[Analyst's Notes:]
We keep hearing about the threats from Electromagnetic Pulses (EMP's) but no one seems to be listening. The costs to retrofit our power systems is substantial (estimated at about $100 billion) but in comparison with the amount of money we have been throwing out to other nations and to banks to prop up the corrupt, we could have paid for this protection over and over.
I fear that ultimately there will be a deadly version of an "I told you so" coming if we continue to ignore this situation. What makes it worse is that the military, the politicians, and some scientists keep dismissing Korea's tests as "failures" but all it takes is ONE success to change the entire world. Who knows, that success could be high above our own country resulting in our being thrown back to the 1800's in the blink of an eye....
[...] North Korea’s last round of tests, conducted in May 2009, appear to have included a “super-EMP” weapon, capable of emitting enough gamma rays to disable the electric power grid across most of the lower 48 states, says Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, a former CIA nuclear weapons analyst and president of EMPact America, a citizens lobbying group. [...]
[...] Such a weapon — equal to a massive solar flare such as the “solar maxima” predicted by NASA to occur in 2012 — poses “substantial risk to equipment and operation of the nation’s power grid and under extreme conditions could result in major long term electrical outages,” said Joseph McClelland of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Senate testimony last month.
Pry said that a group of Russian nuclear weapons scientists approached him in 2004 when he served as staff director of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack, to warn the United States that the technology to make that weapon “had leaked” to North Korea, and possibly to Iran.
“They told us that Russian scientists had gone to North Korea to work on building the super-EMP weapon,” Pry told Newsmax. “The North Koreans appear to have tested it in 2006 and again in 2009.” [....]
[...] Rep. Trent Franks, who authored the SHIELD Act, warned of “catastrophic consequences” should Congress fail to act.
“The U.S. society and economy are so critically dependent upon the availability of electricity that a significant collapse of the grid, precipitated by a major natural or man-made EMP event, could result in catastrophic civilian casualties,” he said. “This vulnerability, if left unaddressed, could have grave, societal altering consequences.” [...]
