4 thoughts on “Recalling that 1962 nuclear test”

1. facts matter February 6, 2018 at 10:34 am

   I remember the sky was a wild array of orange and purple colors and I saw a brightly colored boomerang shape in the sky. We felt relieved that we were told ahead of time that it was expected, instead of the previous blast that was unexpected and terrifying.

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2. Charley Memminger February 6, 2018 at 3:12 pm

   I was in elementary school in Georgia in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. My dad was a B-52 pilot put on alert in case he had to go on a bombing run. In school, we had missile test drills. In order to survive a nuke attack, we were taught to climb under our little wooden desks. No sht! Who knew that those little desks were nuke proof? So when Margie and I received the warning that a nuke missile was on its way to Hawaii at about 8 a.m. a few weeks ago, – and not having any wooden school desks at hand – popped a bottle of champagne sat on our lanai. Possible nuke attack? Been there. Cheers.

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3. compare and decide February 10, 2018 at 11:52 am

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime#Explosion

   “Starfish Prime caused an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), which was far larger than expected, so much larger that it drove much of the instrumentation off scale, causing great difficulty in getting accurate measurements. The Starfish Prime electromagnetic pulse also made those effects known to the public by causing electrical damage in Hawaii, about 1,445 kilometres (898 mi) away from the detonation point, knocking out about 300 streetlights,[6] setting off numerous burglar alarms and damaging a telephone company microwave link.[7] The EMP damage to the microwave link shut down telephone calls from Kauai to the other Hawaiian islands.”

   The aftermath disturbed scientists.

   http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/07/09/the-50th-anniversary-of-starfish-prime-the-nuke-that-shook-the-world/#.Wn9XcvxG3gg

   “But the effects were far more than a simple light show. When the bomb detonated, those electrons underwent incredible acceleration. When that happens they create a brief but extremely powerful magnetic field. This is called an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP. The strength of the pulse was so huge that it affected the flow of electricity on the Earth hundreds of kilometers away! In Hawaii it blew out hundreds of streetlights, and caused widespread telephone outages. Other effects included electrical surges on airplanes and radio blackouts.

   “The EMP had been predicted by scientists, but the Starfish Prime pulse was far larger than expected. And there was another effect that hadn’t been predicted accurately. Many of the electrons from the blast didn’t fall down into the Earth’s atmosphere, but instead lingered in space for months, trapped by Earth’s magnetic field, creating an artificial radiation belt high above our planet’s surface.

   “When a high-speed electron hits a satellite, it can generate a sort-of miniature EMP. The details are complex, but the net effect is that these electrons can zap satellites and damage their electronics. The pulse of electrons from the Starfish Prime detonation damaged at least six satellites (including one Soviet bird), all of which eventually failed due to the blast. Other satellite failures at the time may be linked to the explosion as well.

   “The overall effect shocked scientists and engineers. They had expected something much smaller, not nearly the level that actually occurred. Because of this, later high-altitude nuclear tests made by the US as part of Operation Fishbowl were designed to have a much lower yield. Although the explosion energies are still classified, it’s estimated they ranged from a few dozen to a few hundred kilotons, a fraction of the 1.4 megaton Starfish Prime explosion.”

   This was inspired by the recently discovered “Van Allen Belts”.

   https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/going-nuclear-over-the-pacific-24428997/

   “What Van Allen had discovered were the bands of high-energy particles that were held in place by strong magnetic fields, and soon known as the Van Allen Belts. A year later, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine as he opened an entirely new field of research—magnetospheric physics—and catapulted the United States into the race to space with the Soviet Union.

   “On the same day Van Allen held his press conference in May 1958, he agreed to cooperate with the U.S. military on a top-secret project. The plan: to send atomic bombs into space in an attempt to blow up the Van Allen Belts, or to at least disrupt them with a massive blast of nuclear energy.

   “At the height of the Cold War, the thinking may have been, as the science historian James Fleming said recently, that “if we don’t do it, the Russians will.” In fact, over the next few years, both the United States and the Soviet Union tested atomic bombs in space, with little or no disruption in the Van Allen Belts. Fleming suspects that the U.S. military may have theorized that the Van Allen belts could be used to attack the enemy. But in July 1962, the United States was ready to test a far more powerful nuclear bomb in space.”

   What scientists and the military had been concerned with specifically:

   https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2010/07/01/128170775/a-very-scary-light-show-exploding-h-bombs-in-space

   “The plan was to send rockets hundreds of miles up, higher than the Earth’s atmosphere, and then detonate nuclear weapons to see:
   a) If a bomb’s radiation would make it harder to see what was up there (like incoming Russian missiles!);
   b) If an explosion would do any damage to objects nearby;
   c) If the Van Allen belts would move a blast down the bands to an earthly target (Moscow! for example); and — most peculiar —
   d) if a man-made explosion might “alter” the natural shape of the belts.”

