Reality Check
I know minimal about EMP's, however I do understand how large of a threat they could pose to modern societies. I scoured the forums looking for some sort of a post related to what I am thinking, to no avail. However, I did come across a few posts that spurred my interests just a tad bit more.
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Is the threat real now, or will be real in the future? Nations like Iran, NK, Pakistan all have the bomb, or will in the future, is it likely due to their isolationalism that they are more likely to use a nuclear weapon as and EMP?
Thanks!
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Now that I have read the several posts on this thread, I believe that it would not be remiss to attempt to correct some misconceptions. If you who are posting are going to talk about the EMP, your comments will be much more cogent if you have some understanding of what you are talking about.
Do I know what I’m talking about? Let me introduce myself. I am a retired Electrical Engineer (BS(EE) with special honors, University of Colorado 1961). During the Korean war I served in the US Navy on the aircraft carriers “Valley Forge” (Essex Class) and “Bedoing Straits” a small support carrier, and in the Military Air Transport Service as an Aviation Electronics technician and Radioman flying air evacuation from the Far East to Hawaii. I was briefly at Eniwetok during the nuclear testing period in 1953. I was also on Johnston Island several times during this period (which predated the Starfish Prime test).
In the years following my graduation in 1961 I became an internationally recognized consultant on Electromagnetic Compatibility – keeping the electromagnetic fields from digital equipment from interfering with each other. I am the author of the “Handbook of Design Guidelines for Electromagnetic Compatibility of Digital Products” and the novel “SS-18; The SATAN Legacy” – an in depth treatment of the mechanism and consequences of an EMP attack on the United States in the form of an adventure story.
I won’t go into the history of the discovery of the EMP (Operation Starfish Prime, Johnston Island, Pacific, 1962). As has been noted elsewhere, searching for EMP or Electromagnetic Pulse on the Internet will bring up a wealth of information on this subject – some good, some not so good.
The following discussion deals with the High Altitude EMP (HEMP) only. This is the strategic EMP that is a nation killer.
A comment before I start: If you have access to a nuclear bomb, all you need to make it into an EMP bomb is a rocket. You do not need any sophisticated control. All you need to do is put it on the rocket, fire it into the air, and “make it go boom” at about 200 miles altitude. You could do it. I could do it. Al Qa’Ida could do it. Could Russia do it? Absolutely! They already have the weapons in silos. Then why won’t they do it? No sovereign nation will use HEMP as a strategic weapon because it is too devastating! If Russia were to detonate one over the U.S., it would essentially destroy the U.S. And, as a direct result, it would destroy the international economic community. The economy of every first and second world nation would crash. It is quite possible that such an attack would result in the destruction of civilization. No rational nation would want to do that.
But, of course, that would suit al Qa’Ida just fine.
So. How does it work.
When a nuclear device detonates it generates, among other things, massive numbers of Prompt Gamma Ray Photons. Gamma Ray Photons are just like light photons, but they are much more energetic and are, of course, of much higher frequency – above even X-rays. (The bombs used in my novel are Enhanced EMP.)
The following is quoted from my novel “SS-18; The SATAN Legacy;
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Each thermonuclear blast released huge numbers of neutrons, beta particles (high speed electrons) and Prompt gamma rays which sped outward from the point of detonation. Because the detonations were so high above the earth – about 200 miles up – there was essentially no blast effect to mask the effects of the radiation particles.
The neutron cloud immediately encountered a harmless Cobalt 59 shell around each bomb and instantly converted it to Cobalt 60, an extremely powerful emitter of Prompt gamma rays. Prompt gamma rays are high energy gamma rays created by the actual decay of a radioactive element. The Cobalt shell multiplied the total number and density of Prompt gamma rays many fold, turning the bomb into what the Russians, who originally designed it in the late 1990s, call an “Enhanced EMP Weapon.”1
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1 “Statement [of] Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, EMP Commission Staff. Before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technoilogy [sic] and Homeland Security” March 8, 2005, p. 3
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The Prompt gamma rays (or photons – they are the same thing) immediately began crashing into air molecules. Because the air was very rare at the point of detonation, the gamma photon collisions with the molecules were not confined to the area immediately surrounding the blast. Some shot for miles before colliding with an atom. When they did, though, each was captured by the atom. In each case the millions of electron volts of energy in the Prompt gamma photon was transferred to the atom, which then released a high energy electron, called a Compton Recoil electron (named for Arthur Compton, who first detected it), and a slower gamma photon called a Capture gamma ray because it resulted from the capture of the Prompt gamma ray. The action is known as “Compton Scattering” because both the Compton Recoil Electron and the Capture gamma ray leave the atom in new directions from that of the Prompt Gamma ray.
