EMP riskCoalition sounds alarm about possible global EMP disaster
A coalition that includes former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former CIA director James Woolsey has issued a terse warning regarding apocalyptic effects that could result from a mass EMP (electromagnetic pulse) disaster or attack. Members of the coalition “are convinced that our fragile electrical grid could be wiped out at any moment” from bursts of electrical energy caused by anything from a nuclear explosion to a solar flare from the sun, leading to chaos on a global scale.
A coalition that includes former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former CIA director James Woolsey has issued a terse warning regarding apocalyptic effects that could result from a mass EMP (electromagnetic pulse) disaster or attack.
Defense One reports that members of the coalition “are convinced that our fragile electrical grid could be wiped out at any moment” from bursts of electrical energy caused by anything from a nuclear explosion to a solar flare from the sun, leading to chaos on a global scale.
Peter Pry, a former CIA officer and head of a congressional advisory board on national security, as well as a member of the coalition, said “I think we’re running out of time. This gets translated into mass fatalities, because our modern civilization can’t feed, transport, or provide law and order without electricity.”
The coalition’s members “believe a single nuclear blast at 300-400 kilometers in altitude — about the height of the International Space Station — could take down all power in the United States. Even an explosion just thirty kilometers up would take out the Eastern grid, which supplies three-quarters of the country’s power.”
Pry goes on to say that “What happens post-detonation is not a pretty picture. You have massive industrial accidents. One hundred four nuclear reactors going Fukushima, spreading toxic clouds everywhere. Oil refineries burning down, oil pipelines exploding…Airlines crashing down.”
These disasters, Defense One point out, would just occur during the first day. The coalition believes that effects of such an event would destroy 90 percent of the world’s population in just a year.
The solutions debated in the U.S. House of Representatives include the GRID Act and SHIELD Act, both of which call for surge protectors on a national infrastructural scale. The GRID Act was voted down by the Senate in 2011, and the SHIELD Act is currently being championed by the coalition and awaits review by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
In terms of potentially harmful solar flares, the world is already due for another. The Carrington Event, which occurred in 1859, interrupted the minimal electrical power grid already in place — the effects of which would be felt much more today given our modern dependence upon electricity.
