A “Super-Powerful” EMP Attack: North Korea’s Newest Weapon Against The U.S.
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Sep 3, 2017
The dynamics of the standoff between the US and North Korea have shifted dramatically in the past week.
First, the North started with an unexpectedly sharp provocation – launching a missile over the Japanese island of Hokkaido – before following that up with its sixth nuclear test. Also, judging by the size the earthquake detected in the country’s mountainous North on Sunday morning, North Korea may have been telling the truth when it said it conducted what it described as its first hydrogen bomb test.
And while the North bragged about the weapon’s “great destructive power” in a TV broadcast, what caught analysts’ attention was a mention of a different tactic: detonating an H-bomb at high altitude to create an electromagnetic pulse that could knock out parts of the US electrical grid.
Here’s WSJ:
“North Korea’s threats against the U.S. now include a tactic long discussed by some experts: an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, triggered by a nuclear weapon that would aim to shut down the U.S. electricity grid.
North Korea’s state news agency made a rare reference to the tactic in a Sunday morning release in which the country said it was able to load a hydrogen bomb onto a long-range missile. The bomb, North Korea said, ‘is a multifunctional thermonuclear nuke with great destructive power which can be detonated even at high altitudes for super-powerful EMP attack.’”
Unlike a conventional nuke, an EMP blast – think Oceans’ 11 – is not directly lethal, and serves mostly to knock out key infrastructure (useful when robbing a casino).
However, it would probably lead to an unknown number of indirect deaths as hospitals and essential infrastructure lose power.
“The idea of an EMP attack is to detonate a nuclear weapon tens or hundreds of miles above the earth with the aim of knocking out power in much of the U.S. Unlike the U.S. atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, such a weapon wouldn’t directly destroy buildings or kill people. Instead, electromagnetic waves from the nuclear explosion would generate pulses to overwhelm the electric grid and electronic devices in the same way a lightning surge can destroy equipment.”
In the worst possible scenario, regional power grids could be offline for months, potentially costing many deaths as people would eventually start running out of necessities like food and medicine. Lawmakers and the US military have been aware of the EMP threat for many years, according to WSJ. IN a 2008 report commissioned by Congress, the authors warned that an EMP attack would lead to “widespread and long-lasting disruption and damage to the critical infrastructures that underpin the fabric of US society.”
The Rest…HERE
