In my never-ending hunt for apocalyptic novels of any kind, I’ve recently read One Second After, by William R. Forstchen. As a work of fiction, I can say I found it to be rather mediocre. Admittedly fun, but mediocre nonetheless. The reason I mention this is that I did find the issues raised by One Second After to be of critical importance, and it taught me a lot about a shadowy topic that truly threatens the safety of the western world: Large scale Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack.
What is an EMP?
For those who haven’t watched Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds, an EMP, or Electromagnetic Pulse, is a brief ultra-powerful electromagnetic surge that destroys virtually all electronics in its path (EMPs travel through the air, just like any other electromagnetic waves). EMPs were discovered sometime mid last century through nuclear tests conducted at the height of the cold war. As a side effect of the nuclear blasts, it was discovered that a ultra-high-energy surge gets released, and that this surge has a devastating effect on all electronics within its range: city power grids, phone systems, and almost any other electronic device within range gets immediately “bricked”. More importantly, when a nuclear weapon is detonated in high altitude, something called the Compton effect comes into play. This means that much more of the nuclear weapon’s energy goes into an EMP than it would have otherwise, resulting in a far more powerful EMP.
The end result is that a small nuclear device detonated in high altitude can cripple any electronics in a radius of over 1000 km, without causing any direct human casualties. Just to put this in perspective, the estimate is that two or three such devices detonated in the atmosphere could essentially cripple all electronics in an area as large as the continental United States. If losing all power and electronics sounds harmless or somehow minor, it is not. An EMP would disable all modern day communications, transportation, and electronics. This means no cars, no planes, no phones, no Internet, no computers, etc. Our increased reliance on technology, coupled with the the huge impacted area means that the potential effect this could have on a western society is absolutely devastating.
Imagine a situation where one day, without warning, all electronics shut down, all cars die, and essentially all technology becomes useless. Additionally, these devices would not be fixable — definitely not in the short term, and most likely not even in the long term. On the most immediate level, the meaning is that the only food you’d have access to is whatever is walking distance from your present position. Now imagine that unless you happen to live in an agricultural area, that food would most likely last for no more than a couple of days. Add that to the fact that no one would be coming — all form of government would come to an instant halt without communications… Starting to get the picture?
Just to give an idea, One Second After describes such an attack over the United States, and describes how within weeks after the attack starvation becomes commonplace and barbaric tribes are formed, looting and scavenging for any food they can get their hands on. I honestly don’t think that’s an exaggeration. Western societies rely so heavily on technology that at this point we’ve simply forgotten how to live without it.
How Likely is it?
The next question we must ask ourselves is, how difficult would it be for terrorists or rouge nations to carry out such an attack? Unfortunately, the answer is that it’s not that difficult. The fact is that it is within the means of any nation equipped with ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads. From the enemy’s standpoint this might be a far more effective use of their nuclear arsenal because it causes widespread devastation, unlike a conventional atmospheric detonation of a typical nuclear weapon, which can generally destroy a large city, at the most. Sure, the destruction of an entire city sounds unthinkable and horrifying, but it most likely wouldn’t defeat a powerful nation. A large scale EMP can easily disable even the largest and most powerful countries, possibly for good.
What Can Be Done?
While completely defending against EMPs is impractical, it turns out that there are relatively cheap ways for governments to prepare and minimize the potential damage. For example, power plants and communication systems can be hardened against EMPs. So can vehicles and commercial airliners. The point is that this is one of those things where governments can invest a little bit right now and dramatically minimize the potential damage caused by this kind of attack. At the very minimum, be prepared to the point of having the ability to recover from such an attack, should it ever take place.
As an individual, there is very little we can do, other than complain to our governments and drive them to action. My only advice would have been to buy EMP-hardened cars and radios, but those don’t appear to exist…
Learn More
If you’d like to learn more, you could give One Second After a read to get a more dramatized view of the potential consequences, with some decent entertainment value. Alternatively, if you prefer the raw details you could take a look at the executive report written by the EMP Commission. It’s not as dramatic, but it’s just as scary…