Society would collapse. The rule of the gun will replace the rule of law. And it’s exactly what North Korea has been threatening. The lights would go out and computers would die — and so would every piece of medical equipment in a line-of-sight of the nuclear fireball, high in the sky. Then there would be the fires. Gas pipelines feeding cities and industry could ignite from fried control systems, unleashing widespread firestorms. How many would die in the first day is anyone’s guess.

But that would just be the beginning of the end. All it would take, he says, is for something like a timer, a GPS receiver or an altimeter to be paired with a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile. Once the warhead reached an altitude of 300km, its pulse could fry the electrical grid of all 48 mainland US states.

“The US can sustain a population of 320 million people only because of modern technology,” Dr Pry told Forbes. “An EMP that blacks-out the electric grid for a year would remove the critical infrastructure necessary to support such a large population.”

By day three, the United States would still be at a standstill. Few would know what was going on. But the population would begin to panic. Government would have already devolved to local councils and sheriff’s offices. The National Guard — and private militias — would be milling aimlessly about in the streets. The only people with power would be those with generators that survived the pulse.

The water supply would be drying up everywhere from country towns to the most major cities. There’d be nothing to pump it through the system. The fresh food in grocery stores — if it hadn’t already been eaten — would have begun to go off. No replacements stocks would be being trucked in. The vehicles wouldn’t be working, and even if they did, none of the computer and communications systems for distributing and paying for it would be active. In just a few more days, nuclear reactors — their control and safety systems dead — would begin to melt down.

YEAR ONE

Dr Pry says the simple scale of such a disaster would overwhelm the world’s ability to respond. Within a year, 90 per cent of the 300 million people living in the 48 adjoining US states could be dead, he warns. Small pockets of survivors would be scattered across the country. Disease would be rampant. There would not have been enough living to bury the dead.

Water supplies would be contaminated. Most livestock would be dead through a lack of care — and poaching. The only food would be what can be grown, and hunted, by survivors. There would be little fuel. Little communication. The only hope would come from international relief efforts.

Dr Pry insists there is ample evidence the alarming apocalyptic scenario painted above is a very real possibility. “A protracted blackout endangering millions will be the inevitable result of the EMP attack described by the North Koreans,” he says. Kim Jong-un certainly appears to believe so. His state-controlled news agencies have repeatedly referenced EMP in its threats to the United States.

That scenario was part of a pandemic simulation held during the World Bank’s annual meeting in Washington this month. It’s not the kind of event that people would typically associate with the World Bank. But it’s the fourth such exercise the bank has helped organize in the past year, reflecting what experts say is the growing awareness outside the traditional global health sector of the increasing threat and economic disruption posed by a global pandemic.

The chaotic and “horrendously inefficient” early response to the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa that killed more than 11,000 people was the catalyst for the simulations, said Tim Evans, senior director for health, nutrition and population at the World Bank.

“We realized that people were just making it up as they were going along, including us,” Evans said, referring to the Ebola response. The bank wanted to “move from a history of panic and neglect to one where we’re going to start to prepare much more systematically to be ready for the 100 percent probability we will be dealing with this again,” he said. “Probably sooner than we expect.” Discussions during the 90-minute session were off the record.

And the arrival of MPs from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) — which came third in last month’s election — will fundamentally change the tone of debates. “The question at stake is what will this do to the discourse,” said Sophie Schönberger, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Konstanz. “What are the limits of what can be said inside a parliament?”

The bloated size of the Bundestag will significantly complicate day-to-day work, as “the more diverse and the larger a parliament is, the more difficult it is to control the government and to do parliamentary work,” Schönberger cautioned.

The Bundestag will also have a new man in charge — outgoing Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble will be elected its president. The parliament’s longest serving member (he was first elected in 1972), Schäuble has been hand-picked by Chancellor Angela Merkel to manage the unwieldy assembly and keep the AfD in line.

But with 92 members of parliament, the populists known for their anti-immigration and anti-Muslim rhetoric are determined to make their mark. “Of course, we will change the topics of the debates,” said a high-ranking AfD member of the Bundestag, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The US is currently backing moves by the Saudis to punish Qatar for allegedly funding the Muslim Brotherhood and other “radical Islamic terrorism”. Bannon said at the Hudson Institute yesterday: “I think the single most important thing that’s happening in the world is the situation in Qatar,” Bannon said. “What’s happening in Qatar is every bit as important as what’s happening in North Korea.”

Qatar is home to the region’s biggest US military base.

In July, Washington and Doha signed an agreement to combat terrorism financing. The comments come as Rex Tillerson spent the weekend visiting Qatar to improve relations. He claimed Saudi Arabia is still not willing to begin direct talks to resolve the Gulf diplomatic crisis.

His Qatari counterpart expressed frustration over the behaviour of the four countries blockading Qatar. In a joint news conference with Mohammed bin Abdulrahman in Qatar's capital, Doha, Tillerson said he is not hopeful Saudi Arabia is willing to enter discussions to resolve the crisis. In July, Washington and Doha signed an agreement to combat terrorism financing.

Those in favor of GMO crops – who tend to also be the ones who benefit from it financially – say that they will end world hunger, but now such lofty proclamations have been deflated as a new study shows that pests are quickly developing resistance to genetically modified crops. In just five years, scientists say that many bugs have gotten to the point where they can simply shrug off the poisons that are created by GM crops.

This is hardly a new phenomenon. In 2015, researchers discovered that the crop pest corn earworm had stopped responding to the Bt toxin. A year earlier, it was discovered that bollworms had developed resistance to Bt cotton, destroying GM crops in Pakistan. On that occasion, one Pakistani cotton grower lamented that all Bt cotton varieties had failed to kill the bollworms and live up to their promises. Farmers there were then advised by the government to spray their crops even more – after Monsanto had said that Bt cotton would decrease pesticide use!

Bt crops in India, meanwhile, failed to deliver on their promises, leading many farmers to unmanageable debt and spurring one of the world’s biggest suicide epidemics, with nearly 300,000 Indian farmers killing themselves in the last two decades.

These “solutions” aren’t killing pests and they are causing widespread problems for people and the planet, so why are we still poisoning ourselves? Traditional farming practices like crop rotation can also prevent pests and disease, and they do it without creating superbugs or putting the health of life on our planet in jeopardy.

He revealed that scientists are close to breaking the genetic code which would enable them to create “a human with pre-designed characteristics". Speaking at a youth festival in Sochi, Putin warned of the consequences of playing God with man’s genetic code, reports The Express.

He said: "A man has the opportunity to get into the genetic code created by either nature, or as religious people would say, by the God. All kinds of practical consequences may follow. One may imagine that a man can create a man not only theoretically but also practically."

Earlier this month, the election-hacking autocrat said that AI was “the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind.” While saying the burgeoning technology had “colossal opportunities”, Putin added “whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”