Above: today I received a declassified file of over 200 pages from the UK National Archives at Kew on what the UK Government (Atomic Weapons Research Establishment Aldermaston, Home Office Scientific Advisory Branch, Ministry of Aviation, etc) knew about the EMP effects of their own nuclear weapon tests, and more importantly, the EMP damage from the many, many more nuclear tests done by America: for a PDF summary please click here. Please note that this debunks the 1977 Glasstone and Dolan “Effects of Nuclear Weapons” chapter 9 on EMP, which falsely claims in paragraph 11.12 that the maximim range for surface burst EMP damage is the range of 2 psi peak blast overpressure in surface bursts (8 miles for 1 megaton), failing to mention that in a city where EMP is coupled into cables, those cables can then carry the EMP pulse energy to hundreds of miles. In 1961, during the fourth French nuclear test of 1 kt, a network of cables below the bomb received an EMP of 150,000 A. This effect in a cabled city or industrial target area gets conducted in the cables out of the 2-5 miles radius (for 1 kt – 10 megaton yield surface bursts) “source region” Glasstone and Dolan refer to, and travels way beyond the 2psi or 8 miles for 1 megaton region, as proved by the data above where the only cables near Nevada ground zero’s were for bomb arming, firing, and instrumentation. Far more cables exist in urban targets, and the outward dispersing induced cable currents won’t stop at the 2psi peak overpressure range. Near the fireball, there is also the risk that the air ionization will induce nuclear lightning discharges, so bright they were visible on films of early time (tens of milliseconds) nuclear fireball development, as shown below (lightning flash EMP filmed beside 10.4 megaton Mike fireball in 1952):
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The delusional assumptions are debunked by extensive nuclear weapons test evidence as well as the best theoretical and laboratory studies of EMP, not just from surface bursts but also high altitude bursts: “Relay malfunction during a HEMP attack would likely cause other electric grid systems to fail, resulting in large-scale cascading blackouts and widespread equipment damage. Notably, E1 effects on protective relays are likely to interrupt substation self-protection processes needed to interrupt E3 current flow through transformers.” – https://overthehorizonmdos.wpcomstaging.com/2019/08/27/electromagnetic-pulse-threats-to-americas-electric-grid-counterpoints-to-electric-power-research-institute-positions/
It should also be noted that the EMP energy required to damage the older, very rugged electromagnetic mechanical relays etc used at nuclear tests over 60 years ago is much greater than that required to damage modern semiconductors. We discussed this in detail in 2009, with reference to Russian nuclear test EMP data:
The unclassified Glasstone and Dolan book The effects of nuclear weapons is a long ago debunked load of rubbish, which fails to even point out that intense cable currents induced near ground zero are piped out to huge distances to shut down power and communications far beyond the blast zone by those cables! (Glasstone and Dolan falsely assert that the EMP is only a problem within the 2psi peak blast radius!) This was in fact debunked by Senator Barry Goldwater’s submission to the Senate’s Congressional Record, on 19 September 1963, of the EMP effects report, “EMP and Associated Effects on Power, Communications and Command and Control Systems” by Dr. V. W. Vodicka and John A. Kuypers, of Joslyn Electronics Systems Division, Goleta, California, 1963. Joslyn manufactured the EMP protective cut-out tubes used at the 1950s American nuclear tests, and they correlated all the EMP damage reports out to huge distances from those early nuclear tests.
Furthermore, Britain participitated in American nuclear test EMP research, for instance the 1.65 kt surface burst 1962 Nevada shot, Small Boy and the 0.5 kt shot Johnnie Boy, and these results are discussed in the declassified reports.
