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Ex-CIA Director: We're Not Doing Nearly Enough To Protect Against the EMP Threat
An anonymous reader writes: Last week saw the release of an open letter written to President Obama by a committee of notable political, security and defense experts — which includes past and present members of Congress, ambassadors, CIA directors, and others — on the country's concerning level of vulnerability to a natural or man-made Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP). An EMP has very real potential for crippling much of our electrical grid instantaneously. Not only would that immediately throw the social order into chaos, but the timeline to repair and restart the grid in most estimated scenarios would take months to a year or more.
Executive Director of the EMP Task Force Dr Peter Pry said, "Well, the short answer to [why we aren't defending against EMPs] is called the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. They used to be a trade association or a lobby for the 3,000 electric utilities that exist in this country. ... There is no part of the U.S. government that has the legal powers to order them to protect the grid. This is unusual, because in the case of every other critical infrastructure, there's an agency in the U.S. government that can require them to take actions for public safety. For example, the Food & Drug Administration can order certain medicines kept off shelves to protect the public safety. ... The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission doesn't have those legal powers or authorities."
Executive Director of the EMP Task Force Dr Peter Pry said, "Well, the short answer to [why we aren't defending against EMPs] is called the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. They used to be a trade association or a lobby for the 3,000 electric utilities that exist in this country. ... There is no part of the U.S. government that has the legal powers to order them to protect the grid. This is unusual, because in the case of every other critical infrastructure, there's an agency in the U.S. government that can require them to take actions for public safety. For example, the Food & Drug Administration can order certain medicines kept off shelves to protect the public safety. ... The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission doesn't have those legal powers or authorities."
"Come on. It's unfair!"
It's unbelievable. No, wait, that's, uh, ??
The causes of an EMP are nuclear blast or solar flare, I think in case of the former you would have far larger problems than the grid to worry about.
From TFA.
And, the NERC, which owns half of K Street and has got very deep pockets, has been successful in lobbying against legislation like the Grid Act and the SHIELD Act, both bipartisan bills supported almost unanimously by Democrats and Republicans. They've been able to stall for years and keep these bills held up. One time when we got a bill passed: the Grid Act actually, in 2010, unanimously passed the House. Everybody supported it. But Washington is so broken, one senator put a hold on a bill - if they know which senator to buy, they can buy that one senator and the person can put a hold on the bill so it can't come to the floor for a vote and they can do it anonymously. The senator doesn't have to identify themselves. So, you never know who stopped the bill.
Just heard a long-format interview with three of the signers the other day. Very interesting.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Really this should be done over the ISlamic State
The datacenters that keep account information for banks?
Fuck no. Lets do the world a favor when the shit hits the fan.
What needs to be hardened are those assets the guys in the strategic defense bunker need access to when they're sending orders to the ballistic submarines to conduct retaliatory strategic strikes.
Also fuck retaliation, that is just going to make shit worse.
There are some non-nuclear EMP weapons.
shield and fuse anything sensitive enough to have a real problem.
Simply shielding and fusing is not enough against EMP from a nuke, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
WE WANT NEW TOYZ!
How we put up with this shit really escapes me.
Wrong.
What "kills" with EMP is not that it would disable the military stuff.
It is the fact that it would disable everything needed to get clean water, food and warmth to everyone. For that you pretty much have to protect most of it. These days things like food deliveries, store inventory control, cash registers... everything is full of electronics and if everything fails, nothing moves. You are instantly down to trucks (hopefully you had some of those old style trucks that are not full of electronics in the engine) handing out emergency supplies to the people sitting in dark houses with no heating and no running water. Cue apocalypse in VERY short order.
It is actually, you naive little insect.
Let me explain this to you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Maintaining the fault tolerance of the retaliation ensures MAD. Mutually Assured Destruction.
And that preserves the deterrence of the strike.
And that means the strike is very unlikely to happen by any rational power because they know a lethal retaliation is certain.
That means the EMP never happens in the first place.
Thus the commercial and private systems are largely protected because things that don't happen can't hurt them.
How can anyone in the 21st century not understand nuclear deterrence?
The mindless headless chicken ignorance of some people will probably always amaze me.
And he presumed to call ME the neanderthal? No, child. You're the one that doesn't understand.
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As to the banks... possibly. The issue is rebuilding will be harder if we disagree about who owns what. A free for all with surviving resources will lead to chaos and that will require a command economy if you don't preserve ownership.
And that means... basically whatever remains will turn into something sort of like WW2 England or the soviet union in that everything will be rationed and the government will decide who owns things.
I'd prefer to try and preserve the existing system as it has a lot fewer cons. But to each his own on that one.
As to retaliation, to the contrary that is extremely important.
First, it is retaliation that keeps the enemy from striking you in the first place. If the enemy doesn't think you'll retaliate it makes them more likely to hit you in the first place. So you have to do that.
Second, those fuckers just glassed your cities and if you don't return the favor they're going to be in a world where your people are mostly dead/radioactive ant people... and they're totally fine. Which means they're going to rule the world if you don't knock them back. And if you do... maybe you can save your civilization. But if you don't... your people lose and will never recover.
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... would you mind clarifying your point? Your citation didn't specifically elaborate on the issue so I don't know what you're talking about.
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MAD is still insane. But due to human nature it is currently, as far as I can see, one if the less insane viable options.
To an irrational actor who only desires destruction for all, it's a gas can and matches ready for taking.
It is actually, you naive little insect.
Let me explain this to you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Maintaining the fault tolerance of the retaliation ensures MAD. Mutually Assured Destruction.
And that preserves the deterrence of the strike.
And that means the strike is very unlikely to happen by any rational power because they know a lethal retaliation is certain.
That means the EMP never happens in the first place.
Thus the commercial and private systems are largely protected because things that don't happen can't hurt them.
How can anyone in the 21st century not understand nuclear deterrence?
The mindless headless chicken ignorance of some people will probably always amaze me.
And he presumed to call ME the neanderthal? No, child. You're the one that doesn't understand.
OK neanderthal, TRY and understand this. An EMP targeted attack does not have to be state-sponsored, and all of your retaliation plans go out the fucking window when that happens, since you're looking for nothing but a state-sponsored attack to be able to execute your plans against said state in retaliation.
An EMP device does not require controlled material. That is the scary part, and why the attack vector is so much larger. This problem is not black-and-white as you make it out to be, nor is the retaliation plan. Creating a nuclear wasteland should not be the automatic go-to answer here in response to an EMP attack. That level of retaliation isn't even equal, and would likely guarantee the end of our civilization instead of leaving the planet and environment intact to rebuild our electronics.
But hey, fuck that, caveman tactics FTW. We "won", that's all that matters.
Feather-nesting bed-wetters. Why don't they predict something that will happen for a change?
The trouble is that, especially with just-in-time logistics and similar developments, there are a lot of areas where disruption of relatively boring commercial systems will mean substantial disruptions of supplies to population centers in fairly short order, as well as breakdown in the production chains for the various replacement parts that a post-EMP society might want.
If the only activity that a post-apocalyptic society need be capable of is firing zee missiles, then yeah, it's not such a hard problem. If you'd prefer not to have all your urban centers start eating themselves, though, it gets a bit trickier.
Even if it doesn't make things worse, the trouble with retaliation, 'second strike', MAD, 'deterrence', etc. is that it relies on attribution of warheads being relatively easy.
If the adversary knows that you'll know it was him if he tries anything, your big huge second strike infrastructure is pretty scary. If you can obfuscate attribution(or, worse, successfully pin it on some innocent party) the theory of deterrence becomes effectively useless.
