Just Thinking about new Start any day now

[LT. Ox]

I have a lot of questions about EMP and an idea for a game start.

Let us say that a certain Mid-Eastern Nation has a desire to rid the world of the evil that is rampant in the Western Nations.

Let us say that said nation has a nuclear program and has made enough strides in that program to have a capability to manufacture a few weapons.

Let us say the western nations think they have stopped the program by treaty and are not too worried because the aforementioned nation has not the means to deliver the weapons.

Then three things change; One, a nation that has built and would like to sell launch vehicles makes a deal to do so with them and ships ten of the intercontinental capable units to the bad boys.

Two, an agreement is reached with a far eastern nation that is split in half to share capabilities and this is consummated.

Three, the decision is made to launch, oh say six to eight weapons, not at ground targets but to detonate at Two hundred miles above the targets.

Now the questions, where would you target the munitions to do the most damage, not only to the west but all the major players around the world.

The idea, of course, is to destroy or damage as much as possible with EMP and sit back and watch as the world rapidly moves to the non-electronic age.

What do you think are the expected results?
HarryO
If This is an unwanted rehash, sorry

[StainlessSteelCynic]

For me, I would not hit the targets that seem the most obvious with the exception of one - I'd concentrate on the electrical grid and only the electrical grid.
Because, quite frankly, in the Western world we are so dependent on electricity these days that without it for more than a week, we'll be screwed and I don't mean just a city here and there but entire provinces/states such as what occurred in the Northeast Blackout of 2003.

In the 2003 blackout, most urban areas got power back within two days and only the most remote locations had to wait a week. Imagine what a city of 2 million people would do if they had to go without power for more than a week - no fuel pumps, no ATMs, no cash registers, no internet, no wi-fi spots etc. etc. But that can actually be dealt with and even if they have no power from the immediate area, electricity can be provided from other grids further away. This is exactly what happened with the attacks on Pacific Gas & Electrical Company facilities in Metcalf, California in 2013. The facilities took about a month to repair but electricity was sourced from other areas so the community was not affected in any major way.

But if you destroy those grids as well, the damage would be more than can be repaired fast enough and the the populace would likely turn to looting & rioting - do that in several large population centres and the chaos would be more than can be contained.
The transportation system would stop (not enough fuel and no electronic banking to pay for it anyway), shops would run out of supplies and people would riot/loot. There wouldn't be enough police or military to contain the populations of several large cities suffering through this.
While facilities like hospitals have generators, they'll only run while they have fuel and fuel deliveries would have to be protected from the angry mob who want it for their own needs. I think that soon enough, the community would break down in that region and would cease to be a modern Western society.

Multiply that across entire regions and it doesn't matter how many military bases or communications centres are left intact, the population is out of control and the government would have their hands full trying to contain the situation. I think it would take massive support from allied nations to ship in the supplies needed to keep the general population supplied but that sort of effort takes weeks to occur, by then it's entirely possible that too much damage has been done.

[swaghauler]

Any ICBM set off at an altitude of about 40K will generate an EMP that affects an area of about 1000 Km. This is calculated using the first EMP ever detected. The EMP that affected Hawaii in the 50's during the Bikini Atoll tests. The EMP is the most insidious aspect of a full scale nuclear exchange in the digital age because of our dependence on so many technologies that are very vulnerable to it. We know it was a large part of Soviet Nuclear Strategy during the 90's. This is why I have always espoused this type of attack for Twilight. Very little fallout. Virtually no collateral damage on the ground (except from all the vehicle and plane crashes). Very hard to intercept with 90's tech. It also leaves you crippled for months or even years as you have to simultaneously rebuild your power, transportation, and civilian communications grids as well as your manufacturing base. Chaos would reign for months.

[Silent Hunter UK]

It also leaves you crippled for months or even years as you have to simultaneously rebuild your power, transportation, and civilian communications grids as well as your manufacturing base. Chaos would reign for months.

Problem is that if you can do it to them, they can probably do it to you as well; remember both sides in the Twilight War had SSBNs.

