Ken’s Take on the EMP Threat
Dear Walk Show Family,
In the early 1960s, nuclear weapons testers in both the United States and the Soviet Union noticed that, when nuclear warheads were exploded high above the Earth, an intense electromatic pulse was emitted that did damage to electrical systems on the ground. The U. S. first discovered this phenomenon when it set off a blast 250 miles above Johnston Island in the South Pacific. Unexpectedly it destroyed a commercial telecommunications system in the Hawaiian Islands 900 miles away!
The Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP)
Our friend, Hal Lindsey, in his article, “EMP Attack: Overlooked Catastrophe,” stated
A nuclear weapon detonated 180 miles above the United States would generate an EMP pulse that experts say would instantly plunge half the country into the technological 1800s. All our electrical grids would be destroyed. . . . There would be no communications by satellite, TV, radios, telephones; no transportation as we know it, no water, no fuel, no electricity, no food, no stoves, no heat, no air-conditioning, no functioning hospitals, no elevators, no law and order, no computers, no banks, very little work force. In addition, there would be very few military weapons systems that would work.
As Katherine McIntire Peters reports in her article, “Commission Finds U. S. Vulnerable to Electromagnetic Pulse Attack“:
Now, a new report by the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack warns that a nuclear attack aimed at crippling the nation’s technological backbone could be greater today than it was during the Cold War. Such an attack also would be easier to orchestrate, and potentially more devastating, than a direct hit to a major metropolitan area. . . . “The increasingly pervasive use of electronics of all forms represents the greatest source of vulnerability to attack by EMP. Electronics are used to control, communicate, compute, store, manage and implement nearly every aspect of U.S. civilian systems,” the commission reported.
“Should significant parts of the electric power infrastructure be lost for any substantial period of time, the commission believes that the consequences are likely to be catastrophic, and many people may ultimately die for lack of the basic elements necessary to sustain life in dense urban and suburban communities,” the report noted. [Commission chairman William R.] Graham noted that an adversary wouldn’t have to have long-range ballistic missile capability to deliver an EMP attack. Such an attack could be launched from a freighter off the coast of the United States, using a short- or medium-range missile loaded with a nuclear warhead.
“Iran, the world’s leading sponsor of international terrorism, has practiced launching a mobile ballistic missile from a vessel in the Caspian Sea,” Graham said.
Iran’s Potential EMP Attack on Israel and America
Iran has signaled its consideration of an EMP attack via their internal communiqués, their nuclear program, their ballistic missile R&D, and their Satellite capability. It is obvious to see that it would be their cheapest, most effective means to cripple their adversaries. . . and they have already stated who their adversaries are and how EMP might help them in neutralizing Israel, the U. S. and Europe.
By the same token, as our friend, Hal Lindsey, has suggested elsewhere, a pre-emptive EMP attack against Iran would most certainly turn the tables and eliminate the problem for a long time. Some say that this would not be a pre-emptive attack, but rather, a retaliatory attack, because Iran has already heavily engaged itself in not only the EMP technology development, but in the supply of arms to Hamas and Hezbollah in their mutual, active aggression against our ally, Israel.
Yet, since our new national leadership seems to be already signaling a Chamberlainesque politics of appeasement on almost all fronts, it is unlikely that the U. S. will do anything about the EMP until it is too late.
After all, our latest Democrat administration gave us Bill Clinton, who, against the counsel of his own intelligence apparatus, denied that there was any ballistic missile threat at all until seven and a half years into his administration, when he suddenly woke up with a start after we had squandered almost a decade of strategic missile-defense R&D progress. I have intimate, first-hand evidence of this from my experience with laser missile defenses, which the Clinton Administration actively thwarted throughout the 1990’s, in a pattern not dissimilar to that which Obama is advocating in his declared intentions of incrementally dismantling our military defenses — especially our R&D.
Replacing Character with Characters in Office
In the 1992 Presidential elections, the pollsters tell us that the American public made a conscious decision to discard matters of character in electing a President. “So what if the guy is a bum morally or a narcissist? All that matters is that he does a good job as President,” went the logic. It only followed that a person who had no ability or interest in resisting evil on a personal basis would have no ability or interest in resisting it on a national or international basis, either!
Now, the pollsters say that in our most recent Presidential election the voters discarded almost entirely not just the long-forgotten matter of character, but of life and death themselves! Consequently, we suffer the dismantling of our military defenses by two presidents who didn’t have fathers to teach them that evil and death-giving mentalities are to be resisted instead of embraced.
Israel’s Sampson Complex
Israel, however, might well consider an EMP attack on its adversaries. As Youth Communications Officer for the Armed Forces in Hollywood, I once spent an entire day privately one-on-one with the head of Israeli media (Army radio). He confided, “Israel has been accused of having a Masada [i.e,. suicidal] complex, but that is no longer the case. Now we are operating by a Samson complex. In other words [like Samson who pulled down the support pillars of a building holding 3,000 of his adversaries], if we’re sufficiently threatened, we’re willing to bring the whole world down with us!” In my way of thinking, that was a not-so-veiled allusion to nuclear weapons. And, this former tank-battalion commander who wept with his troops as they freed the Wailing Wall for the first time in 2,000 years in the 1967 Six-Day War, was to be taken seriously.
So, a pre-emptive Israeli EMP attack on Iran and possibly a regular nuclear attack on Syria would in no way surprise me. After all, the Bible prediction about Damascus has never yet been fulfilled: “Damascus will no longer be a city. It will become a pile of rubble. …. A palace of strangers is a city no more, It will never be rebuilt” (Isaiah 17).
When You Gonna Wake Up and Strengthen the Things that Remain? – Dylan
Absent Israel’s initiative, I gather from what I’m hearing that there are some things individuals can do to start shielding our homes, cars, computers, etc., and it is hoped that articles like this will at least prompt a few to start prayerfully developing prudent strategies that will render the church whole and helpful to our neighbors should such unthinkable things happen. Or, we could just go back to sleep.
