Quoted from Jenny's post in "What do you think of today's world events?" thread.

"But sources tell Fox News, and we are reporting this evening, that China stole the technology for electromagnetic pulse weapons from several nuclear labs during your first term in office, sir, and that the Chinese have successfully tested these weapons in China."

For those unaware of it, EMP weapons create a burst of electromagnetic energy that, among other effects, wipes and scrambles unprotected computer chips. And for the purposes of this discussion, any chip outside a hardened military environment is unprotected. EMP was first noticed during the early atomic bomb tests -- one in the Pacific in the early 1950s crashed the power grid in Honolulu, some 500 miles away. For decades, many nuclear war scenarios have opened with high-level nuclear bomb bursts over mid-America creating EMP havoc across the continent. Remember the scene from the TV movie, "The Day After," when all the newer-model, computer-controlled cars died after the nukes went off?

G. Gordon Liddy first mentioned backpack EMP weapons in an article he wrote in the late 1980s about terorist attacks paralyzing the US. We have to assume the technology has only gotten better in the years since. A cordinated EMP attack would make a 5-level y2k look like a walk in the park.

Just another unsettling thought on an unsettling day.

-- Cash (cash@andcarry.com), March 24, 1999

Answers

For more info on EMP weapons go to

http://www.infowar.com/MIL_C4I/mil_c4i8.html-ssi

Sorry! I haven't figured out this hotlink stuff yet.

-- No No (nono@nogo.com), March 24, 1999.