Imagine you're a terrorist with a single nuclear weapon. You could wipe
out the U.S. city of your choice, or you could decide to destroy the
infrastructure of the entire U.S. economy and leave millions of
Americans to die of starvation or want of medical care.
The latter scenario is the one envisioned by a long-running commission
to assess the threat from electromagnetic pulse, or EMP. The subject of
its latest, and little discussed, report to Congress is the effect an
EMP attack could have on civilian infrastructure. If you're prone to
nightmares, don't read it before bedtime.
An EMP attack occurs when a nuclear bomb explodes high in the Earth's
atmosphere. The electromagnetic pulse generated by the blast destroys
all the electronics in its line of sight. For a bomb detonated over the
Midwest, that includes most of the continental U.S. Few, if any, people
die in the blast. It's what comes next that has the potential to be
catastrophic. Since an EMP surge wipes out electronics, virtually every
aspect of modern American life would come to a standstill.
The commission's list of horribles is 181 pages long. The chapter on
food, for instance, catalogs the disruptions up and down the production
chain as food spoils or has no way to get to market. Many families have
food supplies of several days or more. But after that, and without
refrigeration, what? The U.S. also has 75,000 dams and reservoirs,
168,000 drinking water-treatment facilities, and 19,000 wastewater
treatment centers -- all with pumps, valves and filters run by
electricity.
Getting everything up and running again is not merely a matter of
flipping a switch, and the commission estimates that many systems could
be out of service for months or a year or more -- far longer than
emergency stockpiles or batteries could cover. The large transformers
used in electrical transmission are no longer built in the U.S. and
delivery time is typically three years. "Lack of high voltage equipment
manufacturing capacity represents a glaring weakness in our survival
and recovery," the commission notes.
Many industries rely on automated control systems maintained by small
work forces. In emergencies -- say, during a blackout -- companies
often have arrangements in place to borrow workers from outside the
affected area to augment the locals and help with manual repairs. After
an EMP attack, those workers would be busy in their home regions -- or
foraging for food and water for their families.
The commission offers extensive recommendations for how industry and
government can protect against the effects of an EMP attack and ensure
a quicker recovery. They include "hardening" more equipment to
withstand an electromagnetic pulse; making sure replacement equipment
is on hand; training recovery personnel; increasing federal food
stockpiles; and many others.
If not, our vulnerability "can both invite and reward attack," the
commission's chairman, William Graham, told Congress last month. Iran's
military writings "explicitly discuss a nuclear EMP attack that would
gravely harm the United States," he said. James Shinn, an assistant
secretary of defense, has said that China is developing EMP weapons.
The commission calls an EMP attack "one of a small number of threats
that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences." The
threat is real. It's past time to address it.
