Senate panel explores the EMP threat

Every couple of years a congressional committee takes a look at the threat to the US posed by both naturally occurring geomagnetic disturbances (GMDs) and attacks with an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generated by a nuclear weapon. On 4 May the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources took its turn, hearing from witnesses who alternately sought to scare and reassure the lawmakers. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, for one, declared an EMP attack “one of the three great threats to our survival,” on par with cyberwarfare and nuclear weapons. “Here we are gambling our civilization,” he warned. “This is vastly bigger than 9/11.”