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Nov. 27, 2009 - Art Bell
02:35:16
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Electromagnetic Pulse Attack - William R. Forstchen
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From the Southeast Asian capital city of the Philippines, Manila, I welcome you.
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever the case may be, wherever you are.
Darkness, I suppose, across the majority of the listening audience at this hour.
It is my honor and privilege to be with you, all the ABs.
The typhoon season here, save one super-duper typhoon out in the middle of the Pacific, not threatening us in any way, but it's big.
Wind gusts up to 333 kilometers per hour.
That is a big typhoon.
Fortunately, I guess threatening Guam with some of the rain bands, but beyond that, no inhabited areas.
Well, all right.
We're going to look quickly at the news and then we've got a very, very, very, very interesting guest, William Forsgen, who is going to be talking about EMP, electromagnetic pulse, and what it could do to us.
And frankly, I'm very interested myself in this.
I've been interested in EMP all my life.
And I don't fully, I mean, I have an understanding of EMP.
But I don't really, I don't really understand it.
I don't really understand how it's generated and how it does the damage that it apparently does, which is unbelievable.
So we'll get to that.
Hopefully only in talk.
First, a little bit of news.
It was indeed an interesting Friday.
Dubai announced that it might default On its $60 billion debt.
Dubai!
This is, I think, home of now what is the world's tallest building.
It was supposed to be a very rich nation with no problems, and now it's going to default, possibly, on its debt.
Well, they talked about a six-month grace period or something, but that's just ahead of default.
And boy did it rattle the world's financial markets, and yesterday the financial stations, which we get over here, were talking about the possibility of, you know, another global dip.
That's putting it mildly.
So you have to wonder.
The markets did recover a little bit, but you've got to wonder, is it all over?
I wonder how many other emerging markets are teetering on the edge of insolvency.
In a blow to Iran, I don't think it's a blow, the board of the UN Nuclear Agency Friday overwhelmingly backed a demand from the US, Russia, China and three other powers that Tehran immediately stop building its newest revealed nuclear facility.
And freeze uranium enrichment.
Iranian officials, of course, shrugged off the approval of the resolution by 25 members of the 35-nation board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, but the U.S.
and its allies hinted of new U.N.
sanctions if Tehran should remain defiant.
I don't mean to laugh, but U.N.
sanctions...
Have never really moved anybody to do anything, as far as I know.
The only kind of sanctions that Iran should fear would be F-117 and B-2 sanctions.
Now those, those are sanctions with teeth.
And I don't know that it will ever get to that.
But if Tehran gets a nuclear weapon, if North Korea is able to build up their nuclear arsenal, then the subject we're going to talk about tonight has an awful lot of relevance, so stay tuned.
Tiger Woods injured early Friday.
He lost control of his SUV.
This all occurred at about 2.25 in the morning local time.
And I guess I guess his wife grabbed one of his golf clubs and smashed the window and got him out.
So, golf clubs are good for something besides golf.
I live next to a big golf course here, and I watch, it's a gorgeous golf course, and I watch the golfers, and even when it rains here, it doesn't matter if the wind is blowing, if it's raining, they're out there golfing under the absolute worst of conditions, even in a typhoon!
They're out there trying to golf.
They are intractable.
I guess you have all heard now about the Virginia couple who crashed the President's party.
Got by all the Secret Service checkpoints.
Took pictures with everybody who counts.
Unbelievable.
I guess they're going to get a, there's going to be an investigation of how they did that.
Very embarrassing for the Secret Service.
Very, very embarrassing.
a Train is derailed in Russia 25 dead.
Oh And then this From Amsterdam the The U.S.
now has joined, along with China and other countries, setting targets this week for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The world's combined pledges ahead of next month's climate summit in Copenhagen.
They're actually calling it Hope-en-hagen.
Some people are hoping that there'll be big changes.
Anyway, it's on and President Obama will go and he will make a sort of a middle-of-the-road promise about what we might do.
I want to address the climate, the hacked climate emails.
I don't know if that's been mentioned.
The mainstream press seems to be ignoring it, possibly for a good reason.
Most of the world's scientists believe that global warming is absolutely real.
There are skeptics, of course, and whether any of the skeptics were behind this or whether the hacking of these emails was just done, the timing seems a little suspicious.
So what I did is I went and I read as much as I could.
Even I want to know.
I believe in global warming.
And I don't know how anybody who's really looked at it could not believe in global warming.
I really don't.
So I went and I looked at as many extracts of the emails as I could.
I even went and tried to look at the full body of emails.
There's simply too many.
But in everything I read, yeah, it's embarrassing, of course.
Private communications hacked and then made public are always embarrassing, but I really didn't see any smoke emitting gun if you'll excuse the sort of pun I really didn't see anything that said they were faking all of this but I wanted to address the issue and I really did and I went and I looked as hard as I could and they're picking out little words from you know there's thousands of emails I guess and I presume they're legit and even if they are legit I really didn't see anything that
says all of this is a hoax and even if one or two scientists did fudge you know if it turns out I didn't see that but if it turns out they did fudge data one way or the other it's It's not apparent to me, at this point, with as much as I could read.
And any of you who, you know, they make big internet headlines about, oh, the, you know, the emails and it's all a hoax and all the rest of it.
Well, I didn't read that.
And any of you who go read it, let me know if you find anything that declares it's a hoax.
They made it all up.
And it's in the emails.
I didn't see that.
And I think that's why it's not hitting the mainstream press, but I wanted to mention it nevertheless, and I did the best kind of research I could before coming on the air.
All right, a couple of other items.
Suddenly the moon looks exciting again.
It apparently has lots of water, according to scientists on Friday.
A thrilling discovery that sent a ripple of hope for a future astronaut outpost in a place that's always seemed barren and inhospitable.
Experts have long suspected there was water on the moon.
Confirmation came from data churned up by two NASA spacecraft that intentionally slammed into a lunar crater last month.
Indeed, yes, we have found water.
And not just a little bit, we found a lot, said Anthony Klopiet, I believe it is, lead scientist for the mission, holding up a white water bucket for emphasis, of course.
Everybody has kind of always thought the moon would be a launching point for Mars and beyond.
And you need fuel.
And when you have water, you have fuel.
So there's that.
And of course, if there's going to be human beings there, you've also got to have water because we don't live long without it.
So a lot of water on the moon, they're happy.
The following comes from the Bulgarian press.
And these are legit scientists in Bulgaria saying this.
Aliens live on Earth and are in constant communication and interaction with us, according to Bulgarian scientists.
This is all quoted by a news service called DNES, and I wouldn't try to pronounce it.
It may be May not even be a name, it may be just initials for something.
On November 23rd of 2009, it was even claimed that some alien species were present during a media statement.
This is when they did the news conference for this, and I guess they said, well, they're here now.
In which they had answered more than 30 questions put forward by Bulgarian Academy of Science personnel.
You see, pretty mainstream there anyway.
The Deputy Head of the Space Exploration Department within the BAS told reporters that they, the aliens, are here among us now.
He said that even though there is little awareness of their presence, they are conducting surveillance, said he, and research on Earth.
The scientists said they're not hostile in any way.
In fact, to the contrary, they are friendly and they're willing to help us.
Unfortunately, due to our lack of evolution and development, Gee, I don't like that.
We are unable to conduct any coherent form of conversation with this superior life form.
They want to help us, but the problem is that we don't know what to ask of them once a contact is established.
Philipov, the scientist involved, reckons it'll be impossible to try and track extraterrestrial life with our current radar equipment or through the use of radio telescopes.
Apparently, the aliens were categorical that any future means of contact between us and them would be conducted through mental power and telepathy.
The aliens are very critical of our immoral behavior and our destruction of the environment.
They say that global warming is attributed mainly to infrastructural engineering.
Haven't read the emails yet, I guess.
Additionally, they are very skeptical of our use of cosmetics and artificial insemination because it is, quote, unnatural.
Philip Boff said.
Sounds more like the Catholic Church.
According to Philip Boff, his team of scientists are currently analyzing the answers to their questions from the interactions with the visitors.
Scientists aim to have a coherent strategic plan pertaining to questions which they will put forward to the extraterrestrials in their next meeting Which is now said to be scheduled for the spring of 2010.
So, that's mainstream science in Bulgaria.
Alright, coming up in a moment is William Forsgen.
William R. Forsgen is a professor of history and faculty fellow at Montreat College in Montreat, North Carolina.
He received his doctorate from Purdue University With specializations in military history, the American Civil War, and the history of technology.
His current book, which is one second after what a great title, was cited on the floor of Congress and before the House Armed Services Committee by Congressman Rosco Bartlett, a Republican from Maryland, Chair of the House Committee, tasked to evaluate EMP weapons as A realistic portrayal of the potential damage rendered by an EMP attack on the continental United States.
So he'll be talking about that and of course the nukes in Korea and what an EMP attack actually does.
So coming up in a moment, expect William Forstjen.
Oh, there is one bit of news that may or may not be breaking worldwide, I don't know, but in the Southern Philippines, in Southwest Mininau, that's kind of where all the trouble is, you know, Southwest Mininau, there was a slaughter.
There were 57 people killed, near as we can figure out.
It's political.
There was somebody there about to, a mayor I believe, about to register for election and it was a family thing, a couple of families.
It involved 100 armed men and there were 57 people slaughtered, shot and then beheaded I believe.
I don't know if that made it to the world press or not.
It's certainly big news over here.
All right, William Force Chen, welcome to Coast to Coast AM, or welcome back, I'm not sure.
Have you been a guest previously?
Yes, I've been with George a couple of times before, and sir, it's an honor to be with you today.
It's an honor to have you, my friend.
All right, this is a subject near and dear to my heart.
EMP, I guess I could ask you what it means, but it's electromagnetic pulse, right?
Yes, sir.
And may I ask, to start, what got you interested in it?
Well, I'm an amateur radio operator, have been since I was 13 years old, now 64 years of age.
And I've just simply always been interested, but I have not, and this is going to lead to some interesting questions that I don't know that you're ready for, but I'm going to try anyway.
I don't understand a very great deal about an electromagnetic pulse, how it's generated, how, for example, I understand that an air burst or a burst very high in the atmosphere will produce an electromagnetic pulse.
So can I start with sort of a list of questions?
For example, would any nuclear blast in the atmosphere generate EMP?
EMP is a byproduct of all nuclear detonations.
What it is, is that at the instant of detonation, you have a massive gamma ray burst being emitted by the weapon.
And when that hits the atmosphere, it does separate off some electrons that create a static electric event.
So why haven't we really noticed it much before?
Well, in the nuclear weapon testing of the, and also military use in the 40s and 50s, EMP is a line of sight event.
You detonate a weapon on the ground.
Well, the static discharge really isn't going to be noticeable because you're going to be overwhelmed by the blast of the bomb.
But in 1962, as the Cuban Missile Crisis was building, Both we and the Soviets, and a bit of saber-rattling, tossed a couple of nukes out into space.
I think there was a total of at least 10 or 15 shots.
I remember that, yes.
Yeah.
Remember the Life magazine cover showing the weapon blowing up, and it's as bright as day in Hawaii, 500 miles away?
But what happened is, one, it's above the Earth's atmosphere.
As the gamma-ray burst comes off the bomb, It hits the upper atmosphere and it triggers what's called the Compton Effect, first discussed by Nobel Prize winner Compton, who received the Nobel Prize for this theory in 1927.
These free electrons are like a pebble going off the top of a cliff and then triggering an avalanche.
They cascade down through the atmosphere.
It's almost like a chain reaction.
And now we look at the fact that the Earth is, in fact, a giant magnet.
We have a magnetic core.
The electrical charge is slapped down onto the Earth's surface.
Estimates can run as high as a couple hundred volts per square meter.
And this is when the bad stuff starts.
Oh yeah, a couple hundred volts per square meter, my God.
But let me back up for just a second.
We did a lot of above ground testing before we took it below ground.
And I'm sure we measured everything in the world.
I mean, we just measured and measured and measured radiation levels, the amounts of damage, and on and on and on.
You know, we had sensors looking at everything.
So this would not be apparent at ground level, I take it.
Exactly.
Because it is a line-of-sight event, and a nuclear weapon detonated on the ground.
Depending upon the terrain, the line-of-sight is usually only several miles.
But within that several miles, you're in the blast radius.
I would think at least 20 miles line of sight.
Or maybe more because, you know, a nuclear mushroom cloud goes up.
But at least 20 miles.
You know, radio is line of sight 20 miles usually at ground level.
What shocked the observers, both in the Soviet Union and America in 1962, Was, uh, and I urge folks, uh, when our show is over and they get up tomorrow or whatever, if this sounds a bit like tinfoil hat stuff, just simply go on the internet for an hour or two and Google up Starfish Prime.
It's one word for Starfish Prime.
Okay.
That is the code name for the declassified information regarding the 1962 detonation of a weapon about 500 miles south of Hawaii.
The second thing to look up is Soviet test number 184.
That was not realized on our side until after the collapse of the Soviet Union was only recently declassified, in which the Soviets did the same thing over Kazakhstan.
So, here in 1962, we popped some nukes, and that first one, Starfish Prime, they The observation teams are like, well, maybe we can finally measure this EMP event that Compton talked about.
