I just finished 2 book series, and bother were excellent, especially if you like post-apocalyptic type scenarios.
"One Second After", followed by "One Year After" and "Final Day" by William Forstchen and the survivalist Series "Going Home" by A. American.
Both were post-EMP America novels and both were scary as hell in their descriptions of the breakdown of American society.
For those who know more about EMP threats, are the books and the things you read accurate or way overblown? Could 1 nuke exploded 300 miles above the US launched from a container ship in the gulf really end civilization?
Yeah sure, whatever you say
Again - New Orleans was just one city affected by Katrina and the one most people reference when the entire Gulf Coast was destroyed. Heck, Gulfport lost blocks of homes that today are still bare patches.
People came together. People helped out. Your scenario of murder, rape and mayhem simply didn't happen on some sort of wide scale, no matter how many times you keep trying to say it did.
it's not an either/or situation. people will band together to help each other out. people will also look to take from them.
a single, limited region suffering a catastrophe is one thing. a large scale catastrophic power/transportation/electronic device outage across a large portion of the country is quite another.
there will be mass starvation when the food production and transportation system suddenly gets a massive jolt and slowdown if not downright cessation of corporate farming. People can start small scale farming, but where are all the seeds for planting going to come from? Most urban dwellers don't know much about animal husbandry, or horticulture. What are people going to eat while waiting for the first harvest?
Don't kid yourself, a national wipeout of electronics is going to be a huge disaster bringing out the worst and the best of humanity. Even if the best takes the upper hand, there will still be a lot of death and mayhem and the worst will make a massive showing.
the beauty of this plan is that it works for a variety of catastrophes.
In all seriousness, people should have an emergency kit that would cover a lot of scenarios, but most, including myself, don't. Gov'ts large and small have plans for a variety of situations, but it's cost/manpower prohibitive to run drills on all of them, so they tend to collect dust. it's likely that there'll be some snafu getting gov't/relief services functioning.
You can plan for any given disaster scenario, but it's costly, and if you're going to plan for all of them, prepare to spend most of your money on contingencies that may never happen.
the beauty of this plan is that it works for a variety of catastrophes.
In all seriousness, people should have an emergency kit that would cover a lot of scenarios, but most, including myself, don't. Gov'ts large and small have plans for a variety of situations, but it's cost/manpower prohibitive to run drills on all of them, so they tend to collect dust. it's likely that there'll be some snafu getting gov't/relief services functioning.
You can plan for any given disaster scenario, but it's costly, and if you're going to plan for all of them, prepare to spend most of your money on contingencies that may never happen.
Fkap, that is good advice but I am really talking about preventing the effects of the EMP through science. Is it as simple as insulating important circuitry and electronics or setting up a fallback energy source like localized nuclear decay energy?
But an EMP would be a national disaster, including a wrecked power grid that might not be repaired for a year or more. Nothing is comparable. There is no precedent.
National disaster? Are we talking a 100 megaton bomb or a ship launched less then 100 kiloton bomb.
I'm talking out my ass, but I don't think the kind of scenario you are talking about happens unless there are some major nukes going off in several places.
You can harden electronics and upgrade the power grids to mitigate the damage but at a cost of billions of dollars. Several people have gone before congress to lay out the potential danger from both natural events or from weapons but the cost to fix the infrastructure is massive and not likely to happen
Quote:
and Puerto Rico were local, not national disasters. Because of that, help could come from those areas of the country that were unaffected.
But an EMP would be a national disaster, including a wrecked power grid that might not be repaired for a year or more. Nothing is comparable. There is no precedent.
National disaster? Are we talking a 100 megaton bomb or a ship launched less then 100 kiloton bomb.
I'm talking out my ass, but I don't think the kind of scenario you are talking about happens unless there are some major nukes going off in several places.
no one knows for sure since there has not been many nuclear devices tested in the upper atmosphere so all projections come from models done by projected output. However I read some where a few years back that it could only take one Russian Topol 800Kt ICBM to do it
That is a scary scenario and there isn't a thing that could be done....
The Yellowstone caldera last erupted 630,000 years ago. The supervolcano erupts every 600,000 - 800,000 years. So we are living in the range of when it is due to erupt. Really don't have to worry about post-apocalyptic scenarios as such an eruption would be an extinction event.
Quote:
That would be worse, you wouldn't even be able to grow your own food. Think about that
That is a scary scenario and there isn't a thing that could be done....
so how long would the Ash block the sun how many years? So I can plan on how much more food to store.