Thread: Report: United States Increasingly Vulnerable to Potentially Catastrophic EMP Attack

I quess we will take 25% of Mexico and about 20% of Guatemala with us. Then the EBT cards will stop loading.
Report: United States Increasingly Vulnerable to Potentially Catastrophic EMP Attack

Previous estimates have found that an EMP event ‘could kill 9 of 10 Americans’

.S. power grid / AP

BY: Daniel Wiser
November 6, 2015 2:22 pm

The threat of a devastating electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States is increasing just as American infrastructure has become more vulnerable, according to a new report.

“Our nation has further increased its reliance on technologies that depend upon the availability of electricity and digital electronics to manage and monitor the network of systems that deliver our basic goods and services,” said the report from the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).

As a result, an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack “could severely disrupt everything we take for granted, from food and water distribution to functioning sewer, medical, healthcare and banking systems.”

EMP events can be generated by natural causes, such as a solar storm, or an intentional attack through a cyber assault or the detonation of a nuclear weapon above earth’s atmosphere. Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are all said to be developing EMP weapon technology.

Some experts have suggested that an EMP assault “could kill 9 of 10 Americans through starvation, disease, and societal collapse.”

The JINSA task force, which includes former senior government and military officials, issued several recommendations to improve the nation’s defenses against an EMP attack, such as building EMP protection into new smart grids, declaring unequivocally how the United States would respond to an attack, and forming more public-private partnerships to tackle the problem.

“Despite this growing danger, mitigating the likelihood and consequences of such an attack could be accomplished with relatively modest investments in infrastructure over the near to medium term, especially when compared to the scale of losses should we continue to do nothing,” the report said.
http://freebeacon.com/national-secur...ic-emp-attack/

Iran endorses nuclear EMP attack on United States



By PAUL BEDARD (@SECRETSBEDARD)

•

3/19/15 11:46 AM

<font color="#000000"><span style="font-family: Curator"><font color="#073394">

Suspected for years of plotting to dismantle the U.S. electric grid, American officials have confirmed that Iranian military brass have endorsed a nuclear electromagnetic pulse explosion that would attack the country's power system.
American defense experts made the discovery while translating a secret Iranian military handbook, raising new concerns about Tehran's recent nuclear talks with the administration.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, right, attends a graduation ceremony of army cadets, accompanied by Revolutionary Guard commander Mohammad Ali Jafari, left, Chief of the General Staff of Iran's Armed Forces, Hasan Firouzabadi, second left in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Oct. 5 2013. (AP Photo/Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader)

The issue of a nuclear EMP attack was raised in the final hours of this week's elections in Israel when U.S. authority Peter Vincent Pry penned a column for Arutz Sheva warning of Iran's threat to free nations.

"Iranian military documents describe such a scenario — including a recently translated Iranian military textbook that endorses nuclear EMP attack against the United States," he wrote.

A knowledgable source said that the textbook discusses an EMP attack on America in 20 different places.

Arizona Republican Rep. Trent Franks, who is leading an effort to protect the U.S. electric grid from an EMP attack, has recently made similar claims based on the document translated by military authorities.

Once sneered at by critics, recent moves by Iran and North Korea have given credibility to the potential EMP threat from an atmospheric nuclear explosion over the U.S.

Pry has suggested ways for Iran to deliver a nuclear attack: by ship launched off the East Coast, a missile or via satellite.
Either way the result could be destruction of all or part of the U.S. electric grid, robbing the public of power, computers, water and communications for potentially a year.

Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy, said the threat to the grid can also come from solar activity.

He has been pushing Washington and state governments to take the relatively inexpensive move to protect the electric grid, though his concern is from a nuclear attack by Iran or North Korea.

"It is increasingly frightening," he said. "We have to get started on this."

He noted that Iran's top military leader recently announced that he was ready for war with the U.S.
"We are ready for the decisive battle against the U.S. and the Zionist regime," Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Hassan Firouzabadi told Iran's Fars News Agency in 2014.

