GDC 2011: EMP Expert Supports Realism of Homefront

[Baresark]

It's still not believable because the source is North Korea. More than likely if this were to occur, it would be the US that developed it (having the largest military budget in human history, with no plans to cut it, even if it would immensely help our economy now), or one of out allies.

Meh, we're talking the better part of two decades here. Major power shifts can come a lot quicker than that. A decade is a long time nowadays, and even if the US were the progenitors of a satellite EMP all it would take is one guy inside the wrong R&D lab with a usb and an iPhone, or something. Also remember that "North Korea", in this timeline is by the time of launch "The Greater Korean Republic" which has annexed large chunks of Asia, including China and Japan, so the resources for it could come from either of those. I think the E3 trailer [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5yyWZ2Z6Ps] painted a reasonably believable picture, overall. Good enough for fiction, certainly.

I agree, more than good enough for fiction. The previews on the story of this game have got quite a lot of critical acclaim. And I should have been more explicit, this isn't my first post by a long shot on this particular subject. The Greater Korean Public is literally impossible as it's staged in this game. But, I agree, one slip up and it's all over, haha. The good part about a weapon like that is if everyone has it, no one will risk using it.

 

[Lord Of Cyberia]

Reasonably believable? They're NORTH F-ING KOREA. Their army's weapons are laughable by the the standards of the USSR, circa World War II. No one trades with them. Their people are all starving to death. Their neighbors are all intensely patriotic and heavily armed and advanced. And they all hate North Korea.

If Homefront were realistic, it would be more like: "2013, Kim Jun Ung attacks South Korea. 2013.1, Kim Jun Ung gets his arse kicked by the combined forces of the U.S. border forces and the South Korean military."

 

[Ohlookit'sMatty]

Loving the new beard Russ

-M

 

[Smooth Operator]

Christ this guy creeps me out, I imagine he sleeps with a shotgun under his pillow.

 

[Jamous]

Well that turned out surprisingly dark. As fear-mongering as it is, the man -does- address the, probably very real, possibility. But then he goes talking about pre-emptive strike bullshit. You could just start setting up defences for that sort of thing, surely?

 

[cheywoodward]

I am not an expert on EMP's and I have no idea of whether Dr. Forstchen is correct or not in regards to the danger of an EMP attack and the effect an EMP attack would have on America. However, as relatively politically knowledgeable person, I think that it is ridiculous to start a campaign based around preparing the United States for a threat that may or may not exist while we have real problems like the War in Afghanistan, the recession and the rising Deficit. A nuclear strike on an American city would have a casualty rate far greater than the 90% Dr. Forstchen predicts would exist a year after an EMP strike mere hours after the nuclear missile hit said city. Preparing for a potential problem is all well and good when no real problems exist but the United States currently has more than enough real problems and far greater potential ones. Dr. Forstchen has a right to spout his fear-based rhetoric and he is right that North Korea could become a powerful nation in the near future just as Germany transformed itself from the weak and conflict ridden Weimar Republic into the Third Reich under the leadership of one mentally ill failed artist. However THQ shouldn't let him turn their game into a political statement just because he claims their version of the future is plausible. I don't care about the plausibility of the story of a game as much as I care about the political message it sends. I don't want my entertainment to be politicized, regardless of whether or not I agree with its message, unless the subject of the entertainment is politics.

I will still buy Homefront if it's critically well received but this video has made me worried, not about an EMP strike on America or the rise of North Korea, it has made me worried about the overt politicization of entertainment that is not based around politics.

 

[Woodsey]

Christ this guy creeps me out, I imagine he sleeps with a shotgun under his pillow.

And an anthology of Tom Clancy books, no doubt.

 

[Baresark]

I don't know how much the game goes into specifics, I've only really watched the trailer. So you have me on that one. I just wanted to point out that the entire point of making this sort of story as science fiction is that you have the freedom to construct a "What if" scenario that throws convention around a bit. "Korean Superpower" in 15 years I'll buy. I'm not particularly worried it'll happen, but I'll suspend my disbelief for a while. Again, I know very few specifics, but those are never right in this sort of story anyway.

snip

That's why I said reasonably believable as opposed to realistic. The ambition to take on the world is arguably in North Korea, at least. And as for the rest, well, that's where the fiction comes in to try to make a convincing narrative.

Besides, judging by the trailer I can't really see that the unification of Korea was by military conquest. If you make it vague enough you can fill the blanks with anything. It was done via the election of a Manchurian candidate! North Korea had outside funding in taking South Korea. There was a revolt! It was done via a lot of military contractors! Etc. Etc.

I'm with you on this. Whether it's possible or not will not determine how good or bad the game is. This game has been used by some to point at a "true North Korean threat". And they try to enhance the believability of it at the GDC. I think they are really only hurting themselves by doing this, the game has enough backing it that this all feels extraneous. I'm not arguing with you. The point of the video is to show enhanced believability. So it's no wonder arguments are breaking out all over the internet, haha.