   Some say that Hawaii is especially vulnerable to an EMP attack.

   http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/05/12/electromagnetic-pulse-attack-on-hawaii-would-devaste-state.html

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4. compare and decide February 17, 2018 at 12:02 pm

   How likely is an EMP attack?

   http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/congress-warned-north-korean-emp-attack-would-kill-90-of-all-americans/article/2637349

   “Congress was warned Thursday that North Korea is capable of attacking the U.S. today with a nuclear EMP bomb that could indefinitely shut down the electric power grid and kill 90 percent of “all Americans” within a year.

   “At a House hearing, experts said that North Korea could easily employ the “doomsday scenario” to turn parts of the U.S. to ashes.

   “In calling on the Pentagon and President Trump to move quickly to protect the grid, the experts testified that an explosion of a high-altitude nuclear bomb delivered by a missile or satellite “could be to shut down the U.S. electric power grid for an indefinite period, leading to the death within a year of up to 90 percent of all Americans.””
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   http://www.newsweek.com/could-north-korean-emp-attack-could-cause-mass-starvation-and-societal-691736

   “So how likely is the scenario that Pry warns of? According to some experts, not very.”
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   More skepticism regarding a potential EMP attack.

   https://www.wired.com/story/north-korea-emp-threat/
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   A measured technical analysis of the potential destruction of an EMP attack:

   https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/news/a28425/emp-north-korea/

   “Back in March, a bogus claim circulated that 90 percent of Americans would die in such an attack, a figure also regurgitated by a former director of the CIA. That simply is not the case.

   “The short E1 pulse induces strong, transient electrical currents in conductors, and the longer the conductor, the more voltage it experiences. Small devices like smartphones and laptops may be unscathed, but the real problems happen in long cables that would experience surges of 10,000 volts or more. … [That] will affect the low voltage sensor and control lines connected to relays and control electronics. These lines usually only carry a few volts, and the surge will destroy computers, communication devices like routers, and safety relays. … The long, slow E3 pulse is a threat, though, and may be strong enough to burn out transformers attached to long power cables. While the generators themselves may be left intact, the damage inflicted by E1 and E3 pulses mean no electricity can reach people, so the lights will go out. What happens after that is speculation. The most extreme suggestion is that, pushed back to 19th century technology, America would starve, but likely it the situation wouldn’t be quite so dire.”
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   A fixation on the theoretical possibility of an EMP attack can blind us to more probable threats.

   http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/07/emp_threats_could_an_electro_magnetic_pulse_weapon_wipe_out_the_power_grid.html

   “Moreover, if an adversary did want to start World War III and was not deterred by the formidable U.S. capability to respond to such an attack, the grid might not be the best target. It is not a certainty that such a detonation would cause a prolonged, widespread, and devastating power outage; indeed, some manufacturers of industrial control systems and transformers report that their equipment has been tested and proven robust to such an electromagnetic pulse. Nor is it clear that the electric grid would be the ideal target for such weapons. And for that matter, there are other, easier ways to attack the grid. Frankly, the development of more discrete EMP weapons that can be used against specific military targets is probably more worrisome from a national security point of view.

   “Second, there’s the possibility of a remote cyber attack, which is uncomfortably easy to carry out if the target is a website or business software. Those types of attacks can cause significant damage to a company or even a country, but are less likely to result in physical damage to equipment in the grid.

   “National outage reporting data suggests that enemy No. 1 is Mother Nature. According to the Department of Energy, severe weather accounts for the majority of outages; in 2014 there were 87 outages resulting from weather-related issues.

   “A different kind of weather, space weather, also gets some attention as a hazard to the grid. Geomagnetic events have the potential to be high consequence, and although the last major event occurred in 1921, such flare-ups could happen at any time.”
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   There is a hype campaign behind the concern with an EMP attack.

   https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/07/the-campaign-to-terrify-you-about-emp/241971/

   “It may be that a terrorist, after going through the trouble of acquiring a nuclear warhead and a missile capable of delivering it to America’s shores, would be a fool to employ the ultimate weapon in such a cockamamie fashion. The effects of an EMP are far from universal; according to one commissioned study, a best-case scenario would impact 70 percent of electronics, while a worst-case estimate could be as low as 5 percent. Far better from the terrorist’s perspective to deliver the bomb as it was intended, rather than hang his hopes on a series of unpredictable events and second- or third-order consequences. After all, a nuclear bomb need not be made any more devastating to serve a terrorist’s purposes.

