"It was procrastination, I know . . . "

Well, it has been more than a day or two. Anyone (thanks, Irish) who read my last post who checked back for a couple of days is probably saying, "Yeah, right. Wrote one post and it'll be another eleven months before we see anything else." Can't blame you - all two or three of you, if that.

Anyone who has been paying any attention to world events knows that Lil' Kimmie of North Korea has been threatening to use one or more of his nukes on us here in America. The feeling is that, if he is at all smart - or is willing to take good advice from his advisors - he would use one or two EMP or "Super-EMP" weapons instead of wasting ammo targeting cities.

Let me digress here for a moment. It has occurred to me, as it must have to others who are brighter than I, that so far, other than a plane into the Pentagon, no one has targeted Washington D.C. That's not to say that Russia doesn't have one or two MIRVs or Tsar bombs with D.C.'s name on it, but consider this: don't you think there are people in power, or their advisors, in other countries who have considered hitting D.C. with either a nuke or a dirty bomb, or terrorism on a massive scale, much bigger than Mumbai?

I believe that anyone who is the least bit intelligent would do their damnedest to see that D.C. remains intact. Think about it, folks. What would the result be to the rest of the country if D.C. was destroyed, and we were fortunate enough that Congress was in session, the President (no, I don't wish Trump or Melania were there, especially Melania - not because she is beautiful, but because I get the impression she is a truly nice and decent person), Vice-President, Speaker of the House (damn, could you imagine Ryan as President without throwing up?), President Pro-Tempore of the Senate (Orin Hatch), the Secretary of State (Tillerson, another vomit-inducer), Secretary of the Treasury (Mnuchin - I don't have a read on him), Secretary of Defense (Mattis - a possibly decent result), or the Attorney General (Sessions would have to recuse himself again ;-) were all there, and no one was left alive to take over?

If all of the states were spared, and only D.C. was destroyed, what would be the damage to the states? How would it interfere with normal, everyday business, life for the rest of us? Wiping out D.C. would be a blessing to the rest of the country - except the progressives, who love being able to force others to do what they want them to do.

D.C. doesn't make anything - other than laws and regulations, which _aren't_ useful, usually are damaging. They don't do anything useful to the rest of us. The EPA is no help. The FDA usually interferes with the production and availability of new meds - and yet has approved medications which have later been determined to be harmful. DOJ - nyet. DOE - nope. IRS - give me a break. Do you see where I am going with this?

Oh, I imagine someone will come up with an agency or section of government which would inconvenience us by its loss, but certainly not seriously impede our daily lives, or the businesses that we need to keep our economy going smoothly. Probably everything would run much _more_ smoothly without the roadblocks, the thousands of regulations, the controlling and damaging legislation that spews forth from D.C. like bloody pus from a lanced boil.

Even the loss of the Pentagon would likely be a plus for us, although I imagine there might still be one or two warriors (out of the thousands who "work" there) forced to "do time" there who we would miss, along with some innocent civilian staffers.

So, anyone wishing us harm _might_ be smart enough to avoid hurting D.C. in the slightest way.

BUT - since an EMP event over the East Coast would cause the shutting down of our financial centers, Wall Street, etc. and the entire eastern seaboard along with much of the Midwest (we won't miss Chicago or Detroit), it could throw the economy into a tailspin. The loss of D.C. along with the rest wouldn't help us. The - what, about 200 million? - people who would die if all commerce shut down, food stopped being delivered, EBT cards didn't work throughout the country (do states fund any of those, or are they all federal? I should know, but I don't) might impact the rest of the country, even if their electricity could be restored when the Eastern/Midwestern grid was destroyed.

There would certainly be a mass exodus of people from the cities and suburbs, hell everywhere there was no power. No way to exchange money for food - even with real currency, let alone digital sources  like banks/ATMs/etc. Folks who own physical silver and gold might be able to buy the necessities they desire, but not for long. Gangs, welfare families, even the otherwise normal and law-abiding would end up looting, stripping stores empty. Don't you think _you_ would, to feed your children? The moderately intelligent would hit the food stores first, then go on to the rest. Some might be smart enough to acquire enough fuel that they could get out of the affected areas (if any of the country remained intact, thanks to local coal/gas/hydroelectric power plants, etc.)

Can you imagine watching the usual suspects running into Best Buy and running out with huge flat screen TVs? TVs that won't work because there is no power? It would happen, I guarantee you. Some, because they are incapable of logic, but some in the expectation that their sugar-daddy, Uncle Sam, would be restoring power in a few days.

I don't know about the rest of the country, but here in the Northwest there are coal power stations that sit on their own coal mines, and enough coal mining elsewhere available to provide power to quite a few other power plants. Although there would probably be some disruption due to being connected to the national power grid, - if we were not also hit with an EMP device (high altitude burst from a missile, or from one of NKs satellites) - I believe that local power companies would be able to repair whatever damage might occur from that connection, and continue to power most of their current area of responsibility. I could be wrong about that, but I don't think so.

Now, in the aftermath of such an event, with the East and possibly also the Midwest having lost all power, plus many vehicles including semi-trucks used for moving absolutely essential commodities such as food and fuel, put out of commission, the Southwest, West Coast, and the Northwest would face the issue of those who survived and fled from the affected areas. That would probably include inner-city gangs, MS-13, and other undesirables. It would require the National Guard, as well as state and local law enforcement to deal with that. They would also have to deal with the loss of necessary fuels that they might have normally acquired from the damaged zones. I'm sure there are many commodities that would become unavailable, or be in short supply.

However, there are a quite a few refineries that might still be able to operate. There are six in Wyoming, five in Washington State, five in Utah, four in Montana, two in New Mexico, and one each in North Dakota and in Colorado. There are a bunch in California, but they would likely refuse to assist any other states. They might even secede in such a scenario (good riddance). Texas probably would still be up and running if the western half of the country remained viable, and they have a _bunch_ of refineries (at least twenty three), with a huge capacity.

Bottom line? The dictatorship of "Democratic" North Korea might well be crazy enough to pop a Super-EMP over part - or all - of America. China is wily enough to consider doing so in a way that would implicate North Korea. So, as the man said in "Under Siege", "The threat is real. I repeat, the threat is real."

The full text of the paper on Unrestricted Warfare is available here: https://fas.org/nuke/guide/china/doctrine/unresw1.htm