Effect of EMP on electronic/ballistics shooting equipment
- Thread starter Cassidy
- Start date
Shynloco
You can lead a horse to water, but ........
All of which is why everyone should have a back-up plan in case the shiz hits the fan. Backup to me means mechanical with no reliance on electricity unless you also have and maintain a generator of a sort. It strikes me we just might have more use for loaded ammo if the worst occurs and that EMP hits. Preparedness goes a long way..and I'm not talking having a bomb shelter or a years worth of extra foods necessarily.
Alex
Alex
This is not true at all. All it takes is one to get most of the continental US. Two devices at high altitude would take out all of the US and most of Canada.
Most Americans would survive this kind of attack. The aftermath well who has enough stuff to live much past three days. I bet 99% of Americans have less than one day of water.
First day of fall on the Mississippi Coast. You know what that means? It means absolutely nothing. It's 90ºF outside. I went to the range today and knocked off after an hour because of the heat. The F-Class match tomorrow will be brutal but I have to go because I sat out July and August.
Uggg totally agree.. I hope the first nuke lands on my house... You guys can have it... I am to damn tired to fight that hard for a can of tuna...
Am I incorrect in thinking that unless the electronics or electrical system like our cars are running that EMP has little to no affect?
Also, don't you have to be pretty close to the pulse for it to affect you? In other words, close enough that the EMP pulse is the least of your worrries.
Also, don't you have to be pretty close to the pulse for it to affect you? In other words, close enough that the EMP pulse is the least of your worrries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse
That will give you all you want to know. Maybe a place to start depending on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go.
You can also look into US testing and how it affected Hawaii.
If your stuff is off it should fair better than if it was on. Todays cars have too much electronics. Even off I would suspect your car would be a very large and not very good paper weight.
You do not need to be close at all. That is what makes and EMP such and affective weapon.
If you want your stuff to survive you need to protect it in a faraday cage. Some stuff does not matter. In my NF scopes I do not care if the illumination fails I am OK with it. My ability to see at night I do try to protect it. I have pretty good night vision but it sucks compared to an actual device to see at night.
What are you guys talking about?
I figured it meant. Extra Marital Pulses.
In which case, you better worry about the consequences.
I figured it meant. Extra Marital Pulses.
In which case, you better worry about the consequences.
joshb
Gold $$ Contributor
May be. I think he's "crazy like a fox". He's keeping his populace "engaged" in fear of the outside world, especially the "great Satan". US. Societies are easier to control that way. United against a common enemy. It keeps them distracted from the real domestic problems in thier own country.
It might also be a calculated push to get us to go to war. As you know we do spend a lot of money to rebuild countries we go to war with. He might just be crazy enough to think we will let him be in charge after a war.
A lot of misunderstanding in this thread.
This is an area that I have done a lot of research in to see what is likely to happen and what you can do to avoid it.
There are two types of EMPs. A solar EMP affects long conductors and they are easy to protect from. Some of the electric grid is already equipped with fast switching circuits to protect the generating systems and large transformers that could be affected by a solar EMP.
The other kind of EMP is caused by a high altitude burst of a nuclear device. Nukes detonated at or within a few miles of the ground simply do not produce large area EMPs. A nuclear bomb detonated at altitudes above 30 Km will produce a High altitude EMP or HEMP. The HEMP has three pulses. The first happens in nano-seconds and is called the E1 pulse. It is caused by the gamma particles bumping electrons free of the atoms that contain them. This completely ionizes the atmosphere within the line of sight of the center of the explosion. The electric pulse is extremely high voltage and only lasts about a millisecond. At a low of 50,000 volts per meter it equates to 50 per millimeter. Your 3 and 5 volt ICs are subjected to that 50 volts so fast the the junctions are just burned away. Any diode, transistor or electronic device will be useless 1/1000 of a second after you see a bright flash in the sky. There won't be any noise, blast or radiation because the blast happens above the atmosphere. You are too far away to be hurt by it. The E1 pulse will damage any semiconductor whether it is connected in a circuit or sitting on a shelf by itself. The ionization actually prevents a second device from causing further damage but at orbital altitudes the E1 pulse will take out all the unprotected electronics over the entire visible planet from the bombs point of view. The Lower 48 states, most of southern Canada and northern Mexico and Central America.
