I think the biggest problem are EMP weapons.

If a large EMP pulse hit your life, it would wipe out every bit of
social record, except for some tatters in bunkers, and the public
common would be decimated. The private common, the personal PC
would be wiped out entirely. Really destroyed, CV's, spreadsheets,
personal accounts, phone records, vehicle records, legal records, music records, corporate accounts, some world stock markets.

EMP hardening is a different science altogether, and few bits of
data-system would survive a "terrorist" strike. The ultimate bushian
nihilism, that i think the neocons exacerbate is this seriously
deadly social potentail of EMP war.

Flame away.

Popular Science had an article back in 2000 showing how to build an EMP weapon for a few hundred bucks. I always thought that would be the next phase in "Diplomacy by other means" (WAR), but sachel charges are more personal and planes proved easier.

By the way, SBC in Michigan has hardened their data against EMP weapons.

You don't need EMP weapons. A high altitude nuke would do the same thing.

http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/effects.htm
The electromagnetic pulse generated by the detonation of a single nuclear weapon at high altitudes can be a threat to military systems located as much as a thousand miles away. HEMP can disable communications systems and even power grids at enormous distances from the burst. This type of threat could be used by a third world country that has the capability to launch a rocket carrying a high-yield device (about 1 megaton or more) a few hundred kilometers into the upper atmosphere and a few thousand kilometers from its own territory (to avoid damaging its own systems).

Have a nice day!

I believe that a sitting-still hard disk has a higher potential of
surviving provided its in a shielded case, when the motor burns out.
At least the magnetic content of the disk might survive.

I sense that i will have a premonition when they are about to do
anything so silly, and LIGHNING FAST SHUT DOWN the computer. These
stupid dorks at microland just are clueless zorons, to force me to
wait more than a microsecond to shut down. Stop as fast as this
machine can stop, and disconnect, PHYSICALLY FROM ALL NETWORKS.
Surge protectors will zap computers through their power supplies,
as the larger loops generate electricity in the field before fusing.

I think i might have to build a special case. I'm still working on
what it would take for a private data store to survive such a strike.
I feel it could happen before they get around to adding this fast
shut as a feature. I want processor reset as a button on the front
of the screen, please, or something as close as possible to it.
A lotta people live by their computers, and it would be socially
very devastating.

You know how much damage those things can do?

They scare me, but my tin foil hat protects me.









Sheesh.

a special alloy that uses nickel and other things to protect hard drives so that they are relatively immune to EMP for government data files.

I'm glad its tinfoil.

Were you to hire me to provide an independent opinion, in the field
that the CIA is protecting from, i believe that a serious opponent
will use EMP. They should guard against it, and i suspect instead
they are exacerbating the potential for its use.

I think bush raises this possibility by his relection alone. The
"this 4 years" presidency has hardly begun, as much as september 11th
was inconceivable on January 25 2000. Direct field effect weapons,
would not kill people, but whole societies, all hard disks lost
and no records left of the people.. social archeologiests will
write it off as a gap period for wherever it happens.

Personal data will be lost terribly, as poverty. A sort of marxist
social revolution in a bomb. I do not doubt that the military
have the capacity, the weapons and the delivery vehicles to deploy
and fight with such rapiers.

The poteintial of this is much higher than an asteroid hit. Over
the next 200 years, looking long, EMP is the most deadly. It will
wipe out all past data, directly by fuszing the gazillion processors
that understand it in one tiny moment.

The impulse that can blow out a car alternator at 100 miles could
certianly, reduce all social data in israel to dust, as well that
in any other country in the world. The US in some cities, it would
be painful as hell. (i did not single out israel, say malasia, or
phillipines, countries that have not the money to harden most
systems. I'm glad to be wrong, but i want this feature on my computer, because i believe they will try testing some of these
things, maybe up near the north pole, and i just think that some
problems might transpire, even say 1000 miles away.

I don't think they'll give warning of a test, honestly. It would
be like them. If they were to test a nuke of this type, near the
north pole, i believe they could wipe this work computer i'm using.
So i think it is the biggest danger.

Sorry for being obtuse. Russia might test one, responding to
another test.

They'll slice you in half, man. Then you explode. Scary shit.

Good; I'll tape some of those to my tin foil hat.

I hope they stop the Japanese robot laser swords!



