Deprivation or not.

[Frankingun]

national geographic did a great 2 hour show on what would happen if humans disappeared tomorrow... they had some pretty good research to show the first 30 years or so, they used Prypat (the town nearest to Chernobyl) to show what happens if cities are left completely abandoned...

it was a fascinating look at how well nature retakes civilization... we are starting to see some of that in Michigan cities that are being overrun with plant growth now that they are being abandoned...

And as a plus, more trees means more raccoons for that guy in Detroit to sell...

Just set aside a square foot of flowerbed this year and do nothing with it, you might be surprised.

[arctictom]

Some of are not only ready , but will fare very well, lots of folks on this forum will fare well , the folks that are rudderless and wont do well are going to create social unrest and will be zombies as they realize their isn't any one to help them or support their broken lifestyle/government/society.
My Grandfather said if people are not allowed to fail (he hated FDR) the country will.

[postmanone]

The events that would cause widespread deprivation are many. However, the one that would place the current generation back 500 years would be a EMP wave covering the USA. And What I cannot believe that this government knows the threat is real and does nothing about it. Hell, Iran and North Korea could pull this off as well as China and Russia. One must understand how easy it is to do. A few satellites launched in thier own territory orbit the earth. At a predetermined time, they fall towards the center of the United States and each coast. At the 200 mile range from Earth, they detonate sending out EMP energy from coast to coast. In that instant, the United States is screwed. 95% of all communications sytems fail, all commercial airlines crash, 95% of all cars, trains, trucks stop. In less than a month, all major cities are death zones with milllions dead from just the lack of water. And what a perfect time for an envasion. The United States thanks to the enviro-nuts have huge natual resources and spoils do go to the victor. I doubt Americans would ever recover.

[randy]

Roger Roger all of Chris's traffic.

The military's been planning on fighting in that environment for 50 or so years (40+ in the age after vacuum tubes). Equipment I was working with in the 80's was built and tested to work while we engaged in nuclear combat, toe to toe with the Russkies.

A lot of consumer goods are hardened by virtue of being spin offs of military and government gear.

And my older Ham gear is going to be just fine unless I happen to have the antennas hooked up when the pulse hits. As Chris said (and I think I said in another thread but can't find it), I'm not going to be around to worry about it after any pulse strong enough to take all of my gear out.

[HTRN]

Chris, what about the new LED monitors?

And oh, for those who are really worried..


HTRN

[mekender]

IIRC the two biggest things that would be effected by an EMP would be car ignitions and power transmission stations...

the studies i saw said that basically any car built after 1974 would be dead...

the electrical systems would be vulnerable to electron cascades... basically the emp causes an electron pulse that cascades up the line and blows out substations... im sure most failsafes would stop them before they got too far, but it would still be a problem...

[Frosch]

IIRC the two biggest things that would be effected by an EMP would be car ignitions and power transmission stations...

the studies i saw said that basically any car built after 1974 would be dead...

the electrical systems would be vulnerable to electron cascades... basically the emp causes an electron pulse that cascades up the line and blows out substations... im sure most failsafes would stop them before they got too far, but it would still be a problem...

None of this squares with the commission report. They say cars are pretty well hardened, but that
the grid will come down because the controllers will die. Communications will fare better than the
grid, and the grid failure has the most dire consequences.

http://www.empcommission.org/docs/A2473 ... on-7MB.pdf

[Frosch]

IIRC the two biggest things that would be effected by an EMP would be car ignitions and power transmission stations...

the studies i saw said that basically any car built after 1974 would be dead...

the electrical systems would be vulnerable to electron cascades... basically the emp causes an electron pulse that cascades up the line and blows out substations... im sure most failsafes would stop them before they got too far, but it would still be a problem...

Actually most cars built since 1987 have had EM shielding in their ignition systems; and the studies you read are either wrong, grossly out of date, or based on much higher energy estimates.

Of course power cables are HUGE inductors, and they would be the biggest problem; but they would need to have a hell of a lot of overvoltage induced in them to cause a problem.

The report shouldn't be that far off on the fundamental science. The details and the ramifications
are hard to predict (in fact, they say that), but government failures tend to be political (ie, failures
of will) rather than technical. When there's science to be done, they hire scientists. They might
ignore them and politicize the results (<coff> global warming <coff>), but in this case, I would
expect politics to minimize the dangers.

[Frosch]

Well, what the report in question says isn't actually that the high voltagle sections would go donw; but that the much more vulnerable remote monitoring instrumentation would go down.

This would allow, or even induce, alrge fluctiations in the grid, which would cause cascade failures.

The thing is, I know those monitoring sensors. I worked for a company that made them (PX instruments/DataEdge in Ireland. They were my partners in a security consulting business. They make the PXI instrumentation system). I know where they're installed. I know how they're made. They aren't NEARLY as vulnerable or fragile as indicated in the report.

Also, the energy levels they're talking about are orders of magnitude different than what I would expect from any sort of airburst nuclear device, at any scale that wouldnt kill everyone on the ground anyway.

And, they're also assuming MANY more devices, with a much wider and more even distribution than would be possible under any known scenario.

This isn't worst case scenarios; this is worst case, multiplied by worst case, multiplied by worst case; then multiplied by 10 just to make sure.

Methinks perhaps this is deliberate.

That's encouraging.

Airburst won't produce emp, though. It has to be an out-of-atmosphere detonation.

Anyway, since the Obambots are against missle denfense, they would never play up the
danger. If it is being overestimated, it has to be a Bush administration effort, or, more
likely, an agency doing its own thing. We already know the State department goes its
own way, president be damned.

Iran has in fact conducted a sea-launched missle test, with an out-of-atmosphere detonation.
This is a test of an emp attack. Transparently so, really, so you wonder about that. I do worry
about the undeterable out there.

I hate to say it, but I think a nuclear attack against the US is inevitable. I just hope it's a light
enough blow that it serves as a wakeup call, instead of a knockout. There are still enough
competent Americans to make very fast progress on the defense front, once we put aside
childish notions. It might be an occasion for hanging those who stood down our defenses in
the first place.

[mekender]

all of the stuff i read was on EMP weapons not on conventional nukes... granted this was years ago that i read it, so the old memory is probably a bit fuzzy... but if i remember correctly it was high yield EM weapons detonated at a medium altitude... they talked about needing 8 to 15 to blanket then entire continental US...

what i was led to believe was that the EM energy would amplify off of steel and other dense metals... that skyscrapers and other large mostly metal structures would actually amplify the effect... that power lines, especially the big ones would carry the surge for hundreds of miles...

the basic conclusions were that $10,000,000 worth of em shielding could be negated by a $30,000 EM weapon, so shielding was worthless and it was much better to situate redundant backup systems at multiple geographic locations...

if i recall, the principles discussed was that it would cause the electrons and magnetic particles (or perhaps the conductive materials) to polarize differently than they normally were and that would basically wipe any circuit that had power to it... so devices that were unplugged shouldn't be affected, but there was no guarantee...

the effect that would happen on power lines would basically be like a series of ever intensifying waves of electrons hammering down the lines into whatever they could... the end result would either be a total loss of function at transfer stations or an overload at one of the stepping stations... worst case would be an overload at a nuke plant that killed their ability to drop the safety rods leading to a meltdown...

now i suspect that much has changed in the research since the articles i read were written which was probably at least 15 years ago... so who knows...