From Slate magazine ….
Here’s a sampling:
1. Electromagnetic Pulse: A nuclear weapon detonated at high elevation could knock out the country’s electrical infrastructure, sending us back to the Stone Age. The congressional EMP Commission says an electromagnetic pulse “is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences.”
2. Foreign Invasion: The Red Dawn scenario: A hostile alliance of foreign powers dispatches a team of elite combat troops to America. They launch a coordinated assault with thousands of paratroopers on key military and communications installations, dealing the U.S. government a fatal blow.
3. Russia Hits the Button: Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg says the United States should fear “a mistaken attack on our country by the huge Russian arsenal of nuclear weapons.” As recently as 1995, a “retaliatory” nuclear strike was barely averted when Russian officials figured out at the last second that what they thought was an enemy strike was really a craft launched to monitor the Northern lights.
4. Loose Nukes: Taliban fighters wrest nuclear weapons from a destabilized Pakistan. Or al-Qaida acquires a small arsenal of nukes from a disintegrating Russia. The nonstate actors launch against the United States in an attack exponentially worse than 9/11.
5. Dirty Bombs: Terror groups armed with “radiological dispersal devices”—a cocktail of radioactive material and garden-variety explosives—launch coordinated attacks in a dozen major cities. The attacks destabilize the government and break our spirit. The terrorists win.
6. Abandonment: After a series of devastating attacks, Washington admits it can no longer protect large swaths of the nation. The United States contracts to a smaller core that’s easier to defend.
7. Suicidal Tyrant: An Ahmadinejad-like figure strikes at the heart of the Great Satan, launching nuclear weapons at major American cities and pushing the country to anarchy.
8. Internal Guerrilla Warfare: Smugglers and street gangs join forces to contest the authority of the U.S. government—first along the Mexican border and later in pockets of major cities—in order to maintain control of lucrative illicit markets.
9. Mercenary Armies: As in the seventh season of 24, a military contractor goes rogue and attacks the United States. Not even Jack Bauer can save us.
10. Space Attacks: A coalition of malevolent nations with hyper-advanced space programs strikes at the United States from the outer limits, disrupting all of our communications and rendering our conventional Army powerless.
11. Information War: A rogue state, terror organization, or group of malevolent hackers takes down America’s infrastructure by infiltrating every system that’s controlled by computers: television stations, traffic signals, telecommunications, the stock market, the power grid. As seen in Live Free or Die Hard.
12. Push-Button Warfare: Nanoscale production allows anyone to make tanks and flying drones with the press of a button. With sophisticated weaponry available to all, the nation-state ceases to be an important entity.
13. Peak Oil: Petroleum production reaches terminal decline. Oil becomes too expensive to extract, and alternative energies can’t maintain our fossil-fuel-dependent lifestyle. The developed world goes kaput, with gas-happy America leading the way to the gutter.
14. Peak Water: The overpopulated, overheated Southwest runs out of H20, instigating mass migration to Canada.
15. Overpopulation: A spike in birth rates—or massive levels of immigration—increases the population of the United States to 1 billion. America doesn’t have the carrying capacity to support its new crush of citizens, and a die-off ensues.
For #16 to #144, go to the full article:
http://www.slate.com/id/2223285/sidebar/2223286/
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Thanks to Jim C for the lead.
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The Homa Files 
August 21, 2009 at 1:32 pm |
Who thinks about this stuff.
Once again, Slate can be summed up in one word: idiots.
August 21, 2009 at 3:02 pm |
About 10 months ago this kind of stuff was dismissed as the government trying to scare the American people into submission…