The EMP Commission has published a number of reports concluding that, in the event of a comprehensive EMP attack on the U.S. homeland, up to 90 percent of the U.S. population would die within a year due to a widespread breakdown of the food distribution system resulting in mass starvation and an epidemic of starvation-related diseases and related adverse effects. In his article, Mr. Gault ridicules this estimate as vastly overstated. But certainly, any threat potentially capable of causing tens of millions of Americans to die cannot be said to “exist only in our minds” as Mr. Gault would like us to believe.

No one wants world peace more than this author, having recently published a global peace proposal earlier this year and a subsequent more comprehensive version here which would entail the U.S. making substantial concessions to Russia and/or the PRC while rebuilding America’s defenses in order to help ensure a just and lasting great power peace and successfully avert a Third World War. However, just as it was folly for past U.S. leaders to believe that America’s enemies would not or could not attack us before Pearl Harbor, it would be the height of folly for us to stick our heads in the sand and pretend existential threats like EMP and nuclear missile attack do not exist, which is why EMP threat deniers such as Mr. Gault and Dr. Singer must not be heeded. This is particularly the case when America’s enemies, beginning with Russia, have been successful in developing super-EMP weapons for the purpose of winning a hypothetical war against the U.S. in the belief that they could succeed in crippling America’s ability to retaliate with its nuclear deterrent and thus deliver a knock-out blow at low-risk to themselves.

Of all the potential existential threats facing the United States attack including a full-scale nuclear war or the overhyped unproven threat of man-made climate change, allegedly requiring a New Green Deal estimated to cost $95 trillion, EMP attack is undoubtedly the most affordable to defend against with the cost of hardening the U.S. electrical power grid estimated at only $2 billion. It is imperative that U.S. leaders act quickly to rebuild America’s shrinking nuclear arsenal, deploy a comprehensive national missile defense system and harden our electrical power grid against EMP attack to defend our great nation from nuclear missile/EMP attack and deter our enemies from ever attempting such nuclear aggression. It is also important that the U.S. develop its own super-EMP weapons to provide a more flexible response which could more credibly deter their use against us.