Above: the measured Starfish and Kingfish close-in (within horizon radius) EMP waveforms remain secret (e.g., John S. Malik, “Operation Fishbown Radioflash Waveforms”, Los Alamos report LAMS-3105, May 1964, Secret), but their lower-frequency waveforms measured in California were published in open literature (the highest frequency part, peaking in 10ns or so, can’t diffract around the earth’s horizon, so doesn’t extend beyond the tangent point). Part of the reason is that when Starfish went off, most of the EMP oscilloscopes were set to measure an air density gradient asymmetry or electric dipole EMP predicted wrongly by Bethe (whose dodgy theoretical physics guesswork also caused the Bravo disaster by falsely claiming the 14MeV fusion neutrons in the bomb would be degraded in energy so much by scattering that they couldn’t split normal lithium-7, a fact revealed in declassified US Atomic Energy Commission minutes totally ignored by Richard Rhodes and Howard Agnew, who instead claimed falsely that the fact lithium-7 was fissioned by 14MeV neutrons producing tritium wasn’t known ahead of the test!), in his report: Hans A. Bethe, “Electromagnetic Signal Expected from High-Altitude Test”, Los Alamos report LA-2173, October 1957, Secret. He repeatedly caused nuclear weapons effects study disasters:
Bethe’s secret use of the incorrect EMP mechanism meant there was an unchallengable secret prediction under 1000 v/m for Starfish which scientists could not even access (secrecy meant no open peer review), so most of the instruments (apart from one operated by Richard Wakefield in an aircraft) were set too sensitive for the Starfish’s magnetic dipole EMP and went off scale, giving no useful data. But the most interesting and shamefully still SECRET American report on EMP from nuclear tests is EG & G’s (Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier) compilation of Nevada test EMP effects from 1951-8: namely, B. J. Stralser’s 68-page illustrated report of 30 April 1961 “Electromagnetic Effects from Nuclear tests” (EG & G report L-523, also issued by the US Department of Defense’s Defense Atomic Support Agency as DASA-1226, AD-323067, classified Secret – Formerly Restricted Data).
It is essential, in order to clearly establish nuclear testing facts (not “theoretical calculations guesswork” which might be no better than Bethe’s pseudophysics), since many “disarmament liberals” who support Russia or Iran try to discredit EMP warnings as “fake threats”. Patrick Disney wrote “The Campaign to Terrify You about EMP” in the Atlantic, 2011. These people generally claim that low yield weapons don’t produce significant EMP, a fallacy based on official EMP data secrecy, debunked finally in 2015 congressional hearings on EMP:
So, even with emergency back up generators in use in a pre-attack period, EMP will end civilization. The electrical engineers at the Nevada nuclear tests in the 1950s used the best technology to try to protect their equipment, and yet still had massive destruction from EMP, even though they used older electronic components that were typically millions of times less sensitive to EMP energy than a microchip, e.g. the 1950s components required about 1 J for burn out, whereas the tiny components in microchips are burned by one micro Joule. A microchip’s densely packed circuitry when subjected to a microsecond long pulse of energy will overheat and burns out far more easily than a relay or vacuum tube, because it is about a million times less than the mass of the older bulky relay or vacuum tube, thus it requires correspondingly less EMP pulse energy in order to reach burn out temperature).
The high altitude EMP is similar to the surface burst EMP up to a point: the key difference is that in high altitude bursts, the gamma rays only interact with low-density air at altitudes of ~30 km, so that the Compton electrons knocked flying in the forward direction (towards the ground) have a range on the order of 100 metres, similar to the 100 metres Larmor radius of the earth’s magnetic field for electrons. Therefore, that Compton current is deflected around the magnetic field lines, a deceleration that is accompanied by the radiation of EMP in the downward direction by those deflected Compton electrons. In the denser sea level air of a surface burst, those Compton electrons have a range of only about 3 metres (like beta radiation with similar energy), so they can’t be deflected around more than about 3% of the 100 metre Larmor radius, reducing the contribution from this “magnetic dipole EMP” mechanism to less than that caused by the asymmetry from the air-ground interface (or the air density gradient in free air bursts).
Other mechanisms also generate a late-time, very low frequency EMP (extending to many seconds after detonation) in high altitude bursts: the expansion of the ionized fireball debris excludes a magnetic field and thus “pushes out the earth’s magnetic field”, causing an EMP, and later, having lost beta particles to pumping the van Allen radiation belts, electrically charged debris moves along earth’s field lines in space, causing a further EMP pulsation:
Such extremely low frequency (ELF) EMP was initially ignored as a damaging mechanism by America, although Russia found it to have massive effects on transformers in its 300 kt nuclear test on 22 October 1962: it penetrates quite deep into the ground and induces massive direct current (DC) in very long (100-1000 km long) buried cables, burning out transformers at power stations which can’t cope with DC.
