Ranger Rainier
Inactive
What are the things one does around the house to prepare for an EMP? I can't throw the computer in the microwave at night and call it good. Any ideas?
PREP HOW DO YOU EMP PROOF YOUR HOUSE?
- Thread starter Ranger Rainier
- Start date
your house?
You don't, nobody does that, not realistic.
Before I go any further, YOU need to do a search here on TB2K on the topic.
We have probably at least a dozen pages on this very subject.
After you've done that,,,, I'm sure there are a few here that would be more than happy to help you out.
But to start educate yourself about the two basic types of threats because they have very different levels/means of protection.
P.S. Don't listen to the bullcrap that ANY politician puts out on this topic! I'm serious, everything I've heard to date is seriously wrong in some manner and is propaganda.
You don't, nobody does that, not realistic.
Before I go any further, YOU need to do a search here on TB2K on the topic.
We have probably at least a dozen pages on this very subject.
After you've done that,,,, I'm sure there are a few here that would be more than happy to help you out.
But to start educate yourself about the two basic types of threats because they have very different levels/means of protection.
P.S. Don't listen to the bullcrap that ANY politician puts out on this topic! I'm serious, everything I've heard to date is seriously wrong in some manner and is propaganda.
Uncle Screwtape
Mumbler
Wrap it in foil
Ranger Rainier
Inactive
I put a search in for EMP and came up blank on TB2K.
came up w/ this article on the web but not much else.
http://www.aussurvivalist.com/nuclear/empprotection.htm
Protecting Yourself from EMP by Duncan Long
EMP. The letters spell burnt out computers and other electrical systems and perhaps even a return to the dark ages if it were to mark the beginning of a nuclear war. But it doesn't need to be that way. Once you understand EMP, you can take a few simple precautions to protect yourself and equipment from it. In fact, you can enjoy much of the "high tech" life style you've come accustomed to even after the use of a nuclear device has been used by terrorists--or there is an all-out WWIII.
EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse), also sometimes known as "NEMP" (Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse), was kept secret from the public for a long time and was first discovered more or less by accident when US Military tests of nuclear weapons started knocking out phone banks and other equipment miles from ground zero.
EMP is no longer "top secret" but information about it is still a little sketchy and hard to come by. Adding to the problems is the fact that its effects are hard to predict; even electronics designers have to test their equipment in powerful EMP simulators before they can be sure it is really capable of with standing the effect.
EMP occurs with all nuclear explosions. With smaller explosions the effects are less pronounced. Nuclear bursts close to the ground are dampened by the earth so that EMP effects are more or less confined to the region of the blast and heat wave. But EMP becomes more pronounced and wide spread as the size and altitude of a nuclear blast is increased since the ground; of these two, altitude is the quickest way to produce greater EMP effects. As a nuclear device is exploded higher up, the earth soaks up fewer of the free electrons produced before they can travel some distance.
The most "enhanced" EMP effects would occur if a nuclear weapon were exploded in space, outside the Earth's atmosphere. In such a case, the gamma radiation released during the flash cycle of the weapon would react with the upper layer of the earth's atmosphere and strip electrons free from the air molecules, producing electromagnetic radiation similar to broad-band radio waves (10 kHz-100 MHz) in the process. These electrons would follow the earth's magnetic field and quickly circle toward the ground where they would be finally dampened. (To add to the confusion, we now have two more EMP terms:
"Surface EMP" or "SEMP" which refers to ground bursts with limited-range effects and "High-altitude EMP" or "HEMP" which is the term used for a nuclear detonation creating large amounts of EMP.)
Tactically, a space-based nuclear attack has a lot going for it; the magnetic field of the earth tends to spread out EMP so much that just one 20-MT bomb exploded at an altitude of 200 miles could--in theory--blanket the continental US with the effects of EMP. It's believed that the electrical surge of the EMP from such an explosion would be strong enough to knock out much of the civilian electrical equipment over the whole country. Certainly this is a lot of "bang for the buck" and it would be foolish to think that a nuclear attack would be launched without taking advantage of the confusion a high-altitude explosion could create. Ditto with its use by terrorists should the technology to get such payloads into space become readily available to smaller countries and groups.
