Earlier this year, I read with horror Annie Jacobsen’s book, “Nuclear War”. Jacobsen, an investigative journalist, tracks a scenario of a nuclear missile launch against the United States: minute by minute, second by second.
The world as we know it ends within 92 minutes.
There is an inescapable procedural logic from the detection of a launch (between 1-3 seconds after launch) to the response, counter response, counter counter response…. It is a sobering account, and one cannot help but wonder how such an incredibly stupid and self-destructive species has managed to survive as long as it has.
Jacobsen’s speculation did get me thinking about different “what if” scenarios. She imagines that the target of a nuclear strike will be another nuclear power and, probably because she is herself an American, casts the US in the role of the victim. It struck me, however, that proxy wars and barely, plausibly deniable attacks between states are the current modus bellandi. A direct military confrontation between two superpowers carries a significant risk of nuclear annihilation. Instead, they manage the tensions and release pressure through grey- and proxy-wars.
Jacobsen’s account of a nuclear electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) weapon in space also got me thinking about how one exploits the power of nuclear weapons with significantly reduced risks of starting the 92-minute nuclear countdown from kids playing in the park and couples doing grocery shopping to the end of humanity.
Here’s my short speculative account, with thanks to various AIs for their extraordinarily frank preparedness to engage in weapon-design scenarios.
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On 8 August 2023, a Long March 2C rocket launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi. According to the manifest, the payload included a 170kg satellite from Meteo Analytics equipped with multispectral optical cameras (visible, near-infrared, and short-wave infrared capture) for flood delineation, fire scars, windfall damage, and snowpack analysis.
Meteo Analytics was registered in the Isle of Man on 19 July 2023. According to the company papers, it offered real-time risk information to the insurance industry. “Seeing the risks you can’t” was its tagline. Meteo was a subsidiary of a company based in Singapore, which was in turn a subsidiary of a company based in the UAE that was owned by a Sri Lankan national who didn’t exist.
The launch was a success. Approximately 15 minutes after launch, the satellite Meteo-1 settled into a sun-synchronous polar orbit 700km above the Earth’s surface. Traveling at 27,000km per hour, pole to pole, it covered nearly every point on the planet multiple times every day.
The ground crew started the de-tumbling process—small burns that would stabilise the satellite’s cameras on the Earth’s surface. The process usually takes between 24 and 72 hours. Everything seemed to be going well until the ground station lost contact with Meteo-1. Two weeks later it was declared space junk, gently tumbling above the earth. Meteo Analytics declared bankruptcy a fortnight later.
On 20 May 2024 another Long March rocket launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi. The rocket was one meter shorter than the Long March 2D. Again, there was an imaging satellite to be placed into a sun-synchronous polar orbit 700km above the Earth’s surface. This time the company specialised in geological resource mapping, and the ground station lost contact with GeoRes-1 soon after launch. It joined its sister in a slow, space-junk tumble above the earth and Global Resource Imaging filed for bankruptcy.
* * *
Nuclear powers do not want to go to war with each other. The risk of mutually assured destruction (MAD) means that they play out their conflicts in proxy wars. To avoid being the host country for a nuclear power’s proxy war, one needs a defence treaty with another nuclear power. The deterrence works because if one nuclear power were to attack a treaty partner, they would risk a war with the other nuclear power itself.
If, however, a nuclear power could attack a treaty partner in a devastating but indirect way, the other nuclear power would be placed in a much more ambiguous position. Furthermore, if the other nuclear power did not provide a full military response, the value of their treaty shield would be pierced—for all countries in treaty arrangements with it.
If you are not prepared to defend your treaty partner over there, how can I trust that you would protect me here? Global alliances would fracture further.
* * *
February 3, 2026 was a typically hot summer’s day in Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney. In all the cities, the daytime temperature had been well above 30 degrees, barely dropping below 25 over night. The School holidays were over; business was falling back into a 9-5 routine. There were sporadic bush fires but it was not as bad as it had been in recent years.
At 7.30 am Australian Eastern Summer Time, a narrow band encrypted communication was focused on the tumbling piece of space junk, formerly known as Meteo-1. The onboard computers winked into life.