Sea water has a conductivity of 4.3 S/m = 4.3 Mho/m in pe-SI physics units where the unit for conductivity was “Ohm” spelled backwards, because it is defined as the reciprocal of resistance, i.e.: 1 S = 1/(1 Ohm). The frequency dependent penetration fraction of radio, radar or EMP electromagnetic fields into depth d (metres) of the ocean is: f = exp(-0.026d) for 100 MHz, i.e. at 100 MHz there is a factor of e ~2.718 attenuation for a depth of just 2.6 cm. But at a lower frequency of just 10 kHz, the penetration is f = exp(-2.5d), so that it takes 2.5 metres of water to reduce the signal by a factor of about 2.7. (This is why submarines have to use low frequencies requiring long trailing aerials to communicate with base when safely submerged below periscope depth under water; higher frequencies get totally absorbed by the water.) For dry sandy ground however, the conductivity is just 0.001 S/m, which is almost transparent up to VHF frequencies so there is very strong coupling of EMP into buried cables: for frequencies of 10-100 MHz, f = exp(-12d), so even at 12 metres depth in such dry sandy soil, there is only a factor of 2.7 attenuation. For 10 kHz in such 0.001 S/m ground, f = exp(-159d), so you get 159 metres depth for 2.7 fold attenuation. (Source: L. W. Ricketts, J. E. Bridges, and J. Miletta, EMP Radiation and Protective Techniques, Wiley-Interscience, NY, 1976, Table 1.1 on p18.)
Dad and I both first visited the UK National Archives, then called the Public Records Office, getting reader’s tickets in July 1990, when under the then-30-year-rule, most of the 1950s UK Government nuclear test civil defence research was finally becoming public. This continued for decades, and the first very brief (1-page) summary of Stralser’s report was available decades ago in the older files HO 338/115 + HO 338/116, although it takes a lot of perservence to find such nuggets of useful information amid a huge amount of bureaucratic waffle in those files. This original, very brief (1-page) Stralser report summary, was written by Dr R. H. Purcell, the Chief Scientific Adviser in the UK Government’s Home Office, as he had the security clearance. This latest far more detailed summary of the same report in HO 338/146 goes way further, citing effects from individual nuclear tests, thereby exposing the real EMP danger for the UK and the West, because the whole UK nuclear attack warning and monitoring system, including the Cold War early warning radar at Flyingdales et al., was being was exposed to the risk of microsecond shut-down from EMP in a surprise nuclear attack, which America’s excessive secrecy covered-up even from key UK military personnel:
Above: American EMP secrecy nonsense continued to endanger Western defenses in 1966, when the Birtish military complained it could not get access to the April 1966 DASA-1731, “Electromagnetic Pulse Phenomenology and Effects” (DASIAC Special Report 41), due to secrecy! Not only was EMP secrecy of no use in safeguarding anyone, because the Russian’s had done more and better EMP-instrumented high altitude nuclear tests than the West (their 300 kt test at 300 km over power lines on 22 October 1962 fully proof-tested EMP warfare at the same time as their System K ABM system), but it also prevented those in charge of detecting Russian attacks in the West from knowing the facts about EMP!
