Massive solar flare narrowly misses Earth, EMP disaster barely avoided
The earth barely missed taking a massive solar punch in the teeth two weeks ago, an "electromagnetic pulse" so big that it could have knocked out power, cars and iPhones throughout the United States.
Two EMP experts told Secrets that the EMP flashed through earth's typical orbit around the sun about two weeks before the planet got there.
"The world escaped an EMP catastrophe," said Henry Cooper, who led strategic arms negotiations with the Soviet Union under President Reagan, and who now heads High Frontier, a group pushing for missile defense.
"There had been a near miss about two weeks ago, a Carrington-class coronal mass ejection crossed the orbit of the Earth and basically just missed us," said Peter Vincent Pry, who served on the Congressional EMP Threat Commission from 2001-2008. He was referring to the 1859 EMP named after astronomer Richard Carrington that melted telegraph lines in Europe and North America.
"Basically this is a Russian roulette thing," added Pry. "We narrowly escape from a Carrington-class disaster."
Pry, Cooper, and former CIA Director James Woolsey have been recently demanding that Washington prepare the nation's electric grid for an EMP, either from the sun or an enemy's nuclear bomb. They want the 2,000-3,000 transformers in the grid protected with a high-tech metal box and spares ready to rebuild the system. Woolsey said knocking out just 20 would shut down electricity to parts of the nation "for a long time."
But Washington is giving them the cold shoulder, especially the administration. Woolsey told Secrets that some in Congress are interested in the issue, but the administration is just in the "beginnings" of paying attention.
Woolsey said that Air Force One and aircraft used by the Strategic Air Command to control nuclear-tipped missiles are hardened against an EMP.
The EMP effect is not rare. One occurred in Canada in 1989, knocking out Quebec's electric transmission system. And North Korea is reportedly testing a device to attack the U.S. with an EMP attack.
The trio appeared at an event in Washington this week, but Pry said getting the nation's leaders interested in the issue is difficult and educating the public about EMP hard too. "The education curve isn't going up fast enough," he said.
At the event, Cooper suggested that North Korea might already have the capability to launch an EMP against the United States. He said in December, North Korea tested its so-called Space Launch Vehicle which could deliver a stealthy nuclear attack on the United States by orbiting a nuclear weapon over the South Pole where the U.S. has no radar or missile interceptors facing south. North Korea, he said, apparently orbited a satellite over the south polar region on a trajectory and altitude consistent with making a surprise nuclear EMP attack against the United States.
Woolsey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich are the honorary co-chairs of a new EMP Coalition pushing for protections to the electric grid, national security, and civilian infrastructures.
Paul Bedard, The Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com.
Solar Flare poses huge threat: Column
A solar flare could wipe out the communications and electrical grids while frying a wide variety of electronics, quickly sending us back to the 19th Century.
So this week the news is consumed with the Supreme Court, the immigration bill, Edward Snowden and the NSA scandals, and the IRS scandal and the lingering Benghazi scandal. But behind the scenes there are things going on that may be much more important. Earth-shakingly important, even.
No, I'm not talking about the threat from asteroid strikes. This time, though, I'm talking about a different kind of civilizational threat: A solar flare that could wipe out the communications and electrical grids while frying a wide variety of electronics, quickly sending us back to the 19th Century.
That's happened before. In fact, it happened in the 19th Century, with the "Carrington Event" of 1859. A massive solar flare sent a cloud of charged particles that struck the Earth squarely, creating massive currents in the Earth's magnetic field and sending brilliant auroras south as far as Cuba and Hawaii. About the only thing electrical back then was the telegraph network, and the Carrington event had a literally shocking impact -- causing some operators to be shocked, and inducing strong enough currents in the telegraph wires that operators could disconnect the batteries and operate the telegraph off of the flare-induced electrical flow.
Modern electronics are a lot more sensitive, of course, and a similar event today would fry computers, cell phones, new cars and more.
More worryingly, it would probably melt major transformers in the power net, transformers that take months or years to replace and that are expensive enough that few spares are kept. Big chunks of the planet -- all of North America, for example -- might be without electricity for a year or longer.
The disruption would kill a lot of people -- some quickly, as medical devices failed, others later as food supplies and clean water became scarce. Without electricity, pretty much everything in our civilization comes to a stop. The economic damage would be incalculable.
We don't know how common Carrington Events are, since they probably wouldn't have made much of an impact in pre-industrial years.
But in 1989 a smaller flare wiped out Hydro Quebec's grid, leaving many Canadians without power for an extended period. And similar flares have been near misses -- a Class X flare (the most powerful kind) sideswiped the Earth back in May.
Space is big, and the Earth is small, so most of these will miss us. But the consequences of being hit are serious. And there's also the possibility that an enemy nation might detonate a nuclear weapon at high altitude over the United States, generating a similar effect via the nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP). (For a scary but realistic story of an EMP attack on the USA, read William Forstchen's disaster novel, One Second After.)
These kinds of worries have gone from science columns and Internet speculation, to serious worries by the National Academy of Sciences and big insurers like Lloyd's.And now Congress is taking a hand.
There's now a bill aimed at doing something to harden our systems and prepare for such events. It's called the Secure High-voltage Infrastructure for Electricity from Lethal Damage Act (SHIELD Act for short, in one of those now-unavoidable legislative acronyms).
It is aimed at seeing that those big transformers basically get the heavy-duty equivalent of surge protectors to prevent damage in the event of either a solar storm or EMP attack.
Perhaps because I lived through the Great Northeastern Blackout when I was a kid, I've always been aware of the risk of power going out. I'm glad that folks in Washington are starting to pay attention, too.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is professor of law at the University of Tennessee. He blogs at InstaPundit.com.
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