Meteo-1 began a descent from 700 to 300 km above the Earth’s surface. By the time it came over the southern polar cap for the last time, it had maneuvered into a position on a latitude South of Sydney, over international waters in the Tasman Sea.
The detection of the satellite’s change in telemetry was almost instantaneous, but the reaction was slow. Australia’s security architecture deliberately routes existential military decisions up a tight chain of command—from intelligence and defense advisers through ministers to the Prime Minister and National Security Committee—so that confirmation, legal advice and allied consultation must be assembled before any action is taken. That human and institutional pipeline routinely stretches minutes into hours, transforming a narrowly timed tactical surprise into a period of strategic ambiguity during which the country must rely first on civil emergency responses and resilience rather than an immediate military response. Was a satellite descending over international waters in the Tasman sea a military threat?
At 10am the nuclear device on Meteo-1 detonated. This was not a standard nuclear weapon. Everything about it was designed to maximise the electro-magnetic pulse (EMP), not the blast. It had a plutonium-239 core (with a deuterium-tritium boost) surrounded by a lithium-6 deuteride fusion candle that ignited on the detonation of the plutonium. All this was wrapped in a uranium-238 jacket that doubled as both a concentrator and last-minute fission fuel. The effect was a 250kt EMP aimed at destroying all unshielded electrical and electronic equipment between Melbourne and Brisbane—a 1,400km crow-flight under which more than 50% of the Australian population lived.
There was no blast to see. No bang. No flash. Electrical things just stopped working.
About 10% of cars on the road stalled immediately. Most would restart, but about 1% would be left clogging up the roads and causing traffic snarls. There were some immediate injuries and deaths.
The power grid failed. Hospital and emergency services with backup diesel generators quickly came back to life. Unless the emergency services radios were EMP hardened, which most were not, they died. Reserve batteries in mobile phone towers kept some of the network alive (for 8 hours). About 50% of smartphones failed permanently—the rest were never recharged. Fifty percent of the 4G and 5G network failed, as did terrestrial radio. Water pumping stations relying on electricity failed as did the sewerage pumping stations. All commercial and domestic refrigeration without a backup generator stopped. All air-conditioning stopped. Petrol stations could no longer pump fuel.
On that day, they were expecting a high of 38 degrees in Melbourne.
In the first 24 hours after the lights went out, communities rallied. This was just an enormous power blackout, and an opportunity to gather on the streets under candle- and torch-light. The stars were clearer than they had been in decades. Many people came to each others’ aid. Some didn’t. In the darkness, sporadic looting had already started. A curfew was imposed. If you lived on the 9th floor of an apartment block, you had to climb the stairs. If you had physical mobility issues, communication issues, or cognitive impairment, the challenges were compounded.
Cash was king and debit and credit cards were just pieces of plastic.
Rumours swirled. This was the only consistent form of communication. Cars with megaphones made announcements. Stay calm. Preserve water. Reserve transformers and communications equipment were being pulled out of warehouses and deployed. In 48 hours, things would be better.
The next day was 38.5 degrees in Melbourne.
On 5 February, 2026—48 hours later—the replacement equipment was being moved into place.
At 1.30 pm a narrow band encrypted communication was focused on the tumbling piece of space junk, formerly known as GeoRes-1. The onboard computers winked into life.
GeoRes-1 began a descent from 700 to 300 km above the earth’s surface and detonated off the Australian Eastern sea board. The replacement transformers and communications equipment were fried where they sat, waiting to be connected.
The next day was 40 degrees.
* * *
Within hours of the first EMP, the source of the plutonium was known with a reasonable degree of certainty. It was from the Nuclear Fuel Component Plant (Plant 812) in Yibin, Sichuan.
A plutonium source is determined by the isotopic fingerprint of each reactor. The fingerprint of Plant 812 was not known definitively, because China does not reveal the information. But it could be inferred from atmospheric isotopes following nuclear tests conducted between the mid-1960s and the mid-1990s.
China denied it. It argued that another fast-breeder reactor may be in North Korea, Pakistan or Russia, was the source. Isotopic fingerprinting is not as clean as one might hope. Corruption and loss of nuclear material are also problems.
