When the lights go out
When the recent Solar Eclipse passed across the United States, our daughter’s family found the perfect spot to view it. Their family traveled to vacation in Yellowstone National Park. Where they stayed, there were no street lights, no cell phone towers, no electricity. The stars at night shone brilliantly. The daytime total eclipse was astonishing amidst beautiful mountain scenery, where the deer and antelope play, and buffalo roam; a beautiful world.
The International Space Station recently shared images captured earlier this past month. They showed the aurora borealis spreading over North America with shimmering curtains of shifting pastel bands of light. These occur all the time, mostly in the northern hemisphere, closer to the pole. They happen more frequently when the sun is releasing solar flares. When these energetic streams hit our atmosphere, they produce the “northern lights.” I’ve never seen them. Have you?
These lights delight nighttime observers in far northern regions of the globe. They are usually harmless. The earth’s magnetic sphere keeps us safe from the effects of these downpours of powerful energy. There are rare times when severe electrical “sun-storms” cause electronic systems to be disrupted on a large scale on earth. This affects cell phones, telephone lines, satellite signals, even electrical distribution lines, causing mass power failures.
When America began testing atomic bombs, one of the accidental side effects was the release of an electro-magnetic pulse — EMP for short. An EMP travels as fast as the speed of light but is invisible. You can’t see it or feel it. An EMP from a nuclear explosion high above the United States would cause the electrical grid below to instantly burn out. No blast would be felt, no damage observed, but suddenly without warning, there would be no electricity. Anything that depended on transistors, circuit boards, or computer chips would be fried, forever dead.
Cars would not start nor drive. We would all have to walk everywhere. Cell phones would not work. Computers would be as dead as a brick. Elevators would stall. Water pumps that lift water into water towers for our homes would stop pumping. Refrigerators would not cool anymore. Trucks that bring in produce to stores or deliver groceries from warehouses would could not move. But guns would still work. Bullets could fire. Can you imagine the end of law and order? Only end-time preppers would survive.
Those big transformers on the poles beside our roads that carry high voltage? They would explode in a shower of sparks or melt. Replacing hundreds or thousands of transformers would take months if not years. You know where the largest ones are made? Only one place in the world, South Korea. Makes you wonder if we are a bit vulnerable, doesn’t it?
North Korea has been working on perfecting this stealth weapon against the United States for decades. Iran has traded EMP technology and missile development information with them.
Maybe Kim Jung Un is not so stupid after all. Maybe “Rocket Man” has a trick up his sleeve.