As far as I know, military bases don’t have their own nuclear reactors or coal plants.
EDIT: Apparently the DoD requires diesel backup with enough fuel to last… “one to two weeks.” Meh… if I’m an EMP-empowered nation who hates the US, the grid looks tempting… sure, they can counterattack, but if you make investigating difficult and spread enough pandemonium… all you need to do is keep the government haphazardly distracted and confused for two weeks and you win…
Well the nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers have power plants, and a few military bases used to be powered with nuclear (Camp Century, Ft. Greenly, McMurdo Station). But your point is reasonable. We'd be able to counterattack militarily, but it still would not be a happy day, nor a lasting integrity.
FYI, Eielson AFB in Alaska has a coal plant and is working on an experimental nuclear microreactor installation, the first of its kind that the military plans to expand to other bases.
That's where Article 90 of the UCMJ comes into play,
Any person subject to this chapter who willfully disobeys a lawful command of that person’s superior commissioned officer shall be punished—
(1) if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct; and
(2) if the offense is committed at any other time, by such punishment, other than death, as a court-martial may direct.The UCMJ works great when you can shame a soldier, have a Justice system to rely on, can seize assets or pay, have superiors in other states, and so forth. When it’s pandemonium everywhere… not much to keep it enforced especially when it gets really bad. The system works when a solider has something to lose… but when soldiers feel they have nothing to lose, heck, risk starving and actually losing more by staying…
I mean, it's possible to win, but it requires 10-20 years and having quite a bit of your country destroyed (and possibly a couple countries near yours). Or at least, that's what's required when you can broadcast what's going on to the populace to turn them against the war. What it takes to defeat the US military when the populace can't communicate electronically is actually much more poorly defined.
This is really only a good strategy for countries with low-levels of infrastructure and a ruling faction with a strong ideological commitment against the US. So, places like Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Also, there's a decent stockpile of food for feeding the soldiers (and probably their families, although someone else might be able to speak to that better).
I just rounded off my most recent expansion to 120kw peak production with 500kwh storage, all EMP hardened to well above carrington event levels.
Most of you have a house full of IoT crap dependent on AWS (region) to function.
How are you producing 120kw? That's the equivalent of around 300 solar panels (assuming 400W panels).
I brought it up more for the space requirements. That’s a physically huge system. Panels are only a fraction of the overall cost. Unless you have a massive commercial building somewhere, 300 panels are going to take up a huge amount of ground-mount space. You also need a lot of inverters, wiring, etc.
Sure, somebody could do this with enough money and motivation, but the second question becomes: Why? That’s an order of magnitude more power than you’d need to cover a typical house’s energy use and top up those batteries.
Which, yeah, completely un-doable in manhattan (they already rules out NY anyways), but 10 acre lots are a thing in plenty of places.
https://practical.engineering/blog/2022/11/7/how-would-a-nuc...
https://energsustainsoc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...
People thought I was nuts in 2021 when the lockdowns continued and I bought enough tools to survive such an event. I figured, people aren’t working, things gonna break. Lol
For reference, some basics would go a long way — survival straw to filter water, 3 month emergency food storage, fire starting kit, water collection, etc. for those in the country it’s really not much. A solar generator with a big battery could probably work for those in the country (with a well). For those in the suburbs you’ll need enough to hunker down for a few weeks (and guns). For the city, you need an escape plan and a place to go.
A true grid collapse would be insane. Most people don’t know how to do any of the basics all our families did only a generation or two ago.
How many people can? How many know how to preserve meat for long periods without a freezer? How many know how to grow food and store it?
I’ve spent the past couple years learning some of these skills and preparing the tools.
To be clear grid collapse is inevitable on a long enough time horizon. Being prepared with food, water and shelter is a bare minimum.
Hell I barely know how to change the oil in my car because I never had someone teach me and only recently got to a place in my life where I realized that sort of thing is important. I'm making headway, slowly but surely, but something like growing enough food for a family or acquiring meat, let alone preserving it, might as well be trying to get to the moon.
Funny to think that for our grandparents, that was just a typical Tuesday.
They did pickling, canning, preserves, all that stuff. Some might've done smoking and curing. Kept a spare freezer stocked. After the Great Depression, they weren't going to be caught empty-handed again.
Two generations later, we learned nothing from them and look at that as comparable to going to the moon. Wow.
But yeah, I don't know how to do any of that either. To learn, talk to some older people, I guess?
1. Start a garden this year. Learn the basics. A big garden is just the same principles at a larger scale.
2. Just start doing everything yourself. Go on YouTube and watch how to do X and do it. It’ll build general knowledge of how things work. Saves money, builds confidence, generally good skills regardless.
3. There are survivalist camps if you’re hard core (don’t think it’s necessary, but some people might like it idk)
4. Start curing / pickling your own food. Some simple examples: but everything from the store to make salsa and try that. Make your own bacon (very good) by buying pork belly. Country ham can be delicious and fairly straight forward. Just be sure to follow guides. The USDA publishes guides on canning for instance
I do. It doesn't matter. I'm under no illusion I'd be able do defend myself and my food when I'm outnumbered and outgunned, being on alert 24/7. All it takes is one mistake and it's game over.
I also don’t think people will be as violent after the first 3-4 weeks without water or food. Simply put, those who collaborate have a higher likelihood of survival. There’s only so much you can steal.
If / when this situation arises be prepared and it’ll give you a buffer to survive longer. Have the skills to keep surviving after that and make friends who do as well. Make a plan to meet said friends. That’s really all you can do. It increases your odds
Powerlines worked as giant antennas picking up the VLF component of the blast, driving voltages in megavolts for a brief while. All tricky analog devicery which was used to control the grid in seventies had no protection.
Now, fast acting digital safeties will certainly be more robust.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/02/22/air-force-wan...
I used to teach and consult on various preparedness topics and people used to ask me what my favorite "survival manual" was. It is this book.
TL;DR - 90% of the US population dies in 1 year.
The military is fully hardened against EMP. Civilian infrastructure, not so much.
"The EMP robustness of the civilian infrastructure of the United States can be summarized far less equivocally: it is entirely non-existent. Our civilian telephony, electricity, broadband communications and electronics plants are all naked to our nuclear-armed enemies. They were neither designed, nor engineered, nor constructed nor are they operated so as to survive nuclear explosion effects, even at very great distances – for the 'invisible hand' of the marketplace provides no incentives for EMP robustness, nor penalties for failing to so prepare. Large electric power and telephony systems are known to fail under the effects of solar storms, which impose far smaller electromagnetic stresses than are known to arise from high-altitude nuclear explosions of even modest scales. Consequently, even a modest, single-explosion EMP attack on the U.S. might well devastate us as a modern, post-industrial nation."
https://spp.fas.org/starwars/congress/1999_h/99-10-07wood.ht...