Concerned Officials Warn: “North Korea Could Explode a High-Altitude Nuclear Device Over the Unite

Just can't understand why NK makes the news so much. If they are really such a threat, take them out first. Simple as that. In reality, we should withdraw our troops, throw some freebie nukes to S korea, and let China worry about stopping a nuclear war in their own backyard.

Just think we ought to go ahead and just have a big whole war to let out all this hatred and anger that is spreading all over the world.

Peace

I'd be more concerned about NK bombing what's left of Fukishima.

There is still a lot of radioactive material over there. And Japan is WELL WITHIN the reach of there current available technology.

It would spell the end for the northern hemisphere.

Let's hope NK don't read ATS.

reply to post by buster2010

If an EMP hit America like they are describing it could take years to undo the damage. I don't think you really understand just how devastating a EMP attack can be.

But just think of what a boon that would be to the bankers who would love nothing more than to give the Americans an instant 100% haircut on their bank accounts and be able to say "hey ~ don't blame us, Kim did it..

Has anyone taken the refresher course on spotting Main Stream BS? When articles fill their content with, "Officials are concerned", "experts agree" and "sources say", you can smell the spin like rubber tires on asphalt. I know that doesn't fool people on ATS.

This concern recently has been reinforced by a little-publicized study by the U.S. Army War College that said a nuclear detonation at altitude above a U.S. city could wipe out the electrical grid for hundreds, possibly thousands of miles around.

www.wnd.com...

Oh, no. Oh NO! Its Korea-geddon. Again...


Yawn.

Creatives:

I'd be more concerned about NK bombing what's left of Fukishima.

Now that is plausible. North Korea can most certainly hit Japan. A few homemade nukes on nuclear reactors would send a fair bit of toxic radiation into the atmosphere that would spread around the world. Another serious threat NK hold is chemical and biological weaponry, pretty much masters of the stuff, getting their technology from Russia during the cold war. They have some very very nasty stuff.

However, the only way NK is going to hit mainland US is if they've already walked the weapons into the country and sleeper cells are awaiting the order to act! Hell, I can fearmonger with the best of them.

This is a snippet from the EMP Commission who was formed to report to congress the concerns of an EMP attack.

Several potential adversaries have or can acquire the capability to attack the United States with a high -altitude nuclear weapon - generated electromagnetic pulse (EMP). A determined adversary can achieve an EMP attack capability without having a high level of sophistication.

EMP is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences . EMP will cover the wide geographic region within line of sight to the nuclear weapon. It has the capability to produce significant damage to critical infrastructures and thus to the very fabric of US society, as well as to the ability of the United States and Western nations to project influence and military power.

The common element that can produce such an impact from EMP is primarily electronics, so pervasive in all aspects of our society and military, coupled through critical infrastructures. Our vulnerability is increasing daily as our use of and dependence on electronics continues to grow. The impact of EMP is asymmetric in relation to potential protagonists who are not as dependent on modern electronics.

The current vulnerability of our critical infrastructures can both invite and reward attack if not corrected. Correction is feasible and well with in the Nation' s means and resources to accomplish.

Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack

I'll emphasize what was said early on in the snippet:

A determined adversary can achieve an EMP attack capability without having a high level of sophistication.

So ask yourself again. Can N. Korea hit any country in the world with and EMP? Sounds like it. I'm not saying freak out running around screaming but we need to stop underestimating the little guy.

An EMP can happen.

reply to post by penninja


Where do you get your information from? No shortage of water? Are you serious? Arizona has basically tapped its groundwater in many areas and is now starting to drill into fossilized water. While there is no "shortage" of food, much of the industrialized US relies on a complicated system of trucking and communications which keeps city stores stocked for 3 days at a time, and so on.

Sure - we could rebuild from a massive, coordinated EMP attack, but it would take months to get critical infrastructure up and running, and years to get everything back "on." This assumes, of course that full scale invasion or coordinated air attack didn't follow the EMP.

