CIVIL-MILITARY PREPREDNESS FOR AN

ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE CATASTROPHE

OFFICIAL CONSENSUS

 

A Surfeit of Studies

 

All Acknowledge the Threat and Endorse Urgent Implementation

The natural and nuclear EMP threats described in the previous chapter, though still unknown or little understood by many policymakers and the public are not controversial as constituting threats to the very existence of modern civilization, threats that urgently need to be addressed by public policy. Not counting the present study, two Congressional Commissions and three U.S. Government sponsored projects have produced five major independent studies--all acknowledging that EMP is an existential threat to modern society and generally endorsing urgent implementation of the EMP Commission's recommendations.

 

 

Not one official study by the U.S. Government or by any Congressional Commission dissents from the above consensus.

 

 

A brief review of the several Commission and U.S. Government reports on EMP, even at the risk of some redundancy, is well worthwhile for most policymakers and the average citizen. Skeptics and even devout cynics may be moved by reading, over and over again, the words of successive independent studies, each re-examining the evidence with a different team of experts, and each arriving at the same conclusion about the EMP threat independently. These five studies also deserve some attention on their own merit, as each one represents an enormous investment of U.S. Government expertise and resources, each the collective product of different teams of scientists, technicians, strategists and other experts, each supported by different departments and agencies and laboratories. This chapter shall briefly review:

 

 

--The EMP Commission Reports

--The National Academy of Sciences Report

--The Strategic Posture Commission Report

--The NERC-DOE Report

--The FERC Interagency Report

 

 

The reader should be mindful that typically major public policy decisions are made and major programs enacted based on the recommendations of a single Congressional Commission or U.S. Government study of the gravity of any one of the reports listed above. Perhaps after the review below the reader may come to share the view of Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur, of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, who at the International Electric Infrastructure Summit, held in Washington D.C. on April 11, 2011, publicly declared, "We have done enough studies. It is time to act!"