We've...assumed that all commercial equipment would fail under an EMP pulse.
Not only would everything be devastated in the immediate vicinity of the blast but an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) could wipe out almost anything that uses electricity (including cars and battery-powered phones, radios, and flashlights) throughout a much wider area.
Specifically, they have or are developing the ability to engage in devastating electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks, biological warfare and other asymmetric terrorist strikes.
An electromagnetic pulse or EMP attack is an indirect nuclear attack.
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Their job has been to examine in detail a phenomenon known as electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) that could be used by our enemies like Iran to effect such devastation.
It is reckless at a time when countries like North Korea and Iran are acquiring missiles capable of delivering devastating electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) or other nuclear attacks against this country.
Another which has been getting increasing attention could be delivered via the kind of nuclear-armed ballistic missile that Iran and North Korea have been developing: a strategic electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) attack.
Unfortunately, the lack of U.S. nuclear testing since 1992 has also contributed to uncertainty about the adequacy of steps to protect conventional military gear from the effects of high-energy, electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks.
This could allow Tehran to execute the sort of missile-delivered strike that has been judged by a congressionally mandated, blue-ribbon commission to be capable of causing "catastrophic" damage to the United States - an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack.
Scientists are gathered this week to discuss a relatively underappreciated threat to our well-being, the impact a huge solar flare (also known as a solar mass ejection (SME) or solar electromagnetic pulse (EMP)) directed at Earth could wreak upon our modern technology.
If used to detonate nuclear weapons in space over targeted nations, such missiles could unleash electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) attacks, resulting in widespread destruction of electrical grids and what a congressional commission has described as the "catastrophic" disruption of civilizations reliant upon them.
These scenarios, of course, are likely because they compare favorably to the worst case scenarios in which a nuclear-armed Iran decides to simply detonate its nuclear bombs over Israel, either in the form of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack or in the form of a direct nuclear strike.
The state of America's aging nuclear arsenal also troubled Mr. Gaffney, who warned "Our stockpile is not as safe and reliable as we could make it" and that a resumption of nuclear testing is needed to permit such improvements to be made and to diagnose and correct the Nation's yawning vulnerabilities to electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) attacks.
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Worse yet, evidence continues to accumulate that both North Korea and Iran are interested in a nuclear weapons application that poses a particular and extraordinary danger to the United States: a ballistic missile-delivered warhead that would cause an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) capable of inflicting what a blue-ribbon commission recently called "catastrophic" damage to the electric grid and electronic systems across the country.
In a new op-ed in today's Washington TImes, Center President Frank Gaffney argues that we had better be awakened, though, to one other, particularly ominous prospect: Determined terrorists could inflict lasting, if not actually permanent, damage on the United States' electrical and other computer-based systems by employing small nuclear or non-nuclear devices that generate what is known as electro-magnetic pulse (EMP).
Finally, there is the problem that even some Democrats on Capitol Hill - notably, Senator Joe Lieberman (technically an Independent who caucuses with Democrats) and Rep. Bennie Thompson, the chairmen respectively of the Senate and House Homeland Security Committees - recognize could eventuate at any time: an attack involving relatively short-range, ship-borne ballistic missiles used to launch a strategic electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack against this country.
Dr. Graham formerly served as President Reagan's Science Advisor and has in recent years chaired the congressionally mandated Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (better known as the EMP Commission).
Today, the best that can be said is that the extent and duration of future EMP-induced blackouts would depend on whether the emitter generates a small or large pulse, and whether it is detonated at ground-level or from high altitudes.
Believe it or not, Congress sought to address some of these questions when they established an EMP Commission in 2001, formally known as the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack.
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