Guest post by Steven Goddard
The Effects of One Nuclear Bomb at High Altitude
From Wikipedia
Yesterday’s missile launch from nuclear power North Korea raised particular concern in the military, due to the possibility of EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) attack. Almost every piece of technology in our lives is dependent on semiconductors, which contain circuitry that is extremely vulnerable to electromagnetic pulses. From the Federation of American Scientists:
During the Cold War, the US military was very concerned about the fact that US planes used solid state circuitry and Soviet planes used vacuum tubes. It was known that nuclear war would likely cause American planes to drop out of the sky. Since then, we all have become completely reliant on semiconductor technology which controls our transportation, power, satellites, information technology and communication systems. Transistors have evolved over time to smaller and smaller geometries and lower voltages, which make them increasingly vulnerable to EMP.
The US and Russia conducted many nuclear detonations at high altitude prior to 1962, but the integrated circuit had not yet been invented. Some experts believe that an effective EMP attack would send the US and/or Europe instantly back to the dark ages. Civilian planes could lose control and fall from the sky, and cars made since 1980 might instantly and permanently lose steering, engine and brake control. Many phones, computers and Internet switches would become permanently disabled. Newt Gingrich spoke about the danger on Fox News this morning.
Gingrich replied: “There are three or four techniques that could have been used, from unconventional forces to standoff capabilities, to say: ‘We’re not going to tolerate a North Korean missile launch, period.’ … look at electromagnetic pulse, which changes every … equation about how risky these weapons are.”
More from Wikipedia
Ever wonder why (“Axis of Evil”) North Korea and Iran have been rushing to develop nuclear weapons and missile delivery capabilities? It has nothing to do with stopping global warming or making friends with Washington and Whitehall. Some references below. I recommend that everyone read them before they go to the voting booth next time. It is important to have leaders who can do more than talk, because we have bigger and tougher enemies than people who use incandescent light bulbs, and bankers who take holidays in Las Vegas.
ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE THREATS TO U.S. MILITARY AND CIVILIAN INFRASTRUCTURE
http://superconductors.org/emp-bomb.htm
http://www.unitedstatesaction.com/emp-terror.htm
http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/future-weapons-emp-bomb.html
http://www.electronics-related.com/usenet/design/show/98485-1.php
http://www.janes.com/articles/Janes-Strategic-Weapon-Systems/EMP-Bomb-Australia.html
http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/security/has197010.000/has197010_1.htm
http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/mctl98-2/p2sec06.pdf
http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/emp/toc.htm
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1281421.html
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codetech,
I don’t recommend that you try turning your engine off while driving 75mph to see what happens to the steering or brakes.
crosspatch,
I don’t think Wikipedia or Newt are giving away any classified information.
That is correct, which is why I specifically mentioned magnetic shielding as well. Our shield enclosure in the emergency operations center was a metal box (room) composed of multiple layers of galvanized steel and sheet copper, to provide shielding against both the electric field and the magnetic field. The door had continuous brass finger stock to ground the entire perimeter of the door when closed, to create a complete Faraday cage room with magnetic shielding included.
As mentioned above it is a highly complex topic that is not well understood in even the normal trades that deal with electricity and data. It is very common for a custom engineered EMP enclosure to be seriously compromised by a well meaning electrician doing something so simple as drilling a single small hole in the wall to pass a low power conductor through the wall.
The problem with this sort of forum, is you have to strike a balance between precision and clear communication. The Electronics engineer might understand the distinction but for a layman’s discussion, a Faraday cage is good enough to communicate the basic process of shielding and is understood by most folks with a passing understanding of physics and electronics.
Magnetic shielding is also used inside the shield enclosure with all leads in steel conduits and junction boxes, and avoidance of corner installation locations for sensitive equipment as Faraday and Magnetic shielding are less effective in the corners of the cage.
At penetrations and conductors they also filter, by placing ferrite beads over leads and chokes in power leads to buck induced currents and stretch the rise time to a rate of change that can be handled by consumer class devices. You have to also consider coupling modes that are not typically a concern.
