Late response, but:

Smallpox vaccinations were routine in the US (and have always been highly effective) until 1972. Any such infection, even by such ridiculous means as an ICBM, would not have been very devastating if the vast majority of the US population was even partially immune.

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/smallpox/vaccination/facts.asp

Thought to be by whom? Alarmists with political motives, perhaps.

Uh, 5 deaths. And a lot of panic.

Understanding of the 'biology' behind biowarfare has adavanced considerably since the 70s. As has the ability to rapidly assess (by many means) and treat infections. And the intelligence capacity to track the materials needed to make them.

An alternate view of Nixon's decision to abandon bioweapons is that there was no reason to continue spending money on them, seeing as they were of limited efficacy and redundant to the far more 'effective' (offensively or as a deterrent) nuclear forces.

Please consider, for at least a millisecond, that medicine and communications and sanitation have advanced significantly since 1918!

Chris: your knowledge of biology, and anything that's gone on in it in the last 30 years, is sorely lacking. But your adherence to and amplification of worst-case scenario sky-is-ready-to-fall-at-any-instant rhetoric makes you a good (if semiliterate) foot soldier for the alarmists.

Thanks very much for the Info, OD. It matches up with what I knew, but my knowledge was less detailed.

One of those likely to fall for Gaffney's BS is my former Congressman, Curt Weldon. He's a former teacher and --in my vague recollection -- a fireman who's infected with the Tom Clancy wannabe-a-military-man disease. The type who think in cartoon fashion and don't realize what they don't understand. Weldon has been beating the drum for NMD for years and --more recently --the threat of EMP. Probably because Boeing has the Ospery plant in his area and so he carries water for them.

PS while you're fabricating the H-bomb "intelligence", don't forget to throw in a long-range missile capability.

Their best effort to date won't even do 2000km.

I'm sure your Egyptian cattle-prod pals can be persuaded to coax a false confession out of some drug-addicted Iranian vagrant.

Hey, KZ, what EMP threat?

We've already established that only a large hydrogen bomb could do widespread EMP effects.

Better rustle up another "Office of Special Plans" to convince us all that the Iranians are close to building an H-bomb. Yeah riiiight.

Why not just write a blank cheque and send it to Boeing and TRW?

That way Gaffney's real purpose will be achieved without the need for all this silly scaremongering.

Somewhat Off Topic:

With all this Gaffney bashing going on, I could not help mention the following story and Gaffney's role in it:

One positive thing about Frank Gaffney is that he at least had the "kohones" to expose Grover Norquist's connections to activists with links to radical Islamic elements and the GOP. If you don't have a clue as to what I'm talking about read the following:

"As Frank Gaffney's article recounts, Grover's own Islamic Institute was initially financed by one of the most notorious of these operatives, Abdurahman Alamoudi, a supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah who told the Annual Convention of the Islamic Association of Palestine in 1996, "If we are outside this country we can say 'Oh, Allah destroy America.' But once we are here, our mission in this country is to change it." Grover appointed Alamoudi's deputy, Khaled Saffuri to head his own organization. Together they gained access to the White House for Alamoudi and Sami al-Arian and others with similar agendas who used their cachet to spread Islamist influence to the American military and the prison system and the universities and the political arena with untold consequences for the nation."

http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/readarticle.asp?ID=11209&p=1

This story has also been covered by Salon.com and The Wall Street Journal, among other news sources. It has also been addressed in Craig Unger's book House of Bush- House of Saud.

http://www.madcowprod.com/10292004issue.html

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/06/22/gill/index_np.html

http://dir.salon.com/topics/craig_unger/

http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/241

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/561786/posts

http://www.john-loftus.com/old_dominion.asp

I agree with KS. Nothing in your article does anything to minimize the seriousness of the EMP threat. The only real argument to reduce concern is that it is *politically* unlikely that it will occur.

Phila, I think too that this EMP scare is a way to make Iran look dangerous, by implying that there is a way in which a country with one nuclear missile could somehow threaten America.

The fact that Iran actually has zero nukes and zero missiles capable of getting anywhere near America certainly wouldn't stop people like Gaffney. But you'd think the war in Iraq and the poll numbers might.

From your link to The Next Great Threat: it seems the EMP commission is composed mostly of beltway bandits and arms dealers, specifically companies that deal in missiles and people associated with NMD and even going back to Star Wars. Gaffney's CSP is funded by Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, TRW, a rogue's gallery of missile defence scam artists.

Sadly for them, their NMD is considered stupid and pointless because it can only stop one missile (in theory that is - it can't really).

But wait, look everyone, here's this one missile that can "destroy America". Suddenly NMD has new life. And sure enough that is the EMP commission's solution.

So I think the NMD angle is the heart of it. Iran is a passerby dragged in as convenient boogeyman. The defense hawks and profiteers haven't got the stomach to attack Iran right now, but they're always ready to beat on the taxpayer. No white elephant ever cost Americans more than this one.

Missile defence fat cats have taken thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars from each and every American, man, women, and child, over the past 25 years...and they still can't stop a real missile.

I'm shocked that there are people out there gullible enough to give Gaffney and crowd the time of day. Hey doofuses! You're getting WMD-scammed again! Duhhhh...

Amazing. Some people never learn.

While I agree that Gaffney is an excellent example of "an agenda in search of a catastrophe", I disgree with your comparison of him to Chicken Little. "The boy who cried wolf" may be more apt, imho.

Gaffney has pointed out several actual, serious vulnerabilities, but because he makes a living finding and sensationalizing threats, it's easy to dismiss him altogether.

But I think we would be wise to remember that other old story, and how in the end, the Boy really did get eaten.

EMP attacks should not be discounted so quickly, imo, especially because non-nuclear versions of these weapons are surprisingly simple to build. Even though they are obviously far less potent than the 1MT devices mentioned earlier, EMP/T or HERF devices could be cheaply built in multiples and delivered via, say, FedEx or other motor freight throughout one or more regions for a simultaneous attacks on predetermined weak spots.

