Fr. Z's Blog

FINALLY!

Long-time readers here will recall that I’ve written on occasion about the devastation that a large Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) would cause.  A large enough EMP could take out much or all of the electrical grid that our lives have come to depend on as babies for their mothers.

EMPs can be natural occurrences (as produced by your planet’s yellow star) or manmade (as produced by the detonation of nuclear weapons).   On the natural side, we are overdue for a repeat of the infamous Carrington Event of 1859.  **shudder**

I read now at In Homeland Security that Pres. Trump issued an Executive Order concerning EMPs.

[…]

The Executive Order on Coordinating National Resilience to Electromagnetic Threats mandates that the White House take charge of national EMP preparedness. This order circumnavigates the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Energy (DOE).

Putting the White House in charge of EMP preparedness is a bold, but vital, component of the president’s executive order. Traditionally, cabinet departments – including DOE and DHS – have a long history of playing down the seriousness of the EMP threat.

The new executive order states that the president’s National Security Advisor, coordinating with the National Security Council and the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, “shall coordinate the development and implementation of executive branch actions to assess, prioritize, and manage the risks of EMPs.”

President Trump’s executive order also directs DHS to liaise with DOE and other agencies, along with the private sector, to “develop a plan to mitigate the effects of EMPs on the vulnerable priority-critical infrastructures.”

Rare Bipartisan Progress on EMP Preparedness

Getting an EMP preparedness executive order is one of those extraordinarily rare bipartisan successes on Capitol Hill. Republican and Democratic factions in Congress have emphasized for years how important EMP preparedness is, but past administrations were mostly indifferent.

Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and former Senator Jim Webb (D-Va.) have all led calls for EMP preparedness legislation. U.S. Representatives Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and Doug Lamborn (D-Colo.) also played a big part, as did many other current and former lawmakers at the state and federal level.

“It is way past time to stop admiring this problem,” Sen. Johnson told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Operations Committee on Feb. 26, “and actually begin to do something concrete to protect our vulnerable electrical grid, control systems, and the ever- increasing array of electronic devices our society has become dependent upon.”

[…]

This is a really important development as our world gets more dangerous by the day and as the clock ticks.  It is just a matter of time before your planet gets nailed by a serious CME.  Then it’s lights out and about 90% of everyone will die.

Try to contemplate what would happen were you to lose all electricity, and even most things that run on batteries would simply not work.  What would happen to your life? What would your world look like after a week of zero electricity?  A month?

If you haven’t read much about the impact that a large EMP might have, try…

One Second After by William R. Forstchen US HERE – UK HERE
This is a standard in the genre.  The author, who’s got game, has written two sequels.

He also has a newish one out.  Far more dire, however.

• 48 Hours: A Novel

US HERE – UK HERE

Check it out.

Lights Out by David Crawford.  US HERE – UK HERE

And not exactly an EMP scenario, but in the same line:

Patriots by James Wesley Rawles. (It’s sequel HERE) UK HERE

There are quite a few now that explore the impact of an EMP.  One series, the Perseid Collapse, by Steven Konkoly, starts with a pandemic and then moves to an EMP scenario.

You get the drift.