I’m not alarmist by any stretch, but I am concerned that our way of life in the United States teeters on the razor’s edge. Perhaps it’s the knowledge that we have fashioned a society that exists one permanent power outage away from the Stone Age and a hysterical evil is foaming at its jaws to lay hands on the off switch. We have constructed everything about our lives on a brittle and vulnerable electronic limb that is swaying wildly in the storm around us. I look around at the stuff I’ve acquired and realize how insignificant it is. The TVs, computers, iPods, cell phones and vehicles definitely dominate our reality. Gone are the water wells, outhouses, wood stoves, meat smoking houses, farms and family gardens. We scoff at how primitive our grandparents and theirs lived. How eagerly we traded their slower, simpler lifestyle for our high-speed, electrified definition of progress. But yank the rug of this “progress” from beneath our feet and watch how feebly, in only seconds, 300 million slaves to power would proceed into a dark world of chaos. There has been a lot of talk of late about radical Islamic terrorists possibly acquiring a nuclear weapon to use against us. Yet we could be brought to our collective knees by a far more accessible and affordable device that would not spill a drop of blood. I’m talking about an electromagnetic pulse bomb, or EMP, which, through an enormous blast of frequency waves, is capable of erasing every device that relies on electrical power. Set off an EMP on Wall Street and others near the power grids that feed our nation and you and I would awaken in 1900. We’ve created a power-driven society. These Islamic extremists want to destroy us for creating it or reduce us to their level.
Our economy and our lives are slaves to power. We are fully addicted. Imagine 300 million panicked people suddenly out of work and without communication, transportation, access to financial resources and even food and clean water. How long before we’d return to the survival of the fittest and turn on each other ? And believe me, few of us are fit in a nation where nearly one-fifth are obese and diabetic.
This isn’t Mike trying to generate fear in an age where it prevails, but rather to prompt awareness and preparedness toward those who have shown no moral boundaries.
Our legislators recognize the terrible potential of an EMP blast, which also could be caused by a nuclear detonation from high above. Congress created the so-called EMP Commission under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2001 specifically to assess such a threat.
The Heritage Foundation in August 2004 reported that studies have shown that this glaring hole in U. S. defenses is a liability that “America’s adversaries will surely exploit if it is not corrected. As with civilian infrastructure, hardening America’s entire military apparatus against EMP is prohibitively expensive. However, the nation should... retrofit enough of the military’s land, sea and air assets to guarantee any potential adversary that the U. S. will be able to respond... to any kind of attack.” While the costs of such protection are huge, experts say it’s a necessary expense given the risk. That’s fine for our military and retaliation, but what of our homes and jobs and our lives as we’ve chosen to shape them ? A powerful enough electromagnetic pulse bomb “is one of a small number of threats that has the potential to hold our society seriously at risk and might result in defeat of our military forces,” the Commission to Assess the Threat From Electromagnetic Pulse Attack told Congress. Research, as reported by the Heritage Foundation, showed that an EMP detonated at an altitude of 500 kilometers could produce a pulse that would blanket the U. S., potentially damaging or destroying military forces and civilian communications, power, transportation, water, food and other infrastructure essential to modern society. The report continued: “Although recent changes in homeland security policy would decrease the severity... recovery could still take years.” Dr. Lowell Wood of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory told Congress that an EMP attack would “instantly regress a country dependent on 21 st century technology by more than 100 years.” So read and take heed of our extreme vulnerability this morning, my friends, and remember: We’re all standing side by side against evil.
—–––––•–––––—Staff columnist Mike Masterson is the former editor of three Arkansas daily newspapers.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online