A wrote:  he may or may not be legit. It doesn't matter a great deal to me because it would not sway my beliefs one way or the other at this point. But it is certainly conceivable that he is part of a think tank, like the one at Navy War College, that is strategizing about y2k. He may even be a shill trying to gather information on how a "mini-panic" can spread (on this forum). He has not stated enough to make this clear, one way or the other, although I am skeptical at this point.

However, for those that feel his projections may be a little pessimistic, have a look at this thread:

Worse than Y2K - EMP

Basically, ONE TERRORIST with ONE NUKE could detonate it above the US and the resulting EMP would fry enough critic electronic components to initiate a INFOMAGIC devolutionary spiral, which for those new to the topic, is about a 15 on a the normal "scale of 10."

-- a (a@a.a), June 10, 1999., on this thread:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000w5S

First, the Navy (Naval) War College is not a think tank. Go look up the definition of a think tank. Think tanks are associated with for profit businesses, not academia organizations. Second, it doesnt take much thought to create panic on this forum; you doomers panic more than any DGI or DWGI could possibly. Most of you are just the paranoid bunch creating reasons to not sleep at night. Third his projections have nothing to do with reality, pessimistic or optimistic, they are just ravings.

Now for your next set of sentences, I cant understand how you can possibly conclude this when you have only read one thread. Must be that warped sense of logic. Do you have any idea what EMP stands for? Electromagnetic Pulse. Do you know what that is? It is the effect of the combination of electrical and magnetic fields. Did you know that they are found to be perpendicular to each other and follow the right hand rule? Now go do some research to find out how these phenomena can affect your communications and computers. Do you know how much of a nuclear blast it takes for such effects? Do you know at what altitude? How absurd!!! Fry enough critic (critical) components for an INFOMAGIC event!!! What evidence leads you to this??? How much have you studied EMP??? I suspect none.

So, let me conclude you are totally ignorant when it comes to nukes. However, does that stop you from making an informed or intelligent comment on this thread? No of course not. Let me suggest that you continue to attack people for when you make statements your stupidity really shows.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), June 10, 1999

Answers

Maria, your right, we should go back to thinking up reasons why we can all have a peaceful eight hours sleep every night, no guilty conscience, and ne'er a thought to taking responsibility for anything... ever.

As far as EMP goes, you DOLT, they detonated a warhead above one city in California some years back and it did exactly what 'a' described... total Infomagic, for about three days. Fried every damn phone line and circuit for HUNDREDS of miles. It was a nightmare... can you even remember that far back little girl?

And get this, the Chinese currently have under plan new versions of the Neutron bomb, which creates devestating radioactive fallout without much real physical damage. Build 'em smarter guys, not harder... that is what they told them at places like Los Alamos.

Maria, seriously, get educated before you unleash your ignorance on the forum.

-- (oldyeller@sanfran.com), June 10, 1999.

Maria,

Have I told you before how cute I think you are? You is one hot mommy.

Anita

-- Anita Spooner (spoonera@msn.com), June 10, 1999.

Maria, You may be the best example I've seen of dangerous ignorance. Ever hear of the Rand Corporation? You spend so much time trying to come across as a well informed expert but you don't know squat!! Give up trying to BS the folks on this forum and read a book.

-- PULLEEEEZEE (go@way.ldy), June 10, 1999.

Maria,

I think "a" must have watched the pegasus project (or some name like that) on tee vee a few years back. but of course that is a TOTAL and REALISTIC depiction of WHAT COULD HAPPEN in his tiny brain...

-- Super Polly (Fu_Q_y2kfreaks@hotmail.com), June 10, 1999.

Maria,

When I was in the Air Force (OVER 20 years ago...!), we studied the issue extensively. Contrary to your beliefs, the EMP issue is quite legitimate. As a matter of fact, we (in the U.S. have had "contingency plans" to do EXACTLY THIS to the Soviet Union. (probably still do...)

Also, my studies at University, this topic was also studied. (elec engrg major)

I hate to rain on your parade, but you are, at least in this case, in error.

-- Dennis (djolson@pressenter.com), June 10, 1999.

Maria, here is a clue:

http://www.digivill.net/~gate/knightz/elwarfare/clip1.html

{snip}

The effects of these field on electronics is difficult to predict, but can be profound. Enormous induced electric currents are generated in wires, antennas, and metal objects (like missiles, airplanes, and building frames). Commercial electrical grids are immense EMP antennas and would be subjected to voltage surges far exceeding those created by lightning, and over vastly greater areas. Modern VLSI chips are extremely sensitive to voltage surges, and would be burned out by even small leakage currents. Military equipment is generally designed to be resistant to EMP, but realistic tests are very difficult to perform and EMP protection rests on attention to detail. Minor changes in design, incorrect maintenance procedures, poorly fitting parts, loose debris, moisture, and ordinary dirt can all cause elaborate EMP protections to be totally circumvented. It can be expected that a single high yield, high altitude explosion over an industrialized area would cause massive disruption for an indeterminable period, and would cause huge economic damages (all those damaged chips add up).

