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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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01:09:02

william r forstchen

01:05:48

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art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 are well.
		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 Forstchin, 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 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 another global dip.
		And 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 U.S., 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 UN sanctions if Tehran should remain defiant.
		I don't mean to laugh, but UN 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 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 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.
		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 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 and Russia 25 dead.
		Oh, and then this.
		From Amsterdam.
		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 Hopenhagen.
		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 they were, 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.
	You know, 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 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 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 Clopete, 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 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 it pretty mainstream there anyway.
	The deputy head of the Space Exploration Department within the BAS told reporters that they, the aliens, they're 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 scientist 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, Philippoff said.
	Sounds more like the Catholic Church.
	According to Philipoff, 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.
	All right, coming up in a moment is William Forstchin.
	William R. Forstchen is a professor of history and faculty fellow At Montreal College in Montreal, 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 Roscoe 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 Forstin.
	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 Mindanao, that's kind of where all the trouble is, you know, southwest Mindanao, 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.
	So I don't know if that made it to the world press or not.
	It's certainly big news over here.
	All right, William Forstchen, welcome to Coast to Coast AM or welcome back.
	I'm not sure.
	Have you been a guest previously?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I've been with George a couple of times before, and sir, it's an honor to be with you today.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		And may I ask to start, what got you interested in it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm an amateur radio operator.
		I've 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 airburst 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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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.
		Now, 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I remember that, yes.
unidentified		Yeah.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 when it's above the Earth's atmosphere, as the gamma-ray burst comes off of 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 have sensors looking at everything.
		So this would not be apparent at ground level, I take it.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		But within that several miles, you're in the blast radius.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		What shocked the observers, both in the Soviet Union and America in 1962, was, and I urge folks, 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.
		One word.
		Starfish Prime.
		That is the code name for the declassifying 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 and was only recently declassified, in which the Soviets did the same thing over Kazakhstan.
		So here in 1962, we popped some nukes in that first one, Starfish Prime.
		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.
unidentified		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 Norris, 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, 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.
		And Ian is right here, I think.
		And Ian will tell us all about the show tomorrow night.
		Ian, what's up for tomorrow?
unidentified		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 Braden 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What does he think is going to happen in 2012?
unidentified		Well, I honestly don't know.
		We had a brief conversation about it, and because I like Greg Braden 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, let me ask you the opposite question, because I'm out of the loop here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What does Richard think is going to happen?
unidentified		Well, according to Greg, that 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.
unidentified		So that'll be Sunday night on coast to coast.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'll try and tune in.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That sounds really, really interesting.
unidentified		You never know.
		Thanks, Art.
		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
		But, 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 Forstin and EMP in a moment.
		James in Dorchester, Massachusetts, fast blasted me regarding the emails, the climate emails, and he says, all right, 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.
		He's imagining that, I suppose, that it's okay if the ice melts 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.
		Wonderful.
		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 Forsten, 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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Oh, gosh, you just gave me an underhand pitch because listening to your program, the promo on your program coming up in a couple of days discussing potentials in the year 2012, after my book, One Second After, was released, a couple of weeks after it came out, one of my friends called up and 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 about mostly focuses 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.
unidentified		That's right.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		My old man, K2GEC, I used to sit up in the attic with him many an evening.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, we both know that solar weather affects radio transmissions.
unidentified		Yes, of course.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		A major solar flare produces an EMP.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The big one was back, I think, in the late 1800s, right?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 EMT 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.
		It was sort of an, oh my God, gas.
		The head of that team, an incredible comment.
		He said, ask me to predict a military usage of an EMP weapon.
		I can't give you a percentage.
		Ask 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
unidentified		Yeah.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		How much to worry about now on top of everything else with the 2012 prophecy?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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.
		Now, when 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 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.
		Now, consider that happening to our vastly more elaborate and delicate infrastructure of today.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm not sure how much voltage per square meter an event from the sun could actually produce.
		I know there was a solar flare at the end, toward the end of this last cycle that was so large the scientists couldn't measure it.
		Fortunately, it was not directed earthward, but it was very large.
		Pardon me?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		It was pretty darn close, though.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		We felt like a bullet going past it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right, but didn't hit, you know, horseshoes and hand 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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 a square odd, 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Got it.
		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 zone.
		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 the nuclear EMP event and begin to fry people's transistor equipment is another question.
		Do you have any thoughts on that?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it is.