The UK AWRE and Frank H. Pavey and George R. Stanbury of the UK Home Office Scientific Advisory Branch had access to the secret data, but not the Air Commodore in the Air Ministry in charge of detecting nuclear explosions! Ridiculous bureaucracy. The key reports in the file are assembled in the PDF here (67 pages including some other useful, relevant declassified report extracts at the end) but since this is so important, for historical clarity (for those who can’t visit UK National Archives easily), you can see the full, original 200+ pages version below (in the original order of the UK Government “working file”, which is generally back to front with more recent stuff at the front and older reports at the rear, as in most correspondence folders; there is also a lot of hand scribbled notes about the report enclosures by Stanbury, Pavey and others at the beginning of this folder):
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsMore news of Russian TV population preparation for nuclear escalations, which the Western media and politicians continue to ignore as propaganda, just as Novichok and the Ukraine invasion prep was ignored as propaganda bluff, until it took us by "surprise". We need to prepare now https://t.co/tiFmJw0Htq
— nukegate.org (@Nukegate) September 11, 2023
It wasn’t just Britain that had difficulties getting the vital EMP data to the military personnel who needed it. Norwegian Defense EMP expert Karl-Ludvig Grønhaug in a paper on his site (below in Norwegian) gives the shameful case of the French nuclear bomb shelters exposed about 300m to Nevada test Smoky (44kt) of Operation Plumbbob in 1957 (France didn’t test nuclear weapons until the 1960s, when it made great efforts to get EMP data): “In 1957, several shelters of French construction were also tested in Nevada (16). Electrical records of pressure and temperature inside the shelters were destroyed as no special precautions had been taken. The Americans had not wanted to tell the French that it was necessary to protect against EMP. The errors were due, among other things, to sparking between power supply circuits and long cables that were routed into the shelters to provide automatic start of all printers. Flashover occurred on relay contacts which partially burned together. Batteries that was supposed to supply power for the operation of printers was thereby short-circuited. In other printers fuses blew.” So the French ironically discovered the damaging effects of the EMP effect the American’s had been so keen to keep secret, precisely because they took no precautions.
In Algeria on 25 April 1961, using a small tactical 1 kt plutonium bomb, France performed the most spectacular of EMP nuclear tests, using a blanket of 250 cables under the bomb to capture and measure as much of the source region EMP as possible, coupled into a brass cable out to a measuring station located at 3 km ground range, where the EMP induced in the cables near the explosion (by the radial electric field) was measured to peak some 20 microseconds after detonation at 150,000 Amperes, falling to zero at 150 microseconds after detonation, and then producing a second peak of 56,000 Amperes, with opposite polarity to the first peak. (Dismissing American secrecy obsessions, they openly published their findings: J. Ferrier and Y. Rocard, ‘Mesure du courant electrique total fourni par une explosion nucleaire’, Compt. Rend., vol. 263, page 2931 (1961).)
Holden and Foster have since 2016 written a series of fictional stories, beginning with “Instant Darkness”, describing EMP attacks that are really just an alternative to the classic anti-neutron bomb propaganda of the Cold War: “Society crumbles after an EMP attack, and the terrifying nightmare has only just begun… Three people from different walks of life each experience the end of America.” The EMP attack is a simple way for an invader to plunge an opponent into darkness and chaos (no electricity means no computers, no internet, no defense) prior to an invasion, without requiring the fictional “instant vaporization” mass destruction that all Cold War style Russian-World Peace Council-backed/funded anti-nuclear “arms control and disarmament” propaganda hype is still based upon.
It is not even dependent on missile accuracy, since the EMP affected areas involved are so massive that large errors in detonation location will have little effect on the big picture. In fact, the EMP bomb actually lives up to hype that Russia poured falsely on the neutron bomb W79: they deceptively claimed that the W79 was a bomb to kill the Russian people and leave the buildings intact for invasion and occupation (entirely false, it was a low-yield battlefield military weapon to deter the kind of invasions that set off both world wars and the Ukraine invasion last year). But the EMP bomb (basically a high yield neutron bomb with a chromium-nickel case to produce high energy gamma rays from neutron interactions), can be used in that way. Furthermore, there is no deterrence because it can be fired in a SLBM from a submarine hidden at sea anywhere, preventing any hope of determining who is responsible for the attack, so you can’t even “retaliate” (as if that is helpful):
Patrick Disney, “The Campaign to Terrify You About EMP”, The Atlantic, 15 July 2011:
“According to Gingrich, EMP may be the greatest single threat facing America today. Such a blast, in theory, could shut down the continent’s electrical grid. … The blast is too high to cause death or devastation on the ground, but the surge of electrical particles produced by the bomb scatters down to Earth and affects electronics like a giant bolt of lightning, crashing electrical gadgets for hundreds of miles. Cars, telephones, power stations: all silenced in a flash. The scariness of the EMP threat comes from its falling dominoes nature… If an EMP attack occurs in the right place — say a nuclear bomb detonated over Nebraska — the entire continental United States could feel the impact. At least that’s how the story goes.
