today my guest is william forstchen who is a military historian. six which is co-authored with newt gingrich and his most recent book is "one second after." it is a novel but it is also being made into a motion picture from warner brothers. its subject is america after an electromagnetic pulse attack. thank you again for being here. good to see you. >> thank you. >> i'm afraid there are many people waveng who perhaps don't know what an electromagnetic pulse attack would be. maybe we'd start with your explaining that attack. >> it's a byproduct of any detonation of any nuclear weapon. first realizing some testing in the '60s and before we go any further, i know this sounds like sci-fi. so you in the audience, folks watching this later -- if this

sounds like sci-fi, this evening go on the internet, google up emp, go to wikipedia. here's a couple of other things you should look up. starfish crime which was the american test in 1962 of detonating a weapon in space which blew out a fair part of the power grid in hawaii. also look up soviet test 184. and then finally if you want to look at a completely different aspect of emp look up the carrington event which was actually triggered by a solar storm. and to go back to answering your question, emp, electromagnetic pulse, is a byproduct of detonating a nuclear weapon. here's the scenario that's terrifying for me and it's pointed out in the book in relationship to america. if you detonate a weapon above the center of the united states and you don't need a high mega ton range, a low kilo ton range,

the gamma ray burst when it hits the upper atmosphere starts a chain reaction. it's called the compton effect. imagine a pebble rolling downhill finally triggering an avalanche. by the time this hits the earth's surface at the speed of light, it is a giant electrostatic discharge. it feeds through the power grid of the united states. all of our wiring, antennas and everything become antennas picking up this electrical overload. it blows out the entire power grid of the united states. game over. >> so in other words, you got a missile. instead of hitting a target such as a city and wiping out the city, you have the missile go high up above the united states, detonate the warhead there. people on the ground wouldn't feel a thing, right? >> no. >> however, you would fry the electric grid and it means which comes in your book in a place where you live in where you teach college, suddenly they find out that knock electrical

works. every car on the highway pretty much has stopped. anything that is computerized is dead. phones don't work. refrigeration doesn't work. everything has stopped. >> it's all gone. >> it's all gone. >> the scenarios -- there's a variety of scenarios looking at this. some people talk about a three-weapon detonation. one on the east coast, one in the center of the united states and one towards the west coast. there's a number of various scenarios, delivery by icpm or the really frightening one is a cargo ship just a couple months off the coast of the gulf of mexico. you do not need precision guidance. when you're delivering an emp weapon. we have to get out of our cold war thinking. all you have to do is a general loft in the area, detonate it and then the cascading effects starts. the congressional studies done in 2004, 2008, one of the gentleman testifying 90% of the americans will be a dead after an emp event.

>> why would they be dead. it's not because of the force of the explosion. it's because of the absence of infrastructure that means that food begins to rot, medicine begins to go bad. you can't deliver anything. there are no emergency vehicles. no planes are flying, no helicopters, all that's gone. >> let's talk about planes to start with. it's approximately noon i think as we're doing this program right now. at this moment there's about maybe a quarter of a million americans in transit, a couple thousand commercial planes. you can have captain sully up in the front seat, the famous pilot who saved all those lives by ditching the plane in the hudson. suppose he lost his electrical along with his power, he'd be holding a stick that's useless. fair number of commercial aircraft will fall in the first minute. it will make 9/11 pale to insignificance when compared to what will happen in the first minute. >> in your novel the president is in air force one and that falls out of the sky? >> well, i always have to

emphasize in all of these, i have only worked with unclassified information. so i can't speak directly as to what condition air force one is but i pray they have upgraded it from the last upgrade which was some years ago. by upgrading, i mean, hardening. >> and i don't want to jump too far ahead. but let's just mention this and then we'll come back to it. if you're worried about the possibility of an emp attack there are two things that one should think about doing. >> and uh-huh. >> and it seems to me and i think it seems to you and one is moving ahead rapidly towards comprehensive and missile defense so that missile going up could be destroyed before it detonates and the other is a hardening of the electrical grids in the united states so it's not clear everything -- every plane, everything would be knocked out by any emp attack. >> let's just take an analogy.

