The recent temporary blackout in Washington that afflicted the White House, the Congress and interrupted a State Department press conference rightly provoked a spate of media commentary about the vulnerability of the electric grid to terrorist attack. The blackout reportedly was caused by a small explosion resulting from a malfunction in a transformer substation.

Nonetheless, the White House and Congress should regard the blackout as a wake-up call, a reminder that a protracted blackout can indeed be inflicted on the national electric grid by terrorists or rogue states ― with catastrophic consequences for society. A nationwide blackout lasting months or years could be inflicted by physical sabotage, cyberattack, or worst of all, by electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from the high-altitude detonation of a nuclear weapon or from a geomagnetic super storm caused by the sun.

The likelihood of a nuclear EMP attack is unknown but increasing with the proliferation of technology for missiles and nuclear weapons. NASA in a July 2014 report warned that earth narrowly missed a geomagnetic super storm in 2012. NASA estimates that the probability of a super geo-storm is 12 percent per decade, which virtually guarantees that the world will encounter a catastrophic natural EMP event within our lifetimes or that of our children.

Yet the White House and the Congress have done nothing to protect the electric grid from a long-term blackout that, according to the EMP Commission, could kill up to nine in 10 Americans by starvation and societal collapse.

While the White House and Congress play politics, the bad guys are getting ready to wage against us what can be described as a blackout war. The EMP Commission found the military doctrines of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran describe a revolutionary new kind of warfare that would use cyberattacks and physical sabotage, combined and coordinated with EMP attack, to black out the national electric grid and crash the other critical infrastructures ― communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water. Thus, high-tech armies and navies would be rendered obsolete.

For the first time in history, failed states such as Iran or North Korea, or terrorists could use a blackout war to destroy the most successful societies on earth.

April 16 marks the second anniversary of North Korea apparently practicing a nuclear EMP attack by orbiting a satellite over the United States on an optimum trajectory to avoid our national missile defenses and put a EMP field over Washington and New York.