It overwhelmed the instrumentation that was evaluating the detonation, and a fair part of the power grid on the island of Maui was totally blown out, and sections of the power grid in Honolulu were blown out as well.
Doctor, hold it right there.
It's a very short break because of the news I had at the beginning of the program, so hold tight right there and we'll come back and get into this in depth.
It apparently would kill about 90% of those below it eventually.
We'll find out how shortly.
You are all the way from the other side of the world.
Here in Southeast Asia, Manila, in the Philippines.
I am Art Bell, and I'm filling in for George Norrie, who's taking the night off.
Oh, no, wait a minute.
Am I?
Yes, I am.
Friday night back there, right?
So I am filling in for George.
He's taking a night off, and I'm sure it's related in some way or another to the holiday.
Tomorrow night, it's going to be Ian Punnett.
Ian is right here, I think, and Ian will tell us all about the show tomorrow night.
Ian, what's up for tomorrow?
Always a pleasure, Art.
Thank you so much.
Tomorrow night we'll return to the Muslim Mafia.
We had them on for the first hour, but we're going to get deeper into this book, which connects both the front organizations for Al-Qaeda operating in this country, in some cases operating in plain sight, And also the authors of the book that have been in court about the Muslim Mafia this week.
And on Sunday night, an old friend of yours, Richard C. Hoagland, will be debating Greg Brayden on 2012.
Exactly what's going to happen.
This was Greg's idea.
He called me last week and said, got an idea.
And RCH is willing to go along with it.
So that's coming up Sunday night when I'll be hosting on Coast to Coast.
What does he think is going to happen in 2012?
Well, I honestly don't know.
We had a brief conversation about it, and because I like Greg Brayden so much, and I know he's been listening to Richard talking about it with George, he said, I got a lot to say, and I thought, okay, well let's... Let me ask you the opposite question, because I'm out of the loop here.
What does Richard think is going to happen?
Well, according to Greg, he's taking a much more literalistic approach to an astronomical catastrophe, and that there will be something that will happen as a result of this planetary alignment, which Greg does not subscribe to, but he also has some definite views on something that will happen that he doesn't think RCH will go along with it, so that'll be Sunday night on Coast to Coast.
I'll try and tune in.
That sounds really, really interesting.
You never know.
Thanks Art.
Alright, thank you buddy.
Take care.
Fascinating.
Of course, it debuted here the very same day it debuted back in the United States.
They do that now.
I think it has something to do with anti-piracy efforts or something.
Boy, I'll tell you what, we get movies just like that over here.
Have nice digital movie theaters and everything.
All right, back with William Forsgen and EMP in a moment.
James in Dorchester, Massachusetts, fast blasted me regarding the emails, the climate emails, and he says, Art, they must have gotten to you.
Oh, I'm not surprised.
The next thing you'll be telling me is polar bears can't swim.
I guess.
He's imagining that I suppose that it's okay if the ice melt because polar bears can swim.
Well, if they can swim and swim and swim and swim and swim, then I guess they'll be okay.
James.
By the way, you can fast blast me anything you want, positive, negative, upside down, or whatever, by going to the coastcoastam.com website and finding Fast Blast and just typing it away, and it'll appear magically on my screen.
All right, back to Professor Forstjen, and he is a professor, so I guess we should honor him that way, or a doctor, one way or the other.
Again, I want to understand some of the basics of EMP, Doctor, and that is, for example, are there other ways to generate EMP aside from a nuclear detonation?
Oh gosh, you just gave me an underhand pitch.
Listening to your program, the promo on your program coming up in a couple days discussing potentials in the year 2012, after my book, One Second Answer, was released, a couple weeks after it came out, one of my friends called up and he says, Bill, you've got to read a book called The Sun, S-U-N, The Sun Kings, by Clark, and it's about The impact of, it's actually mostly focused on 19th century solar astronomy, in which for the first time I came across something called the Carrington Event.
Now, you mentioned right at the start your interest in ham radio and radio operation.
That's right.
My old man, K2GEC, I used to sit up in the attic with him many an evening.
And we both know that solar weather affects radio transmission.
Yes, of course.
A major solar flare produces an EMP.
The big one was back, I think, in the late 1800s, right?
1859.
And yet another thing that folks, if they think this sounds a bit crazy, look it up later, it's called the Carrington Event.
Now, I was attending a conference on EMP about two months ago up in Niagara.
There's about 800 folks in the audience, experts from around the world, and when the team did the presentation on the potential of an EMP event from a solar storm, that room was as silent, you know, as the old pin drop at the end.
There was sort of an oh my god gasp.
The head of that team, an incredible comment, he said, asked me to predict a military usage of an EMP weapon.
I can't give you a percentage.
Asked me to predict an EMP event within our lifetimes that could actually take down the entire power grid of the world.
I think it's highly probable, almost inevitable.
Now NASA and NOAA put out a report back around May or June predicting a significant increase in solar storm activity peaking in 2013.
Really?
Yeah.
What else to worry about now on top of everything else with the 2012 profits?
Well, you know, right now scientists are saying, the last I read anyway, we've all been, ham operators have been very upset about the fact that we have not been having any sunspots.
What's going on right now is, if not unprecedented, pretty close.
There are no new sunspots, or so few.
I mean, we actually saw the sun reverse polarity, and then we've had a few very weak sunspots that have sort of appeared in the opposite polarity and then disappeared, and there's a great Vacuum, where the sunspots ought to be.
We ought to be in mid-cycle right now on the way up, and nothing's happening, Professor.
Yeah, and that's what caught me with the NASA NOAA report in June, and which became a major topic at the EMP conference in Niagara in September, is we are out of cycle, but the prediction is the cycle is going to finally pick back up and swing in again.
I hope so.
One, the Carrington event is named after a British astronomer, Carrington obviously, who in 1859 was the first solar astronomer to observe a major solar flare event.
About 24 hours after he observed this, the Victorian internet, the telegraphy systems in England and in Northeast United States, went down.
So here we have the overbuilt technology of that time.
I know I've seen some of the telegraphy equipment of that period, and as a historian, and boy, it's overbuilt compared to what we got now.
Wires were melting off of the poles, railroad ties were bursting into flames from the current running down the track, telegraphy operators were being electrocuted, it blew the grid out.
Consider that happening to our vastly more elaborate and delicate infrastructure of today.
Well I'm not sure how much voltage per square meter You know, an event from the sun could actually produce, in other words, a solar flare at the end, toward the end of this last cycle, that was so large, the scientists couldn't measure it.
Unfortunately, it was not directed earthward, but it was very, very large.
Pardon me?
It was pretty darn close, though.
It was like a bullet going past it.
Right, but didn't hit, you know, horseshoes and grenades, I think.
So it didn't hit, but had it hit, I'm not sure, did anybody bother after the event to measure, had it actually hit Earth, how much voltage per square meter it would have produced?
I couldn't give you the answer on that one, and I think that would be hard to predict, but if that one had hit it square on, like the Carrington event of 1859, I don't think we'd be linked as we are via satellite with you in Manila and me in Asheville, North Carolina and millions and millions of people around the world listening in.
It would have taken our grid system down.
And the disturbing aspect of that is we don't have the spare parts.
We don't have the infrastructure redundancy to bring the grid back up.
The projection I heard at the conference in September was That over 80% of our electrical generating systems in the eastern United States would still be offline four years later.
Yeah.
That's amazing.
That really is amazing.
And certainly an event like that could occur if the sun ever cranks up and does what it's supposed to do again.
So that's definitely worth consideration.
Of course, I don't know if people understand this or not, but back in the 1800s, the telegraph system, for example, was nothing but long lines.
Very, very long lines.
And that's what collects the energy from an event like that from the sun.
Or, as you mentioned, railroad ties.
Something very, very, very long would collect a great deal of voltage.
Now, whether it could reach the kind of levels that you're talking about with a nuclear EMP event and begin to fry people's transistor equipment is another question.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
Yes it is.
And if you look up the, again I mentioned this earlier, Soviet Test 184.
Unlike our detonations over the Pacific, they detonated their weapon over Central Asia.
Now, obviously, they're not going to do something insane in terms of destroying their own power grid, but they did.
So what happened in Kazakhstan?
Well, one of their underground power cables Picked up the overload from the EMP, and it blew out the power generating rating system 400 miles away.
Think of the overbuilt Soviet cars of the 50s and 60s.
Automobile ignition systems fused.
So, obviously they're not going to blow one of these with, oh, yeah, okay, we're going to lose some of our power stations, but what the heck, let's see what happens.
It caught them by surprise, and there's a significant date here.
We were just starting to gather data on just how dangerous EMP is by detonating a weapon in space.
The following year, 1963, we go to our test pantry.
So, we've not been able to develop actual real-time testing since, but the concern is, militarily, of calibrating weapons to generate a higher gamma-ray burst.
Okay, that was going to be one of my questions.
Is there a way, and I guess the obvious answer is yes, to build a nuclear weapon to specifically enhance the effect?
Yes.
And I should throw in right now my disclaimer at the very start.
I do not have a security clearance.
I've asked a lot of questions of a lot of people when I was working on this book, and at times they would smile and say, next question.
Well, if you did have one, you wouldn't after tonight or after the book.
Well, as an American patriot, I don't want to get into a topical area that somebody might say, Bill, you know, you really shouldn't be discussing this.
But when I went to a conference of military experts on this in Albuquerque back in March, they were telling me, you know, you're on the mark in a declassified sense.
Now, you mentioned at the very start the concern about Iran.
Some people I hear say, oh gosh, well what the heck?
What are they going to do?
They're going to build one or two nuclear weapons at most.
Why worry about it?
We can overwhelm them.
Well, using an EMP calibrated weapon, it becomes a first strike.
It's a first strike, what they call asymmetrical strike weapon.
Detonating one to three of these over the continental United States could blow out the entire power grid.
And as you mentioned just before going into a break, a congressional study in 2004 Projected that the fatality rate in America at the end of a year could be as high as 90% Okay, I'd like to try and understand that there's a lot here to talk about I'm not sure that Iran of course Nor Korea for that matter Has the ability to deliver weapons at that altitude over the United States, but that's they do Okay, we'll get to that all right.
Let's let's get to 90% of the Americans would be dead a year after an EMP attack now Obviously, as much as we worry about our communications and about the transistors and everything we use virtually, we're organic matter.
EMP ought not really affect us that much if conventional wisdom prevails.
Perhaps it does not.
So how do 90% of us die after an EMP attack, even a very, very effective one?
Oh, with the EMP event, in fact, we're not going to notice it at all in that first second, unless maybe you're leaning against a nice long fence.
But just about a month ago, I was chatting with a radio station a couple of months back now in Phoenix, and they went to their weather break and they said, oh, you know, it's a nice day in Phoenix, high of 110, low of 93.
Now, let's consider life in Phoenix.
One second after an EMP event blows out the power grid system.
No air conditioning.
And with the elderly population that's rather high in Phoenix, with homes that are of course all designed for perfect climate control, what happens there?
Where does Phoenix get its water?
Do you see immediately what starts happening within two or three days?
Part of the inspiration for this novel was, I shouldn't say part, a major part of it was, my father was in the last weeks of his life, going out like the old cavalry trooper he was, he was putting up a darn good fight, and a hurricane hit us up here in the mountains of North Carolina.
30 inches of rain in less than a day, and it blew out the infrastructure.
Our power went down, our water supply was busted, and the nursing home called me.
And then they said, hey, we need some extra help.
I'm sitting there at 2 in the morning with my dad.
I'm watching the respirator.
We're on emergency power.
I'm already thinking about the book about EMP.
And I asked my friend, the nurse who'd been helping with my dad for a year, and I said, you know, D, what happens if the emergency generator blows?
What about my father's respirator?
Well, we go to bottled air.
So what happens when we run out of bottled air?
Well, Bill, I'll give you one of those squeeze balls.
And I'll freely confess, George, I broke down in tears.
I was sitting there thinking to myself, and yes, I keep squeezing air into my father's lungs until I get tired and I can't do it anymore.
We are a very hot H.O.T.
house bred species across the last 100, 150 years.
We've become used to a very wonderful, brilliant, designed system.
But is it incredibly fragile?
Pull out one or two props, as that system starts collapsing, all hell breaks loose.
But 90% of Americans did, a year after an EMP attack.
That's hard for him.
I can see, for example, that Phoenix would get hot.
A lot of elderly people would probably expire from the heat.
Even my home, Pahrump, Nevada, back in the States, would be very much exactly the same way.
We get some of the hottest temperatures.
You know, it's adjacent to Death Valley.
Some of the highest temperatures in the world.
You have to have air conditioning to live.
So, I can understand what you're suggesting with respect to those areas, but there's a lot of moderate areas.
90% of the people, that's a lot of people.
How does that happen?
Let's not talk about Phoenix for a moment.
Let's talk about, I don't know, San Diego?
That'd be the other side of the spectrum, or it's Eternal Spring, or I don't know, Chicago if you wish, or whatever.
Let's talk about my hometown.
One second answer.
My book, One Second Answer, I wrote it actually in my hometown of Black Mountain, North Carolina, just outside of Asheville, home of Joshua Warren, who I know is on your show occasionally.
And let's look at Black Mountain, where I set the novel.
As soon as the grid goes down, what about our water supply?
Well, we're fortunate.
We're gravity-fed from a reservoir.
