"Blackout Warfare" is the term used in this report to describe a revolutionary new way of warfare planned by Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran that is still little understood in the United States, but poses an imminent and existential threat to Western Civilization. These potential adversaries plan to use cyber-attacks, sabotage, and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons in combination to blackout national electric grids to achieve quick and decisive victory. Blackout Warfare that paralyzes the U.S. electric grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures--communications, transportation, natural gas and petroleum, business and industry, food and water infrastructures, and the military--could kill most Americans. The EMP Commission estimates up to 90% of the U.S. population could die from a nationwide blackout lasting one year. The military would be paralyzed by a nationwide blackout, as CONUS military bases depend for 99% of their electricity upon the civilian electric grid. For the first time in the West, this report fights back against looming catastrophe by thinking about and planning for Blackout Warfare the way our potential adversaries do.
Blackout Wars is about the historically unprecedented threat to our electronic civilization from its dependence on the electric power grid. Most Americans have experienced temporary blackouts, and regard them as merely an inconvenience. Some Americans have experienced more protracted local and regional blackouts, as in the aftermaths of Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina, and may be better able to imagine the consequences of a nationwide blackout lasting months or years, that plunges the entire United States into the dark. In such a nightmare blackout, the entire population of the United States could be at risk. There would be no food. No water. Communications, transportation, industry, business and finance--all of the critical infrastructures that support modern civilization and the lives of the American people would be paralyzed by collapse of the electric power grid. Millions could die. How could a catastrophic blackout happen? Threats to the electric power grid are posed by cyber attack, sabotage, a geomagnetic super-storm, and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from the high-altitude detonation of a nuclear weapon. Blackout Wars warns that terrorists and rogue states are developing a revolutionary new military strategy that could exploit all of these threats in combination, including exploiting the opportunity of severe weather or a geo-storm, to collapse the national electric grid and all the critical infrastructures. It would be the fall of American civilization. For the first time in history, the most dysfunctional societies, like North Korea that cannot even feed its own people, or even non-state actors like terrorists, could destroy the most successful societies on Earth--by means of a Blackout War. Attacking the electric grid enables an adversary to strike at the technological and societal Achilles Heel of U.S. military and economic power. Blackout Wars likens this new Revolution in Military Affairs to Nazi Germany's Blitzkrieg strategy, secretly developed and tested in low-profile experiments during the 1930s, sprung upon the Allies in 1939-1941 in a series of surprise attacks that nearly enabled the Third Reich to win World War II. Just as the West was asleep to the threat from the Blitzkrieg, so today U.S. and Western elites are blind to the looming threat from a Blackout War. Fortunately, where the Federal government is failing to protect the national electric grid, State governments have legal authority and the technical capability to protect their electric grids within their State boundaries, and so spare their citizens from the worst consequences of a protracted blackout. Maine, Virginia, Arizona, Florida, Oklahoma Texas, Colorado and other States have initiatives underway to protect their grids and their peoples from the existential threat that is nuclear EMP attack, and from other hazards that could cause a catastrophic blackout. Ominously, this necessary trend toward decentralization of a vital national security responsibility from the Federal government to State governments is eerily reminiscent of the late Roman Empire. When Rome could no longer defend its cities from the barbarians, the cities built walls to defend themselves. Now that Washington cannot or will not defend the United States from nuclear EMP attack, some States are "building walls" to protect their electric grids and peoples from the new barbarians. Blackout Wars is the story of these heroic efforts by individual legislators and citizens to be "Horatio on the Bridge" defending their States and peoples against perhaps the greatest threat that has ever challenged civilization. Most of all, Blackout Wars is a handbook on why and how the States must meet this challenge, and a clarion call to the States to defend themselves.
