EMP threat: Our latest bogeyman

Today’s blog will focus on the novel One Second After and the “threat” of terrorist attack by means of EMP: Electromagnetic Pulse. Also, I will have some unkind-but-wholly-accurate words for the author of One Second After (William R. Forstchen, Ph.D.) and that shameless snake oil salesman who wrote its foreword, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (also a Ph.D. – believe it or not).

“One Second After is a 2009 novel by American writer William R. Forstchen. The novel deals with an unexpected electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States as it affects the people living in and around the town of Black Mountain, North Carolina.” – From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Second_After

Basically, this novel details the struggle for survival which starts one second after a nuclear weapon is detonated at high altitude over each of three different states: Utah, Kansas, and Ohio. One second after these detonations, the entire continental United States no longer has access to its electrical power grid or any devices with EMP-sensitive circuits which were “fried” by the sudden surge of energy released by these weapons.

I want to be very clear about this: We’re being lead to believe that three low-yield nuclear weapons could serve to knock out the technological underpinnings of our modern way of life. No computers. No phones. Few operable automobiles and trucks. No planes, no refrigeration or heating units. No manufacturing, dependent on electrical power. Even portable power generators are rendered useless by this attack.

So of course my bullshit detector went into high alert.

Hidden Agenda?

I believe there is a hidden agenda motivating people who seek to terrorize (really, there is no better word) their fellow Americans by speculating about what nastiness our numerous enemies wish to inflict upon us. These native-born terrorists are basically insecure weaklings who are terrified of every possible doomsday scenario they can dream up. They would if they could engage in pre-emptive strikes against the entire gamut of bad guys out there.

Or try their damnedest to convince the US government to do so.

Neither the author nor Gingrich has any military experience whatsoever (nada, zero, zip). Neither of them served in our nation’s armed forces in any capacity. Yet, they have collaborated in writing several novels of military fiction. How strange!

My own experience in the military (USAF) was limited, but I can tell you this: “There’s a derogatory term which soldiers use when speaking of such long-distance ‘warriors’ – of people who find it so easy to speak of valor and combat without themselves ever having been in harm’s way. That derogatory term is maggot.”

[To be sure, maggot covers a lot of territory, but would easily include such authors.]

The novel itself gives a clue as to motive

Back to the notion of pre-emptive strike. I quote from page 201 of One Second After, from Chapter 7: DAY 18.

QUOTE:

9. WAR NEWS!  This same resident reports that the attack is now believed to have been three missiles, fired from a containership in the Gulf of Mexico. Our forces overseas are engaged in heavy combat in Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Korea. There is progress on all fronts. Responsibility for the attack rests upon an alliance of forces in the Middle East and North Korea ….

…widespread outages in Japan, South Korea*, and Taiwan …similar missiles over Eastern Europe.

  * Observation by Steven Searle: South Korea? North Korea is just over the border and would therefore be affected by any EMP attack against its southern neighbor. So (apparently!) North Korea, as one of the parties responsible for this attack, decided to attack itself(?)

:UNQUOTE.

So there we have it. Eighteen days after the US has been rendered paralyzed), not only has our government been able to determine who was responsible, but had also managed to engage our forces in heavy combat in five countries (four of which do not currently have US forces present on their soil). And (we are assured), “There is progress on all fronts.” All this in 18 days!

I swear, whoever writes stuff like this must be taking stupid pills (or assumes their readers are). The only way it would be even remotely possible for there to be “progress on all fronts” is for the United States to have instantly decided to take off the kid gloves and use nuclear weapons and massive WWII style assaults on these nations. Oh…I get it…no one’s been taking stupid pills. It appears that Fortschen and Gingrich, in their sly way, are urging the United States to stop being soft on our opponents – that we must strike now, with no holds barred (up to and including the use of nukes) before it’s too late.

And check out that list of opponent nations, which includes Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, both of which are currently allies in our global war on terror. Unless…by DAY 18, we were able to determine that the Saudi and Pakistani governments were linked to this EMP assault. Has anyone who praises this novel even noticed that Saudi Arabia is included on this shit list?

Saudi Arabia? Hello! [Sounds like a bald-faced oil grab to me.]

Let’s do the math

The novel itself makes categorical assertions about what would happen if the US were to be attacked by an EMP weapon, but (am I surprised by this?) nowhere in the novel itself (or in an Appendix or Foreword or Afterword) is any number-crunching done.

So allow me!

The basic assertion is that even a relatively low-yield atomic bomb detonated up to several hundred miles above ground level would generate an EMP with sufficient energy to knock out sensitive electronic components everywhere within line-of-sight of the explosion. Anything “over the horizon” wouldn’t be affected, which is the reason why a high-altitude detonation would be preferred by our enemies.

First, there are some practical factors which would limit the damage inflicted:

·         Not all of the energy in a nuclear blast ends up in the form of EMP. For example, there is a tremendous amount of heat, light, and sound generated as well – none of which would harm ground-based circuits from such a distance.

·         Energy dissipates as it moves away from a central point. That is, the blast’s energy would be most highly-concentrated within the first few miles from the source. [In my calculations, though, I assume that all of this energy is uniformly distributed within a 100-mile blast radius.]

·         A great deal of energy (even that composing the EMP itself) would radiate away from ground level – harmlessly into outer space.

·         Any EMP would surely be weakened by collisions with the molecules which make up our atmosphere.