		And if you look up the, again, I mentioned this earlier, Soviet test 184.
		Unlike our detonations over the Pacific, they detonate 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So what happened in Kazakhstan?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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.
		Soviet, 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.
		Following year, 1963, we go to our test stand treaty.
		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, that was going to be one of my questions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there a way, and I guess the obvious answer is yes, to build a nuclear weapon to specifically enhance the effect?
unidentified		Yes.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you did have one, you wouldn't have to tonight or after the book.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Well, as an American patriot, I don't want to get into a topical area that somebody might say, hey, 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.
		Now, some people I hear saying, 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 percent.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
		Okay, we'll get to that.
		All right, let's get to 90 percent 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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Oh, with an 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No air conditioning.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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, well, 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 up and 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, Dee, what happens if the emergency generator blows?
		What about my father's respirator?
		I said, well, we go to bottled air.
		I said, what happens when we run out of bottled air?
		I said, 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 housebred species across the last 100, 150 years.
		We've become used to a very wonderful, brilliant designed system, but is incredibly fragile.
		Pull out one or two props, as that system starts collapsing, all hell breaks loose.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But 90% of Americans did a year after an EMP attack?
		That seems hard to risk.
		Can you see, for example, that Phoenix would get hot.
		A lot of elderly people would probably expire from the heat.
		Even my home from 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 is 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 would be the other side of the spectrum.
		Or it's eternal spring or, I don't know, Chicago, if you wish, or whatever.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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.
		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.
unidentified		Sure.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Within five to seven days, you start running into the crisis, as we all see in disaster areas, of gastrointestinal illness that can kill hundreds of thousands, as we saw with the hurricanes and typhoons and tsunamis that hit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Professor, hold tight.
		Again, just that half hour just evaporated.
		That's how fast it goes.
		This is fascinating stuff.
		Professor William Forstchin 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 are 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 Forstin 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 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 Forschen, back in just a moment.
		All right.
		Once again, Professor Forschen.
		Professor, you asked earlier, by the way, my interest in EMP, how they 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.
		So I do understand, and I've been very, very interested in this subject, what I don't understand is how 90% of this, 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 a does that underestimate the resilience of the American people?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		It's not an underestimation of our basic resilience.
		But let's look at the greatest natural catastrophe to hit America in 100 years, and that's Katrina.
		Katrina ultimately was a local event.
		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 had a drive.
		We filled up a whole tractor trailer load of stuff within a day and sent it on a flight.
		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 in the back and hundreds of different bottles.
		Walk 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 Antonia, my pharmacist, we're a small town.
		She got really upset.
		She said, my gosh, Bill, I'm thinking of all my friends in this town who are going to die within the first two or three weeks, who pancreatic enzyme disorder, those people who are major painkillers.
		Those for all their various, various medications.
		Now, I have a couple 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, I know grocery stores depend on regular deliveries and they would soon be out of food.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		So we run into, 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 when 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 started 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, Bill, we never trained for this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, 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 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.
		So it would be like that, sticks and stones.
		I know, but 90%, I think a higher percentage than that would survive.
		And maybe I'm wrong.
		I just think people are more resilient than that.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Mark, I pray that I am dead on wrong and you are dead on right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, even if I'm dead on right, it's still a gigantic catastrophe with millions and millions, hundreds of millions possibly dead.
		I'm with you there.
		I just think 90% is a little high.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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.
		And he projects about a 75% loss rate.
		Now, his scenario is an economic collapse.
		Okay, even economics.
		Let's say 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 telling me like, what do I use for money?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A lot of people are buying gold.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		What is 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's moved electronically, yes.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Look, I'm really not arguing your premise, just your percentage.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		I hope I'm wrong.
		I truly hope I'm wrong.
		In fact, in the forward 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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.
unidentified		Sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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, it comes 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, Gulf of Mexico, or out in the Pacific, pop a missile straight up, detonate it, 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 megatonage, megatonnage, would it require to produce the kind of EMP effect that you're talking about?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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.
unidentified		No.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Paradoxically, you go for the large megaton pop, meaning one, three, five million tons of TNT.
		The actual detonation burst is actually using a fission bomb To create the compression for a fusion detonation.
		That 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So the size of the detonation is not necessarily proportional to the size of the EMP produced?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		No, there's not a direct correlation there.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		In fact, projections are it's an inverse correlation after a certain point.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 a 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, Wal Thomas.
