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Re: We Really Should be Hardening our Systems Against an EMP Attack [big kahuna] [ In reply to ]
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http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,841540,00.html

RayGovett
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Be Prepared-- Strike Swiftly -- Who Dares Wins- Without warning-"it will be hard. I can do it"
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Re: We Really Should be Hardening our Systems Against an EMP Attack [eb] [ In reply to ]
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eb wrote:
chaparral wrote:
eb wrote:
chaparral wrote:
No, the EMP threat is just silly.


Read up a little bit (start with Starfish Prime), and get back to us.

Recall that Starfish Prime was in the early 1960s when our electronic infrastructure was minimal compared to now. And yet streetlights were knocked out 900 miles away.


I have, I know about starfish prime. Can you tell me what percentage of street lights were knocked out? Or do you just know that street lights were knocked out? Do you know how difficult it was to get them back on? There is detail far beyond the simple fact and that detail is critical to understanding the danger.

This may shock you, but the more you read into it, the less concerning it is. Seriously, if you gave me the choice between a high altitude detonation to maximize EMP effect and a detonation targeting a large population center, I would take the high altitude all day long. And that goes for anyone launching a nuke, I can only hope us dismissing this threat makes some adversary think it is a better idea than hitting a city. Plus optimizing the blast for the greatest effect is difficult and requires a precise knowledge of what the atmosphere is doing at that time and very big device. If they want to waste a bunch of material making a huge warhead to detonate high up, that is much better than them using that same material to build a couple smaller warheads to hit cities.


Look, if you want to take issue with "90 percent of population will die", I'm with you. If you want to take issue with the EMP commission report (https://apps.dtic.mil/...ltext/u2/1051492.pdf), I'm with you. That report seems alarmist and speculative.

But when you say "the EMP threat is just silly", I think you're taking it a little too far.

Starfish Prime (and the Soviet tests in that era) clearly showed that even distant nuclear detonations can damage electrical infrastructure. Yeah, it was relatively easy to get a few 1960s streetlights working again in Hawaii. Remember, it's Hawaii: small power grid, relatively short conductors. At that time, few transistors, and no ICs to speak of. The 1962 incident had peak fields of maybe 6 kV/m in Hawaii - modern weapons would reach 90-100 kV/m, perhaps more for the secret EMP weapons that several countries probably have.

How do you think modern infrastructure will fare if subjected to a targeted EMP attack? Not just the power grid which is obviously vulnerable; I'll assume you know about the 1989 Quebec outages. What about traffic control systems? What about SCADA systems on oil and gas pipelines? Almost none of this infrastructure is hardened.

Also, your argument about a EMP attack versus attacking a city is a false equivalence. There is no reason an adversary couldn't do both, or combine EMP with other tactics.

Finally, I can tell you that DoD takes EMP takes very seriously. My work has taken me to several facilities which have significant hardening. I'd like to know how many tons of copper are in some of these walls and ceilings - from what little I've seen it's a hell of a lot.

You have totally avoided why someone would use a nuclear warhead for EMP effect and not attack a city. You then say, well a country can do both, but then why would we care about hardening our power grid against EMPs? Good thing we saved the power grid from EMP, because the cities are a smoldering ruin and most of our power lines were knocked down by blast waves, but the power grid would have survived anyway!

This is the central argument, why would an adversary using a nuclear war head for an EMP attack, instead of attacking a city? It is just so much more effective to hit a city.

The military is different, they are making it so their systems could survive a nuclear attack, so they could continue to fight. This prevents an adversary from using an EMP to knock out the US militaries ability to respond to an attack. But that is different from some fear of the civilian infrastructure. I mean it is the same reason that we don't build our cities underground, but the military will put important control systems in bunkers. Just because the military does something, does not mean it makes sense for the civilian world to do the same.
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Re: We Really Should be Hardening our Systems Against an EMP Attack [big kahuna] [ In reply to ]
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Oops. I thought you meant EDM....



