Today we will be discussing

electromagnetic pulses (EMPs). EMPs can bring down our electrical grid and

potentially our way of life with it. How likely are they and how bad could it

get?

Hi everyone. Today I just

wanted to say thanks to all those that have subscribed to my podcast and for

your kind comments on iTunes. That has really made this project a lot of fun. I

have some great episodes around the corner that I can’t wait to share with you.

Today’s episode is:

Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP): When the lights go out (E8)

When I began this podcast, I

was trying to select my first ten topics. I asked my family to go through the

couple of hundred topics that I had collected and choose their top 10. Not

surprisingly, their responses were quite varied, but the one topic that was one

everybody’s list was EMPs. This may be because we have a good friend who is

heavily involved in electromagnetic research or because of the talks we’ve had

around the dinner table. 

For a second, I’d like you to

imagine a world where all school classes are canceled, grocery stores lose

their entire inventory of perishable foods, hospitals are running on generator

power, restaurants are closed, lines are rapidly forming at the few working gas

stations, and people are desperately searching for a place to charge their dying

cell phones.

Everything I’m describing has

already happened in Oct 2019 when high winds caused California PG&E to shut

off power to millions of customers. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-10/millions-without-power-pge-blackouts-california  Although the blackouts were relatively short,

the damages were estimated to be as high as 2 billion dollars https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/10/pge-power-outage-could-cost-the-california-economy-more-than-2-billion.html While I would be interested in seeing exactly how

that figure was reached, there is no doubt that it was a costly and traumatic

event.

Electro-magnetic pulse: End of the world?

I think most of us recognize

how dependent we are on electricity for our modern way of life. One of the biggest

threats to our electric grid is an EMP, or electromagnetic pulse. In Oct 2017

the EMP commission which had recently lost all funding made some dire

predictions. If you will remember, during that period North Korea wasn’t

behaving themselves very well. They predicted that North Korea could use a

short-range nuclear warhead to create an EMP capable of blacking out the

Eastern electric grid. Such an incident could shut down the entire US

electrical grid for years and potentially lead to the death of 90% of all

Americans.

They based their predictions

off of the US Starfish Prime nuclear tests in 1962 over Johnston atoll that

effected the electrical grid in HI over 800 miles away. Russian EMP tests over

Kazakhstan in the same time frame had a similar effect. They also point out

that our modern electronics are more susceptible and that destruction of just 9

key power transformers would cause long-term blackouts nationwide. https://docs.