North Korea, China and Russia able to use the "E-Bomb"?

[auroraglacialis]

North Korea may soon be able to strike USA with ultimate doomsday weapon that deactivates (nearly) all electronics

ICBMs typically carry nuclear warheads, and they can easily target cities on the West Coast such as Los Angeles or Seattle. But even this threat doesn't compare to the "doomsday weapon" that China or Russia could almost certainly launch right now: A high-altitude EMP weapon (HEMP for short, and I'm not joking).
[...]
Once detonated, the energy released by these weapons interacts with the Earth's magnetic field, producing an extremely fast and powerful electromagnetic burst that rushes to the ground at 94% the speed of light, slamming everything on the ground with as much as 50,000 volts per square meter at high amps.

Not surprisingly, such a phenomenon would fry virtually every piece of electronics they touch, as today's electronics are manufactured with delicate circuitry that simply cannot withstand such extreme voltage ranges.

Instantly taken out of service would be many automobiles, televisions, cell phones, air conditioners, airplanes, radios, military electronics, and many satellites. Even more worryingly, such an attack would also take out the backup generators and control electronics for active nuclear power plants

[Clarke]

We've known about this since the Cold War. All the military hardware is already defended, and launching such a thing would be pretty much a death sentence to whoever launched it. Can anyone say, "global thermonuclear war?"

[auroraglacialis]

Well I guess the new thing is that these are specifically designed to be E-Bombs not nuclear weapons and the concern seems to be that North Korea has it. The cold war never stopped and more players enter the game again...

[Clarke]

The only way to generate a decently sized EMP is via nuclear explosion. Though I meant that launching such a thing, nevermind detonating it, would be probably be met with an overwhelming response, nuclear or otherwise.

[auroraglacialis]

Yeah probably it would be. I'd prefer such a bomb over any ground-targetted nuclear device at any time though. At least the biota will survive this.

[Moco Loco]

Then we can look at it as good news

[Human No More]

Scaremongering.

This is a site that has such stories as anti-vaccination scaremongering (including the thoroughly and completely debunked 'autism' bull****), claims that E. coli is genetically engineered, and that bread contains human hair.

Seriously, check your sources first.

As clarke said, you'd need a nuclear weapon. Clearly, you don't know what a faraday cage is, or understand the concept of either defensive design or the principle of failsafe - if control is removed, then systems will fail to a safe state. A classic example is that the control rods are held in place by electromagnets. If the power is lost, they insert fully in 1-2 seconds. Modern designs even use a spring that would insert them even if gravity itself stopped working.
Also, you seem not to understand how nuclear weapons work. An airburst is damaging, a ground burst only makes a crater. A warhead capable of affecting anything more than a city would need to be thousands of megatons, or 20+ times the size of the largest warhead EVER (which is no longer operational and was not even put into production)

...oh, and north korea can't even feed their own population or generate electricity*, let alone build an ICBM or viable warhead.
* Seriously. Only Pyongyang and the towns right by the border have a powergrid.

[Advent]

I don't get the title of this thread. America would also be able to use such weapons, as would any other country that possesses a nuclear arsenal. There's always a threat of nuclear weapons anyhow, and we've known about EMPs for some great time now.

[Isard]

A month without power, oh noes.

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Isard

A month without power, oh noes.

And gas and, probably, water. ALso, where did you get a month from? EMPs permanently wipe out infrastructure.

[Isard]

Originally Posted by Clarke

And gas and, probably, water. ALso, where did you get a month from? EMPs permanently wipe out infrastructure.

Right, because we're going to just sit on our asses and starve to death, not replace circuitry.

[Clarke]

Well, yeah. There's no money, because the banking systems have been destroyed. There's no transport, because most car batteries has been destroyed. There's little production infrastructure, because the computers that run that have been destroyed. Also, did I mention that soon, they'll be no food, because there's no power and thus all the fridges are broken?

Game over, man.

[Aquaplant]

Kind of hard to make new circuitry when all the machines that are used for such purpose would be out of order, since it's not possible to replace current electronics with the kind of low tier products that would be possible to manufacture without the use of complex machinery.

[Isard]

Originally Posted by Aquaplant

Kind of hard to make new circuitry when all the machines that are used for such purpose would be out of order, since it's not possible to replace current electronics with the kind of low tier products that would be possible to manufacture without the use of complex machinery.

Military and government systems are hardened against attacks like that, many corporate ones as well (paranoia runs rampant in the business world) EMP's are not a game over, that's alarmist bull**** that spreads every 3-4 years.

[Clarke]

Why would corporation machinery be hardened against EMPs? They have more pressing concerns in the event of a nuclear war.