mikegideon

Even if they could, it simply isn't capable of killing everything. Let me give you a real world example, about 1:40 into the video... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMpm7oHNivg That's my 180 ft. tower on Music Row. Part of the effects of that large energy dump is a pretty significant EMP induced by the huge current pulse in the tower. It was a fraction of the energy from a nuke, but it wasn't 30 to 500 miles away either... it was 20 feet away. The facility houses five radio stations (studios), a statewide network, and all the business offices that support it. I'm the director of engineering for that facility, so I (and my staff) was responsible for the recovery. We have over 150 PC's in the building, all connected to the network and the power distrubution. We have 12 full size radio studios as well. We have 9 (or so) T1's to the phone company for voice and data communication. There's more stuff in there too, too much to list. Here's what happened... 3 of the 5 stations remained on the air, and we got the other two back on within 30 minutes. We lost less than 10 computers. damage was scattered throughout the building, but there was almost no crippling damage. It DID kill all our phone service by killing AT&T's fiber MUX. It took them about 12 hours to restore it. We were without landline phones for the entire time, but had our computer network restored within an hour via satellite backup. Most of the damaged gear was repaired on site by my staff and me. Also note that the facility was connected to the tower, so a lot of the damage was from the high voltage generated across the base of the tower. I know that the makeup of a lightning pulse is significantly different than a pulse from a nuke. With that said, this was a BIG pulse, with lots of computer gear within 20 feet of the source. It's safe to say that there were E1 and E2 components (E3 is irrelevent here), and that they could have been as large or larger than one generated by a nuke, especially one that's 500 miles away. Note that the power grid doomsday scenarios fly apart without extensive damage to solid state control circuits from the E1 component. BTW... no cell phones were damaged in the making of this film. The longwave E3 component is of concern, but much less so if the solid state control circuits remain intact. It's also possible that they haven't considered all the older technology overload circuits that remain in our power grid. Would a well implemented EMP break a lot of stuff using US nuclear weapons technology? I think yes. Will it break everything? Probably not. But, as one of our favorite scumbags once said, "never let a crisis go to waste". Some good reading for the geeky ones... The Space Review: The EMP threat: fact, fiction, and response (part 1) (page 1)

I usually don't attempt to go there on Saturday and Sunday if the weather is nice. It's a five minute drive for me, and everything else is an hour or so. Even if I did wait two hours, it would be a wash timewise. It's just too easy to turn around and go home if I find a full parking lot.

We have a lot more of them. I'm betting with you

Are you sayin' they're all a##holes?

I want some damn oil. I've already paid for it.

Only one thing confuses me. We never wind up with the oil.

If you can believe them, they're just knocking out air defenses so they can patrol the no fly zone without threats.

Obama says no ground troups. Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com

Wow! I'll bet your ass is completely missing

G30 or a flavor of M&P45, probably the C. Just gotta get around to shooting them. The .40 isn't a bad round as I ponder my options.

I have one 1911, and may get more. But, if I'm going to carry a .45, it will be a plastic one. haven't picked one yet

I'm not watching it closely. Just getting email alerts. So far, I think the US has only gifted them with a couple of cruise missles. I would be real surprised if they put any boots on the ground. My gut says it won't take much intervention to flip it around in the right direction. EDIT: make that 110 tomahawks from US and British ships. That's a pretty serious slap.

Might as well. It's interesting that last time we bombed Libya, the French wouldn't even let us cross their airspace. From the reports I've been getting, they were the first ones in.

I'm a recent Glockee myself. I got a G23 Gen 4. I like it better than the earlier Glocks, but the trigger is heavy. Getting ready to take some stops to lighten it. Maybe not my favorite pistol, but I like it a lot.

Then... it's what she likes. You need to let her shoot everything she can get her hands on, and let her pick. There is no such thing as a girl gun, and men suck at picking out guns for their women. It usually turns out (when you do the picking) that you wind up with a gun you like, and she winds up with her own. That's not a bad oucome, but it happens in the wrong order. If it were me, I would get her happy and safe first. After all, you have the M4 to fall back on

It's ALL math

I've pondered the mystery of why they do it, and can only come up with one thing... they're dedicated shooters. They're also pretty cool folks when they're not trying to keep the newbies from shooting up the other customers.

I've asked about that more than once. It's limited by the number of available RSO's. All those guys are unpaid. That's one of the reasons I always stick up for them. They're doin' it for free. Stones River also had a problem with some NIMBY neighbors awhile back. I would have to dig, but the NIMBY's basically tried to force a reduction in hours.

I'm there a lot when it's not crowded. The RSO's are all personable folks. Their job just gets tense when the place is full. I've had a lot of time to chew the fat with those guys. They have stories. That place can be a handful when the line is full, usually with some newbies mixed in. It's why they use red cards for the first timers. The crowds die down in the dead of summer too. The nicer the weather, the bigger the crowd. If you're willing to freeze or sweat a lot, you'll wind up getting to know the RSO's a little better.

All nukes are air bursts so they can maximize the destructive radius. It makes no sense to spread the radius more than avaiable energy. Wasn't ground zero around 1000 feet above ground? A bomb used for EMP is too high to make it an effective bomb. The blast energy will decay based on distance. 30 miles is a long way, even for a nuke. The WW2 nukes had a pretty small radius in terms of destruction from the blast.

I'm on my second annual membership there. Yep... great facilities. Fridays are always best. I won't let them put me next to a muzzle brake. If that's the only lane available, I'll pick up my toys and go home, or move over to handguns.

Yep, they got some good data from that one, even though I think the EMP effects were actually an accident.

There's a wonderful thing about nuclear energy. It's the main reason the science exists. You can release a whole lot of energy with a relatively light package. We are bound by physics. An EMP can induce thousands of volts per meter, but the real destructive power is going to be determined by the energy in that pulse. For example, you can kick up thousands of volts of static charge in the winter time. That charge will destroy semiconductor junctions. Static control measures are used in any decent electronic assembly area. Now... touch your TV with that same charge. There is so little energy in the charge that it will do no damage. Shielding and circuit loading (mainly) protects those same junctions to a large degree. Because of what I do for a living, I have had gear subjected to very high energy pulses, probably thousands of times. It's amazing what survives that kind of thing. It would be difficult or impossible to generate the energy of a 1 megaton nuclear blast in a package that you could get off the ground. It's easy to induce a high voltage in an open wire. If you're going to induce that same voltage in a loaded wire, you better put a lot of ass behind it.

An EMP is not going to kill everything, but it will do some widespread damage. It's also not a trivial thing to deliver it. You're talking about delivering a heavy nuke to a very high altitude. For example, to cover a 480 mile radius, you would have to pop a nuke at an altitude of 30 miles (158,000 FEET!). Even IF some of the crazier countries could pull that off, it would only yield regional damage. To cover a 1000 mile radius (still won't cover the entire US), the required altitude is 120 miles (633,000 feet). I'm no expert, but I don't think there are many planes that can deliver that kind of payload at those altitudes. I think we're talking long range missles. It's also my guess that we are going to see a missle, and its trajectroy. So, the country that launches may have to deal with some nukes too. I need to read up more. Anything is possible, including world peace and free healthcare. That doesn't make it likely.

It's Memphis