		And 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The references so far would be the Soviet test 184 over Kazakhstan, then Starfish Prime, I think it was, and EMP Commission Report.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		And you can link into all those through my website, which is onesecondafter.com.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		A lot of people are going to be going to look this up and try to verify what we're saying.
		All right.
		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 the 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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 two, but enough of our weapons will survive that you will inherit nothing but smoking rooms.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it's most likely, yeah, there'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?
		But 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I don't disagree at all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or even if you want to talk about North Korea, same deal, they're nuts.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		They're nuts.
		You know, by any Western standards, now the Soviets, thank God they were atheists.
		Do they want to inherit a smoking rune?
		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 Matzi returns.
		The lost Iman, the hidden Iman, comes up out of that well, and you all get your reward.
		You've 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I'm with you there.
		Sure.
		As long as they're willing to sacrifice their country and their own lives to get us, then yes, it could happen.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
		And that apocryphal vision that these people have, 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?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I imagine that's what would occur, yes.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		And what a horror that is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
		You know, would be smoking rubble.
		Certainly, we'd 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. just 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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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, wow, how would we retaliate?
		Would we still be able to 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 the professor suggested, what would be left not of the country we retaliated against, because essentially there would be nothing, because yes, we could retaliate, Barbara.
		The question would be, what would be left of our country?
		Back in a moment.
		All right.
		Once again, Professor Forsten.
		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 cripple America.
		We would retaliate.
		Whoever did it would be absolute toast.
		But it wouldn't be the end of the world, would it?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		No, of course not.
		Josh, 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.
		There'd 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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, and in fact, let's talk about that.
		What possible prevention is there for the scenario that you just laid out?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Well, remember the analogy I gave at the 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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		If Iran is doing testing, and in fact is doing testing that fits an EMP profile, is this world crazy enough to sit back and let Iran become a nuclear power?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, 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 means 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 power, period.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		That's all.
		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.
		Now, boys and girls, now boys and girls, and nothing would ever happen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		And then you could have a 90-pound five-foot-tall teacher, skinny as a rail, could come in and the whole room goes silent because it's like, don't cross Miss Keller.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		End the discussion.
unidentified		Yeah, that's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ruler across the knuckles.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Or in my case, yeah, the nuns accused 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
		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 is what will happen.
		So why isn't that going on, Professor?
		That's a political question, I guess.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 were, 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 to disconnect the antenna from your expensive radio?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		I did.
		I had a big Frankenstein switch is what I call it.
		But again, 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 going to take a level of preparedness that is going to take a generation to accomplish At minimum.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		I would disagree on one point: that we can actually begin engaging in preparedness now in terms of hardening an 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 spider webs you 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.
		Did the spider survive 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, clean 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 reduce that maybe extreme figure of 90% and take it down to 10%.
		Now, 10% is still 30 million Americans.
		The catastrophe is bad as what Russia suffered in World War II.
		I'd rather 10% than 90%.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me concede that you're right.
		We could begin to harden things, although 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 burn out.
		They would, so vehicles wouldn't be moving.
		If it struck above New York and Washington, the Northeast Carter, 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.
		Sure.
		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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		My personal opinion is that I'm 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
		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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		You know, sir, you're hitting it dead on straight because 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 crossed 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Then why, Professor, is our government not telling its constituents what we're facing?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, I was in the Air Force at Emeraldo Air Force Base in Texas.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		What was your memory of that?
		How did you feel?
		What did you think?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I thought we were going to go to war.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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, Professor.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 birth zone.
		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But everybody understood what nuclear weapons were and what the result of a full exchange would be.
		Today, 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 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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 Barlett, 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 at Janus.
		And we were looking backwards to the last war rather than thinking of looking forward to the potential of the next war.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
		And the other 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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		I think it was 04, 05 around Halloween.
unidentified		0405, yeah, okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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.
		I've been told it could be worse than 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.
unidentified		And yet again, I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In the case of something from the Sun, 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, and then weak as it is, boom, it gets hit by a giant one, and the scenario you talk 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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		The information is online.
		I've gone through it, and 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The data is too hard.
		Professor, hold tight.
		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.
		All right, everybody, my guest is Professor William Forstchin.
		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 Nori.
		Has a night off.
		Professor William Forstchan 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, 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 may be 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.
		Well, 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 whole big whole house surge protector work?
