nephews and she would do the op-ed on monday. >> it was a meeting in the moment. obama was somebody who energized young voters. kennedy always listens to his nieces and grand nieces and nephews. they were excited about the obama. once they achieve adulthood he takes their views seriously. and also was the culmination of some respects of the civil rights that obama had used throughout his career. [inaudible] >> you know, he has a lot of respect on senator clinton and they worked a lot on healthcare and he helped her a lot when she first came to the senate. they never really clicked in right the same way. she's a different kind of legislator from up here and he's from down here. she's a very hard worker and, you know, she's really just so knowledgeable on policy, but she -- she doesn't operate on the same way up there that he doesn't so i don't think they ended up having quite the relationship with her that he thought he might. >> thank you very much. finish. >> no, i'm done. [laughter] >> well, there it is about -- it's about 75 years and about 90 minutes. we could go a lot longer. you've been a terrific audience. [applause] >> let's hear it from the seven writers and the editors from the "boston globe." [applause] >> the eight writers will be outside autographing books as you leave. thanks again for coming, everyone. you've been terrific. [inaudible conversations] >> for more information about the contributors to the book, visit boston.com/bostonglobe. >> how is c-span funded? >> maybe donations. >> there's some kind of sponsorships or something like that. >> taxpayer-funded possibly. >> through philanthropy. >> fundraising. >> government maybe? partly? >> how is c-span funded? 30 years ago, america's cable companies created c-span as a public service, a private business initiative. no government, no government money. >> william fortune talks about his latest book, one second after, a novel about a nuclear bomb explosion that sends out electromagnetic pulses which permanently destroy all the electrical systems. the foundation for defense of democracies here in washington hosted this event. it's about an hour. >> hi, i'm cliff. i'm the president of the foundation for the defense of democracies. it's a policy institute formed just after 9/11. we focus on terrorism, the ideologies, regimes and movements that drive terrorism. we're based in washington, d.c. today my guest is william fortune. william fortune is a military historian. he's the author of some 40 books including six i believe he co-authored with newt gingrich? >> yes. >> and his most recent book is "one second after." it was also -- it is a novel but it is also being made into a motion picture from warner brothers. its subject is america after an electromagnetic pulse attack. thank you for being here. it's a pleasure to see you. i'm afraid there are many people who do not know what an electromagnetic pulse attackñrs would be. maybe we start with you explaining that. >> sure. emp is shorthand for electromagnetic pulse. it's a byproduct of any detonation of a nuclear weapon. first realized with some testing in the '60s. i know this sounds like sci-fi so you in the audience, folks watching this later, if this sounds like sci-fi, this evening go on the internet, google up emp, go to wikipedia, here's a couple of other things you should look up. starfish crime which was the american test in 1962 of detonating a weapon in space which blew out a fair part of the power grid in hawaii. also look up soviet test 184. and then finally if you want to look at a complete different aspect of emp, look up the carington of that which was triggered by a solar storm. now, to go back to your question, it's byproduct of detonating a nuclear weapon. here's the scenario that's terrifying for me, it's pointed out in the book, in my opinion to america. if you detonate a weapon approximately 200, to 250 miles above the center of the united states and you don't need a high mega ton range, a low kiloton range, some what the koreans detonated a few weeks ago will do it. when the gamma ray bursts and it hits the atmosphere it, starts a chain reaction, it's called a compton effect. imagine a pebble rolling downtown triggering an avalanche. by the time it hits the earth's surface at the speed of light, it is a giant electrostatic discharge. it feeds through the power grid of the united states. all of our wire, antennas, everything become -- antennas picking up this electrical overload. it blows out the entire power brid of the united states, game over. >> so in other words you've got a missile instead of hitting a target such as a city, a nuclear missile and wiping out the city. you have the missile go high up in the united states, detonate and missile and people would not feel anything and you would fry the electrical grid and it becomes very clear in your book and it takes place in a town much like where you live in where you teach college and they find out nothing electrical works, every car on the highway has stopped, anything that is computerized is dead, phones don't work, refrigeration doesn't work. everything has stopped working. >> it's all gone. there's a variety of scenarios looking at this. some people talk about a three-weapon detonation, one on the west coast, one in the center of the united states, one towards the west coast. there's a number of various scenarios, delivery by icbm or the really frightening one is a cargo ship just getting a couple hundred miles off the coast of the gulf of mexico. you do not need precision guidance when you're delivering any mp weapon. we have to get our cold war thinking. all you have to do is do a general loft into the area, detonate it, and then the cascading effect starts. the congressional starts started in 2004/2008 well, one of the gentleman testifying said that 90% of all americans will be dead a year after an emp event. >> can you explain why they would be dead. it's not because of the force of the explosion. it's because of the absence of infrastructure. that means food begins to rot, medicine begins to go bad. you can't deliver anything. there are no emergency vehicles. no planes are flying. no helicopters. all that's gone. >> let's talk about planes to start with. it's approximately noon, i think, as we're doing this program right now. at this moment there's about maybe a quarter of a million americans in transit. a couple thousand commercial