So what? We still have numerous Achilles heels in this department. Such an attack in, say, an energy production/distribution area along the Gulf Coast could hinder natural gas supplies to a large part of the US for a surprisingly long time. A similar distributed/coordinated attack in a major financial center such as NYC or London could produce some pretty serious financial consequences, too. Or try running the port of Long Beach without solid state electronics for a week.

All done on the cheap, without requiring much more engineering expertise than that required to build, say, a Qassam rocket. Just a little more imagination.

Here's a fun link on the topic:
http://www.ciaonet.org/olj/sa/sa_oct00ghc01.html

Oh; and natureboy- I also disagree with your assessment. A shoebox full of the better Amerithrax over NYC could easily be as lethal as a tacnuke, and at least as difficult to clean up afterwards.

Pleasant dreams...

Apart from the fact that Gaffney's been a pathological liar for as long as I can remember, the main thing that bothers me about the EMP claims is the use of false documentation to imply that Iran intends to launch such an attack. Roughly a year ago, the EMP alarmists began circulating the news that a magazine called "Iranian Journal" detailed Iran's plans to launch an EMP attack against the USA. In fact, the article not only didn't describe an EMP attack, it didn't even mention nuclear weapons. It was, in essence, a broad-interest article on cyberterrorism, not too different from a discussion one might find in Time or Newsweek. The use of fraudulent materials to "prove" a dubious threat should set off alarm bells.

Of course, if EMP were half the threat Gaffney claims it is, it should've been addressed long before now; if it hasn't been, it reflects badly on past administrations, particularly the big-spending, defense-crazed Reagan/Bush administrations. We've known about EMP since, IIRC, the early sixties, and we've built a large facility in New Mexico to help us research it. We've spent a good deal of money on hardening facilities, too.

There's also considerable doubt as to whether EMP could reasonably be expected to produce the catastrophic results Gaffney claims for it. Nick Schwellenbach of POGO addresses these questions in detail in an article called "The Next Fake Threat."

Amazing how a discussion of H-bombs brings out the anti-Semites. It couldn't be Christian fundamentalists or cynical politicians who made us invade Iraq. It must be the dastardly Jews (oops, I mean Zionists).

It isn't that the Zionists are so smart. It's that people like Chris Ford are so stupid. If they couldn't blame their problems on the Jews, it would be the Chinese stabbing them in the back...or the Mexicans...or the Teletubbies.

It's always easier to create fear than allay it. Part of staying on a war footing is to keep scary bogeymen around every corner. The American public eats it up - irrespective of the fact that they're 1,000 times more likely to die in a car accident or by a handgun than by terrorist attack, let alone EMP, but no one's sweating that too much. Listening to all the hysteria in this country, you'd never guess we are the safest people who have ever lived.

Why when I post do either the posts never appear or I have to be checked out. Will I ever see these last two posts? Is this a way to control the rabble rousers. Why does it only happen in William Arkin's column. I post all the time in other columns and it is only in William Arkins that I have to be screened. What is going on there, I find it creepy.

The Avian flu issue you barely touched on is an interesting issue. When I saw Bush doing his doomsday scenario we are all used to about the avian flu, saying the government is buying huge quantities of Tamiflu a question came to my mind. Bush doesn't care about Americans, he's made that very clear.He has his own agenda for power and m oney. I found this sudden concern suspicious so I did my research.
Surprise, surprise to see that Donald Rumsfeld was made Chairman of Gilead who produced Tamiflu and own the intellectual rights to the Drug which was bought by Roche.He stands to win big from his little corrupt buddy deal.
What does the British Medical journal say about Tamiflu? "The lack of sustained human to human transmission suggests that this AH5N1 Avian virus does not currently have the capacity to cause a human pandemic."
It proved my point that in Corrupt Fascist America if the elite can make money off the worker bees of America they will. You are the sacrificial lambs of your nation. Have you read the high suicide rates among children who take Tamiflu? Collatoral damage for your elite on their way to the bank.

The Avian flu issue you barely touched on is an interesting issue. When I saw Bush doing his doomsday scenario we are all used to about the avian flu, saying the government is buying huge quantities of Tamiflu a question came to my mind. Bush doesn't care about Americans, he's made that very clear.He has his own agenda for power and m oney. I found this sudden concern suspicious so I did my research.
Surprise, surprise to see that Donald Rumsfeld was made Chairman of Gilead who produced Tamiflu and own the intellectual rights to the Drug which was bought by Roche.He stands to win big from his little corrupt buddy deal.
What does the British Medical journal say about Tamiflu? "The lack of sustained human to human transmission suggests that this AH5N1 Avian virus does not currently have the capacity to cause a human pandemic."
It proved my point that in Corrupt Fascist America if the elite can make money off the worker bees of America they will. You are the sacrificial lambs of your nation. Have you read the high suicide rates among children who take Tamiflu? Collatoral damage for your elite on their way to the bank.

Chris Ford-Yes America did help in WW2, but it refused to aid Europe when they asked for assistance due to Humanitarian reasons. Canada and Europe fought in WW2 for years before the US got involved, they were not interested until the effects of war started to affect their economy. The business that American companies did with Nazi Germany all through the War did nothing to help this war come to a speedy end, the dirty business ITT and Ford did in assisting the Nazi's made it hard for everyone. There was nothing generous about this assistance, they only gave for the benefit of Americans. Then they did lots of dirty business as America always has, to ensure the Nazi's had a good fighting chance to win the war. They snuck the Nazi leaders out and brought them to America. The historical information is out there, but it is always eclipsed by the propaganda machine. They were euroweenies for trusting the US. Anyone is because the US is as self serving and corrupt as you can get. Luckily for your government Americans are programmed for propaganda and just repeat the company line. The thinking ones do their research, the robots pull their information out of a hat.

Fear mongering was how this bunch got reelected in 2004. Remember the almost daily terror warnings by Tom Ridge back then. Well they all seemed to disappear right after the election. Look for them to start again some time in the spring of 2006.

Reducing political anger is the surest road to reducing the risk of the ultimate nightmare of nuclear war/terrorism. Military measures have a strong tendency to produce unintended consequences and create cycles of violence.

