The Day the Lights Went Out
I read some years ago that we could be crippled as a nation by detonation of a nuclear bomb in the sub-stratosphere, not all that far up. The electro-magnetic disturbance would effectively put us out of action and I have worried since that time, not so much about nuclear attack, but about our increasing dependency on computers.
Now comes Senator Jon Kyl, not exactly a household name, but the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is no small job. A name has been put to this disturbance, electro-magnetic pulse, or EMP. Senator Kyl suggests in an editorial that it doesn’t take much sophistication to chunk a nuclear device a couple miles up into the air, which is all it would take. Scud missiles are cheap, readily available and capable. Any old rusted-out tramp steamer would suffice as a platform and international waters would be close enough. El Qaeda owns a bunch of such vessels.
Pretty scary.
So, okay, you say. Damned inconvenient and you remember the last northeast power o…