{end snip}

-- (oldyeller@sanfran.com), June 10, 1999.

I've learned since I've been on this forum that Maria is not a reliable source of information. She tried to 'debunk' an article once on solar flares by saying she'd never heard the term 'coronal mass ejections' used in the article.

-- (american@heritage.dictionary), June 10, 1999.

Lick my balls Maria.

-- a (a@a.a), June 10, 1999.

I think the above response from 'a' may be an imposter, but it's very hard to tell.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), June 10, 1999.

Not an imposter Flint, I really want Maria to lick my balls.

-- a (a@a.a), June 10, 1999.

You better think twice about that a. I'll bet the bitch bites!

-- Pickles (123@123.3), June 10, 1999.

Yes its an imposter, I have a little more tact than that.

The EMP issue is real, but I spoke too soon about terrorists being able to get a bomb to a high enough altitude. I got side tracked with "flyer" who argued that they could not get one in an airplane at all. Anyway, mea culpa.

What I found intriguing about the referenced thread though, was that Russia has just recently said that they could do such a thing (unleash EMP), and if they did, the Infomagic scenario would probably occur, because of all the mechanisms that have been previously associated with y2k problems.

-- a (a@a.a), June 10, 1999.

Maria said: " First, the Navy (Naval) War College is not a think tank. Go look up the definition of a think tank. Think tanks are associated with for profit businesses, not academia organizations."

My In-House Naval Expert, who's been there, done that, says, "A very large part of the Naval War College's activity is research and policy formulation. It deals in predictions, hypotheses and scenarios. It is the post-graduate educational institution for future admirals and command personnel. It fits the definition of a think-tank very well; in fact, that is the descriptor I would use for the War College."

Then my IHNE said: "It definitely don't fit no college definition--it don't have no football team and it don't have no cheerleaders."

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), June 10, 1999.

'a':

If you can find it, you might enjoy the novel "flare" by Roger Zelazny and Thomas T. Thomas. Very accurate depiction of the effects of a big coronal mass ejection towards Earth.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), June 10, 1999.

"they detonated a warhead above one city in California some years back and it did exactly what 'a' described... total Infomagic, for about three days. Fried every damn phone line and circuit for HUNDREDS of miles. It was a nightmare... can you even remember that far back little girl? "

care to provide some references, please? [where was I when that was going on?]

thanks,

Perry

-- Perry Arnett (pjarnett@pdqnet.net), June 10, 1999.

URLs, please.

Facts, news; and not from some crackpot's site.

As LUDICROUS as it sounds, realiable sources like AP, Reuters, and , yes, gov't agencies are appreciated.

-- JAW (clueless@pollyanna.com), June 10, 1999.

J(ust)A(nother)W(annabe)

-- (cujo@baddog.com), June 10, 1999.

Dennis, were you at the weapons lab working on the tressle (sp?) project?

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), June 10, 1999.

It may have been many years ago, but I seem to recall it was the after effects of one of the very first ultra-high altitude nuclear detonations, at something like 100,000 feet. The EMP was unknown at that time and was unplanned. I can't give you links but I can imagine that if you go back and look at the history of the bomb you'll find out what I was talking about. And anyway if you don't like my memory, do you think you could remember the specifics of a three day black out in a west coast city years later, no matter what the cause? Thought not. Check the microfiche, I bet you it'll be there somewhere. San Diego? Maybe L.A.?

-- (oldyeller@sanfran.com), June 10, 1999.

Maria

You are wrong about the think tank and the neutron bomb. The Link to the think tank is below and the army folk could provide you with info on the bomb. It was developed decades ago to keep cities intact but disable them. I am a Canadian so this is MHO on what I remember.

By the way folks the Naval think tank has another summary on the site. Dated the first of the month. More interesting material.

Naval War College Y2K Project Site The

-- Brian (imager@home.com), June 10, 1999.

No Maria, We discussed the issues in my Avionics Electronics classes...

-- Dennis (djolson@pressenter.com), June 10, 1999.

WW said:

Flying asserted that a high-altitude EMP event had never been tested. It most certainly has been. It's how the phenomena was discovered in the first place.

