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An EMP or Solar Incident Could Result in Blackout Warfare
- ortusdux 3y agohttps://www.energy.gov/ceser/articles/strategic-transformer-reserve-report-congress-march-2017 https://www.energy.gov/ceser/articles/strategic-transformer-...
- yabones 3y agoThis has been largely known since the 60s, when the Starfish Prime exoatmospheric nuclear test knocked out all communications and damaged power grids over the Pacific. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime
- BashiBazouk 3y agoWhat these articles always leave out is what are the US capabilities in this area? Can we destroy the Russian and Chinese power grids by the same methods? Snowden showed that yes, the NSA and other US agencies have pretty much gotten in to everything and the cyber warfare is likely in place. What are our EMP capabilities both nuclear and non-nuclear? Is this a case of something new? The adversaries have caught up? Or someone just wants some more funding?
- ben_w 3y agoAs it only takes one nuke, my assumption is that anyone with nukes and ICBMs can take out a power grid or grids spanning any region the size of the continental USA. On that basis, yes, you could also take out the Russian or Chinese grids this way. North Korea could also perform such an attack. I assume the UK can too; although I don't know the maximum altitude of a Trident SLBM, the maximum range suggests it could well be great enough for this mode of attack. Non-nuclear EMPs do exist, but you should probably ignore them at this point unless you're actively working in that field, given all the easier solutions in EW including simple jamming.
- Maximus9000 3y ago> The report concluded that, one year after a large-scale EMP or CME, nine of every ten Americans would be dead, from a variety of causes stemming from the attack. Anyone else find that hard to believe?
- jandrese 3y agoIt basically assumes that nobody will have any problem solving skills and will be reliant on the previous systems to still be running. That assumption is easier to make than to try to figure out how people would actually behave.
- dave4420 3y agoAll the transformers melting seems like a tough problem. What’s the solution?
- realce 3y agoCouldn't even imagine the amount of random fires that would break out the first day, with practically no tools to put them out.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- woleium 2y agocurrently there isn’t one. We can manufacture about 2 “big” transformers a year, and there are about 120 on the planet. Assume 50% are melted, and even with redirected resources itll take a long time to recover
- throwanem 3y agoNot if it takes on the order of months to get the power grid back up, no.
- throwanem 2y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- coffeedan 2y agoGood fictional read of how this might play out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Second_After https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Second_After
- throw0101b 3y agoSee also perhaps "Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Protection and Resilience Guidelines for Critical Infrastructure and Equipment" (PDF): * https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/19_0307_CISA_EMP-Protection-Resilience-Guidelines.pdf https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/19_030... It mentions some standards for these types of things: * IEC SC 77C: High power transient phenomena * MIL-STD-188-125-1: High-Altitude EMP Protection for Fixed Ground-Based Facilities * MIL-HDBK-423: High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) Protection for Fixed and Transportable Ground-Based C4 * MIL-STD-2169:High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) Environment
- jaybrendansmith 3y agoA CME event does sound civilization ending, at least for the part of the globe awake when it happens. However the rest of the globe would still be ok, and could quickly ship the necessary hardware over. One hopes that FEMA and the US military do have a DR plan in place for this, because it may happen in our lifetimes.