EMP weapons have the power to disable the technology we rely on for modern life (Image: Getty )
As the war in Ukraine still rages and the with , there’s a secret weapon under development that could destroy the modern way of life.
is a doomsday weapon that could take out almost all electronic equipment, including computers, satellites, radios, radar receivers and even traffic and street lights.
The terrifying weapon works in theory by delivering a nuclear explosion high in the Earth’s upper atmosphere above a target country or city, and scientists have already been researching how such a device could be used.
Electromagnetic interference is already a problem for the world as it is produced by the source of all energy in our solar system, the sun.
When our closest star, which is a seething ball of constant nuclear reactions, is particularly active, it can produce huge amounts of electromagnetic energy which it expels in so-called coronal mass ejections (CME).
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(File image) A missile being fired with an EMP capability could be devastating (Image: Getty )
These ejections contain huge amounts of energy and can easily reach the Earth with electromagnetic interference which, if it was a particularly large ejection, could damage telecommunications and computers, in the same way as an EMP bomb.
In 1859 a huge CME was so powerful it knocked out telegraph wires around the world and created a huge spectacular aurora event seen across much of the Northern Hemisphere.
Prof Richard Horne, head of space weather at the British Antarctic Survey, and chairman of the official group that advises the Cabinet Office on solar electromagnetic threats, told the : “A plasma on the sun creates a magnetic field, a shock wave, and that accelerates the particles towards us.”
But Prof Horne added we only usually get a day or two’s notice of a CME, and that: “Even then, you still can’t say how big the magnetic storm will be. That depends on the polarity of the magnetic field, and you can only do that with half an hour’s warning.”
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President Putin has made numerous threats against the West (Image: Getty )
Natural threats from the sun are negated somewhat by the Earth’s thick atmosphere, and they could pale in comparison if a country decided to weaponise EMP to use closer to the surface of our planet in the form of a bomb.
Jonathan Hollerman of Grid Down Consulting, an EMP researcher, told the newspaper: “The next war is not the war we think it will be – it will be fought out in the electromagnetic spectrum, but here we are, still trying to build the fastest planes.”
Thomas Withington, of the Royal United Services Institute, added that any weapon used to deliver an EMP blast would need to have “a sufficient power level to cause damage over a wide area, and it’s hard to get that into a satellite.
“It’s hard to see how you can do damage to a city without a ballistic missile.”
President-elect appeared to take the threat of an EMP missile seriously during his last term in office when he signed an executive order on co-ordinating a national response to it.
It’s reported is researching how to use an EMP weapon, perhaps to release the energy in space to knock out the West’s satellite network.
The technology as already been tested, in 1962, the US detonated a 1.4 megaton nuclear weapon high above the Pacific Ocean in a test known as “Starfish Prime”.
The EMP from the explosion was so powerful it knocked out streetlights in Hawaii, around 900 miles from the explosion, and left a radiation field in low Earth orbit that damaged satellites.