Israel Could Send Iran ‘Back To The Stone Age’ With Electromagnetic Bomb

[Purveyor]

srael could destroy Iran’s electric network with a specially designed electromagnetic bomb in the event of a military conflict between the countries, The Sunday Times reported on Sunday.

An electromagnetic bomb of this sort would be detonated above the ground, creating an electromagnetic pulse that would “disrupt all the technological devices working on the ground,” an American expert was quoted as saying to the London paper.

The use of the new technology by Israel was brought up in discussions regarding a possible attack on Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the report claimed. Such a move would send Iran “back to the stone age,” the British paper said.

This kind of bomb would operate based on the nonlethal technology of gamma rays, the report explained. The outburst of energy would “fry” electric devices and currents around the source of the explosion.

MORE...

http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-could-destroy-irans-electric-network/

[Comrade Grumpy]

1. Would that be considered a weapon of mass destruction? A war crime?

[longship]

3. Indeed, it would.

AFAIK, the trigger is a nuke. Correct me if I am wrong, please.

[bhikkhu]

5. Nukes do generate an EMP pulse, but lots of other things do too

Last edited Sun Sep 9, 2012, 04:43 PM - Edit history (1)

...like the coil in a car's ignition system. The problem is the energy needed to do it on a large scale - which would probably have to be a nuke.

In any case, field testing a device like that is impossible, so whether it would work as designed is questionable, and how it would work across a large and varied terrain would be extremely speculative.

I'm prone to think that a peremptory strike by Israel involving at least one nuke, especially if its effectiveness is very much in doubt, would be extremely unlikely.

ed - sp.

[longship]

15. What kook would want to start a nuclear war?

That would be madness.

Re: no field testing
What I would worry about is that the damned thing would have effects far beyond projections and that it would take out more than Iran's technology.

Also, even if it wasn't a nuke, it still is likely to escalate. This is a weapon of mass destruction.

Isreal is fucking nuts if they are even considering it. IMHO, this is mere saber rattling, albeit of a very worrisome kind.

[Warpy]

31. A large EMP would fry everything

including the electronics of planes in the air and lifesaving equipment in hospitals. It doesn't discriminate the way Gort did in "The Day the Earth Stood Still."

Multiple countries with planes in the air in the Near East would sustain losses. If Israel used such a weapon, it would be an international pariah immediately. Even the US would find it hard to support them since very likely a lot of US citizens would also be killed.

The military already knows what EMPs do. An atomic burst 250 miles above the Earth knocked out the Telstar satellite in the early 60s. They didn't see that coming then. They do now.

[GreenStormCloud]

44. The U.S. did test in the 1960s. Several bombs were exploded in near space...

...to test the EMP. Although one was exploded in the South Pacific, it lit up the night sky with an aurora in Hawaii, 800 miles away.

[GreenStormCloud]

43. At high altitude no people would be directly killed, but lots of equipment destroyed.

In general, old 1950s technology would be fairly safe as would modern gear that is shielded but most modern electronics would be fried. Lots of folks would die when electronics controlling machinery (Automotive ignitions systems for example) suddenly failed. The targeted country's electrical distribution system would suffer sudden failure and would be very difficult to restore. Telephone systems would totally crash.

Shipboard electronics would be largely safe, except for those that are connected to an outside antenna, because the metal ship would protect them.

Any modern society is almost completely dependent upon modern chip based electronics and if all of those in a country were to be cooked instantly then that country would be knocked back to pre-stone age.

In America, the Amish would be prepared, except that desperate people would descend upon them and take what they have.

[nanabugg]

2. Does Israel have no regard for other human beings? nt

[Xipe Totec]

4. Cute euphemism for a neutron bomb; a nuclear weapon

Is Israel ready to admit they have nuclear weapons now?

[GreenPartyVoter]

23. Are all EMP devices nuclear in nature?

[Confusious]

32. Not all

For the size of EMP they are talking about, it would have to be nuclear.