That's it, keep the people afraid. Talk about your doom&gloom democrats! These right-wingers are much better at it. At least the democrats warn about real risks and did not go off into total paranoia.

After listening these many months from scientists, politicians and the media about Avian Flu, I have not heard one peep (pun intended) about the Swine Flu epidemic of 1976. What you haven't heard of it? How could that be? Everyone was going to die! President Ford ordered every American vaccinated against this new plague. Here's one account of what happened: http://www.capitalcentury.com/1976.html

Now, once you understand how that fiasco went you may start thinking a little more critically. What a nation of scardycats we have become, eager to be manipulated by those who hope to profit from our fears. Here's a bit of advice from a great American who said , "Think for Yourself and Question Authority". Another great American said that "all we have to fear is fear itself", but he was a democrat so what does he know :^}

As for this Gaffney fellow, well, I remember when a nuclear explosion in space (yes, we used to test the bomb in space) knocked out electricity in Hawaii. This was about 50 years ago folks. That's how we found out about EMP and its been studied ever since. There are EMP generators which are used to help design EMP hardened devices. The military requires all of its critical components to be EMP hardened. The military would survive the unbelievable senario of a barge loaded with a scud missle, presumably the fuel and technicians to maintain it, one nuclear bomb and its technicians, computers, power sources, etc... And of course doing this without any of the hundreds of security services around the world not knowing about it. Even our incompetent CIA could catch that.

If 9/11 taught us anything, its that fear is used by these republicans to achieve their goals. They have no interest in governance and it shows. As another great American once said of the Bush administration: "This is the kind of government you get when the people who run it do not believe in government".

"high yield fusion devices?"

By the way, while everyone knows H-bombs are triggered by A-bombs, it's a common misconception that the main explosive yield of an H-bomb comes from fusion.

In fact an H-bomb is technically termed a fission-fusion-fission device. And the real reaction could even be described as fission-fusion-fission-fusion-fission.

I will describe the inside of a typical US H-Bomb to you if you like. I suspect Don Williams, at least, will find it interesting.

As everyone knows, H-bombs are triggered by A-bombs. But it's not just an A-bomb primary strapped to an H-bomb secondary. In fact both devices contain a mixture of fissioning and fusing materials.

The soccerball-shaped trigger or primary device is about 11in diameter. It sits atop a heavy metal closed cylinder about 20in long by 8in wide, which is actually made of ordinary U-238. This closed depleted uranium cylinder contains lots of lithium-6 deuteride, and running down the middle, a U-235 or plutonium rod called a 'spark plug'.

Both devices are encased in a special paper honeycomb and polystyrene shield made only by Bendix in Kansas. Slightly off to the side, pointing at the primary, is a high-voltage vacuum tube the size of a beer can, the neutron generator.

The only raw tritium and deuterium in the H-bomb is actually inside the fission trigger, the soccerball, which as you know is an implosion sphere. This is made of layers of plastic explosive, then a tamper of beryllium and U-238, then a hollow space, then a small hollow ball of plutonium with a U-235 skin, and in the very middle a tiny bit of deuterium and tritium gas.

When the primary device's HE charges detonate, the tamper liquifies and implodes, and the neutron generator simultaneously fires a stream of neutrons at the central 'pit'. This compressed Pu239+U235 ball naturally fissions, as you know. This brings the H2 and H3 gas at the very centre to fusion, generating neutrons which in turn speed the pit's fission.

Now the interesting bit. The physical debris from this explosion is travelling at an incredible 0.01c - 1% of the speed of light. But the x-rays travel at lightspeed. They enter the paper honeycomb before it is damaged and are focused on the polystyrene casing, which flashes into a phenomenally powerful conventional explosion.

This compresses the big U-238 cylinder, and the lithium-6 deuteride inside. These compress the inner Pu or U-35 'spark plug' to supercriticality. This fissions, generating neutrons that convert the lithium deuteride fuel into superhot, supercompressed tritium and deuterium gas. This then fuses, creating unbelievable temperature and pressure. Then comes the really weird bit. These conditions are so extreme that the U-238 cylinder casing - and yes I do mean depleted uranium - fissions. This casing is also still being compressed from the outside by the polystyrene explosion. This is a massive casing of many kilos. It generates the bulk of the bomb's yield, both blast and radiation.

Everyone knowledgeable knows that H-bombs cause dirty explosions, but most people think this is due to the fission trigger. It isn't - it's the U-238 casing of the secondary device that is the most powerful charge in the bomb, and it's obviously very dirty, running through a nasty uranium chain of decaying elements.

I hope you enjoyed OD's tour of a real American H-bomb.

Fascinating eh? Are you listening Osama? I'm giving you the good stuff here.

Actually, one of the great secrets is the exact shape and composition of the x-ray lens (the focussing paper honeycomb) and the polysytrene casing, both made, as I say, by Bendix in Kansas City. Each component has its own unique manufacturer. GE makes the neutron generators. Silas Mason makes the high explosive soccerball imploder segments. DuPont provides the tritium gas. The engineering firm Martin Marietta makes all uranium, deuterium and lithium-6 deuteride components at Oak Ridge. Rockwell International makes the beryllium and plutonium spheres of the trigger. And guess who makes the simultaneous detonators for the HE segments on the primary? Europeans and environmentalists prepare to get really mad...it's the hated Monsanto.

To go a bit deeper: The bomb itself does not emit EMP. That is to say, it emits gamma-ray photons, not electrons. The photons produce electrons by striking atoms in the atmosphere.

In the process known as Compton scattering, electrons generated at between 12-30 miles altitude become trapped in the earth's magnetic field. These Compton electrons cause an oscillating current which radiates a large, coherent short-lived EM field, an expanding pulse that lasts for a microsecond. This is called the HEMP, and is what the military fears most.

The actual plasma from the bomb also pushes back the earth's magnetic field, making a gap which then snaps shut again, very like thunder after lightning. This creates a second, longer, weaker pulse. This can damage things attached to long cables. It's called magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) EMP, or more commonly a 'heave signal'.

