If North Korea isn’t keeping President Trump up at night, we should all be a little worried. A new report circulating in Washington indicates that the rogue nation may already be in possession of a war capability that until recently most defense departments dismissed as a theoretical fantasy: a nuclear-activated electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapon.
An EMP is a terrifying byproduct of an atomic reaction that can produce extremely strong gamma rays capable of disabling virtually all electronic devices in existence — from radios to telephones to computers to cell phones — even the starter motors of cars and the electronics of airplanes. A nuclear-enabled EMP blast — if it were powerful enough — could take out most of the electrical power grid of the United States, either all at once or via the cascading domino effect of one subsystem taking down another one.
If the right kind of EMP weapon were used over a specific location of the United States, truly devastating consequences could occur; food would be undeliverable and/or unprocessable, vehicles could not go anywhere, computers and telephones would not function, and there would be no electricity. Even if no one died from the nuclear blast itself (which would likely occur many miles up in the stratosphere), essentially, life would revert back to a 1600s-era state. In the words of one British analyst, “after about three days, anarchic conditions would start to set in.”
It’s a horrifying scenario that to date has only been seriously contemplated in a few movies, television shows and fictional novels, but according to scientists like Dr. Peter Pry, who’s interviewed in this clip, and former CIA Director James Woolsey, the North Koreans have two satellites already in orbit that may have these capabilities.
Recent North Korean missile launches the U.S. deemed failures may actually have been successful tests for a future EMP strike. Watch as Fox’s Lou Dobbs queries Dr. Pry about this chilling possibility.