X-Industry

Imagine waking up tomorrow to a world without power.  No lights.  No phones.  No internet. No refrigeration. Within days, grocery stores are stripped bare. Within weeks, hospitals close.  Within months, millions are dead.  That isn’t science fiction.  It is the very real danger of an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, and it is what keeps a national security expert awake at night.

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a burst of electromagnetic energy that can disrupt or destroy electronic equipment and

"They went after our gas and they went after our hot dogs.  No one is out of bounds here. Everyone is in play here," warned Christopher Krebs, former director of cybersecurity at Department of Homeland Security.  From natural phenomena to cyberattacks like the massive SolarWinds operation and recent attack on the Colonial Gas Pipeline, security experts warn it is clear that most businesses and key infrastructure like power grids across this country are pitifully unprepared to meet such threats.

Research Overview

Background: The detonation of a nuclear weapon at high altitude or in space (~30 km or more above the earth’s surface) can generate an intense electromagnetic pulse (EMP) referred to as a high-altitude EMP or HEMP. HEMP can propagate to the earth and impact various ground-based technological systems such as the electric power grid. Depending on the height of the explosion above the earth’s surface and the yield of the weapon, the resulting HEMP can be characterized by three haz