill half a million people, even though we've seen blackouts of this magnitude in our lifetimes (the 2003 Northeast blackout). Are some people's memories so short and brains so stupid they've already forgotten that event and the aftermath? Here's a quick refresher: 55 million people affected. 11 deaths. ELEVEN. There's a reason Jon Stewart refers to Fox News as Bullsh** Mountain.
Okay, I'm more ignorant than I thought an I'm an idiot for posting without verifying that what I thought I knew was actually true.
5 minutes of Google should've made me realize that some of the things I thought I knew about EMP are based on mis-information I got years and decades ago.
Memo to self: Do homework fist, THEN post to /.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Science? Reality? This is clearly FUD and an attempt by someone to wring money out of the government for something that's total horsesh**.
So I read the book that guy wrote and while it was entertaining and probably accurate, it still came off as advocating giving billions to defense contractors for some unspecified fix. The forward by Newt Gingrich kinda tipped me off.
Store enough food and potable water for several months. Then when disaster comes, you'll have five wives too.
To prevent an EMP from causing the collapse of US civilization, you, at the least, need to protect:
- The power grid
- Every municipal water and sewage system
- The entire petroleum refining and distribution apparatus to a point where you can refine and distribute diesel fuel. (Can't run farm equipment or food transport without it)
- Food distribution and processing
- The public safety system (cars, computers, etc.)
- A decent portion of the telecommunications grid
- Acute medical care
- Military weapons, logistics, computer systems, and transport
- Enough of industry that the US to restart the private sector once nearly much every major employer in the country collapses when their computers get fried
There is No. Way. that can be done for a puny $2B. $2B would probably fund whatever pet project the original article was pushing, but it wouldn't actually do any good when everything else collapsed around it.
Even ignoring the threat of so-called deaths, the damage caused by a massive EMP blackout will easily measure in the hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars for North America alone. The blackout on the east coast in 2003 alone created about $10b damage to the economy... scale that up to the entire continent.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The reality is that a continent-wide power disruption, which could easily follow a solar-generated EMP if our infrastructure is not hardened against it, will do hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions of dollars of damage to the economy., The east coast blackout of 2003 alone did about $10b worth of economic damage.... scale that up to the entire continent.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
No, "politics" means the criminal assholes in Congress and the White House have no problem wasting trillions of dollars on pet feel-good projects and perpetual programs of relentless ever-increasing scope, but pontificate and argue themselves blue in the face over a billion here and there for undertakings which are unquestionably vital to safeguard the life and welfare of EVERYBODY.
We're not ready for a massive EMP... or a 500 mile high Tsunami... or Giant radioactive lizards that breath fire. I love the quote though, "In the first few minutes of an EMP, nearly half a million people would die." Well, if we're talking about an EMP that could take out the entire US including airspace, that might be true of planes falling from the sky and trains running off the rails. But that scenario isn't even remotely plausible outside total nuclear annihilation. Further, Hurrican Katrina showed that even an EMP hitting a major city is really nothing more than a power outage. Flooding happens to be the most dangerous natural disaster in reach of major cities (short of Hawaii blowing up or California splitting in half). Unless the results of an EMP are dams breaking in some Superman: The Movie kind of way, we wouldn't even see a Katrina level disaster.
Frankly, I could care less about an EMP. Any number of computer viruses could disable more machines than an EMP. And a radioactive dirty bomb is a real threat to life for decades. Any terrorist that could cause an explosion capable of triggering a sufficiently large EMP would find that the bomb itself would be more useful against a soft civilian target. An EMP is just flat out impractical for a terrorist, who prefers simple and direct and terrifying.
On the other hand, if we're worried about a bad actor like North Korea, I believe such an EMP that could hit multiple US cities at once would trigger a nuclear response from the US. What are we going to do, waste resources wrapping electronics in shielding for... an unwarranted fear? And $2 Billion sounds desperately low. It's like the TSA, only even more incredibly useless.
I8-D
After all, you can never be too careful, right?
Do you realize what careful is? For example when living in earthquake country believing that three days of supplies as recommended by the government is optimistic. So you buy three cases (adjust for family size) of bottled water rather than one, and as you use one case through normal activity you replace it so you always have 2-3 on hand. For your cupboard you purchase six cans (adjust for family size) of a particular canned good you use, when you get down to three you purchase three more, that way you always have 3-6 on hand. Do so each for canned chile, soup, peaches ... whatever you normally use. Similar story with dry goods, 1-2 boxes on hand, snack foods, etc. 1-2 packages of toilet paper. 1-2 boxes of plastic garbage bags on hand, toilet liners if water is out. 1-2 packages of batteries for some LED flashlights. A basic first aid kit with antiseptic, gauzes, tape, bandaids, aspirin/tylenol, etc; no wilderness self-surgery kit necessary. If a disaster occurs eat what is in your refrigerator first, then your freezer, then your canned goods. You can have a week or two of food just by not letting your cupboard go bare. Nothing special or exotic needed, no freeze dried food good for years necessary. No special gear beyond what a boy scout might take on a weekend camping trip is necessary.