The Compton electrons shot off mostly in the direction away from the point of detonation because the energy of the blast forced them to do so. As the negatively charged particles passed by lines of force of the Earth’s magnetic field, they were deflected in much the same way that the electrons in a television picture tube are deflected by the magnetic coil around the neck of the tube to create the picture. These Compton Recoil electrons immediately began to spiral around the lines of force coherently - somewhat like the coherent light photons in a Laser, or soldiers marching in step. The coherence of their spin caused the tiny electromagnetic pulse created by each spinning electron to add to that of every other spiraling Compton electron in a mechanism called “Synchrotron Radiation.2” The sum of all of these tiny fields was an Electromagnetic Pulse (“EMP”) that was immense in size and in power3. This all happened in less than a nanosecond (a billionth of a second).
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2 “Electromagnetic Pulse” by Larry Gilman – Electromagnetic Pulse Forum June, 2007
3 “The Effects of Nuclear Weapons,” compiled and edited by Samuel Glasstone and Phillip J. Dolan, third edition, published by the United States Department of Defense and the Energy research and Development Administration. 1977
4 “Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack,” Chartered under Public Law 106-398 Title XIV, 2004
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This monster pulse raced out from the point of detonation like a gigantic tidal wave moving at the speed of light. It was so powerful that its destructive force was scarcely diminished at the limit of its effect (approximately the horizon as seen from the point of detonation itself. A single detonation 200 miles up over SE Nebraska would affect the entire United States and parts of Canada and Mexico.).
As the Pulse raced through the country, it caused the solid state (transistors and such) components of all electronic equipment that was not adequately hardened to stop functioning. Permanently. In some cases the tiny wires from the device contacts to the solid state chip were burned away. It others the solid state silicon material itself melted such that the junctions, critical to its functioning, disappeared. The end result was the same. The device just stopped as though someone had thrown the switch. Even units not turned on, or even not plugged in, were disabled.
All of this was over in a few nanoseconds.4 Then the First Component of the Pulse was gone, but it had done its job. Nearly all of the solid state devices in the target area (coast to coast and southern Canada to northern Mexico) were destroyed.
But the EMP was not over. There was much more destruction to come.
At the same time that most of the Compton electrons were spinning around the Earth’s magnetic lines of force, others actually collided with the lines themselves.
In a mechanism known as the “Christofilos Effect” (Named for Dr. Nicholas Christofilos, who first predicted it), these electrons were instantly captured by the magnetic lines and immediately accelerated along the lines to a speed approaching that of light.5 Electrons at this speed are Beta Particles – hard nuclear radiation. The atmosphere absorbed those moving toward the Earth, but there was essentially no atmosphere to absorb those moving into space. The result was a sudden increase in the magnitude of radiation in the Van Allen radiation belt around the Earth. At first it was just in the vicinity of the detonation, but within days the Belt completely around the Earth would become highly radioactive. All civilian low orbit satellites would be destroyed by the radiation within days, as would many Military satellites. As weeks wore on, the accumulating radiation dose would destroy most of the hardened Military low orbit satellites as well.
Meanwhile, as the Capture gamma rays and Compton recoil electrons flashed away from their atoms, some of them collided with other atoms. Because these particles were at lower energy levels than the Prompt gamma rays, they did not create more Compton electrons, but they did cause electrons to be emitted from the atoms, turning the atoms into positive ions.