Below is from Pry's column that discusses an Iran EMP attack:

Iran armed with nuclear missiles poses an unprecedented threat to global civilization.

One nuclear warhead detonated at high-altitude over the United States would blackout the national electric grid and other life sustaining critical infrastructures for months or years by means of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). A nationwide blackout lasting one year, according to the Congressional EMP Commission, could cause chaos and starvation that leaves 90 percent of Americans dead.

Iranian military documents describe such a scenario--including a recently translated Iranian military textbook that endorses nuclear EMP attack against the United States.

Thus, Iran with a small number of nuclear missiles can by EMP attack threaten the existence of modernity and be the death knell for Western principles of international law, humanism and freedom. For the first time in history, a failed state like Iran could destroy the most successful societies on Earth and convert an evolving benign world order into world chaos.


http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/ir...rticle/2561733

Ambitious. If they succeed they will only last as long as it takes to turn their sandtrap to a sheet of glass. JMO
SECRET IRANIAN HANDBOOK CALLS FOR EMP ATTACK ON AMERICA

General: 'We are ready for decisive battle against the U.S., Zionist regime'

Published: 03/19/2015 at 9:48 PM
F. MICHAEL MALOOF


WASHINGTON – A “secret” Iranian military handbook, American officials say, confirms that the Islamic Republic of Iran is including in its arsenal a plan to launch a nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack on the American national grid system.
To carry out such an attack, from a high-altitude nuclear blast, would require Iran to have not only the missiles to launch such a device but also the technology to produce a nuclear explosion.

The revelation comes as the United States, along with the P5+1 countries that comprise the United Nations Security Council, is about to finalize negotiations over Iran’s nuclear development program.

There have been concerns raised that Iran still has the intention of making nuclear bombs using the technology in that program, and the negotiations may not do enough to prevent it.

It’s also an issue on which WND has reported for a decade, as long ago as 2005 when intelligence sources were quoted, saying, “Iran is not only covertly developing nuclear weapons, it is already testing ballistic missiles specifically designed to destroy America’s technical infrastructure, effectively neutralizing the world’s lone superpower.”

At that time, scientists, including President Reagan’s top science adviser, William R. Graham, said there was no other explanation for such tests than preparation for the deployment of electromagnetic pulse weapons – even one of which could knock out America’s critical electrical and technological infrastructure, effectively sending the continental U.S. back to the 19th century with a recovery time of months or years.

An also at the time, Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., warned, “A terrorist organization might have trouble putting a nuclear warhead ‘on target’ with a Scud, but it would be much easier to simply launch and detonate in the atmosphere. No need for the risk and difficulty of trying to smuggle a nuclear weapon over the border or hit a particular city. Just launch a cheap missile from a freighter in international waters – al-Qaida is believed to own about 80 such vessels – and make sure to get it a few miles in the air.”

In the latest development, the P5+1 countries – Great Britain, France, the United States, Russia and China plus Germany – have sought restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program to prevent that country from turning a program that reportedly is for medical and power production into a bomb factory.

Peter Vincent Pry, who is executive director of a congressional advisory group called the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, raised the alarm as the agreement is about to be finalized.

He said U.S. military officials have confirmed such an Iranian plan.

“Iranian military documents describe such a scenario – including a recently translated Iranian military textbook that endorses nuclear EMP attack against the United States,” Pry wrote in a recent column in Israel’s main online media network, Aruz Sheva.

“Iran with a small number of nuclear missiles can by EMP attack threaten the existence of modernity and be the death knell of Western principles of international law, humanism and freedom,” he said.

“For the first time in history, a failed state like Iran could destroy the most successful societies on Earth and convert an evolving benign world order into world chaos.”

WND could not immediately independently confirm the military documents cited by Pry.

Those experts confirmed there would be no warning and that the U.S. missile defense system would not be able to respond in time to prevent the high altitude nuclear explosion that could be launched from one of those ships.

“It shows they could put a weapon on a boat or freighter, and if Iran has ballistic missiles it could put it anywhere on the U.S. coast,” John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a senior fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, said at the time.