Pretty much all you need is the stuff you normally buy and use anyway. You just don't let inventories get to zero.
Gormless twit.
OK, we finally installed the last of the EMP blocking grounded wire mesh. Lets call our boss and let him know... Hmm, no signal... Awww shit.
Hello EMP proof, good bye wireless.
I would agree with the anti-fox rant, but they are more of shit gossip news channel then anything else. And to be 'fair and balanced' you could [I am] say that about the a majority of the mainstream press/media. It is a corporation and only interested in making money. They want to report this so they can induce an attack, then go on about how Obama failed to secure America.
But i don't see the Republicans busting their asses to do anything about it either. Instead both sides are wasting money and time going to court, or having these childish fits during sessions. I want to know how much money was spent over this childish nonsense that should have been put into infrastructure.
I could go on with the Republicans puppet dance, "were here for you" babble. And you could say the same for Democrats. No one thinks for themselves in this country and you see the end result from whats going on in Washington and thru out the country at the state level. To be honest its happened since the start of government, and yet it hasn't changed. And only after a disaster do both sides pretend to actually give a shit.
I have grown accustomed to garbage links in recent years ("Dingleberry Trollbait writes: 'What is the best Linux for grandmothers? Mine is about 5'4" and likes baking. I need a Linux that comes in purple and has a great warranty.')
I had beep putting up with all of that 'content', but this fox news garbage is a new low.
I am going to look elsewhere for my tech news.
And the civilian world isn't prepared for a zombie apocalypse either, or to be suddenly attacked by hoards of man eating tigers.
Is this a slow news day?
Maybe this has something to do with it.
Why does FCC Require the Acceptance of Interference?
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/00/07/15/1940242/why-does-fcc-require-the-acceptance-of-interference
Why would we want someone able to deploy an EMP capable nuclear device to go instead with a dirty bomb or use it to cause more physical damage (i.e.: city-busting?)
Would defending against EMP like this also defend against a solar coronal mass ejection (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... ?) If it can't be justified for an event like that, I don't see the point.
We're not ready for a Godzilla attack, the eruption of Yellowstone, or the zombie apocalypse.
Load of fuss about nothing. It's never going to happen, so why %!$*%& NO CARRIER
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Slashdot isn't what it used to be. This site has become total shit over the years.
I like to pretend it always was shit, and that I and many others have simply become more intelligent over the years and so we're now able to see through it. It makes me feel better as it implies that people are becoming smarter and so there's still some hope for the world.
So ridiculous.
The power grid is ALREADY protected with things like circuit-breakers, designed to trip when lightning hits the lines, or a tower goes down. Those are probably much larger jolts than a EMP weapon is going to produce. So the big lines trip off, and 5 seconds later the circuit breakers try to close. Most of those will succeed. A few circuit breakers will fail, as they're under huge stress and they're hard to test and verify. But we are not going to all be in the dark. We may have limited internet access for a while but that may be a good thing.
Linking to a Faux News pretend news article :)
what the title says
Starfish Prime caused EMP damage in Hawaii, about 1,445 kilometres (898 mi) away from the detonation point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZoic9vg1fw
For those with tl;dr disease, a quick review of why the FIRST POSTer's comment (well done sir) is worth every mod point.
Reading summary: this seems pretty stupid and a little fear-mongery for slashdot.
Click link: Fox news, figures. Usual shit reporting and lack of detail. Obamacare not mentioned anywhere in article.
Click link in article to watchdog.org: not much more detail, more zomg fear crap, still no mention of obamacare.
Read comments on watchdog.org: ok, I’m out
The last part about the comment section of watchdog.org (trust me dont go there) consists mainly
of a turgid stream of inane comments from a single commenter (Obummer) such as:
ALERT! ALERT!! The Worst Rated Solar Flare in 2006 LASTED FOR 10 MINUTES!!
EXPERTS ESTIMATE!! Pay 2 Billion or 2 Million Will Die!!!!
But through this shite storm shines one gem :
I had a friend whose sister's husband's ex-wife's step-daughter's 1st husband made $87,000 last month selling EMP protective clothing made from recycled tin foil. You can too. Check it out at www.empinsuranceforchumps.com
Cryonics - Keep cool and carry on.
Solar storms are not that infrequent. Besides the one in 1859, Canada had one in March, 1989. And last July, we had a near-miss of a major solar storm.
My first thought would be (not as US-centric), if we experienced a worldwide EMP, losing electricity is probably the least of your worries...