How is this for over hyped?

I found some emails in my outbox that I guess didn’t generate any responses, but I still think they are interesting so will post them here…

I came across a site that talked about the various ways our civilization could come to an end (gamma ray burst, plague, evil robots, etc.) and found one listed as “Electromagnetic pulse”.  Having read about it quite a bit and knowing what is involved, I was quite shocked to read that the authors apparently had documentation that as much as 90% of the population in the US would be dead within a year of an EMP (as it is termed) pulse if at the appropriate altitude (300 miles for those of you keeping stats).  Since all an EMP does is fry electronics I was having a hard time finding any way it could cause human casualties on such scale (it is easy to imagine people dying in car accidents when the electronics gets fried, but that hardly could amount to 9 in 10).  So I rooted around a bit (didn’t feel like reading the actual report here: http://www.empcommission.org/index.php, let me know if you do and find where they talk about this) and found a wee bit here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2506183/posts:

‘”Within a year of that attack, nine out of 10 Americans would be dead, because we can’t support a population of the present size in urban centers and the like without electricity,” said Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy. “And that is exactly what I believe the Iranians are working towards.” ‘

As a side note, notice how major Iran factors into this?

So the presumption by these geniuses is that people are going to sit in the core of cities that lack electricity and starve to death because they are too damn stupid to get up off their ass and walk a few hours to get outside of the city.  Now, if the nation’s infrastructure is totally destroyed, as they feel is a finger snap away, then ultimately bad things are going to happen and undoubtedly there will be mass casualties, looting, anarchy, etc., etc., but I figure that the ratio is backwards and ‘only’ 10% would die, most of the remaining 90% would just be incredibly unhappy and probably many would wish they had died.  Of course, this total calamity presupposes that it is impossible to get any sort of electricity going again with THE ENTIRE NATION WORKING ON IT AS ITS SINGLE FOCUS.  How is it that the Iranians are so damn smart and we are so damn dumb?  Wait, we are that dumb, but perhaps the Iranians aren’t that smart.

Anyway, this is prime stuff for feeding the sheeple and felt you might find a wee bit of amusement reading it…

Author: Tfoui

He who spews forth data that could be construed as information...