[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.