HOW LONG WOULD IT TAKE?
onesecondafter.com - What is EMP?
Here is the bottom line of the entire issue and why the threat of a single EMP weapon is so dangerous. There is the serious potential that we might never be able to restore the system. One might ask why? It just means replacing some circuit breakers, pulling out fried chips in our cars and replacing them with new ones etc.
It is not that simple. The infrastructure America has developed since the beginnings of the Industrial Age, is now so vast, intricate and fragile, that it is like a delicate spider web, which if touched by a flame can instantly vanish.
A few examples to illustrate what might seem an extreme statement.
The incredibly complex system that creates electricity, starting from a hydro-electric dam, a glowing nuclear reactor, or coal fired plant, leaps through hundreds of circuit breakers, perhaps thousands of miles of wiring, across high tension lines to sub stations, and finally to the outlet your computer is plug into. This single line will now have hundreds of breaks in it, each one having to be replaced.
Any of us who have lived through a major disaster such as a hurricane, ice storm, or tornado, and then gone several days without power know the sequence, h ow much longer the wait seems to be, and then finally the welcome sight of a power company repair truck turning on to your block. . .and that truck might be from a power company five hundred miles away. All our disasters have ultimately been local in nature, Andrew in Florida, Katrina in Louisiana and Mississippi or one this author went through with Ivan in North Carolina. The disaster is local, even if fifty thousand square miles are affected, help streaming in from neighboring states, caravans of power trucks, each carrying not just experienced crews, but ladened down with all the replacement parts necessary to put electricity and phone service back into your house. When Ivan hit my town, dumping 30 inches of rain, wiping out the power grid and water supply, in less than twelve hours thousands of gallons of bottled water had arrived from Charlotte, power companies from Alabama, Tennessee and Virginia were arriving, the special parts needed to replace my town’s shattered water main from the reservoir were air lifted in by a national guard unit.
Consider though if the entire nation is “down.” Quite simply there are not enough replacement parts in the entire nation to even remotely begin the retro-fitting and replacement of all components. Every community will be on its own, struggling to rebuild. . .on their own.