an aircraft carrier, world war ii. it had the capability of defending itself with antiaircraft fire, fighter protection, everything else. but what happens if the carrier gets hit? then you go in to damage control. so you point out exactly. we need two things which i hope this triggers just a little bit. we need ballistic missile defense and we need that damage in place. the hardening of our infrastructure to be able to withstand. there's an interesting point you got to consider. if the systems are not hardened, would that not embolden some enemies to think that they can try this? >> exactly. and two things to point out is we all love the fact that we have blackberries and ipods and our cars are more computerized. >> i don't have a blackberry because work follows you. >> i'm trying to try that. and this comes out in your novel

that we are developing a more sophisticated but more vulnerable society than we have ever had because as we have these technological achievements and they are more widespread we become more, not less vulnerable in your novel. there are few cars that are working. they're all antique cars that don't rely on computer technology. you have a plane that works because it's an antique plane. those hold up against this sort of attack in a way that does not happen with the highly sophisticated and fragile system that we're now building. >> imagine a graph. one line could represent the research going in to increasing the gamma ray burst coming off of a nuclear weapon. that's classified information. i can't speak about it but one assumes it's being done. point two, which i think we're all familiar with -- think about a cell phone if you could afford

one 30 years ago. it was the size of a shoe box. across the last 30 years we have built a fabulous, wondrous, incredible infrastructure but in so doing we have become more and more reliant on microprecision electronics that are ever increasingly susceptible to an emp overload. again, go back to soviet test 184 and you will read how it's reported that some of ignition systems in the cars underneath this burst in central asia cooked off. we're talking in 1962 soviet car which i think was slightly overbuilt, compare that to a vehicle today that's loaded with electronics so we're seeing ever increasing vulnerability at the that ever-increasing ty at the potential for damage from a small nuclear weapon. >> you and i are aware of this and some of the people in the room are, most people in the country don't know a lot about it. an important point is that we are not alone in being aware of

this as a dangerous  and as a weapon that could be used against us. there has been such a thing as an emp commission that was established by congress. didn't get a whole lot of publicity. >> you put that in the past tense as well. >> exactly. >> there's some talk about reinstating the commission and they're out of business or going out of business as i discuss this, if i'm correct. particularly important to understand that, for example, the iranian regime, which has as its rallying cry and has for 30 years death to america, they know about emp as the congressional emp commission found out. and if i'm correct, they have been working -- the iranian regime, let me put it bluntly, has been working on developing the capability to launch an emp attack; is that correct? >> now you're getting into a core issue that's actually part of the book. there have been -- there has

been testing going on from barges of the caspian sea of doing a launch and declaring that it's a failure. there's only one profile that fits a vertical launch for use. this to me is the equivalent of say you and i are out in a cruise and the waters off japan in october of 1941 and we see torpedo planes doing slow low-level passes in a narrow harbor. one of us says that looks like a gear-up for a strike on pearl harbor. we are looking at a potential future pearl harbor. if they are testing in this matter, vertical launch off of barges, it fits that scenario we talked about earlier. >> which which the reason you need barges you don't need a long-range missile. >> you can upgraded -- >> so we worry about the kinds of .+missiles. there's missiles could hit israel or europe. they could put it on a barge or a freighter or some large ship and by the way this comes out in your book -- if they wanted to do it in such a way there's no

fingerprints they could turn the barge over to a hezbollah crew or an al-qaeda crew or whatever wants to do it the ship could be scuttled afterwards or it could be sunk in the night back in the u.s. in your novel it's not clear who has done this to the united states. who has been complicit. >> one of the things that concerns me the most we have to get out of the cold war paradigm. for 30 years -- the world i grew up was duck and cover. as a boy growing up in the new york city many in the audience smile remember the duck and cover film. i remember the cuban missile -- we remember madd mutual assured destruction. most of our opponents were communists and atheists because they're very pragmatic. they are not going to inherit a

smoking room. we're dealing with a situation now in iran where mutual assured destruction might be an encouragement. >> that's exactly right. i happen to notice a bit because i was an exchange student in the soviet union years ago and my view many of the soviets were evil but they were not irrational. they didn't believe in a here after. the idea of moscow being destroyed was terrible to them but bernard lewis among the others who said if you have the religious ideology of a mahmoud ahmadinejad -- if you believe that the mahdi will return to the earth only when millions of people are screaming in agony, then the idea of mutually assured destruction becomes not a deterrent but rather an inducement in his words so you have that fear that you cannot use deterrence as you do in the cold war. you have the iranians working to develop this capability. the cia, i believe, has also translated documents from the persian specifically dealing with the idea of an emp and how

they would deal with it and this has been an regime death to america is its goal and something that a world without america is obtainable. now, despite all this, there are a lot of people out there -- there's a large piece in the new republic recently saying all of this -- that bill forstchen has been talking about. it is science fiction and it's a crazy scenario that we really shouldn't be worry about in trying to defend ourselves against. the first thing that occurs to me is if in 1999 we had been here and talked about the possibility of 19 radical middle easterners coming to the united states bringing box cutters and knocking a hole in the pentagon or going to the white house, i think people might also have said that's crazy. that's science fiction. they couldn't possibly get away with it. do you agree with that analogy?