Back in the fifties there was a high-altitude nuclear test of a device launched from Johnston Island and detonated over the mid- Pacific. It knocked out electrical systems and equipment from the eastern Marhall Islands to as far away as Hawaii. Footage of some of the test series is shown in the movie "Trinity, and Beyond".

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), June 10, 1999.

-- a (a@a.a), June 10, 1999.

Oldyeller, links please. Of course none of the doomers believe you when you dont have links. Hundreds of miles, ey? I agree with your snip, It can be expected that a single high yield, high altitude explosion over an industrialized area would cause massive disruption for an indeterminable period. A was espousing some crap about a terrorist in an airplane going to detonate a nuke. Read the thread. Its this crap that I called her on.

PULLEEEEZEE, you can choose to ignore my posts. you cant always get what you wa-ant. But if you try some time, youll find, you get what you ne-ed

American, Ive studied solar activity and didnt recall CME acronym. Just because I cant remember the term, you think that I know nothing about solar flares. Are you saying that the article about predicting solar flare intensity is true? Oh well, no wonder youre so confident about the future; your crystal ball tells you so.

A Imposter, you have a fetish about your genitalia dont you? A is a woman and youre too busy licking your own balls like some junk yard dog, that you havent noticed.

A, No shit EMP is real. I never said it wasnt but glad to see you admit mea culpa. No shit the Russians have thought of it. Its been a threat for some time. Funny thing about that thread, it never went into the discussion surrounding EMP, just an intro.

Old Git Think tank is not the same connotation as academia. The Naval War College is like any other university with honest to goodness thesis, papers, theories and thought provoking issues that students research. However, when someone says think tank, they are referencing a for profit business (Rand, Mitre, Booze Allen, NRA, and others) who provide a service for government and other organizations. A non-profit university is not really a think tank, they do as they please (for the most part). So I agree with what youre saying but theres a difference in the terminology for a think tank.

Perry, JAW, I dont think there are any links at least none that this group will find.

Brain, Never said anything about no neutron bomb. I have heard of it but know nothing about it. My post was simply to point out that a doesnt know anything about EMP and yet she can comment intelligently.

Dennis, too bad I thought you actually knew something about EMP. The weapons lab build a structure to test EMP on various components. It was a monstrous thing; I remember one year they tested Air Force one under it. The structure was build completely out of wood; wood nuts and bolts, wood screws, an interesting piece of work.

A question for a to see if shes been reading: Why do you think it was made out of wood?

One other comment: they have never tested EMP, so they really don't know the "best" altitude, the optimum weapon size, the actual damage and other characteristics. Just because they stumbled upon these effects during another test doesn't constitute a test with subsequent data. Once again, you can't extapolate with only one data point (if you can call it that). Simulations are great but no substitute for the real thing.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), June 11, 1999.

Maria: Just to prove that you are an imperceptive blabbermouth (at times), I am not a SHE. Ask PNG, Milne, Cory, or Flint. They can also vouch for my other credentials. (although Flint may show a little bias :)

And for your information, I stand by my statement that a terrorist could detonate a nuke above the US and unleash EMP. The mea culpa was because it would not be enough to cause Infomagic results. That would take a burst at 80-120 miles as Ken pointed out. I doubt that terrorists could fly one over 10 miles high. But that would be plenty to knock out a good sector of say the NY/NJ area. Of course they would most likely just detonate it in NY harbor. It would make a much greater mess.

As for the wooden test bed, I would imagine they used it for the same reason we use fiberglass to build masts for our radar receivers. We thought about using wood, but it seemed too old fashioned. You forget that one of my undergraduate degrees is in Physics.

BTW...why did you think I was a she? And, ah, you ARE a SHE, right?

-- a (a@a.a), June 11, 1999.

Maria, when we were in the Navy the War College was commonly referred to as a think tank. It still is. I asked my husband (my "In-House Naval Expert") for a quote on the subject because he actually attended the institution in the early eighties. In Norfolk, in the late eighties-early nineties, we knew many foreign Nato staff officers who also had attended the War College; they too considered it a think tank. The think tank may have started out decades ago as a for-profit venture, but the term has now expanded and is in common usage to describe many entities researching and brainstorming public policy, and even other matters. Perhaps dictionaries have yet to catch up to common usage. A quick search on "university AND think AND tank" turned up over 16,000 hits. Over half the first 20 are nonprofits and part of universities. The status of the remainder wasn't clear from the summaries, so I didn't include them.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), June 11, 1999.

The only difference between for-profit and not-for-profit institutions is the taxes they pay.

Everything else is cosmetics.

-- nothere nothere (nothere@nothere.com), June 11, 1999.

