From what I've read, the 90% death rate from EMP originates from a science fiction novel: "One Second Later". And the assumption that book made was that EVERYTHING would be destroyed by a single EMP. All electronics, the entire grid, every vehicle in the nation.John wrote: OK, that all makes sense to me. Let me add a couple of additional
thoughts, and ask your opinion.
First, a lot of people talk about civil war within the US, but I just
don't see it. I expect the country to unify behind President Trump or
whoever follows him (in generational theory this is the "Regeneracy").
The fault line from the American Civil War has pretty much healed.
But China has had two major, bloody civil wars -- the Taiping
Rebellion and Mao's civil war -- along the north vs south fault line.
And as we know, there are hundreds of thousands of "mass events" in
China every year, and one of those could certainly spiral out of
control.
Mao and Chiang were able to put the civil war on hold because of the
Japanese invasion. But if China is the aggressor this time, then
China's society may be split and remain split, causing China to be
bogged down with an internal civil war. Have you looked into that at
all?
Second, it's claimed that if there's an EMP blast, then 90% of the US
population will die from starvation and disease within a year, because
the entire transportation system will be crippled. Have you looked at
that? Is that what you mean by, "go after the US power grid"?
Third, I've estimated that 3-4 billion people will die in the war,
from nuclear weapons, conventional weapons, ground war, riots, disease
and famine, leaving behind 4 billion people to hold an international
peace conference and rebuild the world. Does that make sense to you?
Fourth, I could imagine a scenario where China launches lots of
missiles, and destroys a lot of American cities and aircraft carriers,
but still loses the war because they have their hands full fighting
Japan, Vietnam, Philippines, Australia, India, and probably Russia.
Does that make sense to you?
I've looked up and watched videos of their effects on vehicles. It takes an enormous amount of electronic interference to shut down a vehicle and even then, it can be restarted most of the time. About 10-15 percent of vehicles would be affected, which would be enough to cause massive traffic jams all throughout the nation. And this was a test at maximum intensity (50kv/m)
EMP blasts would definitely cause a lot of damage, but I haven't seen any validity to the claim that 90% of our population would be dead. And it's a weapon we could just as easily use against China.
Now our power grid I consider more vulnerable, primarily because of all the Chinese components that have backdoor programs inside them.
[Admittedly, this is a fictional example, but I have a death toll of around 1-1.5 billion with my novel on the subject. To keep it realistic, the estimates of total deaths vary]
However, I expect we won't know for sure until well after the war's over, and likely hotly debated even then.
I don't see China winning this war, but we'd be fools to underestimate them.