Citykilling ICBMs, detonated at 1-12 miles, create minimal EMP damage. Photons from lower atmospheric bursts either create electrons too low to become trapped in the magnetosphere, or they reach the ground directly as high-energy photons, which are obviously a hell of a lot worse than EMP.

I said lower altitudes will mean smaller affected areas. The exception to this is a very low or actual ground burst. This is called Source Region Electro-magnetic Pulse (SREMP). The bomb's photons rapdily produce electrons in the nearby ground and atmosphere. These aren't symmetrically deposited because those travelling down are stopped by the earth while those travelling up keep going. This generates a vertical current which decays, producing a horizontal EMP. It's very powerful, but only to about 5 miles, making it good against missile silos and suchlike.

This can also send a pulse down local power lines etc, which can produce unexpected damage down the grid. I don't know how far it can go, but Dr Gordon Soper, who was an EMP expert at the Defense Nuclear Agency in Virginia, called it "significant amounts of energy over tens of miles".

But this damage is patchy and scattered. This could never be a national disaster scenario. Or rather, EMP would be the least of everyone's concerns.

To get a real feel for the threat posed by EMP consider this. The US actually DID detonate dozens and dozens of nukes large and small, at all sorts of altitudes including ground-burst, in Nevada and New Mexico. With minimal EMP effect. They also tested in space. These space H-bomb tests killed the first generation of TV satelites.

In fact it was EMPs from space detonations that led to the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty. The first big one was the US Starfish test, an H-bomb test 650 miles up, which caused power cuts, burglar alarms going off, etc, in Hawaii, which was 2000 miles north. But no disaster. On the other hand, there weren't many computers in Hawaii in 1962.

Don Williams: "Can anyone provide some technical facts re the EMP threat?.... Doesn't the EMP effect Gaffney talks about require high yield fusion devices? If so, doesn't that make his talk of a threat from terrorists --or even North Korea -- implausible?"

EMP can come from both fission and fusion detonations, whether space, ground, or high atmospheric. However a pulse coming from the upper atmosphere is stopped by the ground.

What this means in practise is that the only way to EMP a really wide area is a high burst. To 'see' the whole lower 48 states it must detonate at minimum 200 miles altitude.

Since the photon wavefront diminishes in insensity as it spreads out, it requires a very powerful detonation to generate a strong EM pulse from 200+ miles. In practise an H-bomb, yes. At least one megaton.

Lower bomb yields will give weaker effects. Lower altitudes will mean smaller affected areas.

EMP can temporarily disrupt a circuit or it can actually 'smoke' it. Smoking almost every unprotected semiconductor circuit in the US with a single 1MT warhead at 500 miles altitude may be possible, according to one declassified estimate. But the results of actual space and high-altitude nuclear weapons tests might suggest this is a bit exaggerated.

I would guess that to get longlasting nationwide powercuts with physical grid damage would require at least three or four large H-bombs at lower altitude. But even that is not going to destroy the US, as Gaffney claims. Besides, why attack computers when the same weapons can wipe out three or four cities if used at normal burst height?

So yeah, you're right that terrorists can't EMP the whole US. Nor can rogue states. Specially-designed EMP weapons would, however, accompany or preceed a major missile strike by a serious power.

France probably tested a (buried) nuclear EMP weapon during its 1995 Pacific tests. The US definitely has a program. Amd some high-energy phyicists have developed non-nuclear close-range EMP weapons using conventional explosives, apparently. I have no idea how it works. There is another type based on a modified radar. Eglin Air Force Base in Florida fried a few local cars in 1993 testing such a device.

I think a plain old nuke on LA would be bad enough, and EMP might take out a lot of civilian electronics, but might not be bloody enough for our Arab Brethren. However, poison gas is 1900's techlology, and any city with a temperature inversion could be made into a bloody mess.

Train loads of toxic gasses cross every city every day, and the regulation is still probably at the typewriter and carbon paper level. Ever see a guard on a train? We wouldn't want stifle the industry, now would we?... Especially as the chemical companies have so much invested in Texas.

And speaking of Texas, there was the Texas City explosion in 1947. That was a big enough disaster to gratify almost anybody. More chemical company neglect. Get on google earth and look at Houston Bay if you want something to worry about.

OD actually we are simpatico. I was thrown off one blog a couple of years ago for merely mentioning Histories Greatest Victims in less than glowing fashion - and you seemed to have missed my reference to Gaffney being tied to "Zionist think tanks" the mere mention of which leads to automatic banning on Likud-loving sites like Charles Johnson's "nuke Mecca" LGF Muslim hate site.

Besides Gaffney and "faster, faster for us Zionists, please, America! Onto Iran onto Syria, onto Saudi Arabia!!" Ledeen, Perle was also snagged shipping secrets to his Zionist masters. On the other hand, not all American Jews are like them. Dav Zackheim buried the US taxpayer subsidies for the Lavi fighter, and Casper Weinburger is ensuring the Zionist traitor Jonathan Pollard will rot in jail no matter how much pardon money is thrown at retiring Presidents or how hard Israel tries to tie his release to Palestinian concessions.

But I will continue to use "Euroweenie" until I see Euros willing to put their balls on the line in numbers commensurate with their large population rather than go with the 90% American, 5% Brit, 5% other numbers they love to armchair criticize. It is easy for "Euroweenies" to blanch in horror over our refusal to grant Islamoid unlawful combatants full POW rights despite them violating all laws of war - as long as Europeans are content to let their gutless elites who never served and who populate their unaccountable to the people ministries blubber about terrorist rights and Americans being such imperfect warriors compared to a Euroweenie who would wage war like an angel if only they felt like it.

Euroweenies bitch about how the US refused to stop Rwanda, how they have not yet intervened in Myanmar or Darfur? Brits aside, it has been 60 years since Europeans took the lead on intervening in any conflict other than trying to patch up their inherited anti-colonialist insurgencies, which they usually cut and ran from. They can't even be counted on to summon the will to round up Serb war criminals to join Slobbo in their pathetic decades-long "justice process" at the ICC. All to frequently, Euros wait on the NGOs or stern words from Kofi the World Leader to absolve them of any sacrifice. If not that, "stern sanctions" or Kofi Himself telling the Euro-supplicants to "issue warrants". Oooooo! Warrants! Folks like Slobbo fear Euro-warrants! And, when the statements or warrants are ignored, hopefully long after the slaughter ends, Euros shrug and say "Well, we did all we could....now it it time to bash America to mask our impotence.."

