January 18^th 2017 Blog

My Congressman sent me his usually email with issues to consider.  This one was about “cyber attacks”, for which I sent the following reply:

Congressman Hines, technology is a two-edged sword.  On the one side it is faithful servant, but there is also a “dark side”, which is something we have to live with… or do we?  I am going to take you back for a moment to 1973, when a USSR jet pilot was seeking asylum and landed in Japan.  Without a doubt our military was elated to be able to crawl all over it and fetch the technology within that craft.  They were scratching their heads as to why they opted to use the “lower form” of technology with the use of vacuum tubes.  On the surface that might seem laughable, but come to find out vacuum tubes are immune to EMP; Electro-magnetic pulse; electronics are not immune!

Our enemies are quite well aware of our dependency on our electronic devices and have EMP weapons specifically for the purpose of rendering all electrical systems useless and from what I understand; it would take a minimum of 2 years to recover from such a strike.  Everything in this nation is connected.  Even though such an attack would not kill anyone, the residual effects will put the entire nation at a standstill.  There is not one grocery store that could withstand no deliveries after a three day period… normally.  The shelves would be empty after just the first day of such an attack.  You could not pump gas or use an ATM machine.  

The electrical grid would be down, because of the damage done to the substation transformers and every one of them would have to be replaced.  And they would have to be built from scratch, because any in storage would also be destroyed.  In addition, all the electronic components would have to be purchased from someplace that was not affected from the EMP blast, or also manufactured from scratch.

So as one can plainly see, cyber attacks are Mickey Mouse compared to an EMP attack.  We can deal with the occasional and annoying disruption of a cyber attack and produce more effective counter-measures. 

You see my friends there is more to the issue of any attack against us.  Why waste time with a cyber attack, when about 3 or 4 EMP bomb blasts can put the United States back into the 19^th century.  One might suppose an enemy might want to find out more about us, in order to enrich themselves before an EMP attack.  And guess what folks, there is a distinct possibility that we would not be able to retaliate, because every electrical system and electronic devices would become useless, unless protected from EMP.  Okay, we might be able to respond, but what would we gain?  We would be cold, hungry and drop like flies.  FEMA might be able to help, but for how long?