Civilize the mind, but make savage the body.

- Chinese proverb
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Re: We Really Should be Hardening our Systems Against an EMP Attack [chaparral] [ In reply to ]
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chaparral wrote:
eb wrote:
chaparral wrote:
eb wrote:
chaparral wrote:
No, the EMP threat is just silly.


Read up a little bit (start with Starfish Prime), and get back to us.

Recall that Starfish Prime was in the early 1960s when our electronic infrastructure was minimal compared to now. And yet streetlights were knocked out 900 miles away.


I have, I know about starfish prime. Can you tell me what percentage of street lights were knocked out? Or do you just know that street lights were knocked out? Do you know how difficult it was to get them back on? There is detail far beyond the simple fact and that detail is critical to understanding the danger.

This may shock you, but the more you read into it, the less concerning it is. Seriously, if you gave me the choice between a high altitude detonation to maximize EMP effect and a detonation targeting a large population center, I would take the high altitude all day long. And that goes for anyone launching a nuke, I can only hope us dismissing this threat makes some adversary think it is a better idea than hitting a city. Plus optimizing the blast for the greatest effect is difficult and requires a precise knowledge of what the atmosphere is doing at that time and very big device. If they want to waste a bunch of material making a huge warhead to detonate high up, that is much better than them using that same material to build a couple smaller warheads to hit cities.


Look, if you want to take issue with "90 percent of population will die", I'm with you. If you want to take issue with the EMP commission report (https://apps.dtic.mil/...ltext/u2/1051492.pdf), I'm with you. That report seems alarmist and speculative.

But when you say "the EMP threat is just silly", I think you're taking it a little too far.

Starfish Prime (and the Soviet tests in that era) clearly showed that even distant nuclear detonations can damage electrical infrastructure. Yeah, it was relatively easy to get a few 1960s streetlights working again in Hawaii. Remember, it's Hawaii: small power grid, relatively short conductors. At that time, few transistors, and no ICs to speak of. The 1962 incident had peak fields of maybe 6 kV/m in Hawaii - modern weapons would reach 90-100 kV/m, perhaps more for the secret EMP weapons that several countries probably have.

How do you think modern infrastructure will fare if subjected to a targeted EMP attack? Not just the power grid which is obviously vulnerable; I'll assume you know about the 1989 Quebec outages. What about traffic control systems? What about SCADA systems on oil and gas pipelines? Almost none of this infrastructure is hardened.

Also, your argument about a EMP attack versus attacking a city is a false equivalence. There is no reason an adversary couldn't do both, or combine EMP with other tactics.

Finally, I can tell you that DoD takes EMP takes very seriously. My work has taken me to several facilities which have significant hardening. I'd like to know how many tons of copper are in some of these walls and ceilings - from what little I've seen it's a hell of a lot.


You have totally avoided why someone would use a nuclear warhead for EMP effect and not attack a city. You then say, well a country can do both, but then why would we care about hardening our power grid against EMPs? Good thing we saved the power grid from EMP, because the cities are a smoldering ruin and most of our power lines were knocked down by blast waves, but the power grid would have survived anyway!

This is the central argument, why would an adversary using a nuclear war head for an EMP attack, instead of attacking a city? It is just so much more effective to hit a city.

The military is different, they are making it so their systems could survive a nuclear attack, so they could continue to fight. This prevents an adversary from using an EMP to knock out the US militaries ability to respond to an attack. But that is different from some fear of the civilian infrastructure. I mean it is the same reason that we don't build our cities underground, but the military will put important control systems in bunkers. Just because the military does something, does not mean it makes sense for the civilian world to do the same.

Avoided it? I brought it up! EMP is a largely independent tactical option. As such, we should be prepared to defend against it, and we should be prepared to employ it. There are many possible scenarios where some world leader or terrorist may choose to deploy an EMP device rather than directly attack a city or military facility.