		Thanks, Don in Las Vegas.
		Professor?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Great question.
		I'm referring people a lot to the Internet tonight.
		Look up Faraday Cage, F-A-R-A-D-A-Y Cage.
unidentified		Yes.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 looked into your TV goes, uh-oh, and snaps it off before it can go through and blow your system.
		And 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 assuming 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 enough voltage to directly fry all the circuits in your computer.
		Certainly all the transistors would go, and that would be that.
		Or your TV or whatever.
		Am I wrong?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		You're absolutely right.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		In fact, I set in on some real experts, the PhD physicist types, that were debating what happens to people with pacemakers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Funny.
		David at CatchCount, Alaska, is asking that.
		He says his wife has a pacemaker and a defibrator.
		And, of course, she'd be instantly dead.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 system, 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, Professor, it's my understanding, though, that these would be detonated at what sort of altitude?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 lay down across the entire continent of the United States.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that was my point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So the line of sight from 200 or 300 miles up is obviously gigantic.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		I wouldn't want to live in Salina.
		People talk about Salina is just go straight up 200 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		But it's going to cover, if it's line of sight, 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 for the United States so that it's, 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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 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 also talk about a political gaff.
		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 an X-Fan 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, frustrating.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Yes, there is.
		We have a battery and we have four batteries.
		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 low-off 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, not in the middle.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We probably also have space-based stuff that we don't talk about, wouldn't you imagine?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		I can imagine, but I've never heard anybody talk about it.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		I've heard a lot of people, and I'm very enthusiastic in my support of what's called Brilliant Pebbles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 with about a 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 loft stage, or definitely in the transition stage.
unidentified		So we probably have some protection.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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, Kenneth?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Well, let me present an absurdity.
		In talking with Congressman Bartlett and his staff, and they were tremendous help with getting data.
		And 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.
		Now, sir, I mean, 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 congressman, by heavens, one of you guys is 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, do you know that Congress passed a law forbidding us from owning chimpanzees?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do that again, please.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Congress passed the law forbidding us from owning chimpanzees.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		You see my point?
		Well, one woman endured a horrific tragedy.
		Remember, she was on some talk show a couple weeks ago, the woman who had her face torn off by chimpanzees.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Well, that gained such national media attention that some congressman stood up and says, 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 at times.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
		Let me rephrase this.
		Are you aware of any classified material that would justify the government's silence on this subject?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm not sure what, you know, assuming that you had the cooperation of those people who listened tonight and it scared the hell out of them, what would you suggest they do?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		House Bill 2195 for starters.
		Now, 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 it.
		She said, Bill, what good is a bailout?
		What good is a health care bill if there's no country left to bail out?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good point.
		Good point.
		House Bill 2195, you said?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		H.R. 2195, co-sponsored by Benny Thompson and Representative Bartlett, you can look it up online, is a first step towards hardening our system.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it provides for the beginning of the hardening of the infrastructure?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In what manner does it do that?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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, beautiful high-tech, highly vulnerable.
		H.R. 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And what kind of timeline, even if you assume for a moment this passes, which in the current political atmosphere I doubt.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But if it did and it got signed, what kind of timeline would be involved in terms of hardening?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		I've been told three to five years we could start to see a major effect.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Three to five years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		I am deeply, deeply concerned.
		In fact, one, 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 visionable warheads that they have two to three of them.
		That's the day they can take it down.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 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 Mark Bell.
		This is Coast to Coast A.M. 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.
		And 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 think that they're listening to some crackpot.
		I prefer Bill, but whatever.
		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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		I 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 warfighting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Hated it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hated it.
		Really?
		I mean, the car has stopped, except our hero's car, which, you know, got worked on quickly.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Oh, change of solenoid.
		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.
		And one, his car, he's a change of solenoid.
		I did make the scatological comment.
		Bill Nye, the science guy, who's a really great guy, he actually did a little 15-minute piece for Stretchcom, the old strategic air 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 Travalto, 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know.
		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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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.
		So 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.
		So maybe conveying the well will disappear could be one aspect of it.
		Yeah, you're right.
		Shiite 12s are one particular sect within the Muslim movement that's 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 eighth century, emerges from the world and emerges back into the world, that's a terrifying toy.
		And 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's assuming that any of the broadcasters were left to broadcast.
		So, yes, perhaps a vacuum and 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 a 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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		You got it exactly.