planes. you can have captain sully up in the front seat, the famous pilot who saved all those lives by ditching the plane in the hudson. well, suppose he lost his electrical along with his power. he would be holding a stick that's usely. a fair number of commercial aircraft will fall in the first minute. it will make 9/11 pale to insignificance in compared to what will happen in the first minute. >> in your novel, the president is in air force one when this happen and it falls out of the sky. >> i have only worked with unclassified information. so i can't speak directly as to what the condition air force one is but i pray they have upgraded it from the last upgrade which was some years ago. >> right. >> and i don't want to jump too far ahead. but let's just mention and this then we'll come back to it. if you are worried about the possibility of an emp attack, there are two things one should think about doing. and it seems to me and it seems -- i think it seems to you, and one is moving ahead rapidly towards comprehensive and effective missile defense so that missile going up could be destroyed before it detonates, before it does damage, and the other is a hardening of the electrical grid and the systems we have in the united states so it's not clear that everything, every plane would be knocked out by any mp attack. >> let's just take an analogy. an aircraft carrier, world war ii. it had the capability of defending itself with antiaircraft fire. fighter protection and everything else but what happens if the carrier gets hit? then you go in to damage control. so you're pointing out exactly. we need two things which i hope this book triggers just a little bit. we need ballistic missile defense but we also need that damage control now in place. the hardening of our infrastructure to be able to withstand. if the systems are not hardened, would not embolden some enemies to think they can try this? >> exactly. two things to point out. we all love the fact we have blackberries and ipods. >> i don't like blackberries because work follows you. >> what i'm driving at is this, and this comes out in your novel, that we are developing a more sophisticated but more vulnerable society than we have ever had because as we have these technological achievements and they're more widespread, we become more, not less vulnerable. in your novel, there are a few cars that are working. they're all antique cars that don't rely on computer technology. you have a plane that works because it's an antique plane. those hold up against this sort of attack in a way that does not happen with the highly sophisticated and fragile system that we're now building? >> imagine a graph. one line could represent the research going in to increasing the gamma ray burst coming off a nuclear weapon. that's classified information. i can't speak for it. i don't know about it. but one can assume that it's being done. point 2, which i think we're all familiar with, think about a cell phone if you could afford one 30 years ago. you know, it was the size of a shoe box. across the last 30 years we have built a fabulous, wondrous, incredible infrastructure. but in so doing we have become more reliant on microprecision electronics that are ever increasingly susceptible to an emp overload. again, go back to soviet test 184 and you will read how it's reported that some of the ignition systems in the cars underneath this burst in central asia cooked off. we're talking in 1962 soviet car which i think was slightly overbuilt. compare that to a vehicle today that's loaded with electronics so we're seeing ever increasing vulnerability at the same time that ever increasing potential of damage from a small nuclear weapon. >> you and i are aware of this, some of the people in the room are, most people probably in the country don't know a lot about it. an important point is we are not alone in being aware of this as a dangerous weapon and a weapon that could be used against us. there has been such a thing as an emp commission that was established by congress. it didn't get a whole lot of publicity. >> you put that into past tense as well. >> exactly. and there is some talk about reinstating the commission but they're out of business or going out of business as we discuss this, if i'm correct. >> yes. >> particularly, important to understand, for example, the iranian regime, which has as its rallying cry and has for 30 years death to america, they know about emp, as the congressional emp commission found out. and if i'm correct, they have been working -- the iranian regime -- let me put it bluntly, has been working on developing the capability to launch an emp attack; is that correct? >> now you're really hitting into a core issue that's actually part of the book. there have been -- there has been testing going on from barges in the caspian see of doing a vertical launch and then declaring that it's a failure. there's only one profile that fits a vertical launch for use. this to me is the equivalent of -- say you and i are out in the cruise and the waters off japan in october of 1941 and we see torpedo planes doing slow low level passes in a narrow harbor and one of us might say, you know, that looks like a gear-up on a strike for pearl harbor. we are looking at a potential pearl harbor. if they are testing in this matter, vertical launch off of barges, it fits that scenario we talked about earlier. >> the reason to use a barge you don't need a long-range missile. you can do it off the barge. so we worry about the kinds of missiles. there are missiles could hit israel or europe. they could put it on a barge or a freighter and by the way, this also comes out in your book -- if they wanted to do it in such a way that there were no fingerprints, they could turn the barge over to a hezbollah crew or an al-qaeda crew or whoever wants to do it. the ship could be scuttled afterwards or it might be taken away in the night. in your novel it is not clear who has done this to the united states. who has been complicit in this act. >> one of the things that concerns me the most here we have to get out of the cold war paradigm. for 30 years -- the world i crew up in was duck and cover. as a boy growing up in the new york city area i think many in the audience smile the duck and cover. i remember the cuban missile crisis where we practiced evidence. but remember mad, mutual assured destruction and it