The nation’s enemies have set their sights on your cell phones, personal computers and the hundreds of thousands of transmission lines that make up the national power grid.

That’s the case a group of Western New Yorkers led and backed by the head of Steuben Foods hopes to make during a conference on the dangers of electromagnetic pulse, scheduled for early September in the Niagara Falls Conference Center.

“I will admit this might sound like a science fiction novel,” Henry Schwartz, Steuben chairman, said Tuesday at EMPACT America’s inaugural news conference. “But they could knock out everything that depends on electric current. Modern civilization could be paralyzed.”

Featured in apocalyptic novels, a James Bond movie and the film “Ocean’s 11,” electromagnetic pulse, involves detonating a nuclear device at high altitude so the burst of energy fries circuit boards below. Large solar flare storms can have a similar effect.

The threat has gained recent traction with some members of Congress, Defense Department staffers and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who took to Fox News in April to discuss the matter.

But it has yet to make an appearance in modern warfare. And since future plotters would need reliable missiles, a willingness to attack and a functional atomic bomb, some are skeptical of a strike’s likelihood, said John Mueller, a professor at Ohio State University.

“I don’t think the U. S. could do this today, much less North Korea, especially without testing,” said Mueller, author of the forthcoming “Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al Qaeda.”

“It sits in a long range of hysterical predictions about nukes that have been going on since 1945.”

That’s hardly the case, said Peter V. Pry, former staffer for a congressional commission on electromagnetic pulse.

He and those at EMPACT described a hypothetical case in which an Iranian freighter launches a short-range missile off the U. S. coast, or North Korea uses a three-stage rocket to strike above Indiana.

Pry concedes that others often describe the attacks as "low-probability, high-consequence events" because Iran and North Korea have yet to perfect their missile and nuclear weapons capabilities. He also notes that the nation faces a natural EMP threat from solar flares.

"Its just too consequential to ignore," he said.

Protection requires the U. S. to shield major components of its electrical infrastructure, which could cost $10 billion, according to testimony from Minneapolis- based Emprimus at a Congressional hearing last week. The company specializes in the subject.

Schwartz, who is already making plans to shield his factory in Elma, said he just wants people to be prepared.

Tickets for the conference, scheduled for Sep. 8 to 10, cost $50 through Friday, $75 thereafter and $25 for government employees, first responders and students.

Gingrich will address attendees via video feed.