		That's why I'm awed that you're devoting your program to this tonight.
		If but 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 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 and within our communities?
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		David in Mesa, Arizona, you're on the air with Art Bell and Professor Force Genai.
unidentified		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, we discussed HAARP.
		Now, whether HAARP actually accomplishes weather control is another question.
		Proceed.
unidentified		Now, the next thing is, is why 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, I dedicated my book to two people.
		I dedicated it to my father, who taught me about my country and patriotism.
		I dedicated to my daughter, that she grows up in a world that's safe.
		Retaliation after the event, in which a 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm not sure such an instruction to somebody who wishes to die, you know, and begin partaking of their 72 virgins 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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 a newsreel footage here, 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yucaipa, California brings John.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're on air, John.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hello, Professor.
		I'm sorry, I'm going deaf, but 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, because do you have a solution to any of this?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, actually, it's a good question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's You know, like I asked earlier, what other than what I've suggested with a preemptive strike, if we just stick to talking about the, you know, the man-made threat, what is the solution?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I'm going to run from the top down.
		Preemptive action.
		And I think we're all in agreement on that.
		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 there, 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 when 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 to say, come to your family?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I remember getting under the desk.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, ducking cover.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		But beyond that, do you remember the pamphlets they used to give to us as kids that say, come to our parents, what you and your family should do in the event of nuclear war?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I do, yes.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 at.
		We need to educate.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		How many people are you reaching, do you think, at this moment?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		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 and such would be pretty ugly, wouldn't it?
		Be best just to tell Russia that, you know, if Iran or Korea, you know, 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.
		And it's just a matter of time before you're totally vulnerable.
		You can't run your fleets.
		You're pretty much doomed, eh?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		The gentleman who sent the email in before we started taking the calls, gosh, I wish that guy would call in.
		He's really an expert on this system, on 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But that's, you know, 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, Iran with some nukes.
		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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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, says, oh, not to worry about it because 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 Forschin.
		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 your congressman a note, or perhaps those of you who have been listening very closely tonight will, 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 Forskin, 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, and 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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		History.
		History.
		Just spend a couple of hours and 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 Guggenwald, of 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, you know, the Nazis are a bit crazy, but they'll never go that far.
		Well, we know history taught us.
unidentified		They did.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		And then 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.
		You know, we are doomed to keep repeating things.
		But by golly, there should be some things that should connect to us.
		And EMP is a holocaust beyond our imagining.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, back to the tones.
		Let's go to Louisiana and Cornelius.
		You're on the air.
unidentified		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 had 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, God bless you, and God's going to be able to do that.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		God bless you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Lately, anytime there's a problem, Professor, we've told the Israelis, lay low, we will handle it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you hear my sarcastic hmm.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Wasn't there a member of the administration just a couple months back that said the Israelis attempted to launch an attack on Iran, we would shoot the Israelis down?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Something like that, yeah.
unidentified		Yeah.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		They, again, the Jewish analogy, but 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But even Israel, in recent years, Israel at one point was very, very proactive in terms of preemption, that sort of thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Synchronicity, sir, because I was about to say the words, political correctness is destroying Israel.
unidentified		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From Wichita, Kansas comes Michael.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're on the air, Michael.
unidentified		Hello, Art, Professor.
		First of all, a little ray of hope, maybe.
		There are several what used to be termed survivalist type sites or blogs.
		I prefer to call themselves preparedness types now.
		But these are civilians.
		And the subject of EMP is being discussed and also how to countermeasures that people can take, such as putting radios or hand gear in tuna boxes or Faraday gauges.
		And 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, is it is EMP proof?
		So my question, though, 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 of personal equipment?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a totally a fair question.
		Professor, what about your automobile?
		What would you do to protect that?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Well, Mr. Bell, you know, you've hit it repeatedly where you 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 Rawl's stuff, R-A-W-L-E-S.
		His books.
		He has a website that, well, you're talking about an expert who covers everything.
		Regarding automobiles, well, in my novel, One Second After, because there do so happen to be a 64 Mustang and a 59 Etzel 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, four Taurus EMP, and you'll see a demonstration of EMP zapping a Taurus.
		As to the technical, what to do with a modern car, I'm sorry, I'm not a tech head on that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think not much.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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, you mentioned fiber optics and 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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		And the pilots are no longer able to override them in time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 still 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.