worked. thank heavens our opponents at that time were communists and atheists because every pragmatic -- they're not going to inherit a smoking room. we're dealing with a situation now in iran where mutual short destruction might well be an encouragement. >> that's exactly -- i happen to know this a bit because i was an exchange student in the soviet union years ago and my view many of the soviets were evil and they weren't irrational and the idea of moscow was destroyed was terrifying to them. but bernard lewis and others the dean of islamic studs have said if you have the religious ideology of a mahmoud ahmadinejad, if you believe that did mahdi will return to the earth only when millions of people are screaming in agony, then the idea a mutually destruction is not a deterrence. the cia i believe has also translated documents from the persian specifically dealing with the idea of an emp capability and how they would obtain it and this is from a regime that has been, as i said, saying death to america is its goal and is something that a world without america is obtainable. now, despite all this, there are a lot of people out there, there's a large piece in the new republic recently saying all of this that bill fortune and others have been talking about it is science. it is something -- it is some crazy scenario that we really shouldn't be worrying about trying to defend ourselves against. the first thing that occurred to me if in 1999 we had been here and talked about the possibility approximate of 19 radical middle easterners armed with box cutters running a plane in the world trade center and attempting to go to the capitol and the white house people would say that's crazy, that's paranoia and that's science fiction. they couldn't get away with it. do you agree with that analogy. >> i have a wonderful friend. he was one of the old grandfathers of science fiction from the '30s and '40s. he had a great story in 1941 some gentleman sat down with him who said you're no longer to write anything on the following subjects. uranium, plutonium and he made a mistake, are we making an atomic bomb suddenly they took him into another room that said if you keep this conversation up you're going to spend a long time in south dakota. so that was science fiction to the world in 1941 and look at the terrible results in hiroshima and nagasaki. this is not science fiction. the capability is here. we could be emp today. i don't think to be a paranoid monger. don't read the book but go out there and do the research. go online. look up emp and you think i'm going to say this the second time. look up starfish crime, which was the american test in 1962. look up soviet test 184. that's the data that shows you the potential of what could be done to the united states right now. >> people should read your book, by the way. because it's entertaining and because it's -- it gives one an education. you're a military historian. you also have worked on the history of technology. and my next question is, put those two together, generally speaking in history, any rep developed generally has been used am i right? >> yes, yes. we've all heard the cry throughout history that this new weapon is so terrible, one catapults -- i believe it was a spartan who said hercules what tragedy is valor. when machine guns were projected it's going to be so terrible we're not going to do it. all weapon systems are eventually used. >> and emp makes maximum use of a single weapon or a small number of chemicals for a long time i think the thinking has been, you know, if 100 nuclear weapons are launched against us, that's -- we might not be able to defend but one or two surely we can through deterrence, not necessarily if it's used in this way to plunge us back in a couple hundred centuries technologically. >> i'm going to have to say something that sounds rather cruel. and that is bang for the buck. if that at this moment a hiroshima-size weapon was detonated over, say, a significant building, say the capitol, our probability of survival here would be pretty good. so we would deal with the horror again that will pale 9/11. that same weapon if used as an emp, the initial result, of course, would be the loss of the aircraft. but take a look at this. where did this water come from? i'm asking you right now where did this water come from? >> it came from a reservoir and was pushed through the use of electricity, i'm guessing. >> imagine washington, d.c. in 24 hours without no water. imagine washington, d.c. in 21 days with no food. it is an uninhabitable place. you have a hierarchy of needs sort of situation. within 48 to 72 hours, this would be worth its weight in gold to some people. then what? >> this probably deserves mention, too. beyond an attack, a purposeful attack, there is the possibility that you talked about of having an emp through some natural means. nasa and noaa put out some information carington, carington event. we've been in a low period of solar activity for about the last five years. i can remember -- i think it was in 2003 in north carolina we were watching northern lights. some of you might recall it fritzed some of our systems. a carington event refers an event in 1959 where tellography melts melted . railroad cross ties burst into flames. electrical sparks were shooting out of the tello graphy systems. if that event level of a solar storm happened today, it could emp the whole world if it lasted for 24 hours. one rotation of the earth, 24 hours, bang, most of the world. let me provide an analogy. one of my great heroes in developing this is congressman roscoe bartlett, a representative from frederick, maryland, who headed up from the republican side and let me emphasize as well, this is a bipartisan issue. i just wish we could get out of partisan politics on this issue and agree on a bipartisan basis that we'll all be in the same sinking ship. now, the issue of ballistic defense might not excite you so much, maybe green environmental issues do. therefore, please look at the carrington event. such a solar storm today would do the identical thing that you and i are talking about. well, congress and bartlyn's analogy is this. would any of us dare to own a house and not spent the 500 or $1,000 on insurance? all i'm asking for is good heaven's if we could spend one-tenth of 1% of what's been thrown on you in the last six months on proper hardening and defense i'd sleep