>> i had a wonderful friend. he was one of the old grandfathers of science fiction from the '30s and '40s. he had a great story about how in 1940, '41 and had some gentlemen come in. you are not to write such topics. he said are we making an atomic bomb and suddenly they took him into another room and said if you keep this conversation up you're going to spend a long time in south dakota. so that was science fiction to the world in 1941. and look at the terrible results in hiroshima and nagasaki four years later that shocked the world. this is not science fiction. the capability is there. we could be emp'd today. now, i don't want to be a panic-mongers or this is not move a back or whatever. don't read the book but go out there and do the research. go online. look up emp. and again, i'm going to say it a second time. look up starfish prime which was

the american test in 1962. look up soviet test 184. that's the data that shows you the potential that can be done to the united states right now. >> people should read your book, by the way, because it's entertaining and it gives one an occasion. you're a military historian. you also have worked on the history of technology. and if my next question is, put those two together. generally speaking in history, any weapon developed generally has been used? is that right? >> yes. we've always heard the cry throughout history that this new weapon is so terrible, one catapults -- i believe it was a spartan hercules what use is marshall valor. it's been that way throughout history. look at the tragedies of world war i where machine guns, poison gas and such were projected. it's going to be so terrible we're not going to do it. all weapon systems are eventually used.

>> and it makes maximum use of a single weapon or a small number of weapons. for a long time the thinking has been, you know, if 100 nuclear weapons are launched against us, we might not be able to defend. but one or two surely we can through deterrence. but not necessarily if it is used in this way to plunge us back in a couple centuries technologically. >> i'm going to have to say something that is cruel. bang for the buck. at this moment a hiroshima-size weapon was detonated over say a significant building, say the capitol, our probability of survival here would be pretty good. so we would deal with the horror again that would pale 9/11. that same weapon if used as an emp, the initial result, of course, would be the loss of the aircraft. but take a look at this. where did this water come from?

i'm ask you where did this water come from? >> it came from a reservoir and was pumped through use of electricity, i'm guessing. >> imagine washington, d.c. in 24 hours with no water. imagine washington, d.c. in 21 days with no food. it is an uninhabitable place. you have a hierarchy of needs sort of situation. within 48 to 72 hours this would be worth its weight in gold to some people. then what? >> this probably deserves mention, too. beyond an attack, a purposeful attack, there is the possibility that you talked about of having an emp event take place through natural means. >> yes. in fact, nasa and noaa just put out a report -- i believe it was three or four weeks ago. go online look up nasa/noaa. carrington, carrington event. we've been in a low period of solar activity for about the last five years.

i can remember -- i think it was in 2003 in north carolina we were watching northern lights. some of you might recall that it fritzed some of our systems. carrington event happened in 1959 where it was melt on the poles. railroad ties burst into flames. electrical sparks were shooting out of the telegraphy systems. it blew out a fair amount of the telegraphy systems. if that event of a solar storm happened today, it could emp the whole world. if it lasted for 24 hours. one rotation of the earth, 24 hours, most of the world. let me provide an analogy. one of my greatest heroes in developing this is congressman roscoe bartlett, a representative from frederick, maryland who headed up through the republican side. let me emphasize this is a

bipartisan issue. i wish we could agree on a bipartisan basis that we'll be all in the same sinking ship. the issue of ballistic defense might not excite you so much and maybe green environmental issues do. therefore, please look at the carrington event. such a solar storm today would do the identical thing that you and i are talking about. well, congress in bartlett i-analogy is this. would we own a house and not spend on insurance? if we could spend one-tenth of 1% of what's been thrown out in the last six months on proper hardening and defense, i'd sleep a lot easier. >> let's move on to that. there are two things that can be done to defend ourselves against an emp attack, whether it's by an enemy or it is through a solar event. one is to harden the electrical grid to be resistant to it. the other is missile defense. start with the first one but let's be clear. we're not aggressively doing

either of these. >> that's right. >> in fact, we're not hardening the grid. and it appears that congress is on track to spend less on missile defense, not more, at a time when we have iran being provocative, north korea being provocative testing missiles, testing nuclear weapons and pakistan which has both missiles and nuclear weapons is sort of on a precipice. you cannot guarantee those nukes could not come loose. it would seem, as you say on a bipartisan basis, members of congress of the administration would say our primary duty is to defend americans from this sort of thing. so let's make this a high priority. and neither of these are priorities, in fact, just the opposite. >> well, i have the two of the main characters in my novel, one is rather conservative. another is rather liberal in the views. and about four weeks after this event, both just how foolish and

