The Billionth-of-a-Second Attack That Ends All Critical Infrastructure | Prof. Steven Starr

## Introduction The recorded exchange with Professor Steven Starr forces a hard reappraisal of a silent and immediate vulnerability at the core of modern life: the electrical and electronic infrastructure that underpins food distribution, healthcare, communications, transport and finance. The conversation moves beyond doomsday sensationalism to paint an empirically grounded portrait of how an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) — delivered in a fraction of a second from above the atmosphere — could paralyze entire societies. This is not a speculative cinematic threat; it is a physical phenomenon, documented in historical tests and modeled by experts, that intersects with geopolitical reality, industrial dependence and political choices about resilience and deterrence. ## What are EMPs and why are they a real threat? The term electromagnetic pulse describes a burst of electromagnetic radiation that, unlike blast or thermal effects, does not physically harm humans or buildings but couples violently to conductive materials. As discussed in the exchange, EMP effects are divided into components: an E1 pulse that arrives at near light speed and induces destructive voltages in solid-state electronics, an intermediate E2 comparable to lightning, and an E3 component that behaves like a geomagnetic disturbance and drives quasi-DC currents through long conductors such as power transmission lines. The physics are straightforward: gamma rays from a nuclear detonation high above the atmosphere liberate electrons, which then interact with the geomagnetic field to create enormous currents over continental scales. What makes EMPs especially consequential is not merely the magnitude of instantaneous damage but the systemic fragility of contemporary systems. Modern civilization is built on ubiquitous microelectronics — from routers and medical devices to the control systems of power stations. The E1 wave can fry transistors and integrated circuits in a billionth of a second; the subsequent E3 wave can permanently damage large power transformers and high-voltage protection equipment essential for long-distance transmission. Together, these effects cascade through supply chains and services, turning localized equipment failures into national-scale collapses of function. ## How an EMP attack destroys the power grid 00: 21:05 The catastrophic risk to nuclear power plants The recorded discussion paints a chilling picture of how an EMP can cripple a grid. Large power transformers — the hulking, custom-built machines that step voltage up and down across transmission systems — form the backbone of national electricity networks. There are only a few thousand in the United States that match the highest voltage classes, they are bespoke, most are manufactured abroad, and replacement lead times range from years to several years. If E3 currents damage these components en masse, restoring service is not a matter of flipping a switch; it is a logistical and industrial marathon with no short cuts. The subtler but equally grave dimension involves substations, relays and control electronics that coordinate grid stability. The E1 component can neutralize relays and control systems instantly, leaving transformers exposed to the slower but deeply damaging E3 currents. Even peripheral failures — millions of glass insulators experiencing “flashover” because of induced surges — can snowball into widespread outages. The scenario discussed is deliberately stark: a small number of high-altitude detonations could blanket hundreds of thousands of square miles and disable enough of the grid to induce prolonged blackouts measured in years, not days. Overlaying this infrastructure failure is the acute risk to nuclear power plants. These facilities are designed with numerous safety systems but rely heavily on electricity for cooling and monitoring. Loss of offsite power combined with damaged onsite control electronics and depleted backup systems could create conditions where containment and decay heat removal are jeopardized. The conversation highlighted incidents in which nuclear facilities have been targeted or intermittently knocked offline in recent conflicts, underscoring how weaponized or accidental cascading outages could produce catastrophic consequences beyond conventional grid damage. ## Are EMP weapons a special class of nuke? The interlocutors emphasize that an EMP is not a mystical separate technology but rather an effect that can be produced by nuclear detonations at certain altitudes and designs. Every nuclear detonation emits gamma radiation and can therefore generate EMP effects; the difference is one of yield, altitude and design focus. A “super-EMP” concept intensifies the gamma ray output or optimizes the yield-to-EMP coupling so that the radiated energy is disproportionately effective at producing E1 pulses over a wide geographic area. Conversely, detonations intended to maximize