easier. >> let's move on to that. there are two things that can be done to defend ourselves against an emp attack, whether it's by an enemy or it is through a solar event. one is to harden the electrical grid to be resistant to it. the other is missile defense. start with the first one but let's be clear. we're not aggressively doing either of these. >> that's right. >> in fact, we're not hardeming the grid. and it appears congress is on track to spend less on missile defense, not more at a time when we have iran being provocative, north korea being provocative testing missiles, testing nuclear weapons and pakistan which has both missiles and nuclear weapons is sort of on a precipice where you cannot guarantee those nukes could not come loose. it would seem, as you say on a bipartisan basis, members of congress of the administration would say our primary duty is to defend americans from this sort of thing. so let's make this a high priority. and neither of these are priorities, in fact, just the opposite. >> well, i have -- two of the main characters in my novel. one is conservative and the other is rather liberal in the views and about four weeks after this event both of them comment just how foolish, how stupid it all now seems of what divided us. what we're arguing back then four weeks ago is moot compared to what we are facing today. we tend to forget how divided america was divided public opinion in 1940, 1941, what became world war ii for us. there was some things done by franklin roosevelt if done today he would be impeached. go find -- look up the "chicago tribune" for december 5th, 1941, friday, 1941, look at the political cartoons on the cover denouncing the war hysteria in washington. it's right on the front page. that ended at 7:55 am december 7th, 1941, hawaiian time. the following day we were united. i want to see us united before we have another event. >> i want to take questions from our guests here. we have the technology, do we not. >> yes. >> we have the technology to tell any regime in the world, iran, north korea, anyone, that your missiles are a wasted investment because they are never going to hit their targets. we have the technology if we would implement and deploy it to destroy missiles before they hit their target anywhere in the world. am i correct in that? >> yes. >> that would require a layered and comprehensive defense system, land based, sea based off of ships and if we want to do it right, as i understand it, we need a space based missile defense system where the technologies is called brilliant pebble and really what it is it's a lot of rubbish in kind of sort of like a garbage cans -- >> the pebbles program is generations ahead of what was being talked about in the '80s. now it is precision tracking by very small munitions that can be placed into space. several dozen -- i don't know the exact specs but several dozen platforms and they are not weapons. the weaponization of space is when a weapon is carrying a nuclear warhead and it's coming our way. >> this destroys these weapons. >> yes. >> when these missiles get into space you're going to destroy them up there before they can ever hit their target. we have the technology to that. >> some people might were the old rand corporation in the '50s and '60s with nuclear war game north carolina and such and again, and if there's 100% probability i can inflict damage on you i might be tempted if you and i were in a serious disagreement but if you have a shield system up that the probability is very low, i will think twice or three times before taking that step. so a minimal investment now can save millions of lives. and let's say every american survived an emp event can we afford the 2 to $3 trillion to rebuild our power grid. and that's including the tragedies. >> i can't introduce everyone, i'm going to introduce two very briefly and ask for comments or questions. the general was his last assignment as director of the missile defense agency. and general william sanders is here with him as well or admiral -- i should have known him. >> you just promoted. >> and i'm very pleased to have them with us. feel free to ask a question or make a comment in what you've heard so far. >> thank you very much. i just wanted to comment that first of all i very much appreciate the views that you've expressed and i'm very interested in reading your book. one of the reasons why we do not have a comprehensive missile defense system deployed today, although we have a very first step in what we've done in the last four years, is because of the significant cuts in missile defense in the '90s, in the early '90s specifically in which they said that they wanted to rely on arms as opposed to missile defense and i want the viability with this kind of approach when you're dealing with this kind of threat. >> that's a great question. i would emphasize there was no collusion before you and i before this meeting and my response to this. ronald reagan proposed sdi circa '1982, '83 which was mockingly referred to as "star wars" and no matter what system we use, if we knock out a boost -- the boost phase, the transition phase, reentry phase with all these other technical terms which sounds like from dr. strangelove which could put 10,000 warheads over the united states, missile defense is useless. if one 1 or 2% get through we're all dead anyhow. well, that's cold war thinking. today missile defense is everything. we're looking at stopping 1 to 3 maybe 5 max the technology has gone generations in 30 years. so there's the difference, sir, between what was going on 30 years ago, 25 years ago and now. and also at a fraction of the cost of what sdi was being discussed about back in the 1980s. what's so frustrating is the technology is there, all that's needed now is some of the funding to finish developing a layered defense for our country. to me that's the insurance policy that that congressman bartlett talks about. >> as an old criminalologist the arms control approach works to the problem if you have two sides that you want to freeze the status quo. it's in their interest. they don't want to spend or do more but it doesn't work so well with a regime like that which came to power in 1979 in iran, which believes it is on a mission and that mission is to spread its revolution around the world. it is not at this point -- it has not come to the point in its revolution where it thanks, no, we'll