Today, such an event could do a lot more damage because of the widespread use of semiconductors. Protecting solid-state equipment is apparently no easy task.

That said, using the possible EMP danger as a reason to attack North Korea or Iran is a bit much.

Either country would have to have a lot more engineering sophistication and resources than it has now. An attacker would need to develop a weapon of sufficient power. The Starfish test used a 1.44-megaton W49 thermonuclear device (a fusion/hydrogen bomb), which is harder to make than a fission weapon. Then they would have to miniaturize it enough to fit on a missile–no easy task in itself (W49s weighed over 1600 pounds, while early US H-bombs weighed 40,000 pounds or more). Finally, they’d need to get the warhead to detonate at the right altitude in space over the central US. In the 1962 test series, four of the five test shots leading up to Starfish failed to go off at all. The North Koreans or Iranians would only get one shot, too–they couldn’t test it the way we did.

So would either country want to go to that level of trouble to insure an annihilting counterstrike? I doubt it. They want to develop nuclear weapons because they fear that we will otherwise use such weapons against them. In short, their rationale is neither more (nor less) evil/irrational than ours was at the height of the Cold War.

Thank you for your answers. They are always thought provoking.

For hours…possibly even days.. think about that