Defining EMP

Just in case you haven't heard of EMP, here's the Wikipedia definition. Essentially, detonating a nuclear weapon (depending on yield) about 300 miles over ground has the potential to disrupt, damage, or destroy electrical, and (especially) microprocessor systems in a circle roughly the size of the US. Take a tramp freighter or oil tanker, place a mobile/portable launch system roughly similar to the Peacekeeper or MX missile system deployed in the USA until 1991. This system mounted a missile in a more or less standard railroad car. The Russian SS-27/Topol-M is a very similar system.
The point is, a strategic nuclear missile can be transported in a package the size of a railroad car. The Peacekeeper system generally was two locomotives, two missile cars, two security cars, one launch control car, one fuel car, and one maintenance car. Inside the guts of a medium-sized oil tanker I'd guess that the equivalent of two missile launchers and the launch control unit would mount quite nicely. Parked in the Gulf Coast area the two missiles could be launched towards each coast to maximize damage. In another vision, one or more could also be launched to detonate near each coast to maximize damage to the more heavily populated areas of the US. The same system would do wonderfully for the EU nations, Japan, India, and the Russian states.
Damage from an EMP would come from its ability to knock out the electrical grid and damage electronics and computers. No electricity for anyone, for quite some time according to my electrical worker friends. Repairing and restarting power plants is much more complicated than most of realize. Telecommunications would be disrupted not just by the damage or destruction of much phone company equipment but also by messing up comsats. Your car wouldn't work anymore until repaired. No computers, television, cell phones, iPods, elevators, refrigerators, microwave ovens, electronically-controlled furnaces or air conditioners, or just about anything you might think of. Lets not even try to imagine intensive care units in hospitals, operating rooms, fire trucks, ambulances, police cars, police radios, or the other myriad bits of glue holding everything together.
Try to imagine Katrina, but the entire country, and with nobody able to send help. No food getting delivered, no water being pumped, no fuel being delivered. How many of us in the industrialized world could go two or more weeks without running water, the grocery store, transportation, heat, communications, or any electrically-provided luxury or necessity?
Effective aid was delivered to New Orleans within 3 days and look at the chaos. Lest we forget, New Orleans was fairly empty when everything went south. Try to imagine what would have happened there without any evacuation, and no aid delivery for two weeks. The stuff nightmares are made of. Now try to imagine this damage in the dead of winter in anyplace that gets cold. The point is, an effective EMP attack against the industrialized world would be a disaster unimaginable, in loss of life and damage done. Military gear is generally hardened against EMP but little in the civilian world is.
Now do you understand why EMP attacks could be bad? If I had just a few nuclear weapons and delivery devices, I really can't think of a better way to use them. I'm sure that I'm not the only person out there thinking.

Israel Asking If They Can 'Play Through'

Israel is leaking the information that they are lining up permission in advance to overfly other nation's airspace for future air strikes in Iran. I'd expect mainly to make sure that everyone understands how seriously they take the Iranian nuclear threat. I've written about this before my pleasant imaginary reader, so it should come as a surprise to nobody. Some time back in this post, a timetable of 90 days came up; before March 28th. Maybe what they are asking for is exactly what they are asking for, if you get my drift. Not really triangulating but preparation.
Sounds ominous when read together.

Iranian Suborbital Rocket Test

At the NYT is a story about Iran testing a suborbital rocket. (The Christian Science monitor doesn't charge, though.) The kind used to carry satellites into space. Or the king used to boost high-altitude nukes used to propagate serious EMP attacks. Call me paranoid, but if I were an enemy of the USA that's just what I'd be working on myself. Along with a portable/mobile launcher unit it could be a truly devastating attack against any 1st world nation. I've talked about this before so all of my imaginary readers shouldn't be surprised to hear me obsessing about this.

Drinking the Kool-Aid

About a month ago I finally broke down and bought an iPod. My old 2.5gb Rio took its final, fatal, plunge into piece of shithood and died. The 30gb iPod which I bought on a Friday died on Sunday; possibly the victim of too much received kinetic trauma received while I was sledding after one of my daughter's hockey games. To be fair, I broke the middle finger on my left hand and have been off work for a month now so maybe the iPod's failure wasn't entirely lame. Anyway the replacement has worked wonderfully since and I haven't returned to the sledding slopes so it should stay that way.

It works well and everything, but I'm not sure what the big deal is. A Mac True Believer® I work with actually said things like "This has changed my life" when speaking of his iPod. Again, its nice but not epiphany nice. The intellectual class in America has abandoned religion for the most part it seems, but voids must be filled. Some with celebrity-friendly global warming orthodoxy, some with alternative celebrity-friendly religions, some with nihilism and schadenfreude, and others with love of their Apple products. Whatever it takes to get through the day I guess.

The Troublesome S word

One more thing that I just can't get excited about. The word "scrotum" appears in a book for children aged nine or so. Apparently some poor dog gets their scrotum bit by another dog. Tough luck for that pooch but even tougher if your child is reading the book and doesn't yet know what a scrotum is. Look, if you're child is nine and doesn't know this, then its probably time for them to discover that body parts have names that don't sound like winky, po-po, or whatever cute-sounding euphemism.