Because bashing is more fun? Going after the folks actually in the field defending their homeland, as well as America's?

Fine. The Euroweenies can have the next genocide or Iran crisis to handle and maybe see America jus sit back, enjoy the show, and offer a free ride into combat for the Zapateros, as well as the French and Germans and their chocolate poodle Belgium. Supervised by the two nations on the absolute highest pacifist moral plane - Sweden and Switzerland.

Euroweenies chicken out, Iran goes nuclear and/'or genocide continues. Europe's problem not ours - and no harsh note from the head judge of the ICC or Kofi will remove the stigma of Euroweenie chickenhood...though the Euroweenies may go down insisting they aren't fraidy cats, but moral saints.

Perhaps the "euroweenie" charge is harsh, but America DID help bail out your asses in 2 World Wars and since then, has done 90% of the heavy lifting, only to see our Euro pals safe behind our skirts call us immoral scum. It does get old. And the old radical Jewish Left, liberal DEms inside America don't make it any better by insisting "Sweden and France know best, are far more moral and sophisticated than you Yanks...."

1) Can anyone provide some technical facts re the EMP threat? For example, references to "nukes" is too vague. There are fission devices --of relatively low yield -- and there are fusion devices with yields of 1-10 Megatons or more.

2) Doesn't the EMP effect Gaffney talks about require high yield fusion devices? If so, doesn't that make his talk of a threat from terrorists --or even North Korea -- implausible? Constructing a fusion device -- a hydrogen bomb -- is a far more advanced technology than making an atomic bomb. One needs a significant supply of new tritium , for example. Since the half life of tritium is so short (a few years) , one also needs to constantly replace the tritium in warheads.

3) It takes a lot more to make a 1 megaton fusion device than it takes to make primitive fission devices.

4) Another question is whether primitive fission devices can be lifted on a Korean or Iranian ballistic missile. The issue here is whether one is talking about a gun-type fission device or an implosion device.

Gun fission devices are simple --you simply fire one subcritical mass of U235 into another subcritical mass. However, the huge technical problem in making such a device is separating out U235 from the far more abundant and chemically identical U238. Look at the huge complexes at Oak Ridge and Paducah set up to do this.

5) Gaining the material (plutonium) for an implosion device is easier --because plutonium can be chemically separated from Uranium using chemical processes. But primitive implosion devices are huge because of the large amounts of explosive wrapped around the plutonium hollow sphere in order to compress the plutonium into a small point. Look at the early, low yield FatMan device. Aren't such devices too large and heavy to be launched across the oceans on Korean or Iranian missiles?

6) I don't think that someone has to have a long list of artifical credentials in order to speak in the public forum. But I also think that ignorant bullshit should be quickly exposed.

It seems to me that determining whether Gaffney has a point --or that he's full of crap -- should be more important than discussing his character flaws. It also seems to me that making that determination should be a matter of determining the facts rather than tossing off a lot of unsupported opinion.

PS As for all that boost-phase gamma ray stuff, it was supposedly just around the corner 30 years ago and it's still just around the corner today.

Beam me up, Scotty! Warp factor 7! Launch photon torpedoes!

...I'll believe it when I see it.

Man, this blog would make a whole lot more sense if Arkin reversed the order of the comments.
HEY ARKIN! We're not medieval Chinese. We start at the top and read downwards, y'know?

Natureboy - "I say this as a Ph.D.-level researcher and former editor of one of the top journals in biomedical research, and someone who has observed many self-anointed 'experts' with little knowledge fan the biowarfare flames."
Natureboy continues: "There are no biowarfare agents even remotely as dangerous as nukes. Simply put, they cannot be dispersed across a wide area anywhere near as quickly as radiation, and merely the simply act of detection will preclude much of the only act--human contact--that can continue to transmit them. There may well be a heavy economic cost, but not a high price in human life. You literally cannot create these things in a basement--or without a tremendous and easily identifiable infrastructure."

So, PhD Natureboy...was that researcher post and editorship of a top scientific journal inside the Soviet Union? Because of it wasn't I don't know how you were unaware of the "easily identifiable infrastructure" of the Soviet Biowar program of the 70s and 80s coded "VEKTOR".

Or perhaps you are fully aware, as a top mind, of that program. Care to remind us all of how many tons of freeze-dried smallpox, anthrax spores and other diseases like tulerimia, ebola, lassa fever they had ready to go from the "easily detectable" knowledge you had?

As I recollect when the VEKTOR numbers were tallied, militarized anthrax spore mass was in the tens of thousands of metric tons, but the freeze dried smallpox virus mounted on ICBM missiles without the US having a clue was thought to be adequate to kill tens of millions of Americans, Europeans, Japanese and perhaps several hundreds of millions of Chinese in an alternate Soviet strike.

All that? Constrasted with what the "ignorant" American public saw happen from less than 1 oz of anthrax spores put into the mail in Sept-Oct 2001?

"There may well be a heavy economic cost, but not a high price in human life."

I guess the 30 million dead from a projected smallpox pandemic in just the USA alone are not a "high price in human life". But if 30 million "are not a high price" in lives as long as they are American, why is waterboarding the 9/11 Mastermind who killed thousands in order to save thousands "monstrous"?

My verdict on Natureboy? Ex-Soviet, or an idiot. Biowar agents are true WMD, they can be manufactured in quantity in non-descript buildings relatively safe from detection, and can kill millions. When Richard NIxon unilaterally abandoned them as too evil, too uncontrollable, too frightening to continue advancing - he was right - and also right that thermonuclear bombs to clean out the ability of any attacker using them is the mandatory response America must use or threaten to use to maintain deterrance.

Chris, it's interesting that you mention China's theft of US missile technology.

Because of course the main conduit for this spying and technology transfer to China is your own closest ally, Israel.