EMPs are probably a moderately favorable case, since you need to do a reasonably visible launch to high altitude to get the best effect; but if somebody just puts a nuke in a cargo container that was supposed to contain xboxes and it levels one of the world's larger container ports, who exactly are you going to retaliate against?
... Okay... so you think something is a deterrence even if you have no intention of using it as a deterrence?
What you are suggesting is that we basically point unloaded guns at people to scare them away from shooting at us. But if they actually just shoot us anyway... we should drop the unloaded gun and die without firing a shot?
So do you suggest the police do that? Guy whips out a gun and says "I'm going to shoot people"... And then he does. He shoots them. He shoots them dead. Well, your deterrence failed. Guess we don't need the gun anymore. Just put it away. Let him finish. Let him reload. Let him just go to town.
And here is the part where I laugh at you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The deterrence only works if they know we'll do it. That bead of sweet that forms on their brow when their finger gets near the button. That only happens if they know that if they press that button, their cities get nuked in response.
And beyond even that... what is to stop them from threatening and nuking other countries TOMORROW? Day 1... they nuke us. Day 2... they nuke some other country. The point is to make sure there is no day 2... they die on day 1. End of issue.
And that isn't the whole human race. Just a handful of countries at most. South Africa will be fine. Brazil will be fine. Australia probably will be fine. Stuff like that. And because whomever started the stupid nuke war is glowing in the dark, they won't be around to annoy the countries that were just minding their own business.
But whatever, cupcake. You want to pretend you're more evolved even though you don't understand basic game theory? Oh kay, pudding.
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Just don't invite the European Minister of Parliament, if Mr. Schulz is a threat.
"This is unusual, because in the case of every other critical infrastructure, there's an agency in the U.S. government that can require them to take actions for public safety. "
That's because electricity is relatively new to the US, if one judges why the power lines are still nailed to wooden posts all over the country.
In other civilized countries those have been put 6 feet underground several generations ago.
But I guess you needed that money to bring war on foreign countries with oil.
THat there are going to be issues is likely but run the cost benefit analysis.
The benefit of having less shit to deal with on doomsday versus the probability of doomsday in the first place... and the relevance of those problems you're talking about on doomsday?
Okay... so EMP... you think there is ONLY going to be an EMP? I rather suspect that you're going to get an EMP PLUS a full nuclear strike. I don't see how you're going to just get an EMP? Are you assuming a terrorist EMP? A terrorist fires a nuke into high orbit and detonates it over the US? I mean... I don't see it happening.
A nation state would have to do that. And a nation state has territory. And territory can be retaliated against. And thus deterrence policy has some validity.
So if a nation state is doing it and they know this is going to put the US immediately into DEFCON 1... we can assume they are prepared for that which means they're going to try and hit us as hard as they possibly can as quickly as they can. Which means a full nuclear assault. A modern nuclear war is over in couple hours to a week at most. After that... everything that could launch has launched... and the damage is so extreme that neither power should retain a credible industrial base rearm.
The worries of "just in time" inventory are contextually irrelevant. You think your city is going to survive that? Call yourself lucky if you're eating dead dogs with all their hair burned off on one side... much less worrying about whether your new shipment of nikes arrived on time.
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Even if it doesn't make things worse, the trouble with retaliation, 'second strike', MAD, 'deterrence', etc. is that it relies on attribution of warheads being relatively easy. If the adversary knows that you'll know it was him if he tries anything, your big huge second strike infrastructure is pretty scary. If you can obfuscate attribution(or, worse, successfully pin it on some innocent party) the theory of deterrence becomes effectively useless. EMPs are probably a moderately favorable case, since you need to do a reasonably visible launch to high altitude to get the best effect; but if somebody just puts a nuke in a cargo container that was supposed to contain xboxes and it levels one of the world's larger container ports, who exactly are you going to retaliate against?
Answer: all of them. Specifically, ALL of the nuclear-capable threat-states.
The ones that didn't do it, will really really want to share information about who did.
Subs can second strike anybody anywhere, and wait for a time for it to be an accurately determined enemy as they are basically impossible to kill if they are hiding.
Being able to kill off some or all other states after your state is already dead creates allies, not enemies.
MAD is based on a theory by a guy who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.
And yes it is seen as a deterrence, however when that deterrence fails, to follow through with it is just stupid. Because what everyone ends up with is nothing, irrespective of which civilization they belong to.
I think you need to play a game of "Fuck you buddy" and let me know if you win.
I think we all need to have more faith in humanity than to have zenophobic reactions .
OK neanderthal, TRY and understand this. An EMP targeted attack does not have to be state-sponsored, and all of your retaliation plans go out the fucking window when that happens, since you're looking for nothing but a state-sponsored attack to be able to execute your plans against said state in retaliation.
An EMP device does not require controlled material. That is the scary part, and why the attack vector is so much larger. This problem is not black-and-white as you make it out to be, nor is the retaliation plan. Creating a nuclear wasteland should not be the automatic go-to answer here in response to an EMP attack. That level of retaliation isn't even equal, and would likely guarantee the end of our civilization instead of leaving the planet and environment intact to rebuild our electronics.
But hey, fuck that, caveman tactics FTW. We "won", that's all that matters.
How many non states do you know that can get a sophisticated, tested, and probably fifth generation or later nuclear weapon in low earth orbit at just the right height over the US while every one of their electronic devices and electronic communications are compromised or intercepted... without being noticed the entire time it's doing it?
Space aliens are the only thing I can think of... Just send a pinterest photo of your cave-painting diagram of how this will happen. We'll wait.
okay, fuckwit... if it isn't state sponsored, you're saying that a terrorist got their hands on a nuclear weapon, fired it into orbit, and then detonated it over the US? This is your scenario?
Now here is the bit where you say "well what if they didn't put it into orbit"... then the damage area will be very small and help from people outside the blast will be save the survivors. it will suck but it won't be any worse than the damage from a hurricane or something. Not great but not a reason for everyone to go to the expense of hardening everything.
As to EMP devices not requiring controlled material... lets look that up: ... Okay, did some research. You're talking about a Non-Nuclear EMP or E-Bomb? From what I can see, they're not going to knock out more than a small area. They're not powerful enough. And that is even with nation state resources.
A city losing power and having all its hardware trashed is bad but not a justification to harden fucking everything on the off chance that some terrorist is going to get such a thing and use it.
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> An EMP has very real potential for crippling much of our electrical grid instantaneously
A *nuclear* one, sure. But that would require someone to explode a nuclear bomb over the US.
Non-nuclear EMPs are a joke, and not getting better.
Your police example doesn't work because we know that if the police carry guns and intend to use them it does not stop others from having guns and using them as well. The deterrent has already failed and as proof we can name every single mass shooting in the US.
Whatever the economic value of JIT logistics and long-distance supply chains, it seems pretty clear that these dramatically increase the risk of economic disruption, especially in the food supply.
Less economically efficient supply chains with more stockpiling, warehousing and local sourcing seems much more durable.
Talks a lot about telephone lines, that looks like a VERY good reason that all those copper lines need replacing with fibre optic
The bigger the tensions in a country the more important that the infrastructure is up and running. If there is an power outage for a couple of days and your inner society tensions are not too big, life would get organized again. Most of the food I consume is produced locally. Real problems would be heating (in winter) and water supply. However, I assume that we could organize that in a couple of days based on existing catastrophe reaction plans. True health care especially hospitals will not work, however, this only affects a few people and is not threatening to society. The only determinable issue is tensions in different groups of people in town, as police will not be able to keep control in the same way.
Look, do we need to shield every fucking thing from EMP? No. Obviously not. Obviously... Not. BUT a few things really should be shielded. Core military communications, power, and computer systems? Yep.