how stupid it all now seems what divided us. what we are arguing about now is back then, four weeks ago, is moot compared to what we are facing today. we tend to forget how divided america was in public opinion in 1940, '41 about our entry into what became world war ii for us. there were some things done by franklin roosevelt, if done today, he would be impeached. there was actually -- look up the "chicago tribune" for december 5th, 1941. look at the political cartoons on the cover. denouncing the war hysteria in washington. it's right on the front page. that ended at 7:55 am december 7th, 1941, hawaii time. the day we were united. i want us to see us united before another december 7th. >> i want to take questions from our guests here.

we have the technology, do we not? >> yes. >> we have the technology to tell any regime in the world, iran, north korea, anyone that your missiles are a wasted investment because they are never going to hit their targets. we would have the technology. >> yes. >> that would require a layered and comprehensive missile defense system. land-based, sea-based off of ships. and if we want to do it right, as i understand it, we need a space-based missile defense system. where the technology is called brilliant pebbles and really what it is is a lot of rubbish kind of sort of like garbage cans. >> the new brilliant pebbles program is generations ahead what was being talked about in the 80s. now it is precision tracking by very small munitions that can be placed into space.

several dozen. i don't know the exact specs. and they are not weapons. sflurn it's when a weapon is carrying a nuclear warhead and it's coming our way. >> it's not weapons -- what you're doing is when these missiles get into the space, you're going to destroy them up there before they can ever hit their target. we have the technology to do it but we're not proceeding on that track? >> some folks might remember the old rand corporation in the '50s and '60s with nuclear war gaming scenario and such. and again, we're going mutual assured destruction. if anyone there is 100% probability that i can inflict damage upon you, you, i might be tempted if you and i are in a serious disagreement. but if you have a shield system up that the probability is very low, i will think twice or three times before taking that step. so a minimal investment now can save millions of lives. and let's say every american

survived an emp event, can we afford the minimum of $2 to $3 trillion to rebuild our power grid? and that's not counting the casualties. >> we have a distinguished group of guests here. i can't introduce everyone. i'm going to introduce just two very briefly and ask for comments or questions. we have a general who is a retired general in the united states air force and his last assignment was as director of the missile defense agency. and general william sanders is here with us as well. or is it admiral? >> you just promoted him. >> is also a missile defense expert and we're very pleased to have them with us. feel free to ask a question or make a comment on what you've heard so far. >> thank you very much. i just wanted to comment that, first of all, i very much appreciate the views that you've expressed. and i'm very interested in reading your book. one of the reasons why we do not

have a comprehensive missile defense system deployed today, although we have a very good first step at that -- in what we'd done in the last four years, is because of the significant cuts in missile defense in the '90s, in the early '90s specifically in which they said that they wanted to rely on arms control. as opposed to missile defense and i just wanted to get your thoughts about the viability of that kind of approach when you're dealing with this type of threat? >> general, that's a great question and i'd like to emphasize there's no collusion between you and i in my response to this. ronald reagan proposes sdi was in 1982? >> '83. >> '83. which in a matter of weeks it was mocking referred to as "star wars." no matter what system we use, if we knock out the boost phase, the transition phase, reentry

phase with all these other technical terms which means 1,000 missiles could put 10,000 warheads over the united states, missile defense is useless. if but 1 or 2% get through, we're all dead anyhow. well, that's cold war thinking. today missile defense is everything. we're looking at stopping one to three, one to three max, maybe five max. that is viable. it can be done. the technology has gone generations in 30 years. so there's the difference, sir, between what was going on 30 years ago, 25 years ago and now. and also at a fraction of the cost of what sdi was being discussed about in the 1980s. what's so frustrating for me, sir, is the technology is there. all that's needed now is some of the funding to finish developing a layered defense for our country. to me that's the insurance policy that congressman bartlett talks about. >> also, i think relevant to

your question, general, as an old criminalologist, the arms control approach to the problem works if you have two sides that basically want to freeze the status quo. it's in their interest. they don't want to spend more. they don't want to do more but it doesn't work so well with a regime like that which came to power in 1979 in iran, which believes it is on a mission and that mission is to spread its revolution around the world. it is not at this point -- it has not come to the point in its revolution where it thinks, no, we'll be happy with khomeiniism. admiral, did you want to say something as well? i'm going to go over to peter from the national defense university. i'm not going to introduce everyone by name. >> i want to thank you for being the inspiration to a lunch we had on capitol hill with congressman bartlett as our speaker along with yvette clark.

