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This article originally appeared at rechargemag.com in December of 2004
Electromagnetic Waves Comprise the Lifeblood of
Western Society by Joe Mitchell OPENING SHOT: Indoors, shabby urban apartment with exposed brick and mortar walls. Young man ("YM") in black T-shirt with "TERRORIST" emblazoned in white letters sits in front of his computer making online purchases. On the computer screen are giant letters of a Web Site declaring "WMD's R US." CUT TO: YM greeting UPS deliveryman, and signing clipboard. CUT TO: Numerous boxes on floor of apartment. YM opens the boxes and removes each item in conjunction with the following VO. VOICEOVER: Book on Building a Flux Compression Generator- $40 Book on Electro-Magnetic Pulse Theory- $40 Copper Wire for Stator Winding- $100 Insulator Blocks- $75 Metal Tube for Armature- $50 Metal for Stator Input and Output Rings- $30 Dielectric Structural Jacket- $400 Materials for Lens Plane Generator- $150 Cut to Scene inside Warehouse filled with black Barrels with gray stenciled letters on the side. YM meets a shifty looking guy in coveralls who takes his credit card. The shifty man returns with a barrel on a hand truck. The young man takes the truck, nodding a "thank you" to the shifty man. VO: PBX 9501- $300 CUT TO: YM soldering, banging hammer, filing. CUT TO: YM, wearing suit, carrying gym bag, getting off train. VO: Train Ticket to Manhattan- $80. CUT TO: The YM walking down Wall Street, carrying gym bag. He drops gym bag on an empty corner a block away from Wall Street and briskly walks away. YM pulls out remote control, hits big red button. VO: Remote Control from Radio Shack- $30 CUT TO: Bag makes small blast. No one even notices. They think it's a car backfiring. CUT TO: Interior of crowded Trading Floor. Lights, marquee boards, and monitors go black. CUT TO: Interior of Cube Farm. Lights, computers go black. Office Workers look all around, confused. CUT TO: People in suits running through streets jumping on stalled cars stuck in the street, breaking windows and stealing everything they can get their hands on. VO: Bringing down Western Civilization- Priceless. I awake, realizing it all started in 1962 when the U.S. exploded a nuclear device called Starfish 250 miles above Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean. Over one thousand miles away in Hawaii, simultaneous to the explosion, numerous electronic systems were zapped. Street lamps went black, burglar alarms activated, a telephone relay station was severely damaged. That same year, the Soviets detonated three such devices at varying heights over Central Asia. Electric and telephone cables above and below ground were damaged beyond repair. Power supply circuits melted, all in a virtually desolate area. Scientists in both countries scratched their heads and realized there was more to the nuke than just evaporated humans and eternal radiation contamination. The detonation of nuclear devices produces an Electro-Magnetic Pulse ("EMP"), or very short burst of Electro-Magnetic wave energy that lasts no more than a few billionths of a second. With its extremely high frequency, an EMP can spread over vast land areas proportionate to its height of detonation. By the most conservative estimates, a small nuclear device dropped 200 miles over Chicago would produce an EMP that would generate damage going all the way to Miami and Houston in the South, and Winnipeg and Montreal in the North. Electronic components would be fried- telephone systems, computer circuits and hard drives, automobile electrical systems. Most of the systems would be beyond repair. Other parts of the civilian infrastructure dependent upon electronic data and components would be disabled- air traffic control systems, water and dam control systems, electrical grids, emergency call centers. Even most military equipment would fry. Your bank account would read $0. The electronic lifeblood of the affected area would stop cold. A cascading effect due to the integrated nature of electronic systems would hobble the rest of the nation. No one would die, but civilization would plunge backwards 100 to 200 years. The fear throughout the Cold War, and continuing today, was that an enemy, rather than using several nukes to wipe out several cities, could use only one or two nukes to cripple the entire country's infrastructure. The former Soviets have admitted that such a plan against the United States existed throughout the 70's and 80's. The Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP Attack released in April of this year still recognizes the high-altitude nuclear EMP threat. However, the Commission failed to recognize the new kid in town- the Flux Compression Generator (FCG), like in the nightmare above. An FCG is small, non-nuclear, and can destroy the electronic systems in a localized area. Considering the cascading effect, such device set-off in the right place can cause economic damage and disruption equal to or greater than the WTC attack. The scary thing is that an FCG can be made for under $2,000. Some estimates by engineers go as low as $1,000 and $400. A Popular Mechanics story, which eerily appeared on its September 2001 cover, extensively quotes Australian engineer Carlo Kopp regarding just how easy it would be for a terrorist cell to create and detonate an FCG. Despite the fact that Michigan has outlawed FCG's and the U.S. Army has its own FCG's, those in charge of national security remain oblivious to its threat. All discussion of EMP attack by government officials seems to be geared toward nuke-derived EMPs and justifying the resurrection of the Star Wars Defense Shield. Even on the House Armed Services Committee, a pork barrel mentality prevails- spend billions on new sophisticated high-tech systems and billions more to maintain them, only to have a few nefarious types with engineering degrees circumvent the whole thing for less than the price of a good mountain bike. Nothing seems to have been learned from 9/11. You may want to start pricing mountain bikes.
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