# Could NK actually hiit the US with and EMP?



## Moby76065 (Jul 31, 2012)

http://www.liveleak.com/






Doubtful....but we are preppers.

I'm thinking about protecting my generator (small portable), hotplate, and a small microwave. Maybe a small space heater and some lights too.


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## nopolitics12 (Mar 20, 2013)

I'm going over my preps tonight. I don't know about NKs ICBM abilities, but I'm not taking any chances. Gonna pick up some more iodine and potassium too.


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## Trinka (Feb 16, 2013)

My understanding is they can only remotely hit the west coast ...

would that knock out the whole country?

would those of us farther east still be ok? 

This is the part I'm not sure on...if a hit our there knocks out the whole grid and for how long....


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## rf197 (Jul 19, 2009)

If I was in Hawaii I'd be a bit nervous


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## Trinka (Feb 16, 2013)

rf197 said:


> If I was in Hawaii I'd be a bit nervous


Or Alaska..


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## rf197 (Jul 19, 2009)

Trinka said:


> Or Alaska..


Very true Trinka, as crazy as it may sound I didn't even consider Alaska only due to the fact that the population is spread out. I think Hawaii would be an easy target, could easily wipe out an island with a carefully landed bomb.


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## haley4217 (Dec 16, 2012)

Trinka said:


> Or Alaska..





rf197 said:


> Very true Trinka, as crazy as it may sound I didn't even consider Alaska only due to the fact that the population is spread out. I think Hawaii would be an easy target, could easily wipe out an island with a carefully landed bomb.


Without intending to start a battle with Hawaii or Alaska members and not ment to be disparaging to either of the states, they are probably safer than we are here on the mainland. Think about it from a historical standpoint, Japan attacked Hawaii because it was the stronghold of the US Pacific Fleet. While both of those states could possibly be attacked by a missle from Korea, what would it gain them. Other than interrupting the President's Hawaiian vacations and golf outings the force of the US would be only slightly affected.

I believe that their strike would have to be something that would, excuse the pun, give them the biggest bang for their bucks. It's unlikely that they could survive an all out war with the US and I for one don't believe that China will come running to their aid.

Don't get me wrong, I think China and possibly Russia would condem and let loose with a non-ending flow of rehetoric, but I don't think either of them want to get drawn into a shooting battle.

So, I believe that if Korea was to strike they are going to have to take down a significant part of the US infrastructure. Wall Street, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, possibly even a nuclear device in an airplane over areas where the EMP would knock out as much communication and electrical as possible.

OR, just make a lot of noise talk about what you can do and give Congress and Washington a little more time to torpedo the economy to the point of a crash so that everyone in the US is focusing on eating and surviving and paying little attention to the Korean Pennisula.


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## sgtrunningfool (Dec 8, 2012)

There is a lot more military strength in Hawaii and Alaska then people realize


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## cengasser (Mar 12, 2012)

If this is to be believed and why not? Then this idiot needs to go. They (NK) know they can't take us in a ground war. So an EMP seems likely, how much would it really take for them to have this capability? 
If we sent fighters and destroyers are we just posturing or do the PTB know something?
Just when I think I'm nuts for prepping along comes NK to reassure me, I'm NOT the nutty one. It's the rest of the world.

http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-ne...nuclear-device-over-the-united-states_0402201


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## 101airborne (Jan 29, 2010)

Trinka said:


> My understanding is they can only remotely hit the west coast ...
> 
> would that knock out the whole country?
> 
> ...


From what I have read your correct. Hawaii, alaska, the west coast would be "reachable". By therory they could MAYBE effect areas a couple hundred miles inland from the coast but not much more than that with their current technology as far as I understand. Could be wrong though.:dunno:


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## Elinor0987 (May 28, 2010)

101airborne said:


> From what I have read your correct. Hawaii, alaska, the west coast would be "reachable". By therory they could MAYBE effect areas a couple hundred miles inland from the coast but not much more than that with their current technology as far as I understand. Could be wrong though.:dunno:


If the nuclear bomb was aimed directly at the west coast and its point of impact was near a fault line, couldn't that trigger an earthquake or a series of them? The San Andreas fault line is about 810 miles long. It might set off a chain reaction of disasters.


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## northstarprepper (Mar 19, 2013)

The last article I read stated that North Korea does not yet have a miniaturized nuke able to fit on an ICBM. If they chose to actually attack us or South Korea, it would most likely be either non-nuclear (on the Korean Peninsula) or a larger device smuggled onto a ship and sailed to an American harbor. North Korea is prone to radical actions, mainly caused by their dictators posturing to keep their military from a coup attempt. The real threat here would be the Chinese build up along their border with North Korea. You don't want your government making a miscalculation that ends with U.S. and Chinese forces in a conflict. That could end very badly for everyone.


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## d_saum (Jan 17, 2012)

why do people always seem to forget about the container ship option? Never mind the FOBS thing as well..

