Contrary to some "expert" analysis, both the recent North Korean nuclear and the Iranian ballistic missile tests are deadly serious threats to the United States.
The danger to the United States is particularly consequential due to the close military cooperation of North Korea and Iran. Their combined capabilities, as demonstrated recently, could very well signal a future nuclear attack of the electromagnetic pulse type, for which the U.S., at the moment, is totally unprepared.
The threat to the United States from an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack -- the high-altitude detonation of a nuclear weapon over the United States -- is so potentially catastrophic that both the 2004 and 2008 reports of the Congressional EMP Commission said so openly -- probably in the hope that the public warning would spur the nation and the Department of Defense to action. [1]
Even an EMP attack from a single 10-kiloton nuclear weapon -- of the type now in North Korea's arsenal -- could cause cascading failures which could black out the U.S. Eastern Grid for months or years, and devastate the civilian economy. An EMP, detonated at an altitude above 30-70 kilometers, could be delivered by a short-range missile fired off a freighter, hundreds of kilometers off U.S. shores.
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