emp. mark: welcome back, dr. peter pry. what would be, before we get to the question of how do we protect ourselves? the question is, we need to figure out how we might be attacked? what are the different scenarios, i m sure there are many, which a country might want to shut down our electrical grid? north korea could shut down our grid by an emp attack off a satellite. they in fact have two satellites orbiting over this country as we speak that pass over us several times a day, at optimal altitude to evade our national defense systems. mark: how would they make an emp field? detonate the satellite when it s over the center of the country and the field would propagate from the location of the warhead to the line of sight. mark: it would have to be a satellite with a warhead. have to be a satellite with a warhead.
i don t think south korea and germany and the chinese and the russians would be so generous in the aftermath of natural emp. that s why the way to think of the dangerous blackouts that we re talking about, they re not temporary blackouts, when you lose transformers and the control systems, another piece of technology that is fundamental to our civilization, the scada, it s a control system that also runs everything. both of these things are vulnerable to emp. if you lose them, that s it for us. mark: let s talk about this. from time to time, in our country, youead of a state or city that s without electricity for a few days. yes. mark: maybe a tree has fallen and hit a particular generator or a generator blows up. things like that happen and they re able to put it back together, relatively short period of time, but you can see right there, three, four, five days, there s really a panic in place and so forth.
how are you? very well. have you written on it, you testified, executive director of the task force on national and homeland security, this electromagnetic pulse, emp and other threats on an accelerated basis, directed the united states advisory board on congress on policies to counter weapons of mass destruction. you must be staying up at night. you must have nightmares. intelligence officer with the cia responsible for analyzing soviet and russian strategy and operational plans including emp threats. let s begin at the beginning, what s emp? electromagnetic pulse is a super energetic radio base, so much power, it can destroy electronics across a huge area. in fact, across the entire world in the case of a superstorm, a solar superstorm, emp can be made by nature, by the sun, by a solar superstorm or mand by a nuclear weapon. and it can be made by a
business? the same preparedness that you have for a hurricane or any emergency situation, have a food supply, water supply, medicine. mark: what about the electrical attack on your house, can you have a room protected? you could. you could have a metal shed. mark: that s all it takes? you could have a if you have electrical equipment or medical equipment or communications equipment that you wanted to keep safe. if you had a metal garbage can with a tight fitting lid and put the equipment inside a plastic bag so it doesn t touch the inside, that would mitigate the effects. you should have an emergency generator at your house and don t put it on automatic, leave the switch on manual. so there are things. you could have solar panels which are inherently robust against emp anything to get you off the grid and makes you more self-sufficient would be a way of protecting yourself. and you can also protect your
125 to $250 billion a year. that s right. mark: 2 to $3 billion a year, that s mustard money for the federal government. i agree. mark: i m not talking down the money, as far as the federal government goes, that s a pittance, is there a reason that s not slipped into the omnibus bills? yes, the electric power industry doesn t want to do anything against the emp, and they have very deep pockets, they own half of k street. they lobby against bills. there s also mark: why wouldn t they? it would destroy the entire industry. i know. mark: don t believe it will happen? they are not experts on emp, okay? and they don t see their jobs in their right as being national and homeland security, they see that as the job of the federal government and also want to have a regulatory environment such as exists now where in effect the electric power industry last critical