A 'Technological' terror attack

Has anyone here ever seen that show, Dark Angel?

Has everyone here thought about the consequences of a terrorist attack like the one that set the stage for that post-apocalyptic program?

What would they seriously be? I\'m sure that the world would be in worse shape than shown in that show. I don\'t know how I know, I just do. Let\'s take into perspective the repercussions of that attack, and for people who don\'t know what happened, I\'ll explain it.

James Cameron (writer, director) wrote a show called Dark Angel. Within the storyline, there was a major terrorist attack on the United states, involving a terrorist organization, whom set of an EMP pulse in the high atmosphere over US soil, which caused a cataclysmic chain reaction, which downed US satellites, and disabled computers/electronics nationwide. I\'m thinking that an EMP would also do a few things that we hadn\'t anticipated. Something that large of scale would almost have to trigger something atmospheric, considering the fact that the world operates on a sphere of magnetism. Secondly, as I\'m so fond of pointing out, we don\'t really know all that much about the human brain. How can we be sure that a human within range of a high-powered EMP would not suffer some serious ill-effects? With all these facts in mind, I\'d stop worring about al-quaida trying to ram planes into skyscrapers, and start worrying about hamas trying to come across a rocket, which could affect such an attack as that.

I don\'t know what made me think of this topic. I guess it just came to me in a dream or something....heh. Everyone look out, and keep watching those skies. Peace.

That scenario would be tied into the FOB (Fractional orbital bombardment) plan that the US was expecting as a precursor to massive soviet nuclear attack, a few of those megaton sized warheads delivered over each section of the us (say around 5) would disable just about every piece of electronics on the continent, completely disarming the US conventional arsenal.

As the bomb explodes so high that theres very little air to form a fireball the explosion strips the ions in the atmosphere creating a massive pulse of them ( a trillion watts) that cascades downward over several hundred miles.
This can be done without nuclear weapons now, the principle is incredibly simple and anyone with vague knowledge in the area could build one, all you need to do is create an electric charge then step it up through step-up circuits and capacitors to the point where its fully charged, then explode it creating an EMP shockwave, the effects would be good for a few hundred meters or perhaps a mile.

Not gonna go into too much detail there, some people dont need to know how to do it exactly

could harp do this type of thing?

I vote for it being just fiction.

In fiction, people conveniently lose all their ability to think for themselves and one jolt to the land makes everything go to pieces.

9/11 didn't make everything fall to pieces. If the plane had hit the White House, it still wouldn't have fallen into pieces. Take out all the technology, and we'd still be back on our feet (remember, that was just one "pulse" not a blanket and permanent effect.) Zap the cars and everything else, and you'd still have people who could get communications going (even via oldfashioned methods.) Bicycles would still work, and so would a lot of other things.

People have coped through huge backouts that blanketed most of the area. They go through devastating hurricanes that trash most of the countryside (like Hurricane Andrew) and nothing breaks down.

Writers underestimate humanity's ability to pull itself up and out and move on because it makes for a better dramatic story. If Cameron had based it on reality, the zap would have come, the local governments would have stepped in to take care of cities and towns (most large towns have horse patrol cops as well as bicycle cops), and once the power came back on (notice that everyone conveniently has electricity in Cameron's world?), then things would bounce back to normal.

See, I thought that with the EMP thing, that It was a once, but permanent effect thing, Like it ruined the piece of equipment. I guess not, though.

I agree Byrd that life does go on, the only way we'd crumble is with the destruction of a massive part of the population, things can always be rebuilt but the financial cost of such an attack would be enormous.

From what I understand, EMP would only effect electronics that are on. So once you got the power grids back up, anything that was not on when the EMP hit would be OK. But of course, based on the power grid situation right now, that could take a long long time.

Ever hear of the ebomb? It was supposed to be used early in the Iraq war to destroy their electronics and communications. I don't recall if they ever used it or not.


www.cnn.com...

[Edited on 7-10-2003 by darklanser]