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PostPosted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 4:01 pm 
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Khross wrote:
Diamondeye:

I looked at a map.


And what drew you to this conclusion, that absolutely no one else seems to have noticed?

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 4:01 pm 
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Lenas wrote:
Diamondeye wrote:
Don't you live pretty close to San Diego, though?


You get pretty comfortable with random explosions with so much Mexican food around.


There's some truth to that.

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 4:03 pm 
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Knocking out the power grid would not come close to killing everyone in North America. Certainly not in 30 days (it generally takes longer than that to starve to death). That's just silly.


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 4:22 pm 
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Its not the food that would be an issue. Its the water.

Without power, there's no water infrastructure. No pumps, no waste management etc.

A US without power would rapidly descend into anarchy and awfulness. Especially if there was no real way of getting things fixed in a timely manner.

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 6:56 pm 
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Actually, high altitude detonations are a bit of an issue and one of the subjects the War College has been researching heavily. The logistical situation in North America is currently completely computer dependent, from our food to other necessities people don't really consider. That both Diamondeye and Arathain are localizing their objections to the power grid demonstrates they don't understand exactly what that EMP is going to do.

It's not power delivery I'm worried about; Y2K fixed that for most providers almost indefinitely. Some providers ignored Y2K because their manual switching and control stations were still in place and could still be used (the Southern Companies). Most providers learned from that example and adjusted accordingly.

The computers, on the other hand, will be an issue. As will your phones, your tablets, and most other electronic devices. Large portions of our communication network will be rendered completely inoperable and the ubiquitous internet that has more impact on your daily lives than you know will all but evaporate.

It takes less than 30 days to starve to death. It takes significantly less than 30 days for people to start dying and the disintegration of society to begin. 30 days is a fairly safe number, but slightly arbitrary. Some people will survive the dystopian future such detonations would create. The United States and Canada would not survive; Mexico might. Everything south is Central or South America.

That said, your food, your water, your electricity, your gasoline, and everything else transported by bulk surface transport in the United States would cease to move, cease to get sold, and cease to arrive where you need it.

How would you fuel the diesel trucks without manual pumps that gas stations don't have anymore? How many pump trucks do you have to crib from airports just to keep ground transport moving? Better yet, how do you get most of those vehicles to start in the absence of their ECMs or viable replacements? More importantly, how do you get semi-literate truck drivers who computer delivered GPS dependent to their destinations with the right freight?

The damage a nuclear device delivers directly is brutal. The immediate consequences are devastating. The secondary damage and tertiary damage vectors, however, are down right astronomical. The United States operates on an infrastructure controlled almost entirely by computers.

By the way, the average city has a 3 day supply of food at any given time. The average grocery store (Super Wal-Mart) can feed around 4000 people for those three days and then its out of calories. Our fresh produce delivery and distribution system would collapse, leaving the majority of quickly sustainable food sources isolated and not available to large markets. There are literally thousands of square miles in New England where no food is produced, only processed.

Then you have health care, pharmacies, police departments, fire departments, etc., that are all dependent on computers that wouldn't survive the EMP. And their replacements won't get here, because we can't import and distribute the replacements fast enough.

Quite simply, you guys don't have enough perspective to understand exactly what's at stake. Economics isn't important; logistics aren't important.

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 7:19 pm 
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Khross wrote:
Actually, high altitude detonations are a bit of an issue and one of the subjects the War College has been researching heavily. The logistical situation in North America is currently completely computer dependent, from our food to other necessities people don't really consider. That both Diamondeye and Arathain are localizing their objections to the power grid demonstrates they don't understand exactly what that EMP is going to do.

It's not power delivery I'm worried about; Y2K fixed that for most providers almost indefinitely. Some providers ignored Y2K because their manual switching and control stations were still in place and could still be used (the Southern Companies). Most providers learned from that example and adjusted accordingly.

The computers, on the other hand, will be an issue. As will your phones, your tablets, and most other electronic devices. Large portions of our communication network will be rendered completely inoperable and the ubiquitous internet that has more impact on your daily lives than you know will all but evaporate.

It takes less than 30 days to starve to death. It takes significantly less than 30 days for people to start dying and the disintegration of society to begin. 30 days is a fairly safe number, but slightly arbitrary. Some people will survive the dystopian future such detonations would create. The United States and Canada would not survive; Mexico might. Everything south is Central or South America.

That said, your food, your water, your electricity, your gasoline, and everything else transported by bulk surface transport in the United States would cease to move, cease to get sold, and cease to arrive where you need it.