And who are their foot soldiers? None other than Gaffney and his fellow foreign agents, like his best buddy Michael Ledeen, who was caught in a restaurant trying to give away 5000 TOW missiles to a nice man from the Israeli embassy.

Ledeen regularly poses as an American patriot on right-wing websites. Strangely he never mentions that the CIA has revoked his security clearance twice. And Gaffney also doubles as an America-first media pundit, but never gives the little conflict-of-interest disclaimer mentioning that "the author is also a paid agent of a foreign power." You mentioned this minor character flaw of his yourself.

(Talking of Gaffney's media punditry, the FOX News article posted below is fascinating. I see from the date that he wrote this about two weeks before Bush "didn't" suggest bombing Al Jazeera to Tony Blair.)

Oh to be a hawkish Beltway Bandit. Nice work if you can get it. No brain required. No morals allowed. The more you screw up global security, the more work you get. One employer, the US public, hasn't the faintest idea what you're up to and doesn't care. The other, in Tel-Aviv, doesn't give a toss about US security anyway.

By the way, Chris, I'm happy to discuss technical military issues with you. But leave out the Euroweenie stuff, ok? You can do better.

For the record, I accept that in the case of nuclear attack, there is no requirement for proportionality in the response...assuming you are capable of correctly identifying the country that attacked you. Recent history is not reassuring on that score.

As for nuclear preemptive attack, it would quite simply be the biggest crime in human history.

Just think, if you'd turned Iraq into a glass parking lot in 2003, you probably never would have found out that the deadly threat they presented was completely bogus.

To think that the people behind the phony WMD claims still dare to threaten NUCLEAR preemptive attack over suspected WMD...it's utterly mind-boggling.

OD - You list reasons why SDI is "impossible" today against an advance opponent like Russia or China, and that is good - but end stage defense on warheads in one layer, and we are working on boost and flight phase not using just kill vehicles but 3rd Gen rail guns, lasers, particle beams...and on electronics that work even with an EMP. So impossible against the Big 2 today, but perhaps not with the NORKs or Iranians where defenses might work on a small number of missiles they have ready. And despite Euroweenie panty-pissing on the Very Thought of preemptive strike without the wisdom of Kofi Himself - we can do some incredible things with conventional precision munitions no other nation can until China steals that from us too.

And we always have the thermonuclear hammer that no nation should ever doubt we would use to end their nation and their people if we feel the nuke or biowar threat against us is existential.

KS - "The possibility of an EMP attack is also much greater now than it was in the Cold War, when it was part of a deterrence strategy. Today, hostile nations or terrorist groups could use EMP to attack the US, either anonymously (shooting a SCUD from a shipping barge off the US coast) or with very little risk of an equivalent retaliation."

An EMP would still be regarded as a nuclear attack on America. No different in destructiveness than setting off a nuke on the Hoover dam or in a major American city, even with warning to evacuate. I would not - if I was on the other side - risk America being unable to find out who did it, who financed it, who was involved in any way - and really, only Lefties think we are somehow morally obligated to keep retaliation to being less costly than the attack. Would the whole Iranian NORK or Arab people suffer from the attack by a few radical Islamists or mad dictators they didn't vote for?

You betcha. Comes with the territory, and the concept of nuclear deterrance. Blow up an aircraft carrier group with nukes and we will blow up your whole Navy, Air Force, centers of Gov't, and Army concentrations with nukes. NO tit for tat.

Dave G -

It doesn't work like that. One nuke, one nuke power plant doesn't make all of America a radioactive wasteland. It means a Chernobyl at best - which only has killed about 80 people so far other than the tens of thousands of fetuses killed by hysterical, ignorant Euroweenies - that had abortions because their fear overrode common sense.

Not discounting one nuke accurately dropped on one nuke plant and it's spent fuel pool (Russia has that missile accuracy, China is either buying it from Russia or stealing it from us) - the nuke blast would make a huge mess - but America would survive and the nations we directed the hydrogen bomb firestorm on (excepting Russia and China) would not.

The fact that that a 1918-like flu pandemic has not yet struck since then makes it no more likely that there will be one anytime soon. It is truly a question of 'if' not 'when.' More information, in this case the elucidation of the sequence of the 1918 virus, may have ratcheted up fears, but the reality has not changed.

There are no biowarfare agents even remotely as dangerous as nukes. Simply put, they cannot be dispersed across a wide area anywhere near as quickly as radiation, and merely the simply act of detection will preclude much of the only act--human contact--that can continue to transmit them. There may well be a heavy economic cost, but not a high price in human life. You literally cannot create these things in a basement--or without a tremendous and easily identifiable infrastructure.

It is precisely this type of alarmist rhetoric with no basis in reality that has created an environment in which paranoia with no basis in reality can flourish. Ignorance is the real enemy here. I say this as a Ph.D.-level researcher and former editor of one of the top journals in biomedical research, and someone who has observed many self-anointed 'experts' with little knowledge fan the biowarfare flames.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,98621,00.html

Take Out Al Jazeera
Monday, September 29, 2003
By Frank Gaffney, Jr.

"...Under present wartime circumstances, though, the United States has the ability -- and, indeed, an urgent responsibility -- to take more comprehensive action against Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. Unless the two networks adjust their behavior so as no longer to act as the propaganda arm of our enemies, they should be taken off the air, one way or another."

I also have two questions for our old pal Frank:

1. Are you just a moron who doesn't understand how to fight insurgencies, or are you deliberately sh1t-stirring to create more violence so your Center for Insecurity Policy can continue to profit from the deaths of others?

2. How much, exactly, are the Israelis paying you to sell the US' future down the river?

And by the way, a big hand to the folks at Fox News for publishing calls for the murder of fellow journalists. Because al Jazeera allegedly foments violence! Trust FOX to draw a perfect circle of hypocrisy.

Indeed, this threat is well-known enough to have been the backstory for James Cameron's two-season TV series "Dark Angel". Shorter range EMP also featured prominently in the very popular "Matrix" films, as well as "Ocean's Eleven".