Maria, I do ignore your posts!

-- PULLEEEEZEE (go@way.ldy), June 11, 1999.

PULLEEEEZEE, Oh so you just look at the pictures and don't read the articles.

-- Playing (with@yourself.magazine), June 11, 1999.

Maria, it's very hard to believe your credibility when your defending yourself against an onslaught of posts opposing your viewpoint. Your trying to talk your way out of looking stupid and in doing so your only making it worse for yourself. Ever hear this one: "Quit while your behind". The link I gave to the effects of EMP should be more than enough to convince you otherwise, if you were smart enough to even go there and check it out for yourself. If your not going to buy it, then fine, revel in your ignorance, makes no difference to me.

-- (oldyeller@sanfran.com), June 11, 1999.

old yeller says

The link I gave to the effects of EMP should be more than enough to convince you otherwise, if you were smart enough to even go there and check it out for yourself.

Checked it out and the author is unknown. If the alleged EMP affect really was a three day blackout in a major city and was a fact and not a theory, why wouldn't the author include that in his story. Also, looked at the rest of the site and found lots of hacking tools and links, "The Terrorist's Handbook", "The Anarchist's Handbook", etc. Very interesting that you would use a link from this site, old yeller...

-- Big Brother (isw@tching.you), June 11, 1999.

and BTW maria...I thought you were leaving the forum??

-- a (a@a.a), June 11, 1999.

Thanks Big Brother; oldyeller, you're looking like the fool.

A wrote, "And for your information, I stand by my statement that a terrorist could detonate a nuke above the US and unleash EMP." [How does a terrorist do that?]

"The mea culpa was because it would not be enough to cause Infomagic results." [Isn't that what I quoted in the post? That's why I called you an ignoramus, specifically not thinking through and concluding INFOMAGIC]

"That would take a burst at 80-120 miles as Ken pointed out. I doubt that terrorists could fly one over 10 miles high." [Well, glad to see you agree with someone. No shit a terrorist couldn't "fly" to the altitudes. Why? Well, I'll make that question easy on you... Because those altitudes are orbital altitudes. Now if a terrorist can put something in orbit, he can make big bucks launching stuff for NASA and other satellite programs. But I suspect the launchers available to terrorist don't go that high, maybe just a mile or two. No not 10 miles.]

"But that would be plenty to knock out a good sector of say the NY/NJ area. Of course they would most likely just detonate it in NY harbor. It would make a much greater mess" [Now you're a terrorist planner. My, you do such a good job of analyzing this nuclear stuff.]

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), June 11, 1999.

I couldn't pass this up.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), June 11, 1999.

'a', I'm taking that shovel away from you. You got yourself deep enough on this one.

-- Doomers Don't (Know@whento.stop), June 11, 1999.

1. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a nuke detonated above a US city, at any altitude.

2. Most of the so-called EMP data is flat wrong - the people who are interpreting it don't seem to understand the test in the Pacific was an nuke exploded in the stratosphere, right where it would mess up the Heaviside layers. And did mess them up, with after effects still showing up over a year later. Bouncing radio waves off these natural reflectors was an important part of communications back in the 50's.

3. The rest of the EMP data refers to theoritical studies mostly done in the 60's. Some of the other things they studied were - building 1000 megaton bombs and setting them off at altitudes of up to 500 miles - the heat from the initial flash would start firestorms over an area of hundreds of square miles without producing any fallout problems - first study of neutron bombs - studies of using extremely dirty bombs with cobalt casings to spread enormous fallout patterns across an entire continent using a single bomb, the famous 'Doomsday Device'. Most of this was never brought to any kind of practical fruition.

EMP enjoyed a brief return with some fanfare in the 80's when SDI was in vogue. I have some severe doubts about the real-world effectiveness of the technique - microwave absorption by clouds and reflection from the stratosphere make it a very multi-dimensional problem not really subject to any but the most complex types of computer modeling. Only way to get a real answer would be to build a fake city somewhere and test it with a few high altitude nukes. And we have signed several treaties that say we won't do that.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), June 11, 1999.

I didn't know there WAS more to that site, I did a search for EMP and came up with that page, which accuratley describes the effects of EMP and it does in fact coincide with everything I've heard about EMP. So why do you naturally assume the other part of the site (???) is related to anything I was talking about. Big Brother just shows his ineptitude for doing anything right again.

I can't see how anyone could think otherwise on this subject but like I said, reveling in ignorance is your own damn fault. Go ahead thinking EMP is some fad back in the sci-fi days and just drop the whole thing. I don't care if your foolish, I really don't.

-- (oldyeller@sanfran.com), June 11, 1999.