I think the possibility of Nuclear Retaliation after a country wide EMP strike is not well thought out. Remember, the delivery of the weapons is very different path from delivery to strike Continental cities. Sure, we would detect launch, sure, we could see where they were coming from… but we would also see where they are going to — space. I think we could safely assume this wasn’t an accident, and that the launch would coincide with a diplomatic and PR fronts, which Putin is a master of.

So imagine this, Putin has been blocked from Crimea, Ukraine has been given provisional NATO membership and strong military backing, Gas ports and pipelines are opened in Europe, and Oil/gas prices plummet even more, with no way out.

Putin opens negotiations with the US for a broad slate of agreements, and during a high level summit in Europe, a large fire is detected at a nuclear facility somewhere deep in the forest. RT starts running stories of possible ISIS attack on a Dead Hand facility that was being taken offline. The head of Russia's Nuclear Missile forces comes on TV to say that there is only a minor risk as the system has been rendered inoperable by warhead safeguards and the fact that the missiles have had their targeting data removed. As he speaks live, a number of missiles salvo off, a few on short trajectories, a number on wild long range ones. The short ones land first in Russia, with no detonation. Medium trajectory landings occur in China and other populous countries — again no detonations. Missiles keep popping off but non detonate — showing the world that this is just an embarrassing incident that doesn’t warrant DEFCON1, and that they are doing their best to self destruct the birds as they are in flight to prevent damage to people and structures on the ground.

Then the long flight missiles do go off, in space. A bunch over the US, a couple over the Middle East — none over Europe or China or Japan. Oops! Sorry guys! We are destroying on the ground the last of our remaining ICBM’s so this never happens again!

So the USA is still fully armed to the teeth, but what are they going to do? The USA is without power and communications. Is the job of the Government and the Military to NOW go kill millions of Russians, and also ensure that our cities are also going to be destroyed too? Or is it going to be full throttle Rescue and Recovery for the USA? Remember, the cities worldwide are untouched, no one’s died, Russia claims this is a big accident have publicly stated they are going to disarm… Into this we launch Armageddon? That isn’t politically feasible.

The outcome of this would be a USA almost completely removed from the world stage, a resurgent Russia that plays by it’s own rules — and is also the only game in town for energy infrastructure to the still functioning countries of the world. In one swoop, killing no one on the ground, you change the world.

I think that is plausible and possible.