The Australian Prime Minister wanted to know what the US response would be. The US President offered thoughts and prayers.
International aid began to move towards Australia. China was one of the first countries to offer it. The world, however, has never had 13 million people simultaneously affected in this way in a Western country. It is a humanitarian disaster. And Australia was a very long way away.
* * *
In the White House the conversation quickly turned to the appropriate response.
Everything was on the table. But the US was not going to risk Los Angeles or New York because of an attack on Melbourne. That was the path to MADness.
They settled on sanctions and outrage.
China demurred.
Any proposals put before the United Nations Security Council was vetoed by China and Russia.
Investigations were proposed. China fully supported the idea, but China would conduct all internal investigations. North Korea was silent. Russia suggested that it was a US false flag operation. Pakistan denied all involvement.
* * *
Months later, after the satellite telemetry had been analysed, the EMP devices were definitively tied to Meteo-1 and GeoRes-1. It was also established that they were both launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi.
China immediately launched a high-profile investigation. They assured the world that if there was any wrongdoing, any corruption, it would be found,. People would be punished. The Director of the launch facility was arrested and disappeared. In a video confession, a rather bruised Director admitted that he took bribes from non-state actors to accept the payload and falsify the manifest.
The US launched an investigation of the commercial entities Meteo Analytics and Global Resource Imaging. Meteo’s Sri Lankan director stayed lost, and Global Resource Imaging’s Mexican Director was no less elusive.
China published their final report. The nuclear material did not originate in China. The isotopic fingerprint definitively pointed to another, as yet unidentified, source. Due diligence of Meteo Analytics and Global Resource Imaging was conducted, and both companies appeared legitimate at the time of their satellite launches. However, China was tightening processes and procedures for commercial entities using Chinese launch facilities. The Director of the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center along with 5 other members of staff, including a payload technician were executed for their crimes.
China continued to offer support to Australia, including preferential loans to rebuild the energy infrastructure.
Over the following few months, a global scramble began. Every country wanted to harden their infrastructure against an EMP attack. Copper prices skyrocketed. A manufacturing boom started for Faraday cages and EMP-resistant transformers. The world’s largest manufacturer (China) stepped into the breach, helping out where it could, prioritising friendly partners.
America’s allies drifted away, seeking security in smaller groups with shared agendas. Every country would watch and ask, if the US would not act for Australia, then for whom?
* * *
In the first few months after the “EMP event”, there were tens of thousands of deaths. The sick, the elderly and the vulnerable died first. Health and social care infrastructure failed. Life saving drugs and procedures vanished into scarcity. As the year progressed, the effects of winter, crowding, the loss of routine vaccination, disappearing maternal and child health services, lack of food and water, and failed sewerage infrastructure saw deaths climb into the hundreds of thousands. Australia, as a functioning polity, was fracturing.
America had made the rational choice. Sanctions, outrage, investigations—but not war. Global annihilation for Melbourne was not, and should not, be a part of the playbook. And every treaty partner in the world watched and understood. Deterrence works only when the threat is credible—and that actually puts treaty allies on the periphery of rational action. China found the gap between devastating and unacceptable, and because of its position as the global manufacturer of EMP-hardened infrastructure and renewable energy, it controlled both the weapon and the remedy.
Taiwan recalculated. Japan quietly revisited constitutional constraints on offensive capabilities. South Korea explored independent deterrence options. The smaller nations—those on the periphery of peripheral alliances—sought alternatives. The post-1945 alliance architecture didn’t collapse in a day. It fractured precisely along the lines China had mapped: not with a bang (MAD!), but with the quiet logic of rational self-interest.
Jacobsen’s 92-minute countdown was terrifying because it was inevitable. In this speculative piece, China found something worse—a form of warfare that was rationally inevitable, with no automatic tripwires to prevent it. But it is speculative, and China is used as a “straw man argument”. Our global interconnectivity, levels of urbanisation, and reliance on modern technology create enormous strategic vulnerabilities that state and non-state actors can exploit by seeing between the cracks.