I’ll add two other considerations detrimental to Forstchen’s argument:

·         There were serious scientists who had urged that we not test our first atomic bomb out of fear that a chain reaction could ignite the entire atmosphere of the planet. Didn’t happen but their calculations suggested such a possibility. The point? Not all calculations are created equal.

·         When the most powerful hydrogen bomb of all time was detonated by the USSR, the plane that dropped this 50 megaton behemoth wasn’t knocked out of the sky by an EMP (unless those dastardly Rooskies figured out a way to shield that aircraft’s electrical systems – ah, one more thing for us to be afraid of, though we should keep in mind: “Surely the US must have developed similar shielding technology since the Tsar Bomba exploded on the scene in 1961.”)

·         The foreword of this novel states: “My friend Captain William Sanders, USN, one of our nation’s leading experts on this particular weapon, will provide the afterword for this book explaining in greater detail, using unclassified documents, as to how such a weapon works.” No offense, but I’m not exactly thrilled that a Captain is considered “one of our nation’s leading experts.” I would expect that someone a little more highly-credentialed be cited. Or that someone so knowledgeable had been rewarded with a higher rank. [Again, no offense but…please…]

For the sake of my analysis, I will assume that an EMP weapon is detonated 100 miles above my home town of Chicago, Illinois. I will also assume that all of the energy is contained and uniformly-distributed within a sphere 100 miles in radius, though of course that wouldn’t literally be the case. However, this assumption makes my argument even more powerful, as you will see. The weapon in question will be assumed to be equivalent in energy to that of the Castle Bravo device, the most powerful ever tested by the United States.

Castle Bravo, detonated in 1954, released 84,000 TJ of energy – 84K TeraJoules. My analysis will show, this is the equivalent amount of energy (if evenly distributed within a sphere with a radius of 100 miles) released from one 100-watt light bulb being turned on for one second in a volume of space consisting of 722 cubic feet. In other words, within a cube measuring 9 feet on each side. [Can you feel the burn?]

[Note: For my step-by-step analysis, see Appendix 1 at the very end of this blog.]

Let’s use a little common sense here

If three low-yield nukes could bring the USA to its knees after being secretly launched from a barge in the Gulf of Mexico, our enemies would have done so long before now. Since numerous nations currently own nukes, we could never be sure who actually used these particular three against us. But Newt Gingrich and company assure us that, indeed, we are in mortal danger of such an attack. And, by gum, we’d better spend whatever it takes to EMP-proof our infrastructure.

Don’t forget: Whatever gets added to our ever-increasing mountain of debt will serve only to drive us more deeply and more quickly into a servitude from which we can never recover. But…maybe that’s precisely the point.

Steven Searle for U.S. President in 2012:

"Hell, I used to think the Newt in Newt Gingrich’s name stood for Newton. Now I think it stands for Newtron Bomb" - Steve.

Founder of The Independent Contractors Party

Appendix 1

To recap:  Castle Bravo, detonated in 1954, released 84,000 TJ of energy – 84K TeraJoules. The following analysis will show, this is the equivalent amount of energy (if evenly distributed within a sphere with a radius of 100 miles) released from one 100-watt light bulb being turned on for one second in a volume of space consisting of 722 cubic feet. In other words, within a cube measuring 9 feet on each side.

All of the energy output generated by a nuclear explosion can be calculated by using Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc². Even though this energy consists of different forms, I will not differentiate here as to how much ends up in the form of an EMP, though (obviously) it must be less than the total amount of energy generated.

My chain of logic proceeds as follows:

·         The volume of a sphere is determined by this equation: V = (4/3) π r³.

·         The volume in question, being determined by the bomb detonating 100 miles above the earth, is 4 million cubic miles.

·         Assuming that all blast energy is contained within this volume, that gives us 84,000 TeraJoules of energy per 4 million cubic miles.

·         That’s equal to 21 billion joules per cubic mile.

·         Next, convert 21 billion joules to its equivalent in Kilowatt Hours of energy, a unit most Americans are more familiar with.

·         3.6 million joules of energy might sound like a lot, but that’s equal to one kilowatt hour. Translation? That’s the amount of energy needed to keep a 1,000 watt light bulb burning for an hour or, put another way, enough to keep ten 100-watt bulbs burning for an hour.

·         Therefore, 21 billion joules is equal to 5,800 kilowatt hours. Again, this is the amount of energy contained within each cubic mile within 100 miles of detonation.

·         5,800 kilowatt hours is the amount of energy used by 5,800 light bulbs burning for an hour, if each bulb is rated at 1,000 watts. Or, put another way, the same as 58,000 100-watt bulbs.

·         One cubic mile is equal to 150 billion cubic feet. Therefore, if 58,000 100-watt bulbs are burning for an hour within a 150 billion cubic foot volume, that’s equal to one bulb burning for an hour within a volume of 2.6 million cubic feet.

·         If that one bulb is burning for an hour, that’s equal to 3,600 seconds. Or, put another way, to 3,600 bulbs burning for one second.

·         That reduces down to one 100-watt bulb burning for one second within a volume comprising 722 cubic feet. Or, put another way, within a cube measuring 9 feet on each edge.

·         Considering these calculations, it doesn’t seem like we’re talking about a lot of energy here, especially since I’ve taken into consideration what happens within a 100-mile radius. Our authors are saying this one single bomb could blackout an area covering more than a dozen states, if exploded at an altitude much greater than 100 miles. But of course, the further away the detonation, the less energy would be contained per cubic mile. So that single, solitary light bulb would burn for one second within a volume much greater than 722 cubic feet.

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