USA - In an extraordinary and sobering report meant to wake the nation up to a growing threat, a new military white paper warns that an electromagnetic pulse weapon attack such as those developed by North Korea, Russia, and Iran could essentially wipe out the United States… While it is focused on the devastating impact an EMP hit would have on the military, it backs up a congressional warning that up to 90 percent of the population on the East Coast would die in a year of an attack that would dismantle or interfere with electricity, transportation, food processing, and healthcare.
Consider just some of the warnings in the report from the United States Air Force Air University and the Curtis E LeMay Center for Doctrine Development and Education. In an attack, said the report:
- 99 nuclear reactors would likely melt down without electricity to cool them.
- 4.1 million would be displaced from areas around the nuclear plants as the radioactive cloud spread.
- Military and commercial jets, such as those built by Airbus, would fall from the sky. "Alarmingly, aircraft designed to carry large numbers of people and sizable cargo are allowed to operate without certainty about their level of resilience."
- Bases would be cut off, making defense and counter-attacks impossible.
- Civil unrest would start in “hours.”
- Power and GPS would go dark. “An EMP would cause instantaneous and simultaneous loss of many technologies reliant on electrical power and computer circuit boards, such as cell phones and GPS devices.”
- Technology would be dismantled. “Failures may include long-term loss of electrical power (due to loss of emergency generators), sewage, fresh water, banking, landlines, cellular service, vehicles.”
- 18 months are required to replace key elements of the electric grid that would be damaged or knocked out.
The report, written by experts Air Force Major David Stuckenberg, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and Colonel Douglas DeMaio, also called for a national and congressional publicity campaign to alert the nation and governmental leaders to the threat.