While some in the Texsa Legislature are discussing bathrooms and marijuana, a State Senate committee is taking time out to plan for Armageddon, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
The committee is discussing a measure that would call on the state to conduct a study of how to harden the state's power grid to protect against the dangers of an Electromagnetic Pulse attack, which scientists like Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy called the single most pressing issue before the Legislature this session.
"Your grid is vulnerable to physic attack in the form on sabatoge, to cyber attack, to electromagnetic pulse attack, or through solar storms," Gaffney told the committee.
He said Texas is particularly vulnerable because the state is its own power grid, and does not share a grid with the rest of the country.
An Electromagnetic Pulse, (EMP) is an electrical version of the familiar Denial of Service attacks which frequently bring down major computer networks. It involves a nuclear explosion or other major electricity producing entity, detonated in the atmosphere, which short circuits the entire electrical grid. That would bring down civilization as we know it, bringing Texas back to the Fourteenth Century.
"This is a nation-ending problem," Gaffney said.
He said an EMP could be caused by any number of factors, or could even be caused accidentally.
"The costs will be in the millions of citizens lives, and the economy of this state would be profoundly and permanently affected," he said.