As long as your house is below 2,500 feet, above that, you're out of luck.
But that watering system goes through a filtration and chlorification process.
And then when you flush the toilet, it goes mysteriously away to a filtration plant in Asheville that finally puts the water back into the French Broad River, sterilized.
Right.
All of that is now offline.
What happens is that within a day to three days, you're into a major crisis regarding clean, purified water.
Sure.
Within five to seven days, you start running into the crisis, as we all see in disaster areas, of gastrointestinal illnesses.
That can kill hundreds of thousands, as we saw with the hurricanes and typhoons and tsunamis that hit.
All right.
Professor, hold tight.
Again, just that half hour just evaporated.
That's how fast it goes.
This is fascinating stuff.
Professor William Forsgen is my guest.
We're talking about EMP, electromagnetic pulse.
But I'm still not sure about that 90% figure.
I'm Art Bell.
From the other side of the world, actually.
Southeast Asia, Manila.
How you doing, everybody?
I am Art Bell for George Norrie, who gets the night off tonight.
I think it's related to the holiday.
William Forsgen is my guest, and we're talking about EMP.
And I'm only questioning the 90% figure.
I guess what it means is, yes, the infrastructure obviously across the country under those conditions would absolutely collapse, but 90%, I'm not sure that we are We have that much of a lack of resilience, but maybe we do.
We just suffered a situation over here in the Philippines that was unbelievable.
I mean, just unbelievable.
Andoy, the typhoon.
And of course, it left people wading in water and it went on for weeks and there were concerns.
In fact, there was disease.
There was a lot of problem.
But there was also resilience, and they've snapped back.
So, I don't know if the 90% figure underestimates the resilience of people, or perhaps I overestimate it.
Professor Forsgen, back in just a moment.
All right, once again, Professor Forsgen.
Professor, you asked earlier, by the way, my interest in EMP, how that got started as an amateur radio operator.
I built a very, very, very large antenna.
It involved actually a couple of miles of wire on 13 towers.
The center one being 100 feet high and the others being about 70 feet high.
So it covered about five acres of land.
Possibly one of the largest antennas of its type for an amateur in the world.
And as a result of that, I lost a number of very expensive radios because the EMP effect from even nearby lightning strikes was overwhelming.
I mean, we'd get a dark cloud that would pass over and I'd lose a radio.
That's how bad it was until I figured out how to get it properly grounded and so forth.
I do understand and I've been very, very interested in those subjects.
What I don't understand is how 90% of us, even if we lost, if the worst happened, yes, it would be catastrophic, the power goes, I understand, no water, a lot of things, gone.
But 90% of the people, could that be, does that underestimate the resilience of the American people?
It's not an underestimation of our basic resilience.
Well, let's look at the greatest natural catastrophe that hit America in a hundred years, and that's Katrina.
Katrina, ultimately, was a local event.
Right.
It struck, it devastated a three-state area, but within a matter of hours, emergency trucks, supplies, I know my radio station here in town, how to drive, we filled up a whole tractor-trailer load of stuff within a day and sent it on its way.
Well, let's look at a continental-wide event.
Or, in the case of a solar storm, potentially a global event.
Where does the help come from?
Now, when I started working on this book, I went around, I did a lot of research, and then I also interviewed a lot of folks.
One of the really chilling interviews early on was, I sat down with my pharmacist.
We've been friends for years.
She works in animal rescue.
I think she's a great person.
And we talked about how a pharmacy runs today, which is essentially just-in-time delivery.
When I was a kid, I remember you went into the pharmacy, remember the guy used to have a big table on the back and hundreds of different bottles?
We'll get into your typical pharmacy today, next time you get a prescription refilled, and look behind the counter.
See how little is really there.
Because when you're getting your prescript filled, it goes into the computer, goes up to the central office, FedEx pulls up the next day, drops off the identical vial.
So, I'm talking to my pharmacist, we're a small town, she got really upset, she's like, I'm thinking of all my friends in this town who are going to die within the first two or three weeks.
Who have pancreatic enzyme disorder.
Those people who are major painkillers.
All the various, various medications.
Now, I have a couple of medications.
They make my life easier.
I'm not life dependent on them.
But if I was, what happens when the vial runs out?
Next, go to the food manager at my college where I teach.
What do you do?
How does this work?
Bill, at the end of seven days we are totally out of food.
That's right.
Now I know grocery stores depend on regular deliveries and they would soon be out of food.
So we run, particularly in the eastern United States, we start running into a cascading series of events.
Failure of water supply, failure of medical supply, failure of food supply.
Your average community in America has at most about 20 to 30 days worth of food on hand.
And that includes what you're lucky might be in a tractor-trailer going down the road once the power goes.
And a fair percentage, maybe a very high percentage of vehicles die.
What happens within 20 or 30 days?
And then a final point that I find I spend a lot of time talking about when I'm doing seminars with different groups is, we are a society that absolutely today is conditioned top-down.
Almost any decision being made, it's pick up the phone, ask the boss.
So I'm interviewing a good friend of mine who's in emergency management.
I said, okay, what happens?
What do you do now?
And the guy actually starts to reach for the phone.
He said, wait a minute, I can't call Asheville now, can I?
I said, no, make a decision.
It's like, Phil, we never trained for this.
I'll give you all of this, and I know it would be catastrophic, and certainly many, many would die within a month, five weeks, whatever, when the food ran out.
Probably the lack of water would kill a lot of people first, but I don't know.
I still argue with the 90% figure.
I think that, who was it, Einstein said something about the next war being fought with, well, he wasn't sure, he was sure, but then World War IV, I think, would be sticks and stones, and so it would be like that, sticks and stones.
I know, but 90%, I think a higher percentage than that would survive.
Maybe I'm wrong.
I just think people are more resilient than that.
Mark, I pray that I am dead on wrong and you are dead on right.
Even if I'm dead on right, it's still...
A gigantic catastrophe with, you know, millions and millions, hundreds of millions possibly dead.
I'm with you there.
I just think 90% is a little high.
A gentleman I truly admire, his name is Rawls.
He's written several books on the subject.
One of them is Patriot that I'm rereading right now.
He projects about a 75% loss rate.
His scenario is an economic collapse.
Okay, even economics.
It goes down and I think, gosh, I better get that medication refilled.
And I go down to the pharmacy and I walk in and it's like, what do I use for money?
A lot of people are buying gold.
Yeah.
Was one gold coin going to do for you?
Remember, what is it?
90, 95% of our money actually doesn't really exist.
It's all electronic.
Well, it's moved electronically, yes.
And so, we suddenly, within a day or two, have an economic breakdown on top of it.
And then, I think where we're going to see a lot of casualties is simply societal breakdown.
Your major urban areas become uninhabitable within a day or two.
The food supply runs out, and everybody seems to function with this fantasy that, well, out in the country, they must have a lot of food.
You know, they got cows out there and everything else.
I even sat in with a local group here who were, after reading my book, they said, let's have a talk session.
And folks were talking about, oh, well, we can go hunting.
And I'm like, have you ever been out in the woods of Pennsylvania or Maine on the first day of hunting season?
It's terrifying.
Now, imagine everybody is out there on that first day going, well, I'm going to get a deer or a rabbit or whatever.
That is wiped out within a matter of days.
Then what?
Look, I'm really not arguing your premise, just your percentage.
I hope I'm wrong.
I truly hope I'm wrong.
In fact, in the foreword of my book, my last paragraph of my foreword is, I just hope that 30 years from now my daughter is healthy, with wonderful children, and people just remember me as a crank because it never happened.
Do you really think that either North Korea or Iran actually has the ability to put a series of nuclear devices into the atmosphere above us now?
Let me draw a little analogy before answering directly.
If I step outside tomorrow and some crazy new guy has moved in next to me, and I see him out there with a gun and he's doing target practice, and what is he practicing on?
A picture of me.
I'd get worried, real quick.
Sure, absolutely.
Iran, starting some years ago, started doing vertical launch testing on barges out in the middle of the Caspian Sea.
In other words, they're popping a missile, sending it straight up, upwards, trying to reach a range of 200 miles.
Missile detonates, and then they declare that it was a failure.
Now, you know, and you've got a great audience out there that are into these various things, We all know that when you're putting an object into orbit, you launch it at an angle.
Shooting something straight up, it's going to, boom, come down.
So why is Iran launching missiles vertically off of barges?
It fits only one scenario.
Take a container ship, put it off the eastern United States, call from Mexico or out in the Pacific, pop the missile straight up, detonate it, you've got an EMP.
You don't need an intercontinental ballistic missile, which by the way, Iran did happen to launch back in February, and only about two weeks ago, there was a little minor news item that Iran has perfected a higher level of detonators, which means that the payload can now be significantly reduced.
Yeah, I was going to ask, what kind of, if we can go back to the technical aspects of it for a second, what kind of megatonnage Kilotonnage, megatonnage, would it require to produce the kind of EMP effect that you're talking about?
Another thing that's kind of scary because I had a running debate with somebody on the internet over this for a while saying, look, it's megatonnage.
No.
Paradoxically, you go for the large megaton pop, meaning 1, 3, 5 million tons of EMP.
The actual detonation burst is actually using a fission bomb to create the compression for a fusion detonation.
It scrambles your gamma ray emission.
The scary thing, this really scares me, is we're looking actually at fairly low yield fission weapons, old style atomic bombs in the 40 to 100 kiloton range.
meaning the type of weapons that we had already by the late 1940s.
Not megatonnage. These smaller atomic bombs are actually your optimum weapons for creating
an EMP event.
Yeah.
So the size of the detonation is not necessarily proportional to the size of
the EMP produced.
No, there's not a direct correlation there.
In fact, projections are it's an inverse correlation after a certain point.
Okay.
Again, I don't think we're giving away any secrets that Iran and North Korea and a lot of other people don't already know about our countries.
So, you're suggesting that Iran is sending missiles up vertically to, in essence, practice to get this done.
Is that so?
In fact, yet another internet reference after we're all off the air tonight is simply And this is the big document.
Simply go to the EMP Commission Report.
You can get it on the government website.
You can get it from hundreds of different websites.
This is the 2004 report put together by some of our top experts, overseen by a bipartisan congressional committee.
And that's where the data, about 90% comes in from Dr. Thomas, Will Thomas.
The profile with Iran as a key player in this is very, very clear when they're talking about that type of launch.
So I urge folks, take a look at that commission report.
That will give you a lot of the hard data that, you know, you and I would have to draw incredibly elaborate diagrams, which I could barely understand to explain some of it.
The references so far would be the Soviet Test 184 over Kazakhstan, then Starfish Prime, I think it was, and EMP Commission Report.
And you can link all those through my website, which is OneSecondAfter.com.
Okay, a lot of people are going to be going to look this up and try to verify what we're saying.
Alright, I knew about EMP Weapons, and I've known for a long time.
But why is the kind of information that you're giving me tonight so new?
In other words, most people knew about EMP, or at least I think a majority of people knew about it, or heard references to it in passing, but they didn't know that it could produce the kind of catastrophic end that you're talking about tonight.
Well, there's two points to there.
One is mad.
The old Mutual Assured Destruction of us versus the Soviets in the 1960s, Dr. Strangelove and all that.
Sure.
And the fundamental warfighting strategy and deterrence became known as Mutual Assured Destruction, which means, okay, you can throw everything at us, but the kitchen sink and throw that in too.
But enough of our weapons will survive that You will inherit nothing but smoking rooms.
Well, that's still true.
I mean, if Iran, certainly if Iran detonated an EMP weapon above any part of the United States, Iran would very shortly cease to exist.
Now, if that's not true, tell me how not.
Oh, it's most likely, yeah, it'd be a fair part of the country that could be turned into glass within a matter of minutes.
But let's put two other components into this now.
One is, Suppose we have a container ship that launches, successfully puts one up there, detonates it, and then a minute later the container ship blows up and sinks.
Where's our culpability?
Well, let's say we could even trace it back to Iran.
There's a big difference between the Soviet leaders and the current Shiite 12ers in charge of Iran.
Oh, I don't disagree at all, or even if you want to talk about North Korea, same deal, they're nuts.
They're nuts!
Yeah.
You know, by any Western standard, now the Soviets Thank God they were atheists.
Do they want to inherit a smoking room?
No.
Their kingdom is here on Earth, and once you die, you become worm food by that vision.
But suppose we're facing an enemy who actually believes that by destroying the infidel, you bring about the end time, the Nazi returns, the lost Iman, the hidden Iman, comes up out of that well, And you all get your reward, you got 70 girlfriends waiting for you, and hey, great day, isn't it?
And so what if we all die?
We've created the fulfillment of prophecy.
Okay, I'm with you there, sure.
As long as they're willing to, you know, sacrifice their country and their own lives to get us, then yes, you know, it could happen, sure.
And that apocryphal vision that these people have, you know, for heaven's sake, we must never confuse the leadership with the people.
We saw what almost started in Iran earlier this summer and then was smashed down, but all it takes is one crazy person with their finger on the button saying, let's go.
And then there's even a moral question that I've talked about with some military people.
Let's say North Korea did it.
We know who would be doing it.
The sick nut job that's running their country right now.
How do we retaliate?
Do we slaughter the slave population on the surface?
Well, I imagine that's what would occur, yes.
And what a horror that is.
It's a horror, right.
War is always a horror.