blast damage at ground level produce different profiles of harm. High-altitude nuclear detonations are unique in operational effect because they create continent-spanning line-of-sight coupling between the burst and exposed conductive infrastructure. This means that a limited number of strategically placed detonations can generate EMP fields that blanket entire countries. The remark in the conversation that satellites or weapons detonated hundreds of miles above the surface could achieve this effect underscores the asymmetry: relatively few weapons can induce disproportionate systemic disruption without producing local blast or fallout on the ground below. ## Can we protect our infrastructure from EMPs? The good news embedded in the interview is that protection is technically feasible. Hardening electronics, retrofitting substations with surge arrestors and blocking capacitors, installing geomagnetically induced current (GIC) mitigation systems, and stockpiling critical replacement hardware are all viable measures. Military systems and critical command-and-control networks have been hardened for decades; the civilian challenge is to scale and finance similar protections across the national grid and key sectors. Yet the obstacles are less technical than political and economic. Many utilities resist regulations that would force costly retrofits onto shareholders and ratepayers. Legislative proposals have sometimes been crafted in ways that defer responsibility or fail to require meaningful standards. The interplay between private utility interests, regulatory frameworks, and the public good creates policy friction. The conversation argued that the financial outlay to secure infrastructure would be modest compared to other national expenditures — and that measures to harden against EMPs would also protect against solar storms, which represent a naturally recurring hazard with known historical precedent. ## Diplomacy and arms control in the age of EMP EMP risks map directly onto arms control dilemmas. Deterrence doctrines and nuclear force postures that emphasize survivability and second-strike capability can inadvertently incentivize the development or deployment of high-altitude EMP options. Because EMP effects can be achieved without localizing blast or fallout, they complicate signaling, attribution and normative taboos that have governed nuclear use since 1945. The interview foregrounds an uncomfortable truth: the mere existence of thousands of nuclear weapons in multiple arsenals means that the EMP problem cannot be divorced from broader strategic dynamics. This reality calls for fresh diplomatic attention. Existing treaties focus on testing bans, non-proliferation, and limits on delivery systems, but few mechanisms explicitly constrain or stigmatize the operational use of high-altitude detonations designed to produce EMP effects. Confidence-building, mutual verification, and perhaps a dedicated protocol addressing high-altitude EMP detonations could reduce the risk of miscalculation. Equally

The Billionth-of-a-Second Attack That Ends All Critical Infrastructure For the longest time, I thought electromagnetic pulses—those bursts of invisible radiation that can wipe out power grids and shut down entire cities—were just sci-fi fantasy. The kind of thing you’d see in The Matrix or Hollywood disaster movies. But I was wrong. The United States actually has a Task Force on EMPs, and real scientists have been warning about these threats for decades. One of them is here with me today. Professor Steven Starr is the former Director of the University of Missouri’s Clinical Laboratory Science Program, and a Senior Scientist at the Physicians for Social Responsibility. Nuclear power plants continue to be targeted in the Ukraine War. As I said during the interview, I’m still concerned that one of the Russian RBMK Chernobyl-type reactors will come under a missile attack. — Prof. Steven Starr https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/nuclear-plant- southern-russia-briefly-offline-after-ukrainian-drone-attack Links: Nuclear Famine: https://nuclearfamine.org/ Steven's book on EMP: https://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-High-Altitude- Electromagnetic-Pulse-Mortal/dp/8793987358 Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:00:54 What are EMPs and why are they a real threat? 