yvette clark, as you may know, is a democratic congresswoman from brooklyn, who has cosponsored with bennie thompson home of the homeland security a piece of legislation to harden all our electrical circuits every year for the next five years at a cost of 4 to $5 billion. they're trying to urge that administration to take that much money out of the stimulus package and spend it on something we desperately need as part of a smart grid because actually if you do the smart grid and don't harden as you know you're going to make the situation worse. but i want to thank you in being the inspiration within primas with the lunch we had a couple of weeks ago. we're trying to get a senate companion bill. two people that are not exactly sole mates politically, yvette clark from brooklyn, a democratic woman and roscoe bartlett, who is the congressman from maryland has basically been

the inspirations to go to bennie thompson and try to get him as chairman of the homeland security committee. but, bill, you've been the inspiration to do this and i want to thank you. there is a bill, if we can get our act together and get this thing passed, and we'll try also to take care of the missile defense issue but as my friend here said, the administration, unfortunately, is going backwards. with the cuts they had in the missile defense system. and kind of in the air when you talk about being able to detect a freighter, a rogue freighter. we have the capability technologically to do that but our navy is not crazy about doing picket duty as they call it. on the other hand, we do not have even onshore or on space to shoot down a scud off our freighter unless we to have a aegis cruiser right there. we'd have to get pretty lucky by identifying the freighter before it gets there. >> would you mind repeating just one thing. how much are you talking about per year as an insurance policy? >> bennie thompson's people have estimated that we could do not

everything but we could ensure the survival of the electrical grid by a cost of $4 to $5 billion a year every year and you do it over a period over four or five years. there's some question as to whether to order all the parts to do work -- you can't do it all at once but you can't do a significant amount every year and just do it over a five-year period and pray that the threat doesn't materialize until then. >> i have to respond to one thing and i'm not trying to do this as some sort of overdramatized emotional appeal but part of the inspiration for this novel. we had two hurricanes crisscross my town five years ago. ivan was one of them. blew everything out. .. the respirator my father

is on, what do we do? they said we have some bottle they're here. suppose we run out of bottled air, we give you a squeeze bottle to put over the face. and i said, in other words -- i get tired and i stop, my father dies. that is what we're talking about. that is the reality i try to bring into the book. that is what we are all personally confronting with our children, our parents, our friends, our neighbors, -- $3 billion or $4 billion a year could be the difference. >> how would you characterize

where congress is on this issue? can you say, if you don't mind, is congress more less educated on the issue, and is it divided on a partisan basis or not entirely? and is the inclination, let's cut a little, let's cut a lot, how would you characterize congress? >> there is a sense, this is a serious issue, the problem comes with democrats who say oh, you just want to push missile defense. it is like immigration, don't talk about illegal immigration as too tough to stop. is not a problem. you are worried about the solution because it is tough. >> let's talk about the carrington event. >> betty thompson was convinced by roscoe bartlett, they're very good friends, he is from mississippi, he is a democrat, he has everything from a to xi'an homeland security, you

that clark is chairwoman who deals wiwith terrorism and so f. you get around that by going with a hardening and with a missile defense, we get it right or we don't get it right. in the senate you have joe lieberman, ben nelson, and by, a democrat from alaska, they get it. there isn't a companion bill yet, but joe lieberman and sue collins could be persuaded to put in a homeland security bill. betty thompson, $800 billion of stimulus money, what is $20 billion? is over three years, spend $15 billion, you are 60% on the way to solving your problem. not everything, but it is going to require people like bill and

others. there is no substitute to getting on the phone and banging on doors and doing it over and over again until they say we will do this. i don't know where the administration is on this. by doing heartening we get around the missile defense problem of wanting to push missile defense. congress isn't there yet but on the house side, we have sufficient support from betty thompson to get the bill done, if the administration came on board. i don't know where they are in terms of answering some of his letters, i just don't know. >> interesting fact that i believe is correct, overwhelming majority of americans favor a missile defense but also believe we haven't -- we do not. they don't understand we are not adequately defended right now. if we were to harden the electrical grid, are there subsidiary benefits to that even if there is never an emt effect?

