EMP Commission follow-on reports - 3 of 10 now released

[schüler]

The U.S. "EMP Commission" was closed down last summer. Ten staff reports followed the big 2008 report but those ten were not completed/released before Commission closure. Three of the ten have been released in the past several months, one of them released last week. Downloads hosted/linked in this article:
https://michaelmabee.info/three-new-...orts-released/

The last several weeks of North Korea and Israel developments have prompted articles by former Commission member Dr. Peter Pry. A few of them paraphrased:
NK/Iran developments and agreements mean nothing, the U.S. must continue to work on EMP-proofing and defense systems.
From the Israel intel release one would be led to believe Iran already has limited nukes in hand.

Pry continues to work with others in a non-gov funded EMP advisory board. He has a few publications on Amazon.

[Drang]

I attended a conference on Emergency Communications last Thursday. They were going over a lot of "lessons observed/learned" from Puerto Rico and Hurricane Maria, making the point that it is as extreme a disaster impact as any we have seen, and replicates the impact of a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake here in the Pacific Northwest.

They then said the only disasters that might exceed that would be either the Yellowstone system going up, or an EMP Attack or Coronal Mass Ejection, and that the assumption is that if you are ready for an EMP attack, you are about as prepared as you can be.

[schüler]

That conference would have been very interesting to listen in on. It's difficult to think of a more challenging situation than an EMP - short of being in the hotter part of a nuke fallout zone. Anyway, I'll have to look for more publicly available lessons learned from PR.

We've joked before that it's probably "easiest" overall to just live live near the largest non-urban major nuke target.

[BWT]

EMP continues to be a buzzword but just asking; has that technology been harnessed independently of a nuclear detonation?

I have coworkers who pontificate on the subject regularly and I try to not get pulled into the discussion because I feel it’s almost a zombie apocalypse style what-if situation.

I figure this forum is fairly well-informed.

God Bless,

Brandon

[farscott]

I took a look at the E3 HEMP heave waveform, and I have to say that is one high intensity pulse. The peak electric field appears to exceed 50,000 V/m and the pulse does not drop below 100 V/m until more than 100 microseconds have passed. Vehicles are typically tested with 100 V/m electric fields. I have to assume that fields of that peak strength would seriously damage modern microcontrollers and many power FETs even though the peak duration is not that long. The peak is just too high, so the area under the curve is large even though time is relatively short.

The magnetic field duration was more than 100 seconds, which is enough to induce damaging currents in the power grid. I suspect a cascade grid failure would occur, with damage to transformers. And transformers are not sitting on the shelf ready for replacement. I suspect transformer replacement would be the hardest part of getting the power grid back on line. I can see us moving to a much more distributed power grid with individually-owned generators picking up most of the slack.

I remember reading that a coronal mass ejection event in 1859 induced enough currents to burn telegraph station equipment and shock operators. I prefer to not see that event repeated as it would cause a regression of civilization to the pre-industrial age.

[schüler]

EMP continues to be a buzzword but just asking; has that technology been harnessed independently of a nuclear detonation?
...

Yes, they've been developing small and large non-nuke devices for some time. HPM Blackout, CHAMP are two examples.

[schüler]

...
The magnetic field duration was more than 100 seconds, which is enough to induce damaging currents in the power grid. I suspect a cascade grid failure would occur, with damage to transformers.
...
I remember reading that a coronal mass ejection event in 1859 induced enough currents to burn telegraph station equipment and shock operators. I prefer to not see that event repeated as it would cause a regression of civilization to the pre-industrial age.

Transformers, switch/safety gear, control systems... not to mention the patched together web of transmission lines. Especially in the northeastern US/Canada.

There have been a number of noted CME events over the past several years.

[buzz_knox]

I remember reading that a coronal mass ejection event in 1859 induced enough currents to burn telegraph station equipment and shock operators. I prefer to not see that event repeated as it would cause a regression of civilization to the pre-industrial age.

That was the Carrington Event. One massive CME followed shortly by another on the same path. Look up Stephanie Osbourne for some great discussion of the event and what it would mean for current society.

[Surf]

Is the "juice worth the squeeze?" Absolutely! The cost to update and harden infrastructure is a drop in the bucket when it comes to Federal Tax Dollars. Hardening systems on a national scale should not be looked at to suit a "doomsday" scenario like an EMP caused by a nuke, or a CME, but as mentioned above it relates to and covers other natural disaster situations in general. The cost vs. benefit is more than worthy of the investment and should have been started years ago.

[Wake27]

I recently found a YouTube channel called the “Go Commando Show” hosted by a former Marine SOF Officer, he has a two hour episode on the EMP threat. Haven’t seen it yet but I watched two of his others and found them interesting.


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