

The campaign to terrify you about EMP - dctoedt
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/07/the-campaign-to-terrify-you-about-emp/241971/

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rkalla
I was sitting in Chris Paget's "How to hack GSM" talk at DEFCON 18 last
year[1], it was one of the biggest talks of the entire conference.

Chris has basically setup a make-shift cell tower in the room where the talk
was being held, with two high-gain antenna pointed out towards the crowd.
Behind him he had... (bear with me, I am not an EE guy) a huge receiver hooked
to the antenna.

He kept belaboring the point that he was only turning the power up to some
micro-fraction of what the box could output.

When someone at the front pushed him for more info "Why can't you turn it up
more and try and pick up more cell phones from around the hotel?" he replied
that if he "cranked it all the way up" he would "kick every cell phone in
Vegas off their towers"... and then he kept presenting.

Given that Paget knows his stuff, and he is sitting there with equipment from
any radio store... and could take at least most cell phones offline for a few-
mile-radius if what he said was true... it seems to me that the biggest thread
to America is just _smart people_ in general.

He could hypothetically put that think in an SUV, turn it on, and just drive
across town, causing havok all day long. ANYONE COULD.

Every time politicians learn about a new "threat to America" they get all
excited, throw a saddle on the damn issue and ride it to glory, screaming and
shouting the whole way until we can't remember why we ever thought it was safe
to leave our houses in the first place.

I understand the need to push your own agendas for elections, but besides not
being able to take laptops on airplanes, I only see a whole lot of hurt for
citizens coming out of this.

While we're at it, you know what else is the worst threat ever to America? How
about education, health, the sun, asteroids and gangs of unruly dogs.

<sigh>

[1]
[http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/202298/fcc_con...](http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/202298/fcc_concerned_over_defcon_mobile_hacking_talk.html)

~~~
JonnieCache
And dropping a few concrete blocks onto railway lines could completely
immobilise most countries with fear. Ditto for a few shooting sprees in
shopping malls. It's easy to think of any number of utterly trivial ways to
bring a society to a standstill.

The fact that these things aren't happening every day gives the lie to the
"war on terror."

~~~
skrebbel
> Ditto for a few shooting sprees in shopping malls.

I don't know, the day after <insert your favourite high school shooting here>
my neighbourhood supermarket was open like any other day.

~~~
tomjen3
Counterpoint: the DC sniper meant that people shoot down plenty of outdoor
gatherings just based on the fear that he might shoot somebody.

Or even the hunt against geeks/trench-coat wearing people after Columbine
(instead of just going after people who had told you they felled homocidal and
where on antidepressants known to cause people to feel that way).

------
deepGem
Can these people ever walk away from the idea of war. I mean, really which
rogue state can or will possibly launch a nuclear missile over the continental
US ?

~~~
iwwr
_I mean, really which rogue state can or will possibly launch a nuclear
missile over Switzerland?_

FTFY

Seriously now, nukes are not toys available at every street corner. And the
idea of rogue states is more or less fanciful. The dangerous thing is painting
the picture of an imminent US invasion, which can keep the crazy people in
power (and justify the need for nukes).

You don't really need a nuke to strike terror, just plain old conventional
explosives. You are also never safe so long as you are in a crowd.

See: terror is not about killing people, but terrorizing them
<http://www.schneier.com/essay-124.html>

~~~
deepGem
The article mentions the destruction that's caused by EMP. One of the foremost
sources of EMP is a nuclear explosion, I don't think there are any
conventional explosives that can 'turn on' an EMP.

~~~
skorgu
If only it were so:
[http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/hpm...](http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/hpm.htm)

Anecdotally you can inject a surprisingly effective amount of noise into
insufficiently-shielded systems with little more than the guts of a microwave
oven.

------
altcognito
I also would be curious about the efficiency of said weapon. Most of what
research I believe the US did into these kinds of weapons revealed that they
wouldn't be very effective. Just because it's nuclear doesn't mean it's going
to magically transmit it's energy over a 1500 mile wide radius through the
air, and jump past all of the plastic and metal "shielding" around your
electronics and the wrapping around the electrical system. I'm not saying it's
impossible, I just think that if it were that simple to transmit electricity
efficiently to devices, maybe we would have good wireless electricity already.

Update: I'm sure these guys are at the center of the scare, so they may be
biased, but here it is all the same:
[http://www.empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP_Commission-7MB.p...](http://www.empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP_Commission-7MB.pdf)

------
skrebbel
I love how an article in a US paper about US defense strategies and US
lobbyists working to get US politicians to make choices that only affect the
US, is filed under _international_.

~~~
tptacek
The Atlantic isn't a paper, and on the website, people who write have a bucket
(business, politics, whatever). This guy is an Iran scholar, so it's
unsurprising his bucket is "International".

~~~
skrebbel
Ah, right. Thanks for the clarification.

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DannoHung
I dunno, I think this is a somewhat legitimate issue. There's probably going
to be another large solar flare on the scale of the Carrington event
eventually and being prepared to recover from broken electronics and
electrical systems in its wake isn't such a ridiculous notion.

I definitely do doubt that we're going to have to worry that much about
terrorists using an EMP strike. I'd expect a nation with nuclear capability
would be much more likely (like Schwarzkopf suggested doing in 91).

~~~
jefffoster
I hadn't heard of the Carrington event
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859>). Even in 1859 it caused
havoc, so it's interesting to think what it would do to modern infrastructure.
From the article:

 _Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed in some cases
even shocking telegraph operators. Telegraph pylons threw sparks and telegraph
paper spontaneously caught fire. Some telegraph systems appeared to continue
to send and receive messages despite having been disconnected from their power
supplies._

~~~
chopsueyar
_Some telegraph systems appeared to continue to send and receive messages
despite having been disconnected from their power supplies._

What would cause this?

~~~
rcthompson
Telegraph signals are sent by turning on and off the current in the wire. If
the solar storm generates a sporadic electrical potential (rather than a
constant unchanging one), then the receiver will get an apparent transmission,
although it will be complete gibberish.

~~~
chopsueyar
So how long is the solar storm duration?

------
pwg
>but the surge of electrical __particles__(???) produced by the bomb scatters
down to Earth and affects electronics like a giant bolt of lightning

Where were the editors and fact checkers?? The __ __(???) was added for
highlighting.

~~~
tdfx
I'm surprised they didn't call it what it is -- electromagnetic radiation.
Sounds much scarier to most people in our science-adverse society.

------
hollerith
EMPs produced by nukes were in the news circa 1986. One producer of laptops
computers, Grid Systems IIRC, advertised their computers as "EMP resistant" or
some such and consequently suitable for use by defense personnel.

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rcthompson
So the worry is about terrorists launching an ICBM and detonating it at high
altitude? How many conventional cell-phone bombs can you make for the price of
an ICBM? How many would it take to knock out the US power grid?

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garethsprice
Still waiting for the GOP caucus on chemtrails or lizard people... what is it
with the Republican party and paranoid conspiracies?

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wwkeyboard
I find it funny that all of the end-of-technology-as-we-know-it criers never
talk about bicycling and local farming.

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Jach
I think they just finally saw the 007 movie _Goldeneye_.

------
georgieporgie
<http://www.schneier.com/essay-316.html>

_I didn't get to give my answer until the afternoon, which was: "My nightmare
scenario is that people keep talking about their nightmare scenarios."_