Such an event would probably kill 75 million plus North Americans, and be the single largest "holocaust" in human history.

ok people, so now we are afraid of n. korea...what ever happened to iran? you remember that country..just a few short weeks a go it was an immentant threat to the u.s. and all of the middle east.....now we are talking about iraq...err, i meant afganistan...no no no...it was libya, thats it ..it was yeman..err i mean n.korea...oh wait...im confused now...who are we suppose to be afraid of now??......oh, now i remember.......'all enemies forgien AND DOMESTIC'.......

the public is being played like a well tuned fiddle ..i wonder what the next country...err...tune will be....

sit back relax..enjoy the next threat that will be played for you

Or Not..............the size of the blast, the height of the blast etc etc.....
Not all EMP attacks are equal.....what could lil Kim really set aloft?
certainly not enough to kill the entire CONUS power grid....
Theres Mexico and canada too that are connected to the same grid so there will be limited power at the least fairly quickly....bACK UP GEN PLANTS WILL KICK IN At hospitals......etc...
Noy so bad....
Walk out of the subway maybe....
back to cops directing traffic again....

Originally posted by 0zzymand0s
reply to post by penninja

 

Where do you get your information from? No shortage of water? Are you serious? Arizona has basically tapped its groundwater in many areas and is now starting to drill into fossilized water. While there is no "shortage" of food, much of the industrialized US relies on a complicated system of trucking and communications which keeps city stores stocked for 3 days at a time, and so on.

Sure - we could rebuild from a massive, coordinated EMP attack, but it would take months to get critical infrastructure up and running, and years to get everything back "on." This assumes, of course that full scale invasion or coordinated air attack didn't follow the EMP.

Such an event would probably kill 75 million plus North Americans, and be the single largest "holocaust" in human history.

You know what I hear?

The voice of panic and if this is the typical persons reaction YEAH we'd be screwed...

What i'm saying is it does NOT have to be that way

And honestly people pull together sometimes in adverse situations, America might surprise you, change, internal change happens Fast sometimes under pressure.

Even in AZ the coconino aquifer is huge, people have wells... the choice is HORDE PANIC SHOOT.... or nurse that bottle of aquafina and remember a few bear gryliss piss tricks and chill out until help arrives.... people can move the trains... by eye.... crops wont be damaged.... we have Canada North of us with all the water in the world....

NO ONE will die from the blast

they would die from the panic

Every cockamamie can of green beans has water in it, every single fruit....

Come together or fall apart.... that's the REAL danger from such an attack.... Unlike AZ the majority of America has no such water issues. Band together...send help by hook or crook out side of grandmas pacemaker stopping in theory we could just ride it out like civilized human beings....

75 Million? No reason what so ever for such nonsense....

How fast can 18 Million unemployed lay pipe? Real fast if they aren't shooting each other... is there someone in every neighborhood practically with a well? Cb? Solar.... the ability to organize as a COMMUNITY and not be jerk offs? Sure there is

I can last two weeks or three on 12 cans of green beans and a couple gallons of bottled water and not kill anyone

Can you?

FEAR is the real enemy in this scenario

Originally posted by stirling
Or Not..............the size of the blast, the height of the blast etc etc.....
Not all EMP attacks are equal.....what could lil Kim really set aloft?
certainly not enough to kill the entire CONUS power grid....
Theres Mexico and canada too that are connected to the same grid so there will be limited power at the least fairly quickly....bACK UP GEN PLANTS WILL KICK IN At hospitals......etc...
Noy so bad....
Walk out of the subway maybe....
back to cops directing traffic again....

It's all attitude isn't it?

Could you go back in time and live POOR and not be a flaming doufous about it and tantrum out and start killing for bottles of Vos water lol

That's the real plan of such an attack

The assumption is we are so spoiled we will turn on each other like rabid dogs

I wont

For anyone who actually wants to read about EMP produced by hi altitude nuclear weapons detonations...

There is debunking by scientists who know. Put away your hype caps.

' Indeed, electromagnetic pulses, EMP, generated by high-altitude nuclear explosions have riveted the attention of the military nuclear technical community for more than three and a half decades since the first comparatively modest one very unexpectedly and abruptly turned off the lights over a few million square miles of the mid-Pacific. This EMP also shut down radio stations and street-lighting systems, turned off cars, burned out telephone systems and wreaked other technical mischief throughout the Hawaiian Islands nearly 1,000 miles distant from ground zero.'

