The threat of an electromagnetic pulse event or attack on the United States that could kill tens of millions of people has prompted George Noory, host of “Coast to Coast AM,” the most-listened-to overnight radio program in North America, to launch a campaign to prepare a defense.
“I implore all individual states, the president and members of Congress to immediately develop a plan to protect our power grid,” said Noory. “The preservation of our great nation and the lives of its people are critical.”
WND has reported extensively on the issue and is a partner in the campaign.
“I want to thank WND and Joseph Farah for joining this effort, which is imperative to our future,” Noory said.
The goal is to protect and insulate the U.S. power grid against an EMP event or attack from a solar flare, nuclear weapon or ballistic missile, all of which could endanger the lives of millions of Americans, according to Noory.
The work follows on the heels of a recent report from NASA scientists that Earth narrowly avoided a catastrophic X-class solar flare on July 23, 2012.
According to WND senior staff writer F. Michael Maloof, whose book, “A Nation Forsaken,” addresses the EMP threat, the United States could be turned into a virtual 19th-century agrarian society.
The problem is that an EMP would take out virtually all electronics. The controls that enable gas to be pumped into a vehicle, systems that control underground pipelines, the computers controlling financial systems, the electronics in vehicles, communications, emergency services, law enforcement and much more could all be rendered useless.
See the big list of EMP reports from WND.
Maloof wrote recently:”Under such chaotic conditions, there is no doubt that gangs may begin roaming neighborhoods and more rural locations, and individuals need to be able to protect their families and possessions. It will mean having a firearm as part of families’ survival items.
“People who have experienced the impact of temporarily having no electricity and no means of transportation in times of floods, hurricanes and past natural disasters know what such chaotic conditions are like,” he continued. “In the case of an EMP, people need to place themselves into a 19th-century existence and figure out what they will need in a household, such as a supply of stored food, water and medications on which they may need to survive for weeks, months and possibly years.”
Experts forecast an event could affect some 160 million people, take anywhere from four to 10 years to recover and cost upward of $2 trillion.
Noory’s campaign will feature scientific experts and government leaders on his program, which reaches more than 3 million listeners weekly.
There is a way to protect your electronics in an EMP event, the Faraday bags from the WND Superstore. Also featured there is “A Nation Forsaken,” an emergency radio, a personal water straw to clean water, a how-to guidebook for fleeing danger and a long list of supplies helpful for being self-reliant.
The goal is to inform the public of the vulnerability of America’s electronics-dependent infrastructure and the need to harden the facilities and build protections.
He will seek congressional action.
WND will leverage its reach of 6 million unique visitors each month and more than 40 million page views to support and promote efforts to improve defense capabilities.
“The preservation of our great nation and the lives of its people are critical. It is not a matter of if, but when we will experience an EMP event or attack. We need to be ready now. I want to thank WND and Joseph Farah for joining this effort, which is imperative to our future,” Noory said.
WND founder and Editor-in-Chief Joseph Farah stated: “I’m so grateful to George Noory for recognizing the threat to our grid as the No. 1 catastrophic threat to national security. If the grid goes down, it could spell the starvation deaths of tens of millions of Americans. It’s hard to top that threat. George Noory’s platform, coupled with WND’s, significantly raises the probability of getting Congress to take responsibility for addressing this threat, which, by all accounts, is not an expensive fix nor a technically difficult one. WND pledges its support to this important campaign.”
Maloof warned the U.S. has become increasingly vulnerable.
“The threat of an electromagnetic pulse event,” he said, “whether natural or man-made, to our vulnerable electrical grid and the life-sustaining critical infrastructures that depend on it will be added to the ongoing infiltration of al-Qaida-affiliated terrorists linked with drug cartels and MS-13 members known to be using the mass immigration influx as a cover to go to some 1,200 U.S. cities where the cartels and gang members already are present.”
He emphasized the “incredible thing is that these vulnerabilities can be fixed.”