Oh good. only the single most complicated and expensive things then. Look it's not "hard". It's more like "fucking impossible". It's hard to shield against something when you need to provide some kind of external connectivity which can act as a conduit, you're effectively talking about tuned faraday cages around powerlines. It's not only impractical, it's almost impossible to do completely from a technical perspective.
We can do a lot better than we are doing now, but to think we can actually secure these systems against an outage is dangerous ... unless you're the person selling the gear.
And that means the strike is very unlikely to happen by any rational power because they know a lethal retaliation is certain.
[Emphasis added.]
In addition to the possibility of someone irrational getting control, you have to consider launches based on accidents or limited/inaccurate information.
We really need a system that fails-safe rather than fails-MAD. Not that I have any suggestions...
BTW, supposedly a Soviet submarine commander and his political officer agreed to launch a nuclear torpedo against the US Navy during the Cuban missile crisis, and were only stopped because the fleet commander happened to be on the sub and overruled them.[*]
[*] Per a documentary on PBS last week. Unfortunately, it was not clear whether we have any evidence other than the sub's radio operator's word for it. But it was a very nasty limited-information scenario.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Q: Why are we just talking about it and why hasn't the problem been fixed?
Dr. Pry: Okay. Well, the short answer to that is itâ(TM)s called the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. They are basically the representativeâ" they used to be a trade association or a lobby for the 3,000 electric utilities [...] agency in the U.S. government [...] protect the public safety
Woolsey: [mumble mumble THEY could make a bomb]
I call NO THANKS on this transparent attempt to create yet another regulatory agency arm of DHS, and Jen Bawden who may be as concerned as I am about the grid, but sounds like she wants a boxcar on the gravy train. Mumble mumble THEY could come by boat she says. Then Woolsey and Pry go so far as to declare NERC 'worthless'. Sounds like a gub'mint involvement power grab that has little to do with engineering. To find out how little a political initiative like this will actually improve the grid, just go ahead and create this new agency, just like all the other ones. Before long everyone will be working for the Federal Government and the economy will be supported by a single hot dog vendor in Wash DC. They'll spend their whole budget creating scary power point presentations about bad-people-threats, because they'd rather not go outside.
NERC is populated by people who don't mind going outside to look at things.
NERC does need a kick in the ass though. It needs to worry less about cyberattack (which conveniently does not require you to go outside) and put a more concentrated effort into black start capability --- which is the ability (through planned procedures and simulation) to bring up the grid from complete power down This involves the identification of islands and what are called 'black start resources', stations that can power up first and help others to start. See the working document on EOP-005-x. Whatever the disaster and no matter how pervasive its effects, the first priority needs to be a firm plan for getting things going again and isolating sections that need replacement parts.
Do not let that Carrington Event stuff terrify you too deeply. In the 1859 small gauge telegraph wires were strung hundreds of miles to make the perfect EMP antenna, and its effects were what could be expected of a system that was on no way designed to withstand induced EMF. The modern grid is a lightning-arresting monster of conductor. Many old or improperly maintained components may fail in places, but it's not some slate-wiper, the greatest challenge will be merely to isolate problems and restart the rest.
Unfortunately when it comes to telephone communication this generation is pretty well screwed by a series of shitty little compromises over 30 years that will result in NO PHONES WORKING a week after major sections of the grid has gone dark, no matter if there are portable generators handy. POTS is gone, control has been centralized to distant places. Don't expect that cell tower to let you call your neighbor.
But the essential components and practice of the power grid remains the same as it was in the 70s, robust and reliable. If NERC would spend more time planning and training for black start capability, THAT is the best, possibly only, thing that would make a real difference.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
As to some philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, other thinkers occasionally having troubled minds... that is nothing new.
If I told you that the man that invented the airplane was convinced elves lived in his ears... would that mean the plane was an unsound invention?
Your argument is literally ad hominem. You're saying that because something was wrong with the person that made an argument that the argument itself is invalid.
I mean... are you literally retarded? Am I speaking to a someone with a football helmet on his head that types on this forum by banging his head into the keyboard?
I mean... you're an AC... so that is quite likely... most of you seem to have the IQ of a stunned trout. But I mean... how can you not know ad hominem is bullshit at this point? You people baffle me. You really do. Fucking learn... anything.
Also it is spelled "xenophobic"... from the greek... xenos.
Also, MAD has nothing to do with xenophobia. Just fyi... totally unrelated concepts.
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+1
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
That is a pro with fiber until you realize that the fiber has boosters every few miles and those are complicated electronic doodads.
You'd have to shield each of those and THEN you'd have to make sure those little boxes still got power.
The copper lines are actually more fault tolerant than the fiber unless you can shield and power the boosters.
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In 1859 the world was hit by an EMP from a massive solar flare, called the Carrington Event. From a comment by Sampenny in the original article.
More recently in March 1989 we had a geomagnetic storm which caused a massive blackout in Quebec. It was repaired in 9 hours, but a more massive widespread storm could take months.
Really interesting reading, found the link at the Wiki article on NEMP.
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/ees/et...
I think, as usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle (as the ORNL study points out). A few things to keep in mind:
1. Even a small nuclear weapon can cause a significant EMP. Larger weapons cause a more widespread affect, but even a relatively small 2KT weapon, targeted over a key facility, could knock out power to a large area.
2. The weapon needs to be detonated above dense atmosphere.
As far as electromagnetic pulses in general, shielding is effective ... and those who say it isn't don't understand that there are right and wrong ways to shield and ground. In my work (radio engineer), I have to do some odd-looking things to protect against lightning. A single loop in a feedline to an AM tower, for example, attenuates the lightning that comes back into my facility. Thus, I have big honkin' ball gaps at the tower base, but can get by with a smaller "horn gap" at the entry to my equipment.
Our grid could be protected with reasonable expenditures. We couldn't prevent all damage, but we could limit it. Solid-state electronics have to be protected two ways: overall shielding, and limiting/protection at the I/O points. For example, an old desktop computer in a heavy metal case, with a good ground, probably wouldn't notice the EMP ... *except* for induced voltages coming in on the video, mouse and printer cables. Those would probably send the motherboard screaming into the shrubbery. :)
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
Unless I had a real hard on for cold war nostalgia, I would definitely be exploring the possibility of attempting to develop a hard-to-attribute limited strike capability; rather than thinking about doing a full scale launch. Those are splashy; but there's nobody so obnoxious that it is worth your own society's existence to take down theirs.
A full scale nuclear exchange isn't in the interests of any rational actor, they'd be MAD to try. Obfuscating attribution, though, is probably technologically easier than effective missile defense, and a great deal cheaper; as well as opening up the possibility of actually getting to use your nukes, rather than just spending your time polishing them.
No it hasn't.
A deterrence doesn't have to be 100 percent effective to be effective.
An electric fence around live stock doesn't stop all the live stock. Some of them will jump over the fence sometimes. Sometimes they'll just get mad and run right through the fence. They're big animals sometimes. A little bit of wire isn't going to stop them. What stops them is the pain of the electric shock. But if they either leap over the fence or don't care about the pain then the fence isn't going to stop them.
Yet it does in nearly all cases. Its very effective.
You're goal post moving. Look, you want to argue MAD doesn't work? Oh KAY... the last 60 years of history call you a fool. But whatever.
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I'm going to temper that apocalyptic-looking premise with a quote from that NASA article which may provide a little... comfort.
The worst geomagnetic storm of the Space Age, which knocked out power across Quebec in March 1989, registered Dst=-600 nT. Modern estimates of Dst for the Carrington Event itself range from -800 nT to a staggering -1750 nT.
