Hi,

I've been lurking for awhile and only recently decided to register. I agree totally with the above post. EMP's are one of those things that Hollywood probably does better than reality. I'm getting my PhD in chemical physics and have been working with quite a few nuc engineers this summer. Every so often over lunch this type of topic comes up. Consensus among us is that unless the weapon was specifically designed to maximize the resulting EMP, most of us doubt the EMP would be substantial beyond the blast radius. Unless there is some part of the problem I am really missing, the pulse should die off as 1/r^2, so its probably not that big of a deal unless you are close enough to the weapon to have much bigger problems than a busted radio.

Also, the faraday cages around secured buidings I would guess have more to do with keeping people from electronically eavesdropping than serious concerns about EMP survivabillity. Then again, this is all pretty speculative anyway...

-r