Boston Dynamics.

[Argent 88]

A lot of countries are working on this, it's like a space race. Who will become the first?

[Bob Riebe]

And when one of these goes off they will be lying on the ground like cadavers.

Non-Nuclear EMP: Automating the Military May Prove a Real Threat

Real EMP Weapons
In reality, the existence of Goldeneye-like pulse weapons first became a fact in the early 1960s. While testing hydrogen bombs in outer space, hundreds of miles above the planet, American and Soviet scientists discovered that each atomic blast created a pulse of electromagnetic energy similar to conventional radio-made microwaves, but with energy so great that they erased magnetic memories and melted the microscopic junctions in transistors on the Earth below. These were veritable tidal waves of energy, sufficient to cripple sensitive microelectronics but too weak to be seen, heard, or felt by human beings.1 During one U.S. test, in July 1962, a hydrogen bomb was detonated approximately 650 miles in space, roughly where today's space shuttles orbit. Simultaneously, 2100 miles to the northeast, street lights went dark and burglar alarms began ringing on the Hawaiian islands. The reason was an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) produced by the blast.2
Due to this reaction, in 1963 the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty to counter the considerable threat posed by EMPs. Since then, that threat has grown at a fantastic rate, fueled by the rapid progress made in compacting ever more EMP-sensitive transistors onto the computer chips upon which modern electronics rely.3 Can you imagine your neighbor being able to go down to the local radio parts store, buy a hand-held EMP weapon, and use it to wipe out your household electronics? All because he is angry at you.
According to a declassified U.S. military report, the explosion of a bomb about one megaton in size (the exact size remains classified) eight hundred miles over Omaha, Nebraska, would shower the continental United States, southern Canada, and northern Mexico with an EMP capable of disabling virtually every computerized circuit in its path. Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, succinctly described the damaging consequences of such an EMP attack in 1982, when he wrote in an obscure engineering journal
Today there is almost universal dependence on electronic computers. They are used by first-graders as well as research engineers. Industry, communications, financial records, are all at stake here. In the event of heavy EMP radiation, I suspect it would be easier to enumerate the apparatus that would continue to function than the apparatus that would stop.4
Are you now beginning to reconsider that purchase of the latest superhot mini-tower PC? Relax. It is unlikely that a nuclear blast will occur in space any time soon. The Outer-Space Treaty of 1967, since ratified by the members of the United Nations, explicitly states that treaty partners not place any objects carrying nuclear weapons in Earth's orbit great idea, in principle. The trouble is, the treaty does not oblige any nation to allow others to inspect the cargo they send into space.5 So, if Iraq obtained nuclear weapons and was capable of launching them into a space orbit around the Earth for detonation over the United States (in revenge of Operation DESERT STORM), you could kiss your fancy E-mail system goodbye...

...This knowledge has set off a new arms race. Whether fitted into cruise missiles or parked at the side of the road in a van, non-nuclear EMP weapons have the potential to devastate the electronic systems of areas as large as a city or as small as a selected building, all without being seen, heard, or felt by a single soul.8 It is a dream come true for any and all terrorists, to include Saddam Hussein himself!
Sound far-fetched? It did not in 1993 to the owners of automobiles parked about 300 meters from a U.S. Defense Contractor's EMP generator test site at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Their alternators and electronic engine controls were accidentally fried by a pulse during classified field trials.9 .

https://fas.org/irp/agency/army/mipb/1997-1/merkle.htm

I rank these in the same category as goin to Mars.

[Argent 88]

Good one Bob. And very informative.

[Casull]

"in 1982, when he wrote in an obscure engineering journal
Today there is almost universal dependence on electronic computers. They are used by first-graders as well as research engineers."



Pretty sure there were NO first-graders using computers in 1982.

[geezerbiker]

On the other hand we are over due for another Carrington Event.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event

If god decides were not using the knowledge he gave us wisely, he could simply remind us in a way that cannot be missed...

Tony