For example on fast rise time surges transformers can capacitively couple across the coils to pass surges that would normally be blocked by their inductance. They act as if a small capacitor was connected between the windings.
For example on board ship (1970’s period) our computer room was isolated from ships power by 5 1:1 transformers in series to supress surges. We had a rat or snake crawl into a power box and it blew a shore power lead the size of your forearm off the box and it vaporized a 12″ by 18″ junction panel, and then proceeded to hop all over the fantail of the ship until shore power cut off. This 440 volt line glitched all sorts of systems on our ship. It killed the first 3 of the 5 – 1:1 isolation transformers but in spite of that isolation, enough of the surge got through to zap about a dozen circuit cards in our computer. We were chasing phantom electrical problems for about a month from the gradual failure of components that survived the original surges but were degraded enough that they failed much sooner than normal.
Here are a few references — For the technically minded the last link will keep you busy for a while (298 page PDF) and covers things like shielding, shunting surges, components, and single point grounds (single point earth in the UK).
http://www.eeel.nist.gov/817/pubs/spd-anthology/files/MOV%20announce%20color.pdf
http://books.google.com/books?id=-sE7JVywygQC&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71&dq=MOV+Metal+oxide+varistors++GE&source=bl&ots=pj-Mul8Rw8&sig=bCjpnY4TVyqgnv-8H8T5L_yz-YM&hl=en&ei=8XPZSYSyBIz2MMfL4fwO&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2
http://www.lightningtalks.com/LightningProtection.htm
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5368/is_200709/ai_n21296174/
http://www.dstan.mod.uk/data/59/411/05000100.pdf (page 50 and following for devices)
Larry
hotrod (18:24:17)
“Both EMI and ESD protection on consumer electronics has improved substantially since then, as has consumer level power surge protection.”
Agree, but there is no guarantee.
The United States does not have any regulations regarding immunity for consumer products, if the consumer product has a CE mark on it for the European Union then it as been evaluated to 4kV contact and 8kV air discharges for ESD and 3V/m for radiated immunity, that is if the company has fulfilled only the minimum requirements for the CE mark.
Bill_M7
A few brief excerpts from: http://republicans.smbiz.house.gov/hearings/106th/1999/990601/skinner.asp
???????? (Makes little sense to differentiate btw the two types of ‘fields’ esp. in as general a discussion as we are having here; the haphazard use of term ‘Faraday shielding’, I think, however, serves no useful purpose but to confuse and water down the term, the meaning, and the true nature of same. Regards)
geophys55 ,
Besides the romantic idea of going back to the good old days, there is that little problem of having cities with tens of millions of people and no access to food, heat or water.
Is it just me, or does that map look like a very bizzare clown face?
I wonder if North Korea was even interested in placing the satellite in space. Maybe what they want more is the attention from the attempt and it’s use to gain a bargening chip in the future. Surely they realize that noone can be a winner when it comes to a war and that retalliation would be swift and awful for their country and spill over into countries close to it’s border. There is a lot of pride involved in the psychology of the leaders in North Korea. For example, when South Korea sent food the ship got to the harbor but since it was flying the South Korean flag the ship was turned away. It will be interesting to see the sanctions, if any, that are imposed on South Korea.
_Jim (19:50:28) :
coaldust (19:29:16) :
The power assist goes away when the prime mover is no longer running, …
Yes, this is what I mean. This would only be a problem for vehicles already in motion.
c’mon folks
Losing the power assist on the brakes and steering, even at 75 mph, is not really much of a problem unless you’re riding the switchbacks down the mountain. But a modern high-energy electronic ignition system with coil-on-plug and electronic fuel injection is going to require a lot more than firing up the old soldering gun and renovating all those old parts you’ve been saving in vintage coffee cans under the bench.
When I worked for IBM UK at Havant Plant, many moons ago, there was a section called logic test and rework. From time to time one of the women (Freda…mmmm) who worked there allowed me to have a look at circuit boards under her microscope. Some times it, literally, looked like an aerial photo of a WW1 battle field. This damage was from static discharge, not an EMP, but the effects are the same.
