[lurker]

Originally Posted by Captain Kemical

That is just a website to promote fear in my opinion. The simple fact is that electricity and electronics work on basic priciples, EMP would be a form of induction, grounded circuits and components will handle most induction, there might be some scattered damaged items, but not the end of the information age and electronic components.

I realize this is the second time I've pick your quote but I've been pondering and wondering what website you are referring too...? The link I posted was simply a google search BUT it included a link that remains relevant even today.

[H.A.S.C. No. 106–31]

ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE THREATS TO U.S. MILITARY AND CIVILIAN INFRASTRUCTURE

HEARING

BEFORE THE

MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

HEARING HELD
OCTOBER 7, 1999

That includes this little gem:

Dr. WOOD. Mr. Bartlett, if I might respond very briefly to the hypothesis that you had in your question which I didn't speak to. Some might consider your suggestions with respect to EMP-based launches from the sea to be somewhat exotic, and along those lines I would just like to bring to the committee's attention the statement made by former Defense Secretary William Perry last Saturday speaking to the Nobel symposium in Stockholm and as quoted by the Associated Press. He said, quote, last year's India test ruptured the fragile barrier of the nonproliferation treaty. Not surprisingly, Pakistan quickly followed suit, and my expectation is that we will see Iran, Iraq, and possibly Syria go nuclear as well, end quote.

Now, the significance of this, other than pointing out that, hey, everybody is getting them as fast as they can, is that it has also been reported in The New York Times that the Iranians have been seen testing the launch of SCUD-type missiles from barges in the Caspian Sea, and so they are not waiting to develops ICBMs, Shahab-5 and so forth; that the CIA has publicly said they will likely have in well under a decade, they are looking to a possibility, one which was identified by the Rumsfeld Commission and tabled before the Congress, of shipping their short-range ballistic missiles presumably with weaponry of mass destruction in them as close to the U.S. as they can get in tramp steamers or barges or whatever and launching them from there.

This is not a conjecture anymore. They have been seen testing such equipment in the Caspian Sea.

Agreed, this testimony was in 1999 and it was only the third public discussion of EMP

For obvious reasons, the entire topic of EMP was highly classified, and congressional oversight was generally circumspect and conducted in closed session. Indeed, this is only the third even partly open session of congressional oversight devoted to the EMP topic of which I am aware, and I congratulate you and your colleagues, Mr. Chairman, for the extraordinary vision and dedication to bedrock, albeit less fashionable, aspects of the Nation's security which are evidenced by this morning's hearing

BUT what's important to note is the changes during the ensuing years....

Terrorists have destroyed the World Trade Center.

The low-tech stuff would be what was done at the World Trade Center. The story that Jim Woolsey, former CIA Director, relates there was that the guy who masterminded that particular attack was being taken by helicopter over Manhattan by Federal agents for arraignments, and one of the Federal agents pointed to the World Trade Center and said, it is still standing, and Ramsi Yosef said, yes, but if I had had $5,000 more materials, it wouldn't be.

If they had knocked over the World Trade Center, they would have killed 100,000 people. That is the super low-tech garden fertilizer approach. The medium-tech is the Tokyo subway approach. The high-tech way would be just to destroy the electronic and electrical infrastructure in large part over an entire urban industrial complex with an EMP weapon, a nonnuclear EMP weapon of the type that a very small terrorist group could build.

We have become even more reliant on semiconductors.

The Laws of Physics haven't changed.


The link I'd hoped someone would find:
ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE THREATS TO U.S. MILITARY AND CIVILIAN INFRASTRUCTURE
It's generated and hosted by the US House of Representatives.