But I'm convinced that anybody who would attack us in that manner, you know, as long as we could pin it on a nation, and I think we would, ship or no ship, I think we would in fact.
Um, you know, would be smoking rubble.
Certainly we would retaliate with nuclear devices and a lot of innocent people would die.
That government would cease to exist.
And I guess, you know, I mean the scenario you gave me, it might cripple the United States.
I'll give you that.
It would certainly.
I can see the economic infrastructure if it was over the northeast part of the U.S.
In total disarray, totally destructed, destroyed rather.
And so, yeah, I can see what you're suggesting could occur, but it would be a mad situation.
And we would retaliate in that manner.
I'm almost certain we would.
Or do you see a scenario where we would not?
We most likely would.
I mean, of course we would.
But let's look at it this way.
I have a character in my novel, about two-thirds of the way through, they're discussing, well, we think these guys did it and we turned Iran into glass.
His response, does that change the fact that we're all dying?
No, of course not.
Professor, boy, this time is just flying.
This is a fascinating subject and I guess I've got to concede, except for the 90% figure perhaps, that you're right.
From Manila, I'm Art Bell.
Here I am, we're talking about EMP and essentially the end of the world.
Well, I don't know, I guess that's something we'd have to think about too.
It really wouldn't be the end of the world.
It might be the end of the United States as we know it.
But the end of the world?
Perhaps not.
Barbara in Hollywood, California, Hollywood, huh?
Says, Art, wow, how would we retaliate?
Would we still be able to launch, even launch missiles?
With the EMP having taken out more of the U.S., wouldn't the perpetrators Have more than one vertical bomb go off at strategic points, East Coast, West Coast and so forth?
Yes, no doubt that would be the case.
Retaliate?
Oh yes, we could retaliate.
The military is well aware of EMP and has hardened their sights against such an event.
And it is possible to harden against EMP.
So yes, we'd be able to retaliate.
The question is, as a professor suggested, What would be left, not of the country we retaliated against, because essentially there would be nothing, because yes we could retaliate to Barbara.
The question would be what would be left of our country.
Back in a moment.
All right, once again, Professor Forsgen.
Professor, welcome back.
You know, I see how what you're suggesting could certainly occur, and even if it was done well, by that I mean efficiently, and they got one up over the West Coast and one up over the Northeast and whatever else they were able to do simultaneously, it would probably It would cripple America.
We would retaliate.
Whoever did it would be absolute toast.
But it wouldn't be the end of the world, would it?
No, of course not.
Gosh, well, let's look at one of the greatest disasters in recorded history of humanity, the Great Plague of the 14th century.
There were areas that were all but depopulated and civilization came back.
It would be a very different civilization.
Who would be the dominant power player for the rest of the 21st century?
I cannot even begin to imagine on that.
And to directly answer Barbara in Hollywood, all you need is one boomer, one of our nuclear submarines, carrying all those missiles somewhere out deep in the ocean.
That can retaliate anywhere in the world.
Oh, sure.
And even our silos are hardened, so there'd be plenty of retaliation available.
But you're right.
I mean, it would end the United States as a major world player, period.
And it would be a long time before the U.S.
recovered.
And I'm not sure what the world would be like after that.
And you're certainly correct.
I mean, as long as you have somebody willing to sacrifice their own nation, their own life to do this, I don't see... In fact, let's talk about that.
What possible prevention Is there for the scenario that you just laid out?
Well, remember the analogy I gave beginning of our last time segment where if my neighbor is out there doing target practice and it's my picture up on the range, I better start paying attention.
If I ran is doing testing and in fact is doing testing that fits an EMP profile, is this world Are you crazy enough to sit back and let Iran become a nuclear power?
No, I think so, yeah.
We've done it again and again.
We allowed North Korea to become a nuclear power, and so then why not Iran?
All we ever do is, as I said at the beginning of the program, we have UN sanctions, which Absolutely, yeah.
I mean, that laugh says it right.
I think that I said the only sanctions that would be worth anything would be coming from an F-117 or a B-2, and obviously we're not prepared to do that.
So they're going to become, are becoming nuclear, period.
That's all.
Yeah, I remember your opening, and what came to mind immediately is we all have memories of when we were in middle school.
And you'd always have the one teacher who had zero control.
Now this guy could be a huge, hulking guy, and he would just sit there and clap his hands and say, now boys and girls, now boys and girls, and nothing would ever happen.
That's right.
And then you could have a 90-pound, 5-foot-tall teacher, skinny as a rail, could come in and the whole room goes silent because it's like, don't cross Ms.
Keller.
End of discussion.
Yeah, that's right.
Ruler across the knuckles.
Yeah.
Or in my case, yeah, the nuns across my knuckles.
You don't cross them.
Well, come on, the schoolyard analogy works for the entire world.
I, in my moments of depression, will tell people, you know, I feel like at times I'm living in September 1938, right after Munich, or November 1941, when we're getting war warnings and nobody's reacting.
We can stop this before it happens, but we have to make a very clear, not line in the sand because the wind blows the sand away, a line chiseled in the rock.
You're not going to cross this line.
And if you do, there will be a full action before you even know it.
They're already crossing the line.
I guess what I'm asking is, if the scenario you've drawn for us is an accurate one, then, gee, during the Cold War, you mentioned it, they had tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, as did we, and I guess we still do.
And everybody was aware of the possible end of the world.
I mean, you know, if everything had let loose, it would be essentially the end of the world.
So we all knew that, and we were all prepared for it, and...
But this danger is not only not known, but it's not talked about.
Our government hasn't said, look, here's what could happen.
It could be the end of our country.
And we have other nations, rogue nations, that are preparing to do this, and so therefore We have to act with sanctions that don't come from the UN, but come from a direct military action, period.
So we have to do it, because otherwise, here's what'll happen.
So, why isn't that going on, Professor?
That's a political question, I guess.
You know, sir, and let's not forget the solar aspect of this.
I mean, completely outside the realm of a potential military scenario, what I heard From the solar experts' world, you want me to predict a solar EMP event that could take down a fair part of the global grid?
Almost certain.
And you said the key word right there, about a minute ago, preparedness.
There's preparation at a number of different levels, from right within your own household, all the way up to a national level.
That one, the key thing is, as you know, you described it yourself, you hardened your antenna system.
Also, I was thinking, did you have a very big plug that you could pull the disconnecting antenna from your expensive radio?
That's right, I did.
I had a big Frankenstein switch, is what I call it.
I guess you're missing my point a little bit.
I understand that the sun could produce just an outrageous solar flare that could probably cripple everything, but there is very little, very, very little that we can do to actually prepare for an event like that.
There is something we can do to prepare for nations that would intentionally do it to us.
So they're kind of separate issues.
Well, in a way they're not, but they are separate issues.
One, we can actually do something about.
The other is gonna take a level of preparedness that is gonna take a generation to accomplish at minimum.
I would disagree on one point.
That we can actually begin engaging in preparedness now in terms of hardening and infrastructure.
Okay, let's say while you and I are talking, we go to radio break and then bang.
The bad stuff happens.
We do not have stockpiled in place the replacement parts that can get an infrastructure up and running.
The analogy I give is this.
I remember as a kid, I'd go out in my backyard in Jersey and those little beautiful spiderwebs you'd see covered in dew in the morning.
And being a little boy, of course I'd light a match and see what would happen, and boom, the web's gone.
The spider survived the day, he made another one.
Well, suppose only a dozen of those threads were fireproof.
How much easier would be the rebuilding of his web?
By hardening our infrastructure and then laying into place the replacement parts, which do cost money, And then having personnel trained, power utility companies going through the military to our local police and everyone else, that if a grid goes down, we pull this part, this part, this part, this part, and this part and replace them.
We can at least get some of the threads back up and running again, which could be reduced that maybe extreme figure of 90% and take it down to 10%.
That 10% is still 30 million Americans.
The catastrophe is there's where Russia suffered in World War II.
I'd rather 10% than 90.
All right.
Let me concede that you're right.
We could begin to harden things, though it's not an easy job.
You know, we've got power lines all across America.
In fact, all around the world, but certainly all across America.
And a lot of things that are just not infrastructure that's not going to be easily replaced.
I mean, automobiles, for example.
You mentioned the ignition systems would Burnout, they would, so vehicles wouldn't be moving.
If it struck above New York and Washington, the Northeast Corridor, which is where you know they'd hit, the economic, I don't know how much hardening there's been done secretly by our government for, you know, if it hit Wall Street as an example, you know, all the computers go, all the information goes, perhaps all the money goes.
I really don't know.
It would be awful.
I mean, I'm not in any way saying that what you've drawn out would not occur.
It would occur.
I'm saying that there's two separate things we can talk about here.
One is a possible event from the sun, and the other is, of course, a deliberate attack.
So if we can separate them, I'd appreciate that.
With regard to a deliberate attack, if we know that this is what they're planning, Then we have to preemptively take them out, don't we?
My personal opinion?
Dead on 100% right.
We have to take it out.
And that means preemptive, and that means a very tough political decision.
We did a preemptive strike in 2002 against Iraq, and look at the controversy that swirls around it seven years later.
Professor, the reason it would be so controversial is because the American people don't understand what the results of an attack of this sort would be.
And what would make it an easier political decision would be if the government said, look, here's what we know about an EMP attack.
Um, we know they're preparing to do this eventually.
So, you know, once you educate the American people about what they're facing and the consequences of it, then the political decision to preemptively attack is not so controversial.
You know, sir, you're hitting it dead on straight.
The history of warfare, and that's one of the things I specialized in, the vast majority is usually through miscommunication, miscalculation, misunderstanding.
1938, 1939, Hitler kept pushing the edge of the envelope because he knew we would back off.
And then finally, when England did make its heroic stand, even after the fall of France, he was caught completely off guard.
These guys aren't supposed to be fighting like this.
Well, suppose that message had been communicated to him back in September 1938 before Munich.
Listen, you cross the line, you're a dead man.
End of discussion.
You want to debate it?
Think of the 70 million lives that would have been spared.
Then why, Professor, is our government not telling its constituents what we're facing?
How many really heroic, tough, Political leaders have stood face to face with us and said, guys, these are the hard choices.
Either we're going to face them or we're going to perish.
I can remember, I'm old enough to remember Jack Kennedy in October 1962.
As am I. You were what, about 16, 17 then?
No, I was in the Air Force at Amarillo Air Force Base in Texas.
What was your memory of that?
How did you feel?
What did you think?
I thought we were going to go to war.
I was the guy who got to run over and pick up the red telephone and I was told that the preparedness level just jumped through the roof because, anyway, I remember it quite well.
I was a 12-year-old kid that from my attic window I looked at the New York City skyline and I knew I was inside the birthstone.
And yet I also knew I had a leader who was standing up and saying, this is the reality, and I'm not going to hide it from you.
There's a lot of mythology about Cuba, but we see people like Churchill, Jack Kennedy, and others who have had the guts to stand up and say, this is the reality, folks, now grow up and face it.
But everybody understood.
What nuclear weapons were and what the result of a full exchange would be.
Today, only people staying up late listening to our radio program understand the threat of an EMP attack.
So, again, certainly our military understands and certainly our military briefs whoever the current president happens to be.
About what the dangers are.
So, I guess, I don't know, what are you telling me that our current president, President Bush, before him and on back, I suppose, all the way to previous to Carter, all of them were briefed on this possibility.
And I would think the latter presidents even more so because we've now got these rogue nations with nuclear weapons.
So, I don't Get it, Professor.
Why aren't the people being educated about what we face?
I don't know.
I wish I could give you the answer, because when I started working on this book, I was introduced to Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, who is a great hero.
He has been the lone voice in the wilderness in Congress for years, saying, and this is one of only two PhDs in the hard sciences in all of Congress.
And this has been an issue for him for 20 years, and he finally got the funding for the commission in 1999.
Now, I'm not into conspiracy theories, but if you want to hear something weird, his 2004 report, which you can find online, on the day it was released, was on the identical day that the 9-11 report was released.
So where do you think mainstream media was hanging out on that day?
That whole day that the 9-11 report came out in 2004, that's all they dwelled on.
My friend, Captain Bill Sanders, U.S.
Navy, who is one of our country's top experts on EMP, he did the afterword for my book.
He has a great quote on that.
He said, Bill, on that day, we were like the two-faced god, was it Janus?
And we were looking backwards to the last war rather than thinking of looking forward to the potential of the next war.
Okay.
Let's try this again, Professor.
There's two scenarios.
One is, of course, a rogue nation simply detonating one of these above us.
Is our sun.
Now I'm well aware that the sun could certainly and will probably certainly become active again and eventually will get hit by a big solar storm.
But if you take the largest example we can think of and that would be the just a monstrous solar flare that missed the earth.
What was it a couple, three years ago?
I think it was 04 or 05 around Halloween.
04 or 05, yeah, okay.
Had that hit the earth, this is kind of a technical question for you, but had that hit the earth, is there any way that you can give me, that you can delineate between what that would have done Versus what an intentional attack with a nuclear device detonated above us would do.
How many volts per square meter?
How much of the infrastructure would collapse as a result of something from the sun versus a nuclear weapon?
Just so I can understand the severity of the two threats we're talking about.
There are some very good websites on the variable Potential of a flare output versus what's the potential EMP?
It's known as EMP-3 is created.