But there's no need for you to go back to the stone age if a nuclear war occurs. It is possible to avoid much of the EMP damage that could be done to electrical equipment--including the computer that brought this article to you--with just a few simple precautions.
First of all, it's necessary to get rid of a few erroneous facts, however.
One mistaken idea is that EMP is like a powerful bolt of lightning. While the two are alike in their end results--burning out electrical equipment with intense electronic surges--EMP is actually more akin to a super-powerful radio wave. Thus, strategies based on using lightning arrestors or lightning-rod grounding techniques are destined to failure in protecting equipment from EMP.
Another false concept is that EMP "out of the blue" will fry your brain and/or body the way lightning strikes do. In the levels created by a nuclear weapon, it would not pose a health hazard to plants, animals, or man PROVIDED it isn't concentrated.
EMP can be concentrated. That could happen if it were "pulled in" by a stretch of metal. If this
happened, EMP would be dangerous to living things. It could become concentrated by metal girders, large stretches of wiring (including telephone lines), long antennas, or similar set ups. So--if a nuclear war were in the offing--you'd do well to avoid being very close to such concentrations. (A safe distance for nuclear-generated EMP would be at least 8 feet from such stretches of metal.)
This concentration of EMP by metal wiring is one reason that most electrical equipment and telephones would be destroyed by the electrical surge. It isn't that the equipment itself is really all that sensitive, but that the surge would be so concentrated that nothing working on low levels of electricity would survive.
Protecting electrical equipment is simple if it can be unplugged from AC outlets, phone systems, or long antennas. But that assumes that you won't be using it when the EMP strikes. That isn't all that practical and--if a nuclear war were drawn out or an attack occurred in waves spread over hours or days-- you'd have to either risk damage to equipment or do without it until things had settled down for sure.
One simple solution is to use battery-operated equipment which has cords or antennas of only 30 inches or less in length. This short stretch of metal puts the device within the troughs of the nuclear-generated EMP wave and will keep the equipment from getting a damaging concentration of electrons. Provided the equipment isn't operated close to some other metal object (i.e., within 8 feet of a metal girder, telephone line, etc.), it should survive without any other precautions being taken with it.
If you don't want to buy a wealth of batteries for every appliance you own or use a radio set up with longer than 30-inch antenna, then you'll need to use equipment that is "hardened" against EMP.
The trick is that it must REALLY be hardened from the real thing, not just EMP-proof on paper. This isn't all that easy; the National Academy of Sciences recently stated that tailored hardening is "not only deceptively difficult, but also very poorly understood by the defence-electronics community." Even the US Military has equipment which might not survive a nuclear attack, even though it is designed to do just that.
That said, there are some methods which will help to protect circuits from EMP and give you an edge if you must operate ham radios or the like when a nuclear attack occurs. Design considerations include the use of tree formation circuits (rather than standard loop formations); the use of induction shielding around components; the use of self-contained battery packs; the use of loop antennas; and (with solid-state components) the use of Zener diodes. These design elements can eliminate the chance an EMP surge from power lines or long antennas damaging your equipment. Another useful strategy is to use grounding wires for each separate instrument which is coupled into a system so that EMP has more paths to take in grounding itself.
A new device which may soon be on the market holds promise in allowing electronic equipment to be EMP hardened. Called the "Ovonic threshold device", it has been created by Energy Conversion Devices of Troy, MI. The Ovonic threshold device is a solid-state switch capable of quickly opening a path to ground when a circuit receives a massive surge of EMP. Use of this or a similar device would assure survival of equipment during a massive surge of electricity.
Some electrical equipment is innately EMP-resistant. This includes large electric motors, vacuum tube equipment, electrical generators, transformers, relays, and the like. These might even survive a massive surge of EMP and would likely to survive if a few of the above precautions were taking in their design and deployment.
At the other end of the scale of EMP resistance are some really sensitive electrical parts. These include IC circuits, microwave transistors, and Field Effect Transistors (FET's). If you have electrical equipment with such components, it must be very well protected if it is to survive EMP.
One "survival system" for such sensitive equipment is the Faraday box.
A Faraday box is simply a metal box designed to divert and soak up the EMP. If the object placed in the box is insulated from the inside surface of the box, it will not be effected by the EMP travelling around the outside metal surface of the box. The Faraday box simple and cheap and often provides more protection to electrical components than "hardening" through circuit designs
which can't be (or haven't been) adequately tested.