"We could send a city block of Tehran back to the stone age" is the best they could do with other means.

[GreenPartyVoter]

34. Thanks! That would be one irritated city block!

[Progressive dog]

6. So it's OK for Israel to use Nukes

Non lethal technology of gamma rays, huh. Electronics can be protected from this on non mobile targets. So they would be knocking out electrical systems, telephones, and civilian infrastructure. Cool move, let's go to war.

[Confusious]

35. I laughed at that too

"Non lethal technology of gamma rays."

The WORST form of external radiation. VERY lethal.

[aquart]

7. Oh good grief. COULD!

Total asshole SPECULATION.

But you know those evil Jews, just waiting for the chance to be branded monsters.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

9. Right. I'm guessing the Times of Israel isn't as anti-Semitic as you think they are.

.

[Scootaloo]

17. Actually, it and many of its readers would fall under a standard rubric of antisemitism.

Times of Israel generally equates "Jews" and "Israel." If you say something about Israel, then you're saying it about all Jews, according to this line of thought (but not the other demographics of Israel. weird, huh?) This also carries with it the belief that Israel defines Jews around the world, as if the Knesset were the mouthpiece for the several million men and women of the faith who have nothing to do with Israel whatsoever.

The Times also falls back on the old canard of disowning Jews who don't share its views on Israel - the old "Self-hating Jew" stereotype. I'm sure you could find no shortage of articles and editorials that go out of their way to decry Jewish people as nazis, or judenrat, kapos, the list goes on, for their lack of "support for Israel."

And this is without taking into account the recycling of the age-old antisemitic stereotypes, and applying them to Arabs and Muslims in general.

it's just that the Times of Israel can "get away with it" because they wave a little blue-and-white flag and scream about how awesome Israel is. it confuses people. But the truth is, they aren't pro-Israel any more than they are pro-Jewish. it just provides an easy cover for the varied degrees of misanthropy they display.

[Comrade Grumpy]

33. What you describe doesn't some like anti-semitism to me.

It sounds like hyper-Zionist bullying.

And I think this story was from the Times of London and reprinted in the Times of Israel.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. I love to read Science Fiction in the news paper

Yup you could generate an EM Pulse... but there is a reason why this is science fiction.

Oy.

FYI, a nuke generates and EM pulse, so do a few other things, and even solar flares... But to get it to do this over the extent of the territory of Iran... look at a map.

[Bosonic]

10. The EMP of the Starfish Prime nuclear test

affected Hawaii ~900 miles from the detonation point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. Critical words, NUCLEAR TEST

This news paper is claiming this is not a lethal device, aka not a nuclear weapon... ergo science fiction. And I love to read it in the paper

Of course this is a very right wing paper... it makes the Jerusalem Post look moderate, even lefty.

[bhikkhu]

27. That was 1962 - they can't do that sort of thing anymore

because of all the satellites in low earth orbit (120-1200 miles), as well as the International Space Station and the Hubble.

EMP's are inherently spherical, and a similar test nowadays would likely cause a great deal of unintended damage "up there".

[byeya]

11. This electromagnetic pulse, so I've read, is the reason the USSR stayed with tubes instead of going

to transistors because the former are less likely to fail from such a pulse.

[Comrade Grumpy]

13. I remember the old joke about the USSR proudly announcing it had created...

...the world's largest transistor.

[hifiguy]

16. Tubes are more or less immune to EMP

I know an audio designer who began his career as a scientist in the USSR designing missile guidance systems. The Soviets used tubes in most of their aeronautical and avionics applications for that very reason. His most exotic amps use a tube that was a mainstay of Soviet avionics.

[byeya]

18. Thanks for the post. It's reassuring to know that I remembered something correctly.

[lexx21]

24. Do you mean the..

Do you mean the 6c33c? Awesome triode!