“As with many things in Washington, a cottage industry of lobbyists, specialists, and ex-government officials has come together to attest to the danger of an EMP attack. … For example, EMPact America, the group that hosted the conference at Niagara Falls, has been on a lobbying blitz in recent weeks to pass the SHIELD Act. The bill, which is backed by the Congressional “EMP Caucus” (yes, such a thing exists) is intended to protect the electrical grid of the continental United States from the effects of an EMP attack. EMPact America even produces a weekly, hour-long radio show devoted entirely to the issue, with recent guests including former CIA Director James Woolsey and Congressman Trent Franks. What sort of response have these warnings gotten so far?
“In Washington’s nuclear arms control [pro-Russian Western disarmament propaganda] circles … they’re not really taken seriously. But how can one side of a debate claim something threatens the very fiber of U.S. civilization, without getting so much as a nod in return? … A slightly more plausible scenario could involve a state actor who, facing a vastly superior U.S. military massed on its border, might consider launching an EMP attack against U.S. troops as a way of evening the playing field. Because the U.S. military is much more highly dependent on technology than others, a rogue state facing the threat of invasion could conceivably attempt such a tactic against invading forces in the hopes that it could damage their capabilities without incurring the totally devastating retaliation that a “regular” nuclear strike would surely provoke. …
“In 1991, Newsweek reported that General Norman Schwarzkopf sought authorization to use a nuclear EMP to cripple Saddam Hussein’s forces at the start of the Gulf War. President George H.W. Bush nixed the plan, probably because the U.S. isn’t in the habit of launching nuclear strikes [forgetting the events on 6 and 9 August, 1945] of even the non-lethal kind, but the idea was tempting enough that this warfighter took it to his bosses for approval. … Putting too much emphasis on something as unlikely as an EMP attack against the American heartland risks distracting much-needed attention and resources away from threats that are simply more plausible. … So far, it has not been much of a political winner. Of course, when it comes to the politics of national security, it’s often the loudest voice, not the most informed, that prevails.”
John Barry, “The Nuclear Option: Thinking the Unthinkable”, Newsweek, 13 January 1991:
“… U.S. commander in the gulf, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, requested authorization to explode a nuclear device high over Iraq at the start of hostilities. Such a blast would generate a massive electromagnetic pulse, which would shut down every electronic device in Iraq. One source said that the request had gone as high as President Bush, who rejected it. In fact, the president ruled out a nuclear option from the start. His reasons are of course political. Almost three quarters of the Americans surveyed by NEWSWEEK said they oppose using atomic weapons against Iraq.
“Nuking Saddam also would inflame world opinion. European and Arab sources in Washington say key allies joined the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq on the understanding that nukes would not be brandished. That didn’t stop the Pentagon from discreetly asking a select group of outside consultants to think the unthinkable for them. How could modern U.S. nuclear weapons, designed to produce little or no fallout and no persistent radiation, be used to shorten a war and cut casualties? … Horrible as these options sound, a source familiar with the study insists that “not just fewer Americans, but fewer Iraqis, too, would be killed by nuclear weapons, than by the conventional campaign we propose to fight. … [Newsweek then published the following poll results on the non-lethal use of nuclear weapons EMP to quickly stop Saddam.]
“NO NUKES Do you favor or oppose the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iraq to quickly end any hostilities and save the lives of U.S. forces?