		Most of them are going to fall from the sky like a rock.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's what I thought.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, good morning.
unidentified		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 when we tried it a couple of 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 It's a good departure point, though.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Okay, person A throws a rock, and the gentleman who's 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		And that was at something like 8,000 miles an hour.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		So that second rock has a thruster and a radar and track.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it can be done.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Oh, absolutely, yes.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		And it's a great investment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You have the political will to just hey, go ahead and do it.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Well, can I draw an analogy for 30 seconds?
		I don't want to take away time 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 see my point?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I guess I do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I figured you'd be buying her a little Volkswagen.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, I walked in there and I said, I want reactive armor on the car.
		I want safety-ready.
		I'm willing to spend the 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?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
unidentified		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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		It's an interesting point, but as mister 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 of hundred volts actually would only be a couple of volts hitting you if you were standing outside.
		I don't think the impact would be there.
		But let me get, I'm jealous of where you live because you get to see all the launches.
unidentified		Oh, yeah, it's great.
unidentified		I love it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Unless you're wearing a pacemaker.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		All right, thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yep, you're very welcome, and have a good morning to New Jersey, all the way to New Jersey.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Morty, you're on the air with Professor Force Chen and Art Bell.
unidentified		Good morning, Art.
		Fascinating program this morning, and it's always great to hear your voice, Art.
		Good morning, Professor.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, sir.
unidentified		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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Professor?
		I've not heard that, but of course we do know Colorado Springs, 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 Mile High City.
		I suppose the adjacent mountains, perhaps?
		I don't understand why.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Cheyenne Mountain Complex nearby.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		To Culver City, California.
		And Olin, you're on the air.
unidentified		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.
unidentified		Do you think that those diodes will protect my car radio from EMP?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Given Mr. Bell's background in ham radio, I'm going to pass that question to you, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		I'm not going to argue with you at all on that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you're the expert.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, you're actually the expert on radio equipment.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		And if my father had ever had a chance to look at your antenna system, he would have gone crazy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Maryland brings Lee.
		Lee, you're on the air.
unidentified		Yeah.
		They have our house has a lever outside with a box, and it cuts off the power.
		Will the surge jump that gap and go into the house and burn down the houses?
		That's all the hotels and all the old tails and all the houses, the wires are all hooked to 2x4s, which are probably really dry.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 the 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 point it out.
		Hmm, Barry.
		What does it tell us?
		It tells us that it's kind of a technical topic.
		It tells us that...
		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 Forresten 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...
		Kathy, you're a female.
unidentified		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 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 geostation 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 really want to know it 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 my next, 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 right here.
		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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Do we have about five more hours of airtime?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		No.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We could use it, but no.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 just 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?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		And by not putting the ABM system in there, we're essentially telling the polls, we'll throw you back to the wolves again?
		I'm angry.
		You can hear, I'm getting angry just remembering it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		In fact, she sort of scrambled my brain a bit just by pointing that out.
		It is beyond, it stretches your imagination.
		I think there wasn't at least one person in that entire administration.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, she asked about advisors.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, a president, non-military though he may be, certainly has military advisors that he'd be advised to listen to.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Well, the Soviet Union isn't a threat, so we don't need ballistic missile defense, which is utterly absurd.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mm-hmm.
		Yeah, it certainly is.
		All right.
		To North Hollywood, California, and Robert, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hey, Art.
unidentified		Nice to hear your voice again on the radio.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		Yeah, real quickly here, we're running low on time.
unidentified		I'm sort of wondering, from one hand to you, I was just wondering, have you cross-banded from your location to your antenna ray in Nevada?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry.
		Just say that again, please.
		Have I done one?
unidentified		Have you cross-banded, reached signal from your location from your antenna and then retransmitted from Nevada?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		As a matter of fact, I don't even have an antenna up at the moment at my current location here in the Philippines.
unidentified		I thought you had one on your condo.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm working on it.
unidentified		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 Veradyne.
		We made the trigger assembly for SDI laser systems.
		And it's fun.
		Most of the systems are compartmentalized, so I don't know anything other than just basically capacitor and resistor array that we made for the triggers.
		But knowing that Russia and the United States were major technological competitors, basically, and our main problem with Iran, since I met a lot of people in the military and intelligence, and I learned a lot about Iran is basically their government is being controlled by Russia, Russian intelligence.
		And they put him, 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.
		And Bush.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Stop there for a moment.
		I'm not certain that's so.
