One Second After [162]
I read Pat Frank's classic apocalyptic 1959 novel Alas, Babylon and was encouraged by man's defiance of annihilation and ability to cope in a post-attack nuclear world. The image of Slim Pickens as Major T. J. "King" Kong in Dr. Strangelove provided dark comic relief every time I inventoried a double-locked safe of nuclear codes. After being promoted to captain, I reread Nevil Shute's classic, On the Beach, and wondered if I had the
courage of the submarine captain Dwight Towers to gracefully face the end of civilization.
I wish my imagination would have allowed me to just sit back and enjoy my friend Bill Forstchen's novel One Second After as another science fiction story but I could not. It was an emotional and gut-wrenching read—because it could actually happen.
An Electromagnetic Pulse (EPM) explosion over the continental United States would have devastating consequences for our country. The detonation of a nuclear weapon produces high-energy gamma radiation that travels radially away from the burst center. When the detonation occurs at high altitudes—greater than twenty-five miles—the gamma rays directed towards the earth encounter the atmosphere where they interact with air molecules to produce positive ions and recoil electrons called Compton electrons after the physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1927 for his discovery of the Compton Effect. The gamma radiation interacting with the air molecules produces charge separation as the Compton recoil electrons are ejected and leave behind the more massive, positive ions. The earth's magnetic field's interaction with the Compton recoil electrons causes charge acceleration, which further radiates an electromagnetic field as an instantaneous electromagnetic pulse.2
Additionally, a high-altitude nuclear burst also produces a relatively slow magnetohydrodynarnic EMP, whose effects are like those from geomagnetic solar storm disturbances causing the flow of very low frequency current into the earth and into long transmission lines. The reality of the damage to electrical and electronic equipment by EMP has been established in various nuclear tests and by the use of EMP simulators.3
The intense and invisible energy pulse cannot be sensed by people and doesn't damage the human body. Unlike a lightning strike, an EMP explosion is both much faster in producing damaging power surges and much broader and far-reaching in causing simultaneous burnout and failure of electrical and electronic systems over a large area. A well-designed nuclear weapon detonated at a high altitude over Kansas could have damaging effects over virtually all of the continental United States. Our technologically oriented society and its heavy dependence on advanced electronics systems could be brought to its knees with cascading failures of our critical infrastructure. Our vulnerability increases daily as our use and dependence on electronics continues to accelerate.
As former Speaker Newt Gingrich describes the potential catastrophic consequences of an EMP attack over the United States, he notes that "this is not idle speculation but taken from the consensus findings of nine distinguished American scientists who authored the Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack^."4
Unfortunately, the Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attach^ was released the exact