HNewsWire:EMP Threat, its real( VIDEO )

For seven hours last Friday, San Francisco was in chaos. A fire in a utility company substation caused a power outage that knocked out traffic lights, cable cars, elevators and computer systems.

At least 88,000 Pacific Gas and Electric Co. customers were left without power for most of the workday.

Employees in the city’s financial district had to go home for the day as they found themselves unable to do business. Many retailers shut their doors as well, unable to accept credit card payments using their electronic card readers. Major traffic jams plagued the city as motorists were forced to treat every intersection as a four-way stop.

However, there were no reported deaths or major injuries associated with the outage, and all power was restored to customers within eight hours.

But what if next time is different? What if next time, the power goes out not for seven hours, but seven days? What if it goes out not merely in part of San Francisco, but the entire Western half of the United States?

That scenario is very plausible in the increasingly dangerous world in which we live.

Ongoing crises make it difficult for policymakers to devote sufficient attention to electromagnetic threats, which are less prominent but potentially catastrophic. Events that reflect our growing vulnerability to these threats often slip quickly from the front page, as did the cyberattack against Sony Pictures. Others, such as solar storms across Alaska in March and the accidental power station explosion in April that left Washington, D.C. in the dark, go mostly unnoticed. And even events that dominate headlines, like the Iran nuclear agreement, don’t tell the whole story about electromagnetic threats. As a nuclear threshold state, Iran may quickly race to build a bomb that could be used to conduct a devastating electromagnetic attack against the United States.

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