I cannot give you those figures.
I'm not sure.
And I've been told it could be worse in a military scenario.
It could go into the hundreds of volts per square meter.
But the best way to get that data is go online.
In the case of something from the Sohn Professor, we do have the Earth's magnetic field, which, if it gets hit hard enough, is depressed.
And of course, the really scary scenario is that there's a series of very large flares, and the magnetic field gets very depressed.
Weak as it is, boom, it gets hit by a giant one and the scenario you talked about is underway.
I just would love to have a way to understand the difference in the severity of these two possibilities.
And I guess there is no way to know, huh?
The information is online.
I've gone through it and, you know, as I mentioned at the start, I've only been bringing myself up to speed on the solar aspect of this since my book was published in March.
And a friend referred me to the book The Sun Kings.
I don't know what's happening to our time.
Professor, hold tight, we're, believe it or not, another half hour just went by.
This is just amazing how quickly time passes when you're having fun?
Question mark?
Alright everybody, my guest is Professor William Forsgen.
We're talking about EMP events and what they would do to us.
From Manila in the Philippines, I'm Art Bell.
Something we can do as long as there's no EMP.
That's Worldwide Communications.
Hi everybody, I am Art Bell filling in for George Noreen.
How's the night off?
Professor William Forsgen is my guest and it's a pretty bleak scenario that he's been laying out.
Now I understand that some of you will have joined the program as it has gone on and probably I don't know, are not exactly aware of what we're talking about.
We're talking about an EMP, which is an electromagnetic pulse.
Now, what it would do is virtually destroy all the transistors, all the long power lines that, you know, the whole shebang would go down.
Computers that hold our Economic data would be dead.
The power grid would be completely dead.
There'd be no water shortly, because of course you need power to pump water, and on and on and on.
You get the idea.
It would essentially be the end of all.
And yes, some percentage would survive, but it would probably be a fairly low percentage compared to the total population of the United States.
Most would die.
I guess we can say that safely.
That's an established, I don't think you can argue with it, scenario.
That's what the professor has laid out.
Smaller nations like Iran and North Korea could accomplish this.
Now, the American population is largely unaware of this threat.
unaware. They don't know about it. Not like the old days when the tens of thousands of nuclear weapons on each side
could destroy each country and probably in the process the entire world.
But it's every bit as serious a threat and maybe more of a threat because it's held in the hands of those who don't
care whether they live or die.
There is also a threat from our sun.
Now I'm not sure there's as much we can do about that.
Certainly we can begin hardening if we understand the threat.
But there is something we can do about the other, you know, the man-made, the hand-of-man threat.
That we can do something about if we understand the threat, which obviously the majority of us do not.
So more of all this in a moment.
We'll be right back.
All right, in the interest of backtracking for those who joined late, Donald in Las Vegas, Nevada asks, we're not getting concrete answers.
Well, actually, we have been.
But to go on exactly, he says, how does an EMP disable the grid, my electronics, and beyond that, how can I harden my home, line the walls with copper mesh grounded to earth, or will having a big whole house surge protector work?
Thanks, Don in Las Vegas, professor.
Great question.
I'm referring people a lot to the internet tonight.
Look up Faraday Cage.
F-A-R-A-D-A-Y Cage.
Yes.
There are numerous sites there that can explain to you how to build a very simple, for $10, $20, you can build a Faraday Cage that you can throw some of your spare electronics into that would be well protected.
The problem with commercial surge protectors as we have them now is The surge, say, from a lightning bolt hitting nearby, comes at you like a wave.
And in those first microseconds, when the surge starts to pick up, your $100 surge protector that you have hooked into your TV goes, uh-oh, and snaps it off before it can go through and blow your system.
An EMP doesn't come like a wave.
It comes like a wall.
So it's already blown through your surge protection system before It detects it and shuts you offline.
There are EMP surge protection systems, but they're rather expensive.
The best answer to that gentleman is, assume you're going to lose a lot, and beyond that, what's your computer, even if you had a survivable computer, what's it going to be communicating with when the grid itself is down?
That takes us back to hardening.
Hardening is building through our electrical supply system sufficient surge protections and relays and replacement parts that even if parts of the system are blown out, they can be replaced quickly and brought back online.
All right, Professor, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that a nuclear detonation in the atmosphere would produce such a large EMP that it wouldn't matter whether you have a surge protector in front of your computer or not because it would fry, there'd be enough voltage to directly fry all the circuits in your computer.
Certainly all the transistors would go, and that would be that.
Or you're a TV or whatever.
Am I wrong?
You're absolutely right.
In fact, I sat in on some real experts, the PhD physicist types that were debating what happens to people with pacemakers.
Funny.
David in Ketchikan, Alaska is asking that.
He says his wife has a pacemaker and a defibrillator and of course she'd be instantly dead.
There's debate.
It depends again upon the voltage per square meter lay down.
And it's a line-of-sight event.
Let's say, fortunately, his wife is down in the basement, away from any nearby conductive systems, doing whatever, and the EMP hits.
Maybe she'll be okay, but there's no promise.
If she's standing looking up at the sky at the moment it happens and she's in a direct line-of-sight, It could be a grim scenario.
It's my understanding, though, that these would be detonated at what sort of altitude?
I've been told that the optimum altitude is classified, but it's somewhere between 200 to 300 miles, directly above Kansas, could do a laydown across the entire continental United States.
Yes, that was my point.
So the line of sight from two or three hundred miles up is obviously gigantic.
I wouldn't want to live in Salina.
That's people talk about Salina is just go straight up two hundred odd miles or whatever and you have a line of sight and of course if you're directly underneath you're going to get a stronger surge than you would say up in Maine.
Yes, but it's going to cover, if it's line decided, it's going to cover a hell of a lot of geography.
So, I don't know.
I think you've laid out your scenario very accurately.
It's really scary.
And the question is, what can we do about it?
Well, not much.
Let me ask about one other line of questioning here, and that is, Ronald Reagan, when he was our president, lobbied very very hard to have some sort of a protective
shield built to the United States so that if you know detecting on launch
anything that would be launched we would turn into dust before it gained much
altitude at all so what about that
What about some sort of great safety net?
Oh, gosh.
Now you've really hit onto the political sore point of this.
And I'll be blunt.
It's why I talk sometimes more about solar, because one of my first concerns is hardening the system.
SDI, more commonly known as Star Wars, Strategic Defense Initiative, kicked in by Reagan in the early 80s.
And you can remember it was met with a lot of derision.
Oh yes.
And a lot of mockery, and it has been all across for the last 25 years.
Now, those who understand the system know that against a full-scale Soviet launch, SDI is not a guarantee.
Even if only 5% of the warheads get through, we're cooked.
But, but, but, and here is the big capitalized but, the UT.
Against the launch from Iran or North Korea, where it's only one to three missiles?
That is an entirely different scenario.
And just two points here.
In Poland, on September 17th, we announced we were pulling out.
And I'll talk about a political gaffe.
The day we announced it, by the way, was the day, the 70th anniversary of Poland being knifed in the back by the Soviet Union and invaded.
That missile shield system in Poland protects Could have protected the eastern United States from an Iranian launch going from east to west.
One other example, when Korea did, remember Korea did a series of launches back in the spring.
We had a highly accurate radar system working on X-band that I was told can detect a baseball lofting out of a stadium from 2,000 miles away.
We turned that radar system off because we didn't want to do something provocative while they were launching their missile.
A radar system that could have given us accurate data as to the capability of the missile system.
As to where their other launch splashed down, nobody's talking.
So...
Yes, it's frustrating.
All right, obviously there's probably some information that's classified that I guess you don't know about, but I would imagine there is some level of SDI up there now that we don't talk about.
Yes, there is.
We have a battery and we have four interceptors based in Vandenberg, both airports based in California.
We have a battery, I believe, of 20 based in Alaska that could be effective against a Korean launch.
Also, your Aegis systems, a mounted shipboard, can be effective in the early stage, the loft stage.
You have your loft, your transition, and re-entry.
But let me add, there is no re-entry on an EMP weapon.
You have to nail it in the beginning or in the middle.
Right, launch phase.
We probably also have space-based stuff that we don't talk about, wouldn't you imagine?
I can imagine, but I've never heard anybody talk about it.
I've heard a lot of people, and I'm very enthusiastic in my support of what's called Brilliant Pebbles.
Yes.
There was the dumb pebble system of the 80s, which was kind of an interesting idea.
Essentially, you launch a trash can full of pebbles in the direction of an incoming missile, and the kinetic energy of these pebbles spreading out would destroy it.
Brilliant Pebbles is a system of small satellites What about it?
Six foot long interceptors mounted on them that are in orbit.
Same way we have, what, I think 14 or 18 geosync, not geosync, our geopositioning satellites.
But any particular spot on the Earth is covered at any given moment.
Detect the launch, pop it while it's still in the launch stage or definitely in the transition stage.
So we probably have some protection.
We probably have some protection that is classified and that we're not aware of.
Hopefully that's the case.
Maybe that's why they're not educating the public.
Perhaps that's why they're not educating the public about the danger.
Otherwise, the collective silence on this issue, with the exception of what we're doing right now, is overwhelming and can't be justified, can it?
Well, let me present an absurdity.
In talking with Congressman Bartlett and his staff, and they were tremendous help with getting data.
I remember early in my first conversation with Congressman Bartlett, who is our leading advocate, along with Benny Thompson, by the way, a liberal Democrat from Mississippi and a conservative Republican from Maryland, worked together on this.
Congressman Bartlett said, Bill, the problem with EMP is there's no constituency.
Sir, I think you are doing a great patriotic duty tonight by talking about this.
You reach millions of people.
If you help build a constituency of audience who start to say to their Congressmen, by heavens, when are you guys going to take this thing seriously?
Then you've done an incredible service for America.
Now, let me give you an absurdity.
While all of this has been going on, and since my own direct involvement in my book, One Second After coming out, you know that Congress passed a law forbidding us from owning chimpanzees?
Do that again, please.
Congress passed a law forbidding us from owning chimpanzees.
Okay.
Do you see my point?
Um, well... One woman endured a horrific tragedy.
Remember, she was on some talk show a couple weeks ago.
A woman who had her face torn off by chimpanzees.
Oh, that's right, yes.
Well, that gained such national media attention that some congressman stood up and said, by gosh, we've got to pass a law against chimpanzees.
Meanwhile, the entire nation is at risk on other issues, and it's ignored.
It shows the absurdity of government.
Well, when I look at this, I can only imagine that they either feel there's nothing we can do about it, or that even an education of the public wouldn't allow a preemptive strike if that's what it's going to take.
And it sounds like it will, short of something classified that we both don't know about, or at least I don't.
Are you aware of any... Let me rephrase this.
Are you aware of any classified...
material that would justify the government's silence on this subject?
Let me, please, and I'm so glad you asked me that, please let me emphasize, I have never looked at classified information.
I have asked questions at times to experts who just smile and say, Bill, let's change the subject.
My anxiety comes because of attending a number of conferences on this subject in which there are people who are aware of both classified
information and of course the declassified who express a lot of anxiety.
That reaction tends to tell me that there is a real genuine reason for a national concern
and a need for national education on this which you are doing at this very moment.
I'm not sure what, you know, assuming that you have the cooperation of those people who
listen tonight, I didn't scare the hell out of them, what would you suggest they do?
House Bill 2195 for starters.
Grant, we're all preoccupied with the health bill and other issues, and a wonderful lady in my life has a wonderful quote that I know Congressman Bartlett even picked up on.
Which is, she was reading my book and doing some editing on the bill.
What good is a bailout?
What good is a healthcare bill if there's no country left to bail out?
Good point.
Good point.
House Bill 2195, you said?
H.R.
2195.
Co-sponsored by Penny Thompson and Representative Bartlett.
You can look it up online.
It is a first step towards hardening our system.
So, it provides for the beginning of the hardening of the infrastructure?
In what manner does it do that?
It's looking particularly at the smart grid system that the administration has proposed, which ironically is even more vulnerable in its infrastructure.
It's creating more vulnerable points.
Granted, it's beautiful high-tech.
Highly vulnerable.
HR 2195 specifically demands funding which would increase the cost by about only 10% to ensure that the smart grid is sufficiently hardened to withstand a major EMT event.
That would be a huge step.
And what kind of timeline, even if you assume for a moment this passes, which in the current political atmosphere I doubt, but if it did and it got signed, what kind of timeline would be involved in terms of hardening?
I've been told three to five years we could start to see a major effect.
Three to five years.
With regard to a possible attack by any one of these rogue nations of the sort you've laid out tonight, how soon might that occur?
I am deeply, deeply concerned.
In fact, when you were going over the news at the start of your program, and I could hear the tone of your voice discussing a number of nations have told Iran, Oh, please, please stop.
I am deeply worried for the safety of my daughter and my country.
On the day that Iran has lost capability, which they already have, combined with fissionable warheads that they have two to
three of them.
That's a day they can take us out.
It's about as scary as it gets.
It's really about as scary as it gets.
What I'd like to do, Professor, is allow the audience to begin to ask some questions.
Go a little bit earlier, because there are an awful lot of very, very good questions.
I suppose we didn't concentrate as hard as we might have on the solar aspect of this, but it seems so So difficult to marshal enough support in the case of the sun.
