I have to admit a personal weakness. For some people it's chocolate, for me, it's post-Apocalyptic fiction. It all started back in the early '70s when I was in high school and read
Alas Babylon by Pat Frank. Written in 1959 during the Sputnik crisis (when I was one years old) by Pat Frank, it is a post-World War III survival story about a Florida community struggling in the aftermath of the US-USSR one day war. Along with
On The Beach,
Fail Safe and
Dr. Strangelove,
Alas Babylon is a classic piece of cold war fiction. It was written in a year when many Americans thought America had fallen behind the Soviets in the technological race for supremacy. America hadn't; Ike knew we hadn't. He knew, from U-2 spy flights, that America had an infinitely greater capacity to destroy the Soviet Union, using SAC, and that the Soviets had no ICBMs. Yet he felt that he couldn't divulge that information, and the "missile gap" helped propel John F. Kennedy into office.
So I continue to read post-Apocalyptic fiction. And non-fiction. There's a solid body of stories built around the end of American society due to an EMP event destroying the power grid and everything containing microchips. And it is based on a very real vulnerability of our electricity and electronics dependent society. The question is: How likely is it?
Every day, we make decisions based on the probability of risks, whether we realize it or not. Do I buy this house in this neighborhood? Probably based on the risk of crime, among other things. Do I put my 401k into stocks or treasuries? Based on the risk of the stock market declining, versus the (perceived) safety of the US Government. Do I drive over the speed limit? What's the risk of getting a ticket? Do I buy a hide-out in the country? What's the probability of an EMP event destroying the grid?
As an Information Security Professional, I decide how to protect a system by listing every knowable threat to the system, attempting to determine the probability of that threat, determining the cost of the control to mitigate that threat, comparing the cost to the value of the asset that is being protected, and rank ordering the controls. The process is called a risk assessment. It's standard practice, whether you are in information security, trying to protect a web site from defacement or in site security, trying to protect a nuclear power plant.
So, how about an EMP?
First of all, what would cause an EMP event that could cripple American society? What is EMP? What would cause it? What do we know about it?
EMP, or electromagnetic pulse, is high energy electromagnetic radiation. Radio, TV, microwave, radar, all are forms of electromagnetic radiation. The devices that detect them, radios, TVs, radar receivers, detect radiation of specific frequencies with very low power. In 1958, and again in 1962, both the US and the USSR tested nuclear devices, atomic and thermonuclear, high in the atmosphere and in outer space. Among other things, the US was trying to determine if they could destroy incoming ICBMs with atomic warheads in flight. Instead, both the US and the USSR discovered EMP. When a nuclear weapon is detonated in the Ionosphere, between 10 and 1000 kilometers above the earth, about 0.1% of the energy yield is released in gamma rays with energy of 1-3 million electron Volts (MeV). The gammas collide with air molecules and strip off free electrons (Compton electrons) with energy of MeV. These electrons spiral around the Earths lines of magnetic force and generate electromagnetic radiation, with frequencies of 15 to 250 MHz. This radiation can then be picked up, or couple, with things made of metal, that act like an antenna. Metal things like electric transmission lines, the power line leading into a home, pipes that may be used as a grounding point.
During Operation Starfish Prime, a 1.4 MT warhead was detonated over Johnston Island in the Pacific. The resultant EMP shorted out street lights, power lines, transformers, burglar alarms, and microwave relays in Hawaii, 800 miles away. Also in 1962, during the Soviet K nuclear test, a 300 KT warhead detonated at 290 km altitude fuzed 570 km of overhead telephone wire with 2500 A current, started a fire in a power station, and shut down 1,000 km of buried power cable between Aqmola and Almaty.
The risk of damage of our modern society to EMP is much higher, for several reasons. First, our electronic devices built on semiconductors, which use much smaller amounts of power, but which can handle a much smaller overload. Second, we use many more electronic devices, personally and throughout our society, than were in use in the 1960s.
So, that is the risk. What is the threat? Because without a threat, a risk remains and unexploited potential.
And here is where I have a problem with some of the people warning of the EMP threat. Not that I doubt the risk. Just the probability of the exploit. For example, Michael Maloof, an advisor to the Congressional EMP Commission, in his book
A Nation Forsaken, outlines an attack on the US where a missile is fired off the east coast of the US that lifts a 1 MT warhead to an altitude of 100 miles to detonation just north of Pittsburgh, causing an EMP event that destroys the grid and most electronics throughout the East Coast. This is a scenario that is quite popular in EMP post-Apocalyptic fiction, a missile or missiles from off the East or West Coasts that explodes high over portions of the US, leading to an EMP event that destroys some or all of the US grid and most electronics in the US. As Maloof writes: "All the
Sabalo-type's crew needed to do was position the submarine close enough to the East Coast to get a missile with a basic nuclear warhead up and over a good portion of the U.S."
My problem with this is that a 1 MT warhead is not a basic nuclear warhead. A basic nuclear warhead is a uranium or plutonium bomb, such as North Korea or Pakistan have, with a yield of 20-40 KT. It takes very sophisticated technology to produce a thermonuclear, or hydrogen, bomb. The Soviet K nuclear device was thermonuclear, at 300 KT. The Starfish Prime device, a 1.4 MT warhead, was also a hydrogen bomb, and it required a Thor missile because it was a W49 and not very miniaturized. It is popular to write of terrorists acquiring MT-class thermonuclear warheads. However, only the US, USSR, China, France and the UK are known to have produced hydrogen bombs of the 100 KT and up yield. Israel, perhaps. India and Pakistan claim to have tested tritium-boosted atomic bombs, but it is doubtful that they have produced warheads with yields of greater than 100 KT. North Korea has only tested basic atomic bombs in the 10-20 KT range. The "size" of the EMP is the amount of gammas converted to Compton electrons. The Starfish Prime event, at 1.4 MT had an output of about 0.1% gamma, or about 1.4 KT of prompt gammas, since about 0.1-0.5% of the warhead yield is converted to gamma radiation, depending on bomb design. So a basic atomic bomb, for example, a 40 KT plutonium implosion device, might generate about 0.04 KT of gammas.
Unfortunately, because the US and USSR only had a limited number of atmospheric tests, with specific yields, and the electrical and electronic devices of the era had a certain hardness, compared to today, it is difficult to say what damage the EMP from a basic bomb producing 0.04 KT of gammas would do to our modern society.
What is the probability that North Korea or Pakistan would let loose a basic bomb to terrorists? What is the probability that a terrorist organization could acquire a missile capable of lifting that basic bomb to an altitude of 10-100 km above the US from the East or West coast? Or the probability that a nation state that owned the two would attempt to use them in such a way against the US?
I would say that the probabilities are very low. What is the cost of attempting to mitigate that threat? The Congressional EMP Commission had recommendations. I didn't find specific costs in the Executive Summary. What would be the estimated loss if such an event were to occur, however small the probability? If such an EMP event was produced, it would eliminate the grid across part of the US for years, simply due to the lead time in procuring the large transformers necessary for high-voltage transmission lines, which have lead times of more than a year. Hurricane Katrina caused an estimated $108B in damage. Loss of the grid for the East Coast for several years would be orders of magnitude greater. Simply the loss of the US Stock Exchanges, in New York and New Jersey, would create $ Trillions in losses. Prudence would dictate that the costs of mitigating such an event would be warranted, no matter the low probability of the event, given the potential loss from such an event.
In today's world, the probability of a house fire has become very low. Yet the costs of a house fire are so great, that no prudent homeowner can live without homeowner's insurance. Can we afford not to purchase insurance against an EMP event, no matter how unlikely for it to occur?