00:05:51 How an EMP attack destroys the power grid 00: 21:05 The catastrophic risk to nuclear power plants 00:30:37 Are EMP weapons a special class of nuke? 00:39:21 Can we protect our infrastructure from EMPs? 00:42:15 Diplomacy and arms control in the age of EMP 00:48:38 The breakdown of trust and the risk of escalation 00:55:20 Outro Our shop: https://neutralitystudies-shop.fourthwall.com Substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com #Pascal For the longest time, I thought electromagnetic pulses—those bursts of invisible radiation that can wipe out power grids and shut down entire cities—were just sci-fi fantasy, the kind of thing you’d see in *The Matrix* or Hollywood disaster movies. But I was wrong. The United States actually has a task force on EMPs, and real scientists have been warning about these threats for decades. One of them is here with me today. Professor Steven Starr is the former director of the University of Missouri's Clinical Laboratory Science Program and a senior scientist at Physicians for Social Responsibility. Steven, welcome. Thank you, Pascal. It's an honor to be on your show. Thank you very much for coming online. You’re also a friend and colleague of Ivana Hughes and Jeffrey Sachs, and you’ve been one of the people working very closely on what really sounds like science fiction. But can you maybe tell us—what are EMPs, and why are they a real threat? #Steven Starr Well, an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, is a burst of invisible energy that doesn’t harm humans, plants, animals, or structures, but it can induce massive voltages and currents into any electrically -- 1 of 19 -- conductive material—particularly power lines, antennas, and telecommunication lines. For example, a medium distribution power line can have two million volts and five to ten thousand amps induced into it. This happens at the speed of light, so surge protectors that can handle lightning are useless against an EMP. When that happens, anything plugged into the grid that has solid-state electronics gets fried, because you can damage your computer even with static electricity. So if you get 50,000 volts coming in through the wall, that goes through your appliances and just about everything you have in the house. It can also knock out probably 10% to 20% of all cars— they just wouldn’t start. The E1 basically destroys all the solid-state electronics instantly. Then, a few seconds later, there’s an E3 wave that comes down and damages the extra high-voltage circuit breakers and large power transformers required for long-distance transmission of electricity in the grid. About 90% of the electricity goes through these, so if you lose them, the grid is out. And we don’t stockpile those; they have to be custom designed and manufactured. Large power transformers weigh between 400,000 and 800,000 pounds each, so they’re not easy to transport or install. The current wait time for those is one and a half to four years, and about 80% are made overseas. So if you damage them to the point where most of them no longer work, entire regions could be without electricity for years—literally. And it only takes, you know, even one super- EMP weapon to accomplish this. I wrote an article for the UNS Review in June of this year about an EMP attack on the U.S. that used three ballistic missiles—three warheads—that detonated over the continental U.S. I can go into that more later. So that’s kind of a long answer, but let me check my notes. #Pascal Two questions—and I know you also prepared slides for us to look at—but before that, two issues. What kind of weapon can induce such a blast, A, and B, why have we never seen one? I mean, we’ ve had nuclear weapons for the last—sorry, there was a bird that just crashed into my window. That’ s scary. Anyway, why have we never seen such a blast, even though we’ve been living with nuclear weapons since 1945? #Steven Starr Well, that’s probably a matter of good fortune. What I’m writing about is a nuclear weapon detonated on the surface of the Earth—it creates an enormous blast, fire, and local radioactive fallout. But what I’m talking about here are nuclear detonations that occur above the atmosphere, ideally around 100 to 300 miles up. And, you know, even a satellite orbiting over us could be a nuclear weapon—they could design one like that. We haven’t seen that because nobody’s used a nuclear weapon in combat since 1945. But there are 12,000 or more nuclear weapons in the world today. -- 2 of 19 -- I taught a class on nuclear weapons at the university for 11 years. And, you know, people don’t even understand how many nuclear weapons there are. I was focused for years on the effects of war— war on the ground, you know, conventional use. But if you detonate just one to three of these, you can take out the grid and all the electronics and basically, you know, probably wipe out most of the population within a year, because you’d have no electricity and no critical national infrastructure. #Pascal Just to clarify, every nuclear weapon is also an EMP weapon, because they radiate that energy. It’s not just the blast itself—it’s the electromagnetic shock that comes with it. #Steven Starr Yeah, what happens is, at the moment of detonation, a nuclear weapon emits a lot of gamma rays. A super-EMP weapon can focus those gamma rays toward the Earth. The gamma rays come down at the speed of light, and when they hit the atmosphere, they rip electrons off the air molecules and send them spinning toward Earth. They interact with the Earth's magnetic field and create, in effect, a giant electric current in the atmosphere. That induces massive currents into the power lines and