In mid-2022, a war game simulation of a Chinese
invasion of Taiwan was conducted by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a bipartisan,
nonprofit Washington DC-based organization, and was broadcast on an episode of NBC’s Meet the
Press. The Center organized two groups of leading experts: one representing China, represented
by several experts on China along with the CEO of CNAS; representing the United States Security
Council advising the US President, which included defense experts, a retired Air Force general,
and several sitting members of Congress. Their simulation ran just short of a week of real
time, and was stunning in several aspects. One of the most sobering was how fast China was willing
to use nuclear weapons. The team representing China decided, after the US and allied forces
navies were close to defeating the Chinese navy’s support of the invasion, to implement what is
known as a “HEMP shot,” that is, a high-altitude EMP attack, an electro-magnetic pulse caused by
a nuclear weapon, high over the US naval forces. Although the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP,
has declared they will not use nukes first, it’s clear their position on their nuclear weapon
force is changing. According to most sources, such as the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, the CSIS, China is both modernizing and expanding its nuclear weapons arsenal, with
the possibility that their current status of using their nuclear weapons for only defensive
deterrence possibly changing in the future. Unlike China, Russia does not have a
no-first-use policy, and has threatened to use nuclear weapons multiple times since
its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. They have repeatedly said that if the “territorial
integrity” of Russia seems threatened, nuclear weapon use might be considered. This
isn’t just President Vladimir Putin saying this. As recently as January 2023, Vyacheslav
Volodin, chairman of Russia’s lower house, the State Duma, threatened Europe and
the U.S. with “global catastrophe” if the West’s military aid to Ukraine passed
some metaphorical line in the sand. Other threats have come from former Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev, who has talked about the use of nuclear weapons more than once since the
outbreak of the conflict in February 2022. And Putin himself warned the West on September 21,
2022 that he was not bluffing when he said Russia would use “all available means to protect Russia
and our people.” He tried to blame the West for ratcheting up the nuclear rhetoric, saying, “This
is not a bluff. And those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the
weathervane can turn and point towards them.” As recently as April 25th, 2023, the
Russian Foreign Ministry's head of Nuclear Non-Proliferation, Vladimir Yermakov,
told the Russian state news agency TASS that it was the US that was escalating the
risks of nuclear confrontation through its opposition to its war in Ukraine. "The
most acute threat today is associated with the danger of nuclear escalation as a result
of a direct military confrontation between nuclear powers," Yermakov said, meaning
the US and its allies, including NATO, versus Russia, "and these risks, to the
deepest regret, are steadily growing." But how would this nuclear attack be carried out?
Most analysts think an all-out nuclear exchange is unlikely, since that’s the basis behind the
no-win strategy known as MAD, mutually assured destruction. Russia and the US both have enough
nuclear weapons to assure complete annihilation of the other many times over. China, while
still building up its own nuclear forces, has enough to take out every major city
in the US, if they decided to join in. However, Russia categorizes any high-altitude EMP
weapon as part of its information warfare branch, alongside cyber warfare and other electronic
attacks, so their already loose restrictions against using nuclear weapons may not even apply
to HEMP weapons—according to their definitions. Make no mistake: an EMP attack, especially one at
a high enough altitude that could encompass large areas of the US, dubbed an HEMP attack, has been
considered an “existential threat” to our future, yet the US is woefully unprepared
for the effects of such an attack. Is Russia Preparing for an
EMP Attack on NATO or the US? Russia is already well underway in preparing
for such an EMP attack. Since the early 1960s, the former Soviet Union had conducted tests
that demonstrated the destructive potential of the EMP pulse generated by nuclear explosions. Their awareness began with a high-altitude
EMP explosion known as “Test 184,” conducted on October 22nd, 1962, over modern-day
Kazakhstan. Even though the technological state of Kazakhstan in 1962 was relatively
primitive by today's standards, it was heavily industrialized and
fully electrified. Test 184 was detonated above a point 180 miles west of