People ignorant of pop culture seem to be perpetually unaware of how often threats they think unknown are, in fact, right there on broadcast television for the entertainment of the masses. Consider, for example, that 6 months before 9/11, an episode of "The X-Files" spinoff "The Lone Gunmen" featured a story wherein a passenger jet was electronically hijacked with the intent (I am not making this up) of piloting it into the World Trade Center. Upon identifying the plot, a main character says something like, "There's no bomb on the aircraft; the aircraft is the bomb." Six months later we had a disaster of epic proportions, with many commentators claiming this was an unheard-of strategy. And who needs "The Lone Gunmen"? Go back and watch the 1976 film "Midway" if you need a reminder of the effectiveness of the kamikaze attack.

Do the military TEMPEST computer enclosures help againt EMP, or is it just to shield internal emissions?

Re EMP attack on Cheney's pacemaker. Ha ha.

Probably the only theoretical scenario in which a nuclear attack could enhance prospects for world peace.

Mr. Arkin, I don't really understand the point you are trying to make here other than a personal attack on Frank Gaffney, who is by no means the only person concerned about the EMP threat. I would recommend that you and other readers look up the EMP Commission Report on our vulnerabilities- which is not a "chicken little" story but rather a sober reckoning of our vulnerabilities and what should be done to protect the nation. Their recommendations are "modest by any standard... and extremely so in relation to both the war on terror and the value of the
national infrastructures involved." (their words)
EMP is not a new threat- it has been around for decades. The threat is indirect- an EMP attack would not immediately kill Americans, but the effects of an attack would cripple our critical infrastructures and paralyze our nation. The consequences of an EMP attack are increasing as we become more and more dependent on electronics and telecommunications. The systems that provide for our vital needs (food and water supplies, electricity, transportation, banking) are interconnected and interdependent- a major breakdown in the power grid could cause a cascade of other failures. And many of the electronics would be totally fried and would have to be completely rebuilt.
The possibility of an EMP attack is also much greater now than it was in the Cold War, when it was part of a deterrence strategy. Today, hostile nations or terrorist groups could use EMP to attack the US, either anonymously (shooting a SCUD from a shipping barge off the US coast) or with very little risk of an equivalent retaliation.
So, it doesn't seem to me to be such an unwarranted fear when there is so much at stake, and it doesn't seem to be a huge burden to take some steps to protect ourselves.
And if, as you suggest, the Bush administration has a sudden love affair with EMP, so much the better- I believe Bush's avian flu focus (albeit brief) did result in some funding and a plan for preparing ourselves. At this point no one, including "Homeland Security," seems to have done anything about EMP.
Again, I'm not sure what the point of your article was- I find it difficult to follow your rambling style. If you are just attacking Gaffney, fine. But I don't see any reason to discount the threat he is pointing out.

Nah, it's worse than that. They could simply hit the Diablo Canyon nuclear reactors with their nuke, which would release enormous amounts of radioactive material, which prevailing winds would blow right across the US. Even if the material didn't go critical, it would make the 'homeland' a radioactive cancer on the earth for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Actually the largest wooden structures in the world are locatd in tustin, CA... the old AFB Derigible Hangers are so big they have their own weather system inside, even raining inside with clear weather outside... but I don't know if they used glue...

HEY! If we make computers out of wood and glue EMP isn't a problem anymore! YAY

So Gaffney saw "the Matrix" and decided common EMP science can be trusted after all huh?

Bet he still thinks the earth is only 10,000 yrs old, though....

You know, Cheney wears a pacemaker and an EMP event under his bed could be a possible Al Qaida/Saddam plot... Better get the CIA's friends to draft a letter in Nigeria about that one...just don't send Joe Wilson to find it this time, huh guys?

On second thoughts, perhaps I should retract my comment about incompetence (the fraud bit stands). It's not that the scientists are incompetent, it's just that they've been asked to do the impossible.

The original idea of Star Wars really WAS to stop a major Soviet attack. Reagan - who was actually a bit of a sweetie when it came to nuclear war - himself believed it was a defensive measure that could save the whole world from Armageddon. In fact he offered Star Wars technology to Gorbachev at Reyjavik. The normally super-polite Gorby was so shocked he called him a liar.

Gorby: Excuse me, Mr. President, but I don't take your idea of sharing SDI seriously. You don't want to share even petroleum equipment, automatic machine tools or equipment for dairies, while sharing SDI would be a second American Revolution. And revolutions do not occur all that often. Let's be realistic and pragmatic. That's more reliable.

Gipper: If I thought that SDI could not be shared, I would have rejected it myself.

(Reagan-Gorbachev summit, Reykjavik, Iceland, 11 October 1986)

Naturally Reagan's horrified aides strangled this baby at birth. They knew, as did Gorby, that SDI was not remotely a defensive measure, but was designed to achieve the US hawks' ancient dream of a winnable nuclear war.

A US first strike, they reasoned, would disable most of the Soviet response. The remainder could be swept up with Star Wars. It was, in their minds, a way to break the Cold War deadlock by giving the US a clear nuclear edge.

But then the US had had a clear edge in the 50s, and that never stopped the Soviets. And worse, it soon became apparent that no system could be built to stop even a weakened Soviet retaliatory strike.

It was later resurrected, of course, with much more modest goals...but the same outrageous price tag.

You make a fair comment about the Soviet ABM system, Chris Ford.

Since the Galosh and its replacement the Gorgon themselves have yields of at least 1mT, it's natural and in fact correct to assume that a single interception would blind their own radars. This would make Moscow's system almost as much of a white elephant as America's non-nuclear one (though it would offer the advantage of potentially destroying more than one object in an ICBM's deployed threat cloud).

But it's risky to assume that the Soviets were any more logical in their system than the Americans have been in theirs. Soviet ABM was really a political band-aid, to convince Moscow elites that it was not necessarily suicidal to play nuclear chicken with America.

It wasn't workable, as you know, and it really would have blinded their own radars.

I'll tell you where I got my information. I got it in a long conversation I had with Prof Theodore Postol, who is not only a leading critic of NMD, but was also chief scientist in the Pentagon project to draw up the original 1960s US nuclear attack plan for the Moscow area. He told me that the plan they developed actually relied partly on this radar-blinding effect, with a fractionally delayed second wave strike.