In the next few seconds the E2 pulse will hit. It brings lower voltages but higher amperage that affects medium sized transformers and generators connected to the grid. The high current flows will burn the transformers mounted on utility poles and send voltage spikes into homes much like a lightning strike does only spread over the same large area. This will be followed by the E3 pulse which is exactly like a solar storm and is caused the same way by deflecting and reconnecting our geomagnetic field. The E3 will cause long transmission wires to burn and burn up the large transformers and generating equipment.
The fast switches that protect the power transmission components will have been disabled by the E1 pulse so total damage will result from the E3 pulse.
A common "Faraday cage" will not protect electronics from the E1 pulse. You need to have a complete wrap of Gold, Silver or Aluminum metal wrapped around semiconductors and everything connected to them to protect them from an E1 pulse. The E1 pulse goes into the ground for over thirty feet so you don't want to ground you protection as that only provides an antenna to attract more of the E1 pulse. The cheapest protection is fairly simple:
A layer of plastic over your electronics (and any connected wiring) wrapped in heavy Aluminum foil (like the heavy duty foil for baking turkey) followed by two more layers of plastic and foil. So you have a three layer capacitive shield around your electronics. Steel has too much resistance and the E1 pulse will penetrate it faster than it can spread over it, So you can forget about using ammo cans and garbage cans as effective protection. The metal has to bee bare - no paint or covering over it. You want to get the pulse on its way before it can affect what is inside the protective covering.
There are quite a few good web sites that discuss this topic and a lot more trash sites that are full of misinformation. There is precious little real experimental evidence because the several high altitude bursts that were used for testing had very unexpected results, frying most of the instruments and affecting populations outside the expected area. Starfish was one that the USA did and the soviets tried one too. It was shortly after this that a treaty was signed to never detonate nuclear weapons in space. A bomb identical to the Hiroshima bomb would cause total destruction of the electronics in the USA if it was detonated at the right height above Kansas. The less "efficient" an atomic device is, the more EMP damage will result. More efficient bombs produce less stray gamma particles to affect the atmosphere.
I hope this clears up what happens with an HEMP and how it differs from a solar EMP.
This is an area that I have done a lot of research in to see what is likely to happen and what you can do to avoid it.
There are two types of EMPs. A solar EMP affects long conductors and they are easy to protect from. Some of the electric grid is already equipped with fast switching circuits to protect the generating systems and large transformers that could be affected by a solar EMP.
The other kind of EMP is caused by a high altitude burst of a nuclear device. Nukes detonated at or within a few miles of the ground simply do not produce large area EMPs. A nuclear bomb detonated at altitudes above 30 Km will produce a High altitude EMP or HEMP. The HEMP has three pulses. The first happens in nano-seconds and is called the E1 pulse. It is caused by the gamma particles bumping electrons free of the atoms that contain them. This completely ionizes the atmosphere within the line of sight of the center of the explosion. The electric pulse is extremely high voltage and only lasts about a millisecond. At a low of 50,000 volts per meter it equates to 50 per millimeter. Your 3 and 5 volt ICs are subjected to that 50 volts so fast the the junctions are just burned away. Any diode, transistor or electronic device will be useless 1/1000 of a second after you see a bright flash in the sky. There won't be any noise, blast or radiation because the blast happens above the atmosphere. You are too far away to be hurt by it. The E1 pulse will damage any semiconductor whether it is connected in a circuit or sitting on a shelf by itself. The ionization actually prevents a second device from causing further damage but at orbital altitudes the E1 pulse will take out all the unprotected electronics over the entire visible planet from the bombs point of view. The Lower 48 states, most of southern Canada and northern Mexico and Central America.