The energy of the blast pushed all of these electrons and ions away from the point of detonation. The ions, being thousands of times heavier than the electrons, accelerated more slowly, causing the two groups of charged particles to move farther and farther apart. As the ions and electrons became increasingly separated, the electric field between them grew in energy until within several nanoseconds it became a “deposition region” some 50 miles thick and hundreds of miles in diameter.6
At ground level out to the horizon the resulting electric field was hundreds to thousands of volts per meter - many times that of a lightning bolt – and it spread across the entire target area in less than one hundredth of a second. At the horizon it was only diminished by about half. The inverse square law for radiated electromagnetic waves didn’t apply because of the immense size of the radiating “antenna” which was the entire ionized cloud.7 This field only lasted about a microsecond (a millionth of a second), but during that brief time it was like millions of lightning strikes happening all over the country at the same time. Those devices robust enough to withstand the First Component of the Pulse were mostly destroyed by the Second Component. This included most of the safety and control circuits for the electrical power grid of the U.S. and Canada. No generators or distribution transformers were damaged, and though the damage to the switching system of the telephone network was extensive, and all of its Earth station and microwave tower electronics were destroyed, it was not beyond repair.
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, 5 “High Altitude Nuclear Explosions: Bind, Deaf and Dumb” Jane’s Defense Weekly, October 23, 2002
6 “The Effects of Nuclear Weapons,” compiled and edited by Samuel Glasstone and Phillip J. Dolan, third edition, published by the United States Department of Defense and the Energy research and Development Administration. 1977
7 “Op. Cit.
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But the EMP had one punch left, and it was a knockout punch.
While the First and Second Components of the Pulse were doing their damage, the original ball of ionized gas – the fire ball – was expanding at thousands of miles per second. The ball of electromagnetic energy pressed down on the magnetic lines of force of the Earth, squeezing them together and pushing them toward the Earth.
Within a few tens to hundreds of microseconds, the ball dissipated, releasing the pressure on these lines of force. Immediately the lines of force attempted to spring back to their proper position. Their movement was slowed by the “whipping” of the lines. This effect was first predicted by Hannes Alfvén by combining the mathematics of electromagnetism with those of hydrodynamics. Hence the effect is known as the “magneto hydrodynamic (“MHD”) effect,”8 and the limiting speed, much slower than light, is called the Alfvén speed.9 This limiting speed extended the time that the magnetic lines were moving to tens of seconds. So the Third Component lasted long enough, and its frequency was low enough, for very long conductors such as electrical power lines and telecommunications lines to respond.
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8 “High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) and High Power Microwave (HPM) Devices: Threat assessments” CRS Report for Congress, August 20, 2004
9 “Alfvén Waves” Christopher C. Finlay, Institute of Geophysics and Tectonics, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, U.K., May 31, 2005
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The moving magnetic lines of force across these (miles) long conductors acted like a monstrous electrical generator trying to force hundreds of thousands of amperes of current through these cables. However, there is a property of electrical conductors called Inductance that opposes any such rapid build-up of current by creating a voltage almost large enough to stop it. When the current is very large and changing very fast, the voltage created becomes very large – hundreds of thousands of volts. Many times as great as the similar voltages caused by lightning strikes, these huge voltages appeared at the “nodes” of the electrical grid and caused most of the large, oil-cooled substation transformers to explode. Many local transformers on poles outside of homes and businesses exploded as well.
With their solid state safety circuits destroyed, the generators supplying power to the entire country were for the most part also destroyed, some exploding on their shafts and destroying entire power plants in the process, others grinding to a destructive halt because the lubrication of their bearings had vaporized. The electrical grid, that network of interacting generating stations and cables that provide electric power to the U.S. and Canada, crashed. There was no electricity. Even most small emergency generators would no longer work because their output voltage was controlled by solid state circuits that were now just so much melted silicon.
The Telecommunications Network, having reasonably well withstood the First and Second components of the EMP, could not survive the Third component. The thousands of amperes caused to flow in the telecommunications lines across the country vaporized the lines, even vaporizing those buried several feet deep. Fiber optic lines were unaffected, but any conversion circuits at the ends of these lines that were not adequately hardened had been destroyed by the First and Second components of the Pulse, rendering even most fiber optic lines useless.
Though it was possible, even practicable to harden some these systems against the EMP, the politics and economics of the issue had caused continual delays. So in the end, outside of some military and critical government functions, there was no hardening.
And the Nation stopped.
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More to come if you are interested
Pat