With all the discussion of EMPs lately I`m curious what will NOT be damaged... and what can be done to limit the damage or eliminate EMP damage totaly.

Will flashlights work?
Will ALL cars be broke or just ones with computers?

If things do stop working is it perm. or temp? If both (which is my guess) how can you tell which items will die for good, and which you can plan to use in case of an EMP?

Diesel vehicles will still work as long as they do not have any sort of microprocessor to contol the starter and/or fuel injection pump. That's one of the reasons why the military uses diesel vehicles. The Humvees, deuce-and-a-halfs, FMTVs (I think), and larger trucks have mechanical injector pumps and very simple glow plug systems. A diesel engine, once it is started, will run forever as long as it has a diesel fuel supply. The extremely high compression ratio causes the fuel to autoignite continuously. There are no ignition parts to wear out or be disabled by EMP. Also, I have heard that electronics using vacuum tubes instead of ICs and transistors, like old High Frequency HAM radios, should still work. The Soviets are still flying some older jets that use vacuum tubes in some of their systems.

Figure on anything electronic not working perminantly until it can be repaired with non blown parts. Think of EMP as a voltage/current spike, so it would have the same effect on electronics as blowing a fuse. First, an old non computerized diesel has less basic electronics then a gas engine, so like mentioned you are better off with that. Also, chances are the starter setup may go bad, so you need to be able to push/roll start the vehicle, so you need a manual transmission. Also, remember that chances are your A/C, Headlights, Radio, Interior lights, Gauges, wipers, ect may or may not work.
Now, as to basic electronics. I've read that LEDs, fuses, batteries that are regulated, ect would be bad if the pulse is big enough, so don't count on your flashlight either. The good news is you can protect your equipment with a faraday cage, they are simple to make and protect equipment quite well. The goverment has quite a few buildings surrounded by a faraday cage, so it is possible to surround your house or garage in one if you had the time, money, and energy. <img src="/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

Faraday cage... I`ll have to look into them <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Great info guys.

Basically, if it has any integrated circuits, they won't work. I'm not 100% on the CR123s and LEDs that Paul mentioned in the WoW thread, but I wouldn't bet on them working. As they say, the factory smoke would be let out.

The "personal electronic age" will come to a screaching halt in areas effected by a pulse. As I said in the WoW post, anything with a fuel injector, gone. Digital anything, kaput. That includes most modern furnaces, water and fuel pumps, elevator controllers, emergency lights... Oh, and a lot of pacemakers will be pretty messed up.

What will work: old cars, small motors (like some ATVs, but most of your new ones are injected not carbed), older generators. Becuase even the older infrastructure has been fitted with computer controls, most areas will be reduced to a 3rd standard of living in a heartbeat.

Forturnatly, EMP is not that easy to make, contrary to what various plans on the web claim. Actually, it is really easy, but big enough to be usable is a trick. Easiest way is to detonate a nuke in the ionosphere. We supposedly have various non-nuke EMP devices in our military inventory, but supposedly we have direct energy weapons and antigravity craft to. *rolls eyes*

Oh, and I should mention this: part of why diesel is used for military purposes is becuase it isn't as likely to explode. That's been US policy since WWII. I doubt anything in out vehicle inventory would survive a pulse if it wasn't buried.

Oh, and I should edit this with protection information, as Todd requested. Dig. Dig deep. Dig deeper. Armour is part of why NORAD is in a mountain, the other part is EMP. You will want a lot of dirt and/or water around you if you want something to survive an EMP strike.

There are other ways to do it. The faraday cage was big for a while during the cold war, but protection costing X dollars could be defeated by a larger pulse, costing Y dollars. And X woudl be much greater than Y. But if you can buy an old missile silo, or a silver mine, or a salt mine, you might be able to do just use earth sheilding. Just remember, everything has to be sheilded. Any antennas are going to have to have big honkin' (yes, that is a technical term) diodes on them to prevent a backwash of the pulse.

Bascially, EMP is a really big radio friequency spike. when RF hits metal, it creates electricity. That is why you can turn a florescent light on just by getting close to a radio tower. The resulting electrical spike is just like any other in an electical system.

Todd, you might as well buy rad and chem suits. :P

A faraday cage, for those that don't know, is a big metal box, which is grounded. Anything in the box is fully self contained. That way, when an external electromagnetic signal (like an EMP pulse or your neighbor's pirate radio broadcast) passes by, and is turned into an electrical impulse, it just goes in a safe direction. Of course, a big enough pulse won't matter.