   “A slightly more plausible scenario could involve a state actor who, facing a vastly superior U.S. military massed on its border, might consider launching an EMP attack against U.S. troops as a way of evening the playing field. Because the U.S. military is much more highly dependent on technology than others, a rogue state facing the threat of invasion could conceivably attempt such a tactic against invading forces in the hopes that it could damage their capabilities without incurring the totally devastating retaliation that a “regular” nuclear strike would surely provoke. Of course, a wide-ranging EMP would knock out his own electronics as much as it would anyone else’s, so even this scenario is a bit far-fetched.”
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   The wikipedia entry on the effects of an EMP attack:

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse

   “The EMP damage of the Starfish Prime test was quickly repaired due, in part, to the fact that the EMP over Hawaii was relatively weak compared to what could be produced over the northern U.S. with a more intense pulse, and in part due to the relative ruggedness (compared to today) of Hawaii’s electrical and electronic infrastructure in 1962.

   “Newer calculations showed that if the Starfish Prime warhead had been detonated over the northern continental United States, the magnitude of the EMP would have been much larger (22 to 30 kV/m) because of the greater strength of the Earth’s magnetic field over the United States, as well as its different orientation at high latitudes. These calculations, combined with the accelerating reliance on EMP-sensitive microelectronics, heightened awareness that EMP could be a significant problem.”

   Soviet test 184

   “In 1962, the Soviet Union also performed three EMP-producing nuclear tests in space over Kazakhstan, the last in the “Soviet Project K nuclear tests”. Although these weapons were much smaller (300 kiloton) than the Starfish Prime test, they were over a populated, large land mass and at a location where the Earth’s magnetic field was greater; the damage caused by the resulting EMP was reportedly much greater than in Starfish Prime. The geomagnetic storm–like E3 pulse from Test 184 induced a current surge in a long underground power line that caused a fire in the power plant in the city of Karaganda.”

   Effects

   “An energetic EMP can temporarily upset or permanently damage electronic equipment by generating high voltage and high current surges; semiconductor components are particularly at risk. The effects of damage can range from imperceptible to the eye, to devices being literally blown apart. Cables, even if short, can act as antennas to transmit pulse energy to equipment.”

   Electronics in operation vs. inactive

   “Equipment that is running at the time of an EMP is more vulnerable. Even a low-energy pulse has access to the power source, and all parts of the system are illuminated by the pulse. For example, a high-current arcing path may be created across the power supply, burning out some device along that path. Such effects are very hard to predict, and equipment needs high-level laboratory testing for vulnerabilities if it may be subjected to pulses.”

   On cars

   “An EMP would probably not affect most cars, despite modern cars’ heavy use of electronics, because cars’ electronic circuits and cabling are likely too short to be affected. In addition, cars’ metallic frames provide some protection. However, even a small percentage of cars breaking down due to an electronic malfunction could cause traffic jams.”

   On small electronics

   “An EMP has a smaller effect, the shorter the length of an electrical conductor; though other factors affect the vulnerability of electronics as well, so there is no one cutoff length that determines whether some piece of equipment will survive. However, small electronic devices, such as wristwatches and cell phones, would most likely withstand an EMP.”

   On humans and animals

   “Though large amounts of voltage can get accumulated in electrical conductors after an EMP, it will generally not flow out into human or animal bodies, and thus contact is safe.”
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   In sum, the more objective and skeptical literature on the dangers of an EMP attack distinguishes between degrees of vulnerability. In particular, different segments of the electrical infrastructure face varying levels of risk.

   – The long miles of cables and wiring that make up so much the electricity grid would serve as antennas that would absorb and transmit vast amounts of EMP.
   – Transformers, routers and other nodes within the grid would be destroyed.
   – The end points of the grid, namely appliances, just might survive unscathed.

   There is a certain biting irony to such a scenario.

   – Cars would generally restart in the aftermath of an EMP attack, but there would be no gasoline. (A car is a natural “Faraday cage” protecting its contents from electromagnetism.)
   – Individual cell phones and landline phones might likewise be unaffected, but the cell phone and telephone system would be down.

   That’s a bit like the Great Depression, during which farms and factories were still capable of production, but no one was buying because the economic system had collapsed.

   In this light, an alternate response to the EMP threat might be to supplement the grid with decentralized, distributed electricity production.

   – microgrids
   – battery storage
   – Electric Vehicles

   The problem might be re-conceived as being the obsolescence of the centralized grid, not the lack of a secure centralized grid.

   Of course, the utility companies would resist a distributed energy solution much the way they resist having to shield their grid from an EMP.

   One conservative critique of the situation is that utilities, as private, for-profit entities, are more interested in shareholder value than they are in national security. (That there might at times be a potential contradiction between capitalism and patriotism is not a sentiment that one hears often among conservatives in these United States.)

   https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterdetwiler/2014/07/31/protecting-the-u-s-against-the-electromagnetic-pulse-threat-a-continued-failure-of-leadership-could-make-911-look-trivial-someday/#76a3b9167a14

   Again, if there is a credible threat to the grid, it might come from nature, not from man.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal

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