LIKELIHOOD AND CONSEQUENCES OF AN EMP ATTACK
We all know that EMP is an electro-magmatic pulse meaning a brief discharge of high energy such as can be caused by an explosion on the sun or a nuke going off in the atmosphere a mile or more above the surface. The higher the altitude the further is the the reach of the energy wave.
What an EMP can do, as has been demonstrated, is over-stress sensitive electronic components just as a lightening strike hitting a transformer can cause it to explode. So, for example, if a nuke went off in the high altitude between Florida and NY, all the electrical and electronic computerized-dependant systems and components on the east coast could be burned up- toast!
What wouldn't work after a powerful EMP?
So, what then? It's estimated that it could take as much as 18 months (if ever) to restore electrical service to 60 million homes, towns, cities and businesses and longer to get the rest of the sensitive equipment operating.
99% of all vehicles will fail to run as all the computerized components and electronic ignitions are turned into smoking crispy critters. America will go back to walking; horses and bicycles overnight. That should immensely please the whacko green dealers...
With no TV, radio, phones, or internet, all communication will instantly shut down. No one will know what's happening anywhere. Americans will be cut off from everything and everyone. To find out what your kids are up to ten miles away you (or they) will have to walk. After a few days, there will be nothing left in any food store (exactly as we all have seen with the hurricanes etc.) Everyone will be walking a few miles to and fro, pushing what they could scavenge in store's carts. You can walk on the road now because there won't be any cars or trucks. Suburban America never built sidewalks.
Of course, since all the heavy tractor trailers that used to bring tons of food to every town and city will also no longer run the stores will stay empty. Maybe some of the vehicles that were too far from the blast radius will still operate but, assuming that the EMP is a military attack, you can bet that several will be exploded all across the country. That's how real wars are planned.
Such a scenario of course, begs the question; now what? Do we respond, do we attack knowing that to do so means mutual assured destruction? What's the point- just revenge? With 150 million Americans already dead and dying, the country and its remaining population can't survive anyway so? Escalation, meaning we send 2000 ICBMS and 500 missiles from the subs into China will for sure kill a bunch of chinks but then they will loose a thousand already targeted weapons on us. What do we achieve, we're already dead and we've already lost. America after the EMP's can't rebuild and over a relatively short time everyone left will die anyway.
Once the food and electricity, along with all communications and travel, shut down all the people will begin to starve, lack of potable water and the failure of electricity will result in millions upon millions of deaths. It's entirely likely that within 18 months, most all Americans will have perished. You can imagine that such an attack would likely be planned for the coldest months to insure all those in the northern states will freeze as well as starve.
Once America loses its ultra-fragile computer dependent infrastructure there's no going back to a more primitive survival mode- no one left alive knows how and there aren't enough copies of the Foxfire series to go around! (even if anyone knows what those books are which is doubtful) China knows this and half of China's population can survive very well as they have for centuries with an abacus and a rice patty. Neither of which are harmed in any way by an EMP!
No help will be coming. Remember, FEMA and the military vehicles will also not work. Police cars and ambulances will never run again. All these vehicles, even modern trains, are stuffed and totally dependent on sensitive electronics that will be smoked during an EMP. It would take years, if ever, to find the failed components let alone obtain replacements and change them out. All those who even know how to do this will be dead long before. Won't our good friends in Europe and Mexico send aid? Are you serious?
So, what will still work? Cars from the 70's will run just fine. What won't work fine are the electronic gas pumps- fortunately, some can be operated manually. As said, a horse will get people around just fine as will a bicycle and good old shoe leather. Some people, those living closer to nature on family farms in less populated areas may survive better the rest. Those who get their water from a well should be OK if they have a manual pump and at least and until the hordes of crazed starving urban raiders and looters attack!
People who own boats may be able to catch some fish but, for those off-shore, fresh water will be a problem. Those living near fresh water lakes with a sizable fish population may get by for a time.
So, what should and can people do to protect themselves? Well, obviously, get the hell out of the cities. Find a place in the country far from population centers with a lake. Equip it with primitive tools, an old diesel tractor, a good generator with a large store of fuel and spare parts. Diesel fuel lasts ten times longer than gasoline. Learn to grow basic food like corn and potatoes, tomatoes and greens. Keep some chickens and maybe a couple of cows. Stock a year's supply of freeze dried food to allow time for getting the farm into production. Take a lot of books!
