I read the book.
Here's why. I had heard about EMP doom for a while and assumed it was a bunch of overreaction and fear mongering by people on the fringe. Yeah, nukes give off EMP, but I assumed that a nuke's EMP would take out maybe a metropolitan-area worth of electrical stuff. So, taking out the nation's electrical infrastructure would take, in effect, a full-on nuclear war. I assumed this without any particular knowledge of it but just because if it took only 1-3 nukes on nothing more than 1950-era rockets, then it would be so easy to destroy the entire US and its population. That would be like learning that it actually is so easy to steal all the gold in Fort Knox that a single 12 year old could do it in half an hour and no special tools.
However, I heard enough about it that I decided I would take a little time to look into it. With a BS in nuclear engineering from the University of Michigan and an MS in applied physics from Caltech, I figured I'd be able to judge if it seems like hokum or not.
What I found out is that -- holy !@#$ -- it really would take only a few nukes to wipe out the US, as backed up by mathematical modeling and also actual historical measurements from nuclear tests and controlled testing. One moderately sized nuke, detonated at very high altitude, can take out electrical equipment in a radius of about 500 miles (i.e., diameter of 1000 miles, i.e., a few of them cover the continental US). What electrical equipment would be burned out? Not just powerlines and transformers and data lines, but even smaller electrical equipment, and a lot of cars, trucks, trains, ships, and aircraft.
Now, think about what that means. You in your house are not going to get electrical power, of course, but also not municipal running water, natural gas, or sewer treatment. Without vehicles, you aren't going to get any food at the supermarket or pick up of your garbage. Most of the people in the US don't store water, so in some areas, lots of people would start to die when the 50 gallons in their hot-water tanks runs out. Most of the people in the US don't store food, so lots of people would start to die within a month or two because supermarkets have only about 3 days worth of food, and no more is coming if vehicles don't work. This is to say nothing of people who might freeze to death if it were winter, what it would be like in cities and even suburbs without sewage disposal, and what things would get like in terms of "civil disturbance."
But wouldn't the US be able to get vehicles going and power back on in a month or two? No. The power grid has critical elements that we don't keep backups of and that, once destroyed, take months or a year to replace (even when all of our factories and electricity and distribution of building materials work). That's not even to consider what a gargantuan job it would be to repair things we do have at least some spares of (like electrical wiring).
All that would be required is a few nukes launched from container ships way out to sea in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf, which (among others) North Korea could accomplish and soon (thanks to our own policy) Iran will be able to accomplish. A sophisticated country like China or Russia could probably accomplish it without leaving enough evidence for anyone to know which country did it. In the not-too-distant future, some terrorist organizations might be able to do it. It doesn't take fancy nukes on fancy rockets. They just have to get up into the atmosphere and be accurate to within a US state or two.
The only bright spot compared to the scenario depicted in "One Second After" is that cars and trucks are somewhat resistant to EMP. So, not all of them (even modern ones) would be wiped out within the 500-mile radius. It's not clear how many would work, but even just some of them would allow some movement of food and water, perhaps saving a lot of people.
What are the odds of this happening? Who knows? It might be miniscule. But, if it happened before the US wakes up and spends the trivial amount of money to have a little preparation for it (maybe it would cost as much as a single B-1 bomber to do this), a large portion of the US population would die.
Also, a giant solar flare (like the one that hit the earth in 1859 and the one that just barely missed the earth in 2012) would wipe out the earth's power grid, but at least vehicles should all mostly still work. That is still a huge problem, of course, for the reasons stated above.
It was for these reasons that I decided (after not preparing ever before) to have a supply of water, a food, and some other items for my family.
For anyone interested in doing that as cheaply and easily as possible, my experience with that is here:
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,374259.0.htmlFor anyone who wants a good report on EMP and what it could do (at a solid technical level), it is here:
http://empcommission.org/
