Historian and public speaker William R. Forstchen, PhD, specializes in topics ranging from history and cultural issues, to space technology development, and the security implications of these combined topics. In the first half, he updated the ongoing campaign to bolster energy and communications infrastructure against EMP attack, solar flares, and other disasters. Huge, damaging solar flares happen about every 150-200 years, he reported (just recently, a large coronal mass ejection- CME- was observed coming from the sun). If we were hit by a flare like the one in 1859 (known as the Carrington Event), it would be far more devastating today because of the magnitudes more technology we have.
Forstchen postulated what would happen if America was struck by an EMP (military weapon that blows out the power grid). “The first thing you’re going to notice is you don’t have water anymore,” he warned. Further, the average community has only 20-25 days of food on hand; after that, they’d be out of luck. People will start getting sick from lack of food and medicines, as well as contaminated water, and because it takes years to replace the power grid transformers, a large percentage of the population would die within the first year, he continued. Forstchen lamented that political efforts have stalled to protect or strengthen the grid, and noted that for $20-30 billion, we could get started by updating 5-7% of the grid with high-level capabilities. For more on the issue, he recommended visiting sites such as securethegrid.com and emptaskforce.us.