You are also correct in saying the trailer doesn't explain enough to try and fight about the idea, haha. It simply states that South Korea was annexed into North Korea. Leaving lots of speculation to be filled in later.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

How are they going to fund these kinds of weapons when their crazy ass leader spends the entire GNP on lobsters? And how did N.K become such a major power (invading countries to increase their borders and supplies) without the world interveening? America has gone to war with nations over considerably less.

Is Homefront really some kind of shell propganda that the fear/warmongers decided to fund to get the anti-North Korea sentiment out to the larger masses?

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

IT *WILL* HAPPEN AND EVERYONE WILL DIE!

-_-'

That's some pretty intense sensationalism, there. Not to mention propaganda.
Fear-based politics are disgusting.
And while the game seems like it could have an interesting premise, this crap makes me not want to buy it.

he does have a point though.
Biological weapons were developed [if you consider launching dead victims into a town being "developed"]

fire based weapons were developed and used.

Nuclear weapons were developed, and they *were* used.

Laser weapons are in development, and they will eventually be used.

EMP's are already developed, and what better way to push the odds into a countries favor than by getting a............. preemptive [small][/small] strike against a bigger enemy?


And honestly, imagine what an EMP will affect in the US....

anything electronic, radio's, TV's, computers, vehicles to some extent, aircraft, phones, we will effectively be darkened, and because the average american panics at the slightest mishap, riots will break out until everything could be fixed.

By that time though we could already have an invasion landing on either coast.


The problem is that EMP's will be this generations Nuclear Weapons, and something actually needs to be done about it.

I refuse to live in a world where we are pushed back into 1950's-1970's nuclear weapon fears, and if that is fear-based politics, then we are officially screwed.



OT: always helps to have a noted person on the subject to stand up and say that your game is good. But in the end, what he says really wont matter if the game to us gamers sucks in the long run, which is what I am thinking Homefront will do.

I'll give you that.
Weapons, once created, do tend to get used.
However I see no rational reason why the U.S. would be the logical target. I mean, yes, it would wreak havoc on us, but our enemies generally *don't* have the kind of resources to develop such weaponry on a large scale.
And even if they managed something like this, we have submarines capable of extended deployment and nuclear strikes on a devastating level. If North Korea *did* attack the U.S. on a large scale with EMP, there would be no North Korea very shortly after.

And it would be a mistake to believe that an EMP strike would make the U.S. easy to invade. We're a huge country and a lot of us own guns.

I'm not trying to make this a big military d*** wag.
I'm just trying to say that this sort of fear-mongering is groundless.

North Korea would be the only one to use it because they're nuts. Terrorists would use it if they could, but they don't have the infrastructure to do so, as you pointed out. China and Russia are both part of the world economy, so WWIII just isn't going to happen unless something changes drastically, because we're all interdependent.

NK would use it because, like I said, they're completely off their rockers. But they would probably use it on Japan first, not us. And yes, you're right, if they did, there would be no North Korea shortly thereafter. Frankly, if China thought they were going to do something crazy, China would probably come in and genocide them just to keep the world stable. They don't have any compunction about such things, and the future seems to belong to them economically, so they really aren't going to want to jeopardize it. So I don't think we have to worry, we can just let China do our dirty work for us if NK gets uppidy. After all they're going to protect their trillion dollar investment (aka the United States).

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

I'm confused...

Are EMPs directly harmful to human life? IE: can they kill, regardless of what is going on around you?

 

[Frostbite3789]

Fear-based politics are disgusting.

So...all politics?

OT: It is a pretty interesting thought really. Suddenly having the power go out all over.

 

[Therumancer]

IT *WILL* HAPPEN AND EVERYONE WILL DIE!

-_-'

That's some pretty intense sensationalism, there. Not to mention propaganda.
Fear-based politics are disgusting.
And while the game seems like it could have an interesting premise, this crap makes me not want to buy it.

Well, as far as that part goes he's right to an extent. Truthfully the USA is not as assertive as it needs to be, in that we are allowing foreign space programs and such to go ahead unopposed, making it increasingly probable that nations like North Korea, China, and others are going to put things in space. We already have China using lasers to blind our spy satellites.

http://defensetech.org/2006/09/25/chinese-laser-vs-u-s-sats/

Do a search for "China, Satellite, Lasers" and you'll find a lot of stuff on this.

Simply put, one of the big problems with the USA right now is people with your sentiments not recognizing clear dangers that are present, because taking action to avert them raises uncomfortable questions given that it involves adjusting a lot of our morality to deal with the real world.

That said, the overall "Homefront" scenario is kind of implausible as it's presented there since it would require a lot of "OMG, stop the fear mongering, give peace a chance" sentiments to overrun common sense a lot more than we are currently seeing. Of course if things continue in such a left wing direction we might run into these kinds of problems, but 2024 is way too soon.