be happy with khomeini in country country. admiral, did you want to say something as well. i'm going to go to peter over here national defense industry. >> bill, i'm peter. and i want to thank you for being the inspiration to a lunch we had on capitol hill with congressman bartlett with our speaker as well as with yvette clark who's from brooklyn who cosponsored with benny thompson head of the homeland security committee, a piece of legislation to harden all our electrical circuits every year for the next five years at a cost of 4 to $5 billion. they're trying to urge the administration to take that much money out of the stimulus package and spend it on something we desperately need as part of a smart grid because actually if you do the smart grid and don't harden as you know you're going to make the situation worse but i want to thank you and being the inspiration within primus. there is a bill. it is in the house. we're trying to get a senate companion bill done. yvette -- two people that are not exactly soul mates politically eevaluate clark from brooklyn, a democratic woman and roscoe bartlett, who is the congressman from maryland has basically been the inspirations to go to bennie thompson as getting him as chairman of the homeland security. but bill you've been the inspiration for doing this. there is a bill if we can get our act together and get this thing passed and we'll try to take care of the missile defense issue. but as my friend said here, the administration, unfortunately, is going backwards. the cuts they've had in the missile defense system. and kind of in the air when you talk about being able to detect a freighter, a rogue freighter. we have the technology to do that but our navy is not doing picket nudie as we call it and have the on shore on space to shoot down a scud unless we have a aegis cruiser right there. and that would have to get pretty lucky by identifying the freighter before it gets there. so thank you, sir, for your help. >> how much are you talking about per year as an insurance policy? >> bennie thompson's people have estimated that we could do not everything but we could ensure the survival of the electrical grid of a cost of 4 to $5 billion a year every year and you do it over a period of four to five years. there's some question as to whether -- to order all the parts to do the work. you can't do it all at once but you can't do a significant amount every year and just do it over a five-year period and pray that the threat doesn't materialize until then. >> i have to respond to one thing and i'm not trying to do this as some sort of overdramatized emotional appeal. but some of the inspiration of this novel we had two hurricanes crisscross my town two years ago. ivan was one of them, blew everything out. my father was in the last weeks of his life. and the nursing home called me up and asked me to come up and help out for the night because half the staff was gone and my father was in a bad crisis. now, of course, an emergency generator was kicking off however in an emp the emergency generator would be gone and i was sitting in my father's room with this storm and i was starting to think about this book. and i finally asked one of the staff -- i said, okay, if the power goes off, the respirator on my father is on. what do we do? well, we have some bottled air here. i said well, suppose we run out of bottled air what happens? we give you a squeeze ball to put on the face. and then i said in other words, until i become so tired i stop and then my father dies and they said, yeah. that's what we're talking about. that's the reality, i guess, i try to bring into the book. that is what we are all personally confronting with our children, our parents, our friends, our neighbors. and 4 and $5 billion a year could be the difference? >> peter, are you -- do you know or how would you characterize where congress is on this issue? first of all, can you say, if you don't mind, is congress more or less educated on the issue? and second, is it divided on a partisan basis or not entirely? and is the inclination let's cut a little, let's cut a lot. how would you characterize congress on this right now? >> i would say there's a sense among republicans this is a deadly serious issue. the problem comes with the democrats who say, oh, you just want to push missile defense. it's like immigration. don't talk to me about illegal immigration. it's too tough to stop, okay, so then it's not a problem. you define away the problem because you're worried about the solution because it's tough. >> then let's talk about the carington event. >> exactly. >> bennie thompson was convinced by roscoe bartlett. they're very good friends. you know, he's from mississippi. he's a democrat. you know, he's got everything from a to z on homeland security. he gets it. yvette clark is the chairwoman of the subcommittee that deals with transnational threats and terrorism and so forth. so i would say there's maybe 10% of the democratic party, maybe 20 might -- like jim marshall and others who are inclined to support missile defense anyway. this is a way to get around the conundrum by going with hardening and then what we do in missile defense we either get it right or we won't get it right. in the senate you got john lieberman and jeff kyle and ben nelson, evan byh and your democratic from alaska who's on the arms services committee, they get it. there isn't a companion bill yet but then again joe lieberman and sue collins i think would be persuaded to put in the homeland security bill. you got $800 billion of stimulus money what's $20 billion? i mean, it's over three years, fiscal '10, fiscal '11, fiscal '12. but again, it's going to require people like bill and others -- i mean, there's no substitute in getting on the phone and going up there and banging on the doors and doing it over and over and over again until they say, okay, we'll do this. by harden we get around the missile defense system oh, you just want to push missile defense so congress isn't there. but on the house side we have sufficient support that bennie thompson could get that bill done if i think if the administration came on board and i have to be honest with you, i don't know where they are in terms of answering some of his letters. i just don't know. >> while waiting for that, let me -- an interesting fact that i believe is correct is that the overwhelming majority