>> of course. again, let's go back to the carrington event. what is the probability that iran or north korea is going to launch on us? we could go across the river, somebody working in statistics, what is the probability of a solar event hitting us? 100%. we had better do it now. >> it is a form of modernization because we have an antiquated electrical grid. >> also, the system we have built at a time of a solar low, we a doing this for the first time of the history of humanity, there is a big hole in it. the probability of a solar event, look up the nasa noaa report. is going to happen sooner or later, so let's get ready. >> thank you, i actually read

your book and reviewed it for bob tyrrell's american spectator. it is an excellent book. there are a couple problems, and this is what you need to take into congress to be able to answer in doing this and i am sympathetic to your point of view that we need to do something. one of them is on missile defense, the kind of missile defense you need to knock down something coming off of a freighter is not the same as shooting a ballistic missile fired from north korea headed toward hawaii. the system we have now deals with the north korean event but something like the airborne laser, which is very far along development and has been cut in half in the proposed defense budget. the obama administration is precisely to have the kind of administration that would give you an opportunity to have -- cover a large area. if you don't do it then, the missile also, if it is headed 300 miles and going up like

this, it will be a sending all the way, an entirely different kind of interception problem. the systems we have now are not designed to do that. two other quick points. on arms control, one of the reasons the patriots did not work as we originally thought they did during the gulf war is they dumped down deliberately to comply with arms agreements that limited the deployment of technology the way targets were acquired, the speed that you are able to shoot at. that was a very big problem. the other thing, on the hard and in. is very good, very high value, the hardened grid. you also need to think in terms of the computers, millions of computers. you just don't live without them in today's world, or your car, as you pointed out, is a traveling computer. you need a hardening device on that kind of thing. we saw it with flight 447, these

new composite aircraft have almost no medal in them so everything, the charge goes in and goes right into the only metal. and some of these aircraft is the hydraulic type control systems. you need some sort of a thing, it is unrealistic to put a car in a fair day cage, they are not easy to single off, but to get some kind of, the equivalent of a grounding where everybody can put it on their house, everybody can put it on their car or a around their computer or what, so that economically, at the end point, people are protected. if not, you can have a perfectly well functioning electronic grid and have cars that still don't run and computers that still don't compute. >> response to that, you are talking about multilayers system. let me draw quick analogy. i spent a lot of time working with world war ii veterans in the course i teach and i

remember one gentleman on a carrier, when the fighters took off, we could hear that they were engaged there miles out, we got a little worried, when the five inch guns started opening of we got more worried. when the 40 mm guns started opening up, we got really worried. when the 20 mm guns started shooting, it was time for a riot. in other words, the carrier had a multilayer defense system that we all see in the old series. the final point of hardening yet again, if the plane hit for the bomb hit, that is when damage control takes over. imagine launching a carrier with 0 damage control. we have essentially launched entire infrastructure with no damage control. >> a question right there. right behind you. >> my name is paul johnson, a journalist from community tv. they may be basic questions, but does the strength of an emt

effect correlate the strength of whatever nuclear weapon is being used? are couple of other ones. the you have this effect with the fission and fusion weapon? when this destroys or takes electronic circuitry offline, does it physically fry it in all cases, or does it just knock it off line and can it be revived after that point? >> those are great questions. this is the strange part when i'm is researching the book. there's a reverse correlation. the blast from a heavy megaton weapon, a fusion bomb, actually dampens out part of the emt effect. at low yield weapon produces a higher form, this is a real paradox, lower yield, more dangerous emp, higher yields, lower emp. it is and inverse correlation. in order to go to fusion you have to master fission.

it is simpler, cheaper, dirty air technology. we don't need precision guidance or anything else. as to what it takes out, as i mentioned with the carrington event, it requires melting. all your microcircuitry is gone. it will not be spectacular, your computer catches on fire. what is all the reaction we have? and the power goes off -- call the power company. what iswhen the power goes off the power company. what is wrong with my computer? >> that is something you did brilliantly in your novel. everything does stop and most people have no idea what is going on, they don't know if it is a localized event or everywhere in the country or everywhere in the world, and little by little there are characters in your book, particularly your hero who has a

sense, he had been concerned about it in the past and began to recognize what was happening, what in means when a radio doesn't go on or there are no planes in the sky, they are left entirely alone to their own devices and there will be no help for months or years, they have no idea. >> there is one of my great concerns about post emp environment. we have americans have been used to, since the 1850s, instant communication. within several hours after abraham lincoln's assassination the entire north new. those of us old enough to remember, remember pearl harbor, jack kennedy, challenger going down, 9/11, all of these crises, we had a voice. my world war ii class, i have the actual recordings, we interrupt this program, the japanese attacked pearl harbor, i played the voice of franklin roosevelt telling america next

