Novelist, Expert Says Potential Nuclear EMP Attack Isn't Just Fiction, US Should Prepare

Excessive heat in parts of the country is straining the nation's aging electrical power grid. Temporary brownouts may occur in different places.

But what would happen if the United States lost electricity permanently?

Electromagnetic Pulse Bomb (E.M.P.) experts warn America's enemies are already targeting the U.S. for a devastating attack, and at least one expert believes such an attack is inevitable.

An E.M.P. is a nuclear weapon designed to explode high in the atmosphere, resulting in a knockout of a country's electrical power grid.

Historian William Forstchen is a New York Times bestselling author and an expert on E.M.P.'s. His new novel is Five Years After, a political thriller about the aftermath of such an attack.

"Hits the earth's surface, feeds into our electrical wiring, and starts shorting out the entire power grid. If they launch three missiles (in the) eastern and central western United States, it would shut our grid down permanently," Forstchen said.

Most people assume Russia or China would be the countries most likely to target the U.S. with an E.M.P. However, Forstchen believes North Korea is the more likely culprit.

The late Peter Pry, a nuclear weapons expert, and former staff director at the Congressional E.M.P. Commission, agreed. Five years before his death in 2022, Dr. Pry warned that Kim Jung Un's launch of a high-altitude ballistic missile was a test of North Korea's E.M.P. capabilities against the United States.

"The Japanese and South Korean military both described it as practicing for an E.M.P. attack because it was a burst set deliberately by the North Koreans when it was at an altitude of 71 kilometers, Pry said.

The higher the altitude of the missile, the wider the area of destruction.  

Pry described the scenario of how such an attack would devastate an unprepared United States.

"Cars would be paralyzed," he explained. "Airplanes could fall out of the sky. You'd have natural gas pipeline explosions, nuclear reactor overloads. And worst of all, if you had a protracted blackout, it would be a serious threat to the survival of the American people.

No electricity means no pumps to provide enough water needed to irrigate and grow crops; and since America has only a 30-day reserve food supply, 90 percent of the population would likely die within 1 or 2 years of the E.M.P. attack.

" All those spare parts. We need the big transformers. Where do you think they're made? China," Forstchen told CBN News. "We farmed out all the components of our electrical grid decades ago."  

Forstchen says history proves that societies always use the weapons they develop. He warns that the United States cannot sit back and assume an E.M.P. attack will never happen.

When we asked why he thinks such an attack is likely or even imminent, he replied, "Sooner or later, somebody is going to try to do this," and added, "I'm not saying it's going to happen tomorrow, but at some point, it will happen." 

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