The World Just Became Unplugged...

                            

"Imagine losing your power and never seeing it again..."

Okay, here comes Mr. Wet Blanket once again. Trust me, this is a subject I would prefer not to talk about - I wished this technology did not exist. But it does, and it is not very complicated to produce maximum destruction, death and mayhem using only minimal resources. It is way to transform a 21st century high tech country back into the stone age. And it can happen in a heartbeat. It is what many terrorist organizations (like ISIS) or terror nations (like North Korea) look upon as the great equalizer.

What am I talking about? EMP. EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) may either be natural or man made. Our sun has the ability to at any time defeat the protection of our natural magnetic field and zap us with so much radiation, the EMP shock would disable most of the world. The odds of this happening are low, but nevertheless still possible as we are in a very active sun storm period right now. Gamma ray bursts from a distant exploding star could do the same (or worse). Again, possible, but much less unlikely. What is much more likely to happen is a man made EMP event. And as time goes on, the technology to create EMP becomes more and more available to people with bad and evil intentions.

An EMP attack from any altitude would have disastrous, paralyzing effects. Most communications would cease, unless you have a tube ham radio and a generator that survived. Nothing would work except the simplest mechanics. Water won’t pump except by gravity or a hand pump. Cars later than 1984 would be immobilized. Gas stations won’t be able to pump gas anyway, except by hand.

There would be no warning, no civil defense crawl on your TV, no sirens going off. If you were close enough to the high altitude blast, you would see the glow from the blast, and then total silence. Nothing would be working. It would be as if someone pulled the plug on the world.

The scenario is nasty. Food would disappear in a heartbeat. Hospital machinery stops. Supply trucks and factories stop. The panic alone will set off unspeakable horrors depending on the degree of electrical destruction. Even airports would be useless, never mind all the planes that just tragically dropped out of the sky. In addition, medical emergencies would go unanswered and life giving medication would be unavailable. If someone in your household dies from hunger or exposure, the only funeral would be burial in the back yard. Hunger and exposure will turn countryman against countryman, neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother. In other words, our country would turn into a version of Dante's Inferno.

A while back I saw the movie Contagion for the second time. The movie is a Hollywood version of what would happen if a new virus was introduced and a pandemic ensued (like Ebola?). Putting the Hollywood aspect aside, here is the realism - with a crisis of this magnitude, the government will be of little help. In addition, it was amazing how fast the stores ran out of food and people started looting and shooting their neighbors. In other words, an EMP attack  would be worse than a pandemic as there would be no time to prepare.

Is there anything we can do other than hope against hope this never happens? Absolutely! I have worked on programs while at Control Data that use "hardening" to make electronics immune to EMP - and that was in the 80's. Our electrical grid is outdated and vulnerable. To harden it against EMP would be expensive, but much less than we spent on the stimulus bill. Having a hardened grid with water and natural gas distribution centers also hardened would allow houses to at least receive power, heat and water after an event.

Bunker up! I have been telling people to bunker up for over 10 years now. Every household needs enough potable water and non-perishable food to last for at least 30 days. It does not have to be fancy, it just needs to keep you alive. Toilet paper, tooth paste, paper towels, paper plates, plastic forks and spoons, batteries, and so on need to be considered. If our distribution system goes down after an event, your bunker will be your store. If it is not there, you will not get it.

Buy or build a Faraday cage. It is an enclosure formed by conducting material or by a mesh of such material. Such an enclosure blocks external static and non-static electric fields. 
A Faraday cage's operation depends on the fact that an external static electrical field will cause the electric charges within the cage's conducting material to redistribute themselves so as to cancel the field's effects in the cage's interior. This phenomenon is used, for example, to protect electronic equipment from lightning strikes and electrostatic discharges. Depending on the severity of the event, it could offer your PC, laptop or other sensitive electronic some degree of protection.

Tough one here. Buy a gun and learn how to use it. Have adequate ammunition on hand. Desperate times will call for desperate measures, and if someone wants what you have, they will not want to negotiate AND there will be no police to call for protection. I hate to put this one in, but in reality, many will not prepare and things would get real bad real fast.

It does not have to be like this. There are things that can be done. However benign neglect will be our undoing. As Louis Pasteur said many years ago, "Chance favors the prepared mind". Lets prepare our minds and think about the unthinkable. Think about a worst case scenario and then prepare for it. Think outside the box, use your imagination. It is far better to take unwarranted criticism for preparing than to suffer an event unprepared and watch your family suffer or die.