Hi DrWeird! :hi:

And death is.
And death is.

nt

I forgot.

:-)

Whew! if feels good to smoke a joint and blow that bubble.

What a terrorizing state of mind to think that thought.

To be a self defending something

over a human being defending nothing

without borders, merely humanity.

The enemy itself.

:-)

Chod

Nothing like EMP to bring out the debunking brigade.


From Military Information Technology last month:

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack could inflict this catastrophic scenario across the entire United States. The same day the 9/11 commission released its final report, Congress and the nation were warned: “The current vulnerability of our critical infrastructures can both invite and reward an attack if not corrected.” That was the unanimous conclusion by nine of America’s most respected experts in nuclear weapons and military and civilian infrastructure, in the “Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack,” which was released on July 22.

Where the terrorist airliner attacks of 9/11 killed thousands, a terrorist EMP attack could indirectly kill millions and conceivably cause the permanent collapse of our entire society. An EMP attack is achieved by launching a nuclear missile and detonating it at high altitude tens or hundreds of kilometers above the target. The blast, through a variety of physical mechanisms, generates an electromagnetic pulse from the detonation point through the atmosphere to the earth’s visible surface, all the way out to the horizon.

Thus, a single nuclear weapon could produce an EMP attack that damages or destroys electronic systems across the entire continental United States. Satellites in low earth orbit would also be damaged. “EMP is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences,” the report stated. “It has the capability to produce significant damage to critical infrastructures and thus to the very fabric of U.S. society, as well as to the ability of the United States and Western nations to project influence and military power.”
http://www.mit-kmi.com/articles.cfm?DocID=639

If not, that's frightening. An EMP could be taken into Manhattan in the back of a truck and set off on Wall St. Wouldn't even have to be that large. The result would be catastrophic.

A Flux Compression Generator can produce a healthy EMP from a device about 2 meters long made of stuff you'd find in many garages + a bit of high explosive like C4 or RDX.

Doesn't need anything but copper wires, a piece of pipe, a bit of explosive and a good eye for detail.

This is the same device that Popular Mechanics described some time ago. It would cost about $40 + the explosives.

and a big fertilizer bomb like the one used in Oklahoma City, or the big truck bombs being used now in Iraq. Do you need certain kinds of explosives to generate the electromagnetic wave? Or it is something else about the design?

An FCG is basically a precision pipe bomb with an electromagnet wound around it. When the pipe explodes, if it can be done in a semi-controlled fashion (depends on the explosives and how they are ignited), the blast wave will expand and SHORT the electromagnet as it travels through the pipe. Think of the pipe becoming a 'cone' for a split second as it explodes from one end to the other.

This 'compression' wave as it shorts out the electromagnet causes a MASSIVE surge in voltage in the electromagnets coils that ultimately travels out the end opposite the one you ignited.

This sort of bomb wouldn't necessarily cause a lot of blast damage at all. It would short out most unshielded electronic devices within a half mile or so, however.

There are some other EMP devices that are more precise (unidirectional instead of shooting EMP in all directions like an FCG) that actually use FCG like devices to trigger the larger EMP device.

I mean, I don't understand electromagnetism very well, but it sounds like the idea is to create a kind of an electric generator that derives its power from an explosion rather than a constant turbine or something. Is that right?

It might be more accurate to characterize it as sort of a step-up transformer, rather than a generator.

It takes a smaller amount of voltage you feed into the coils (it does need a battery, btw), and turns it into a VERY LARGE amount of voltage over a split second as the coil is 'compressed'.

The truth is
that this story is a lie of an illusory
self, and that as death will end all
the world of words and appearances,
to experience that now, by simply
stopping, and then what, and then what.

These thoughts are repeated by a voice
that was never a self, and a body
that appears to be one for a while.

I realize, the public-writing potential of this
internet chat like motzart loved music.
Dancing in the appearance of self.
Samsharra, but to understand words,
the writer is selling that they are more
responsible for the appearance of the words
than the reader, and perhaps its vice
versa and the world is not causative.

Didn't you see "Ocean's Eleven"?

Seriously, there ARE non-nuclear EMP generators. The military tested one 7 or 8 years ago (maybe longer) in the nose cone of a Tomahawk missile. As the missile flew, it knocked out electrical circuitry along it's path of flight.