By JAMES FINK
Business First

Trying not to sound like a fearmonger or something out of Ian Fleming or Tom Clancy novel, Steuben Foods chairman and founder Henry Schwartz has started a grassroots group aimed at warning and educating Americans about what he considers to be serious threats against national security.

Schwartz founded Empact America Inc., a nonprofit organization whose mission is to lobby federal support for funding protections and safeguards against damages from electromagnetic pulses - or EMPs, for short.

EMPs are a burst of energy, typically from a manmade source like a nuclear warhead, that can wipe out everything from municipal water, power and sewer systems to cell phones, laptop computers and iPods.

Schwartz warns that threats from such countries as Iran and North Korea should warrant more concern about fallout damage from EMPs.

Empact America is hosting a three-day conference on the EMP threat and damage, beginning Sept. 8 at the Conference Center Niagara Falls.

"Because America is not prepared, this would not be a temporary outage," Schwartz said Tuesday. "It would take years to get things back to normal, and during that America would have unprecedented suffering."

Schwartz said he first learned of the EMP threat during a conference he attended in January. He learned of a 2001 Congressional commission that warned of the potential fallout from such an attack.

A bomb could be exploded as much as 200 miles above the earth's surface, and a vast area would be impacted.

Schwartz said he hopes local residents will respond to these concerns.

"We need the citizens of Western New York to become the minutemen of our age," Schwartz said. "Democracies usually don't move until they are attacked. We're vulnerable right now."