the city of Zhezgazghan, chosen because of its central location in the middle of
Kazakhstan. At an altitude of 290 kilometers, the distance to the horizon would have been more
than 1900 kilometers, and the electromagnetic pulse generated by the explosion would have
covered the entire region. This was done deliberately for the Soviet Union to see what
effects the EMP would have on a populated area. The EMP effects from Test
184 destroyed transformers, generators, communication systems, electric
switches, and all types of electronics, within an enormous are extending hundreds of
kilometers, thus proving the effectiveness and destructive potential of nuclear
weapon-generated electromagnetic pulses. The results of Test 184 were kept secret for
over thirty years, and were only shared with the West in a briefing by a Russian general in
1994, after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Test 184 confirmed for the Soviets in 1962
what the United States had concluded earlier that same year from its own tests conducted over
the Pacific Ocean, called Project Starfish Prime. Starfish Prime witnessed the explosion of a
hydrogen bomb detonated 250 miles above the Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The
1.4 megaton bomb, 500 times as powerful as the one that fell on Hiroshima, was one
of the last high-altitude nuclear tests, though it was dwarfed by the USSR’s Tsar
Bomba explosion the previous year, which clocked in at 50 megatons. When the Starfish
Prime electromagnetic pulse reached Hawaii, 750 nautical miles to the northeast, it caused
blackouts, blocked radio transmissions, and caused significant electronic faults both on land and
in numerous ships located throughout the area. On top of the problems of the EMP damage,
the Starfish Prime test also created a new artificial radiation belt that was
stronger and longer lasting than scientists had predicted. This unexpected “Starfish
Belt,” which lingered for at least 10 years, destroyed Telstar 1, the first satellite
to broadcast a live television signal, and Ariel-1, Britain’s first satellite.
“It came as a surprise how bad it was, and how long it lasted, and how damaging it
was to satellites that flew through that area and died,” says David Sibeck, a scientist
for NASA’s Van Allen Space Probes mission. The resulting dangers exhibited
by Starfish Prime and Test 184 convinced the US and the USSR to agree
to sign an atmospheric test ban treaty, concluded the very next year. Though
underground nuclear testing has continued, as recently as 2017 by North Korea, no
further atmospheric tests have been conducted. This is both reassuring and troubling: without further testing, it’s unclear just
how damaging a HEMP explosion would be, which means we’re unsure how much protection our
electrical grid and computerized systems need. The Different Components of an EMP Attack From the data collected by those two tests,
as well as a few prior atmospheric tests, we have learned some significant elements of EMPs.
We now know that when a nuclear device goes off, it generates three significant
and distinctive “waveforms” of gamma radiation, usually denoted as E1, E2 and E3. The E1 component is incredibly brief, only
a microsecond in duration, and is produced when gamma radiation from the nuclear detonation
ionizes or strips atoms from molecules floating in the upper atmosphere. This is known as the
Compton Effect, and the resulting current is called the “Compton current.” The electrons
travel at relativistic speeds, or close to the speed of light, in a mostly downward direction,
since there are more atoms lower down in Earth’s atmosphere than higher up. This radiation
travels in a direct line to the horizon, which is why EMP weapons are expected
to be detonated at higher altitudes, from 100 miles up and higher, so as to have the
effect spread out as far as possible and affect as much area as possible. However, like all
energy, the strength dissipates over distance, so the most powerful portion of the pulse
will be directly below the explosion. The E1 component produces high
voltages in electrical conductors, and can destroy any embedded computers in
modern equipment like vehicles, airplanes, laptops, cell phones and modern communications
equipment, as its voltage increases too quickly (over only a few nanoseconds) for ordinary surge
protectors to provide effective protection from it. Shielding can prevent this damage,
but usually, only sophisticated military equipment or specially constructed Faraday cages
are strong enough to protect from such an attack. Following the E1 component is the E2 component,
a longer frequency pulse that lasts from a microsecond to one or two seconds long. The
E2 component bears a lot of similarities to lightning, though a close lightning strike
may be more locally intense than the overall energy of a nuclear weapon-induced E2 component.