The Iranian Fars News Agency had announced that the fleet would undertake a three-month mission and would consist of a destroyer and a helicopter-carrying vessel.

This week’s revelation comes as Israel has just re-elected Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister. He recently warned a joint session of Congress about reaching any nuclear agreement with Iran.

According to sources, the textbook refers to an EMP attack on some 20 locations in the United States.

Pry pointed out that Iran, in fact, would not need an intercontinental missile to launch a high-altitude EMP attack that could knock out the U.S. national grid system and the other life-sustaining critical infrastructures that depend on the grid to function.

He said Iran could deliver a nuclear attack from a ship just off the U.S. East Coast either by a missile or by launching into orbit around the Earth a satellite which, in effect, would be a nuclear device.




Critical infrastructures that depend on the already vulnerable U.S. national grid system include communications, water and food delivery systems, financial and banking systems, transportation, regulation of the nearly million miles of oil and natural gas pipelines that traverse the U.S. and the myriad of modern conveniences that function by automated control systems that often are located in remote areas of the country.Pry said it would cost only about $2 billion to harden the grid from such an attack or a direct hit from solar flares – which could produce similar damage and is occurring now. He added that protection of the grid could include the installation of devices like geomagnetically induced current, or GICs, blockers.
Pry’s warning about the Iranian military textbook coincided with a threat from Gen. Hassan Firouzabad, the Iranian armed forces chief of staff.

“We are ready for the decisive battle against the U.S. and the Zionist regime,” Firouzabad recently told the Iranian Fars News Agency.

“Iran armed with nuclear missiles poses an unprecedented threat to global civilization,” Pry said.

In 2012, when Iran was reporting the successful testing of a variety of missiles, including those that could strike targets 1,250 miles away, WND reported that the rogue nation also was working on an intercontinental ballistic missiles under the guise of it is space program.

One nuclear warhead detonated at high-altitude over the United States would black out the national electric grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures for months or years by means of an electromagnetic pulse, Pry said.

He said the chaos could result in the deaths of 90 percent of the American population.

Such an attack would not be exclusive to the United States.

Dr. Emily Landau, director of the Arms Control and Regional Security Program at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, said Iran also could target Israel.

Landau, who is an expert on Iran’s nuclear program, said Iran could very well be planning an EMP attack on Israel, based on statements from high-level Iranian officials.

She said Iran already has the missiles but only needs the nuclear device to launch an EMP that would be capable of destroying Israel’s electrical grid.

“Iran doesn’t have a nuclear bomb yet, and hopefully it won’t have one, but if it does manage to build a bomb, an EMP attack is a real possibility,” Landau said.

Pry went so far as to say Iran is actively preparing for an EMP attack.

Tehran has undertaken offshore exercises using Scud missiles fired and positioned in such a way that they exploded in the atmosphere, exactly the method you would use for an EMP attack, he said.

“(Iran) could even marshal a major Islamic invasion of Israel, massacring the Jews and ushering in the era of the 12th imam, the Islamic messiah, whose arrival Iran’s leadership believes is imminent,” Pry said.

WND also reported at the time that a 2004 report by a congressional commission found “several potential adversaries have or can acquire the capability to attack the United States with a high-altitude nuclear weapons-generated electromagnetic pulse (EMP). A determined adversary can achieve an EMP attack capability without having a high level of sophistication.”
“EMP is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences,” the report said. “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 U.S. society, as well as to the ability of the United States and Western nations to project influence and military power.”

legislation has not yet succeeded in setting those standards.

It’s the SHIELD Act, from Rep. Trent Franks, that has been introduced several times.

The Shield Act stands for Secure High-voltage Infrastructure for Electricity from Lethal Damage. It calls on industry and government to develop, promulgate and implement standards and processes that are necessary to address the electric grid’s current vulnerabilities and shortcomings that would be affected by an EMP.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/03/secret-ir...vjMQsIOuwbk.99

November 2, 2013
One Second After

By Jon N. Hall


Back in July, I wrote an article that examined the post-apocalyptic genre in fiction and in film. In that piece, I committed (at least) one sin in that I mentioned a book that I had not read. Having just corrected that failing, I'm here to tell you that everyone in America should read William R. Forstchen's novel One Second After.