You say "It is just so much more effective to hit a city." Well, that totally depends on what your goals are, doesn't it?
Deploy a worst-case EMP and you might disable an economy at continental scale for months to years. Deploy that same ICBM with a different warhead on a populous city, and a few millions die and the rest of the world ticks on.
Think of it as analogous to a neutron bomb - yes, it's a nuclear weapon, but the EMP and the neutron bomb have different uses (and consequences) than a thermonuclear warhead on an ICBM.

Maybe you don't remember the days when folks were building fallout shelters in their backyards, and those black and yellow signs were on many streetcorners. The reason we don't build cities underground because it's too damned expensive. And the level of hardening at missile defense facilities would not be needed or appropriate for all but the most critical civilian infrastructure. We harden many civilian facilities against the possibility of terrorist attacks (think about all those TSA agents), but somehow we haven't hardened our power grid and pipeline system very well.

Why is that? I think it's because of a number of factors. Much of the vulnerable infrastructure is privately owned, and private industry doesn't see such investments as an appropriate return on investment. Government? Multiple federal agencies have more or less knowledge and jurisdiction (DOD, DOE, DOT, DHS), and they don't coordinate effectively. So the result is one "action plan" after another, acknowledging vulnerability and proposing ameliorative measures. But like most sweeping "action plans", not much gets done.

Here, for example, is DOE's latest resilience plan for the US power grid: https://www.energy.gov/...20January%202017.pdf It's full of words like "share", "cooperate", and "promote". But hey, at least they recognize the problem (and I'm sure most of the details would be classified or proprietary).
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Re: We Really Should be Hardening our Systems Against an EMP Attack [big kahuna] [ In reply to ]
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An EMP attack could be an effective way for a smaller power to do significant damage to the US infrastructure. And/or that coupled with targeted attacks against power plants through either sabotage or viruses, and perhaps destroying several key transport corridors and bridges, would go a long way to starving a significant portion of the US population. Think of how useless the US government was in New Orleans and Puerto Rico after the hurricanes? Imagine this by a factor of 1000.
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Re: We Really Should be Hardening our Systems Against an EMP Attack [eb] [ In reply to ]
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eb wrote:
chaparral wrote:
eb wrote:
chaparral wrote:
eb wrote:
chaparral wrote:
No, the EMP threat is just silly.


Read up a little bit (start with Starfish Prime), and get back to us.

Recall that Starfish Prime was in the early 1960s when our electronic infrastructure was minimal compared to now. And yet streetlights were knocked out 900 miles away.


I have, I know about starfish prime. Can you tell me what percentage of street lights were knocked out? Or do you just know that street lights were knocked out? Do you know how difficult it was to get them back on? There is detail far beyond the simple fact and that detail is critical to understanding the danger.

This may shock you, but the more you read into it, the less concerning it is. Seriously, if you gave me the choice between a high altitude detonation to maximize EMP effect and a detonation targeting a large population center, I would take the high altitude all day long. And that goes for anyone launching a nuke, I can only hope us dismissing this threat makes some adversary think it is a better idea than hitting a city. Plus optimizing the blast for the greatest effect is difficult and requires a precise knowledge of what the atmosphere is doing at that time and very big device. If they want to waste a bunch of material making a huge warhead to detonate high up, that is much better than them using that same material to build a couple smaller warheads to hit cities.


Look, if you want to take issue with "90 percent of population will die", I'm with you. If you want to take issue with the EMP commission report (https://apps.dtic.mil/...ltext/u2/1051492.pdf), I'm with you. That report seems alarmist and speculative.

But when you say "the EMP threat is just silly", I think you're taking it a little too far.

Starfish Prime (and the Soviet tests in that era) clearly showed that even distant nuclear detonations can damage electrical infrastructure. Yeah, it was relatively easy to get a few 1960s streetlights working again in Hawaii. Remember, it's Hawaii: small power grid, relatively short conductors. At that time, few transistors, and no ICs to speak of. The 1962 incident had peak fields of maybe 6 kV/m in Hawaii - modern weapons would reach 90-100 kV/m, perhaps more for the secret EMP weapons that several countries probably have.

