I don't think they will use an EMP in the surprise attack on the US. Yes, they'll knock out the power, but if you used a big EMP over the center of the country you would fry every electronic device and the whole place would be turned to junk. I think they are planning on suitcase nukes in ten cities, that alone should be sufficient to knock out the power nationwide, but they may also sabotage a few substations. China manufactures them, so they could target specific ones that they can easily replace to turn the power back on. There are 54 commercial nuclear power plants in the US, if the power goes out for a significant period of time those things will go critical and melt down. If you don't use an EMP and just shut down the power they can run the pumps on a generator for weeks even months. All they need is fuel for the generator. There are many, many dreams of the power going out, but in some dreams other things like cars still work which wouldn't happen in an EMP. Also there are many dreams of China invading the US, I don't think they would be doing that if 54 nuclear power plants were about to go into meltdown.