Get a couple of guard dogs and a bunch of guns and ammo. Try to get a few friends to join and build a kind of mini-militia. Set a series of traps to limit, if not stop, incursions by undesirables bent on looting and worse. Remember, there's two sides to surviving, one is food and water and the other is keeping it! If America is, in fact, attacked as described, God only knows what the outcome will be. Reasonable people can however make reasonable assumptions and take reasonable actions to reasonably protect themselves. Those who would try to survive as farmers must also, at the same time, learn to be good soldiers.
If possible, include a military logistics supply officer in your group and try to collect some heavy ordinance. Like what? A few machines guns and cases of ammo, claymores and land mines for starters. Maybe some mil grade comm equipment and build a serious antenna. Include solar and wind gensets to augment the diesel generator. Build a safe defensible protected command bunker, like a tornado shelter but, in this case, with military as well as weather application.
To survive in such a place one would want to set surveillance cameras at all approaches and make certain the security desk is manned at all times. Some cameras have motion detectors that can trip an alarm in the command center. The idea is to never be surprised by looters, scavengers and worse as there will be a lot of them. In the early days, before they all die off, fly surveillance drones and keep an eye out- post lookouts with radios. Even a 5 minute heads-up by well-armed defenders can and often will turn the tables on attackers. Of course, properly prepared, claymores and mines will wipe them out miles before they get in rifle range.
However, if the EMP is followed by a full all out nuclear war with say China, all bets are off as it's likely only China will end up with enough people left to win. Of our population of 320 million, the initial EMP attacks will wipe out most or at least way more than half in the first six months. If we hit back with heavy weapons like Hyg bombs etc., we can expect the same in return probably and possibly from North Korea and Russia as well. In such a scenario, America will be down to probably 20 million in a matter of days. Our military will no longer exist and survivors will be widely separated and scattered across areas far from population centers. There will be no communication or coordination. The war will be over, they win we lose! Period!
I know we have war gamed this to hell and gone and, in every scenario, we lose. America has only one chance and one way to stop what's coming, and I think we all know it's coming. That chance is to design and build a weapon or weapons capable of killing all one billion four hundred million Chinese dead as shit and one they can't possibly stop. The chinkeroos know this too and, believe me, if we even start on such a project they will likely know it immediately. If we had such a weapon we would be safe enough for the foreseeable future- The commie bastards, thank God, are not suicidal.
Half the American congressmen and many in the Pentagon are on China's payroll. Once they find out we're working on a super weapon they will loose the EMP attack as they are planning and go from there. So, can we do it? I don't know- what do you think? In an all out nuclear exchange, or even with just the initial EMP, the Chinese win because, either way, they're coming! After almost all Americans are dead (which will be within a year or so following just the EMP attack or almost immediately after the full nuke plan) China will begin shipping millions of their people to take over the area that used to known as America.
In either case, organized groups of PLA military will find and eliminate isolated pockets of resistance. Nothing will stop them. In such a case, you and your group on the protected farm, if not killed by the nukes, are still dead meat. It may be a good fight for a few minutes but Chinese fighter aircraft firing H.E. into the command bunker will make short work of it all. China has figured out that they can't lose by either just the EMP attack using probably unstoppable ultra high-speed hypersonic ICBM missiles or, should we go nuke on them in retaliation, an all out kinetic atomic war which they know they have enough people to survive.
After America is down to lonely pockets of starving survivors, drones will begin patrolling the isolated areas in Alaska (and Canada which will also be overtaken at the same time in the same way) and across the less populated areas south of the Canadian border searching out and killing off stragglers and off-gridders hiding out living subsistence lives. In a few years, there will be none of the original round-eyes left alive anywhere in North America from the Mexican border north to the North Pole. And that's how she ends folks- either with or without a shot being fired- not with a bang but most likely a whimper!
Robert
PS: Shsssss....maybe we had better get cracking on that there hypersonic whatchamacallit