[hifiguy]

36. That's the tube

and Vladimir Lamm is a genuine genius.

The 6H30 - another Soviet military tube to begin with - is a world standard for small-signal tubes, too.

[lexx21]

40. I agree

As I am writing this I am building a 6sn7 preamp to drive some 6550 tubes (pp) that I picked up this week. I would send you a pm but du says that I don't have enough posts to be able to do that.

[byeya]

12. Since the USA has 30 or more military bases on either side of Iran, wouldn't our

bases be affected by such an ill advised attack?

[GeorgeGist]

14. Nonlethal gamma radiation displays similar cytoplasmic rearrangements as 12(S)-HETE.

Sounds delightful.

.. one end of elongated microfilaments bundles became associated with the plasma membrane while the other end of the bundles became associated with perinuclear mass protrusions. By 5 min, prominent by 15 min, protrusions, now separated from the leading edge by mixture of bundle and ring microfilaments, reached the plasma membrane to form cellular processes. By 30 min, some cytoplasmic masses showed signs of retraction along with the disappearance of their associated mixed microfilaments. As well as numerous vesicles of unknown origin, primarily associated with microtubules perpendicular to the plasma membrane, mitochondria and endoplasmic reticular cisternae were found in the cytoplasmic masses. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9547643

[JackRiddler]

20. Iran could do the same in return...

Not necessarily by one magic country-covering bomb but the technology for making such devices is widespread.

Talk about Pandora's box!

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. And here is where the science fiction comes in

the devices exist, they are really small, hardly covering a whole city block, let alone a whole country.

[lexx21]

21. "non-lethal gama rays".....

I seriously think not. Gama radiation is the most destructive and energetic part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

[bhikkhu]

25. A little research brings up significant problems with EMP bombs -

First, to get a large enough EMP pulse to damage a large target area, you have to have a very powerful pulse generator - basically a nuke is the only way to go, unless its a bunch of small targets. If you look a the size of Iran, and the complexity of the infrastructure, even a very large number of small devices would be unlikely to produce the effect described.

So you have nukes - how many do you need? The answer is still "quite a few". One of the problems of the EMP pulse is that it is inherently spherical. Satellites in low earth orbit (including the International Space Station and Hubble) are as low as 100 miles up, so any EMP would have to have a radius much smaller than that to avoid causing unintentional damage up there. Which means, more or less, one nuke per city if "sending them all back to the stone age" is the plan.

I don't think Israel has enough nukes, though they could scale back to hit only the major cities. But even there you have the problem of actually nuking population centers...I don't doubt that the military could plan it (we've have plans to conquer Canada on paper here!), and that it could even be advocated at a certain level, but I don't see it happening except as a "final solution" as a last resort. As a peremptory move, very unlikely.

[Initech]

26. Wasn't this a James Bond movie?

[Indpndnt]

28. Or a TV series?

Isn't it starting this fall? Where all power in the US is off and everyone is searching for the one man who can turn it back on?

[nadinbrzezinski]

29. Yuo, and that one makes zero sense as well

[2on2u]

30. You would have to rack up the dead and dying in all the hospitals. Most life support devices

and medical equipment would certainly "cease to function".

[cali]

37. still purveying this bullshit, eh?

This is ridiculous speculation. You've been posting that Israel will imminently attack Israel for years and years here. Hasn't happened yet.

[Purveyor]

38. And I will continue to post 'this ridiculous speculation' as long as this shit keeps coming out of

israel and until 'they' shut the fuck up.

[hack89]

42. But this did not "come out of Israel" did it?

it came from the fevered imagination of Bill Getz. Not a single Israeli is mentioned in the article.

[Marrah_G]

39. Unbelievable

Fucking disgusting that they would even consider doing something that would harm so many innocent people.

[dembotoz]

41. i always wanted sort of an emp gun i could mount on my car

some republican in a big suv cuts me off???

turn the cars electronics in th charcoal

yes i could have fun with that