So, that's 'only' up to 3x as bad as an event that happened in 1989, and we seemed to have got through that okay (their power was cut for 11 hours apparently).
Maybe even NASA is over-reacting a bit on this then..... But like CO2 emissions, it's best not to take the chance. It is possible to protect the grid to a large extent if the world cared enough the risk. I think we're talking in the range of $billions of investment to save $trillions of damage when the inevitable happens (definitely a question of when, rather than if).
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First, please don't try and make your point with an ad-hominem attack.
Second, the idea of singing kumbaya together and living in peace has already been thought of, tried, and failed.
Okay... so you think something is a deterrence even if you have no intention of using it as a deterrence?
Yes because at this moment MAD is stopping the nuke nations glassing each other, it is the threat of using it that makes it work.
Going through with the threat does not have to be an option when the deterrence stops working.
The point is that shielding and fuses should be good enough to withstand EMP. From that reference: "Power line insulators were damaged, resulting in a short circuit on the line and some lines detaching from the poles and falling to the ground."
Look, you want to argue MAD doesn't work?
No I am not arguing that MAD does not work, I am arguing that just because a sheep jumps the fence (or a rogue nation fires a nuke) you do not have to turn it into molten glass because it does. Retaliation just creates creates escalation.
To put it in neanderthal terms:
If you hit me and I hit you back, you will hit me again, and I will hit you back.. ad infinitum...
If you hit me and I don't strike back the chance that the cycle of violence can be broken is much higher.
This applies to MAD as well.
A limited number of things in the strategic arsenal... is not... the most... complicated thing... why would you say something silly like that?
Stop saying silly things.
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Except back in 1859 it was not a terrorist or state actor that did it to us; it was SOL and the sun certainly could do it again. While we have some ability to detect and predict when the risk of such an event occurring is higher than usual there ain't much we can do about it either.
So some EMP resilience would be a nice to have. Now the doom sayers are always telling us how after only a few days without electricity we all start dying. Well an EMP is likely to damage transmission lines (because of their length) and possibly some sensitive electronics most stuff won't likely be affected unless its a very very high intensity event. The big east coast power failure of what was it 2k4? Kinda proved we can get on for at least a few days without mains power.
The bigger question is would a China or Russia who might not be similarly given their relationship to the sun at that moment of the event try and take advantage of our condition with a conventional force.
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Thanks for posting from TFA, inspired me to go read it. Pretty messed up stuff. Broken politics aside, their conjuring up of "duhr, 'cause terruhrists, russia, china, much scare, very fear!" arguments are insignificant to me.
However coronal mass ejections are very real and very scary for power distribution networks, and I would say that even without phantom evils going bump in the night, hardening power distribution against EM events is an issue all nations should tackle.
As an outsider living in Europe though looking over the pond... I must say: It's all a symptom of a deeper illness I see in the USA: A short sighted attitude in isn't able to fund long term investment projects which will enrich future generations. The US used to know how to do this, but has forgotten. When I visit the US now days, I just see crumbling and ugly infrastructure everywhere I look. Crumbling infrastructure which was left by our grandfather's generation. Depressing like hell.
Back on topic, hanging medium voltage power cables from poles in US cities: WTF why? They might increase your vulnerability to EMP pulses a bit, but they are also just dumb by every possible measurement except the extremely short sighted near term where they seem cheaper. Long term though, you guys need to replace them after every major snow storm, wind storm, fallen tree branch, when they rot, or when a truck drives into one. The cherry on top is their horrible ugliness! Only costs a few times more to bury them but you won't need to service it for a century! Srsly.
So bury your medium voltage power throughout your cities. Yes, a lower EMP inductive surface area is nice, as buried cables are much better shielded. But it's also significantly cheaper long term and leaves your cities looking beautiful.
Nice side effect: your lights and heat all tend to stay on even during record breaking blizzards, hurricanes and ice storms. What's not to love? You don't need EMP fear mongering or phantom terrorists to justify doing this since it makes sense on every level to bury medium voltage power cables.
social order into chaos
Cats and dogs, living together; gentlemen and their pregnant maids, marrying; women and the poor, voting. See, chaos is the downfall of the British Empire! God save the Queen!
Were those insulators designed to handle an EMP or not?
This is like saying because the shore break couldn't handle a typhoon, it is impossible to build a sea wall that could.
Listen. Please. Calm down. I'm sure you're a nice intelligent guy. But you're arguing about nothing here. The point is that you can harden something against EMP with shielding and fuses. Does the shielding and fuses need to be designed to handle EMP? Yep. But they're still shielding and fuses.
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... You really don't get it.
Its only a threat if it is a credible threat.
If the enemy know that you won't fire back on them then it isn't a deterrence.
Fool.
What makes MAD scary for the enemy is that they know we WILL retaliate. We will methodically annihilate them with the nastiest weapons we have at hand. Without hesitation, mercy, or remorse.
That is what makes MAD work. The certain knowledge in the mind of the enemy that should they cross that line... we will annihilate them. Down to the last screaming child. Horrified? Good. That is exactly the point.
That is why you don't nuke people with my attitude. Because we will respond.
To the pain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
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The world's fucked anyway so who cares?
As to obfuscating the origin... only temporarily.
You'd grab one of the terrorists and you'd make him squeal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And you'd just follow up the chain. You'd also have some physical evidence from the bomb. They have technological signatures. You'd know where the bomb came from.
Then you'd figure out how it came to the terrorists.
As to reprisals... the point is to make it not happen again. And that requires a certain amount of fear on the part of whomever is leaking these bombs. That requires the application of pain.
Maybe we just throw a black bag over the head of some general somewhere while playing golf or banging his mistress. Possibly some quid pro quo with a nuke leaked to someone that wants to blow them up.
It sounds petty but you can't have them doing that. If they're doing it on purpose there is no higher authority to appeal to. You can't go call mom and dad to make your sister stop poking you.
You're going to have to stop them. And most of what stops them is that they're too afraid to even try. And again... that means you're going to have to hurt someone. This is the sort of thing where toppling a few governments becomes justifiable. The CIA for example could get a blank check out of a situation like that. Just go nuts.
that said, nuclear defense technology is progressing more rapidly than a lot of people realize.
First, most legacy ICBMs are already obsolete.
Second, the new ones that Putin is building complicate things but most of their defense relies upon confusing defenses as to what is a missile and what is some crap the ICBM ejected in orbit to cloud sensors. Who has the best sensors and processing systems etc? Frankly, the Russian tech was painfully outdated before the end of the cold war and decades of stagnation haven't helped the Russian tech base.
Third, the chinese tech is mostly Russian hand me downs when it comes to military hardware. And what is left... the Pakistani weapons? Obsolete garbage. North korea? Doubtful whether they even have a bomb. A long range dirty bomb perhaps... that any modern destroyer could shoot down while laughing.
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Sometimes they WANT you to strike back. Remeber 09/11. The reson they did it becquse they WANTED a war. The thinking behind it is that when the western world would attack a muslim country, the muslim countries would join forces and muslims worldwide woul win that war.
All you need is one idiot. Because if an A-bomb prevents war, why not give them to everybody.
Till now each weapon that woul 'end all wars' has failed in doing so. To me that means it is about when and not if theyare going to be used again.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
If you like the topic of EMP and how it would affect the society, check this fiction from William R. Forstchen. It's called One Second After and it's written from the perspective of the US being brought to its knees after a terrorist EMP strike and its effects on all societal levels.
"The hallmark of humanity is the ability to move beyond sensory inputs" - Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
No, it has to fail MAD. Anything else increases the risk of people thinking they can get away with a first strike.
