Thanks once again to The Other McCain for the Rule Five linkage!
Is there a major threat to the security of our Republic that the defense apparatus is overlooking? Former Central Intelligence Agency Director R. James Woolsey thinks so. Excerpt:
Testifying before the Senate Homeland Security & Government Affairs Committee, Woolsey, who served two years under President Bill Clinton, warned that EMP is “a clear and present danger and that something must be done to protect the electric grid and other life sustaining critical infrastructures — immediately.”
But Woolsey noted that official Washington is ignoring the looming threat despite a report issued by a blue-ribbon congressional commission in 2004 that offered what he termed cost-effective solutions.
“Continued inaction by Washington will make inevitable a natural or manmade EMP catastrophe that, as the Congressional EMP Commission warned, could kill up to 90 percent of the national population through starvation, disease, and societal collapse,” said Woolsey, now the chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Indeed, some actions taken by the Congress, the White House and the federal bureaucracy are impeding solutions, making the nation more vulnerable, and helping the arrival of an EMP catastrophe.”
Experts maintain an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) resulting from a high-altitude detonation of a nuclear weapon high above the jet stream — perhaps by a rogue state — or a geomagnetic “super storm” caused by the sun, could conceivably lead to an electrical blackout lasting months or even years. A 2008 report by the congressional Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse found that up to nine out of 10 Americans could die from a long-term blackout as a result of starvation and societal collapse.
The scenario described would shoot the United States back to 1850 at a stroke, if it truly was a continent-spanning event. That would likely require several weapons with overlapping coverage, but given any reasonable ICBM technology, that wouldn’t be too hard to arrange.
And who is developing ICBM tech and nukes? Oh, Iran, and North Korea. Both can only be described as enemies of Western civilization in general and the United States in particular.
For a vivid example of what this might be like, have a read of William R. Forstchen’s novel One Second After. (A sequel, One Year Later, will be released next month.) It’s not a pretty scenario. And it’s one that, at least in the novel, takes the U.S. off the global stage, returning us to a continental power with one-tenth our pre-event population, struggling to rebuild and, by the way, feed everyone.
And so far, there isn’t any plan in place to prevent this, or to deal with it.
