[arminiusreturns]

  The chances of an EMP attack
  Q: I’ve heard a lot from you about how dangerous an EMP attack could be. But how likely is it that anyone will actually try to attack us with an EMP?
  A: Unlike the EMP Commission, most national security experts view EMP attacks as a second rate threat. While perhaps some small terrorist groups or rogue nations might launch a localized EMP attack that might take out a substation or two, it’s unlikely that any country capable of launching a major EMP attack would actually do so.
  Q: Why not?
  A: Because to launch a major EMP attack, a country would need a large nuclear weapon. And if a country was planning on using a large nuclear weapon, it would make more sense — in the morbid logic of war — to conventionally drop it on a city than to launch an EMP attack which would at most cause some brief power disruptions in a few states. As physicist Yousaf Butt put it, “A weapon of mass destruction is preferable to a weapon of mass disruption”.

This is very wrong and just tells me we should be even more cautious due to it being a blind side. The defense industry has for over a decade had highly deployable, targetable, non-nuclear EMP. (ex1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh1rgy25XhU) If there is one thing I know, it's that the tools we develop for war in other places tend to end up being used back at home. So I would also disagree with the casual dismissal of the likelihood of use domestically. Further, part of the entire reasoning in natsec circles for the increasingly egregious violations of the constitution is because of the increase in ability for non nation-state actors to be able to perform in new types of asymmetric attacks, and I would say non-nuclear EMP would be just one in that list.

The good news: I think most of these problems are solvable, and will assist us in being more ready to explore the extreme parts of our world and beyond. Making tempest and EMP shielding default in electronics manufacturing for example. It would also assist in reduction of the totalitarian surveillance regime... so I say lets all start talking about how to do shielding properly. There is a lot of misinformation out there about it. I do wonder though, how much of that misinformation is on purpose. Like encryption, at what point does the government decide to suppress a technology because it might hinder their power? Things to ponder.

[Stratoscope]

Readable version of your quote:

> The chances of an EMP attack

> Q: I’ve heard a lot from you about how dangerous an EMP attack could be. But how likely is it that anyone will actually try to attack us with an EMP?

> A: Unlike the EMP Commission, most national security experts view EMP attacks as a second rate threat. While perhaps some small terrorist groups or rogue nations might launch a localized EMP attack that might take out a substation or two, it’s unlikely that any country capable of launching a major EMP attack would actually do so.

> Q: Why not?

> A: Because to launch a major EMP attack, a country would need a large nuclear weapon. And if a country was planning on using a large nuclear weapon, it would make more sense — in the morbid logic of war — to conventionally drop it on a city than to launch an EMP attack which would at most cause some brief power disruptions in a few states. As physicist Yousaf Butt put it, “A weapon of mass destruction is preferable to a weapon of mass disruption”.

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

It seems like an EMP attack would be best bet against the US for an actor with a very limited number of nukes. From the field strength maps I've seen, a single large nuke (not sure if NK's nukes are large enough) would affect all of the US, two nukes and they could hit the coasts.

Nuking a city destroys a city, destroying the electrical grid takes out most of a nations industrial production and forces them to focus on short-term survival.

An EMP taking out the power grid across the US in a way that isn't quickly recovered from would likely be a lot more devastating - definitely in terms of industrial capacity, possibly also in human losses due to starvation and general collapse - than nuking two major cities with the same yield.

[alkonaut]

Any nuclear exchange will be focused on preventing the other side from using their nukes first and foremost. If the US has N locations to launch nukes from, then an attacker better have N+1 nukes if they want to spend one in the atmosphere for EMP too.

Delivering a conventional strike on N transformer stations would probably be a better idea since there would then likely be a conventional retaliation and not a nuclear obliteration of the attacking country. I guess with North Korea you can’t know.