From an article I read yesterday:

Super-EMP Warhead--Nation Killer
The Obama administration and its allies in the press also want us to believe that North Korea's current "nuclear devices" are not a real threat because of their low explosive yield, only a few kilotons. Supposedly, North Korea after 20 years and three nuclear tests is still struggling to make a crude first generation atomic bomb.
In fact, almost certainly, North Korea now possesses a highly advanced third generation nuclear warhead that could destroy the United States with a single blow.

North Korea's nuclear tests in 2006, 2009, and recently in 2013 were all low yield. Some reports claim the 2013 test might have been as much as 10 kilotons, but the official position of the National Director of Intelligence, Lt. General James Clapper, is that the 2013 test too yielded only "several kilotons." This is not much. In contrast, the primitive U.S. Little Boy bomb that destroyed Hiroshima had a yield of 10-15 kilotons. In the 1970s, a Princeton physics student named Aristotle Phillips proved that even he could design, as a college project, a nuclear weapon like Little Boy, an experiment he described in his 1978 book Mushroom. Does North Korea not have a library card?
If North Korea's nuclear weapon is an ordinary nuclear warhead designed to create a big explosion, then it is not much of a threat. The lethal radius of "several kilotons" is so small, and the miss distance of North Korean missiles is so great, that such a warhead might well explode harmlessly in the countryside, and do little damage to the targeted city.
Yet North Korea is happy with its mysterious "nuclear device," has declared all its tests successful, and has weaponized it into warheads. Is North Korea arming its missiles with nuclear duds? Are they stupid?

In 2004, the Congressional Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Commission was warned by a delegation of Russian generals that Russia had developed a "Super-EMP" nuclear warhead, and that design information for this weapon had leaked to North Korea. A Super-EMP warhead is a nuclear weapon specially designed to produce an enormous burst of gamma rays that generates an extraordinarily powerful electromagnetic pulse, capable of destroying even the best protected electronics, thereby paralyzing military forces and blacking out power grids and collapsing critical infrastructures everywhere--across an entire nation the size of the United States.
One signature of a Super-EMP weapon is that it has a very low explosive yield, just several kilotons, or even less if it is more efficient, because the weapon is converting the energy of the nuclear warhead into gamma rays.
In 2004, the Russian generals told the EMP Commission that North Korea was getting help developing a Super-EMP nuclear weapon from contractors from Russia, China, Pakistan and elsewhere, and could probably test such a weapon "in a few years." A few years later, in 2006, North Korea tested its mysterious "nuclear device" that produced an explosive yield of only several kilotons, and so was derided by the Western press as a failure--but hailed as a success by North Korea.

Independently of the Congressional EMP Commission, South Korean military intelligence several times warned their government, in stories reported in South Korean press, that Russians are in North Korea helping them develop a Super-EMP nuclear warhead. In response, the South Korean government launched projects to harden their military communications and other critical infrastructures.
In 2010, according to some reputable European analysts, radioisotope data indicates North Korea may have conducted two clandestine nuclear tests of a very low yield "nuclear device" of sophisticated fusion design. This is indicative of a weapons program that is very technologically advanced, and consistent with development of a Super-EMP warhead.

In 2012, a military commentator for the People's Republic of China told a Hong Kong journal that North Korea has Super-EMP nuclear warheads.
The Congressional EMP Commission warned in its 2004 and 2008 reports that the electromagnetic pulse from a single nuclear weapon detonated at high-altitude over the United States could have catastrophic consequences nation-wide. One warhead making an EMP attack could collapse the national electric grid and other critical infrastructures--communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water--that sustain modern civilization and the lives of millions.
Just as aqueducts were the cornerstone of classical Roman civilization in antiquity, so electric grids are the most critical infrastructure to all modern societies. Super-EMP weapons threaten the technological foundations of modern civilization that makes possible the prosperity and large populations of the United States and other developed nations in the 21st Century.
All nuclear weapons produce gamma rays and EMP. However, a Super-EMP attack on the U.S. would cause much more and much deeper damage than a primitive nuclear weapon, and so would increase confidence that the catastrophic consequences will be irreversible. A Super-EMP attack would inflict maximum damage and be optimum for realizing a world without America.


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## 101airborne (Jan 29, 2010)

Elinor0987 said:


> If the nuclear bomb was aimed directly at the west coast and its point of impact was near a fault line, couldn't that trigger an earthquake or a series of them? The San Andreas fault line is about 810 miles long. It might set off a chain reaction of disasters.


Eli... again from what I've studied in theory a nuke hit (ground burst) could cause a cascade effect along a major fault line. Several ground burst hits along the same fault line could cause a earthquake that might seperate the west coast from the continent, However the current "threat" from NK isn't a conventinal attack, but a high alltitude burst that would cause an EMP. That again in theory would cause wider spread damage than a ground burst nuke.

Again I may be wrong here as I am by no means an expert, just referencing what I've read elsewhere.


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## db2469 (Jun 11, 2012)

d_saum.....I read that yesterday as well....eye-opening to say the least!


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