What these articles always leave out is what are the US capabilities in this area? Can we destroy the Russian and Chinese power grids by the same methods? Snowden showed that yes, the NSA and other US agencies have pretty much gotten in to everything and the cyber warfare is likely in place. What are our EMP capabilities both nuclear and non-nuclear? Is this a case of something new? The adversaries have caught up? Or someone just wants some more funding?
A CME event does sound civilization ending, at least for the part of the globe awake when it happens. However the rest of the globe would still be ok, and could quickly ship the necessary hardware over. One hopes that FEMA and the US military do have a DR plan in place for this, because it may happen in our lifetimes.
> The report concluded that, one year after a large-scale EMP or CME, nine of every ten Americans would be dead, from a variety of causes stemming from the attack.<p>Anyone else find that hard to believe?
Good fictional read of how this might play out: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Second_After" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Second_After</a>
See also perhaps "Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Protection and Resilience Guidelines for Critical Infrastructure and Equipment" (PDF):<p>* <a href="https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/19_0307_CISA_EMP-Protection-Resilience-Guidelines.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/19_030...</a><p>It mentions some standards for these types of things:<p>* IEC SC 77C:
High power transient phenomena<p>* MIL-STD-188-125-1: High-Altitude EMP Protection for Fixed Ground-Based Facilities<p>* MIL-HDBK-423: High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) Protection for Fixed and Transportable Ground-Based C4<p>* MIL-STD-2169:High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) Environment
This has been largely known since the 60s, when the Starfish Prime exoatmospheric nuclear test knocked out all communications and damaged power grids over the Pacific.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime</a>