See, the issue with this scenario is that the US doesn't keep all of it's eggs in one basket so to speak. Even if someone took out the continental US, we have a massive amount of military forces located in places like Japan. Not to mention the naval prescence around Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Right now North Korea's big ambition is to be able to get into a position where it can fire missles into Hawaii and hopefully leverage us that way.

As things stand right now, the most North Korea could hope for would be MAD. Simply put if they DID EMP bomb the US, submarines (and we have the quietest and stealthiest ones in the world) would immediatly nuke the living bejeesus out of North Korea. Our subs are scattered all over the place and we float them around outside of enemy nations specifically for situations like this, that's one of the things about the US that terrifies people who realize how much our morality actually holds us back. However in a case like this where the US goes dark, chances are those subs are going to have standing orders to just flat out whack whatever targets they are assigned to. Of course then again, the US wouldn't go dark, or at least the military wouldn't. North Korea would find itself contending with the strongest navy in the world, and would probably never be able to get anything to the US for a conventional invashion.

We could go back and forth about this in a point / counter-point type situation, but the point is that this scenario is a joke. What's more given that things like NORAD and some of our other military bases are designed to survive nuclear strikes (which include EMP) a lot of people might die from the results, but the US certainly isn't going to suffer much of an invasion, and even if we did the way the mountain ranges are ser up accross the coasts the whole "Fortress Of America" is going to apply, and I very much doubt anyone would be able to penetrate into the middle of the country with any success.

The point here being that this guy hyping it up as "this could happen" might help promote the game, but it hardly says much about himself as a scholor. I also think he greatly overestimates the amount of damage EMP would do to the goverment infrastructure in the US. It would hurt civilians a lot more than the military who have kind of been getting ready for this kind of thing for decades. This is why we have all those stories about military complexs and silos hidden under corn fields and such, the idea being to shield them from things like EMP.

All told the best that could be said is that he's right about us needing to be a bit more aggressive, and to be careful to mitgate our "peace at any price" attitudes. Simply put, if we're stupid enough to let North Korea launch a satellite like that to begin with, we kind of deserve the results as far as they'd go. It's one of the reasons why we should be doing "tyranicall" things to keep a lot of other nations (like North Korea) out of space, even it it amounts to starting wars over it.


I personally think North Korea would have better luck by simply loading a bunch of missles with biological payloads onto the satellite and firing them into the US from orbit to be honest... assuming they could get into that position to begin with.

 

[Branches]

Dude, he wrote the absolute best Wing Commander Books back in the day. End Run, Fleet Action. It all played out like macho-right-wing bullshit, but they were still friggin awesome.

 

[The Random One]

I'm glad to see commenters think like me. My title for this piece of news would be 'Writer claims Homefront is totes possible, people remain unconvinced.'

I'm confused...

Are EMPs directly harmful to human life? IE: can they kill, regardless of what is going on around you?

What? No, EMPs are the opposite of that. They fry electronics, but other than that they wouldn't topple a brick. The 90% death rate he predicts comes out of the infrastructure collapse.

 

[socialtangent]

This is my take on the Homefront story. Is it plausible? Yes. Is it likely? Not at all.

And as for this guy claiming imminent catastrophe, it sounds like a lot of fear mongering to me. Sure, a large enough EMP strike would wreck all kinds of havoc, but who would fire it? In Homefront's scenario, North Korea is now large and powerful enough to launch a conventional land invasion, while America is suffering from major economic collapse, disease outbreak, and civil unrest.

If North Korea were to attempt such an attack today (assuming they can not only create an EMP device powerful enough to cause that kind of damage, can launch it into space without the rocket crashing over Japan, and missile defense systems not intercepting it), their asses would be grass in very short order. Whether it be from retaliatory missile strikes, invasion by American/South Korean forces, or perhaps both, they're looking at a textbook case of Mutually Assured Destruction.

Simply put, North Korea would be the only nation crazy enough to attempt an EMP attack on America, and not only do they not even have the ability to launch a satellite into orbit, I don't think even Kim Jong Il himself is that bonkers.

Edit: Also, I'm not inclined to call a guy who wrote a work of fiction about an EMP attack an "expert".

 

[razelas]

For people who are claiming that HF is a US nationalistic/patriotic work of propaganda, you should dig a little deeper. For example, after it became known that the US was EMPed by the GKR, race riots occurred against Korea-Americans and generally against anyone who looked Asian, a situation not unlike the days after 9/11 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Arabism#United_States]. Not exactly one of proudest moments in American history. In fact, one of the main characters in HF is a Korean-American with scars from the race riots on his face. Not to mention the videos of an American resistance cell and a San Fransisco suicide bomber in the style of conventional jihadists... but apparently the videos have been taken down...