Washington, DC. In the latest run up to a potential pre-emptive strike upon North Korea, American officials are suggesting that an above ground test of a nuclear device by North Korea, could translate to a big chunk of Asia in the dark, without anything electronically working.
An American State Department Official has written that the threat from a North Korean attack is not limited to simply a strike upon a city inside the USA. If North Korea detonates a nuclear device 40 miles above a target and hundreds of miles away, Asia could encounter serious consequences, according to Henry Cooper.
Cooper pointed to the time the America once detonated a nuclear warhead 900 miles southwest of Hawaii. Back in 1962 and the high-altitude nuclear bomb “destroyed hundreds of street lights in Honolulu, caused electrical surges on airplanes in the area and damaged at least six satellites in orbit.”
North Korea has in its possession the designs for these so-called “super EMP nuclear weapons,” Russian military sources say. Congress put together a commission to study such an explosion, and determined that there would be no effects on the ground, but the high-altitude electromagnetic pulse would render “critical electricity-dependent infrastructure” inoperable.
Intelligence experts specullate North Korea ran a “dry run” recently, when a medium-range missile reportedly exploded midflight in what was seen as a failure. They questions if the missile was deliberately detonated. While far from launching a viable EMP attack on the US or South Korea, the EMP attack may be a more realistic option for Pyongyang, because there is little need for accuracy.
Collateral damage from “even a balloon-lofted warhead detonated at 30 kilometers altitude could blackout the Eastern Grid that supports most of the population and generates 75 percent of US electricity.” Detonation at that altitude of a nuclear warhead with a yield of 10 to 20 kilotons, like those tested by North Korea would produce major EMP effects and inflict catastrophic damage to unhardened electronics across hundreds of miles of surface territory.