What is EMP?

Electromagnetic Pulse Attack

According to the 2004 Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States of EMP Attack (Executive Report), “Several potential adversaries have or can acquire the capability to attack the United States with a high-altitude nuclear weapon-generated electromagnetic pulse (EMP). A determined adversary can achieve an EMP attack capability without having a high level of sophistication.”

It goes on to briefly address the effects, “EMP is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences. EMP will cover the wide geographic region within line of sight to the nuclear weapon. It has the capability to produce significant damage to critical infrastructures and thus to the very fabric of US society...” The Commission's chairman has testified that within one year of such an attack, 70% - 90% of Americans would be dead from such causes as disease and violence. It is also highly plausible that many Americans would die of starvation due to the interruption of the national food supply.

According to the Washington Department of Health, Office of Radiation Protection, “A 1.4 Megaton bomb launched about 250 miles above Kansas would destroy most of the electronics that were not protected in the entire Continental United States.”
So, as you can see, both a massive solar storm and an EMP event could quite possibly end civilization as we know it. I know that sounds drastic, but in the United States and other technologically advanced countries, how would the mass population handle a prolonged event with very little or quite possibly, no electricity? As the Commission noted, our society is utterly dependent on our electrical grid for everything.

Trucking and transportation
Gas stations and refineries
Information and communications
Commercial production of food and goods
Water purification and delivery
Most of our military capability

These are only a handful of things that we take for granted because they are always there. If the gas stations were out of order, and no refineries able to produce more fuel, can you imagine how quickly our “civilized society” would break down? With that event alone, grocery store shelves become empty within a matter of days and farmers can't transport any goods. If you were not aware, grocery stores do not stock much extra produce or food “in the back of the store.” In order to maintain a high profit margin, stores maintain only a few days worth of staples until another shipment arrives. This not only conserves space, but allows for them to keep their overhead lower, among other things.

Once the gas stops flowing and the shelves are wiped clean, how long will your neighbor remain civil?

Several tests and scenarios have shown that cell phones will be one of the first tell-tale signs of an electromagnetic event because of the enormous percentage of the population carrying one. If the power grid were to simply go down, this wouldn't effect your cell phone. Depending on your location, your local cell towers probably have back-up power systems, as well. The cell towers, backup power and your cell phone will all be disabled after an electromagnetic event, offering you a clue as to what has just happened.

The Commission went on to assess just how our society would be impacted from an EMP event, including how well cars and trucks can handle the burst of electromagnetic waves.

The Automobile and Trucking Infrastructures
[brief excerpt from the Commission's 2008 report]
"Over the past century, our society and economy have developed in tandem with the automobile and trucking industries. As a consequence, we have become highly dependent on these infrastructures for maintaining our way of life.
Our land-use patterns, in particular, have been enabled by the automobile and trucking infrastructures. Distances between suburban housing developments, shopping centers, schools, and employment centers enforce a high dependence on the automobile. Suburbanites need their cars to get food from the grocery store, go to work, shop, obtain medical care, and myriad other activities of daily life. Rural Americans are just as dependent on automobiles, if not more so. Their needs are similar to those of suburbanites, and travel distances are greater. To the extent that city dwellers rely on available mass transit, they are less dependent on personal automobiles. But mass transit has been largely supplanted by automobiles, except in a few of our largest cities.

As much as automobiles are important to maintaining our way of life, our very lives are dependent on the trucking industry. The heavy concentration of our population in urban and suburban areas has been enabled by the ability to continuously supply food from farms and processing centers far removed. As we noted above, cities typically have a food supply of only several days available on grocery shelves for their customers.

Replenishment of that food supply depends on a continuous flow of trucks from food processing centers to food distribution centers to warehouses and to grocery stores and restaurants. If urban food supply flow is substantially interrupted for an extended period of time, hunger and mass evacuation, even starvation and anarchy, could result.

Trucks also deliver other essentials. Fuel delivered to metropolitan areas through pipelines is not accessible to the public until it is distributed by tanker trucks to gas stations.

Garbage removal, utility repair operations, fire equipment, and numerous other services are delivered using specially outfitted trucks. Nearly 80 percent of all manufactured goods at some point in the chain from manufacturer to consumer are transported by truck.

The consequences of an EMP attack on the automobile and trucking infrastructures would differ for the first day or so and in the longer term. An EMP attack will certainly immediately disable a portion of the 130 million cars and 90 million trucks in operation in the United States. Vehicles disabled while operating on the road can be expected to cause accidents. With modern traffic patterns, even a very small number of disabled vehicles or accidents can cause debilitating traffic jams. Moreover, failure of electronically based traffic control signals will exacerbate traffic congestion in metropolitan areas.

In the aftermath of an EMP attack that occurs during working hours, with a large number of people taking to the road at the same time to try to get home, we can expect extreme traffic congestion."

EMP Vulnerability of the Automobile and Trucking Infrastructures
The Commission tested the EMP susceptibility of traffic light controllers, automobiles and trucks.

The summary of the tests conclude that traffic light controllers will begin to malfunction following exposure to EMP fields as low as a few kV/m, thereby causing traffic congestion.

For automobiles, approximately 10% of the vehicles on the road will stop, at least temporarily, thereby possibly triggering accidents, as well as congestion, at field levels above 25 kV/m. For vehicles that were turned off during the testing, none suffered serious effects and were able to be started.

Of the trucks that were not running during EMP exposure, none were subsequently affected during the test. Thirteen of the 18 trucks exhibited a response while running. Most seriously, three of the truck motors stopped. Two could be restarted immediately, but one required towing to a garage for repair. The other 10 trucks that responded exhibited relatively minor temporary responses that did not require driver intervention to correct. Five of the 18 trucks tested did not exhibit any anomalous response up to field strengths of approximately 50 kV/m.

In regards to the airline industry, “Although commercial aircraft have proven EM protection against naturally occurring EM environments [such as lightning], we cannot confirm safety of flight following [severe or hostile] EMP exposure. Moreover, if the complex air traffic control system is damaged by EMP, restoration of full services could take months or longer.”

In conclusion, you have a very good chance that should an EMP or severe solar storm occur while you are driving home from work, you will be able to make it home as long as you are careful to avoid collisions. Once home, however, is an entirely different story!

- Kevin Hayden