The following is an update to an article that I posted in SurvivalBlog back in September of 2005, shortly after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast:
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Before selecting a retreat locale, It is crucial that you decide on your own worst-case scenario. A location that is well-suited to surviving a “slow-slide” grid up scenario (a la the deflationary depression of the 1930s) might not necessarily be well suited to a grid down situations. As stated in my post on August 15, 2005, a grid down situation will likely cause a sudden onset variation of TEOTWAWKI with a concomitant mass exodus from the big cities resulting in chaos on a scale heretofore never seen in modern memory.
My own personal “best case” scenario is an economic depression, with the grid still up, and still some semblance of law and order. Things would be bad, but the vast majority of the population would live through it. Living in a rural agricultural area won’t ensure that you’ll always have a job, but probably will ensure that you won’t starve.
My personal “worst case” scenario takes a lot more description: A rogue nation state launches three or four MIRVed ICBMs with high yield warheads simultaneously detonating at 100,000 feet over America’s population center, preferably in October or November, to maximize the extent of secondary electromagnetic pulse (EMP) effects. Picture just six warheads arriving “time on target” (synchronized for simultaneous detonation) at high altitude over, for example, Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Seattle, and Los Angeles. More than 90% of the U.S. population would fall within the footprint of EMP. With such a very high airburst attack, there would be hardly any initial casualties aside for a few thousand people unlucky enough to be traveling on that day. EMP would disable many electric flight controls, causing any modern aircraft to go out of control and crash. And the sudden loss of engine power in automobiles at the same time as a blinding flash would likely cause thousands of high-speed car crashes, by panicked drivers. A high-altitude air burst would impart no blast effects on the ground — nothing but EMP. But what an effect! Think of the full implications.
As previously stated, the higher that a nuclear air burst is detonated, the wider the line of sight (LOS), and hence the larger the footprint of EMP effects. With an EMP-optimized attack, as I just posited, EMP would be coupled to nearly all of the installed microcircuit chips in the U.S., southern Canada, and northern Mexico. In an enormous cascade this would take down all of the North American power grids, and cripple virtually every vital industry and utility: Natural gas production and piping, municipal water systems, telephone systems (hardwire and cellular), refining, trucking, banking, Internet services, agricultural machinery, electrically-pumped irrigation systems, you name it! Many modern cars and trucks within the LOS of EMP could be inoperative.Continue reading“Update: The Big Picture — Grid Up Versus Grid Down–Oil, Soil, and Water”