year we are going to get through this. suppose we are greeted with silence. that is unique to the experience of americans. we have never experienced that. none of us alive have experienced that. for that matter, my daughter, i pulled a cellphone of my pocket, where are you right now? she could be five miles away or on the other side of the world. that is one of the very dangerous aspects. we need, within the hardening, a good, solid backup system of telecommunications, and media connection, that the voice of america or our leadership can get out immediately to say we are in a crisis but we are going to pull together and get out of this and here's how we're going to do it. right now america will just be sitting there going it is quiet. >> it is many months before the people in the small town that

you focus on learn that the chinese have come to help in california by sending troops, some relief aid and probably won't be leaving and the mexicans have come in and texas, some troops -- >> i am not necessarily implying anything. they did stay in europe for quite a few years and helped to rebuild. that could be interpreted -- >> you're talking about an america -- >> we are the third world. >> badly wounded, has very few capabilities to defend itself, but isn't highly vulnerable to anyone or anything. >> if i could talk about a scene in the book where a couple characters are talking, remember the infomercial's we use to z late at night, you couldn't turn them off, help starving children, you are looking at small children with swollen stomachs, starvation, you said you were in ethiopia, you saw children dying. imagine a broadcast, help the starving -- starving children of

america. we have not seen this in america, none of us alive have seen this. >> one of the things that is hard to imagine, is frightful to imagine, it has a ring of science fiction, so a lot of people, i have heard this in congress, i don't want to think about this, i don't like thinking about this, so i am not going to think about this, i am going to say those people who are over the edge, this is not in the realm of possibility that we should prepare for -- >> is anyone in this room a smoker? just one person? occasionally i am. we all know -- our kids will show a photograph over and over, this is what is going to happen to you, then we light another cigarette because we don't like to think about it. we should realize, i will confess as a smart -- part-time smoker, we all go into brain lock. it is easier to think about it as science fiction, when it is

not. it is reality, which is. there's a wonderful film out, bill not a science guy put out a film called how hollywood gets emp wrong. we have to overcome how hollywood and television and everyone else portrays emt -- emp. it will shut down las vegas for thirty-second and comes back on, or some foolish movie with john travolta where everybody else's car got emped but he told the ignition off. i guess my friends in the theater, tom cruise is running around because the aliens are whipping on us and he says change the solenoid in the car, i made a rather rude, loud, and to the embarrassment to very good with me because millions of people walk out thinking emp? just change the solenoid. >> the center for security

policies, if -- is a pleasure -- >> you have helped me so much with this book. >> from very remote, thank you for doing it and the effect, thank you for putting this on the air. i came in late, i apologize. i want to make sure you did cover these points, and if you didn't please go at it. bill graham, the chairman of the emp estimate, the loss of life we would sustain, if you didn't touch that, please do. in my experience, no trey has had a similar difficulty wrestling with congress appropriating even some cases authorizing funds for priorities. i have never seen a perfect line up like this, where as peter was saying, we have got not only

senior republicans the senior democrats beginning to appreciate that this is a severe problem, both from the missile threat delivered version and the natural version. but we also have this unbelievably vast sum of money that has already been authorized and appropriated for the stimulus package, some of which is specifically earmarked to upbraid the grid. it would seem as though this is a propitious moment not only to be doing this indication the encouraging these members to simply make sure that at least a portion of those funds are, in fact, applied for hardening the grid at the same time we are planning for the parade. thank you. >> remember in the old movies? there is an english teacher, diane st. clair gets upset when

i don't give her the proper credit for the quote. she is going through a draft of my book, just before it came out, and she said what bailout if there's no country to bailout? that has become one of my favorite books. thank you, diane st. clair, for that. she brought it up, not me. newt gingrich says it as well. what good is a bailout of there is no country left to bailout? we are at a crucial alignment at this moment of the funding, government realization, even nasa coming in on it. the second point i want to jump on quickly, the projections are upwards of 90% fatality rate within a year. the soviet union suffered a 15% rate in world war ii, poland,