Many containers are suitable for make-shift Faraday boxes: cake boxes, ammunition containers, metal filing cabinets, etc., etc., can all be used. Despite what you may have read or heard, these boxes do NOT have to be airtight due to the long wave length of EMP; boxes can be made of wire screen or other porous metal.
The only two requirements for protection with a Faraday box are: (1) the equipment inside the box does NOT touch the metal container (plastic, wadded paper, or cardboard can all be used to insulate it from the metal) and (2) the metal shield is continuous without any gaps between pieces or extra-large holes in it.
Grounding a Faraday box is NOT necessary and in some cases actually may be less than ideal. While EMP and lightning aren't the "same animal", a good example of how lack of grounding is a plus can be seen with some types of lightning strikes. Take, for example, a lightning strike on a flying airplane. The strike doesn't fry the plane's occupants because the metal shell of the plane is a Faraday box of sorts. Even though the plane, high over the earth, isn't grounded it will sustain little damage.
In this case, much the same is true of small Faraday cages and EMP. Consequently, storage of equipment in Faraday boxes on wooden shelves or the like does NOT require that everything be grounded. (One note: theoretically non-grounded boxes might hold a slight charge of electricity; take some time and care before handling ungrounded boxes following a nuclear attack.)
The thickness of the metal shield around the Faraday box isn't of much concern, either. This makes it possible to build protection "on the cheap" by simply using the cardboard packing box that equipment comes in along with aluminium foil. Just wrap the box with the aluminium foil (other metal foil or metal screen will also work); tape the foil in place and you're done. Provided
it is kept dry, the cardboard will insulate the gear inside it from the foil; placing the foil-wrapped box inside a larger cardboard box is also wise to be sure the foil isn't accidentally ripped anywhere. The result is an "instant" Faraday box with your equipment safely stored inside, ready for use following a nuclear war.
Copper or aluminium foil can help you insulate a whole room from EMP as well. Just paper the wall, ceiling and floor with metal foil. Ideally the floor is then covered with a false floor of wood or with heavy carpeting to insulate everything and everyone inside from the shield (and EMP). The only catch to this is that care must be taken NOT to allow electrical wiring connections to pierce the foil shield (i.e., no AC powered equipment or radio antennas can come into the room from outside). Care must also be taken that the door is covered with foil AND electrically connected to the shield with a wire and screws or some similar set up.
Many government civil defence shelters are now said to have gotten the Faraday box, "foil" treatment. These shelters are covered inside with metal foil and have metal screens which cover all air vents and are connected to the metal foil. Some of these shelters probably make use of new optical fibre systems--protected by plastic pipe--to "connect" communications gear inside the room to the "outside world" without creating a conduit for EMP energy to enter the shelter.
Another "myth" that seems to have grown up with information on EMP is that nearly all cars and trucks would be "knocked out" by EMP. This seems logical, but is one of those cases where "real world" experiments contradict theoretical answers and I'm afraid this is the case with cars and EMP. According to sources working at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, cars have proven to be resistant to EMP in actual tests using nuclear weapons as well as during more recent tests (with newer cars) with the US Military's EMP simulators.
One reason for the ability of a car to resist EMP lies in the fact that its metal body is "insulated" by its rubber tires from the ground. This creates a Faraday cage of sorts. (Drawing on the analogy of EMP being similar to lightning, it is interesting to note that cases of lightning striking and damaging cars is almost non-existent; this apparently carries over to EMP effects on vehicles as well.)
Although Faraday boxes are generally made so that what is inside doesn't touch the box's outer metal shield (and this is especially important for the do-it-yourself since it is easy to inadvertently ground the Faraday box--say by putting the box on metal shelving sitting on a concrete floor), in the case of the car the "grounded" wiring is grounded only to the battery. In practice, the entire system is not grounded in the traditional electrical wiring sense of actually making contact to the earth at some point in its circuitry. Rather the car is sitting on insulators made of rubber.
It is important to note that cars are NOT 100 percent EMP proof; some cars will most certainly be effected, especially those with fibreglass bodies or located near large stretches of metal. (I suspect, too, that recent cars with a high percentage of IC circuitry might also be more susceptible to EMP effects.)