He also told me a host of reasons why NMD doesn't work and can't work, most of which have nothing to do with EMP. I was struck by the forcefulness of his comments. So I rang Philip Coyne, who had just retired as Pentagon chief of testing and evaluation. He (in much milder tones), confirmed much of it. So do the military experts at FAS, including Michael Levi, who had a piece in the WaPo this week.

Coyne, who is no Lefty believe me, also confirmed the use of the GPS beacon in all tests up to that date.

Finally, you may not know that serious contractor fraud has blighted not only the old Star Wars program, but also NMD.

The original kill vehicle manufacturer and lead contractor, who I won't name just in case, was found by the DoD Criminal Investigation Dept to have falsified data from a test, essentially removing most of the data points that showed the kill vehicle's IR focussing on decoys as it hopped cluelessly from one to the other. This left the false impression that it was mostly focussing on the correct object in the final data set, which contained data from just 17 seconds of a minute-plus flight. Among the missing seconds were the moment of impact, when it was targeting the wrong object.

CID passed their findings to the GAO, who were going to take action when the Army Dept contacted them to say the CID investigators had dropped their charges and were satisfied. Later it emerged that CID indignantly denied doing this. I'm sure you're familiar with the Pentagon's weird habit of defending companies who rip them off.

I should probably stop running off at the mouth....but you get the picture. The simplest countermeasures, easily available to NK etc, can defeat the system even in a lone-missile scenario. And NMD is plagued not just by incompetence, but also by fraud.

By the way, the fraudulent contractor's kill vehicle was eventually replaced by a Boeing model with inferior sensors, no more able to overcome the insurmountable problem of stopping MIRVs and MARVs.

Barring unforeseen breakthroughs in physics itself, the offense will always have the upper hand over the defense in nuclear warfare.

EMP has been dealt with by the military - which can "take" EMP blows and still do it's mission, albeit at reduced effectiveness, but civilian infrastructure is not. Effects of an EMP pulse on certain civilian centers of population, industry, oil production are indeed worldchangingly bad. We have not worried about it that much, because it falls within the bounds of the near-unimaginably bad nuclear warfare where use of a device or devices to cause EMP would lead to the other side's military or cities roasting.

But Gaffney is as other posters note, a PNAC pimp, and I'll add Gaffney someone who should have low credibility because his income largely comes from Zionist think tanks...

But just because there are people paid to be chicken littles does not mean that the Islamoids have backed down on their call to obtain and use WMD on infidels as "a religious duty". Chicken Little's low cred should not give way to assuming the Pollyannas are right.

We are about due for a flu pandemic. It's not "if", but "when" - and I worry that our globally interlocked high tech infrastructure we depend on to feed us, keep all utilities going is more vulnerable to significant disruption than the infrastructure back in 1918.

We do know from our experience with the Anthrax attacks of 2001 that less than an ounce of spores can cost us billions and shut down centers of government and key infrastructure (postal centers) for months. Biowar is potent, potentially as potent as nukes if we talk of a man-made pandemic..Not something we want the Islamoids to get and think they can use without the most catastrophic of consequences on them.

As for OD's observations on EMP neutralizing missile defense therefore no one can build an effective one - that is not what the Soviets thought. One of the reasons they collapsed was trying to match or defeat American SDI efforts. Yes, the current system can be overwhelmed by the Russians or Rising China, but it is good to have as we face a NORK missile threat and may have Iranian missiles pointed at allies soon. And yes, people argue that there are other ways to nuke cities than launching nuclear-tipped missiles at them. But there are more ways to sink a ship than by submarine - by missiles, air attack, saboteurs, etc. - but that does not mean a nation trying to protect it's Navy or shipping finds it "useless" to have ASW capacity. This is something the Lefties never get.

Defense involves layers and capacities, not moving towards one single perfect defense an attacker cannot get around or defeat. It involves offensive and defensive capacities, the political and media arena (which suffers when American media sympathize with the enemy). In some cases, there is no defense, given our technology and the enemies capabilities, and we must have deterrance ready when pure defense is not feasible.

Now you're talking, Arkin. Pound on that ****er hard. One of the worst of the PNAC crowd, Gaffney has basically devoted his adult life to trying to start World War Three.
He's like Dr Strangelove without the science degree.

We can be damn sure he's never going to go into any detail about EMP effects, because he wouldn't want the American public to cotton on to the fact that the same phenomenon is yet another reason why basic physics makes his beloved national missile defense program a nonfunctional dodo.

Any nuke detonated in low orbit will also cover radar screens in white noise for at least 20 minutes, allowing all the missiles behind it to sneak by undetected. So even if the US could shoot down more than one missile at a time, which it can't, the system would still be a useless white elephant.

Of course that would only be a relevant problem if the interceptor kill vehicle actually worked, which it doesn't. And if the evil foreigners could be persuaded to drop the use of multiple decoy MIRVs, which they won't. And if they would be so kind as to put a GPS beacon in their warheads, like the cheating NMD testers do.

If Gaffney and his ilk had a shred of honesty, or even a disinterested concern for US security, they could highlight the menace that:

A) they've tricked US taxpayers into blowing countless billions on a defense system with all the protective properties of a wet paper bag, and
B) Having convinced the American people that they were immune to foreign military threats, they then led them on a course of militaristic illegality and bullying that will one day produce the very attack that their NMD boondoggle is powerless to stop.

Hey, I've just identified three deadly threats to the safety of American citizens and the life of the nation:
1. Frank Gaffney
2. PNAC
3. The Bush Administration

Fun fact: The EMP trestle at Kirtland AF base near Alberquerque, where warplanes are EMP-tested with zaps of up to 10 million volts, is the largest wood-and-glue structure in the entire world.

Mr. Gaffney thinks no one realizes the seriouness of EMP? Has he been hunkered down with Cheney for the last 5 years. EMP is common knowledge and there are already defenses in place. Of course this ultra right wing doomsayer may not actually be aware of its braod based knowledge. He should tell Cheney, at least Dick will take him seriously!!!