Author Topic: Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse  (Read 2054 times)

TechMan

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http://www.empcommission.org/

Anybody ever hear of the above commission?
There is an executive report and a Critical National Infrastructures Report at the link.


The EMP Commission was established pursuant to title XIV of the Floyd D. Spence National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (as enacted into law by Public Law 106-398; 114 Stat. 1654A-345). Duties of the EMP Commission include assessing:

    the nature and magnitude of potential high-altitude EMP threats to the United States from all potentially hostile states or non-state actors that have or could acquire nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles enabling them to perform a high-altitude EMP attack against the United States within the next 15 years;
    the vulnerability of United States military and especially civilian systems to an EMP attack, giving special attention to vulnerability of the civilian infrastructure as a matter of emergency preparedness;
    the capability of the United States to repair and recover from damage inflicted on United States military and civilian systems by an EMP attack; and
    the feasibility and cost of hardening select military and civilian systems against EMP attack.

The Commission is charged with identifying any steps it believes should be taken by the United States to better protect its military and civilian systems from EMP attack.
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zxcvbob

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Why do they need a web site?

Also it looks like they filed their executive report in 2004 and full report in 2008.  So doesn't that mean their work is done?
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Hawkmoon

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Here's an idea -- fire the computers and stop controlling our national electric grid with computers so they can't be sabotaged. I mean, really ... I'm a senior citizen. I was born during WW2. We actually had electric lights back then, and I'm sure my mother told me that they had electricity when she was a child. So if they could do it in 1920 without computers, why do we need computers today?
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just Warren

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Vacuum tubes for the win!

Also vacuum tubes just look cool. And coolness should be a factor in all Nat-Sec issues.
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kgbsquirrel

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Here's an idea -- fire the computers and stop controlling our national electric grid with computers so they can't be sabotaged. I mean, really ... I'm a senior citizen. I was born during WW2. We actually had electric lights back then, and I'm sure my mother told me that they had electricity when she was a child. So if they could do it in 1920 without computers, why do we need computers today?

Takes substantially fewer highly skilled workers.

RoadKingLarry

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Vacuum tubes for the win!

Also vacuum tubes just look cool. And coolness should be a factor in all Nat-Sec issues.

They might look cool but they generate a lot of heat. Of course tube systems are pretty easy to work on. rack out the drawer, set the interlock, see which tube don't light up, replace that one and you are usually done.

Actually computerizing the control systems would be OK but harden the controllers against EMP and DON"T hook it all together on the freaking internet.
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birdman

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Here's an idea -- fire the computers and stop controlling our national electric grid with computers so they can't be sabotaged. I mean, really ... I'm a senior citizen. I was born during WW2. We actually had electric lights back then, and I'm sure my mother told me that they had electricity when she was a child. So if they could do it in 1920 without computers, why do we need computers today?

Not really the problem.
Some friends of mine did a lot of the technical work for that commission, it's a really hard problem.

For instance, tubes or not, a 1kV/m field on a transmission line even a few miles long will kill anything attached to it...tubes, chips, even transformers.  Look at the starfish get effects on Hawaii...I can pretty much guarantee that wasn't computers being fried and causing the problem.