North Korea: EMP threatNorth Korea threatens EMP attack on U.S.

Published 6 September 2017

North Korea’s relentless march toward acquiring the capability to place a hydrogen bomb on top of an ICBM will soon pose a threat to all major U.S. cities. There is another threat that marrying of a hydrogen bomb to a powerful rocket poses: An EMP threat. The North Koreans could launch a missile into the upper atmosphere, then detonate a high-yield hydrogen bomb in space in order to generate an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, which would shut down the U.S. power grid and damage electrical devices. Experts testifying before the Congressional EMP Commission said that in the event of a massive EMP attack on the United States using multiple high-yield warheads, around 90 percent of the American population would be dead after eighteen months due to famine, disease, and societal breakdown.

North Korea’s relentless march toward acquiring the capability to place a hydrogen bomb on top of an ICBM will soon pose a threat to all major U.S. cities.

There is another threat that marrying of a hydrogen bomb to a powerful rocket poses: An EMP threat. The North Koreans could launch a missile into the upper atmosphere, then detonate a high-yield hydrogen bomb in space in order to generate an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, which would shut down the U.S. power grid and damage electrical devices.

The Daily Mail reports that North Korea’s state news agency specifically referred to an EMP tactic in an official press release. A news announcer of North Korean TV read the release, which said that the bomb North Korea tested on Sunday “is a multifunctional thermonuclear nuke with great destructive power which can be detonated even at high altitudes for super-powerful EMP attack.”

The idea of an EMP attack is not new, and in the early phase of the cold war it was openly discussed as one option a nuclear-power state could choose in order to cripple a rival nation. The purpose of an EMP attack is to overwhelm the electric grid, inflicting damage that could last weeks or even moths. Emergency equipment at hospitals would be useless, food refrigeration would not be available, traffic lights would stop working, water purification and sewage treatment facilities would stop functioning, flood gates on dams could not be opened or shut, buildings without independent generators would be without power, and much more.

The Boston Herald notes that in 2008, a report commissioned by Congress warned that an EMP attack could bring “widespread and long lasting disruption and damage to the critical infrastructures that underpin the fabric of U.S. society.”

EMPs also occur naturally on the sun, and can disrupt electrical system on earth. A 1989 blackout in Quebec was the result of a powerful explosions on the sun which expelled a cloud of charged particles that struck earth’s magnetic field.