Khross wrote:
Diamondeye:
You assume people are completely untrained at everything. You assume you are smarter and more knowledgeable about everything than everyone else.
Because clearly thinking I know a great deal about subjects that fall within my professional learning and experience means I know more than everyone about everything.
This is the sort of response I expect from a resentful 16-year-old.
You know how you like to remind us every so often about those academic journals you have access to? Well, guess what? I have access to professional sources - and not even classified ones - that you don't. I don't need to know everything about these subjects because I have access to the right sort of people and sources. I do go other places on the internet besides here, and some of those are by-invitation-only. I do receive professional publications, and I read them.
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And, you completely missed the fact that pretty much everything in that post has been debunked by government policy since 2004.
How does government policy debunk the effects of EMP? Government writes a policy and that's how physical phenomenon work? Where are you getting this from?
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Most nuclear EMP effects are from the gamma radiation generated by the explosion and since 2010, our government has held that most infrastructure systems and consumer electronics would be unaffected.
So it's 2010, not 2004? That makes more sense, since that's the date of the
Oak Ridge report. However, that report is 168 pages long and does not say "most consumer electronics would be unaffected, at least, not that I recall.
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Police cars, and other such vehicles, might be more susceptible than most, simply because of additional wiring and larger, more prevalent antenna assemblies. I would put strong emphasis on "might" there, because that's probably a pretty long shot. Aircraft would remain generally vulnerable in some senses, but technology has largely obviated a significant number of concerns in the intervening decades since Operation Fishbowl (*edit* Starfish was one of the U.S. detonations).
In 1994, the Army published report ADA278230, Nuclear Environment Survivability, available on the internet, unclassified. The 2010 item you are referring to is the report by Oak Ridge, which sought to debunk extreme public opinions on what would happen because of EMP - an extreme opinion being the 90% casualties scenario, for example.
An important takeaway from both reports, however, is that we don't really know what effects EMP would have. My estimate - 50-60% casualties, best case, is based on my conversations with people who really DO work on problems of nuclear attack and defense, and other related areas such as missile and air defense networking.
My estimates may very well be too high, and to be fair, I lean more towards the best case than the worst, and I may have unintentionally included ideas that would be based on a much more serious attack than just 2 warheads. However, as the Oak Ridge report says starting on page 2-44:
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Some reasons that E1 HEMP is such a concern for the electric power grid are:
1.
The power grid is so important for our modern society. It is so convenient, and yet generally taken for granted. However, as has been shown by the occasional large-area blackouts, society does not function well when there is an outage.
2.
An E1 HEMP event can cover a large area at once, simultaneously illuminating the whole area with large disturbing fields.
3.
The other parts of HEMP, E2 and E3, will immediately follow the E1 HEMP pulse. There may be synergistic effects due to this. Such effects can be hard to predict, and often each phase of HEMP is studied independently.
4.
Other parts of the infrastructure will also be hit by the E1 HEMP. This may directly interrupt them, such as by causing problems with their control systems or causing interruptions in the
power grid that might shut them down. There also could be feedback issues, such as needing those other systems to help in restoring the power grid.
5.
Blackouts do not always occur at once, but often problems from various parts of the power grid cascade, sometimes slowly, eventually affecting other nearby regions. Under ideal situations, the situation can be brought under control, and the cascading blackout may be contained. However, a massive, wide area E1 HEMP attack would undoubtedly not be an ideal situation, especially if communication systems are adversely affected also.
6.
Many systems do not have built-in health-sensing circuits that can detect if there is some damage, if system data has been corrupted, or if the system has been put into an unusual state. This is of concern, for example, for all the control and fault detection systems for the power grid. Would all those circuits be working perfectly when blackouts start to cascade?
The remainder of the section goes on to discuss possible effects on particular systems.
However, there is an event you failed to mention - the 2003 northeastern blackout. I witnessed that event pretty directly, and the chaos and confusion it caused - and that was an event with none of the cascading or feedback effects discussed above.
The government does not have any really clear position at all on EMP - other than that it's a serious problem. My estimate may have been overblown for 2 warheads, but the effects are not to be underestimated.
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Of course, your first clue I was giving you a hard time ...
Tyrion Lannister wrote:
I looked at a map.
I don't really have Tyrion Lannister's nuggets of wisdom memorized, and I've only read the first 4 books, so if it's in the 5th one I haven't read it.
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