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#201468 - 05/06/10 07:40 PM Re: Protecting against EMP [Re: marduk]
philip Offline
Addict

Registered: 09/19/05
Posts: 639
Loc: San Francisco Bay Area
If you want to know about EMP, here's one source:
http://www.empcommission.org/

I've never heard of the EMP commission, so I don't even know if it's real. I looked over the executive summary, and it seems reasonable enough.

The issue with EMP remains that its _very_ widely spread, so the value of having a personal Faraday Cage escapes me - if there's an EMP pulse, nothing is going to work within some scores or hundreds of miles of the burst, so having my personal computer safe doesn't seem to help me when all the electricity in my state is wiped out and nobody's cars will run. Shrug - to each his own.

Among the scary topics in the report: the power grid, telecommunications, banking and business, fuel and energy, transportation, food, water, emergency services. Lots of details on the Starfish burst, pulses, and more that I didn't read but that people will find fascinating. There's also a link to the full report.

Setting off a nuclear bomb is a difficult task. Setting off an aerial burst above the US at heights sufficient to do significant damage is also (and separately) difficult. My instinct is that it's not likely to happen any time soon, that it is in fact unlikely to happen, and that the better answer than personal Faraday Cages is fixing the infrastructure to withstand EMP, which the commission says is feasible. Mileage varies, the views outside my window are not your views.

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#201478 - 05/07/10 04:02 AM Re: Protecting against EMP [Re: philip]
Art_in_FL Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 09/01/07
Posts: 2432
IMHO the primary survival lesson from the EMP discussion is that while there are real-world survival issues. But there are also people and groups, some of them well funded, that seek to exaggerate and distort perceptions of the issue instead of educating and informing.

There is an entire industry of professional media consultants and hired gun advocates who will shift any issue any way you wish. As long as you're willing to pay. The people hiring such organizations on this issue are motivated by potential financial gain, a desire to steer international relations, and, often, to drum up unfocused fear, uncertainty and distrust that can be leveraged for political advantage.

IMHO the EMP issue has been demagogued to the point that the real issue has been lost. At its core there is something of an issue. The DoD has studied it for better than fifty years in one form or another. At first as just a minor side effect of an nuclear explosion. Later, on its own, as a possible attack modality. But the military has admitted that they are not entirely sure how to create or use such a warhead. It has never been done. Starfish was not intended to create an EMP. Above-ground testing stopped before the effect could be studies at any depth. Even today they don't understand how such a device would be built or how it would fit into any strategy.

The benefit to a third party or terrorist group expending the resources to design and build what has to be an experimental design, a design that uses up a perfectly good nuclear bomb, that potentially might not do much more than provide a nice light show is, to say the least, unclear.

A few insights into the subject, who is behind the subject coming up again and again, who is manipulating the issue and why:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/17/the_boogeyman_bomb

http://www.alternet.org/story/25738/

http://www.alternet.org/media/143455/neocons_salivating_over_their_next_great_exaggerated_%22threat%22%3A_electromagnetic_pulse_attack/?page=1

Various hazards and dangers have been demgogued at one time or another for fun and/or profit. Weapons of mass destruction are always popular for such manipulations. The facts around EMP, direct nuclear attack, dirty bombs, bio-weapons, energy weapons, nano-weapons, chemical attacks and widespread flaws in computer systems have all been exaggerated or otherwise manipulated at one time or another. There is every expectation that these, and any other hazards that can be bent to serve, will be seen again.

All that said the basics of Faraday cages and what is need to shield vulnerable devices are all pretty well known. It also has to be pointed out that EM pulses were unknown by any but a few engineers and scientist fifty years ago. Now anyone in their right mind plugs their computer into a surge arrestor. And every time a copper line is replaced by fiber optic line an EMP become less of an issue. USB is due to be gradually replaced by fiber in the next ten years. More people are using wireless and fewer use copper telephone lines. Even as more copper lines get protection.

All that means that the consequences, effectiveness, of any warhead as a EMP weapon is ever more uncertain. The alarmists claim 90% of all Americans dead as a result. This seems very unlikely. Others, engineers and scientists, claim it might not work at all or that effects could be minimal.

I don't see anyone wasting a perfectly good nuclear weapon on such an uncertain outcome. Not when you could use the very same weapon closer to earth and get a very pretty mushroom cloud. Going for an exotic and theoretical soft-kill option when you could get a big boom seems too cute by half.


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#201479 - 05/07/10 09:32 AM Re: Protecting against EMP [Re: Art_in_FL]
Phaedrus Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 04/28/10
Posts: 3148
Loc: Big Sky Country
I agree; the rist of an EMP bomb is pretty minimal. I suspect any bad guys that obtained a nuke would use it in a way more certain to cause massive damage. Of course, that's not a very comforting thought, either! Still, there are much more serious threats to us than EMP.
_________________________
“I'd rather have questions that cannot be answered than answers that can't be questioned.” —Richard Feynman

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#201482 - 05/07/10 12:41 PM Re: Protecting against EMP [Re: Art_in_FL]
Russ Offline
Geezer

Registered: 06/02/06
Posts: 5357
Loc: SOCAL
Do not confuse the intent of our military's use of an EMP device as a tactical device with that of a small 3rd world country intending to use it as a strategic weapon.

Use of an EMP as a tactical weapon against another military system is iffy, the problem being the electrical coupling issues and kill mechanism. Many military systems are hardened and have back-ups. How do you use an EMP against a target that's in your proximity without also using it against friendly systems? It's difficult to develop a weapon system when you don't know the effect it will have on the target.

Using an EMP at high altitude against a large area with the intent to burn out sensitive non-hardened civilian systems and electrical grids might be easier -- if you have a delivery system. Not saying it will destroy those systems, but they are not hardened and our electrical grid makes coupling rather simple. Will it kill the electrical system in a car? Don't know, one study I read says cars might be fine. But lots of other systems may be at much more risk. Lots of unknowns.

90%?? Don't know how they arrived at that number. Maybe assuming the device worked 100% and succeeded in reducing us to an agrarian society with no transportation. Again, lots of unknowns and much of our military would still be operational -- payback could be swift.
_________________________
Better is the Enemy of Good Enough.
Okay, what’s your point??

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#201483 - 05/07/10 02:08 PM Re: Protecting against EMP [Re: philip]
GoatMan Offline
Member

Registered: 08/17/07
Posts: 119
Originally Posted By: philip
If you want to know about EMP, here's one source:
http://www.empcommission.org/

I've never heard of the EMP commission, so I don't even know if it's real. I looked over the executive summary, and it seems reasonable enough.

I questioned it based on the .org extension. But it looks like Rep. Bartlett of Maryland sponsored it: http://bartlett.house.gov/Issues/Issue/?IssueID=2060


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#201486 - 05/07/10 02:57 PM Re: Protecting against EMP [Re: GoatMan]
paramedicpete Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 04/09/02
Posts: 1920
Loc: Frederick, Maryland
Off topic but somewhat ironic in that U.S. Rep. Bartlett’s apartments that are located on his farm was the scene a major fire yesterday. I don’t know if there were sprinklered or not (I suspect not, since they have been around longer than the building codes requiring new construction of high occupancy buildings to be sprinklered) but an ounce of prevent is worth a pound of cure.

FNP Story - Fire at Bartlett Farm

Pete

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