In 1987, Ronald Reagan mused that if the world were about to be devastated by an alien force — perhaps a collision with a large asteroid — peoples of all nations, ideological persuasions and political parties would come together to save the planet and our civilization. We may be about to test that proposition.
At the moment, no asteroid is known to be hurtling our way. A naturally occurring phenomenon poses a threat, though. The technical term for this threat is geomagnetically induced currents generated by the coronal mass ejections that laymen call solar eruptions or flaring.
Think of it as “space weather.” There is a strong possibility that some of the heaviest such weather in hundreds of years is headed our way.
These currents engender intense bursts of electromagnetic energy. No fewer than five studies mandated by the executive or legislative branches have confirmed that such electromagnetic pulses are lethal to the electronic devices, computers and transformers that power everything in our 21st century society. Since these things are generally unprotected against these naturally occurring or man-induced pulses, they would almost certainly be damaged or destroyed. The U.S. electrical grid could, as a result, be down for many months, and probably years.
We know that this EMP-precipitated effect could also be achieved by the detonation of a nuclear weapon high over the United States. Actual or potential enemies of this country — notably Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — understand our acute vulnerability in this area, and have taken steps to exploit it.
“Catastrophic” is a term often used to describe the repercussions for our country of the cascading shutdown, first of the key elements of the grid, then inexorably, all of the electricity-dependent infrastructures that make possible life as we know it in this country. That would include those that enable access to and distribution of food, water, fuel and heat; telecommunications; finance; transportation; sewage treatment and cooling of nuclear-power plants.
Reagan’s science adviser, William Graham, who headed a blue-ribbon congressional commission on the EMP threat, has calculated that within a year of the U.S. electrical grid being devastated by such a phenomenon, 9 out of 10 Americans would be dead.
Did that get your attention? Or, as Dirty Harry would say, do you feel lucky?
Unfortunately, we cannot afford to bet our nation, and perhaps much of the developed world, on luck with respect to a electromagnetic pulse — any more than we could if we knew an asteroid were headed our way. Persisting in our current state of vulnerability is an invitation to disaster, if not at the hands of some foe, then as a result of the cycle of intense solar storms in which we now find ourselves.
The good news is that there are practical and affordable steps we can take to mitigate these threats, if only we have the will and the wits to adopt them before we are hit by heavy space weather or its man-caused counterpart.
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