Could You Survive an EMP Attack?

I’m not a technical guy.  People who are impress me.  The ones who also can break it into plain English mightily impress me.  I’ve done a few segments on-air about electromagnetic pulse weapons or EMP.  The response has been at times overwhelming.  It’s a subject that fascinates many people and our government warns it could bring down the United States as we know it.

Weapons are one threat but there are several natural occurrences and these could also take down the electrical grid.  There also are some cheap devices and the same devices could be weaponized.  This week I came across this link and the writer discusses all of these possibilities.

During the 1800s solar activity is believed to have interfered with telegraph traffic and cost a fortune in repair costs.  As the writer points out, atomic testing in the 1950s wreaked havoc on electrical systems nearly 1-thousand miles away.  This is apocalyptic stuff we’re dealing with.

One estimate is without the grid only one in 10 Americans would survive a year.  The East Coast and urban areas would be devastated.  Flyover country would fare slightly better and people would be killing for gasoline, generators and scraps of bread.  The old and the very young would suffer more than healthy adults.  Diabetics and people in need of prescription drugs would be facing the equivalent of a death sentence.

Government studies long ago recommended burying much of the grid.  It’s a critical security measure and also incredibly costly.  A year from today, the federal government will roughly be 25 trillion dollars in debt.  In other words, the grid isn’t getting buried.