In other words, an event from nature as compared to the act of a nation and a possible preemptive strike.
Anyway, this half hour is gone.
When we get back, we're going to open the phone lines from Manila, Southeast Asia and the Philippines.
I'm Art Bell.
This is Coast to Coast AM.
Want to read about it?
It's called One Second After.
That's the professor's book.
One Second After.
I'm going to read an email because I want the professor to have a moment to digest it before we come back.
And this was sent prior to the show and I thought it might be relevant.
And I think it is.
And I'm not going to name the person who sent it for obvious reasons.
Art, I look forward to listening to your show tonight about EMP dangers to the grid.
I've got to let you know that I worked at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, SONGS.
That's an acronym for it.
We had Chinese Communist Army engineers working on the most sensitive aspects of Unit 1's TMI, Three Mile Island, upgrades.
They worked on the SIS safety injection system that was the main safety of nukes.
The sequencer drive controls a sequence that is and how and when the control rods are dropped into the reactor and interact with the scram breaker.
The control room being converted to computer systems, which put the control room under threat by outside influences from anybody who breaks into substations and switch yards.
The software was written in India, as well as much of the engineering being done offshore.
I experienced all this firsthand.
Power plants, switch yards, and substations talk to each other.
By way of the transmission lines, the large basket-like contraptions hanging off the lines at the station's deadheads are wave traps where the messages are called off the transmission lines and deciphered at the control room so that the power plant can adjust the power factor and adjust for leading and lagging VARs, that would be volt amps reactants, for their customers.
This is their Achilles heel.
When the enemy is designing everything in your power industry, you could actually say the enemy is in the wire.
At first, I thought the reactors were at risk.
But I later understood that to destroy this nation, all you had to do was destroy the substations by controlling the switch yards and shunting out power stations and keeping the overcurrent relays on to overload and burn out expensive equipment that no longer is staged at power company lay down yards or even made in this country.
You can't even get nuclear power plant motors rebuilt in this country anymore.
If this stuff is burned up, it cannot be replaced in a month.
In two months without power, you're never going to be able to recognize America.
There'll be a severe population reduction without power, and no one will ever know where it came from.
They'll just think it was from an EMP device or a massive solar flare, and they'll never be brought to justice.
SCRAM was in origin an acronym for Safety Cut Rope Axe Man.
Let me say that again.
Safety Cut Rope Axe Man.
That was coined by Enrico Fermi himself.
Back with the professor in just a moment.
I, by the way, call you professor so that as the program proceeds, professor, they don't, they don't think that they're listening to some crackpot.
Okay.
I prefer real professors.
Whatever, you know, Bill is fine, but yes, I think I'll continue with professor so they understand that fact.
Now, did you hear the email and I wonder what reaction you got?
Yeah, it scared the hell out of me.
Yet again, recall, it was about a month or two ago, there was hacking into the power grid.
which had a lot of people concerned.
There's reports that one Russia went in on Georgia last year.
It was preceded by a hacking into their power grid and their communications grid.
It's also believed that the Russians did a training exercise of hacking into Estonia's communications and power
grid.
It is now a standard operating procedure for war fighting.
OK. There have been a number of movies on the subject.
And just before we go to the phones here, and they're all lit up, I wanted to ask you how realistic –
Oh, War of the Worlds, for example, that was an EMP.
Hated it.
Hated it.
Really.
I mean, the cars stopped, except our hero's car, which, you know, got worked on quickly.
Oh, Change of Solenoid.
Yeah.
Friends are embarrassed.
Girlfriend, daughter, friends are embarrassed to go to a movie with me, because being a historian and such, I can make some very loud comments in the theater.
His car, he's at Changes, Illinois.
I did make a scatological comment.
Bill Nye, the science guy, who's a really great guy, he actually did a little 15-minute piece for STRATCOM, the old Strategic Care Command, and it's called, How Hollywood Gets EMP Wrong.
And, you know, I'm glad you asked that question, because you helped me hit a nail on the head that I think I've been missing.
Part of the problem with EMP is people see it in the movies all the time.
It's like Ocean's 11.
Oh, well, EMP, Las Vegas for 30 seconds.
And then the power comes back on.
The one with John Travolta where he snags a couple of weapons.
Oh, don't worry.
I'll turn the ignition off on the car.
The EMP won't bother it.
Hollywood keeps getting it wrong and people believe it.
I know, I know, I know.
All right.
I guess what we ought to do is go to the phones.
I promise that.
So let's do it.
Let's see what kind of questions we get.
From Lima, Ohio.
John, you're on the air with us.
Hi, Art.
Hi, Professor.
Hi, John.
How are you doing?
Okay.
How are you?
The comforting part with the Koreans is that we know that the Koreans will get to a point where they've had enough otherwise we wouldn't
have a DMZ.
But the Iranians seem to be a different factor.
So I'm not sure how versed you are as far as Muslim theology,
but my thought goes to what if we were to destroy the well where this
Mahdi is supposed to originate from? Do you think that would have an effect?
I think it would have a very violent effect if we did that as a preemptive.
Though maybe conveying the well will disappear could be one aspect
of it.
Yeah, you're right.
Shiite Twelvers are one particular sect within the Muslim movement, the religion, and it's one of the most radical and one of the most dangerous.
And the idea about creating the end times, so this hidden Iman from I think it's the 8th century, emerges from the world, emerges back into the world, That's a terrifying thought.
Yeah, you hit a good point.
Threaten the well.
But I think the reaction would be rather violent.
Yeah.
As far as vacuum tubes, would vacuum tubes help within a circuit, or would the rest of the circuit be affected?
If I was going to have anything, and I believe Mr. Bell would agree, I'd like to have an old-fashioned vacuum tube radio somewhere that I could rely on.
Okay, thank you.
That's assuming that any of the broadcasters were left to broadcast.
So, yes, perhaps a vacuum and an old glow-in-the-dark radio is what we call them.
Might work, depending on the level of EMP, I suppose.
I mean, diodes can still burn out and other sensitive parts of the radio can go, so.
I don't know.
You've laid out such a scary scenario, Professor, that unless we have classified stuff that I'm unaware of, and you obviously are unaware of as well, the only protection is education and then action.
And there's not going to be any action, and certainly no preemptive action, until there's education, right?
You got it exactly.
That's why I'm awed that you're devoting your program to this tonight.
But if 1% of the audience reacts, conveys to Congress how they feel about this, that starts building a constituency.
So that rather than passing idiot bills about banning chimpanzees, we start talking about how do we realistically deal with the EMP as a military threat, how do we build a defense policy to respond to that, how do we prepare our infrastructure, and how do we prepare personally within our communities.
David, in Mesa, Arizona, you're on the air with Art Bell and Professor Forsgen.
Hi.
Good morning, Art Bell and Professor.
I'm a long, long time listener.
I first listened to you when you and Richard C. Hoagland discussed the weather control in Alaska, if you remember that.
Well, we discussed HAARP.
Now, whether HAARP actually accomplishes weather control is another question, but proceed.
Right.
Does everybody keep talking so negative when the fact remains that only once did you ever hear we have the cobalt bomb which is supposedly a thousand times more destructive than the hydrogen bomb when President Truman was in office and they never exploded one because they were afraid that it might destroy the earth And anybody that thinks that what you were talking about, both of you, all night long today, that if Korea or any other country, including Iran, were to launch a nuclear bomb towards the United States, and we thought it might destroy 90% of the population, that we would not retaliate with a cobalt bomb.
Well, again, I'm sure we would retaliate with everything that would be needed to destroy utterly the nation that did this to us, but at that point it would be somewhat academic since an EMP series of weapons above the U.S.
would end the United States, Professor.
Yeah, well, I dedicated my book to two people.
I dedicate it to my father, who taught me about my country and patriotism.
I dedicate it to my daughter, that she grows up in a world that's safe.
Retaliation after the event, in which the world in which my daughter is going to die, is not very comforting.
I want to make sure it doesn't happen in the first place.
And part of that is, as the gentleman conveyed, a very firm foreign policy statement.
Don't even think about crossing the line.
Well, I'm not sure it's such an instruction to somebody who wishes to die, you know, and begin partaking of their 72 virgins.
Uh, is going to mean very much, whether it comes from the United Nations or directly from the U.S.
government, as a here's what we'll do kind of deal.
I mean, that's just not going to do much.
The only thing that will affect one of these nations will be to end the threat, and by that I mean end it in a military fashion.
You know, one of the great ironies from some of, shall we say, the lost history of the beginnings of World War II is that when Hitler first started doing his moves, 36, 37, 38, a fair part of his general staff were saying, please, please go ahead and do it because the English and the French and the Americans are going to get ticked off and take this idiot out before he drags us into a real war.
And then they were incredulous every time we backed off.
So, yeah, don't we all wish we could go back to 1937 and say, look, we're going to show you newsreel footage here in a place called Auschwitz, Normandy.
Now, let's make sure this doesn't happen again.
And if that means helping these guys along to their virgins before they attack us, I'm all for it.
Yucaipa, California brings John.
You're on the air, John.
Hello.
Hello, Professor.
I'm sorry.
I'm going deaf, so I'm having trouble with certain things.
But anyway, everything I've heard you say has been so exactly correct, because I've been studying what you're doing for 10 years or more.
I can't even believe it.
And my question is, do you have a solution to any of this?
Okay.
Actually, it's a good question.
It's a great question.
You know, like I asked earlier, other than what I've suggested with a preemptive strike, if we just stick to talking about the man-made threat, what is the solution?
Okay, I'm going to run from the top down.
Preemptive action.
And I think we're all in agreement on that.
If we are looking at a situation with Iran where they're going to push ahead with nuclear weapons, we make sure they never get them.
And if that means taking out the administration, then do it.
Two, ballistic missile defense.
That if something is launched, we take it down before it hits us, and then we retaliate fully.
Third, hardening.
Fourth and fifth are two things we haven't quite talked about, is within your own community.
You go and you talk to your local first responders, your emergency personnel, and you'll be gate-mouthed at how they have received no training on this type of scenario.
And yet, more and more of them are becoming aware because of programs like us tonight, and they want to start planning and training on how to handle an emergency situation.
And then finally, with your own family.
We as individuals.
Now, sir, I think you and I are basically the same age group.
Do you remember when we were kids at school, they would train us regarding nuclear war and they would hand out a pamphlet each year that they'd come to your family?
Yes, I remember getting under the desk.
Yeah, duck and cover.
But beyond that, do you remember the pamphlets they used to give to us as kids that they'd come to our parents what you and your family should do in the event of nuclear war?
Uh, I do, yes.
We should be... Why are we not doing that?
Well, in fact, there are websites that are doing that.
Well...
Education, as you keep pointing out.
We need to educate.
I'm kind of a connoisseur of talk radio, Professor, and I listen to a lot of programs, and I've not heard anybody do a program the likes of which we're doing at the moment.
How many people are you reaching, do you think, at this moment?
Oh gosh, I don't know.
Millions.
How many million?
I don't know.
It's what, Friday night, Saturday morning?
A lot of people.
Millions.
That's pretty powerful.
You're right.
Talk radio.
If 1% of the listening audience called up their local talk radio stations on Monday and said, you know, I want to talk about this issue.
Think of the cascading effect.
It's possible.
It's possible.
But I don't know.
We'll see.
I don't know.
You know, it's kind of a technical subject and I'm not sure.
How it's sinking in, I suppose as we continue to take calls, we might find out.
Alberta, Canada.
Gene, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hello there.
I was wondering how one would go about with a preemptive strike.
It would probably have to involve neutron weapons or something pretty heavy because of these underground facilities.
And then, even if it was successful, The political fallout would be pretty ugly, wouldn't it?
It would be best just to tell Russia that, you know, if Iran or Korea does the unthinkable, that pretty much the whole alliance has to go, because pretty much your sovereignty is going to be destroyed after an EMP strike, because you have no economy.
It's just a matter of time before you're totally vulnerable.
You can't run your fleet.
You're pretty much doomed, eh?
Yeah.
The gentleman who sent the email in before we started taking the calls, gosh, I wish that guy would call in.
He's truly an expert on the system and how vulnerable it is.
And yeah, you're right.
The political fallout will be a blizzard compared to one or two snowflakes falling over Iraq.
But that's, you know, that's, the reason for that is because people don't, have not been educated to the threat.
They don't know about the threat.
You know, most people think, well, North Korea with some nukes, hmm, Iran with some nukes, hmm, bad.
But you know, we just, yeah, we might lose a city, or a few cities, and then we'd retaliate, and their nation wouldn't exist any longer.
They're not considering what you have proposed, that all they have to do is vertically launch something to the right altitude, detonate it, And the United States, as we know it, ceases to exist.
And then what?
I remember, I believe it was April 4th, April 5th, when North Korea did its first loft this year of a missile.
And I was absolutely stunned when a senior member of the administration, some advisor, pointed out, not to worry about it because Uh, they can't get the warhead because they need a re-entry shield on the warhead so it can penetrate through and take out Seattle.
So don't worry about it.
And everybody who is within, shall we say, the EMP community was like, oh my God, nobody's getting it.
Well, nobody is getting it.
All right, Professor, hold tight.
We have yet destroyed another segment.
Very quickly, we have one more hour to go, and we'll devote that to the telephones.
My guest is Professor William Forsgen.