When FINAL BLACKOUT was written there was still a Maginot Line, Dunkirk was just another French coastal town and the Battle of Britain, the Bulge, Saipan, Iwo, V2s and Nagasaki were things unknown and far ahead in history. While it concerns these things, its action will not take place for many years yet to come and it is, therefore, still a story of the future though some of the "future" it embraced (about one fifth) has already transpired. When published in magazine form before the war it created a little skirmish of its own and, I am told, as time has gone by and some of it has unreeled, interest in it has if anything increased. So far its career has been most adventurous as a story. The "battle of FINAL BLACKOUT" has included loud wails from the Communists—who said it was pro-fascist (while at least one fascist has held it to be pro-Communist). Its premises have been called wild and unfounded on the one hand while poems (some of them very good) have been written about or dedicated to the Lieutenant. Meetings have been held to nominate it to greatness while others have been called to hang the author in effigy (and it is a matter of record that the last at least was successfully accomplished). The British would not hear of its being published there at the time it appeared in America, though Boston, I am told, remained neutral—for there is nothing but innocent slaughter in it and no sign of rape. There are those who insist that it is all very bad and those who claim for it the status of immortality. And while it probably is not the worst tale ever written, I cannot bring myself to believe that FINAL BLACKOUT, as so many polls and such insist, is one of the ten greatest stories ever published. Back in those mild days when Pearl Harbor was a place you toured while vacationing at Waikiki and when every drawing room had its business man who wondered disinterestedly whether or not it was not possible to do business with Hitler, the anti-FINAL BLACKOUTISTS (many of whom, I fear, were Communists) were particularly irked by some of the premises of the tale. Russia was, obviously, a peace-loving nation with no more thought than America of entering the war. England was a fine going concern without a thought, beyond a contemptuous aside, for the Socialist who, of course, could never come to power. One must understand this to see why FINAL BLACKOUT slashed about and wounded people. True enough, some of its premises were far off the mark. It supposed, for instance, that the politicians of the great countries, particularly the United States, would push rather than hinder the entrance of the whole world into the war. In fact, it supposed, for its author was very young, that politicians were entirely incompetent and would not prevent for one instant the bloodiest conflict the country had ever known. Further, for the author was no critic, it supposed that the general staffs of most great nations were composed of stupid bunglers who would be looking up their friends on the selection board when they should be looking to their posts and that the general world wide strategy of war would go off in a manner utterly unadroit to the sacrifice of efficiency. It surmised that if general staffs went right on bungling along, military organization would cease to exist, and it further—and more to the point—advanced the thought that the junior combat officer, the noncom and, primarily the enlisted men would have to prosecute the war. These, it believed, would finally be boiled down, by staff "stupidity," to a handful of unkillables who would thereafter shift for themselves. FINAL BLACKOUT declared rather summarily—and very harshly, for the author was inexperienced in international affairs—that the anarchy of nations was an unhealthy arrangement maintained by the greed of a few for the privileges of a few and that the "common people" (which is to say those uncommon people who wish only to be let go about their affairs of getting enough to eat and begetting their next generation) would be knocked flat, silly and completely out of existence by these brand new "defensive" weapons which would, of course, be turned only against soldiers. Bombs, atomics, germs and, in short, science, it maintained, were being used unhealthily and that, soon enough, a person here and there who was no party to the front line sortie was liable to get injured or dusty; it also spoke of populations being affected boomerang fashion by weapons devised for own governments to use. Certainly all this was heresy enough in that quiet world of 1939, and since that time, it is only fair to state, the author has served here and there and has gained enough experience to see the error of his judgment. There have been two or three stories modeled on FINAL BLACKOUT. I am flattered. It is just a story. And as the past few years have fortunately proven, it cannot possibly happen.
This book outlines the concept of Fifth Generation Warfare (5GW) and demonstrates its relevance for understanding contemporary conflicts. Non-kinetic modes of attack and war waged by groups or non-state actors at the societal level has been termed 5GW. This book discusses the theory of generational warfare and explores the key ideas of 5GW, such as secrecy, the manipulation of proxies, the manipulation of identity and culture (including disinformation and big data), and the use of psychological warfare. These techniques are used to achieve strategic objectives, such as inducing desired behaviour and controlling human terrain, without resorting to overt war or overt violence. The text expands the debate on 5GW by exploring emerging technologies and how they could be used for maliciously shaping human society and even for maliciously changing the genetic makeup of a population for the purpose of unprecedented social control. The work closes with comments on the possibility of a Sixth Generation of Warfare, which targets technical systems to possibly collapse a society through strategic sabotage. Overall, the book demonstrates the relevance of 5GW for understanding contemporary conflicts, from the Arab Spring to the war in Ukraine, in terms of the need for dominating the human domain. This book will be of interest to students of security and technology, defence studies and International Relations.
