John Wohlstetter - Sleepwalking with the Bomb

Safeguards against single point failures generally depend on the proper functioning of the rest of the national infrastructure, a plausible assumption for high reliability infrastructure systems when they experience random, uncorrelated single point failures…. Planning for multiple failures, particularly when they are closely correlated in time, is much less common….

No currently available modeling and simulation tools exist that can adequately address the consequences of disruptions and failures occurring simultaneously in different critical infrastructures that are dynamically interdependent.

In other words, if neighboring communities cannot help, recovery time is much longer. “Edge” communities can bring in supplies, give shelter, and send in needed funds, but we cannot predict how much help they will be able to offer. Recovery from Hurricane Katrina included large-scale resettling of displaced residents, with some even choosing to become residents in edge communities that hosted them. A wider circle of destruction would have hindered recovery everywhere.

The second report issued by the EMP panel examined 10 specific infrastructures and detailed their potentially greatest vulnerabilities. It should be noted that one major change in the past half century has increased societal vulnerability: the shift from vacuum tubes to silicon chips inside America’s electrical infrastructures. The latter are less resistant to EMP damage.

Electric powerdrives virtually all infrastructures in the United States. Backup is provided by generators whose life typically is 72 hours or less, along with batteries with a life of a few hours at most. Even a short blackout can cause losses of between 18 and 60 percent of production in the affected area.

Note that in the past 20 years the margin of redundant capacity for emergency needs has halved, from 20 to 10 percent. Increasing use of wind power, a mode that relies on the vagaries of fickle weather, can place unpredictable demands upon the system, increasing reliability problems. Overseas factories often produce (and customize) high-power transformers that step up and down voltage levels as electric current travels between power generation and customer distribution. But these transformers are not an immediate-term solution; the lead-time to order one is about a year, and there are 2,000 transformers in the U.S. electric grid.

As with computers, digitally controlled power systems can suffer extensive damage if shut down without the proper procedures. Thus the electric grid transmission system that links generators and consumers is, the panel said, “highly vulnerable” to EMP.

Telecommunications networksare another major potential weak spot. Backup power typically lasts 4 to 72 hours. (One significant exception: EMP can’t hurt fiber optics, which lie outside the frequency range EMP effects occupy; but computers, telephones, etc. are electrical, and thus the end points of fiber networks are susceptible.)

Banking and finance networksare highly automated electronic digital systems. These networks are impossible to operate without communications connectivity. In the past three decades, the transaction volumes that these networks carry have jumped by several orders of magnitude. A generation ago, a 10 million –share trading day on the New York Stock Exchange was huge, whereas today trading volume averages several billion shares per day. The public securities markets trade trillions of dollars of securities annually; other specialized financial networks also trade trillions of dollars in value. In all, financial communications networks daily carry several times the amount of data held in the entire print collection of the Library of Congress.

The financial industry is well protected against localized outages, with significant backup redundancy. But the industry’s assets are not hardened against EMP, and likely are highly vulnerable. The industry is so automated that reversion to a cash economy may not be feasible in event of a protracted outage; the United States might have to revert to a barter economy. A major disruption for even one day, let alone weeks or months, could be devastating. The Treasury Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission agree that even a single day without power could cause wide-scale disruption and risk to critical markets. In a situation where an EMP crippled electronic systems needed to recover lost data, the panel warned that an “irrecoverable loss of critical operating data and essential records on a large scale would likely result in catastrophic and irreversible damage to U.S. society.”

Petroleum and natural gasflow through an extensive physical infrastructure in America. Backup systems can run this energy infrastructure for a few days, but energy transport systems, run by easily fried specialized digital control systems known as SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), are vulnerable. (It is SCADA systems that were damaged by the Stuxnet cyberwar software. When the SCADA systems went haywire, they caused Iran’s delicate centrifuge equipment to operate erratically, ultimately rendering nearly 1,000 inoperable.)

Transportationis another source of vulnerability. Coal supplies currently on site at some power plants could last up to a month; other plants have only days’ worth of coal on site. Repair and recovery of railroads would take days to weeks, with manual control able to operate at only 10 to 20 percent of normal capacity.

Modern vehicles have up to 100 microprocessors controlling operations, so an EMP attack could disable most of the nation’s over 200 million vehicles, including the ones that carry about 80 percent of manufactured goods between manufacturer and consumer.

Some 100 deep-draft ports (capable of handling large ships) move 95 percent of overseas trade (75 percent by monetary value); typically, ports have 10 to 20 days’ fuel on the premises.

Aircraft have lots of redundancy. Modern airliners and regional jets carry hydraulic backup, driven by pressurized fluid power and unaffected by EMP or other electrical interference. EMP would zap electrical systems and radar, but planes could fly on hydraulic power and land under visual flight rules, weather permitting. Spacing of landing aircraft would be a problem; air traffic control radars have limited redundancy. Once on the ground, though, planes would stay there until power is restored, save for emergency missions. As food and water ran low and communications closed down, a major EMP strike could bring most air travel to a standstill.

Agriculturerequires immense water table and electric grid support. The grid is also essential for food processing, primarily for refrigeration.

Supermarkets are the weakest link—the current reliance on justin-time delivery (using electronic databases) means that supermarkets have one to three days’ supply of food. In 1900, almost a third of Americans were farmers. Today the figure is 2 percent, meaning that there is a shortage of skilled farm personnel to help in a crisis. (Farm productivity, meanwhile, is up fiftyfold.) There are not enough workers to process food in the low-tech ways of earlier times. Gas ranges would work, but most gas-powered ovens built since the mid-1980s would not, as they are made with components more vulnerable to EMP disruption. And these newer models cannot be ignited with a match.

Starvation, in the event that the food infrastructure collapses, would impair mobility and strength within a few days. After four or five days judgment would be impaired. After a fortnight people would be incapacitated. Death would result in one to two months.

The water infrastructureincludes over 75,000 dams and reservoirs; thousands of miles of pipes, aqueducts, and distribution and sewer lines connect buildings with many thousands of water treatment facilities. Filtration and disinfectant systems require electric power. So do the pumps that raise water against the pull of gravity (as in skyscrapers). Irrigation and cooling are 80 percent of water consumption. As for drinking water, stores typically carry one to three days’ supply. Overall, because it relies heavily on electricity and digital control systems, the water infrastructure is highly EMP vulnerable.