I've been asked, at short notice, to fill in for the Guest Speaker this Wednesday 17th January. My subject: Fully unexpected loss of electrical power due to an Electromagnetic Pulse. Such a dystopian event can happen due to either of two principal causes: - a major Solar Storm (coronal mass ejection) - the last one of sufficient strength occurred as recently as 1859 (a minor one occurred in 1921 which affected only a smaller area of the planet) and they are totally unpredictable, or
- by the deployment of a relatively small, single nuclear device above the earth's atmosphere, just 450 Km up. The recent North Korean missile tests reached a height of over 1,400 Km, so this is well within the plausible, and of course is well within the capability of anyone with the capacity to deploy medium range missiles, including those that can launch satellites.
See you there!
Franz Huber.