You have to make it clear that a first strike will not stop the certain obliteration of your civilization.
Our system is fail safe to the extent that a launch must be deliberate. Our missiles are not launched by robots or computers. They're launched by men. They receive a code. They verify. A minimum of two men must enter in codes and turn their launch keys.
That's how all the launch platforms for all the ICBMs in the US work. I can't speak for other powers. And that means each launch is unanimous. What is more... I assume... though am not certain... that that the missiles can be scuttled in flight by NORAD. So if some group of idiots launches something, then NORAD could kill it.
Lay out a scenario that suggests this is not the most viable system?
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What makes MAD scary for the enemy is that they know we COULD retaliate.
FTFY
No it doesn't. Annihilation can't be escalated. How is a country going to nuke me if they're all dead?
As to neanderthal terms... how about I just fuck your sister? While I'm doing that, you can talk to me about what is and is not neanderthal behavior.
Kindly stop talking to me. You're that internet typical mix of fucktard and arrogant that is a complete waste of oxygen.
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more ad hominem? yawn
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he deterrent has already failed and as proof we can name every single mass shooting in the US.
What? Perpetrators of recent mass shootings have made it clear that they sought out targets where they knew there would be no deterrence. That's why they pick "gun free zones" when they do crap like that. Because of the lack of deterrence.
... there's no deterrence. On the other hand, you have things like the recent event in Texas, where two guys decided to risk the fact that there was a deterrence, but decided to Islamify the gathering anyway. They never made it into the building because an armed cop shut them down on the spot. Because he was there, to do exactly that.
It's only a deterrence if it's credibly likely to happen. If you go somewhere that you know nobody is allowed to carry guns, and where there are no armed police and can't be for at least long enough to kill a bunch of people
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If the electricity is off for two weeks, society will begin to totally disintegrate.
Your water tap stops because no power to pump water into your nearby water tower. It may have a backup generator, but that takes fuel, which I'll come to next.
You won't be able to put fuel into your car because no electricity to operate the gas pumps at the filling station. Even using siphoning or other ways of pumping the fuel out of the underground storage tanks, the filling station fuel supplies will get tapped out soon.
Not only will you no longer be able to use your car (electric or fuel powered) but there will be no more deliveries. Your local grocery store should be completely picked clean by now.
At this point, people will fight for food, water, batteries, fuel, other supplies. Don't expect help from the police, military of government. They will be having the same basic problems. The people who participate in the police and military will be having the same basic problems with their own families.
By now, you can see where this is going.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
How is a country going to nuke me if they're all dead?
The same way we will.. Submarines and mobile nukes.
Kindly stop talking to me.
If you want to break the cycle stop yourself, and that is exactly my point.
I think our politicians watch too many nuclear war movies from the 70s.
EMP from a nuclear detonation simply does not do what preppers, paranoids, and government officials say it does. Yes, a fast EMP can induce voltages, but there is very little energy coupled. So, the only danger appears at high impedance terminations that are not protected from overvoltage. To my knowledge, this does not exist, as most devices are protected against overvoltage due to ESD.
There are enough surge protectors plugged into the grid everywhere to completely protect the consumer low-voltage side of the service (with their MOVs, TVSs, and GDTs across the line). There are also overvoltage devices in other segments of the grid that would easily handle a low-energy overvoltage from a nuclear burst.
This whole thing is being completely overblown by politicians in search of a "problem" to solve.
EMPs are probably a moderately favorable case, since you need to do a reasonably visible launch to high altitude to get the best effect; but if somebody just puts a nuke in a cargo container that was supposed to contain xboxes and it levels one of the world's larger container ports, who exactly are you going to retaliate against?
Whoever made that bomb would be my first guess.
Oh good. only the single most complicated and expensive things then. Look it's not "hard". It's more like "fucking impossible". It's hard to shield against something when you need to provide some kind of external connectivity which can act as a conduit, you're effectively talking about tuned faraday cages around powerlines. It's not only impractical, it's almost impossible to do completely from a technical perspective.
This has been studied and it is far from impractical. You just need better protection circuits.
"Only costs a few times more"?? Do you say stuff like that often while shopping for a new car or a house to live in?
Retaliation just creates creates escalation.
To put it in neanderthal terms:
If you hit me and I hit you back, you will hit me again, and I will hit you back.. ad infinitum...
It may work that way with you. But if you hit me, I hit back with my crowbar. I'll break bones and possibly cause permanent brain damage. You won't be able to fight back ever - if you survive. Problem solved.
Humans have fought for long times - and it works. One man either gives up (respecting power) or escalate & wipe out the other guy. Either way, the fight is soon over.
We can't even keep medical records secure. How are we going to stop an EMP?
EMP should be banned too. Problem solved, now back to work.
Okay, you're protected the grid but not a single post-1973 car or truck, or router, switch, phone, or household appliance survives. If it happens in the winter - strategically my choice - that would trigger a massive die off and you can write off most if not all of the northern Midwest and New England because they quickly become cannibal territory. If it was a very bad winter, you could maximize the casualties due to starvation and disease.
Add that the decrease in population makes all of this moot since there would be no one to **operate** the grid - communications would be gone and limited to traffic between Federal hardened facilities. An EMP strike would decapitate State and Local governments, create confusion, and kill off far more people than any single nuke could.
Only costs a few times more to bury them but you won't need to service it for a century! Srsly.
More like 10 times in the country, and much more in the city. I used to work in this industry, did you?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Maybe I'm dense but wouldn't it be much easier to knock out the power by attacking a few plants and/or transmission lines? This whole discussion reminds me of a movie where they have taken the hard way to do things when a much simpler means exists. Not unlike how Dr. Octopus is stopped the moment the order "sniper take the shot" is given. You didn't need another super hero to fist fight him. The grid failed in 2003 due to a complete accident. If a more coordinated effort was made I'm sure that could be done again. This is especially true since there are large transmission lines running through empty desert. This is why I always argue the US doesn't have a terrorism problem. If they did actual acts of terror would be committed more than once a decade. citations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
Karmashock, the most stupid asshole in Slashdot. What makes you think AC's are stupid? Don't you know there might be a reason why someone wants/needs to go AC? Sheesh..
Most of those things don't have anything to worry about from EMP anyway. (An EMP big enough to cause problems in things with short conductors is probably a Game Over event anyway).
The problem is long conductors -- power lines, copper phone lines, etc. The longer the conductor, the better 'antenna' it makes for EMP. Those datacenters? Sure they'll have battery backup, and diesel generators, and even redundant substation feeds. But when the power grid goes out you're out of luck when the fuel in the generator tanks is used up. Some places might have a week's worth. Cheyenne Mountain probably has a month's worth (I don't remember exactly, but they've got a frickin' lake of the stuff hidden in the mountain.) Most places don't. And good luck trying to get the diesel tankers through when the infrastructure is down (pumps, traffic lights, etc...)
"Perpetrators of recent mass shootings have made it clear that they sought out targets where they knew there would be no deterrence"
Um, no. Not a single perp has ever said that. You gun nuts keep repeating that lie. Recent attacks have been on military bases as well as places that gave armed security, including some of the schools. Stop your lies. These murderers don't choose targets base on them being "gun free zones". They choose schools THAT THEY HAVE ATTENDED, or places where they think they have a grievance.
I read a book called "One Second After" describing an EMP scenario. Very eye opening. One day, all the electronics just quit working. Every vehicle with a computer stopped running. For months nobody had any clue as to what happened. People died like flies, starting with hospital patients and progressing to people dependent on medication. Then the food started running out. By the end of the book, when the power started coming back, the great majority of the population was kaput. It was an interesting read.