		Could we preemptively attack Iran without engaging Russia directly, Professor?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I would agree.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Color, go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, my main question is this.
		William Jefferson 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 on the air, but I just wonder what your opinion is and what you've heard about us absorbing our first strike.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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, you know, the first couple hours so that you're grounded on this very, very important topic.
		Austin, Texas.
		Jeff, you're on the air.
unidentified		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, 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 Ahmad Nedijat 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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 face of the earth that know what mass destruction is, it's Israel.
		They will never accept a first strike.
		Never.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		All the way to, I think, where you are there in North Carolina.
		Stan, you're on air.
unidentified		Yes, Art, Professor.
		Great show.
		A little background.
		When I was in the service, I worked for an agency, now defunct 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 coasts east-west in the Gulf of Mexico?
		That's going to be very little response time with any ballistic missile system.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		No response time.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		And as Mr. Bell just pointed out a little while ago, we actually talked about that extensively at the very beginning of the show.
unidentified		Okay, thank you.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but thank you, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
unidentified		Yes, first time I called in.
		Many, many years of listening.
		Professor, 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 our military complex or such?
		I mean, you've got to be kidding me if you think that if Muslim extremists can actually do anything that the Western world can do.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		When 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 view.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But that's your analogy with what's going on right now in Israel politically.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It certainly can.
		Okay, I don't have a name and a location, but wildcard line, you're on the air.
		Good morning.
unidentified		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, I think that's a fair comment, Professor.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely, yes.
		The congressional report says 19th century technology.
		I say let's take a close look at the 14th century.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Chicago, Jim, you're on the air.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hi, Eric.
		Professor, I have a question about vehicles.
		Would something as simple as a lead liner attached to the other side of your hood or perhaps in the headliner of the vehicle protect us from EMPs?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Well, you need a pretty powerful suspension system to handle that, and no, it would not.
unidentified		No, I was thinking more along the lines of x-ray vests that X-ray techs wear readily available.
unidentified		That wouldn't do it?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		You've got a weight load there.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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.
unidentified		That's another option right there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 and something driven into the ground.
unidentified		Okay, that's one more question I have.
unidentified		Does the circuit have to be energized at the time of the hit?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Now, take it out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, the answer is no.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		No.
unidentified		Okay, well.
unidentified		Well, thank you.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're very welcome.
		Cheery stuff, huh?
		Really cheery.
		Does it have to be on, essentially, was the question?
		No, no.
		The answer is no.
		Idaho, Bob, you're on the air.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yeah, hi, gentlemen.
unidentified		Yeah, could not your 90% figure be optimistic if this happened in the wintertime and you might have a revolution on your hands as well as a total breakdown of civil authority?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, that's an interesting question.
		Well, an awful lot of the cells, I think, are controlled electronically, right?
		So I suppose there's safeties built in so that if the power fails, the cells remain locked.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		But after two weeks, what do you do with them when there's no food and Water.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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 EMP.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
unidentified		Yeah, another Kathy.
		I heard you 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?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		You have a good Faraday cage.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		You're protected.
unidentified		Okay.
unidentified		But it has to be unplugged right during the event?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		It has to be grounded.
unidentified		Grounded oven.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		You know the easiest Faraday cage?
		Take your old microwave.
		That's a Faraday cage.
		Ground it.
		Microwave oven.
		Don't plug it into the wall.
		Run that electrical line into the ground to ground it.
		You have a Faraday cage.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you might be able to get your CC radio in there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's about it.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		One quick point about women.
		Let's look at the statistics, mortality statistics.
		Women today outlive men by, what, seven to ten years?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's what it said, yes.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Go back 200 years.
		It was absolutely reversed.
		Think of a pre-technological society in childbirth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 know that?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Short on time.
		John in Georgia, you're on the air.
unidentified		Good evening, gentlemen.
unidentified		Professor, what we learn from history is we don't learn from history, right?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		Precisely, sir.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		That's why they to my students when I hand back their papers.
unidentified		We're reliving the 30s all over again, but it's worse.
		We got a death cult-ish 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		I've listened to you for years, and it's an honor to finally be able to talk with you.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		It's been a pleasure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Your book is One Second After, and it's been out how long now?
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		It's been out since March.
william r forstchen ▲ ● ▼		It's a bestseller, and also through the website onesecondafter.com, you can link into some of the text sites that we talked about tonight as well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.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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