BY Herschel Smith

2 years, 4 months ago

Washington Examiner:

Parts of the United States would be starved of electricity, water, food, internet service and transportation for a year or longer by the smallest electromagnetic pulse attack on the electric grid, according to a newly declassified report from a federal commission. The so-called EMP Commission report said that the threat is real, jeopardizes “modern civilization,” and would set back living conditions to those last seen in the 1800s. And as a result of the chaos, millions would likely die, according to the report titled “Assessing the Threat from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP),” from the recently re-established Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack. “A long-term outage owing to EMP could disable most critical supply chains, leaving the U.S. population living in conditions similar to centuries past, prior to the advent of electric power,” said the July 2017 report provided Secrets. “In the 1800s, the U.S. population was less than 60 million, and those people had many skills and assets necessary for survival without today’s infrastructure. An extended blackout today could result in the death of a large fraction of the American people through the effects of societal collapse, disease, and starvation. While national planning and preparation for such events could help mitigate the damage, few such actions are currently underway or even being contemplated,” added the executive summary. [ … ] In “Life Without Electricity,” he said the results would be:

Social Order: Looting requires dusk to dawn curfew. People become refugees as they flee powerless homes. Work force becomes differently employed at scavenging for basics, including water, food, and shelter.

Communications: No TV, radio, or phone service.

Transportation: Gas pumps inoperable. Failure of signal lights and street lights impedes traffic, stops traffic after dark. No mass transit metro service. Airlines stopped.

Water and Food: No running water. Stoves and refrigerators inoperable. People melt snow, boil water, and cook over open fires. Local food supplies exhausted. Most stores close due to blackout.

Energy: Oil and natural gas flows stop.

Emergency Medical: Hospitals operate in dark. Patients on dialysis and other life support threatened. Medications administered and babies born by flashlight.

Death and Injury: Casualties from exposure, carbon dioxide poisoning and house fires increase.

I didn’t need the list, nor am I persuaded I need to spend any time studying the report. I’ve pointed this out before, and it was only after I began to point out the weakness of the main step-up / step-down transformers at power plants that the FedGov or corporations began to focus on thinking about those key aspects of our critical infrastructure.

So let’s paint the picture. Power goes out. It won’t return for a very long time. There is no power to run pumps to get gasoline out of tanks and into automobiles. There is no fuel delivery truck to bring the gasoline to market because pumps don’t work, and drivers are all at home taking care of their families.

Hospitals have no power except for urgent and critical care, and what little they can get comes from diesel generators (which will stop running when the fuel runs out). Traffic lights don’t work. Emergency responders don’t respond. EBT cards don’t work because food stores are empty, and there is no cash register to run the cards. We’ve seen how that goes before in Atlanta.

Pumps to bring water to urban and suburban centers don’t run. Every family is about 72 hours (three days) away from impending starvation. Looters hit the streets, violence becomes a way of life.

This doesn’t just happen with an EMP event, whether solar or weaponized. It happens on a smaller scale with terrorist attacks on the electrical grid. I’ve discussed this at length, so you know this and have been warned, just as I know (and have failed completely to prepare for).

Prior:

A Terrorist Attack That America Cannot Absorb

Surviving the Apocalypse

Electrical Grid Attack

The Electrical Grid Is Still Vulnerable

See also CBS Chicago, Electrical Grid Vulnerable To Attacks, Natural Disasters