How would you fuel the diesel trucks without manual pumps that gas stations don't have anymore? How many pump trucks do you have to crib from airports just to keep ground transport moving? Better yet, how do you get most of those vehicles to start in the absence of their ECMs or viable replacements? More importantly, how do you get semi-literate truck drivers who computer delivered GPS dependent to their destinations with the right freight?

The damage a nuclear device delivers directly is brutal. The immediate consequences are devastating. The secondary damage and tertiary damage vectors, however, are down right astronomical. The United States operates on an infrastructure controlled almost entirely by computers.

By the way, the average city has a 3 day supply of food at any given time. The average grocery store (Super Wal-Mart) can feed around 4000 people for those three days and then its out of calories. Our fresh produce delivery and distribution system would collapse, leaving the majority of quickly sustainable food sources isolated and not available to large markets. There are literally thousands of square miles in New England where no food is produced, only processed.

Then you have health care, pharmacies, police departments, fire departments, etc., that are all dependent on computers that wouldn't survive the EMP. And their replacements won't get here, because we can't import and distribute the replacements fast enough.

Quite simply, you guys don't have enough perspective to understand exactly what's at stake. Economics isn't important; logistics aren't important.

"Camo Pants"


Ahh, in other words, you didn't bother to do any actual calculations at all. I see no mention whatsoever in your post of the hypocenters you used, altitudes, yields.. no basic information.

You know what else I notice? You've mysteriously changed your position from "Kill every man, woman, and child in North America" to "complete societal disintegration" which, while both obviously horrible, are also not simply academic in terms of difference - especially to the people who would actually still be alive in the second case.

You might have noticed earlier where I pointed out that an EMP attack would leave anywhere from 10 to 60% of the population alive - as an off-the-cuff estimate, and we'll assume 30 days to go with your Wal Mart Grocery store example...

Seriously, what the **** do you think happens to a society that loses 40 to 90% of its population? In the first case it might just barely hold together as a coherent whole, but any more than that and total disintegration is near-certain...

And how the **** else do you think all those people died in my example, except from exactly the causes you discussed?

Just because I didn't mention all those things does not mean I, or for that matter Arathain, or anyone else isn't aware of them, or "lacks perspective." I just didn't go into detail on it. All you're doing is pointing these things out in order to have an excuse to make a condescendingly-worded posts, and say "camo pants" at the end.

That would be the other thread, Khross, where, by the way, I addressed your question on the camo pants. Seriously, keep the butt-hurt in the thread it belongs to.

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Last edited by Diamondeye on Mon Aug 25, 2014 8:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 7:58 pm 
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Diamondeye:

You assume people are completely untrained at everything. You assume you are smarter and more knowledgeable about everything than everyone else. And, you completely missed the fact that pretty much everything in that post has been debunked by government policy since 2004. 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. 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).

Of course, your first clue I was giving you a hard time ...

Tyrion Lannister wrote:
I looked at a map.

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 8:53 pm 
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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. :roll: 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:

Quote:
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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PostPosted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 9:07 pm 
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Diamondeye:

I would suggest that recent government expenditures express a pretty clear position: future proof against it. They are spending money and devoting resources to it.

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 11:11 pm 
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I knew what Khross was referring to almost immediately.

And most of the time he's way too obtuse for me.

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 8:08 am 
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Müs wrote:
Its not the food that would be an issue. Its the water.

Without power, there's no water infrastructure. No pumps, no waste management etc.

A US without power would rapidly descend into anarchy and awfulness. Especially if there was no real way of getting things fixed in a timely manner.


It would be a problem, but would not lead to extinction in 30 days. Water is highly abundant across a majority of the North America.


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 8:26 am 
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Khross wrote:
Actually, high altitude detonations are a bit of an issue and one of the subjects the War College has been researching heavily. The logistical situation in North America is currently completely computer dependent, from our food to other necessities people don't really consider. That both Diamondeye and Arathain are localizing their objections to the power grid demonstrates they don't understand exactly what that EMP is going to do.


Yes, I do.

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It takes less than 30 days to starve to death.


You are basing this on a completely faulty assumption: that all calories disappear immediately. This would not be the case. Some would eat enough, some would not eat enough, some would eat enough to drag it out far beyond 30 days.

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It takes significantly less than 30 days for people to start dying and the disintegration of society to begin. 30 days is a fairly safe number, but slightly arbitrary. Some people will survive the dystopian future such detonations would create. The United States and Canada would not survive; Mexico might. Everything south is Central or South America.


