The prospect of the nation’s electrical grid being compromised has been a concern for many years, but worries are ramping up as Russia appears to be mastering systems that can overcome the protections that have been put in place to preserve the integrity of the grid.
Recent intelligence shows that Russia now possesses a specialized “super electromagnetic pulse” weapon and warhead that can travel at speeds of Mach 20 and would be able to plunge America into darkness with very little advance warning.
The Executive Director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security, Peter Vincent Pry, has also warned that China has surpassed American developments in electromagnetic pulse warfare, putting us at a serious disadvantage if they choose to attack us in this manner.
Some experts are worried that President Biden’s lifting of President Trump’s ban on Chinese involvement in the U.S. grid will make it easier for them to attack our electric supply.
Pry, who has worked with previous administrations and the Pentagon to prepare for attacks, said that the current political turmoil presents a “golden opportunity” for an EMP strike, adding: “Washington’s impotence and irresolution will invite future, increasingly aggressive cyberattacks.”
The truth is that enemies of our nation, such as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, view the U.S. as an easy target given how much of our economy depends on electricity, the internet and electronic communications. An attack would easily wipe out all of these, putting every American in danger.
Pry outlined these advancements in EMP warfare in a new report on Russia. EMP weapons, he says, are exploded very high up in the atmosphere, allowing them to wipe out electric grids and computers across wide swaths of the country in outages that could last longer than a year.
The nation’s large transformers controlling the grid and high-voltage control cables are said to be particularly vulnerable. Transformers take two years to build and cost roughly $7 million each, and we are already behind schedule in having backups ready. This means that if many of our transformers go out at once, as they would in an attack, there is little we can do to restore power in a reasonable time frame.
China is working on similar weapons
China has been working on an array of weapons including laser beam weapons, counter-space weapons, maneuverable missile warheads, artificial intelligence-directed robots and hypersonic weapons. Their weapons could easily knock out satellites, shutting down GPS networks and the nation’s most critical communications and intelligence systems. The threat is so concerning that the U.S. Naval Academy has revived a course in celestial navigation after previously deeming it outdated and cutting it from their curriculum.
There are also concerns about China’s WU-14, a hypersonic glide vehicle that is capable of delivering a precision-guided missile at hypersonic speeds from 60 miles above Earth. America is said to be unprepared to defend against such a weapon at the moment.
An EMP attack would ruin all of the electronics in the country, impacting power, medical networks, financial networks, transportation, food and water supply, and sanitation; they could even take out the ability of our military to respond. Pry has said that as many as 90 percent of Americans could die in the first year after such an event due to starvation, illness and societal collapse.
For this reason, many people are stocking up on appliances that do not need electricity to function, such as solar ovens, wind-up flashlights and hand-powered water pumps, not to mention barter items in the event that credit and debit cards are rendered useless. If you haven't already started preparing for a potential EMP attack, it's time to take the threat seriously.
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