20%. that has echoed for generations. it is incomprehensible to us. it starts with water, within a week, we are seeing massive gastrointestinal, we start to see breakdown of immunological systems, starvation, and let's also go with this. everyone put up their hands who are on some significant medication, that might be life-saving. we have to raise through five 46 generations like a rare tropical plant, you when a sit in ethiopia. how many americans if something was tossed out in ethiopia, would still be alive from all the diseases. >> that raises this corollary, what is the point of the best health-care system in the world

of the hospitals don't have electricity, if the ambulances can't run and if the medicine is riding high temperatures. >> i am still waiting to see, i wonder why more people have not written about what happened in the hospital in new orleans after katrina, comparing that to a post emp situation. >> that would be essentially the same. >> thanks for the opportunity. we talked about catastrophic nuclear emp and solar emp, but what about nonnuclear emp, the capacity for individuals, terrorist organizations, put together some sort of large scale broadcast system, drive it into lower manhattan and completely blow up the financial system's computers or to take it to the outskirts of a nuclear plant or some other facility and use it on a much smaller scale

to create facts, or more locally contained chaos? >> exceptional point. the technology is there. some years ago when we start gaining internet humor about you can figure out how to make a nuclear weapon and place it on the internet, this has been openly discussed, how to make emt generators. do this. check out youtube, look of taurus, ford taurus, emp. check it out. they make and emt generator for the torres. >> another question from peter, just pull the microphone behind you and hand that to him, thank you very much. >> two things, the navy did a study of exactly this problem of taking basically a gizmo the size of this table, the back of a pickup truck, and they didn't experiment -- they did an experiment with radiation blast

that fries everything within three miles. this hardening would take care of that too? if you do two other things, the natural and the nonnuclear, protecting against the nuclear. the third thing, the second thing i want to point out is in europe, it must be serious, not the government but the private sector in europe have hardened the 350 of the most critical nodes in europe precisely because of this problem. they have done it with private sector money with no direction from the government. in this country our industry, if you ask them if they have done anything, isn't that fema's job or homeland security? there waiting for the money to be spent at the government level but in europe they have actually done critical financial centers, computer centers, and some privately owned electrical grids, done it all on their own. if you want evidence of a group

of people who make decisions, they made the decision to go forward again. >> a very important point. i just spent a couple days with a private firm in cumberland, md. who are putting together communication nodes that fit into a small trailer. this is private-sector, seeing the need, putting it together, ready to put it out on market. we are americans. let's do some stuff on the private sector from bottom up. it should not just the way for government scenario. private sector should be doing this. some banks are quietly working on this. so you will still get your bills next month. don't know how they will be delivered, but i had to make at least one smiling, and in a grim discussion. >> on that note, i will mention that jim woolsey is a distinguished advisor appraising what happened on 9/11. he said most of all was a

failure of imagination. that is why i think it is important that you were imaginings the kind of attack, the kind of catastrophe, atrocity, that could occur. the good news is we have the technology, we have the ability to defend ourselves, to defend americans. the bad news is we are not doing it so far. our view here is an educated public will demand of its elected leaders that they have the courage and wisdom to defend them against this sort of possibility. to look it in the face and do what has to be done. at your book makes a great contribution to that effort, so thank you very much for that effort. >> thank you, sir. [applause] >> william forstchen is a history professor at montreal college in north carolina.

his books include gettysburg and pearl harbor, co-authored with newt gingrich. to find out more on the author and his work visit onesecondafter.com. >> president, conservationists, wilderness warrior, douglas brinkley's look at teddy roosevelt, two hours saturday at 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2's book tv. >> join the conversation and civil-rights and relations with fox news analyst juan williams. that is live sunday at noon eastern on booktv's index on c-span2. >> the decatur book festival welcomes harold evans as their keynote speaker. celebrate local culture and literary history in st.

augustine at the florida heritage book festival. look for authors jonathan latham and and. than the cast at the brooklyn festival. the west texas book festival will sponsor nearly a week of author events throughout the city of aberdeen. later in september, baltimore book festival hosts a weekend of workshops, author talks and literary events. from the national mall in washington d.c. book tv brings you live coverage of the 2009 national book festival. please let us know about book fairs and festivals in your area and we will add them to our list. e-mail us at booktv@c-span.org. >> book tv visited with author and teacher eva brann in an apples, md. talking about her life and work. she has been a tutor at st. john's college since 1957, she discussed her interest in the classics and talked about some

of the philosophers her students read. this is just over 30 minutes. >> in 1957 when you first started at st. john's college, what did you think of it? >> i thought i had come to heaven. i never had to change my mind. it was everything that i hope for. learning is as much a part of

being a teacher here as teaching is. the relationship to our students has that kind of closeness which depends on a certain kind of formality. we don't intrude on their lives, we don't pretend to be friends with them. we have important business between us, and teaching is a pleasure and a grief too, enormous irritation. it is wonderful. one of the most remarkable things about the college is the relation of the faculty to each other. we help each other. we have many steady groups, we read