I agree with your assessment, someone needs to have a nuclear device that they can deliver into the upper atmosphere above US infrastructure and detonate it there. This isn't a typical air burst where you light it off at say 5000 feet to increase the damage to a city or army group. It is quite possible that there will be few if any actual casualties caused by the initial detonation, so the motivations of an actor using this mode of attack are going to be quite different than an actor that just wants to kill a lot of people.
Realistically, I would only expect China or Russia to employ this sort of tactic, since they are powerful enough to be able to resist a conventional retaliatory invasion by us conventional forces, but they still would have the nuclear capability to retaliate in a conventional fashion should the US decide to just start paving their major cities with MIRVing cruse missiles.
I think either someone has a leaked copy of a 'Plan A' warfare scenario from Russia or China that they cannot avow, or they are looking for more budget.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Further since an EMP is extremely unlikely to happen, they can spend endless amounts 'protecting' the grid and we'll never know whether it actually works.
What are you talking about? This isn't astrology here; this is well-understood science. We have some EMP data from old atmospheric nuclear tests, and if need be we can create low level (non-nuclear) EMPs for further modeling. This is just electrical engineering. Of course we can make sound predictions about whether or not specific types of protection will work
If they said they are concerned about someone using a nuclear weapon to take out the power grid, everyone would quickly point out that the problem is not protecting the power grid, but that someone has a nuclear weapon.
North Korea has nuclear weapons and will soon have the ability to deliver one to the west coast of the USA. What we going to do about it? Mostly nothing, because China will be very annoyed if we invade and we know that Seoul could be utterly destroyed even by conventional weapons if the North Koreans tried.
Despite widespread mockery, nuclear disaster mitigation (yes, including duck and cover) can work, and if we're talking about realistic measures we can take to limit collateral damage I can think of nothing more important than preserving the power grid.
I'm not commenting on the costs involved or where this should be on our national priority list, but it's a sound idea.
Clearly...look at all the delusional people who believe in magical wizards in the sky that talk to them although no one else can hear them...I'm talking about God here...yet still produce good science. Granted, many are too delusional to do that, but some can put their delusions aside for the narrow area of science they explore.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
The reason is because you are fucking stupid...
Pussy.
The problem is the vulnerability of the power grid. It is pretty easy to bring down transmission towers (with a limited quantity of explosives) and it would be trivial for some terrorist to e.g. place synchronized timer activated explosives on critical points on the grid. Done right the build in redundancy will not help and large areas could be without electricity for weeks to months.
EMP can be a problem but (again ignoring nuclear war) the effects of EMP devices are local, sure that can still be a huge problem given enough devices however the bang-per-buck for a terrorist or enemy state would be much lower than the above scenario. IMHO only critical infrastructure should be protected against EMP.
The other problem is that modern semiconductors are extremely sensitive to over voltage. We are building ASICs at 28 nm, which require a supply voltage of .9V. Anything over 3V and they are fried. It does not take much of a circuit to induce a few volts with the kind of flux a nuke can put out. Loops on the board, on the other side of ESD diodes, can easily be large enough.
0. MAD works when you know who detonated the first weapon. We may not know this.
1. MAD also presumes rational enemies, with motivation sufficiently equal to ours, to make their decisions more or less rational. We no longer live in that world. Many of our enemies do not have the same rationale for using nuclear weapons as we and other like nations do.
2. Even if we know who detonated a weapon, of they are stateless, we have limited retaliation opportunities. If any.
MAD is not useful for asymmetric threats.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Maybe I'm dense but wouldn't it be much easier to knock out the power by attacking a few plants and/or transmission lines?
Yes.
Our system is fail safe to the extent that a launch must be deliberate. Our missiles are not launched by robots or computers. They're launched by men. They receive a code. They verify. A minimum of two men must enter in codes and turn their launch keys.
It's actually more extensive than this. I'm not going to bother to go into details, I'm sure that whatever information isn't classified can be found with some googling, but suffice it to say that while the scenario you describe is accurate, if that is all that happens, there will be no launch.
And if the only outcome I seek in nuclear war situation is the total destruction of human race and civilization as we know it? Then what?
Some nutjob with earth first, humans are bad, i dont like humans at all, or something with similar ideas?
Biggest problem will probably be the giant transformers in power stations.
Who manufactures them, and what is the waiting time for a new unit in peace time?
No electricity means no fresh water in big cities. No sewer in big cities. All freeze foods will go bad in something like 24 hours?
And that is only the beginning of problems.
Yeah, and can the military men walk around with their loaded guns in us military base? No or yes? Whos order it was, that robed them of that right?
that big east coast power failure was 2003.
how can you not know ad hominem is bullshit at this point?
Karmashock (2415832) on Wednesday June 10, 2015 @05:18AM (#49881617)
It is actually, you naive little insect.
Apparently you do not learn either.
Just a hint: you are a clueless idiot.
Here are the known nations with nuclear weapons:
USA
Russia
China
United Kingdom
France
Israel
India
Pakistan
North Korea
And here are the nations know to have delivery capability:
USA
Russia
China
United Kingdom
France
Israel
India
Pakistan
Here are the known nations that have thermonuclear capabilities:
USA
Russia
China
United Kingdom
France
Israel (by inference given the high technical know-how, the advantages of thermonuclear weapons and the time they have had nuclear capabilities)
India (some claim they only have boosted nuclear weapons)
I know of two states that have the know-how to make nuclear weapons given a limited time-frame:
South Africa - they had nuclear weapon capability but willingly gave it up. Gun type devices.
Sweden - had a nuclear weapon program with weapon designs (implosion) and had extracted plutonium enough for several weapons. The program was halted by politics and the plutonium shipped to US.
There are a number of other countries that given enough time could make gun type bombs, there the main difficulty is purifying uranium and securing a reliable ignition.
And the rest of your post is just banal bullshit worthy of a teenager. Your "Obsolete garbage" is still a very potent weapon _and_ it exists. Nobody sane doubts that North Korea have nuclear weapons though the level of sophistication is mostly unknown (probably not in a deliverable form). Your delight of the thought of torturing people also tells a lot...
Technological signatures = ??
Bah.
Not a single perp has ever said that.
Do your homework. Crazies like the most recent 20-kids-killed school shooter were absolutely obsessive about studying and taking notes about the circumstances of other mass murders, and what would allow such an attack to proceed uninterrupted by someone able to stop him. Just because he was nuts (like the Colorado theater killer, or the Virginia Tech killer) doesn't mean they're unable assess the practicalities of the situation.
Recent attacks have been on military bases
Right. Specifically in places where the vast majority of the people walking around are not allowed to carry guns. The Islamist crazy who shot up a room full of people in Ft. Hood knew that room would be without armed people until they were called in (at which point he'd have had an uninterrupted opportunity to kill a bunch of people). The guy who wandered the Navy Yard office building knew that he only had to flash his ID and surprise a single guard in order to then have a "military base" to wander through where nobody would be armed.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Calling someone a fucktard =/= Ad hominem.
Ad hominem means "against the person". It refers to arguments where the argument not talking about the issue but rather saying "this right/wrong/etc because dave likes to grease his body and then slip into really tiny pink leotards, break into nearest women's clothing store at midnight, and dance around in the Bra section."
Now, the problem is that lets say Dave is telling you that it is going to rain tomorrow. Whilst Dave might be a freak, is he wrong about it raining tomorrow just because he's dancing in a pink leotard in the bra section?
No. What Dave does in his free time doesn't really factor into the issue. Dave could have a rape dungeon full of sex slaves. Dave could never leave home without jamming at least three gerbals up his ass. But it doesn't mean anything Dave says is inherently wrong or right.