Forstchen's novel takes place in post-9/11 America. And into that very real America, he introduces "the event" -- an electromagnetic pulse attack. EMP is not science fiction; it's been known about for decades. The Sun emits EMPs in solar flares, which have caused power blackouts.



An EMP attack involves detonating nuclear bombs high up in the atmosphere. With an EMP attack there is no radioactive fallout, nor bombed-out cities. But what a successful EMP attack would do is knock out our entire electric grid and fry all our electronic devices. An EMP attack would turn the lights out across America.

One Second After follows one community, the real town of Black Mountain, North Carolina, for one year after a devastating EMP attack. The town is left like all towns in America: utterly cut off from the outside. That's because an EMP attack would not only destroy the electrical grid and everything attached to it, the electrical systems of all vehicles built in the last few decades would also be destroyed. The only vehicles that would work would be antiques, such as Edsels and VW bugs. So the teeming millions in our cities would either be stuck, or have to walk out.




Beyond transportation and communication, the novel also looks at all the other systems that depend on electricity, like food and medicine. Diabetics, for instance, whose insulin must be kept cool, would not be long for this world. One of the more disturbing scenes occurs soon after the attack when the central character visits the local nursing home and finds it in total chaos. The food situation soon becomes dire and the town declares martial law. (Disabuse yourself of the idea that you'd be able to live off the land; in a nation of more than 300 million, game would quickly disappear.)

But the novel is not just about the logistics of an America without power; Forstchen peoples his book with powerful characters. The central character is an ex-military professor of history at the local college, John Matherson. Matherson becomes the leader of the town and its savior, (insofar as there can be any saving in a post-EMP America). Because we have a history prof as a protagonist, we're made to a look at how other great nations and empires came to their ends. We're even treated (on page 212 of the hardback) to a look at the Battle of Leignitz in 1241 in which the overconfident Germans encountered the invading Mongol horde. (Pride goeth before a fall.)

Like Leignitz, our novel also has a pitched battle, and there's plenty of action and even a bit of a love story. But what the novel is really about is one possible end for America. Americans need to be reminded that we could lose everything. Notions that "it can't happen here" are beyond foolish. A few undersized punks armed with box cutters changed America forever. But armed with nuclear devices, those insane radicals could make 9/11 seem like the good old days. The last chapter in the novel takes place exactly 365 days after the attack. It is a powerful ending, and it will take you all over the emotional map -- joy, despair, anger, shame.

To reach more folks, Forstchen's novel really should be made into a movie. But just as with Cormac McCarthy's bleak post-apocalyptic novel The Road, it would be difficult to film. One of the problems with the film of McCarthy's excellent book is that the boy just wasn't emaciated enough. (Viggo Mortensen did, however, starve himself nicely.) But for One Second After, one would need to cast an entire town's worth of anorexics.

Do we have the leadership in Washington to protect us from an EMP attack? After all, the feds couldn't (or wouldn't) protect Ambassador Christopher Stevens from al-Qaeda terrorists. The feds certainly didn't protect Bostonians from the Tsarnaev brothers. The U.S. Army couldn't even protect their own soldiers from a jihadist massacre at Fort Hood by army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan, one of their own. Which prompted Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey, Jr. to opine: "And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse."

The current regime in Washington doesn't understand that there are untold millions of implacable Muslims who would rather see this world incinerated than for faraway people to worship as they see fit or for a single infidel woman's face to be uncovered. Even though the Muslim world is on fire, and Iran is closer to having the bomb than we had thought, some still cling to the belief that Barack Hussein Obama, in all his transcendent wonderfulness, can reason with these people. (I feel safer already.)

Besides our electric power system, America's other infrastructure is also vulnerable to disruption. But an EMP attack has the potential to destroy America. We need to quit worrying about "diversity" and get serious about survival.