The bottom line is that all vehicles probably won't be knocked out by EMP. But the prudent survivalist should make a few contingency plans "just in case" his car (and other electrical equipment) does not survive the effects of EMP. Discovering that you have one of the few cars knocked out would not be a good way to start the onset of terrorist attack or nuclear war.
Most susceptible to EMP damage would be cars with a lot of IC circuits or other "computers" to control essential changes in the engine. The very prudent may wish to buy spare electronic ignition parts and keep them a car truck (perhaps inside a Faraday box). But it seems probable that many vehicles WILL be working following the start of a nuclear war even if no precautions have been taken with them.
One area of concern are explosives connected to electrical discharge wiring or designed to be set off by other electric devices. These might be set off by an EMP surge. While most citizens don't have access to such equipment, claymore mines and other explosives would be very dangerous to be around at the start of a nuclear box if they weren't carefully stored away in a Faraday box. Ammunition, mines, grenades and the like in large quantities might be prone to damage or explosion by EMP, but in general aren't all that sensitive to EMP.
A major area of concern when it comes to EMP is nuclear reactors located in the US. Unfortunately, a little-known Federal dictum prohibits the NRC from requiring power plants to withstand the effects of a nuclear war. This means that, in the event of a nuclear war, many nuclear reactors' control systems might will be damaged by an EMP surge. In such a case, the core-cooling controls might become inoperable and a core melt down and breaching of the containment vessel by radioactive materials into the surrounding area might well result. (If you were needing a reason not to live down wind from a nuclear reactor, this is it.)
Provided you're not next door to a nuclear power plant, most of the ill effects of EMP can be over come. EMP, like nuclear blasts and fallout, can be survived if you have the know how and take a few precautions before hand.
And that would be worth a lot, wouldn't it?
Some initial thoughts on EMP protection from the US military packaging division.
A continuously sealed metal barrier has proven to be very effective in preventing EM/HPM energy from reaching susceptible electronic or explosive components. Exterior packaging fabricated from plastic, wood or other fibre materials provides almost no protection form EM/HPM threats. The metal enclosure can be very thin provided there are no openings (tears, pin holes, doors, incomplete seams) that would allow microwaves to enter. Sealed barrier bags that incorporate a thin layer of aluminium foil and are primarily used to provide water vapour proof protection to an item, can add a great deal of resistance to EM/HPM penetration.
A number of cylindrical and rectangular steel containers have been developed by the Packaging Division for a wide range of munitions, weapon systems and associated components. The cylindrical containers are end opening and the rectangular containers are top opening. All the containers have synthetic rubber gaskets that allow them to maintain a +3 psi environmental seal to the outside environment. The containers are constructed using seam welding to provide for continuous metal contact on all surfaces of the body assembly. The cover openings have been held to a minimum and the sealing gaskets positioned in a manner to allow overlapping metal parts to add additional protection to these areas. Microwaves are very adept at bouncing around and working their way into even the smallest opening. Tests of the cylindrical and rectangular steel containers used by this organization have demonstrated a high level of protection in preventing EM/HPM energy from entering the container.
The key is to use a metal enclosure and eliminate or minimize any openings. Where openings are needed they should be surrounded to the greatest extent possible by continuous metal and in the case of a gasket, metal sheathing or mesh can be placed around the elastometer material or conductive metal moulded into the gasket. The closer the surrounding container comes to a continuous metal skin the more protection that will be provided.
High quality gaskets, utilizing either a mesh or embedded conductive metal design, are very expensive. They add a magnitude of cost to a normal gasket and can easily double the price of a container similar to the ones mentioned above.
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NBCsurvivor
Has No Life - Lives on TB
The Dome homes with the rebar support should be EMP proof (I think).
Posted: July 10, 2008
6:22 pm Eastern
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
WASHINGTON – A top scientist today warned the House Armed Services Committee America remains vulnerable to a "catastrophe" from a nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack that could be launched with plausible deniability by hostile rogue nations or terrorists.
William R. Graham, chairman of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack and the former national science adviser to President Reagan, testified before the committee while presenting a sobering new report on "one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences."