How do you think modern infrastructure will fare if subjected to a targeted EMP attack? Not just the power grid which is obviously vulnerable; I'll assume you know about the 1989 Quebec outages. What about traffic control systems? What about SCADA systems on oil and gas pipelines? Almost none of this infrastructure is hardened.

Also, your argument about a EMP attack versus attacking a city is a false equivalence. There is no reason an adversary couldn't do both, or combine EMP with other tactics.

Finally, I can tell you that DoD takes EMP takes very seriously. My work has taken me to several facilities which have significant hardening. I'd like to know how many tons of copper are in some of these walls and ceilings - from what little I've seen it's a hell of a lot.


You have totally avoided why someone would use a nuclear warhead for EMP effect and not attack a city. You then say, well a country can do both, but then why would we care about hardening our power grid against EMPs? Good thing we saved the power grid from EMP, because the cities are a smoldering ruin and most of our power lines were knocked down by blast waves, but the power grid would have survived anyway!

This is the central argument, why would an adversary using a nuclear war head for an EMP attack, instead of attacking a city? It is just so much more effective to hit a city.

The military is different, they are making it so their systems could survive a nuclear attack, so they could continue to fight. This prevents an adversary from using an EMP to knock out the US militaries ability to respond to an attack. But that is different from some fear of the civilian infrastructure. I mean it is the same reason that we don't build our cities underground, but the military will put important control systems in bunkers. Just because the military does something, does not mean it makes sense for the civilian world to do the same.


Avoided it? I brought it up! EMP is a largely independent tactical option. As such, we should be prepared to defend against it, and we should be prepared to employ it. There are many possible scenarios where some world leader or terrorist may choose to deploy an EMP device rather than directly attack a city or military facility.

You say "It is just so much more effective to hit a city." Well, that totally depends on what your goals are, doesn't it?
Deploy a worst-case EMP and you might disable an economy at continental scale for months to years. Deploy that same ICBM with a different warhead on a populous city, and a few millions die and the rest of the world ticks on.
Think of it as analogous to a neutron bomb - yes, it's a nuclear weapon, but the EMP and the neutron bomb have different uses (and consequences) than a thermonuclear warhead on an ICBM.

Maybe you don't remember the days when folks were building fallout shelters in their backyards, and those black and yellow signs were on many streetcorners. The reason we don't build cities underground because it's too damned expensive. And the level of hardening at missile defense facilities would not be needed or appropriate for all but the most critical civilian infrastructure. We harden many civilian facilities against the possibility of terrorist attacks (think about all those TSA agents), but somehow we haven't hardened our power grid and pipeline system very well.

Why is that? I think it's because of a number of factors. Much of the vulnerable infrastructure is privately owned, and private industry doesn't see such investments as an appropriate return on investment. Government? Multiple federal agencies have more or less knowledge and jurisdiction (DOD, DOE, DOT, DHS), and they don't coordinate effectively. So the result is one "action plan" after another, acknowledging vulnerability and proposing ameliorative measures. But like most sweeping "action plans", not much gets done.

Here, for example, is DOE's latest resilience plan for the US power grid: https://www.energy.gov/...20January%202017.pdf It's full of words like "share", "cooperate", and "promote". But hey, at least they recognize the problem (and I'm sure most of the details would be classified or proprietary).

And what good does disabling an economy do when your own country is reduced to a smoldering cinder?

And what EMP is going to disable more than a city? It's not like these weapons have an unlimited blast radius.

Tell me what is the endgame when the only outcome assured destruction?
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Re: We Really Should be Hardening our Systems Against an EMP Attack [Duffy] [ In reply to ]
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Duffy wrote:
Oops. I thought you meant EDM....