Do you see?
That is what ad hominem refers to... not whether or not I call someone a fucking retard. But rather whether my point on their argument was based entirely on my judgement that they are fucking retards.
I don't do that. I just don't. I'm better educated than that thanks.
What I do is say "this argument is stupid for reasons"... and then I might say "because you didn't realize the argument was stupid for the cited reasons, you're also stupid."
See? That isn't ad hominem because the validity of the argument itself is not based on whether or not you're stupid. See?
That's the trick.
When someone says "ad hominem"... with validity... they're not saying "oh guys don't say mean things you might hurt someone's feeling, don't ya know?"
Instead what they're saying is "you have made a logically fallacious statement."
Do you see?
My statement was not ad hominem. The comment I labeled ad hominem was ad hominem.
Now you know what ad hominem means. Use it correctly in the future.
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No they didn't. They wanted to make the US look weak. Osama said the US was a paper tiger. he made the argument before the war that if they struck the US, the US would do noting more than fume and stamp its feet.
He used as his basis for that, that the US had responded to previous attacks by firing some cruise missiles and doing nothing else. Had Osama known the US was going to go for a full invasion of Afghanistan, he probably wouldn't have done it. And the local taliban wouldn't have supported it.
Did he claim he wanted the US to invade AFTER the US had invaded? Yes. But that's about as credible as the guy that trips and falls saying "I meant to do that." He was saving face. He did not think the US would invade.
That example aside, lets go with your argument of "what if they want us to nuke them"... well, why would any power want to be nuked? And why is that a problem for me if they do?
The terrorists like to say things like "you want to live but we want to die". That's a literal quote from them. And I've never found that very menacing because I'm very happy to kill them. Show of hands for anyone that is going to lose any sleep over whacking some terrorists? Yeah... no one cares.
If they want to die and they've detonated a nuke or something in the US to provoke that. Then Mission Accomplished. Prepare to glow in the dark roughly 45 minutes after we learn where it came from. If we know at launch because it is an ICBM... then you can expect to get nuked seconds after we are nuked.
So... where is the problem?
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0. Unless it is a massive strike you'll have time to investigate after the bomb kills whomever. If it takes you months to figure that out... so be it. Once you know... you take whatever steps seem appropriate to resolve the situation.
1. MAD also assumed that both powers could annihilate each other. There are really only two nations on earth with that power. The US and Russia. And the Russian claim is increasingly dubious. The Russians and Americans have large ICBM submarine fleets. If you don't have one of those then you're not capable of carrying out your end of the MUTUAL DESTRUCTION.
Lets say Iran gets nukes. How many nukes will Iran have? 1... 10? And how will they deliver them? One US ICBM sub could annihilate Iran all by itself. The Iranians wouldn't even see it coming.
A requirement for MAD is that first strikes don't work. That is the whole point of it. Both the US and Russia were getting paranoid about either power conducting a nuclear first strike. MAD meant that even if either power got a first strike in, it wouldn't stop the response. The subs would head for your country rise to launch depth, and fire on your cities.
Iran or north korea or even China can't do that. China could fire on the western US. That would be bad. But they couldn't get much deeper than that. Which means a US first strike on China would actually work if we wanted to do that.
Any power large enough to carry out their end of MAD is going to be very well known to us and is going to require an economic base large enough that it is unlikely they'll be irrational. North Korea will never be able to threaten the US with mutually assured destruction. They could take one of our cities perhaps. But even that is unlikely.
2. As to limited retaliation options... actually we have no limits of retaliation options. Nuking a city is an act of war. We invaded Afghanistan simply because they wouldn't hand us Osama when we asked really nicely.
Do you have any concept of what we'd do if someone nuked a city? Take what happened after 9/11 and multiply it by a million. That takes you directly to total war. You know the war were you don't even try to avoid killing civilians. You just blow up as much shit as possible... then roll in troops who have basically the same orders. If you genocided a country that nuked one of your cities... who is going to try and stop you?
We're assuming the US is retaliating in this case... who is stopping us? No one.
People get soft and assume that because things work a certain way in peace time that they can't work another way in war. Cross all the lines with the US... and yeah... we'll light them up.
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As to no one sane doubting NK's nukes... actually most countries doubt it. I've read reports from many countries and they all put question marks on the NK nukes.
As to torturing people... we're talking about people that nuked a city. If you're such a gelded farm animal that the mere idea of putting someone to the question causes you to go pearl clutching then so be it. That is YOUR culture. I don't have to respect it or consider your moral views as valid. I do not worship your gods or your religion or especially consider your moral system to be rational or legitimate. So your moral judgements of me are irrelevant to me.
As to tech signitures... and you call me ignorant. Every country builds its bombs a little differently. They're not all equally effiiceint, they draw on different sources of fuel, they have varying degrees of purity... you can tell who made it by taking samples from the crater.
The could intentionally obscure the origin but that rules out terrorists. That would be a nation state obscuring the origin.
A big part of the investigation would be ruling out parties that either are responsible enough to keep track of their nukes or are not hostile to us.
That is going to give you a much smaller set of options. Then you'll know which group did it if it were terrorists because they always claim responsibility. Tracking it back is unlikely to be that complicated especially if you just want to know which country did it. Tracking it back to personally who ordered it or where the bomb was exactly made might be tricky. But tracking it to the country? Not that hard.
Anyway... hate on... your presumption of moral judgement in strategic issues beyond your intellect and too extreme for your philosophy to comprehend merely makes you an object of pity. You're limited. You can't even presume to have an opinion.
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How would you have enough nukes do that if you're just some nut?
There are only two countries in the world capable of waging MAD... The US and Russia. No other power has the numbers of ICBMs to wipe out any significant fraction of the planet.
Having "A" nuke or two doesn't mean you can trigger a MAD response.
Lets say your little shit hole country fires a nuke at the US and it blows up a city or something. Okay... then the US responds by glassing your whole country.
Now exactly how does that end the world? Total losses would be a single US City and some shit hole country. That's it.
Your assumption is what... that some other country will step up and say "if you nuke that shit hole country we'll nuke you in response"? who is going to step up for that country? No one. If North Korea did that do you think that China would step in and say "if you nuke north korea we'll nuke you?"... they're not going to do it. And more to the point, our deterrance via MAD requires that we follow through. If we don't nuke that little country then the bigger countries might think "hmm... they're apparently pansies so we can get away with nuking them."... which is why you MUST follow through.
If you don't like that... then don't nuke a super power. Really simple. If you do... then enjoy life on fire.
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... nuke subs? Cite how many countries have nuclear submarines capable of crossing the ocean without surfacing?
Surface to run your generator and I can see you mother fucker. To attack the US like that, you'd have to run under water the whole way. You can't do that without a nuke sub. And not a lot of countries have those.
Only two countries even build them. The US and Russia. That's it. Anyone else that has one will have ultimately bought it from the US or Russia... I think only Russia since I don't think we sell our nuke subs. Not sure if the Russians do either. But they might have sold some to China and India. Those would be the only other powers to possibly have that kind of capability.
So... no... your theoretical piss pot dictatorship is not firing nukes at the US from a nuclear submarine.
Russia could do that. But then conventional MAD applies to Russia.
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Wait wait. So... when the UK was bombed from the air by the Nazis, your response would be to do nothing?
When the US was bombed at pearl harbor, you'd do nothing? When the Soviets were invaded by the germans, you'd have them do nothing?
Or would you have every power in every case retaliate?
You're a retard. Fuck off.
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Wrong.
Will retaliate.
