The EMP Commission was established pursuant to title XIV of the Floyd D. Spence National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (as enacted into law by Public Law 106-398; 114 Stat. 1654A-345). Duties of the EMP Commission include assessing:
1.the nature and magnitude of potential high-altitude EMP threats to the United States from all potentially hostile states or non-state actors that have or could acquire nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles enabling them to perform a high-altitude EMP attack against the United States within the next 15 years;
2.the vulnerability of United States military and especially civilian systems to an EMP attack, giving special attention to vulnerability of the civilian infrastructure as a matter of emergency preparedness;
3.the capability of the United States to repair and recover from damage inflicted on United States military and civilian systems by an EMP attack; and
4.the feasibility and cost of hardening select military and civilian systems against EMP attack.
The Commission is charged with identifying any steps it believes should be taken by the United States to better protect its military and civilian systems from EMP attack.
Multiple reports and briefings associated with this effort have been produced by the EMP Commission including an Executive Report (PDF, 578KB) and a Critical National Infrastructures Report (PDF, 7MB) describing findings and recommendations.
The EMP Commission was reestablished via the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006 to continue its efforts to monitor, investigate, make recommendations, and report to Congress on the evolving threat to the United States from electromagnetic pulse attack resulting from the detonation of a nuclear weapon or weapons at high altitude.
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The ACT! for America mission is an ambitious one – to combat the threat of radical Islam to America in whatever forms that threat may take. This is why we focus on everything from combating terrorism to resisting cultural jihad. If we successfully prevent terrorism, but fail to prevent the subversion of our society resulting from cultural or stealth jihad, we have not successfully stopped the threat of radical Islam. If we prevent the assault of stealth jihad, but are successfully targeted by major terrorist acts, we have also been unsuccessful in stopping the threat of radical Islam.
This is why the threat of radical Islam is so serious.
And the threat of an Islamist regime or terrorist organization attacking us with an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, triggered by a nuclear detonation above our atmosphere, may well be the most serious threat of all.
Over the past several months we have sent out several emails reporting on this threat, how an EMP attack could knock out much of our power grid, as well as our communications infrastructure, transportation, banking and finance – in short, every infrastructure dependent on electrical power and electronics.
The potential devastation is so great that even some of our members have emailed us with questions asking “could this possibly happen?”
The answer, unfortunately, and frighteningly, is yes. This is not Guy Rodgers talking, or ACT! for America. This is the conclusion of the national Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack.
The members of this commission are a “who’s who” in aerospace, communications, energy, defense, and nuclear weapons fields. One year ago this little-known Commission released a report of its findings on the impact of an EMP attack on our national infrastructures (
http://empcommission.org/).
In the Preface of this 2008 report we read:
“A single EMP attack may seriously degrade or shut down a large part of the electric power grid in the geographic area of EMP exposure effective instantaneously.”
In Chapter Two we read:
“…the cascading effects from even one or two relatively small weapons exploded in optimum location in space at present would almost certainly shut down an entire interconnected electrical power system, perhaps affecting as much as 70% or possibly more of the United States, all in an instant…” (p. 19).
Imagine a collapse of 70% or more of our nation’s electrical grid. Imagine that this collapse didn’t last for a few days, such as occurs after a blackout or a storm, but lasted for weeks – even months. Imagine life without any electrical power for weeks, even months.
I have lived through the aftermath of a hurricane, where electricity was knocked out for days. If you’ve never experienced something like this, it’s hard to appreciate how much everything we do is dependent on electricity. It’s more than the lights going out and the air conditioning not working.
You can’t refrigerate food. Unless you have a natural gas or propane grill (or a lot of charcoal), you can’t cook food. The water supply is unreliable at best. You can’t get gasoline to run your car. You can’t get money from an ATM. You can’t get health care or buy a prescription. Telecommunications are severely limited. You might be able to make a cell phone call but it’s unlikely you could make a landline phone call. Unless you have a battery-operated radio, you can’t get news or information. If the weather is cold you won’t have heat. If the weather is hot you swelter.