[LT. Ox]

I am sure I had read somewhere ( I thought here but I can not locate the post) that a detonation at 200 miles would impact the entire USA and most of Canada with parts of Mexico?
Given that coverage, one north and one south this side of the date line with similar spread in western and eastern eu. and a spot at the south portion of China would disrupt , DISRUPT HELL would cripple the world as much, perhaps more than low level tactical strikes.
I have started to research the effects and see if I can find any preventative measures that have been developed and published, if any you have the info let me know where I can read up.
Thanks

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Well if it's any help LT, the initial weapons test that highlighted EMP, Op: Starfish Prime, was done at an altitude of 400km/250miles above Johnston Island and some 1450km/900miles from Hawaii and it caused damage to the electric grid there - the height and therefore azimuth, is particularly important for the spread of any EM pulse (and that goes further to take into account such things as ground clutter & reflection etc. etc.)

Here's links to a few articles meant for the general public, they have little hard info but still contain some useful points: -
http://www.vice.com/read/we-asked-a-military-expert-how-scared-the-us-should-be-of-an-emp-attack-508
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/american-blackout/articles/emp-attack/
This link has a better breakdown: -
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterdetwiler/2014/07/31/protecting-the-u-s-against-the-electromagnetic-pulse-threat-a-continued-failure-of-leadership-could-make-911-look-trivial-someday/

If you want some "light" reading (oh yes that's a pun on several levels!), then the following pdf has a more in-depth study of the Starfish Prime explosion and it's effects on Hawaii: -
http://ece-research.unm.edu/summa//notes/SDAN/0031.pdf

[LT. Ox]

and a big Thanks

[swaghauler]

I am sure I had read somewhere ( I thought here but I can not locate the post) that a detonation at 200 miles would impact the entire USA and most of Canada with parts of Mexico?
Given that coverage, one north and one south this side of the date line with similar spread in western and eastern eu. and a spot at the south portion of China would disrupt , DISRUPT HELL would cripple the world as much, perhaps more than low level tactical strikes.
I have started to research the effects and see if I can find any preventative measures that have been developed and published, if any you have the info let me know where I can read up.
Thanks

You are absolutely correct. This also makes a good start to your campaign. In my previous post, I was referring to the constant emphasis in Twilight's background that NATO and the PACT didn't want the "other side" to think it was a general exchange. Watching a nuke come down to "nominal yield" altitude would have triggered that general exchange. A nuke detonated at high altitude would have caused much more chaos on the ground without producing the same reaction that "watching your cities burn in a flash" would have. This strategy would have made a greater level of sense with regards to France. "Accidentally initiating" a high level EMP attack just inside the French border from Germany or the French side of The Channel would cause a major disruption of French Command and Control. The Soviets could then say, "Whoops, those were meant for Germany and England." Actually dropping nukes on French soil would invite a French retaliatory attack and possibly drag the French into the conflict. A turn of events that the Soviets could ill afford have happen and would want to avoid at all costs. This makes more sense to me and we know now that EMP was in fact "a cornerstone" of Soviet Nuclear Strategy.

[SquireNed]

On the subject of a potential nuclear conflict, what would be the likely outcome of nuclear weapons intentionally deployed against agricultural centers and transportation infrastructure, as opposed to population centers? Where would be the juiciest targets, and what is the potential food production loss per region? Basically, if the goal of WWIII is to cause massive famines rather than immediate destruction how would it be fought?

I'm focusing on operating under the presupposition that population centers are hardened or protected behind missile shields, and is mostly intended to allow a game to have a more urban focus, so it's not necessarily entirely about realism.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

SquireNed, I'd take a look at the map and see where the most important agricultural areas are for your target nation and then check to see where their water comes from. If it's a dam or a canal system, I'd make that the target rather than the farms specifically because for example, one dam might be providing water for hundreds of farms.
This way you hit almost all of them rather than specific clumps and you have the potential benefit (in terms of disruption) of flooding and maybe even destruction of hydro-electric powerplants.