My tardiness in reading Forstchen's 2009 novel may have been due to not having read anything by the author. But One Second After achieves real power, and is a genuine page-turner besides. Watch this short video of Forstchen on Fox News where he refers to an EMP attack as a "nation-wide Katrina event." Also watch this video of former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who wrote the novel's foreword. For more info on EMP, visit the novel's official website, which has several terrific links to check out. But to really get motivated, I recommend that you start by reading the novel. You can order One Second After at Amazon and at Barnes and Noble.

Jon N. Hall is a programmer/analyst from Kansas City.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/...#ixzz3qr3fVd5W
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Montreat prof writes sequel to ‘One Second After’

Fred McCormick10:49 a.m. EST November 6, 2015

(Photo: SPECIAL TO THE BLACK MOUNTAIN NEWS)


Six and a half years ago, the novel “One Second After” by Montreat history professor and local author William Forstchen painted a vivid and dramatic portrait of what life could look like following an electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States.

The book, which reached No. 11 on The New York Times Best Seller fiction list, highlights the perils an American town might face after an electrical grid failure due to an EMP. Making the tale even more eerie for WNC residents is that “One Second After” is set in Black Mountain.

Now Forstchen has written a sequel. “One Year After,” released on Sept. 15, picks up the story one year after its predecessor ended.

Forstchen moved to Black Mountain in the early 1990s after finishing the final year of his doctorate at Purdue University. He has been a history professor at Montreat College for more than 20 years.

During that time, Forstchen has written about 50 books. “One Second After,” which has sold more than 100,000 copies in 12 countries, was the first book set in his hometown.

“I was first approached on writing a book about EMP in 2004. I’m friends with Newt Gingrich, and we had written some books together,” he said. “A congressional report had just come out on the threat of EMP in 2004. I met with the chair of that committee, Roscoe Bartlett, and he challenged me in terms of why there was not a stronger response to the threat of EMPs.”

Forstchen’s experiences at Montreat College influenced the book’s formulation.

“I was sitting at our college graduation ceremony, and I’m looking at my students,” he said. “Montreat is the type of college where you know every kid that walks across that stage. I feel like God whispered in my ear. It was ‘Write about us. Write about my town, write about my neighbors. Write about my students and friends.’”
Forstchen interviewed various people in and around Black Mountain in an effort to add authenticity to his first book.

“I spent a couple of hours with (Montreat Police chief) Jack Staggs finding out what would happen,” Forstchen said. “I went down to the pharmacy, and a pharmacist there at that time started running down some of the more tragic possibilities.”

The line between fiction and reality is blurred, as Forstchen frequently weaves familiar landmarks, location and people into both books. The neighbor of the protagonist of both books shares a name with Forstchen’s friend Lee Robinson, and the opening scene of the first book comes straight from the author’s own life.

“The opening scene in ‘One Second After,’ the main character is in the store The Ivy Corner buying Beanie Babies for his daughter,” he said. “That was my life for many years” when his daughter was growing up.
As the protagonist ponders his surroundings in the opening pages of “One Second After,” he expresses a thought that Forstchen himself has had on many occasions.

“I remember walking up Cherry Street for one of the first times and thinking ‘I live in a Norman Rockwell painting,’” he said. “And that’s how I came up with that line before he walks into the store. Town Hardware plays a big role in book number two. All of these places I am emotionally connected to.”

The book’s rough draft originally had the story set the story in the fictional town of “Blue Ridge.” But former Montreat College president Dan Struble convinced the author to set it in use Black Mountain as the setting.
“I talked to some of the local folks about how they felt about me using the town’s real identity, and the consensus was ‘go for it,’” Forstchen said.

“The feedback I have gotten over the last six years has been 99 percent positive.”

Forstchen believes that the decision to use his hometown in the book was a “turning point” in the process.
“I really want to thank my neighbors, the college and the town,” he said. “This book would have never happened without them.”

http://www.citizen-times.com/story/l...cond/75282874/