EDITORIAL: Trying to make an ‘EMPact’ in the Falls

Editorials

September 8, 2009

Staff Reports The Niagara Gazette Tue Sep 08, 2009, 06:11 PM EDT

It sounds like something straight out of a movie — a science fiction movie, really.

A terrorist attack on the U.S. involving a nuclear bomb detonated in the sky above us with the resulting electromagnetic pulse (EMP) shutting down all electronic devices.

It certainly is a frightening scenario, but could it really happen?

Henry Schwartz thinks so. An Air Force veteran, who worked in a unit that controlled nuclear-tipped missiles, Schwartz says he knows about what an EMP event could mean.

“Once the grid goes down, nothing will function,” he said. “There’ll be no food, no water, no heat.”

The current chairman of Elma-based Steuben Foods and Elmhurst Dairy is now actively educating anyone who’ll listen.

And starting today he’ll have a big audience here in the Falls.

Today and Thursday, Schwartz will gather some 600 people at Conference Center Niagara Falls, including scientists, members of Congress, terrorism experts and even former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, to draw attention and bring on action to what he views as the EMP threat.

If former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is any indication, the threat is real.

“I’ve believed for a long time that EMP may be the greatest strategic threat we face,” Gingrich says in the message. “Without adequate preparation its impact could be so horrifying that we would, in fact, basically lose our civilization in a matter of seconds.”

If you have time, today or Thursday stop by and hear what they have to say.

It may not be as far-fetched as it seems.

How many of you out there thought it was a realistic possibility that terrorists could fly planes into prominent U.S. buildings before Sept. 11, 2001?

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