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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and welcome back to Coast to Coast George

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Speaker 1: Norri with you as I was mentioning a massive solar eruption,

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Speaker 1: but they're not sure if it's headed towards Planet Earth.

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Speaker 1: William Forsten Bill has been a PhD in history from

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Speaker 1: Burdue University, specializing in military history. His secondary areas of

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Speaker 1: study included the American Civil War and the history of technology.

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Speaker 1: He has been a regular guest on our program for years,

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Speaker 1: bringing to us the story of power protecting the power grid,

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Speaker 1: his book One Second after Another, One one year after

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Speaker 1: and Pillar to the Sky. Mister Forsten, Welcome back. It's

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Speaker 1: great to be with you again, George. So what's going

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Speaker 1: on with the sun this time? Nobody knows what's happening.

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Speaker 1: I'm looking at spaceweather dot com as we talk. There

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Speaker 1: was as they call the failure to launch yesterday the

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Speaker 1: twenty ninth. There was a large solar flare, but it

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Speaker 1: did not get beyond the Sun's atmosphere, I mean the

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Speaker 1: Sun's gravitational pull, because that can affect that. Right now,

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Speaker 1: they're calling for up to a thirty percent probability of

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Speaker 1: severe solar activity and higher out latitudes mid latitudes not

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Speaker 1: so much. So we're in another risk point, but not

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Speaker 1: serious yet, but it could change any day. I saw

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Speaker 1: an interesting story today too, Bill that in eighteen fifty nine,

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Speaker 1: of course, the Quarantine event, which you know about the

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Speaker 1: huge flare that knocked out the telegraph system at the time,

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Speaker 1: But apparently they're saying back in the year seven to

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Speaker 1: seven to four, yes, there was a huge, huge coronal

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Speaker 1: mass ejection. Yeah, I have read about that. There are

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Speaker 1: records in China that that's where we get the information

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Speaker 1: from that you could see it in road daylight. They

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Speaker 1: thought the sun was exploding. Listen, if they even had

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Speaker 1: a nineteenth century technology, then event would have been wiped out.

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Speaker 1: Even a twenty first century technology would have been taken

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Speaker 1: right offline by a storm of that intensity. Are you

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Speaker 1: more intentious? I'm sorry, go ahead. Are they happened about

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Speaker 1: every one hundred and fifty to two hundred years. Are

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Speaker 1: you more concerned about a cm coronal mass ejection or

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Speaker 1: an EMP an electronic magnetic pulse. That's like the question

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Speaker 1: you ask kids, do you prefer to freeze to death

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Speaker 1: or fry to death? Yeah, they're both bad. No weapon

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Speaker 1: system has ever been built that, at some point or

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Speaker 1: other somebody hasn't tried to use it. The use of

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Speaker 1: an EMP by launching three or four small nuclear weapons

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Speaker 1: above the United States two hundred and fifty miles out

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Speaker 1: detonate them that triggers an EMP that could cripple the country,

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Speaker 1: or a coronal man subjection, same thing. I think both

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Speaker 1: are inevitable statistically, sooner or later we will be hit

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Speaker 1: by a large CMA. And the other side of it

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Speaker 1: is someday somebody's going to use it as a weapon.

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Speaker 1: Has it ever been tested as a possible weapon somewhere

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Speaker 1: where it shuts out the power grid? Not that is declassified.

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Speaker 1: I've heard rumors. You know, you can create an EMP

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Speaker 1: generator that can create a short range effect, but of

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Speaker 1: course nobody's actually tried to use. Putting one up in

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Speaker 1: space and into the weapon in space and detonating that

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Speaker 1: would just be catastrophic. One of your books is called

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Speaker 1: one second After, what happens one second after? Well, let's

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Speaker 1: call the man. You know, I call it a Maslow's

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Speaker 1: hierarchy of needs. You know, remember the old you Maslow's hierarchy,

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Speaker 1: What you need to stay alive well. Society needs the following.

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Speaker 1: If we are hit by an EMP a military use

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Speaker 1: of a weapon that sets up a large electrostatic discharge

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Speaker 1: that blows our power grid out, the first thing you're

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Speaker 1: going to notice is you don't have water anymore unless

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Speaker 1: you have a gravity fed system. If you have a

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Speaker 1: pump or be it for your backyard or for an

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Speaker 1: entire city, the water is gone. Item number two food,

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Speaker 1: The average community has twenty to twenty five days worth

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Speaker 1: of food on hand. Once that's gone, it's gone. Three.

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Speaker 1: Medication the average community actually has about several days worth

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Speaker 1: of medication on hand. It's delivered every day by FedEx

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Speaker 1: for its command and control. What about your public safety.