We're talking about electromagnetic pulse and the end of America as we know it.
From Manila, I'm Art Bell.
Well, good day to you, whatever time of day it happens to be.
I am Art Bell, filling in for George Norrie.
And this is a very, very important program.
More important than many out there know, I think.
Whether it's going to actually get traction and cause people to react in, I don't know, sending their congressman a note, or perhaps those of you who have been listening You know, very closely tonight, we'll, as he suggested, pick up the telephone and call another talk show and do a short, to-the-point presentation, and there'll be kind of a cascading effect.
One could always hope for something of that nature.
I don't know.
But to continue as we are now is, or seems to be, to me, suicidal.
Professor Forrest Chin, back in a moment.
Professor, just out of curiosity, this is yet another got you.
We live with so many.
We're in the age of nature getting us with H1N1, biological constructions going on in dark little labs that could end the world, little bugs that could end the world.
So, how do you impress on people?
The truly serious, real-time, right now threat coming from a group of people who just don't care about their own lives.
Their goal is to end the world as we know it.
How do you impress on people the severity of the threat?
History.
History.
Just spend a couple of hours And, uh, let's do this.
Put into your head, imagine you're a Jew.
And then go back and look at what you could see online, on YouTube or whatever, film footage of Auschwitz, of Buchenwald, the Treblinka.
And then go look back five or ten years earlier, where there were so many people saying, oh, it will never happen.
Oh, the Germans, yeah.
Yeah, the Nazis are a bit crazy, but they'll never go that far.
Well, we know.
History taught us.
They did.
And now we actually have a regime in this world who laughs at the Holocaust, who says it never happened.
But then in the next step, we'll then turn around and say, but if we can do it to the Jews again, we will do it.
History should teach us.
Now, I don't necessarily buy the line that... I mean, I'm a historian.
I've been in this business 30 years.
Yeah, we are doomed to keep repeating things, but by golly, there should be some things that should connect to us.
An EMP is a holocaust beyond our imagining.
All right, back to the tones.
Let's go to Louisiana and Cornelius, you're on the air.
Hey Art, God bless you and the professor.
I hope you all had a happy and blessed Thanksgiving and Gina, your call screener and all the coast-to-coast listeners.
I had a question and I'm glad you mentioned that about Israel.
Because I told Gina, I said, I believe the Israelis will attack the Iranians, and that will solve our problem as far as the EMP.
So that was my comment, and God bless y'all all.
Well, God bless you, and thank you for the call.
You'd think the Israelis will do... Lately, anytime there's a problem, professor, we've told the Israelis, lay low, we will handle it.
Right?
Yeah, you hear my sarcastic, hmm.
Wasn't there a member of the administration just a couple months back that said if the Israelis attempted to launch an attack on Iran, we would shoot the Israelis down?
Something like that, yeah.
Yeah.
They, again, the Jewish analogy, it strikes home to me in a very personal sense in that my beloved mentor is a Jew who survived World War II.
The man who became very much my father figure, teaching me to be a historian, He fought.
He managed to get out and he wound up in the British Army.
And most of his family died in that.
The people of Israel understand that they are on the razor's edge.
They see it every day.
But even Israel, in recent years, Israel at one point was very, very proactive in terms of, you know, preemption, that sort of thing.
But in recent years, he'd say it, you might not agree with it, but Israel has started their own brand of political correctness as compared to what they were some years ago.
Synchronicity, sir, because I was about to say the words political correctness is destroying Israel.
All right, from Wichita, Kansas, comes Michael.
You're on the air, Michael.
Hello, Art and Professor.
First of all, a little ray of hope, maybe.
There are several what used to be termed survivalist type sites or blogs, prefer to call themselves preparedness types now, but these are civilians.
And the subject of EMP is being discussed, and also how to counter measures that people can take, such as putting radios or hand gear in tuna boxes or Faraday cages.
And I, of course, in the military until in the 70s, we were still using vacuum tubes.
The primary reason was for EMP protection.
And of course, aircraft is using more and more fiber optics all the time.
Part of the reason for that is weight.
But in addition, it is AMP proof.
So my question, though, is, is what can individuals, I mean, you know, the chances of the government doing anything or doing anything in time are probably nil.
So what can individuals on a personal level do?
And I realize the infrastructure may be gone.
But still, to protect your laptop, perhaps even your automobile, what are some of the things you can do to try to harden or EMP-proof personal equipment?
That's totally a fair question.
Professor, what about your automobile?
What would you do to protect that?
Well, Mr. Bell, you know, you've hit it repeatedly where you've mentioned, how do we educate?
How do we educate?
And the gentleman who's called in has hit one of the key points.
There are a number of sites.
I particularly recommend, I've been reading a lot of RAW stuff, R-A-W-L-E-S.
His book, he has a website that, boy, you talk about an expert who covers everything.
Regarding automobiles, Well, in my novel, One Second After, there just so happened to be a 64 Mustang and a 59 Edsel sitting around.
Any vehicle, there's a lot of debate about what happens with vehicles.
Anything much beyond 1980, 1985, you start getting iffy.
Look up YouTube, look up Taurus EMP, for Taurus EMP, and you'll see a demonstration of EMPs happening at Taurus.
As to the technical, What to do with a modern car?
I'm sorry, I'm not a tech head on that.
You know, I turn the key and the car turns on, I go, oh great.
I'd like to find an old Volkswagen and stick it in my garage from the early 60s.
Okay, not a lot of people are going to end up doing that.
You and I both know it.
What about aircraft?
Just as a curiosity, he mentioned fiber optics in aircraft.
It seems to me that the moment there is an EMP within line of sight, which would be very great indeed, considering an airliner at say 35,000 feet, those aircraft would be falling from the sky most immediately.
I'm gonna say the word synchronicity again, because while we were on commercial break, I was thinking about that.
I was hoping the topic would come up.
I certainly would not want to be in a 777 or one of the new Airbuses.
Sir, maybe you've seen some of the news articles about the software problems that they're having with many of the new jets?
Sure.
And the pilots are no longer able to override them in time?
Right.
Now, I'm a pilot.
I own an original World War II aircraft.
I fly it every week.
I know that thing's going to fly no matter what.
You just have to get out and grab the prop and shout clear.
Modern aircraft, I've heard pessimists say that go online, look at the map.
You can see online where it's a map of air traffic across 24 hours.
There's about 5,000 commercial aircraft in the air at around noontime.
Right.
Most of them are going to fall from the sky like a rock.
That's what I thought.
Gary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Good morning.
Hi.
I'm a big fan, and I just had a quick question for the professor, and I'll take it off the air.
It would seem to me that the Star Wars program would be useless only because of a basic physics law that I was taught in high school and college, which is that you can't know the velocity And the position of an object at the same time.
You can either know the velocity, or you can know the position, not both.
And so Star Wars would seem to be the kind of thing that would be... I mentioned this in a bar one time, and we tried it a couple times, me and my friends.
We sat there, and one of my friends would sit on the other end of the bar, and I would sit on the other end.
And he would throw a rock, and I would try and throw a rock and hit it out of the air.
It just seems absurd.
I'm not saying it's not worth pursuing, because an EMP attack would be really bad, obviously, but I don't understand how that... I'm not sure that a bar rock fight qualifies as a good analogy for what we're talking about here.
Professor?
It's a good departure point, though.
Okay, person A throws a rock, and the gentleman who just called in He throws a rock.
But remember, the rock has a thruster on it and a radar system and is receiving data from other points as well and tracks in on it, which is standard with any air-to-air surface-to-air missile today.
I had a long conversation several months back with a four-star who's a really wonderful gentleman.
He's been involved in the whole issue of SDI for 25 years.
He said, we're no longer at the system level of considering a bullet hitting a bullet.
We do have the capability, if we would invest in it, of picking a point on the bullet that we want to hit.
There was a test that's declassified in which two missiles were, ballistic missiles, were at a target system.
Happened within the last year or two.
The first missile destroyed the target.
A split second later, the second missile intercepted the largest piece of the target that was tumbling off that was about a square meter.
Wow.
And that was at something like 8,000 miles an hour.
So that second rock has a thruster and a radar and tracks.
So it can be done?
Oh, absolutely, yes.
And it's a great investment.
If you have the political will to say, go ahead and do it.
Well, can I draw an analogy for 30 seconds?
I don't want to take away time from the, from, from the, I was out today shopping with my daughter for a car.
My baby is about to get into an automobile.
What kind of dad, and we're on the lot, we're looking at a car for around $14,000.
Now imagine this conversation.
I say to the guy, great, do me a favor, pull out all those darn airbags and these safety systems and the engine block drop and everything else.
How much can we knock off the price?
What kind of father would you... Do you see my point?
Well, I guess I do.
I figured you'd be buying her a little Volkswagen.
Well, no.
I walked in there and I said, I want reactive armor on the car.
I'm willing to spend thousands of dollars necessary to protect my precious baby.
Now, we're talking tens of dollars per American citizen per year to start building an effective ballistic missile defense system.
Isn't it worth it?
I don't know, I'm still thinking of how to fit reactive armor onto my car.
Okay, Terry in Melbourne, Florida, you're on the air.
Good morning.
Hello, good morning.
Hey Professor, you were mentioning the Carrington event, and that it happened, I noted that it happened just two years before the Civil War in 1861.
And due to humans being electromagnetically affected beings, my question is, have you noted or taken any data on solar flares happening prior to war starting?
It's an interesting point, but as Mr. Bell pointed out at the beginning, Organic that we are, I mean, if we were made of metal, yeah, I would be concerned.
But organic that we are, that instantaneous flash of a couple hundred volts, actually would only be a couple volts hitting you, if you were standing outside.
I don't think the impact would be there.
I'm jealous of where you live because you get to see all the launches.
Oh yeah, it's great.
I love it.
Unless you're wearing a pacemaker.
Yeah.
Yep, you're very welcome, and have a good morning.
To New Jersey, all the way to New Jersey, Morty, you're on the air with Professor Force Chen and Art Bell.
Good morning, Art.
Fascinating program this morning, and it's always great to hear your voice, Art.
Good morning, Professor.
Good morning, sir.
Two very quick points, gentlemen.
Number one, just as a matter of information, In the year 1895, a series of solar flares completely wiped out the telegraph in the entire country, and at the time that was considered to be quite an emergency.
Point number two, concerning preparedness.
I have heard that Denver, Colorado is now the unofficial capital of the United States, and that all of the most important government agencies are either already there in hardened underground facilities or will be moving to Denver.
I understand the CIA and half the Pentagon are already there, so it sounds to me like our government is definitely expecting something to happen.
They're not doing all of this moving for nothing.
Professor?
I've not heard that, but of course we do know Colorado Springs, there's the old NORAD system is there, and there are... that was the big one back during the Cold War, so one could assume That there is some redundancy for some government programs there, but no, I've not heard anything related to Denver, sir.
Actually, I have.
There's a lot of internet chatter about a move to Denver, and I'm not sure that I understand it.
It's a mile high city.
I suppose the adjacent mountains, perhaps?
I don't understand why.
There's a big Cheyenne mountain complex nearby.
All right.
To Culver City, California.
And, Olin, you're on the air.
On my car radio, I put three 1N4001 rectifier diodes in series, pointing from the antenna to ground, and three more in series, pointing from ground up to the antenna, which gives me a plus and minus 30-amp surge capability.
Do you think that those diodes will protect my car radio from EMP?
Wow, given Mr. Bell's background in ham radio, I'm going to pass that question to you, sir.
Okay.
It's going to protect your car radio from, for example, a lightning strike or something of a lesser magnitude than a full EMP event produced by a nuclear weapon.
Yes.
But, you know, if what the professor is discussing occurs, Your radio is going to get fried because your radio is composed of transistors and other solid-state devices that will immediately self-destruct, whether or not the spike is coming in through the antenna or not.
It's not going to matter.
It's going to directly fry the radio, or my ham rig, or anything else electronic.
It's going to fry it.
Professor, would you argue with that?
I'm not going to argue with you at all on that.
Well, you're the expert.
Well, no.
You're actually the expert on radio equipment, and if my father had ever had a chance to look at your antenna system, he would have gone crazy.
Okay.
Maryland brings Lee.
Lee, you're on the air.
Yeah.
Our house has a lever outside with a box, and it cuts off the power.
Okay, that's a similar question.
We've got very little time to the last one.
burn down the houses? All the hotels and all the houses, the wires are all hooked to two-by-fours,
which are probably really dry. Okay, that's a similar question. We've got very little
time to the last one. In other words, you could protect yourself from the surge coming
in from the electric company, but even having thrown that switch, you can't protect your
electronics short of a Faraday cage from direct EMP, which would be at a level that would
just simply fry everything immediately.
The computers would all go... Professor, hold tight.
We will be back.
We've got one more segment to go.
We could use about five.
I'm Art Bell.
Or put another way, the other side of the world, from the majority of you listening, Barry in Vancouver, British Columbia brings up a very good point.
Hey Art, how interesting.
Very few women have called the show.
What does that tell you?
I don't know.
I just pointed out.
Hmm, Barry, what does it tell us?
It tells us that it's kind of a technical topic.
It tells us that, I don't know, Barry, I'm going to have to think about it a little bit, but it is a fact and a very interesting question.
Professor William Forreston is my guest and he'll be back in a moment.