“I wonder if North Korea was even interested in placing the satellite in space.”
No they aren’t. But there is a statute in “international law” that says everyone has free access to space. So they use the claim of a space shot to cover their ballistic missile testing. As long as they claim they are attempting to orbit a satellite, they can fire off whatever they want.
A solution would be to offer to launch any satellite they want to launch with our vehicles from Florida. That gives them “access” to space. Then we shoot down anything they launch from Korea. Actually, I would be okay with destroying the vehicle on the pad before launch as even a partial flight can give a lot of data. They can get an idea if the thing is operating properly or not.
As long as they claim they are attempting to reach space, they can do pretty much whatever they want. There really is no difference between an ICBM and a space vehicle. The Mercury and Gemini programs were launched with US ICBM boosters. In fact, the entire purpose of an orbital launch is to send the message that a country has the technology to reach any point on the planet. If you can put an object into a stable orbit, you have the technology to aim a ballistic missile to any place on the Earth. Achieving a stable orbit is a matter of hitting a certain point in space at the right speed and altitude. The idea of hitting a spot on the surface is the same for a suborbital trajectory. You hit a certain spot at a certain speed and then let gravity take over. The payload is “ballistic” at that point and if your boost profile was correct, your reentry profile will be correct.
My ’69 Vette had a metal box around the coil/distributor, and shielding on all the spark plug wires to keep the am-fm radio listenable. Made changing the plugs and points a real pain, so they soon went in a box in the attic and I gave up listening to the radio.
When I once took a transistor radio into Walmart, all the sheet metal in the roof wiped out reception completely. On the other hand, I notice everyone in the aluminum bodied airliner getting good reception on their cell phones during taxi-in, so there’s no telling what’s going to work or not. I’m just glad I got all my pre-fluoride silver fillings replaced with plastic ones.
Nuke deterrence won’t work with the two likely suspects. The Iranian MFWIC would be happy to take his nation to gehenna with him, and Kim Dim Sum is safe because half the folks in South Korea have relatives up north, and the other half (and Japan) would suffer from the fallout. I do believe the North Korean leadership is rational, but willing to push up to the limit, and beyond. It’s the Iranians whom we must worry about. If you look on a globe for missile flight paths, you’ll see why George W. was willing to irritate the Russians by putting an ABM unit in eastern Europe.
Given that the current administration didn’t know that DVD’s have region codes, it might be wise to invest in a little extra tin foil.
Fortunately, for the next four years, my plastic Vette and I aren’t going to be living in any invitingly large population centers.
If you lose your power steering at speed in freeway traffic, you have a serious problem. You can’t swerve to avoid the accident which is inevitably going to happen right in front of you.
Popular Mechanics had a very good article about this in their September, 2001 issue – but something else happened that month which diverted everyone’s attention towards lower tech terrorism.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1281421.html
US leadership still addled, but possibly showing some rudimentary signs of brain function. Perhaps the North Korean missile was an enlightening event.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/5110918/Barack-Obama-goes-ahead-with-missile-defence-shield-despite-disarmament-pledge.html
George Bruce — I have heard that the military has taken steps to “harden” their systems to protect against EMP. How do they do that?
In the 80’s my employer’s equipment was used in the processing of semiconductors being used in the space program (gov’t facilities) and these were rad hardened devices being made. They use manufacturing techniques in the chips themselves to shunt overflow currents. My guess is that almost all modern era non-COTS military electronics are similarly hardened; my experience was well over 20 years ago and I suspect that this is now reasonably standard.
CodeTech — Absolutely wrong. For the vast, vast majority of road vehicles, braking and steering are mechanical, NOT in any way shape or form electronic.
My Acura MDX doesn’t use mechanical linkage for steering. Won’t be long I think before most cars are similar.
pwc — My memory says that the early discussions of EMP indicated the power grid was very susceptible.
Wait until the government upgrades it. Suggested improvements include internet connected PC’s to control the grid. As if it’s not enough to look out for terrorist hackers to cause problems…
A solar event could do that to us.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/21jan_severespaceweather.htm
coaldust (20:51:37) :
. . . The power assist goes away when the prime mover is no longer running, …
Yes, this is what I mean. This would only be a problem for vehicles already in motion.