Those of us who have lived through this knew that help was on the way. That, in time, electricity trucks from outside our area would roll in to help restore power. That emergency food supplies would soon be shipped in.
What would happen to us if there was no one “outside our area” who could come with help? What would happen to is if we were forced to live without electricity, not for days, but for months? And not just us, but the vast majority of people throughout the country?
This is not mere speculation, hyperbole or sci-fi fantasy.
The implications of this are, candidly, terrifying – and, I agree, almost unimaginable. It will not be necessary for an enemy of ours to launch numerous nuclear weapons at us in order to destroy or at least seriously cripple us. As the Commission report notes, the explosion of “one or two relatively small weapons” could shut down most of the nation’s power grid.
Such an electrical failure would impact and disrupt everything in our society. Who would police our streets to prevent lawlessness like we saw in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? What would you do when you ran out of food and water? Who could come to help us when virtually everyone in the country was suffering the same fate? Who would defend us from an invasion by a foreign army – and how would our government even know such an army was coming?
It is difficult to imagine or describe the chaos that would ensue, but as the Commission’s report notes, it is likely millions and millions of people would die if the power outage was not solved in a short period of time. Picture scenes from the worst apocalyptic film you can think of.
In other words, a country like Iran, with only a few nuclear weapons strategically launched for optimum effect, would send us hurtling back to the early 18th century – but without the ability those in the 18th century had to manage their lives without electricity.
The threat of EMP is not new. According to a publication of EMPACT (EMP Awareness Coordination Task Force), in 1999 a Russian committee chairman made this chilling statement to a delegation of the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee:
“Hypothetically, if Russia really wanted to hurt the United States…Russia could…detonate a single nuclear warhead at high-altitude over the United States. The resulting electromagnetic pulse would massively disrupt U.S. communications and computer systems, shutting down everything.”
More ominously, the EMPACT publication opened with a description of what appears to be an actual instance of an EMP attack caused by a nuclear weapon detonation:
“In 1962, deep in a cold war with the Soviet Union, the United States conducted 'Starfish Prime,' a nuclear weapon test over a remote region of the Pacific Ocean. The test was successful, with one unexpected result: Fifteen hundred kilometers away in Hawaii streetlights burned out, TV sets and radios failed and power lines fused.”
North Korea continues to conduct missile launches and develop nuclear weapons. We know that North Korea is assisting Iran in its drive to develop nuclear weapons AND the missile technology with which to launch them, and that Iran has joined North Korea in conducting missile launches to test its technology. The signs couldn’t be clearer.
We also know that many of the leaders of Iran believe that worldwide chaos must occur to set the stage for the reappearance of the 12th Imam. As Iranian President Ahmadinejad proclaimed in a speech in 2005: “Our revolution’s main mission is to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi.” It is difficult to envision a more effective way to create massive chaos – in America, in Israel, and in Europe – than through the strategic launch and detonation of a small number of nuclear weapons that trigger an EMP attack.
Americans must awaken to the reality of the threat of an EMP attack before it’s too late to prevent it from happening. Perhaps such an EMP attack wouldn’t occur after the detonation of a high-altitude nuke. Perhaps. Are you willing to go about your daily life in the hope that it won’t? In the chance that it won’t?
We’re not. That’s why ACT! for America is developing a plan to mobilize Americans to action this year. As the Commission report states, it’s not too late to prevent this from happening, but there are actions America must take sooner rather than later to head off an EMP-triggered apocalypse.
We cannot dismiss this threat and we must not succumb to fear. We as a nation can effectively prepare to prevent the threat, if we have the will to act.
Tomorrow, in Part Two of this special series, I will examine more closely how our enemies perceive the possibility of an EMP attack against us, and what they are doing to make it a reality. I urge you to forward this email and the one tomorrow to everyone you know.
Guy Rodgers is Executive Director of ACT! for America,
www.actforamerica.org.
Topic: The EMP Threat To America! (Read 787 times)