of americans favor missile defense but they also believe we have it, to the extent we do not. they do not understand that we are not adequately defended right now. if we were to harden the electrical grid as peter subscribed, are there some subsidiary benefits even if there's never an emp attack? >> of course. well, again let's go back to the carington effect. what's the probability that iran or north korea is going to launch on us? well, we could maybe go across the river and somebody could work the statistics. what's the probability of a solar event hitting us 100%? >> uh-huh. and so -- >> we better do it now. >> it's a form of modernization because we have an antiquated electrical grid patched over generation guesss really. >> and a system we built at the time of a solar lull and we're doing this for the first time in the history of humanity but we don't realize there's a big hole in the gate so the probability of a solar event -- please, look up the nasa noaa report. it will happen to us sooner or later so let's get ready. >> john from the senior fellow discovery institute, thank you, cliff. and thank you, too mr. forstechen. i've actually read your book and i read it for bob terrell's american spectator it's called one second too late. it's an excellent book. there's a couple of problems and i suspect this is the thing you would need to take into congress or be able to answer this and i'm sympathetic to your answer that we need to do something on this. one of them is on the missile defense that the kind of missile defense you need to knock down something coming off a freighter is not the same as shooting at a ballistic missile fired from north korea headed toward hawaii. the system we have now will deal will the north korean event. but something like the airborne laser, which is very far along in development and now has been cut in half of the defense budget in the obama administration is precisely the system that would give you an opportunity to have a patrol and cover a larger area than the aegis cruisers do. because if you don't do it then, the missile also, if it's headed for 300 miles and going up like this, it's going to be ascending as a different kind of interception problems that we have now are not designed to do that. two other quick points on arms control one of the reasons the patriots did not work as we originally thought they did during the gulf war is 'cause they were dumbed down deliberately to comply with arms agreements that limited the deployment of technology the way targets were acquired, the speed of projectly they would be able to shoot at. that was a very big problem. but the other thing on the hardening. it's very good -- obviously, it's very high value to harden the grid. but you also need to think in terms of the end users, computers, millions of computers. we all now -- you just don't live without them in today's world or your car, which as you pointed out is a traveling computer. you need a hardening device on that kind of thing. we saw it with flight 447. one of the things that was pointed out there is that these new composite aircraft they have almost no metal in them, the charge goes in and it goes right into the only metal and in some of these aircraft the only metal is the hydraulic control type systems but you need some sort of thing -- it isn't realistic to put a car in a ferret cage or necessarily a computer because they're not easy to seal off but to get some kind of -- the equivalent of a grounding where everybody could put it on the house, where everybody could put it on their car or around their computer or what so that economically at the end points people are protected because if not, you could have a perfectly well functioning electronic grid and you have cars that still don't run and you have computers that still don't compute. >> you know, sir, in response to that, again, you're talking about a multilayered system. let me draw a quick analogy. i spent a lot of time working with world war veterans from a course i teach. and i remember one gentleman who was deck crew on a carrier he said, you know, when the fighters took off and we could hear that they were engaged 30 miles out we got a little worried. when the 5-inch guns started opening up we got a little more worried. when the 40 millimeter guns started opening up, we got really worried and when the .20 millimeter guns started running that was time to run. in other words, the carrier had a multilayered defense system that we all see in the old victory at sea series and then the final point of hardening when the bomb hits that's when damage control takes over. can you imagine having a carrier with no damage control. >> there's a question right there. right behind you, mark. >> thank. i'm paul johnson. i'm a journalist from canadian tv. these might be basic questions. >> please please. >> does the strength of an emp affect -- correlate to the strength of whatever nuclear weapon is being used? and a couple of other ones. do you have this affect with both effusion nuclear weapon. and when this takes nuclear circuitry offline does it physically fry it in all cases or knock it off-line or can be be revived. >> these are great questions. this was the strange part when i was researching the book. there was reverse correlation. the blast from a mega ton weapon actually dampens out part of the emp effect. a low yield weapon produces a higher more efficient -- this is a real paradox. lower yield, more dangerous emp. high yield, lower emp. therefore, simpler technology -- >> it's an inverse correlation. >> it's an inverse correlation. remember, in order to go to fusion, you first got to master fission. so it's a simpler, cheaper, dirtier technology and we don't need the precision guidance or anything else. as to what it takes out in the grid, as i mentioned with the carington event, they literally had wires melting. almost all your microcircuitry is just going to -- it's gone. and it's not going to be some sort of spectacular your computer catches on fire. what that is all the reaction we have -- all of us had the same reaction when the power goes off. [laughter] >> and then i'll call up the power company. well, what's wrong with my computer? it might take hours for it to set in. there's no spectacular flashbang. it's suddenly everything stops. >> i think that's up with of the things you did brilliantly in your novel. everything does