Because of the similarities to lightning-caused pulses and the widespread use of lightning
protection technology, the E2 component is generally considered to be the least harmful
and the easiest to protect against. However, it arrives instantaneously following the
E1 component, which may have damaged any surge protections, rendering them useless
in protecting against the E2 component. What might be the most damaging to the
United States would be the third component, the E3 portion of the EMP. This component is very
different from the other two major components of a nuclear EMP. The E3 component is a very
long wavelength and very slow-arriving pulse, lasting tens of seconds to several minutes, as
the nuclear detonation forces its way through the Earth's magnetic field, followed by the
return of the magnetic field to its natural place. The E3 component has similarities
to a geomagnetic storm caused by a very severe coronal mass ejection (CME) from our Sun
(more on that later). Like a geomagnetic storm, the E3 component produces geomagnetically-induced
currents in long electrical conductors like power lines, which can then damage or destroy
components such as power transformers. Since the E3 waves are much longer than the E1
or E2 waves, they synch up perfectly with the long wires of our electric grid, which act as
conductors for the EMP’s destructive energy. And here is where an EMP weapon can deal
significant, some say catastrophic damage to the US. As the E3 pulse overloads the electrical grid,
it can short out transformers over vast areas, leading to regional blackouts encompassing
multiple states because of transformer core saturation and imbalances between supply and
demand of electricity. These transformers are huge, very expensive, and many are
uniquely designed and built for specific locations and purposes. It could take years
to replace them, and without regional power, even building new ones to replace the
overloaded ones might be impossible. When you combine the effects of the E1
component knocking out computerized systems and transportation, and the E3 component knocking
out significant portions of our electric grid, it’s not hard to imagine how the entire
US economy could be seriously disabled. It’s also easy to see how, even if the real
damages to equipment aren’t that significant, the widespread result of an EMP attack, plus
its potential impacts on other systems like computers and telecommunications, not
to mention food and fuel deliveries, has the potential to make the process of getting
things back online seem nearly impossible. What Would Happen to People and Structures
on the Ground During an EMP Attack? As far as we can tell from the existing data, a
high-altitude EMP explosion would cause absolutely no physical damage to anything or anyone on the
ground. When a nuclear weapon is detonated at 100 miles or higher, its effects are too far away
to affect the ground with its blast radius. It doesn’t interact with the ground, so it doesn’t
cause nearly as much radioactive fallout as a near-ground burst, which picks up dirt or ocean
water and irradiates it, allowing it to spread across vast regions. Though as we’ve seen from the
Starfish Prime explosion, atmospheric radiation does exist in at least small quantities, and can
harm existing satellites, especially if they’re orbiting low enough to encounter a resulting
and often long-lasting radiation plume. As already discussed, the biggest problem by far
is the damage done to infrastructure like the electronic grid, transportation, communication
(including both cell phones and the Internet), and anything that relies on these systems to
do everyday business. The resultant problems from losing power and the ability
to move vital services like food, water, gas, heating homes and running
hospitals, would be as bad as anything we’ve seen in the US’ history. Imagine
no power to keep food cool in the summer, or no electricity for hospitals to conduct
surgery, or even no electricity for the pumps in our sewage treatment facilities. Modern society
is wholly dependent on electricity; without it, we’d revert to nearly stone-age living, burning
any available wood to boil water and heat homes. We’ve seen how quickly society breaks down
when something as regional as an ice storm cuts power. In February of 2021, Texas
experienced a severe ice storm that cut power to as many as 5 million residents at
one point, with a peak power loss affecting more than 11 million. Power outages, coupled
with unusually cold sub-freezing temperatures, resulted in the deaths of more than 700
people, and damages exceeding $195 billion. People that survived power loss that extended
in some areas for more than two weeks said it seemed like the “end of the world.” In order
to heat their homes, people burned furniture, books, clothing, even children’s toys. The
lack of firewood became even more extreme when the state government urged 7 million
residents in the Dallas, Fort Worth area and the Houston and Tyler metroplexes to
boil water, due to contamination in water lines caused by the lack of water pressure
from frozen and broken water lines and pumps. This was all caused by a relatively limited-effect
storm, though it did strike many populated areas and at a time when temperatures hit record
lows in a state that wasn’t well prepared for either the damage to its power grid,
nor for the vast numbers of people lacking proper heating and food supplies. Scaling up
such effects on a national level could mean, according to some “preppers”—people preparing
for an End Times-like scenario—and according to doomsayers, preparing for a world that
devolves to Mad Max levels of anarchy and brutality. They foresee extreme problems for
urban areas, and expect such problems to begin to occur in as little as ten to twelve hours
after all the power goes out over a vast area. Are Russia and China
Preparing “Super-EMP” Weapons? It must be noted that the original fusion-type
nuclear weapons, the so-called hydrogen bombs, were created in such a way that they actually
(although unknowingly) minimized the amount of EMP damage that they produced. In that respect,
many analysts consider those earlier weapons to be “suppressed-EMP” weapons. The E1 pulse
these weapons generate arises from gamma rays, and from the effect of those gamma rays
hitting the molecules in the upper- to mid-stratosphere in the presence of a strong
geomagnetic field, so anything that prohibited or held back those gamma rays, lessened their
effect on the atmosphere. These early weapons: 1) Used a very thick and dense
layer of chemical explosive around the nuclear material to trigger the reaction.