However, Dr Wood is not very specific when mentioning damage to radio stations and telephone systems. Dr John Malik notes on page 31 of Herman Hoerlin's Los Alamos National Laboratory report LA-6405, United States High Altitude Test Experiences:

'Starfish produced the largest fields of the high-altitude detonations; they caused outages of the series-connected street-lighting systems of Oahu (Hawaii), probable failure of a microwave repeating station on Kauai, failure of the input stages of ionospheric sounders and damage to rectifiers in communication receivers. Other than the failure of the microwave link, no problem was noted in the telephone system. No failure was noted in the telemetry systems used for data transmission on board the many instrumentation rockets.

'There was no apparent increase in radio or television repairs subsequent to any of the Johnston Island detonations. The failures observed were generally in the unprotected input stages of receivers or in rectifiers of electronic equipment; transients on the power line probably caused the rectifier failures. There was one failure in the unprotected part of an electronic system of the LASL Optical Station on top of Mount Haleakala on Maui Island. With the increase of solidstate circuitry over the vacuum-tube technology of 1962, the susceptibility of electronic equipment will be higher, and the probability of more problems for future detonations will be greater. However, if detonations are below line-of-sight, the fields and therefore system problems will be much smaller.'

ed-thelen.org...

It seems that the lower the detonation the smaller the radii of EMP due to the Earth's curvature. EMP is line of sight. The higher the altitude, the more energy is caught upwards by the Earth's Magnetic Field lines. This can produce effects a long ways off because the energy follows lay lines up into space and back down again to small areas far from the detonation. Thats why Hawaii experienced the effects it did during Pacific tests. Those effects have since ben exaggerated.

Solar storms and lighting strikes are more capable of destroying electronics and power relay equipment. And they do.

Though I don't think the NORKS have the technology to carry out a massive EMP, they possibly could hit our my Japan or even Hawaii. EMPs as stated earlier in the thread, are all not created equally...but even a localized one, say over Hawaii could easily causeways of life. Think of the number of planes in the air at any given moment (would they be able to stay airborne or have any controls to land); vehicles (built after the mid 1970s) would stop. Cell phones, land lines, radio, TV, Internet--all gone in an instant. Transformers would blow. Only communication would be tube radios. Credit cards and ATMS would not work. No power on the local grid...it just goes on and on.

A scary work of fiction, concerning a massive EMP is "One Second After." It chronicals the downfall of society (in addition to the mechanical malfunctions). It is well written and will be hard to forget when you read news stories like this involving a despot like Jong-un. As an aside, the preface to the book was written by Newt Gingrich, who served on Congressional committees versed in the danger. His "insider" acknowledgment is a real eye openner.

reply to post by penninja


I don't have much fear anymore. I am halfway between 40 and 50 and have seen too much already.

What I do have is a realistic assessment of logistics, and our current diaspora: 50% of the country has been trained since birth to hate and fear the other half, and it takes the most coordinated network of physical and computational assets ever to keep food on the shelves of grocery stores in major cities, where 120 million of us live.

I don't believe for a moment that there will be an EMP strike on the US from Korea, but if there was, and if it was large scale, we would lose a third or more of our population in the rebuilding. All the kumbayah in the world doesn't make winter less cold, water less contaminated, or fill empty grocery store shelves.

Originally posted by 0zzymand0s
reply to post by penninja

 

I don't have much fear anymore. I am halfway between 40 and 50 and have seen too much already.

What I do have is a realistic assessment of logistics, and our current diaspora: 50% of the country has been trained since birth to hate and fear the other half, and it takes the most coordinated network of physical and computational assets ever to keep food on the shelves of grocery stores in major cities, where 120 million of us live.

I don't believe for a moment that there will be an EMP strike on the US from Korea, but if there was, and if it was large scale, we would lose a third or more of our population in the rebuilding. All the kumbayah in the world doesn't make winter less cold, water less contaminated, or fill empty grocery store shelves.

It can't really go the other way if you don't believe it can either can it? In winter we can burn wood... what would contaminate the water and why? And people can live on very little food for a long time....

If your prepared to fight for survival .. then you will. If your prepared to go that first month on PB and J and cans of Tuna then you will do that....

Sadly i'm afraid too many think as you do.... and i''m no hippie.... Just survival minded... in this case the food and water would come if you grin and bared it....

we don't actually have to prove our enemies right in how spoiled they think we are man

reply to post by penninja


It doesn't really matter what YOU would do or a handful of preppers would to to self sustain themselves in a situation.

