If you are having trouble coping with the Mayan apocalypse no-show, relax. We face a genuine threat of staggering proportions, namely an Electro-Magnetic Pulse or EMP.
An EMP would take out the electric grid, our food distribution network, banking, possibly even cars. Most people realize the harm computer viruses can do to one bank or power plant. But a major EMP burst wouldn't just force us to reboot everything. It would require physical repair of hundreds of vital installations.
It could even happen naturally. The sun buffets Earth constantly with charged particles, but this "solar wind" varies greatly in intensity. And while it has damaged satellites and messed up radio signals recently, and a geomagnetic storm took down Quebec's electric grid in 1989, even the solar storm that blacked out radio throughout the U.S. in 1958 was not, scientist believe, nearly as potent as 1859's "Carrington Event". Anything on that scale would devastate today's chip-dependent world.
He has almost 30 years of federal service in the U.S. Defense Department and as a specialized trainer for border guards and Special Forces in select countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia.
While with the Department of Defense, he was director of technology security operations as head of a 10-person team involved in halting the diversion of militarily critical technologies to countries of national security involved in sponsoring terrorism.
His office was the liaison to the intelligence and enforcement community within the Office of the Secretary of Defense
Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States, he was detailed back to report directly to the undersecretary of defense for policy to prepare analysis of worldwide terrorist networks, determine their linkages worldwide and their relationship to state sponsors.
