In March of 1983, President Ronald Reagan announced a radical new plan to develop a missile defense system to protect the United States from ballistic strategic nuclear weapons. Dubbed “Star Wars” by the press, the plan called for the development of a broad spectrum of defensive weapons including ground and space missile systems, lasers and other energy weapons then on the cutting edge of scientific development. SDI suffered from Congressional budget cuts and marginal success in testing until it was terminated during the Clinton Administration.
Development of defensive weapons has continued nonetheless, as the science has evolved and the risks of not possessing them have grown. The growing threat presented by rogue nations like Iran and North Korea, pressing to develop nuclear weapons and the systems to deliver them globally has made anti-missile and anti-satellite weapons an imperative. Demonstrations against the location of THAAD anti-missile systems in South Korea center on two concerns: that the sites might then become targets, and fears of the very high energy levels of the system’s targeting radars.
Nonetheless, as the threat of nuclear missile attacks against the United States and its allies grow from rogue states like Korea and Iran, the research on defense weapons systems must still be continuing, if not as the leading edge of a massive, public federal initiative, then as “off the books” black technology operations like those depicted in the pages of “High Ground.”.
Electromagnetic radiation (EMR) now saturates the modern world and has already been weaponized. Today, those ensuring the safety of the president or visiting heads of state must protect them not only from assassins with handguns and rifles, but also weapons which can blind from a distance or damage the hearing or nervous systems of U.S. diplomats, even inside their embassies in Russia or Cuba.
An Electromagnetic Fog
In the past eighty years the average American’s exposure to EMR has grown exponentially. We are surrounded by and unseen fog of television broadcasts, police and fire communications, medical devices, security systems, commercial and military guidance and communications equipment, garage door openers, , wifi, bluetooth devices, tablet computers, remote control toys and smartphones, all generating EMR.
A small, but vocal percentage of the human population appears to suffer in the presence of these invisible waves of nonionizing radiation. Called “electromagnetic hypersensitives” they claim to feel heat or pain, hear buzzing sounds and suffer a range of maladies in the presence of EMR. In desperation, some have moved from distant parts of the country to relocate within the United States National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ), in rural West Virginia and Maryland. The NRQZ is an area of restricted electromagnetic radiation emissions around the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the Sugar Grove Naval Radio Station in West Virginia.
Is electromagnetic sensitivity real? It is to those who suffer from it. Science has yet to prove a link between EMR and their symptoms. There is no doubt the surge of electromagnetic radiation in our world is very real, however, and it has only just begun.
Richard Authier Lee 