Society would go local almost immediately. Anarchy would exist in major cities almost surely, many smaller communities would not break down.

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That said, your food, your water, your electricity, your gasoline, and everything else transported by bulk surface transport in the United States would cease to move, cease to get sold, and cease to arrive where you need it.


I'm certainly not convinced this would happen as the result of two detonations; however, if this was the case, it would not mean all supplies would stop exchanging hands. Everything would go local. Cities would be ****.

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The United States operates on an infrastructure controlled almost entirely by computers.


That will certainly create a lot of havoc. Havoc does not equate to every man, woman, and child dead in 30 days.

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By the way, the average city has a 3 day supply of food at any given time. The average grocery store (Super Wal-Mart) can feed around 4000 people for those three days and then its out of calories. Our fresh produce delivery and distribution system would collapse, leaving the majority of quickly sustainable food sources isolated and not available to large markets. There are literally thousands of square miles in New England where no food is produced, only processed.


The average city would be ****. Again, hardly every man, woman, and child.

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Then you have health care, pharmacies, police departments, fire departments, etc., that are all dependent on computers that wouldn't survive the EMP. And their replacements won't get here, because we can't import and distribute the replacements fast enough.


None of this impacts the survival of a population. People will die. Lots of people will die. Many, many people will survive.

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Quite simply, you guys don't have enough perspective to understand exactly what's at stake. Economics isn't important; logistics aren't important.


No, it is you who is missing perspective. You're focused on the wrong element - the whole. To understand the survival abilities of people, you need to look at the individual. Humans are the most adaptable, resourceful beings on the planet. In your scenario, natural resources would remain. Knowledge would remain. The ability for groups of people to defend themselves would remain. Shelters would remain. People would survive. Lots of people would survive.


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 8:52 am 
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A centrally placed HA EMP or two HA EMP's would cripple the US and I don't think 30% population loss is unrealistic, greater in major metro areas. A lot of this depends on time of year as well.

Also the grid isn't as robust as you state Khross - power loss will be a major issue as there isn't current stock to replace blown transformers. Energy generation may be fine but delivery will be severely interrupted.

Severe rioting will begin in urban areas within a week though I think the cities will do better than many tight suburbs with people who have no alternate food services and whose sewer system is not large to handle drainage issues (unlike the cities). Once sewage processing stops most suburbs will see backflow from the higher altitude locations to the lower resulting in a great deal of disease. Combined with weak immune systems from malnutrition this is what will be the largest killer.

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 9:06 am 
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Müs wrote:
I knew what Khross was referring to almost immediately.

And most of the time he's way too obtuse for me.

Contrary to the assumptions of some people, I do not think I know everything, and am perfectly willing to concede only passing familiarity with any part of Game of Thrones other than those involving Ygritte, who is hawt.

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 11:43 am 
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Elmarnieh wrote:
Severe rioting will begin in urban areas within a week though I think the cities will do better than many tight suburbs with people who have no alternate food services and whose sewer system is not large to handle drainage issues (unlike the cities). Once sewage processing stops most suburbs will see backflow from the higher altitude locations to the lower resulting in a great deal of disease. Combined with weak immune systems from malnutrition this is what will be the largest killer.


There's a lot of space in most suburbs - enough to avoid this issue for a long while, with just a bit of education. Clean water will be a problem, but again, it's fairly easy to clean water given a small amount of education.


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 11:47 am 
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Arathain Kelvar wrote:
Elmarnieh wrote:
Severe rioting will begin in urban areas within a week though I think the cities will do better than many tight suburbs with people who have no alternate food services and whose sewer system is not large to handle drainage issues (unlike the cities). Once sewage processing stops most suburbs will see backflow from the higher altitude locations to the lower resulting in a great deal of disease. Combined with weak immune systems from malnutrition this is what will be the largest killer.


There's a lot of space in most suburbs - enough to avoid this issue for a long while, with just a bit of education. Clean water will be a problem, but again, it's fairly easy to clean water given a small amount of education.



Just a bit of education.....dealing with humans.

Yes it is, but once the grid is down there is not really any good avenue to communicate to people how to prepare and once sewage is in your living space contamination because much easier.

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 11:52 am 
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Elmarnieh wrote:
Just a bit of education.....dealing with humans.

Yes it is, but once the grid is down there is not really any good avenue to communicate to people how to prepare and once sewage is in your living space contamination because much easier.


Well, yeah - now I'm the one projecting. I figure most homeowners understand their systems. Maybe not. Probably not. (sad face)


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 12:19 pm 
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*hugs sad face*

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