E-Bomb Awareness Day: Grab Your Tinfoil Hat

Imagine a day on which all members of Congress had their BlackBerries simultaneously switched off -- and then had to go without lunch. Well, that's idea behind "EMP Recognition Day," an idea being cooked up by our friends at the Heritage Foundation. Electromagnetic pulse weapons -- what our own Sharon Weinberger dubbed "the boogeyman bomb" -- are the favorite doomsday scenario for national-security scaremongers. In theory, an EMP attack -- triggered by the high-altitude detonation of a nuclear device -- would short circuit electronics, resulting in a devastating electronic first strike. "If, just for one day, Congress simulated even a fraction of the impact such an attack would have, the scope of the danger would be clear," argue Jena McNeill and James Carafano.