In the next few seconds the E2 pulse will hit. It brings lower voltages but higher amperage that affects medium sized transformers and generators connected to the grid. The high current flows will burn the transformers mounted on utility poles and send voltage spikes into homes much like a lightning strike does only spread over the same large area. This will be followed by the E3 pulse which is exactly like a solar storm and is caused the same way by deflecting and reconnecting our geomagnetic field. The E3 will cause long transmission wires to burn and burn up the large transformers and generating equipment.
The fast switches that protect the power transmission components will have been disabled by the E1 pulse so total damage will result from the E3 pulse.
A common "Faraday cage" will not protect electronics from the E1 pulse. You need to have a complete wrap of Gold, Silver or Aluminum metal wrapped around semiconductors and everything connected to them to protect them from an E1 pulse. The E1 pulse goes into the ground for over thirty feet so you don't want to ground you protection as that only provides an antenna to attract more of the E1 pulse. The cheapest protection is fairly simple:
A layer of plastic over your electronics (and any connected wiring) wrapped in heavy Aluminum foil (like the heavy duty foil for baking turkey) followed by two more layers of plastic and foil. So you have a three layer capacitive shield around your electronics. Steel has too much resistance and the E1 pulse will penetrate it faster than it can spread over it, So you can forget about using ammo cans and garbage cans as effective protection. The metal has to bee bare - no paint or covering over it. You want to get the pulse on its way before it can affect what is inside the protective covering.
There are quite a few good web sites that discuss this topic and a lot more trash sites that are full of misinformation. There is precious little real experimental evidence because the several high altitude bursts that were used for testing had very unexpected results, frying most of the instruments and affecting populations outside the expected area. Starfish was one that the USA did and the soviets tried one too. It was shortly after this that a treaty was signed to never detonate nuclear weapons in space. A bomb identical to the Hiroshima bomb would cause total destruction of the electronics in the USA if it was detonated at the right height above Kansas. The less "efficient" an atomic device is, the more EMP damage will result. More efficient bombs produce less stray gamma particles to affect the atmosphere.
I hope this clears up what happens with an HEMP and how it differs from a solar EMP.
I have my dads slide rule and the book of tables that make it easier to use. Can you do roots longhand?Having electronics after an HEMP won't really be necessary anyway. You'll be spending your time digging wells and farming your food and raising your meat to do much of anything else. We are nearing the end of our harvesting here and the canners have been going full speed to get it all safely preserved. We will soon be harvesting the meat and the canners and smoke house will be busy then. We have tried something new this year, vacuum packing the dried herbs. I don't know how it will turn out but I will let you know next year.
I don't know rwh, a software engineer has to be a troubleshooter and problem solver. You might find that you have valuable tools.
I have been a mechanic, teacher, minister, fabricator and inventor over my 67 years. Even at my age I can still work with metal, plastic and some woodwork. I've even written some of my own software when I couldn't find what I wanted. I had my first computer in 1978 before the IBM compatibles and about the same time you could get an Apple in a kit. Mine was a TRS-80 model 1 with 4K of RAM and a tape drive storage device. I updated it with the numeric keypad and 16 K of RAM, expansion interface for 48 K ram, a 300 baud modem, two disk drives and had all the books for repair and programming in Basic, and Assembler. I sold it when I moved 5 years ago for more than I had in it. I think it was going to end up in a museum. It still worked.
I have been a mechanic, teacher, minister, fabricator and inventor over my 67 years. Even at my age I can still work with metal, plastic and some woodwork. I've even written some of my own software when I couldn't find what I wanted. I had my first computer in 1978 before the IBM compatibles and about the same time you could get an Apple in a kit. Mine was a TRS-80 model 1 with 4K of RAM and a tape drive storage device. I updated it with the numeric keypad and 16 K of RAM, expansion interface for 48 K ram, a 300 baud modem, two disk drives and had all the books for repair and programming in Basic, and Assembler. I sold it when I moved 5 years ago for more than I had in it. I think it was going to end up in a museum. It still worked.
NorCalMikie
Gold $$ Contributor
No worries till that Micro Wave Pop Corn pack laying on the kitchen counter starts popping.
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