Nuclear Pulse (I): Awakening to the Chaos Factor

Abstract

In July 1962 the US military detonated a 1.4-megaton hydrogen bomb 248 miles above Johnson Island in the Pacific, and for some time thereafter physicists puzzled over a resulting series of odd occurrences. Some 800 miles away in Hawaii, street lights had failed, burgular alarms had rung, and circuit breakers had popped open in power lines. Today, the mysterious agent is known as electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Physicists say a single nuclear detonation in near space would cover vast stretches of the earth with an EMP of 50,000 volts per meter. The first installment of this three-part series describes how EMP was discovered and why its potentially chaos-producing effects were overlooked for more than a decade. The second part will examine the ongoing debate in the Pentagon over how to cope with the EMP threat. The third will discuss questions EMP raises about about waging a limited nuclear war.