“72% Oppose; 24% Favor”
There are a very many threats to civilization due to EMP, all ignored by the disarmament/arms control loons who keep parroting exaggerated immediate thermal, blast and nuclear radiation casualty predictions low altitude burst city strike effects, exaggerations based on ignoring shielding by cities and assuming the people are in the unobstructed Nevada desert. If high altitude bursts are used, EMP may be the only significant effect at ground level, as it was on 9 July 1962 when the 1.4 megaton shot 400 km over Johnston Island did not produce significant thermal, blast or nuclear radiation hazards to Hawaii (although many people were watching the test, which had been publically announced beforehand and it was well documented by local newspaper photographers). Nobody was apparently touching a long metallic conductor, so nobody received an electric shock, but some of the local newspapers mentioned that some people felt an immediate “concussion”.
Experiments with smaller numbers of animals showed no effect of up to 600kv/m EMP on 2 monkeys and 4 dogs, but 7 rats, being smaller mammals like birds, use magnetite crystals in their brains to navigate (rats may have at some point needed this in fields of high grass, just as birds do when migrating long distances over water when there is cloud cover), were “startled” at each 600 kv/m EMP but recovered a day later (see for instance F. G. Hirsch and A. Bruner’s experimental study of the biological effects of EMP on monkeys, dogs and rats, published in the Journal of Occupational Medicine, vol. 14, 1972, issue 5, pp. 380-6, Table 15). These small magnetite crystals also occur at concentrations of over 5 million single-domain crystals per gram in human brains, which may account for the Starfish test reports of a concussion sensation at the time of the flash. (Note that Glasstone and Dolan’s Effects of Nuclear weapons 1977 paragraph 11.20 is misleading in quoting Hirsch and Bruner’s report results on monkeys and dogs not being affected by EMP, without mentioning that the very same report gave evidence in Table 15 that rats are affected by EMP, and rats have magnetite crystals in their brains like humans. They cite the report in their bibliography, although it isn’t keyed into paragraph 11.20 any more than any other assertion in the book is keyed to a reference, without giving all of the pertinent results in the report, the PDF of which is downloadable below to clear up this typical Glasstone and Dolan effects chaos!)
Two other recent EMP issues that have been raised are the assumed 50,000 v/m maximum EMP strength in a high altitude test, used for over fifty years in EMP simulators and official bureaucratic guidance rules for “hardening” military equipment, and the issue of EMP produced power loss to nuclear reactor waste “decay heat” cooling pumps (as occurred at Fukushima when cooling systems were lost, causing waste overheating etc). The original maximum threat assumption of a 30,000-60,000 v/m limit theoretically originated in 1965 from Longmire, Karzas, and Latter (e.g., Physical Review, 8 March 1965), as the saturation limit for high altitude bursts.
However, the “saturation” EMP field strength is not a fixed upper limit, but varies as a function of factors including the burst latitude (earth’s magnetic field strength increases nearer the magnetic poles), and average gamma ray energy of the nuclear weapon which increases the speedy Compton current before it gets “saturated” by the delayed reverse direction conduction current. This increase in mean gamma ray energy and this mean Compton electron energy can be done by a chromium-nickel shell around a fusion capsule, which inelastically scatters 14.1 MeV fusion neutrons, producing very high energy gamma rays. For example, Fig. 9 in Louis Seiler’s EMP model (report ADA009208 from 1975) shows that while the EMP from a 100 km altitude explosion near the equator (e.g. Johnston Island for Starfish, where the earth’s magnetic field was 0.3 gauss) saturates at about 50,000 v/m, for earth’s stronger 0.6 gauss magnetic field at high latitudes, you get a saturation of around 100,000 v/m for the same 100 km height of burst (this requires 10 kt of prompt gamma ray yield, and thus a total yield in the megaton range). (Note that Seiler uses older magnetic field strength units: 1 gauss = 100 micro-Tesla.)