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Speaker 1: We've noticed in Uptick and a lot of bad things

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Speaker 1: happening in America over the last year. Imagine if there

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Speaker 1: was no power even for a week or two end result,

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Speaker 1: people will start getting sick from improper use of water,

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Speaker 1: polluted water, gastrointestinal illnesses. People will start getting sick because

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Speaker 1: of lack of food. People will start getting sick because

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Speaker 1: of medication. According to several congressional studies, upwards a ninety

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Speaker 1: percent of the population would be dead within a year.

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Speaker 1: I use that statistic quite a lot and quote you

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Speaker 1: that is staggering and horribly frightful. Well, you know you've

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Speaker 1: had Peter Prye on your show because of you, of course. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Peter Prye to me is the godfather. He is the

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Speaker 1: one who has been blowing the whistle for the alerted

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Speaker 1: this for thirty years. Peter Prye and I only disagreed

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Speaker 1: on one thing, and he actually came over to my side.

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Speaker 1: He used to say that if we were ever hit

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Speaker 1: by an EMP, America would be thrown back one hundred

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Speaker 1: years to eighteen seventy. And I'm like Peter, people in

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Speaker 1: eighteen seventy knew how to live in eighteen seventy, They

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Speaker 1: knew the technology of that time. We'll be thrown back

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Speaker 1: a thousand years because nobody knows how the system works.

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Speaker 1: We have relied too much on electricity, on power, on stores.

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Speaker 1: Just a few people will be able to make it, unfortunately. Yes,

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Speaker 1: you know, I gave a talk two days ago for

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Speaker 1: a consortium of power companies in South Carolina. It was

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Speaker 1: I learned a lot from this one. These guys were,

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Speaker 1: you know, the major executives for a number of power

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Speaker 1: co ops in South Carolina and they're scared. Now, for example,

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Speaker 1: we get hit by an EMP, it's going to blow

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Speaker 1: out our power grid, are wiring all of us wiring

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Speaker 1: turns into antennas that pick up the overload and burn

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Speaker 1: it out. Transformers are going to go, which come from China,

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Speaker 1: by the way. That was That's my point. And what's

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Speaker 1: the George, what's the average time for if we need

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Speaker 1: a major transformer replacement, what's the average amount of time

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Speaker 1: needed to get one? Oh, my gosh, way too long.

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Speaker 1: And that's that's assuming we don't have a couple in stock.

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Speaker 1: And see, there's part of the problem that we talked about.

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Speaker 1: They don't have the money which they should have to

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Speaker 1: stockpile crucial equipment the way we've done in the past

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Speaker 1: during the Second World War and such, where we stockpiled

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Speaker 1: certain types of weapons or terribly so you know during

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Speaker 1: the Cold War with nuclear weapons. And if for some reason,

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Speaker 1: Bill China was the country that launched the EMP against us,

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Speaker 1: they're not going to supply us with transformers, smile and

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Speaker 1: give us a middle finger. You know, the average large

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Speaker 1: transformer takes two years to be produced, shipped to this country,

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Speaker 1: put into place, we're screwed. A good report I read, well,

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Speaker 1: not a good report, an accurate report I read several

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Speaker 1: years back Doe Department of Energy pointed out that the

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Speaker 1: average component in our electrical system is about forty years old.

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Speaker 1: In other words, we're shipping our power to as our

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Speaker 1: electricity over a system that was basically from the nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventies nineteen eighties. That's whole technology. I think it's it's antiquated,

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Speaker 1: it's absolutely The only thing missing is let's go back

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Speaker 1: to copper wires. It just doesn't have the ability. It's

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Speaker 1: not robust, and as we're seeing now with crisis regarding

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Speaker 1: fuel and other things, we're just barely able to produce

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Speaker 1: enough electricity to keep the system going. Rolling blackouts are

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Speaker 1: going to become a real thing. We already are in

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Speaker 1: some parts of the country. Well, if we're that close

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Speaker 1: to the edge, just takes a little bit more to

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Speaker 1: disrupt the entire system. What did you see to make

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Speaker 1: you write one second? After years ago? The Twilight Zone?

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Speaker 1: By the way, do you remember the Twilight Zone episode? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the monsters are due on Maple Street. I think it

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Speaker 1: was were the aliens just simply turn electricity on and

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Speaker 1: off on and off into community and within a half

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Speaker 1: hour people are going crazy. But seriously, when I was

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Speaker 1: in graduate school and studying military history, I had a

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Speaker 1: really good court on current military thinking and such, and

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Speaker 1: EMP came up as a preemptive first strike capability, meaning

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Speaker 1: it could be launched preemptively by a third rate power

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Speaker 1: and cripple the opponent in the opening move. Who's the

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Speaker 1: major player for that? North Korea. Listen to more Coast

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Speaker 1: to Coast AM every weeknight at one am Eastern, and

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Speaker 1: go to Coast to Coast am dot com for more