stop. most people have no idea what's going on or why. they don't know if it's a localized event or if it's everywhere in the country or everywhere in the world. and little by little there are characters in your book, particularly your hero who has a sense of what this is. he had been concerned about it in the past. and they begin to recognize what's happened. what it means that the radio doesn't go on. what it means there are no planes in the sky. and that they are left entirely alone to their own devices and there will nobody help maybe for months maybe nor years. they have no idea. >> there's one of my great concerns as well about post-emp environment. we as americans have literally been used to since the 1850s instant communication. now, why back to the 1850s? within several hours after abraham lincoln assassination, the entire north knew. those who were old enough to remember, remember pearl harbor, jack kennedy, challenger going down. 9/11, all of these crises we had a voice. my world war ii class, when i show -- i actually have the actual recordings we interrupt this program the japanese have attacked pearl harbor but then i play the voice of franklin roosevelt telling america the next year we're going to get through this. well, suppose we are greeted with silence. that is unique to the experience of americans -- we have never experienced that. none of us alive have experienced that. for that matter, if -- where's my daughter? well, i pull a cell phone out of my pocket like where are you right now? well, she could be five miles away. it would be like she's on the other side of the world. that is one of the very dangerous aspects. let me add, we need within the hardening a good, solid backup system of telecommunications and media connection that the voice of america, the voice of our leadership can get out to all americans we're in a crisis and we're going to pull in together and get out of this and this is how we're going to do it. right now america will just be sitting there going, it's quiet. >> and i do not want to give too much away in your book it's many, many months that the people in this small town that you focus on learn that the chinese have come to help in california by sending in troops with some relief aid. and probably won't be leaving. and the mexicans have come in texas with some relief aid and troops. >> i'm not necessarily implying anything. come on we did stay in europe for quite a few years and helped them rebuild. that can be interpreted. >> you're talking about america, an america -- >> we're the third world. >> that is badly wounded. that has very few capabilities to defend itself. that it's entirely vulnerable to anyone and everyone. >> if i can talk about one scene in the book where a couple of characters are talking. remember all the infomercials we used to see at night and you quick turned them off, help the starve children and x and you're looking at the small children with the edema because of the swollen stomach because of starvation. i believe you said you were an in ethiopia. imagine a broadcast help the starving children of america. again we have not seen this in america. any of us alive have not seen this. >> and get hard -- one of the things is it is hard to imagine, it is frightful to imagine. it has a ring of science fiction and so a lot of people -- i've heard this even in congress say i don't -- i don't want to think about this. i don't like thinking about this so i'm not going to think about this. i'm going to say, those people who are over the edge and this is just -- this is not in the realm of a possibility that we should prepare for. >> then let me give you an analogy for. is anybody in this room a smoker? okay. at least one person. i'll admit occasionally i am. we all know -- i mean, our kids will show us the photographs over and over dad, this is what's going to happen if you keep it up. we light another cigarette because we don't like to think about it. you know, we should realize where it's taking us. and i'll confess as a part-time smoker. so, yeah we go into a brain lock when confronting emm it's easy to think about it as science fiction when it's not than to think of it as a reality which it is. there's a wonderful film out bill nye the science guy put out a little film called how hollywood gets emp wrong. we have to overcome how hollywood and television and everyone else portrays emp. how many of you saw oceans 11. oh, yeah emp will shut down las vegas for 30 seconds and it comes back on. but there was some foolish movie where everybody's car got emp'd and he turned the ignition off and my favorite was tom cruise is running around because the aliens are whipping around change the cellunoid in the car and i made a rude comment to the embarrassment of everybody with me williams of people think well, emp, well, just change the cellinoids. >> frank gaffney center for security policies in the back there. sir, mr. gaffney, it's a pleasure to finally -- dr. gaffney. it's a pleasure. you've helped me so much with this book. >> thank you. from very remote. thank you for doing it and for the affect it's having. cliff, thank you for putting this on the air. i came in late. i apologize. there were two points i wanted to make sure you did cover. one is bill graham the chairman of the mp commissions commitment of the losses of lives that we would sustain within a year if you didn't touch that, please do. and the other is, in my experience -- and i see trey is here. i know he's had a similar kind of difficulty wrestling with congress appropriating even some cases authorizing funds for priorities. i've never seen a sort of perfect lineup like this where as peter was saying not only we've got senior republicans but senior democrats now beginning to appreciate this is a severe problem both from the missile threat delivered version and the natural version. but we also have this unbelievably vast sum of money that has been already authorized and appropriated for the stimulus package's purposes, some of which is specifically earmarked to upgrade the grid. so it would seem as though this is a important moment to encourage these members to make sure that at least a portion of those funds are, in fact, applied for hardening the grid at the same time that we're planning for its upgrade. thank you. >> dr. gaffney, i almost have to do -- it's like -- i have to say somebody's name remember in the