transmission lines. So, this all happens at about 90% of the speed of light—in just a few billionths of a second. That’s all it takes for the E1 wave to hit. #Pascal If you have this in your presentation, is this where we should look at it? #Steven Starr Sure, I'd be glad to. I think that's a good idea. I'll share my screen here. Okay, this is the first photograph of an EMP. It was taken in 1962. The detonation occurred about 860 miles away from Hawaii. This photo was taken from Honolulu. You can see what an enormous flash it made. An EMP attack would occur at night because that’s when it’s far more effective for the E3. Go ahead—sorry, is this visible light, like in ours? Yeah, that’s a big flash of light. If you look down here in the corner, those are telephone poles—that’s the island—and it just lit up the sky, the whole horizon. They had to detonate the weapon farther away, because if it was within 400 miles, it could cause people to go blind. Nuclear weapons are almost unimaginably powerful. At that time, in 1962, we didn’t have solid- state electronics; they just had tubes. But it did knock out streetlights and that sort of thing. It took a while before they started to understand what EMP actually was. So, as I mentioned before, a nuclear detonation above the atmosphere doesn’t create fires, blasts, or local radiation. But it does create an invisible burst of high-intensity energy that doesn't harm plants, animals, humans, or structures, but it will induce massive voltages and currents into any electrically -- 3 of 19 -- conductive material. And as I mentioned, the EMP E1 wave that comes down at the speed of light will induce about 2 million volts and 5,000 to 10,000 amps of current into medium distribution power lines. They're not designed to handle that. The 15‑kilovolt lines can get 200,000 to 400,000 volts. This is a picture of the three grids in the United States. You know, a grid is basically the power‑generating facility, and it's connected to the end consumers with long‑distance transmission lines. So this is a picture from the article I had in the UNS Review, and the three circles show where three nuclear detonations would occur over the U.S. They’re ballistic missiles fired from a submarine. It takes less than a minute to launch three of them from about 200 miles off the Florida coast, and five to seven minutes for the warheads to reach their targets. The U.S. would be able to detect such a launch, but we wouldn’t be able to intercept it—we have no capability. The large circles show the exposure area; there are hundreds of thousands of square miles for each one. The EMP is a line‑of‑sight phenomenon, so it blankets the United States. The inner circles are where the most intense EMP occurs. There’s about 12,500 to 50,000 volts per meter, and that will induce current. Even if you’re not plugged into the grid, it can still induce 50,000 volts into an AC power cord, for example. It burns up things like all solid‑state electronics—your computers, cell phones, routers, switches, modems, microchips, transistors, all the integrated circuits, the scattered devices used to control industrial processes remotely. They all get destroyed instantly. All our critical national infrastructure relies on this stuff, so in an instant it just knocks out practically everything you can think of. The ground, air, and sea transportation systems, water and sanitation systems, banking systems, telecommunications systems—they all stop working. There will be no food or fuel distribution. You won’t be able to pump gas; pumps won’t work. Medical services are unavailable. You can’t call anybody. You can’t drive anywhere. The rail, port, and air traffic control systems no longer operate. Planes fall from the sky. Planes crash. Cars stall. I mean, it’s chaos. Basically, the multitude of electronic devices that society depends on have suddenly stopped working. This happens within a billionth of a second—it’s just instant. Another thing that happens, and it’s not widely known—I got this from a man who’s the director of a large corporation that does research on this. He helped write the guidelines for the Department of Defense, so he knows what he’s talking about. He told me that millions of the glass insulators on our power lines—the 15‑kilovolt lines that go to about 78% of homes, businesses, and farms—would fail. They call it “flashover.” The voltage is so strong that it basically destroys those insulators, especially in cold weather. If you had an EMP attack in the winter, it would just wreck them. And if you lose one glass insulator on a line, it can knock out power on that entire distribution line. So if you lose millions of them, that alone would be an enormous project to repair, and it would take down the grid. The E1 also instantly knocks out the power stations and the high‑voltage substations in the U.S., where the controls and relays that protect the extra‑high‑voltage circuit breakers and large power -- 4 of 19 -- transformers are damaged by the E1. That just knocks