So it is definitely true that some 50,000 v/m-specification tested EMP hardened military equipment could fail in such a situation, since the EMP is almost directly proportional to Earth’s magnetic field strength (0.3 gauss for the Johnston Island tests, 0.6 for New York and Washington DC, 0.47 for Moscow), and Seiler assumed a Compton electron energy of only 0.75 MeV, which is substantially increased by 14.1 MeV neutron scattering if a high yield, very clean, isentropically-compressed fusion system such as the Ripple II (tested successfully during Operation Dominic in 1962 by John H. Nuckolls) were encased in a nickel-chromium outer weapon shell, launched into space by a rogue state disguised as an innocent satellite, and later detonated in a “Pearl Harbor” surprise attack with absolutely no warning whatsoever. Any country beyond the earth’s horizon radius of the burst would be largely protected from the high frequency EMP, which is absorbed or reflected by the ground/ocean, depending on its electrical conductivity (4.3 S/m for sea water, but much less for dry soil).
https://www.militaryaerospace.com/power/article/14072339/emp-high-power-electromagnetic-weapons-railguns-microwaves : “President Donald Trump issued an executive order on “Coordinating National Resilience to Electromagnetic Pulses” in March 2019 after he recognized the growing threat EMPs pose to the nation. … To that end, the president directed the National Security Council, Office of Science and Technology Policy, National Science and Technology Council, and the Secretaries of Defense, Commerce, and Homeland Security “to prepare for the effects of EMPs through targeted approaches that coordinate whole-of-government activities and encourage private-sector engagement. … Scientists and military officers have produced numerous papers and speeches warning of the danger of EMPs since the dawn of the Atomic Age, but they were paid little heed [this is the Irving Janis “groupthink” delusion behind lack of preparedness for the 1941 attack at Pearl Harbor, the British appeasement of the Nazis until it was too late to deter war, and many other fatal disasters; the nitty gritty mindsets of both sides in such arguments are pretty similar to the denialists of the shark problem in the film Jaws – there is always a powerful bureaucrat who will argue that the problem might decide to go away on its own accord if we simply bury our heads in the sand and try not to risk provoking disaster by being fully prepared for it!], especially when none of their forecasts of potential havoc failed to materialize [this was due to the West having a nuclear superiority at the time of the Cuban missiles crisis in 1962, a factor omitted from all the West’s Russian-biased disarmament propaganda nonsense that repeats the British 1930s appeasement]. Today anyone able to buy space on a cheap space launch vehicle, acquire fleets of commercial drones, or transport high-power electromagnetic weapons inside a van or small truck has the potential to launch an EMP attack; the question is no longer if, but when. …
“Introducing high-power electromagnetic weapons into the weapons mix across all warfighting domains is more than just a matter of technology, production, and deployment, however. It also will force major changes in tactics. … China has developed a cruise missile that can be hidden inside a shipping container on a cargo ship. Such a missile, armed with an EMP warhead, could launch from any port to destroy vital military sites, manufacturing facilities, and critical infrastructure like the domestic power grid. Erecting electromagnetic defensive systems is considered the best short-term approach. … With a new emphasis on the rapid development and deployment of offensive and defensive high-power electromagnetic weapons, the U.S. is in a race to counter that possibility before it is employed.”
Update 23 September 2023, EMP threats from Russia have finally been reported in the Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12534893/How-Putins-EMP-nukes-trigger-collapse-society-Unstoppable-blast-space-cut-water-energy-leaving-citizens-starve-die-resulting-panic-fuelled-violence.html :
EXCLUSIVE – How Putin’s EMP nukes could trigger ‘the collapse of society’: Unstoppable blast from space would cut off water and energy, leaving citizens to starve or die in resulting panic-fuelled violence
By DAVID AVERRE
PUBLISHED: 09:52, 23 September 2023
… But now, a new and potentially catastrophic threat looms – the spectre of a Russian EMP strike. … an EMP strike emerges as a ruthlessly effective alternative, capable of plunging entire societies into chaos.
An Electromagnetic Pulse weapon is effectively a nuclear bomb or missile detonated high above the Earth. An EMP effect is created by detonating a large nuke – with a strength of somewhere between 60-80 kilotons – roughly 200 miles above the Earth.
The radiation of the nuclear blast is absorbed by the atmosphere, but the explosion also creates a massive electrostatic discharge known as the Compton effect.
That [Compton current of electrons is deflected by the earth’s magnetic field, thus radiating an EMP that] cascades down to the Earth where every wire and electrical system basically acts as an antenna. The huge charge overloads the system and blows up the electrical grid, and also shorts the components of any electronic products.