Steven Goddard (21:33:41) :
If you lose your power steering at speed in freeway traffic, you have a serious problem. You can’t swerve to avoid the accident which is inevitably going to happen right in front of you.
Been there. The engine quit while I was driving (ignition problem), and the steering suddenly got stiffer and the brakes took more pressure, but they worked just fine.
With nuke EMP’s, airplanes should be OK, at least for getting back on the ground. The little guys have all mechanical controls, and the big ones AFAIK have at least one mechanical backup. The modern jets all have electronic engine controls, but the engines are made by the same companies that make the rad hardened military engines, so they should be OK, too. Airplanes are designed with lightning strikes in mind, so the electronics and electrical systems have some inherent durability.
We still have a little time to get our ABM systems running, since the best rad hardening is preventing the nukes from getting here in the first place.
“If you loose your power steering at speed in freeway traffic, you have a serious problem. You can’t swerve to avoid the accident which is inevitably going to happen right in front of you.”
I am not entirely convinced of this as many PAS systems in cars these days actually start to reduce the PAS as speed increases specifically to prevent an accident as a result of swerving.
Having said that, it’s nothing like losing *ALL* PAS systems (Steering, brakes etc) in a Land Rover on a round-about, in rush hour.
Also had a ex-military Land Rover 109 V8 FFR (Fitted For Radio) which had a fully screened electical system which ran at 24V and 800AH.
Let me try one more time.
If you are in a large vehicle like an SUV, van or truck and the engine goes out, it is nearly impossible to manoeuvre the vehicle out of traffic. I can bench press nearly 300 pounds, but when an SUV I used to own blew out the alternator – it took all of my strength to edge it to the side of the road. I understand that some people have small cars with particular steering systems that can be driven reasonably well without power. Can we move on?
As far as airplanes go, we seem to be barely able to land jets safely with all systems fully functional. Heathrow handles 200,000 passengers per day. Take a typical cloudy day in London and try to land those planes with no fuel systems, communications, lights radar or computers. Not very many are going to make it to the ground in one piece.
Thanks for your blog, Anthony. Always a pleasure to consult in these strange times.
1. Connecting the dots… William Morse (20:00:56) “if the consumer product has a CE mark on it for the European Union then it as been evaluated to 4kV contact and 8kV air discharges for ESD and 3V/m for radiated immunity, that is if the company has fulfilled only the minimum requirements for the CE mark.” From what I see on the bizarre nuclear smiley clown mask map, the charge from a single EMP will be above 12.5V/m for almost the entire area affected. Ergo, even CE mark appliances won’t help.
2. I just finished reading “One Second After” by William Forstchen the fictionalized account of EMP which details the human cost. The author did a lot of research. He was very optimistic however, his time for the attack was spring or summer. Imagine the electricity off because the EMP was shot off just before the major winter holiday of the infidels. By the way, the delivery method in the book was surface launch from container ship, no submarine needed. Will a Korean or Iranian missile fit in a container or two?
3. We don’t need a nuclear EMP to be deprived of electricity, of course. As discussed here previously, a solar storm could do it, or for large area a very bad ice storm (is there a possibility we will have more of those if temperatures keep dropping?) can take out a lot of electrical supply. There were 4 million people without electricity from an ice storm in Quebec 10 years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_ice_storm_of_1998 If average temps keep falling, could the area commonly affected by that move south?
4. Guess I can sell my 86 LeSabre, I had hoped it was old enough but that comment about 1980 cars has me worried!~
Steven, while you are moving on, please re-read paragraph 3 in my post at 22:09:21. A Land Rover *IS* a large, even the short wheel base one, heavy vehicle.
Steven Goddard (22:19:46) :
As far as airplanes go, we seem to be barely able to land jets safely with all systems fully functional. Heathrow handles 200,000 passengers per day.
Barely 200,000 pax per day land safely ?
🙂
That’s it…I’m turning Amish for sure! If only they were allowed to use the internet…hmmm.