Oh, and most of us own a faraday cage, we just don't know it. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> If your computer has a metal frame and metal side panels, rather than the flimsy, cheapy, artsy fartsy all plastic jobs, it will function as a faraday cage. But that is becuase older computers made a lot more noise from an EM point of view, and it had to be contained.

I'm going to be contrary here. There is a lot of hype and spec flying around at the moment about EMP that is not completely accurate, to be charitable. I can offer objective and hard facts, but instead of saying "trust me", I'll do a little checking to see if there is more accurate and objective information readily available on the internet and get back on the thread if I find some open source info to share.

Tom

PS - AFAIK CR123 batteries have no internal electronics and are strictly primary cells. Secondary cells (rechargables) MAY have internal electronics - most don't - but certainly some recent lithium chemistry secondary cells do have internal electronics. Easy to check and if you don't know the answer, you probably aren't using batteries with internal electronics.

Any protection a faraday cage may afford, no matter how big or small, is seriously compromised if a metal conductor passes through it. The conductor can be a power line, communications circuit, or utility pipe or conduit. You will find that any real government hardened building has no metal of any kind passing through or to it. Their communications are fed by strictly fiber opti cables with no shielding.

That also nullifiies the affect of a faraday cage on a metal cased computer due to the power and porting circuits passing through the body.

Do not ask me how I know.

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

Right. My last post on the subject (long):

Let’s start with a brief definition:

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/e/el/electromagnetic_pulse.htm

Now on to some readily available internet “information”

A bit specialized, but a synopsis of some real world testing on COTS Ham gear (and the technique is not exactly news – the news is that there is COTS protection available:
http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Falls/1984/newfact.htm

This is an example of mostly crap info that tosses out some nearly correct mostly irrelevant info and then authoritatively leaps to some (wrong) conclusions without offering one bit of real-world verifiable information: http://www.alpharubicon.com/basicnbc/empfacts.html

This is much older information than the 1997 date indicates; I saw and touched all of those up close and personal well over a decade before that date at the source, CERL. In the early 1980s I did the construction management for their EMP generator, which when completed was (at that time) the world’s largest non-nuclear EMP generator. I have in more recent times toured much larger and more sophisticated non-nuclear EMP generators. At the time and for all practical purposes, nearly all of the testing since was to evaluate the effects of nuclear near-misses on military equipment and has virtually no useful extrapolation to the rest of the world. (doh!) It was often to test a worst-case scenario, not best case. A military formation or ship can take a sever blast and lethal dose of radioactivity but still continue to finish a specific tactical or even operational mission if the systems are all working well enough. That’s not relevant to the rest of the world for the most part, yet this is some of the root information that continues to drive the “Clad your house in tin and ground it” experts (Your house will not be standing if you need that sort of EMP shielding). Actually, a lot of these approaches had/have as much or more to do with TEMPESTizing electronics (protection from electronic eavesdropping) and serendipitously provided a brute-force protection against EMP effects (but not blast or radiation). These non-nuclear EMP generators are also not perfect simulators because the frequency characteristics of these are NOT exactly the same as that from a nuclear weapon as well as some other reasons – you can follow that fact deductively to some correct logical conclusions:
http://www.cecer.army.mil/facts/sheets/FL16.html


This is a tough call; use with caution. There is some surprisingly accurate information here AND some wildly erroneous information salted throughout as well. Worth reading if you are willing to be a little skeptical and check out some of the claims (I mean, some of it is pure crap, but there are many solid nuggets here as well as well):
http://www.aussurvivalist.com/nuclear/empprotection.htm

I can pick a lot of little nits with this, such as substituting “may” for “will” and tossing in a few “some”s in the EMP paragraph, as well as bits of the Chem section, but it’s not a bad read and he’s got the important bits close enough for you and me: http://www.survival.com/cbr.htm

I believe I can dig up some definitive scientific open-source info, but so can you and it will not be light reading. EMP is a small fraction of the total energy released, even in an enhanced weapon used the right way. It is not very relevant to survivors of a nuclear terrorist attack compared to the primary and secondary effects of the (MUCH larger) direct-effect energy releases.

In the event of an all-out nuclear attack by a MAJOR power (you’ll have fingers left over using only one hand to count), the important effects of deliberate EMP attacks again are largely irrelevant to survivors for lots of obvious reasons. If there were deliberate EMP attacks.

If a minor power with the ability to conduct a significant EMP-only attack did so, we would survive and it would probably be an act of national suicide on the attacker’s part.

It’s not worth spending a lot of effort or worry on unless you are in certain businesses (nothing to do with this forum) or have certain equipment needed to respond as a volunteer in emergencies (perhaps HAM operators, for example).

Regards,

Tom