Nuclear EMP attack is part of the military doctrines, plans and exercises of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran for a revolutionary new way of warfare against military forces and civilian critical infrastructures by cyber, sabotage, and EMP. Significantly, because EMP attack entails detonating a nuclear weapon at such high altitude that no blast or other prompt effects injurious to humans are delivered, only the EMP that immediately damages only electronics, potential adversaries do not appear to regard nuclear EMP attack as an act of nuclear warfare. Ignorance of the military doctrines of potential adversaries and a failure of U.S. strategic imagination, as noted in military writings of potentially hostile powers, is setting America up for an EMP Pearl Harbor. EMP is essentially an anti-technology weapon--and perhaps the perfect "silver bullet" to defeat and humble the high-tech military of the United States that is the basis for its claim to be "the world's only superpower."
Sheri Chinen Biesen challenges conventional thinking on the origins of film noir and finds the genre's roots in the political, social and historical conditions of Hollywood during the Second World War.
The explosive conclusion to the Newsflesh trilogy from New York Times bestseller Mira Grant — a saga of zombies, geeks, politics, social media, and the virus that runs through them all. The year was 2014. The year we cured cancer. The year we cured the common cold. And the year the dead started to walk. The year of the Rising. The year was 2039. The world didn't end when the zombies came, it just got worse. Georgia and Shaun Mason set out on the biggest story of their generation. They uncovered the biggest conspiracy since the Rising and realized that to tell the truth, sacrifices have to be made. Now, the year is 2041, and the investigation that began with the election of President Ryman is much bigger than anyone had assumed. With too much left to do and not much time left to do it, the surviving staff of After the End Times must face mad scientists, zombie bears, rogue government agencies-and if there's one thing they know is true in post-zombie America, it's this: Things can always get worse. More from Mira Grant: Newsflesh Feed Deadline Blackout Feedback Rise Praise for Feed: "It's a novel with as much brains as heart, and both are filling and delicious."―The A. V. Club "Gripping, thrilling, and brutal... McGuire has crafted a masterpiece of suspense with engaging, appealing characters who conduct a soul-shredding examination of what's true and what's reported."―Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) “Feed is a proper thriller with zombies.” —SFX
Published for the first time in 1940 in "Astounding" magazine, "Final Blackout" "is set in a world ravaged by 30 years of war. . . [and] chronicles the rise, in England, of the charismatic leader, strategist and statesman known only as the Lieutenant" ("Publishers Weekly"). "Hubbard spins a masterful tale of suspense and nonstop action."--Harold Robbins
Americans' safety, productivity, comfort, and convenience depend on the reliable supply of electric power. The electric power system is a complex "cyber-physical" system composed of a network of millions of components spread out across the continent. These components are owned, operated, and regulated by thousands of different entities. Power system operators work hard to assure safe and reliable service, but large outages occasionally happen. Given the nature of the system, there is simply no way that outages can be completely avoided, no matter how much time and money is devoted to such an effort. The system's reliability and resilience can be improved but never made perfect. Thus, system owners, operators, and regulators must prioritize their investments based on potential benefits. Enhancing the Resilience of the Nation's Electricity System focuses on identifying, developing, and implementing strategies to increase the power system's resilience in the face of events that can cause large-area, long-duration outages: blackouts that extend over multiple service areas and last several days or longer. Resilience is not just about lessening the likelihood that these outages will occur. It is also about limiting the scope and impact of outages when they do occur, restoring power rapidly afterwards, and learning from these experiences to better deal with events in the future.
