Electromagnetic Pulse (27 page)

Sarge pointed to the screen.

“I will leave you with this. If all empires eventually collapse, does this premise also apply to the United States? If so, is this the beginning of the end?”

APPENDIX B
PREPAREDNESS CHECKLIST
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PREPPERS CHECKLIST

APPENDIX C
EMP COMMISSION REPORT,
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

April 2008

CRITICAL NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURES

DUTIES OF COMMISSION

(a) Review of EMP Threat. The Commission shall assess:

(1) the nature and magnitude of potential high-altitude EMP threats to the United States from all potentially hostile states or non-state actors that have or could acquire nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles enabling them to perform a high-altitude EMP attack against the United States within the next 15 years;

(2) the vulnerability of United States military and especially civilian systems to an EMP attack, giving special attention to vulnerability of the civilian infrastructure as a matter of emergency preparedness;

(3) the capability of the United States to repair and recover from damage inflicted on United States military and civilian systems by an EMP attack; and

(4) the feasibility and cost of hardening select military and civilian systems against EMP attack.

(b) Recommendation. The Commission shall recommend any steps it believes should be taken by the United States to better protect its military and civilian systems from EMP attack.

The findings and recommendations presented in this report are the independent judgments of this Commission and should not be attributed to any other people or organizations. This report presents the unanimous views of the Commissioners.

ABSTRACT

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 within the Nation's means and resources to accomplish.

OVERVIEW

EMP IS CAPABLE OF CAUSING CATASTROPHE FOR THE NATION

The high-altitude nuclear weapon-generated electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is one of a small number of threats that has the potential to hold our society seriously at risk and might result in defeat of our military forces.

Briefly, a single nuclear weapon exploded at high altitude above the United States will interact with the Earth’s atmosphere, ionosphere, and magnetic field to produce an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) radiating down to the Earth and additionally create electrical currents in the Earth. EMP effects are both direct and indirect. The former are due to electromagnetic “shocking” of electronics and stressing of electrical systems, and the latter arise from the damage that “shocked”—upset, damaged, and destroyed—electronics controls then inflict on the systems in which they are embedded. The indirect effects can be even more severe than the direct effects.

The electromagnetic fields produced by weapons designed and deployed with the intent to produce EMP have a high likelihood of damaging electrical power systems, electronics, and information systems upon which American society depends. Their effects on dependent systems and infrastructures could be sufficient to qualify as catastrophic to the Nation.

Depending on the specific characteristics of the attacks, unprecedented cascading failures of our major infrastructures could result. In that event, a regional or national recovery would be long and difficult and would seriously degrade the safety and overall viability of our Nation. The primary avenues for catastrophic damage to the Nation are through our electric power infrastructure and thence into our telecommunications, energy, and other infrastructures. These, in turn, can seriously impact other important aspects of our Nation’s life, including the financial system; means of getting food, water, and medical care to the citizenry; trade; and production of goods and services. The recovery of any one of the key national infrastructures is dependent on the recovery of others. The longer the outage, the more problematic and uncertain the recovery will be. It is possible for the functional outages to become mutually reinforcing until at some point the degradation of infrastructure could have irreversible effects on the country’s ability to support its population.

EMP effects from nuclear bursts are not new threats to our nation. The Soviet Union in the past and Russia and other nations today are potentially capable of creating these effects. Historically, this application of nuclear weaponry was mixed with a much larger population of nuclear devices that were the primary source of destruction, and thus EMP as a weapons effect was not the primary focus. Throughout the Cold War, the United States did not try to protect its civilian infrastructure against either the physical or EMP impact of nuclear weapons, and instead depended on deterrence for its safety.

What is different now is that some potential sources of EMP threats are difficult to deter—they can be terrorist groups that have no state identity, have only one or a few weapons, and are motivated to attack the US without regard for their own safety. Rogue states, such as North Korea and Iran, may also be developing the capability to pose an EMP threat to the United States, and may also be unpredictable and difficult to deter.

Certain types of relatively low-yield nuclear weapons can be employed to generate potentially catastrophic EMP effects over wide geographic areas, and designs for variants of such weapons may have been illicitly trafficked for a quarter-century.

China and Russia have considered limited nuclear attack options that, unlike their Cold War plans, employ EMP as the primary or sole means of attack. Indeed, as recently as May 1999, during the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia, high-ranking members of the Russian Duma, meeting with a US congressional delegation to discuss the Balkans conflict, raised the specter of a Russian EMP attack that would paralyze the United States.