Certain as sunrise. You pull the trigger and we'll pull the trigger. Don't like that? Don't pull the trigger and you won't have to deal with the consequences.
Pull it and the consequences are on you. You knew what we would do. We will do it.
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You just need better protection circuits
Oh simple.
You know we can't even properly manage something as simple as a lightning strike without ripple effects throughout a system, and that is a problem a few orders of magnitude more confined to a single area than an EMP. But hey if you can create your "better protection circuit" then do. You'd be a very rich man indeed. Diverting surges is only about the single most difficult and misunderstood thing next to concepts of earthing in electrical engineering, and it's quite fitting that these two complex items need to tie together to make it all work.
Or do you just mean that the people walking around inside aren't armed, which would be what you expect if you're not on operations somewhere?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Had Osama known the US was going to go for a full invasion of Afghanistan, he probably wouldn't have done it. And the local taliban wouldn't have supported it.
No one would have predicted that following 9/11 the US would go for a full invasion of Afghanistan, for the simple reason that it made no logical sense whatsoever. 9/11 was carried out primarily by Saudi Arabians, no Afghan citizens were involved as far as I've heard.
The Taliban certainly seem to have let Osama bin Laden stay in Afghanistan, and it was unlikely they would ever have extradited him to the US, but that is a police/law enforcement issue, not a casus belli. Anyway, on that basis the US should later have invaded Pakistan too.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Lets say your little shit hole country fires a nuke at the US and it blows up a city or something. Okay... then the US responds by glassing your whole country.
So why didn't the US kill everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan?
What's so special about one city being nuked that it deserves total obliteration of your enemy?
I'm not saying you shouldn't react, but surely the point of MAD is that the enemy is going to wipe out your whole civilisation, not just one city?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If you genocided a country that nuked one of your cities... who is going to try and stop you?
For a start, you would lose all your allies, and no one would trade with you. I know the US is powerful, but it's not more powerful than the rest of the world put together.
In case you hadn't noticed, genocide is not looked on as a legitimate strategy any more.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Are you seriously suggesting that there are no armed guards on US military bases?
Are you seriously this uninformed about how large and compartmentalized a "military base" is? And so uninformed about the facts on the ground in a case like Ft. Hood? In both that case and the more recent Navy Yard killings - exactly. The killers sought out areas/victims where there was no immediate chance of someone simply shooting them down to stop them. Just read the accounts, and understand.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
MAD is useful against some situations, not others. Argentina invaded the Falklands/Malvinas in 1982 without regard to the fact that Britain could nuke their major cities, no problem. It's of very limited use against one nuke. I spent much of the Cold War worrying about what would happen if the Soviets launched one missile at a US city, and apologized after launch and before impact, blaming it on an accident and promising to fix the system.
0. If it's a large number of weapons, we'll know who sent them, and who to toast. For a very few weapons, we may have more trouble. However, the country providing the nukes is going to have to live with the possibility that we find out who made them, and what we will do afterwards.
1. All countries with nuclear weapons realize what can happen to them or their leadership if they attack the US with their nukes. This includes the idiot running North Korea, who wants to stay in power in a country not completely devastated by more than the North Korean government. There are irrational people out there, but they don't have access to many nukes. Again, MAD is of use against a major strike.
2. Nukes are not easy to get the ingredients for, and not necessarily easy to make. If a non-state terrorist organization has even a few nukes, we'll likely be able to find out where the ingredients came from, and hence which government was complicit. Governments harboring nuclear terrorists are going to be under great pressure to cooperate in investigating and handing over the terrorists, and if they refuse they will be overthrown and replaced.
So, no, MAD isn't protection against a very small number of nukes. It doesn't have to be. It's a good defense against a crippling attack.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
We're the US. We don't commit genocide except internally. However, we don't really have to care that much about collateral damage, and we can get a LOT of support for taking out a government that used nukes, or allowed their nukes to be used.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Neither power nuked the US.
I know you think you're clever when you conflate unrelated things but it isn't clever. It shows a lack of awareness about the distinctions. And wisdom is largely a matter of perceiving the distinctions between things.
If you can't... you're blind... and the blind do not give directions to those with eyes.
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Shows what you know. I would have. And anyone that understands US culture would know that was coming.
It was actually pretty funny watching experts in US foreign policy from Australia, the UK, and even China explain to their colleagues what was going on.
Non-experts didn't see it coming. The experts all did.
Here is an example you personally will probably be aware of... remember Isoroku Yamamoto?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
His buddies in the Japanese imperial military didn't think the US would respond strongly to having its fleet sunk in Pearl Harbor. They thought the US would continue to do what it was doing before which was trying to stay out of the war... and responding to various attacks against its interests with strong words.
Yamamoto told them that the US would shift radically if they did that and switch from a passive footing to a very aggressive footing.
He knew this because he studied in the US and was something of an expert on American culture at least for an imperial Japanese admiral.
what happened? The Japanese hit Pearl harbor and America switched over night to not wanting to being involved to wanting nothing less than the unconditional surrender of the Japanese empire... crushed beneath the American heel.
It changed like that *snaps fingers*. And the thing is that you're only caught off guard by this is if you don't understand our culture.
The way we work is that we are very much a live and let live people most of the time. We just want peace and trade.
Cross certain lines with us though and... everything changes.
The dynamics of this are complicated but well understood by people that understand US culture and politics. I'd explain it to you but I don't want to go to the effort if you're not listening which I expect is what is going on.
You don't seem to appreciate that I am a lot better educated than you are... especially on this subject. Unless you're able to appreciate that, then I'd just be wasting my time trying to correct your many errors.
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Dream on. A country that nukes the US is going to get abandoned.
The squeamish countries will close their eyes and count to ten... at which point it will be all over. If they're stupid they'll complain about it after the fact. If they are a bit more clever they'll know to keep their mouths shut.
The ones with some moral character will grant approval and watch with open eyes.
https://youtu.be/PTzbOA6cTYM?t...
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Oh simple.
I'm not qualified to judge complexity. Estimates for EMP mitigation across the grid costs on order of $1B as judged by 2008 EMP commission report.
Just use tubes and copper cored relays, problem solved
Say one kind of power cable costs 400 dollars, but it lasts 100 years before maintenance.
Then say another power cable is a bargain at just 100 dollars but lasts 10 years before it must be serviced.
The depth of your foresight is the limiting factor in calculating your ROI.
To make matters worse, you're conflating very different things. A house or a car is a private asset. A power line is common infrastructure. If a private man buys a house which costs 4 times as much as that of another man, then we just call him rich and don't care much as it has no impact. But if a city replaces a street with cheap sand to save money, which must be shovelled and patched every time the wind blows, then we all would suffer at how they are making our day to day life worse, burning our money on endless repairs, and contributing to increased wear in our cars. Long term, sand always a more expensive road material if you look beyond today and into the *societal* total cost of ownership.
Past generations have spent vast fortunes on amazing infrastructure that makes our lives better. Why would you now cheap out and get bargain crap that won't be around in a few years.
The average American grandfather built and paid for the infrastructure that made a great nation.
Today's father is just leaving their children two legacies: rising debt and pointless war.
Sure. I happily buy a car costing "only a few times more" if it really is that much better. Which is why I don't drive cheap chinese cars. Similiar for housing. A tent (house sized) is so much cheaper. Still, I bough an ordinary house costing many times more. It has advantages like outlasting any tent, it stands up to wind, it is not hard to keep warm in the winter, it handles snow load, breaking in takes more than just scissors, . . .
Buried power lines cost more to set up, but cost less to maintain. burying is a win albeit not in the shortest term. Similiar to choosing american cars over chinese, or houses over tents.