[BARC-List] Hypothetical scenario

[William Ricker]

> What are the realistic
> affects of an EMP generator?   How long would the effects last?   What
> areas of the spectrum would be affected?   Could an EMP generator provide
> long-lasting disruption, or only only short-term?

This is easily researched on Google, but I can give an unclassified summary, since that's all I ever got.

The EMP itself is a ultra broadband pulse, like the static crash of a lightning bolt without the lightning. Not quite DC to daylight but close enuf.

Primary effect is that transistors become used fuses. Tubes are immune, so save your HW8's and CD Gonset's for use after WW3 :-)

Full faraday cage is protection, if you can afford one.

Radios you expect to use after EMP attack must be proof against direct lightning hit: off, all cabling disconnected (even no mic or key) and not even near long wires. In the go kit may be safe, if broken down as above or metal can.

Land based generated EMP will fall off as 1/R, since it's a voltage phenomenon not power, but OTH will lose VHF+ components rapidly as well, so near-LOS. Only open source large area generator is exoatmospheric nuclear blast; is it Chernenkov radiation at edge of atmos that generates the widespread EMP in that scenario?

All open source EMP generators have a long recycle time, but it usually only takes one hit anyway.


73 Bill

---
William Ricker wdr at theworld.com