No matter how gumdrop and candyland the world COULD be after an EMP strike, people to not take kindly to loss in any regard. People also tend to take advantage of available lawlessness to the fullest degree if given the opportunity.

You only need to look at disasters in this country on a small scale such as Katrina and the chaos that ensued down there to understand how much worse the big picture would actually be - and that was with aid coming in. There wouldn't be aid to serve an entire country. There wouldn't be shipment lines to refill the grocery shelves. People wouldn't be able to get to work.

After that comes the worst part of all - nuclear meltdown. Current nuclear plants are rigged to run independently on fuel for 7-30 days without access to shipments. They are not configured for long term blackout situations that could take years to repair to any sort of degree. There are 104 nuclear reactors operating at any given time in this country. Unless they have a steady supply of fuel for maintained operation you are looking at a Fukashima situation at every single one of them within 30 days.

So no. An EMP would not be nice. As much fantasy as it would be to go back in time and live off the grid for people, and believe me I would love it to - it would be a complete disaster for us and MILLIONS would die from the chaos that ensued within the first few months. It is sad that society has come to this but it has, and for those of us that won't turn on fellow man for no apparent reason but irrational looting nature, we will just have to try to ride out the storm until nature takes care of those who cannot fend.

Sad but true.

Its funny how American officials always seem to fear that someone will attack the Us... Wonder the # why!?

Three words: Cause and effect....

If America stops #ng up the world, maybe the number of socalled adversaries would go down?

Yawn. All this talk is getting kinda boring. If the leaders of this world are going to "end it", let's "end it" already. Why keep barking, if you ain't gonna bite.

Sorry to Phage this thread, but there are two issues to look at:

1) Is NK capable of the technology?

2) What are the effects of a high-altitude nuclear device?

Answer 1:

“All the available technical evidence suggests that the North’s claims to be able to hit (let alone target precisely) geographical sites in the United States are highly implausible,” John Swenson-Wright, senior lecturer in East Asian International Relations at the University of Cambridge told NK NEWS.

Answer 2:

The Argus explosions created artificial electron belts resulting from the β-decay of fission fragments. These lasted for several weeks. Such radiation belts affect radio and radar transmissions, damage or destroy arming and fusing mechanisms of intercontinental ballistic missile warheads, and endanger crews of orbiting space vehicles.

More:

Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is important only for high altitude bursts. For such detonations, ionization of the upper atmosphere can produce a brief intense pulse of radio frequency radiation which can damage or disrupt electronic devices.

Ionization of the atmosphere from explosions in the atmosphere can interfere with radar and radio communications for short periods.

Charged particles produced by explosions above the Earth's atmosphere can be captured by the Earth's magnetic field, temporarily creating artificial radiation belts that can damage spacecraft and injure astronauts/cosmonauts in orbit.

Argus was conducted in 1958, before we had the ISS. Today, if we set off a high altitude nuke, the radiation would disperse through the Ionosphere, and would fry our Space Station friends. No nation in the world would break protocol today, and detonate a high altitude nuke. Unheard of.

In summary, a high altitude nuke would temporarily short out communications, but not cook the electronics of the devices, just their ability to communicate. The satellites, above the Ionosphere, would not be able to send a signal to the ground. The GPS system would re-establish after several hours, once the radiation was processed and dispersed.

The Ionosphere protects us from solar radiation. It's plasma, and along with the magnetic field, has been dispersing radiation from the sun for millions of years. A nuke set off in the Ionosphere, above 30 miles, is nothing more than another solar flare. Burp.

Originally posted by penninja
Oh sure they do, it's real easy.

What do you suppose we have on board our military shuttle? Pez?

It's just not as doomsday as it's made out to be... the lights go out....I loose you tube... our trains will run, transformers will be fixed etc, etc .... then we have every valid pretext to turn NK to glass

Don't get me wrong... a world of lame... but no one dies unless we act like fools... heat stroke in summer with no ac...whatever, we have no actual shortage of food and water... what else is there that matters in the scheme of things?

I had a dream once, years ago that we were delivered an EMP in the middle of summer, and people in the hottest regions of the U.S. were migrating en mass to California and other cooler areas.