Another key difference from the past is that the US has developed more than most other nations as a modern society heavily dependent on electronics, telecommunications, energy, information networks, and a rich set of financial and transportation systems that leverage modern technology. This asymmetry is a source of substantial economic, industrial, and societal advantages, but it creates vulnerabilities and critical interdependencies that are potentially disastrous to the United States. Therefore, terrorists or state actors that possess relatively unsophisticated missiles armed with nuclear weapons may well calculate that, instead of destroying a city or military base, they may obtain the greatest political-military utility from one or a few such weapons by using them—or threatening their use—in an EMP attack. The current vulnerability of US critical infrastructures can both invite and reward attack if not corrected; however, correction is feasible and well within the Nation's means and resources to accomplish.

WE CAN PREVENT AN EMP CATASTROPHE

The Nation’s vulnerability to EMP that gives rise to potentially large-scale, long-term consequences can be reasonably and readily reduced below the level of a potentially catastrophic national problem by coordinated and focused effort between the private and public sectors of our country. The cost for such improved security in the next 3 to 5 years is modest by any standard—and extremely so in relation to both the war on terror and the value of the national infrastructures involved. The appropriate response to this threatening situation is a balance of prevention, protection, planning, and preparations for recovery. Such actions are both rational and feasible. A number of these actions also reduce vulnerabilities to other serious threats to our infrastructures, thus giving multiple benefits.

NATURE OF THE EMP THREAT

High-altitude EMP results from the detonation of a nuclear warhead at altitudes of about 40 to 400 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. The immediate effects of EMP are disruption of, and damage to, electronic systems and electrical infrastructure. EMP is not reported in the scientific literature to have direct effects on people in the parameter range of present interest.

EMP and its effects were observed during the US and Soviet atmospheric test programs in 1962. Figure 1 depicts the Starfish nuclear detonation—not designed or intended as a generator of EMP—at an altitude of about 400 kilometers above Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean. Some electronic and electrical systems in the Hawaiian Islands, 1400 kilometers distant, were affected, causing the failure of street-lighting systems, tripping of circuit breakers, triggering of burglar alarms, and damage to a telecommunications relay facility. In their testing that year, the Soviets executed a series of nuclear detonations in which they exploded 300 kiloton weapons at approximately 300, 150, and 60 kilometers above their test site in South Central Asia. They report that on each shot they observed damage to overhead and underground buried cables at distances of 600 kilometers. They also observed surge arrestor burnout, spark-gap breakdown, blown fuses, and power supply breakdowns.

What is significant about an EMP attack is that one or a few high-altitude nuclear detonations can produce EMP effects that can potentially disrupt or damage electronic and electrical systems over much of the United States, virtually simultaneously, at a time determined by an adversary.

Gamma rays from a high-altitude nuclear detonation interact with the atmosphere to produce a radio-frequency wave of unique, spatially varying intensity that covers everything within line-of-sight of the explosion’s center point. It is useful to focus on three major EMP components.

FIRST EMP COMPONENT (E1)

The first component is a free-field energy pulse with a rise-time measured in the range of a fraction of a billionth to a few billionths of a second. It is the “electromagnetic shock” that disrupts or damages electronics-based control systems, sensors, communication systems, protective systems, computers, and similar devices. Its damage or functional disruption occurs essentially simultaneously over a very large area.

Widespread red air glow amid dark clouds, caused mostly by x-ray-excited atomic oxygen (i.e., oxygen by photoelectrons liberated by Starfish X-rays)

SECOND EMP COMPONENT (E2)

The middle-time component covers roughly the same geographic area as the first component and is similar to lightning in its time-dependence, but is far more geographically widespread in its character and somewhat lower in amplitude. In general, it would not be an issue for critical infrastructure systems since they have existing protective measures for defense against occasional lightning strikes. The most significant risk is synergistic, because the E2 component follows a small fraction of a second after the first component’s insult, which has the ability to impair or destroy many protective and control features. The energy associated with the second component thus may be allowed to pass into and damage systems.

THIRD EMP COMPONENT (E3)

The final major component of EMP is a subsequent, slower-rising, longer-duration pulse that creates disruptive currents in long electricity transmission lines, resulting in damage to electrical supply and distribution systems connected to such lines (Figure 3). The sequence of E1, E2, and then E3 components of EMP is important because each can cause damage, and the later damage can be increased as a result of the earlier damage. About 70% of the total electrical power load of the United States is within the region exposed to the EMP event.

PREVENTION

An EMP attack is one way for a terrorist activity to use a small amount of nuclear weaponry—potentially just one weapon—in an effort to produce a catastrophic impact on our society, but it is not the only way. In addition, there are potential applications of surface-burst nuclear weaponry, biological and chemical warfare agents, and cyber attacks that might cause damage that could reach large-scale, long-term levels. The first order of business is to prevent any of these attacks from occurring.