old movies like hi ma type of thing. there's an english teacher named diane st. clair and she gets upset when i don't give her the proper credit for the quote. she was going through a draft of my book just before it came out and she said, you know, bill, what's good if a bailout if there's no country to bail out? that has become one of my favorite quotes. so thank you, diane st. clair for that. she's the one who thought it up not me. newt gingrich has says it as well. what's good is a bailout if there's no country to bail out? and i think we are at a crucial alignment at this moment of the funding, government realization, noaa, even nasa coming in on it and the second point i want to jump in quickly is statistically, projections are upwards of 90% fatality rate within a year. the soviet union suffered about -- what, about a 15% fatality rate in world war ii. poland about a 20%, 18 to 20%. that trauma has echoed for generations. it is incomprehensible to us. again, why? it starts with order. within a week we're suddenly seeing massive gastrointestinal. we start to see starvation. and let's also go with this. if the camera could point around. i'm not going to ask it to, everyone put up on their hands who are on some sort of significant medication that might be lifesaving or life essential for them and 30 days from now that supply runs out. we are also a hot house, a hot house raised people now. we have been raised with five or six generations like a rare tropical plant. you witnessed it in ethiopia. how many americans if suddenly tossed out in ethiopia would be alive from two months from all the diseases? >> exactly. and that raises this corollary. what's the point of the best healthcare system in the world if the houses don't have electricity. if the ambulances can't run and if the medicine is rotting in high temperatures. >> just very quickly. i'm still waiting to see -- i wonder why more people have not written about what happened in the hospitals in new orleans after katrina and comparing that to a post-emp situation. >> that would be essentially the same. >> thanks very much for the opportunity. we've talked a lot about catastrophic nuclear emp and catastrophic solar emp. but what about nonnuclear emp and the capacity for individuals, terrorist organizations, whatever to put together some sort of a large-scale capacity system and drive it into lower manhattan and just completely blow up the financial system's computers or to take it to the outskirts of a nuclear plant or some other facility and use it on a much smaller scale to create economic or more locally contained chaos? >> exceptional point. and the technology is there. remember, some years ago when we first started getting internet and there was dark humor well, you can figure out thousand make a nuclear weapon because it's on the internet. this is being openly discussed how to make emp generators. doing this. check up youtube look up before taurus is emp. they made the generator and cooked off a taurus. >> i think we can have another question from peter here. if you can just pull the microphone from behind you and hand that to him. thank you very much. >> two things. the navy did a study of exactly this problem of taking basically the gizmo the size of this table on the back of a pickup truck and they didn't experiment just a radiation blast that was nonnuclear. it fries everything in about 5 miles so this hardening would take care of that too. 'cause you can -- if you do two of the things, the natural and the nonnuclear, you also protect against the nuclear. the third thing -- the second thing i want to point out is in europe we often look to europe if they're doing it must be serious. not the governments but the private sector in europe have hardened 350 of the most critical nodes in europe precisely because of this problem. they've done it with private sector money and without any direction from the government or the eu which is kind of surprising. in this country our industry, if you ask them have you done anything they're asking them isn't it fema's job or the government. in europe they've actually done critical financial centers, computer centers and some of your privately owned electrical grids they've done it all on their own. they made this decision to go forward again. i'm sorry, cliff -- >> no, it's a very important point. >> in fact, i just spent a couple days last week with a private firm in cumberland maryland who are putting in communication nodes that fit in a small trailer. this is private sector seeing a need, putting it together, ready to put it out on the market. so again, hey, we're americans. let's do some stuff from the private sector from bottom up. it should not just be wait for a government scenario. private sector should be doing this and, in fact, some banks are quietly working on this. so you'll still get your bills next month. [laughter] >> i don't know how they'll be delivered. at least i had to make one smiling comment in this otherwise rather brim discussion. -- grim discussion. >> on that note i'll mention jim woolsey is a distinguished advisor for the defense of democracies and appraising what happened on 9/11 most of all it was a failure of imagination. that's why i think it is so important that you are imagining the kind of attack, the kind of catastrophe, tragedy, atrocity that could occur and the good news is we have the technology. we have the ability to defend ourselves and defend americans against all of it. the bad news is we're not doing it so far. and i think our view is that an educated public will demand of its elected leaders that they have the courage and wisdom to defend them against this sort of possibility that looms out there. to look at it in the face and do what happens to be done. and i think your book makes a great contribution to that effort. so thank you very much for that. >> thank you, sir. [applause] >> william forstechen is a faculty fellow and history professor in north carolina. his many books include gettysburg and pearl harbor both co-authored with former house speaker newt gingrich. to find out more from the author and his work, go to his website. >> you've been watching book tv on c-span2. every weekend we bring you 48 hours of nonfiction books, public affairs, history, and biography saturday morning at 8:00 through monday at 8:00 am eastern. ..
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