All right, once again, based on... I think I've got one young lady.
Let me go out of order here and go to Las Vegas and Kathy.
Kathy, you're a female!
Yes, listen, you know, it's funny.
Just be patient with me.
I'm not very technical.
Most technical stuff gives me a headache, but I follow... I follow along a little bit, so I basically want to make one comment and then like two quick questions.
Okay.
You know, I think most people in America, including myself previously, because I kind of discovered your station recently and I'm terrified listening to this because I actually knew nothing about this EMP stuff.
And I think the average person in America would prefer to be blissfully ignorant and just go to a party, you know, and they don't they don't really want to know because it's horrifying.
And what I wanted to say was, okay, as I understand it, Barack Obama is the one who decided to close down the radar detection in Poland.
And my question to you, and then I'll have one more after that, is even if Barack Obama is inexperienced, wouldn't he have advisors?
Who would know the history of Poland, which I don't, I just picked up from what you said and a little other stuff I do.
Wouldn't he have advisors that would tell him, you know, this is like really important to leave this stuff on?
And the other question is, would former President of the United States or politicians decided to let communist Chinese employees fix all this nuclear stuff that's important?
And why aren't there any more Americans who can do this job anymore?
And those are my questions.
Do we have about five more hours of air time?
No.
We could use it, but no.
Boy, the day that was announced, September 17th, maybe because I'm a historian, the moment I heard it, I was like, isn't there at least one person in the White House who should have said, Mr. President, why don't you do the announcement two days later?
Because this is the 70th anniversary.
of the day Poland was knifed in the back by the Soviet Union.
And by not putting the ABM system in there, we're essentially telling the Poles, we'll
throw you back to the wolves again.
I'm angry.
Yeah, I guess you can hear I'm getting angry just remembering it.
Right.
In fact, she sort of scrambled my brain a bit just just by pointing that out.
It is beyond, it stretches, it stretches your imagination.
I think there was only one person in that entire administration.
Well, she asked about advisors.
You know, a president, non-military though he may be, certainly has military advisors that he'd be advised to listen to, so... Well, and then the second point about pulling down the ballistic missile defense system.
Remember, that's been an alleged peace dividend issue ever since 1992.
Well, the Soviet Union is in a threat, so we don't need ballistic missile defense, which is utterly absurd.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, it certainly is.
All right.
To North Hollywood, California, and Robert, you're on the air.
Hey, Art, nice to hear your voice again on the radio.
Thank you.
Yeah, real quickly here, and we're sort of low on time.
I'm sort of wondering, from one hand to you, I was just wondering, have you cross-banded from your location to your attender, Ray, in Nevada?
I'm sorry, say that again, please.
Have I done what?
Have you cross-banded, reached signal from your location, from your antenna, and then retransmitted from Nevada?
No.
As a matter of fact, I don't even have an antenna up at the moment at my current location here in the Philippines.
I thought you had one on your condo.
I'm working on it.
Okay, that would be sort of fun anyway.
Anyway, back to what's going on here.
Yeah, I worked a long time ago.
I worked for a place called Veridyn.
We made the trigger assembly for SDI laser systems, and it's fun.
Most of the systems are compartmentalized, so, you know, I don't know anything other than just the, basically, capacitor and resistor array that we made for the triggers.
But knowing that Russia and the United States were major technological competitors, basically, Our main problem with Iran, since I met a lot of people in the military intelligence and I learned a lot about Iran, is basically their government is being controlled by Russia, Russian intelligence.
And they put in the guys in power there and they have military bases there.
We cannot ever attack Iran without going to war with Russia.
So we're in a stalemate in that situation.
Stop there for a moment.
I'm not certain that's so.
Could we preemptively attack Iran without engaging Russia directly, Professor?
Remember, a fair part of the radical Muslim world refers to us and the Russians as the great Satan and the little Satan.
The issue of Afghanistan still is Resonates deeply.
If the Iranians are playing cozy with the Russians at the moment, that's part of the great game that's been going on between them for hundreds of years.
And they have fought repeated wars across those hundreds of years.
So Russia might be playing a game of the moment in terms of trying to reestablish its power position.
But there's no love lost between those two sides.
I would agree.
Connor, go ahead.
Yeah, my main question is this.
William Justice Clinton, President Clinton and Bush both agreed on this one thing, and Clinton said this fairly clearly, and I want your opinion on this.
He said that we would absorb a first strike on any country with a weapon of mass destruction.
Now, I know the answer to this.
I don't want to say it on the air, but I just wonder what your opinion is and what you've heard about this, us absorbing our first strike.
I would clarify that slightly.
We have always had the policy of launch on detonation, not launch on warning.
Launch on warning means, oh, our radar is picking up their missiles.
Okay, guys, hit the button.
Let's go.
And then we find out it's some Canadian geese.
And we just destroyed the world.
So there were certain target areas in the United States throughout the Cold War that we kind of figured that's where the bombs will hit first.
It will give us at least a couple more minutes to launch out of our facilities in the Dakotas.
So I think that's more the point we're looking at here.
We'll take the very first hit, but the difference now is with the EMP, we're not talking about the detonation of hundreds of weapons, we're talking about one to three weapons, which is an asymmetrical first strike.
Something entirely new.
Right.
And for those of you that didn't have an opportunity to hear the whole show, go to the web and listen to the first couple hours so that you're grounded on this very, very important topic.
Austin, Texas, Jeff, you're on the air.
Yes, sir.
Professor, I had a quick question in regards to maybe a new twist on the subject, but Professor Hagee or Pastor Hagee out here in Texas has a ministry, a Christian ministry, and he's been discussing EMPs and talking about his great love for Israel and, you know, protection for Israel and EMP threat to our country from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or whatever his name is.
And, you know, this has been, in our circles, this has been quite clear for years.
I wanted to hear your comment.
American foreign policy for many, many years was that a weapon of mass destruction impacting on Israel would be construed as an act of the use of mass weapon destruction against us.
The current administration apparently has backed off from that position.
But if ever there is a nation or a people on the first face of the earth that know what mass destruction is, it's Israel.
They will never accept a first strike.
Never.
All right.
All the way to, I think, where you are there in North Carolina.
Stan, you're on the air.
Yes, Art, Professor.
Great show.
A little background.
When I was in the service, I worked for an agency now, the Army Security Agency.
I had read initially about EMP that affected Hawaii during the late 50s.
My question, though, is that people are talking about ICBMs.
What happens if somebody wants to load a battlefield-type missile on freighters and park them off the coast, east-west, in the Gulf of Mexico?
That's going to be very little response time with any ballistic missile system.
No response time, and as Mr. Bell just pointed out a little while ago, we actually talked about that extensively at the very beginning of the show.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, sir.
You're very welcome.
As I mentioned, please go back, if you're just sort of catching up with all of this, maybe you get up early in the morning where you are and just go back and listen to the program is what I would say.
St.
Paul, Minnesota, Vince, you're on the air.
Yes, first time I called in.
Many, many years of listening.
I sense some partiality and favoritism towards Israel, and I'm wondering, do you really think that the Middle East could have any emphasis on destroying the world without the okay of armed military conflict or such?
I mean, you've got to be kidding me if you think that Muslim extremists can actually do anything that the Western world can do.
One, a nation is informed by a nation within strike distance that their number one goal is their total annihilation and destruction.
Israel must take it seriously and must respond.
That's right.
Whether or not Israel will act preemptively with respect to Iran, I don't know anymore.
I'm not sure.
How about you, Professor?
Well, again, my analogy, if I have my neighbors out there doing target practice and it's my pitcher on the target, I'm going to start taking that real seriously.
But that's your analogy.
What's going on right now in Israel politically?
Well, what we talked about, I think, about a half hour, 45 minutes ago.
Political correctness can kill Israel just as much as it can kill the United States.
It certainly can.
Okay.
I don't have a name and a location, but wild card line, you're on the air.
Good morning.
For the professor, does the professor realize I did an analysis about the grid going down?
When the grid goes down, we will not go back to horse and buggy days.
We will go back to hunter-gatherer days.
Actually, I think that's a fair comment.
Absolutely, yes.
The congressional report says 19th century technology.
I'd say let's take a closer look at the 14th century.
Yeah.
Chicago, Jim, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hi, Art.
Professor, I have a question about vehicles.
Would something as simple as a lead liner attached to the underside of your hood or perhaps in the headliner of the vehicle protect us from EMPs?
Well, you need a Pretty powerful suspension system to handle that and no it would not.
No, I was thinking more along the lines of x-ray vests that x-ray techs wear readily available.
That wouldn't do it?
You got a weight load there.
You have so many entry points in terms of the conductive surface of the vehicle that you'd have to pretty well coat the whole thing in a non-conductive material and then ground it.
That's another option right there.
And then ground it.
Remember, these vehicles run on tires, right?
So it'd have to be parked at home with a giant ground wire on something driven into the ground.
Okay, that's one more question I have.
Does the circuit have to be energized at the time of the hit to get out?
No, the answer is no.
Well, thank you.
Thank you, sir.
You're very welcome.
Cheery stuff, huh?
Really cheery.
Does it have to be on, essentially, was the question.
No.
No.
The answer's no.
Idaho, Bob, you're on the air.
Good morning.
Yeah.
Hi, gentlemen.
Hi.
Yeah.
Could not your 90% figure be optimistic if this happened in the wintertime?
You might have a revolution on your hands, as well as a total Breakdown of civil authority?
Well, we would have a total social breakdown, and one thing we didn't talk about, I wish we had time, is what happens with the two million people who are in prisons right now?
Oh, that's an interesting question.
Well, an awful lot of the cells, I think, are controlled electronically, right?
So, I suppose there's safety built in, so that if the power fails, the cells remain locked.
But after two weeks, what do you do with them, when there's no food and water?
Well, it's not the guys in the cells I'm really worried about, though I suppose it's a consideration.
It's all the rest of us.
Food and water, well, pretty much takes us all out, doesn't it?
You shoot them or you let them go.
It's a heck of a moral question.
It's one of thousands of moral questions that can compound out of this whole issue of EMT.
Well, I guess I see how you get to your 90% figure.
If you throw in the anarchy that is sure to follow, particularly from a relatively spoiled nation like the United States, you might just get to or surpass that 90% figure.
I don't know.
Portland, Oregon.
Oh, another Kathy.
Yeah, another Kathy.
I had to call when you said no gals called.
I think a lot of us are adding up what food we have in the pantry and trying to figure out how to feed people with all this news.
But I did have an electronic question.
If your mechanisms that are electronic, small ones, were unplugged and in a Faraday cage, would they survive this or would other parts fry?
You have a good Faraday cage, you're protected.
Okay.
But it has to be unplugged, right, during the event?
It has to be grounded.
Grounded.
Okay.
You know the easiest Faraday cage?
Take your old microwave.
That's a Faraday cage.
Grounded.
That's right.
Microwave oven.
Don't plug it into the wall.
Run that electrical line into the ground to ground it.
You have a Faraday cage.
So you might be able to get your CC radio in there.
That's about it.
One quick point about women.
Let's look at the statistics, mortality statistics.
Women today outlive men by what?
7 to 10 years?
That's what it said, yes.
Go back 200 years.
It was absolutely reversed.
Think of a pre-technological society in childbirth.
Now see, I didn't know that.
I really didn't know that.
Why has that reversed?
Why are women now outliving men and did not previously?
Other than death for males by violence, the Average woman had about five to seven pregnancies, and the possibility of mortality increased with age and also nutritional deficiency.
So you notice, you look back a couple hundred years, you notice how many guys were widows marrying younger women in their third and fourth marriages?
Because women died far younger than men 200 years ago.
All right.
Short on time.
John in Georgia, you're on the air.
Good evening, gentlemen.
What we learn from history is we don't learn from history, right?
Precisely, sir.
That's what I say to my students when I hand back their papers.
We're reliving the 30s all over again, but it's worse.
We've got a death-cultish Hitler running the country that is, in my mind, I believe, and all I've read, they're trying to acquire, build nuclear weapons.
They're arming themselves to the teeth.
They're having regular conferences in the last few years entitled, The World Without America.
I even saw one picture of one of these conferences the President held with a banner behind him of a mushroom cloud.
I mean, they regularly have rallies chanting, Death to America.
They have committed numerous acts of war against us, killing our troops, our men and women, maiming them, killing them in Iraq.
Those are acts of war.
Now, if I was in charge, I would take out their leadership.
All right, I'm afraid, I'm sorry, we're going to have to cut you off at that point.
I'm sure a lot of people are saying, yep, if I were in charge, here's what I'd do.
Professor, it has been a pleasure having you on the air.
I've listened to you for years, and it's an honor to finally be able to talk with you.
It's been a great experience.
Thank you.
Your book is One Second After, and it's been out how long now?
You can have it since March.
It's a bestseller.
And also, through the website OneSecondAfter.com, you can link into some of the tech sites that we talked about as well.
All right.
Professor, thank you for being here.
I'm sure we'll do it again.
Take care, my friend.
We are out of time.
That's it.
I want to remind everybody, you can reach me by email.
I'm Art Bell at MindSpring.com.
A-R-T-B-E-L-L at MindSpring, M-I-N-D-S-P-R-I-N-G dot com.
And given the opportunity, I'll be back again.
You never know when.
From Manila in the Philippines, I am Art Bell.
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