Everyone has experienced a grid failure of some sort – a car hits a telephone pole, or a storm wipes out an electrical transformer – and most of the time it is relatively short-term.

Now imagine if the power outage lasted for months and more importantly if your electronic devices and equipment were rendered unusable; here is what you need to know.

What is an EMP?

An Electromagnetic Pulse is a broad term that can cover both natural and man-made events that would cause a burst of electromagnetic energy, but for the purposes of this article, we will be looking at the most dangerous types of EMPs, nuclear electromagnetic pulses (NEMP) and high altitude nuclear EMPs (HEMP).

A nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack is a burst of Electromagnetic radiation that occurs following the detonation of a nuclear weapon. While this type of attack would cause serious trouble for any country targeted by this type of weaponry, in the classical sense of an EMP attack we are not talking about the stereotypical imagery of a mushroom cloud followed by a wave of destruction. No, an EMP attack doesn’t actually target a landmass, but instead targets the air over a country.

The real danger comes from a nuclear weapon known as a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) device. Depending on the location of the detonation, and how powerful the device is, the effects of a HEMP would cause catastrophic damage to a country’s power grid and communications infrastructure.

Our Dependence on the Grid: What would happen if it all crashed?

We live in a world that’s become incredibly dependent on electricity, so much so that the average person would be hard-pressed to survive for more than a couple weeks without it.

We’ve all seen it on a small-scale: The panic and chaos following a power outage.
Events like hurricanes, earthquakes, or even small seasonal storms give us a little glimpse into the chaos that can happen when our power grid goes down. From the food you buy at the local grocery store to the money sitting in your bank account, almost everything you do has become intertwined with a complex electronics-driven infrastructure.

Time and time again we witness people panicking as a storm bears down on their region; rushing to the store to buy last minute supplies, only to realize 99% of their community was just as unprepared and are now panicking inside an empty grocery store with nothing to bring home to their family. Once the disaster passes and the storm wreaks havoc on the local grid, we often see a huge spike in home invasions, robberies, and in some cases even rioting and looting.

Keep in mind; those are the things that happen during short-term grid-down situations; what do you think is going to happen should the grid go down for weeks, months, or even years? Think it can’t happen? Well that’s exactly what could happen after an EMP attack, our grid could go down for months at best, but more likely, the attack would cause irreparable damage to our infrastructure.

The Complete destruction of our power grid: How serious is the Threat?

The threat is being taken so seriously, that last year the North American Aerospace

Defense Command (NORAD) reopened parts of the infamous doomsday bunker deep inside Colorado’s Cheyenne Mountain Complex.

According to Peter Fry, executive director of the EMP Task Force, a bipartisan congressional commission, the federal government has invested around $700 million to completely upgrade the electronics equipment inside Colorado’s Cheyenne Mountain Complex. It’s thought the bunker, which was built to withstand a nuclear attack, should be able to survive an EMP attack.

Pry warned that the U.S. is incredibly vulnerable to a missile fired into space from a southerly route.

“The grid is utterly unprotected from an EMP attack. It’s not adequately protected from cyber or physical sabotage,” Pry said in an interview with Fox News. “It’s why North Korea and Iran want the bomb, have the bomb. North Korea has actually practiced this against the United States.”

“What it could do, these various threats, is black out the U.S. electric grid for a protracted period of months or years,” warned Pry, “Nine out of ten Americans could die from starvation, disease and societal collapse, if the blackout lasted a year.”

What would happen after an EMP attack?

When most experts talk about the consequences, you will often hear them say things like “an EMP attack would send us back to the 19th century.” While they are right about that on some levels, what they fail to consider is how much knowledge we’ve lost since that time.

Today’s society is completely unprepared to live in a 19th-century environment. The skills our forefathers had have been long forgotten, replaced by useless knowledge like how to tweet random celebrity gossip and how to text using a language that looks like something a toddler would use.

In my opinion, a better analogy might be the medieval times; but then again, even people of that time period had more practical survival skills than today’s generation.

Nightmare Scenario: What to expect in the aftermath of an EMP attack.
The complete destruction of our power grid: An EMP attack would likely take down large portions of the nation’s power grid, possibly even the entire system.

• Most of your electronics could be damaged, if not they will likely become useless without electricity.

• Expect long-term outages that will last for months, possibly even years. Most of our electrical equipment is now made overseas, and damaged power transformers could take years to fully repair.

• No more electronic payments. You need to have cash on hand, but also be aware that even cash will quickly lose value as most modern day commerce is conducted over computer networks.

Chaos in the streets: Once people realize what happened, there is going to be a mass panic. Most people have less than a 3 day supply of food and water in their homes, and most people will be lost without the ability to power their homes.

• Be prepared for rioting and looting.

• Be prepared for a huge spike in crime, especially robberies and home invasions.

• Be prepared to defend your home and your supplies.

Martial Law: Once the chaos breaks out, the government will likely declare a state of emergency or martial law.

• Expect to lose most of your constitutional so rights.

• Expect the government to suspend the 2nd amendment and possibly even the confiscation of firearms.

• Expect travel restrictions and nationwide curfews.

This summary covers what you need to know regarding the possibility of a grid failure – man-made or natural.

We covered it because for most people the threat is “distant,” but in reality, it is very real. Imagine if your power was down for months and even once it came up, everything from phones to computers to your vehicles to appliances were just very expensive anchors.

To learn more about how you can prepare for an EMP, check out Off Grid Survival.