2) Used a very thick and dense steel casing on the entire exterior of the weapon.
3) Set off a very small fission explosion microseconds before the major
(mostly fusion) thermonuclear explosion. 4) Detonated the device where the
geomagnetic field is relatively weak. Because of this, the EMP pulse that they generated
was many times less powerful than it could have been. The Soviets quickly learned they could
develop a more powerful EMP weapon by removing most or all of the characteristics of the original
hydrogen bombs. Simply using more modern materials to eliminate the dense chemical explosives around
the fusion core, and building the bomb with the thinnest casing possible, even if the casing
has to be so thin that it sacrifices some of the explosive power of the weapon, would potentially
increase the number of gamma rays emitted from the weapon by a factor of ten, resulting in
a huge increase in the EMP pulse created. Another mitigating factor was that the region
where the US conducted the Starfish Prime and other earlier atmospheric tests. Most of them
were done in near-equatorial regions of the mid-Pacific, an area where the geomagnetic field
is considerably weaker than other areas of the globe, or in the South Atlantic Anomaly, where
the geomagnetic field is at its very lowest, where three of the first six high-altitude
nuclear tests of the United States were performed. In fact, the US had already stumbled upon the
recipe for creating a more powerful “super-EMP” weapon, without even knowing it. According to
Chuck Hansen's “The Swords of Armageddon,” the Starfish Prime Python weapon used a nuclear
primary called “Python.” It was surprisingly compact, with a diameter of 17 inches and a
length of 26 inches. The Python primary was dense, weighing in at 218 pounds, but all by itself
produced a nuclear yield of 15 to 20 kilotons. Since the Python device was optimized
to produce x-ray and gamma radiation, it would likely have produced a much greater
EMP (if detonated alone outside of the Starfish Prime warhead casing) than the suppressed
EMP actually produced by the Starfish Prime weapon. Rather than knocking out
only 300 streetlights in Hawaii, the much smaller Python device of 1962 would have
likely knocked out many thousands of streetlights. There have been many claims about the existence of
more modern “super-EMP” nuclear weapons that can generate electric fields of 100,000 to 200,000
volts per meter. The declassified scientific literature only describes the operation of first
or second generation nuclear weapons which are capable of producing a maximum EMP field strength
of about 50,000 volts per meter on the ground, and this only applies on the side of the
surface closest to the equator. Maximum field strengths near the horizon would be
limited to about half of this value, or 25,000 volts per meter. The reason that
the maximum field strength is slightly stronger to the equatorial side of the
detonation point (in other words, south of the detonation in the northern hemisphere)
is that this is where the high-energy Compton electrons start to move through the Earth's
magnetic field at nearly a 90 degree angle. We can’t be certain, but many government officials
and nuclear researchers worry that Russia, China, and possibly other adversaries like Iran
and even North Korea may have designed and built nuclear weapons, like those described
above, that can generate a burst of 200,000 volts per meter below the detonation and
100,000 volts per meter near the horizon. Neither the Russian nor the Chinese governments
have admitted to designing, building or testing any kind of “super-EMP” weapons, though since
it’s been made public that the US has declassified documents about their own such programs, it’s
likely they have at least kept up with the US, and possibly even surpassed its capabilities.