Unless you’re living completely unsupported in the wilderness, this essentially takes away your access to water, heat and food – three elements of the base level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – and would essentially trigger a societal collapse as a result.
The long-term effects of an EMP strike are therefore a dramatic reduction in population.
Over weeks and months, most of the people living in cities would die of thirst or starvation – or be killed in panic and violence, and anyone who requires regular medical treatment would have no chance of survival.
Access to what little food and water supplies remain would of course be controlled either by the government and the military, or the most effective and violent armed gangs.
In the US, Department of Energy studies estimate it could take up to 5 years to get just 20 per cent of the grid back online, by which point modern society would have all but collapsed – I imagine the UK would face a similar scenario. [The 9 July 1962 American nuclear bomb test 400km over Johnston Island] had a yield of 1.4 megatons – tiny in comparison to today’s nukes – but the EMP blast still disrupted electrical and communication systems in Hawaii over 500 miles away from the detonation point.
In an address to the United Nations during the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy once said: ‘Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman, and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness.’
It’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which an EMP strike from Russia comes as a calculated response to something which unfolds on the battlefield because the implication of such a strike would be WWIII.
But in a moment of weakness or madness, it’s possible that Putin, if backed into a corner with power slipping away and opponents closing in, could in haste authorise such a strike.
An EMP attack would open Pandora’s Box – it’s been 80 years since we’ve used nuclear weapons in anger, and that’s for a good reason – it would be a rapid and sharp downward spiral into mutually assured destruction.
Chilling moment Putin warns Britain of ‘serious consequences’
William R. Forstchen is a New York Times bestselling author of the One Second After series and a Professor of History at Montreat College in North Carolina. He holds a doctoral degree from Purdue University with a specialisation in military history and technology.
Please see also our selections of relevant declassified papers linked online here and here. Our first, March 2006 dated, EMP effects blog post (nukegate.org) summarising declassified nuclear testing data is linked here: https://glasstone.blogspot.com/2006/03/emp-radiation-from-nuclear-space.html (please note however, that the yields of Kingfish, Bluegill, and Checkmate have since been declassified as 200, 200, and 6 kt, which replace the unclassified estimates of 400, 400 and 7 kt, respectively).
It should be noted that Britain since the 1960s has been protecting its electrical power grid against the 50,000v/m high frequency EMP, using bomb hardened bunker type electric power switching distribution control centres, and Charles Hendry testified that Britain’s transformers are hardened against the high frequency EMP (although the DC from the lower frequency near direct current MHD-EMP or E3 component is another question and requires them to be physically disconnected from powerlines for up to a minute after each fast E1 EMP is detected): “Since 1999, all the transformers purchased by the [UK] National Grid have been ones that can stand the high electricity currents that might be caused by such activities. The grid is constantly being upgraded. Part of the process is to try to localise any impact that happens. We are perhaps less at risk than the United States because we have shorter distances of cabling without interruption, so this can be contained more readily here.” (QUOTATION SOURCE: question 94 response on page 56 in UK House of Commons Defence Committee, Developing Threats: Electro-Magnetic Pulses (EMP), Tenth Report of Session 2010–12, report HC 1552, Published on 22 February 2012 by authority of the House of Commons, London: The Stationery Office Limited, £14.50, see below for PDF dowload of this report. Please note that although the UK power grid has been hardened better than the USA, that doesn’t prevent E1 EMP power surges being delivered by cables into buildings!)
Above: Lawrence Livermore Laboratory Theory of the EM radiation from a high altitude shot by James Paul Wesley, April 1961. Alas, it wasn’t imaginative and radical enough to predict the magnetic deflection of the Compton current by earth’s magnetic field for the strong EMP in the Fishbowl tests a year later; it just deals (like Bethe in 1957) with electric dipole EMP from high altitude burst due to air density asymmetry with altitude. But Wesley was a maverick (just not enough of a maverick), publishing loads of papers trying to explain relativity and quantum field theory effects classically, instead of looking into the mechanism and making progress that way (still his papers are less boring than “not even wrong” superstring nonsense):
Quantum field theory 