“For less than $2 billion, we can harden our grid against an EMP if we can get SHIELD Act legislation passed soon. Once passed, it will take another five years to accomplish the task of hardening the national grid system if there are no hitches,” he said.
“We need to act now to remove all obstacles to fixing this vulnerability to our national security and way of life, and that would include recreating local civil defense facilities that can have stored water, food and medicines. People would then know to report to those facilities since we will have to assume there would be no communication or emergency services following an EMP event,” he said.
Experts warn an EMP event could do more than shut down the infrastructure, explaining it likely would produce explosions.
For example, when electronic Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, or SCADA, systems failed in the 1990s, 250,000 gallons of gas leaked into Hannah and Whatcom Creeks near Bellingham, Washington, and ignited. Three people were killed and eight more injured. The explosions also collapsed the banks of the creek and destroyed many buildings near the creek over a one-and-a-half mile section.
Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, recently joined Noory for a two-hour discussion about the problem.
Maloof, whose “A Nation Forsaken: EMP: The Escalating Threat of an American Catastrophe” is published by WND, talked about the potential dangers, why only a few members of Congress, the military and the scientific community are issuing warnings and what Americans need to do.
Noory also recently welcomed William R. Forstchen, professor of history and faculty fellow at Montreat College in North Carolina and author of “One Second After,” to discuss updates on the dangers of an EMP event, as well as steps to prepare.
“Coast to Coast AM” broadcasts Monday through Sunday from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. Eastern Time and can be heard on more than 570 stations. Noory, a longtime veteran of broadcasting, joined the show in 2003, and is author of “Talking to the Dead,” “Journey to the Light” and “Worker in the Light.”
WND.com is the original independent news source on the Internet and remains the largest. One of the top 500 websites in the U.S., it was founded as a committed watchdog on government waste, fraud, abuse and corruption. Farah is the only independent online news entrepreneur with a long track record in the press. He served for six years as the executive news editor of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. He was editor-in-chief of the Glendale Newspapers before becoming the editor-in-chief of the Sacramento Union. He founded WorldNetDaily, later known as WND, in 1997.
Maloof has explained that in the case of a natural occurrence, a storm begins with solar flares that emit x-rays and other extreme ultraviolet radiation. If Earth is in the path, the flare would strike at the speed of light. A side effect would be a solar electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, that would affect everything from communications to vulnerable electrical grids.
In the case of a deliberate attack, such an EMP signal can be generated by a nuclear explosion in a fairly low position in the skies over the United States. A missile could be launched from a ship off the nation’s coast.
In a 2008 report from the EMP Commission, it was revealed in detail the catastrophic impact an EMP would have on such critical infrastructures as telecommunications, banking and finance, petroleum and natural gas delivery, transportation, food and water delivery, emergency services and space systems.
In issuing the 2008 report, which made a series of recommendations, EMP Commission Chairman William Graham said that an EMP event, whether natural or man-made, would cause “unprecedented cascading failures of major infrastructures.” In that event, he said, a regional or national recovery would be long and difficult.
Principal backers of EMP legislation so far include Reps. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., and the other members of the bi-partisan Congressional Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Caucus, who have introduced the SHIELD Act and CIPA in the House.
There are several proposals pending:
- H.R. 2417 Secure High-voltage Infrastructure for Electricity from Lethal Damage (“SHIELD Act”). 113th Congress (introduced June 18, 2013).
- H.R. 3410 Critical Infrastructure Protection Act (“CIPA”). 113th Congress (introduced Oct. 30, 2013).
- Grid Reliability and Infrastructure Defense Act (“GRID Act”). 113th Congress (introduced March 26, 2014)
- Senate Bill S. 2158
- House Bill H.R. 4298
Some of the proposals call for actual protections for the grid. Another simply would have the government include an EMP event in its planning procedures for various scenarios.
Are you concerned about U.S. power grid being vulnerable? Sound off in today’s WND poll.
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