And with the relatively simple construction process and small size of such a device, it’s
not impossible to theorize that countries like Iran and North Korea could also create
such weapons, and even launch them on easily available short-range missiles from platforms
like cargo ships sailing off either US coasts. Should We Worry About EMPs From Other Sources? As worrisome as nuclear weapon-generated EMPs
are, there is a source far more common and much harder to regulate and control that we
really should be worrying about: our own Sun. The Sun has an eleven-year cycle of low sunspot
activity followed by peak sunspot activity. These sunspots are caused by twists and turns of the
Sun’s magnetic field. At the end of each of these cycles, the Sun’s magnetic field actually flips,
where north becomes south and south becomes north. The solar flares connected with sunspots often
reach far enough out into space that they can have an effect on the Earth, if the side
of the Sun with the solar flare is facing towards Earth at the time. During such events,
we might see an increase in the Aurora Borealis, as the electrified particles interact with
Earth’s magnetic field, and travel down through our atmosphere at the two poles. But
there are much more powerful eruptions called coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, that are
not the same as solar flares: while both are created by the Sun’s magnetic field, a solar
flare is miniscule in comparison to a CME. CMEs are closest to the effects of
the E3 component of an EMP blast, but on a much greater scale. While you can think
of a solar flare as the muzzle flash of a cannon, a CME is the cannonball flung out by that
same cannon. Any sufficiently active solar cycle can create a CME, which carries
an EMP component powerful enough to do significant damage to our power grid,
satellites, and even our very atmosphere. While a solar flare is usually confined to the
upper atmosphere of the sun, a CME is an immense cloud of magnetized particles hurled far out into
space. Traveling over 1.6 million km per hour (around a million mph), the ejected solar plasma
can take up to three days to reach our planet, though some extremely powerful CME events reach
us much faster. The differences between solar flares and CMEs are quite different
when seen through solar telescopes: solar flares appear as a bright
but localized river of light, while CMEs appear as massive fans of gas
erupting into space much farther from the Sun. The largest CMEs can contain billions of tons of
solar material, and are launched from the Sun at up to 3,000 km per second, according to the
NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center. This material contains an embedded magnetic field:
it's this natural EMP field that causes the same kind of destruction that the E3 portion
of a nuclear weapon-generated EMP would cause. But how dangerous are the EMPs generated by
coronal mass ejections? The most well-known CME is one that occurred over two days, September
1–2, 1859, and created the largest geomagnetic storm on record. We didn’t have a sophisticated
energy grid at the time, but the US did have a substantial telegraph system with wires strung
from coast to coast. Since the third component of an EMP is made up of longer wavelengths,
the lengthy telegraph wires were the perfect conductor for such energy. Reports of telegraph
operators getting their hands burned were common, and some telegraph offices were set ablaze
from the sparks emanating from their sets. The Northern Lights, also known as the Aurora
Borealis, were witnessed as far south as Cuba and Honolulu, whilst the Southern Lights, the Aurora
Australis, were seen as far north as Santiago, Chile, according to National Geographic. Telegraph
operators discovered that the auroral current was strong enough that they could transmit messages
without being connected to their batteries. And while most CMEs take up to
three days to travel to Earth, the Carrington CME traversed over 150
million km (90 million miles) between the sun and Earth in less than 18 hours, and
unleashed its force across the entire planet. According to a NASA spaceflight, researchers
from the British insurance company Lloyd's of London and the Atmospheric and Environmental
Research agency in the U.S. have estimated that if a Carrington-class event struck today’s
heavily electrified world, it would cause between $1 trillion and $2.6 trillion in damages,
just to the U.S. alone. Multiply that number by three or four times, if it lasted long enough
to catch Europe, the Middle East and China. There was a recent CME that happened on
March 12th, 2023, though on this occasion, the Sun was facing away from the Earth, and
the CME roared off harmlessly into space. If it had been heading our way, the Earth
could have faced widespread blackouts, burned out satellites, and a complete failure
of the Internet for weeks or even months on end. As CMEs roar through space,
they create a shockwave that can accelerate solar particles along
the CME’s path to incredible speeds, similar to the way surfers ride along an incoming
ocean wave. Known as solar energetic particles, or SEPs, these speedy particles can make the
93-million-mile journey from the Sun to Earth in around half an hour. Though SEPs are commonly
detected following Earth-facing solar events, they are less common for eruptions on the far
side of the Sun. Nevertheless, satellites orbiting Earth detected SEPs from this March 2023 eruption
beginning early in the morning of March 12, meaning this CME was powerful enough to set off a
massive cascade of solar particle collisions that reached the opposite side of the Sun where the
Earth was. NASA’s astronomers are still analyzing the data from this event to discover how such
an impressive and far-reaching effect occurred, and whether we might see such effects in the
next two years of increasing solar activity, leading up to the next solar maximum in 2025.