At my age I'm more interested in scheduling a nice nap than in scheduling a session with a pair of funbags. Also; am I the only one who thinks Marie Osmond in those Nutrisystem commercials is HAWT?

"Politics is just show business for ugly people."
Last edited by: big kahuna: Jan 25, 19 18:26
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Re: We Really Should be Hardening our Systems Against an EMP Attack [FishyJoe] [ In reply to ]
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FishyJoe wrote:

And what good does disabling an economy do when your own country is reduced to a smoldering cinder?

And what EMP is going to disable more than a city? It's not like these weapons have an unlimited blast radius.

Tell me what is the endgame when the only outcome assured destruction?

I mentioned this earlier - the advantage of an EMP over a land-detonated nuke is preservation of the country's natural resources. If you land detonate a nuke, the blast radius is somewhat limited and you have effectively contaminated the land. To take out the entire country would require many nukes, which would create nightmare fallout. That number of nukes would have to be launched from the attacking country, which would be easily detectable and result in retaliation.

However, the "nightmare scenario" is a 100 kiloton nuke detonated over the US. A single 100 kiloton nuke could fry the entire country. Such a nuke could, in theory, be launched remotely. The US would detect the incoming missile, but, if it is a single remote launch, how would the US retaliate? How would the US know who launched it.

So, you detonate the 100 kiloton nuke. You fry the US grid. You knock out vehicles, aircraft, radar, etc. Then you launch a conventional ground attack and take the country or if it is a terrorist attack, you just sit back and watch the US implode.

I'm not claiming this is likely. I'm merely explaining what the potential "nightmare scenario" would be.

If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR
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Re: We Really Should be Hardening our Systems Against an EMP Attack [JSA] [ In reply to ]
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JSA wrote:
Then you launch a conventional ground attack and take the country .

Not a chance in hell mon ami...


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Re: We Really Should be Hardening our Systems Against an EMP Attack [axlsix3] [ In reply to ]
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axlsix3 wrote:
JSA wrote:

Then you launch a conventional ground attack and take the country .


Not a chance in hell mon ami...




If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR
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Re: We Really Should be Hardening our Systems Against an EMP Attack [FishyJoe] [ In reply to ]
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< a whole bunch of stuff trimmed, then taking things one by one >
FishyJoe wrote:
And what good does disabling an economy do when your own country is reduced to a smoldering cinder?

You are assuming a lot of things there, like the ability or desire to retaliate. It's not necessarily a MAD scenario among equal actors. There's not necessarily going to be a country to be retaliated against.

FishyJoe wrote:
And what EMP is going to disable more than a city? It's not like these weapons have an unlimited blast radius.

Well, that's the thing about EMP. A single high-altitude explosion can affect a huge area - an entire continent.
And that has implications for non-traditional actors - you don't have to be able to aim a missile well, you just have to be able to hit a continent. And you don't need a sophisticated H-bomb, a fission bomb could do the trick.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/...lectromagnetic_pulse, because it's handy:


FishyJoe wrote:
Tell me what is the endgame when the only outcome assured destruction?

Well, that's not the only possible outcome, especially with non-state actors. But sure, with other nation-states, MAD why we haven't seen any nuclear weapons used since WWII. But that hasn't stopped all these nations from developing more nuclear weapons of different types, and building enough of them to turn the surface of Earth into a charred wasteland. Right?
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Re: We Really Should be Hardening our Systems Against an EMP Attack [JSA] [ In reply to ]
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JSA wrote:
axlsix3 wrote:
JSA wrote:

Then you launch a conventional ground attack and take the country .


Not a chance in hell mon ami...

Those two 'tards are a couple of pussies. Especially when compared to how this guy repelled an invasion of the USA:



"Politics is just show business for ugly people."
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Re: We Really Should be Hardening our Systems Against an EMP Attack [JSA] [ In reply to ]
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JSA wrote:
FishyJoe wrote:


And what good does disabling an economy do when your own country is reduced to a smoldering cinder?

