# 12 - Could North Korea Really Cripple The U.S. With An EMP?
The United States has been downplaying this very real threat for years, even after in 2004, two Russian Generals who also happen to be EMP experts told U.S. officials that the designs for the Russian Super-EMP warhead, capable of generating high intensity EMP fields of 200,000 volts per meter were "accidentally" given to the North Koreans and that Russian scientists had been in North Korea, helping with their missile and nuclear weapon programs, which included a nuclear EMP program.
Unfortunately we have asshat analysts like Jack Liu and Jeffrey Lewis who write-off the possibility of a nuclear EMP attack by North Korea as "science fiction" and "unlikely".
They believe that the 10 to 20 kiloton nuclear weapons that North Korea currently has are incapable of effectively creating an EMP attack, and many officials in our government believe the views of these asshat analysts.
The consensus view of EMP experts who have advanced degrees in physics and electrical engineering along with several decades of experience in the field, and who have conducted EMP tests on a wide variety of electronic systems since 1963 is the exact opposite.
In 2013, a Chinese military commentator testified at a United States Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security hearing that North Korea already has Super-EMP nuclear weapons. [1]
Super-EMP weapons do not need high-output megaton nuclear weapons to be effective. They are designed to utilize smaller low yield nuclear weapons to produce an extremely high level of gamma rays which produce the high-frequency E-1 EMP which is the type that is most damaging to modern electronics, including our national power grid.
North Korean nuclear tests—including the first in 2006, which was predicted to the EMP Commission two years earlier by the two Russian EMP experts, mostly have yields consistent with the size of a Super-EMP weapon.
The Russian generals’ accurate prediction of when the North would perform its first nuclear test, and the yield being consistent with a super-EMP weapon, indicates their warning about a North Korean super-EMP weapon should be taken very seriously. Yet our government officials still bury their heads in the sand thinking it could never happen and do nothing to upgrade or "harden" our national power grid to protect against an EMP attack.
North Korea would only need three things to take down our entire power grid and basically send the United States back to the stone-age for at least the next several years are:
Long-range ICBM's (which they now have),
Super-EMP weapons (which they have had since at least 2006) and
A desire to use them (which Kim Jong Un has recently threatened to do).
Yet, a long-range ICBM is not the only way that North Korea could launch an EMP attack at the United States. They could also be fired from short-range missiles from a submarine, or cargo ship parked off the coast of the US.
They can even be fired from satellites orbiting the Earth (North Korea already has two such satellites in orbit now, KMS-3 and KMS-4). The south polar trajectory of KMS-3 and KMS-4 evades US Ballistic Missile Early Warning Radars and National Missile Defenses.
Kim Jong Un has threatened to reduce the United States to “ashes” with “nuclear thunderbolts” and threatened to retaliate for US diplomatic and military pressure by “ordering officials and scientists to complete preparations for a satellite launch as soon as possible” amid “the enemies’ harsh sanctions and moves to stifle” the North.[2]
The Congressional EMP Commission has released reports and testified to Congress that the threat of an EMP attack is real, and that the United States is vulnerable to such an attack, both from a thermonuclear device detonated at high altitude, and from Coronal Mass Ejections from the sun. Another study was done to determine how much it would cost to "harden" our electrical grid to prevent most of the destruction which showed that it would only cost approximately $5 per person to sustain modern civilization and the lives of 326 million Americans.
In April the Pentagon announced plans for a system to "harden" the telecommunications and power grid of the country against attacks threatened by both North Korea, and Iran, yet it will not be ready until 2020. Their defense system will only safeguard against cyber attacks and will offer no protection at all against EMPs caused by a high-altitude thermonuclear detonation over the US, which both countries also have the capability of doing.
Given the current state of U.S. unpreparedness for an EMP event, it is estimated that within 12 months of an EMP event, 66 to 90 percent of the entire U.S. population would likely perish from starvation, disease, and societal breakdown.
The nuclear EMP threat is not merely theoretical – it is real, a clear and present danger. Nuclear EMP attack is the perfect asymmetric weapon for a country who wishes to level the battlefield by neutralizing the great technological advantage enjoyed by U.S. military forces. EMP is also the only means whereby rogue states or terrorists organizations could use a single nuclear weapon to destroy the United States and prevail with a single blow.
References:
Peter V. Pry, Statement Before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security Hearing on Terrorism and the EMP Threat to Homeland Security: “Foreign Views of Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack,” March 8, 2005, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-109shrg21324/pdf/CHRG-109shrg21324.pdf.; Min-sek Kim and Jee-ho Yoo, “Military Source Warns of North’s EMP Bomb” JoonAng Daily, September 2, 2009; Daguang Li, “North Korean Electromagnetic Attack Threatens South Korea’s Information Warfare Capabilities” Tzu Chin, June 1, 2012, 44-45.
Alex Lockie, “North Korea threatens ‘nuclear thunderbolts’ as US And China finally work together,” Business Insider, April 14, 2017, http://www.businessinsider.com/north-korea-us-china-nuclear-thunderbolt-cooperation-war-2017-4; “US General: North Korea ‘will’ develop nuclear capabilities to hit America,” Fox News, September 20, 2016, www.foxnews.com/world/2016/09/20/north-korea-says-successfully-ground-tests-new-rocket-engine.html.
Previous Episode:
Coming Episodes:
In upcoming episodes we will also take a look at "Water Purification & Sanitization" as well as "Vacuum Sealed vs. Mylar Bagged Food Storage". We will also take a look at the shelf-life of "Home Canned Foods" and the viability of using them in our emergency supplies.
Also we will have an episode on the need for a Wilderness First Aid training even if you live in a city. We will also take a look at the need for "Sanitation After A Disaster".