We’ve had other near misses from CMEs through the years, as well as being affected by weaker CMEs.
One “weaker” CME struck the area near Quebec, Canada, on March 13th, 1989, which erupted from
the Sun four days earlier on March 9th. This CME caused widespread power outages as well as
short-wave radio interference. There was another on July 23rd, 2012, a massive and potentially
historically damaging solar superstorm, but this one luckily missed the Earth.
Many astronomers believe the 2012 CME would have been a Carrington-class event,
if the Sun had been facing us at the time. Another massive CME erupted on October 14th,
2014. It was strong enough to be detected on Mars on October 17th, where it was observed
by the Mars Express, MAVEN, Mars Odyssey, and Mars Science Laboratory missions. By
October 22nd, at 3.1 AU distance, it reached the Rosetta spacecraft that was approaching comet
67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, perfectly aligned with the Sun and Mars. And by November 12th, it
was observed by the Cassini spacecraft as it approached Saturn, a surprising 9.9 AU away from
the Sun. Three months after its initial eruption, it even reached the New Horizons spacecraft,
which was approaching Pluto at 31.6 AU. CMEs become more frequent during the sunspot’s
11-year solar maximum. At solar minimum, the Sun might kick out about one CME a week, but
as the Sun nears its solar maximum, there might be as many as two or three CMEs being launched per
day. The chances of the Earth eventually being in the crosshairs of a future globe-affecting
CME is undeniably one hundred percent certain. The one good thing about CMEs, if there is one,
is the narrow window of predictability we have. Using our vast fleet of solar observing
satellites and Earth-based telescopes, astronomers can detect an incoming CME and
warn various systems in its path. Electric companies can redirect power, airlines
can reroute flights, and anyone using satellites for GPS location or communication can
be prepared for any anticipated loss of contact. None of the countries of the West are
truly prepared for any sort of EMP attack, whether launched by an adversary like China or
Russia, or even a weaker coronal mass ejection from our own Sun. To be fully prepared, each
country would have to be willing to spend tens of billions of dollars to protect their
electrical grid, and to harden the vast number of electronic devices that its citizens
depend on, from cell phones and cars to internet cables buried beside our roads and
the GPS satellites overhead in our skies. As bad as a nuclear weapon-initiated EMP attack
might be, a bullseye coronal mass ejection would be far worse, as its effects could extend across
an entire hemisphere. And where a weapon-induced EMP attack can be an unlikely possibility— as
we’ve only ever seen two nuclear weapons used in anger in the 78 years since the first A-bomb
was tested—we know for certain that a solar EMP attack through a massive coronal mass ejection
is an inevitability. We’ve seen how powerful they can be, and we risk our very civilization’s
future by ignoring their damaging effects. Maybe instead of Earth-bound countries bullying
each other for our own petty territorial gains, we might choose to work together
to protect the planet as a whole. Unfortunately that seems like a very
unlikely scenario in our current world. Now check out “How Putin Actually Thought the
War in Ukraine Would End” or watch “World War 3 - Most Likely Things That Will Cause It”
for a look at some worst-case scenarios!