And what EMP is going to disable more than a city? It's not like these weapons have an unlimited blast radius.

Tell me what is the endgame when the only outcome assured destruction?


I mentioned this earlier - the advantage of an EMP over a land-detonated nuke is preservation of the country's natural resources. If you land detonate a nuke, the blast radius is somewhat limited and you have effectively contaminated the land. To take out the entire country would require many nukes, which would create nightmare fallout. That number of nukes would have to be launched from the attacking country, which would be easily detectable and result in retaliation.

However, the "nightmare scenario" is a 100 kiloton nuke detonated over the US. A single 100 kiloton nuke could fry the entire country. Such a nuke could, in theory, be launched remotely. The US would detect the incoming missile, but, if it is a single remote launch, how would the US retaliate? How would the US know who launched it.

So, you detonate the 100 kiloton nuke. You fry the US grid. You knock out vehicles, aircraft, radar, etc. Then you launch a conventional ground attack and take the country or if it is a terrorist attack, you just sit back and watch the US implode.

I'm not claiming this is likely. I'm merely explaining what the potential "nightmare scenario" would be.


That's still not going to take out missile silos or subs or really any hardened target. So you're not going to take anything without facing the wrath of thousands of nuclear warheads. So really you might as well just kill everyone, because there is no way to avoid nuclear retaliation.

I just don't see why spending godly amounts of money for an unlikely scenario as a good investment. You can dream up all kinds of unlikely things to spend money on. I guess that's what preppers do, are you one of those people? Do you spend money on a personal bunker awaiting the downfall of society?
Last edited by: FishyJoe: Jan 25, 19 20:23
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Re: We Really Should be Hardening our Systems Against an EMP Attack [big kahuna] [ In reply to ]
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Quote:
Also; am I the only one who thinks Marie Osmond in those Nutrisystem commercials is HAWT?



Well she's hawter than your other recent flame:



Aside from the distractions of Duffy, JSA, and I, this is really a great thread. Intelligent discussion (excepting the three aforementioned).

________
It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev
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Re: We Really Should be Hardening our Systems Against an EMP Attack [H-] [ In reply to ]
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H- wrote:
Quote:
Also; am I the only one who thinks Marie Osmond in those Nutrisystem commercials is HAWT?




Well she's hawter than your other recent flame:



Aside from the distractions of Duffy, JSA, and I, this is really a great thread. Intelligent discussion (excepting the three aforementioned).

Apparently there's more than one way to harden a system ...
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Re: We Really Should be Hardening our Systems Against an EMP Attack [eb] [ In reply to ]
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eb wrote:
H- wrote:
Quote:
Also; am I the only one who thinks Marie Osmond in those Nutrisystem commercials is HAWT?




Well she's hawter than your other recent flame:



Aside from the distractions of Duffy, JSA, and I, this is really a great thread. Intelligent discussion (excepting the three aforementioned).


Apparently there's more than one way to harden a system ...

That's for sure!

"Politics is just show business for ugly people."
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Re: We Really Should be Hardening our Systems Against an EMP Attack [ACE] [ In reply to ]
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I am certain this will come across as incredibly naĂ¯ve but are there really foreign leaders out there ( other than maybe Iran) that want to wipe out entire populations of millions and billions of innocent people and take over their countries?


But fear keeps political parties in power and that's the most important thing.


Iran never actually said they wanted to wipe out innocent people. The original wording of "wipe Israel off the map" was in Farsi and translated poorly. The words should have been translated as a literal meaning, as in not to recognize the State of Israel on a map, as if they don't exist. It was not meant as a way to kill millions of people.


I think Putin's main goal is for the world to respect (fear) Russia and China's main goal is to get resources and wealth for their people (which could mean taking control of parts of countries with resources) but no one is looking to wipe out billions of people.


It's what some want you to believe so you spend more on military defence systems or so that you vote for a party that sells itself on being strong on defence but it's always been that way.
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