i was looking at solar storms and emps seem to do the same thing... solar storms predicted 2012/2015 nasa scientists claim, nobody knows exact date and for all they know it may never happen...

and thats a huge thread, couldn't manage to read all

Has it occurred to anyone else that all the hype about incoming solar storms might be a cover for something else -- like a planned electromagnetic assault on the grid? I'm not saying that's true, but it is a disconcerting thought to me.

That said, the CME pulses of the last week seem to have knocked my cell phone out -- twice. The phone has gone partially dead... the display off, the power alternating on and off... and then gone back to normal. Both of these have corresponded with the supposed arrival of the CME pulses.

I was following that topic pretty closely on another forum before I was inexplicably banned from it.

Originally posted by sockmonkeywrench
Has it occurred to anyone else that all the hype about incoming solar storms might be a cover for something else

Only if every solar scientist in the world (and anyone with a decent telescope) is in on the conpsiracy.

Solar flares do pose a grave and very real risk to our infrastructure. One bad solar flare and we've lost all or most of our satellites and (at least temporarily) our electrical power delivery infrastructure.

With the satellites down we'd lose critical things like telecommunication capacity and GPS. We've just recently shut down the precursor to GPS (which was also acting as a backup), the LORAN system (it's been mothballed for some years before it'll ultimately be dismantled). It would take years to build and deploy enough satellites to restore our current capabilities.

We've always been aware of our vulnerability; there are plenty of studies, journal articles, and research papers on the topic. But from the engineers up through the project managers up through the administrators, no one wants to be the crank who is insisting we spend 3x more on a vehicle to sufficiently harden it while everyone else is fine with things the way they are. Hardening means extra design, extra testing, and extra weight. Either we significantly reduce the functionality of what we're putting in orbit or we account for the extra weight by getting a launch vehicle with a greater lifting capacity (and that ain't going to happen). Everyone is praying the big one doesn't come on their watch. But even if it does, no one's going to blame them, they'll just shrug their shoulders and say (lying), "We couldn't have anticipated this. Don't blame us."

John

Just to dispel a few myths, this technology has been around since the 1950's, although today it is much more sophisticated in implementation, there is nothing really new about any of the basic principles involved.

What is in that paper by Carlo, deals mainly with the effects of what it does, not how to actually build one. There is far more to it than is immediately obvious.

These weapons are completely harmless to people and all living things, but lethal to anything electrical or electronic.

The exact opposite of a neutron bomb, which kills living things but creates no physical damage to structures or "things".

An EMP attack upon America wold be absolutely devastating, far more so than a similar attack on third world country.

As a matter of interest EMP weapons fitted to cruse missiles were used in the initial attack on Saddam's air defense system, and the Iraqi power grid during Gulf War One.

Originally posted by Silver Shadow
The exact opposite of a neutron bomb, which kills living things but creates no physical damage to structures or "things".

I'm not sure this is exactly correct - as I understand a neutron bomb is still a nuke and therefore will still cause a certain amount of destruction on detonation.

The important difference is the way the casing contains the neutrons on the 2 different types of bomb - a 'normal' nuke will want to retain as much of the neutrons as possible to maximise the reaction (explosion) - the neutrons are crucial to this cascade reaction.

The neutron bomb on the other hand will have a casing designed to release as many of these neutrons as possible while still retaining the minimum for the cascade reaction... This results in a much much smaller blast, but still a blast none the less, maybe a blast in the order of something that would make a 20 story building go away as opposed to making a whole city centre go away.

The neutrons then stream on at the speed of light and yes killing all living life not shielded but causing no further damage to infrastructure - but you will still have a rather large creator at ground zero.

BTW that's just the way I understand it, I could of course be wrong.