Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach, Great Britain’s most senior military officer, warns of a new threat to undersea communications and internet cables. He said NATO is protecting the cables “in response to the threat posed by the modernization of the Russian navy, both nuclear and conventional submarines and ships.” And that’s an understatement! Read Full Story
Yesterday’s eclipse captured major attention across America as those in its direct pathway saw nighttime in the middle of a hot summer’s day. It was the first time in nearly a century for an eclipse over the entire nation. There is an even rarer and most unpleasant solar event that last occurred in 1859, almost happened again in 2012, and will certainly happen again in the future—possibly in the near future. We are unprepared and courting a disaster when it does occur. Read Full Story
The recent nearly concurrent East and West Coast shutdown of widely dispersed elements of the national grid should give us pause — and encourage a more serious consideration of the existential threat posed by an orchestrated hostile attack on our national electric grid. Read Full Story
“CIPA implements one of the most important recommendations of the EMP Commission to prevent societal mass destruction. It directs the Department of Homeland Security to establish new national planning scenarios focused on protecting and recovering the nation from an EMP catastrophe. All federal, state, and local emergency planning, training, and resource allocation are based on the DHS national planning scenarios.” ~ Ambassador R. James Woolsey and Dr. Peter Vincent Pry Read Full Story
Skepticism of the merits of NASA’s Solar Probe Plus project plans to launch a satellite to orbit the Sun near its corona? In that intense extremely hot environment, it will seek to make measurements that may enable astrophysicists to provide early warning of a major Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) that could envelop the Earth, produce a major Geomagnetic Disturbance (GMD) causing a national, even international, loss of electricity lasting “many months,” which could lead to many deaths in technologically advanced nations. The satellite, being developed by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), is intended to be launched in 2018. Good news? Maybe. Read Full Story
“I think the initial instinct of industry back when this first started a few years ago was, ‘Let us do many years of research and then order us to do something . . . And we said, ‘No, no, no. You’re going to get started sooner than that,’ and then we had to figure out what was the prudent thing to require — a no-regrets strategy.” ~ FERC Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur . . . No regrets for whom? Read Full Story
Major solar storms will one day inject a massive cloud of electric particles into the earth’s geomagnetic field, producing a major electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that causes catastrophic permanent damage to the electric power grid, unless it is hardened. Our “just-in-time” economy would halt indefinitely, and without necessities dependent on electricity, several hundred million Americans would die within a year. Time to pay attention to such “stormy weather,” don’t you think? Read Full Story
Winston Churchill overcame many difficulties—even failures—to speak truth to power in the 1930s, warning about the growing existential threat to Great Britain—indeed all of Western Civilization; and when that truth became sufficiently apparent, to lead the British from apathy to victory in a great world war. His “V for Victory” pose, illustrated above, rallied the people long before victory was sure. A review of some of that history could help us assess our efforts to awaken the powers that be to today’s electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threat and how to counter it—hopefully in time. Read Full Story
An existential electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threat is posed by a natural event (a massive solar emission that is infrequent but certain to occur—the only question is when) or a manmade event produced by a high altitude nuclear explosion that could be executed by a number of nation states or even terrorists. Recent events suggest a growing appreciation of the seriousness of these threats and possibly the initiation of helpful countermeasures. But will they be in time? Read Full Story
Congratulations to Maine State Representative Andrea Boland (D-Sanford) and all who supported her initiative: Act LD-131, now the law in Maine. Hopefully, representatives in other states will follow with similar initiatives—and Washington’s “powers that be” will implement recommendations of the 2004 and 2008 reports from the congressionally mandated EMP Commission with initiatives to end America’s vulnerability to the existential electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threat! Read Full Story
We will be adding key policy briefs as we progress.