Summary: We are afraid of so many things. That makes us so easy to control. A brave and skeptical citizenry would be our rulers’ greatest fear, if we were likely to change.
The Long War requires a constant bombardment of the Homeland by exaggerated threats in order to produce a state of low-level fear in the people. This allows us to be easily controlled — funding the vast military-intel-security apparatus and allowing slow but steady erosion of our liberty.
Continuous information operations rain upon us, describing a bewilderingly large array of threats — which we passively accept. An individual might find the first dozen unconvincing, but the 13th might hit home — striking fear in his heart.
The vast size of the DoD-intel-Homeland Security apparatus can generate this propaganda. They overwhelm America’s critical facilities, especially the organizations able to critically review the government’s assertions.
This post looks at one of the more bizarre threats, but one structurally similar to most of them: Electromagnetic Pulse Weapons. Note that rebuttals appeared from the beginning, puncturing the threats. To no avail, of course. In America faux threats never die, so long as people are paid to propagate them.
Archive of articles about EMP weapons
(a) Evaluation of Methodologies for Estimating Vulnerability to Electromagnetic Pulse Effects, National Academy of Sciences, 1984
(b) “Effect of the Fast Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse on the Electric Power Grid Nationwide: A Different View“, Mario Rabinowitz (physicist, see Wikipedia), Power Engineering Review (IEEE), October 1987 — Abstract (red emphasis added):
This paper primarily considers the potential effects of a single high-altitude nuclear burst on the U.S. power grid. A comparison is made between EMP and natural phenomena such as lightning. This paper concludes that EMP is no more harmful to the power grid than its counterparts in nature. An upper limit of the electric field of the very fast, high-amplitude EMP is derived from first principles. The resulting values are significantly lower than the commonly presented values. Additional calculations show that the ionization produced by a nuclear burst severely attenuates the EMP.
(c) “E-BOMB“, Jim Wilson, Popular Mechanics, September 2001 — A masterpiece of speculative fantasy.
“In the blink of an eye, electromagnetic bombs could throw civilization back 200 years. And terrorists can build them for $400.”
(d) “The Next Fake Threat“, Nick Schwellenbach, AlterNet, 21 September 2005
“A congressionally-mandated commission with ties to the defense industry is pushing a fake threat — electromagnetic pulse attacks — when the Pentagon can hardly conduct one itself.”
(e) “EMPtyThreat?“, Nick Schwellenbach, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Sept/Oct 2005 — Subscription only. See a summary here.
“The latest doomsday threat to emerge from Washington envisions terrorists unleashing an EMP to produce the mother of all blackouts. Don’t be afraid of the dark.”
(f) Commission to Assess the Threat from High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP), 2008
(g) “Aircraft could be brought down by DIY ‘E-bombs’“, Paul Marks, New Scientist, 01 April 2009
“EMP weapons capable of frying the electronics in civil airliners can be built using information and components available on the net, warn counterterrorism analysts. All it would take to bring a plane down would be a single but highly energetic microwave radio pulse blasted from a device inside a plane, or on the ground and trained at an aircraft coming in to land.”
(h) Excellent summary: “An Endless Bounty of EMP Crazies”, George Smith (aka Dick Destiny), 6 April 2009 — Part One, Part Two.
(i) “The Newt Bomb: How a pulp-fiction fantasy became a GOP weapons craze“, The New Republic, 3 June 2009
(j) “Neocons Salivating Over Their Next Great Exaggerated ‘Threat’: Electromagnetic Pulse Attack“, Robert Farley, AlterNet, 22 October 2009 — “A diverse array of rightwing factions have united behind the effort to promote the EMP threat thesis.”
(k) “The EMP threat: fact, fiction, and response“, Yousaf M. Butt (staff scientist at the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard), The Space Review, January 2010 — Part One, Part Two, Rebuttal
(l) Nuclear Weapon EMP Effects, Federation of American Scientists
(m) For more references see the Wikpedia entry
For More Information
For all posts about this topic see the FM Reference Page on Information & disinformation, the new media & the old. See these posts about propaganda and info warfare:
- News from the Front: America’s military has mastered 4GW!, 2 September 2009
- 4GW at work in a community near you , 19 October 2007 — Propaganda warming us up for war with Iran.
- Successful info ops, but who are the targets?, 1 May 2008
- Psywar, a core skill of the US Military (used most often on us), 26 November 2008
- How the Soviet Menace was over-hyped – and what we can learn from this, 13 October 2009
- Successful propaganda as a characteristic of 21st century America, 1 February 2010