It is the first report from the commission since 2004 and identifies vulnerabilities in the nation's critical infrastructures, "which are essential to both our civilian and military capabilities."
Not taking the steps necessary to reduce the threat in the next three to five years "can both invite and reward attack," Graham told the committee.
The scariest and most threatening kind of EMP attack is initiated by the detonation of a nuclear weapon at high altitude in the range of 25 to 250 miles above the Earth's surface. The immediate effects of EMP are disruption of, and damage to, electronic systems and electrical infrastructure. Such a detonation over the middle of the continental U.S. "has the capability to produce significant damage to critical infrastructures that support the fabric of U.S. society and the ability of the United States and Western nations to project influence and military power," said Graham.
(Story continues below)
"Several potential adversaries have the capability to attack the United States with a high-altitude nuclear weapon-generated electromagnetic pulse, and others appear to be pursuing efforts to obtain that capability," said Graham. "A determined adversary can achieve an EMP attack capability without having a high level of sophistication. For example, an adversary would not have to have long-range ballistic missiles to conduct an EMP attack against the United States. Such an attack could be launched from a freighter off the U.S. coast using a short- or medium-range missile to loft a nuclear warhead to high altitude. Terrorists sponsored by a rogue state could attempt to execute such an attack without revealing the identity of the perpetrators. Iran, the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism, has practiced launching a mobile ballistic missile from a vessel in the Caspian Sea. Iran has also tested high-altitude explosions of the Shahab-III, a test mode consistent with EMP attack, and described the tests as successful. Iranian military writings explicitly discuss a nuclear EMP attack that would gravely harm the United States. While the commission does not know the intention of Iran in conducting these activities, we are disturbed by the capability that emerges when we connect the dots."
William R. Graham
Graham reminded the committee even smaller nuclear weapons can create massive EMP effects over wide geographic areas. He also pointed out that United Nations investigators recently found that "the design for an advanced nuclear weapon, miniaturized to fit on ballistic missiles currently in the inventory of Iran, North Korea and other potentially hostile states, was in the possession of Swiss criminals affiliated with the A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network."
Theoretically, an EMP attack is devastating because of the unprecedented cascading failures of major infrastructures that could result. Because of America's heavy reliance on electricity and electronics, the impact would be far worse than on a country less advanced technologically. Graham and the commission see the potential for failure in the financial system, the system of distribution for food and water, medical care and trade and production.
"The recovery of any one of the key national infrastructures is dependent upon the recovery of others," he said. "The longer the outage, the more problematic and uncertain the recovery will be. It is possible for the functional outages to become mutually reinforcing until at some point the degradation of infrastructure could have irreversible effects on the country's ability to support its population."
Graham took the EMP debate out of the realm of science fiction by reminding the committee that as recently as May 1999, during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Russian leaders threatened a U.S. congressional delegation with the specter of such an attack that would paralyze the U.S.
He also quoted James J. Shinn, assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific Security, who two weeks ago told the same House committee that China's arms buildup includes exotic experiments with electromagnetic weapons that can devastate electronics with bursts of energy similar to those produced by a nuclear blast.
"The consequence of EMP is that you destroy the communications network," Shinn said. "And we are, as you know, and as the Chinese know, heavily dependent on sophisticated communications, satellite communications, in the conduct of our forces. And so, whether it's from an EMP or it's some kind of a coordinated [anti-satellite] effort, we could be in a very bad place if the Chinese enhanced their capability in this area."
Graham says terrorists who get their hands on one or a few unsophisticated nuclear weapons might well calculate they could get the most bang for their buck from attempting an EMP attack.
Recovery from a widespread EMP attack could take months or years, Graham warned. The fact that key components of the U.S. electrical grid are not even manufactured in America and must be ordered a year in advance from foreign suppliers suggests just how complicated and time-consuming recovery might be. The high state of automation within America's utilities further complicates recovery. There just might not be sufficient trained manpower available to get the job done in a timely way.
"The commission's view is that the federal government does not today have sufficient human and physical assets for reliably assessing and managing EMP threats," said Graham. "The commission reviewed current national capabilities to understand and to manage the effects of EMP and concluded that the U.S. is rapidly losing the technical competence and facilities that it needs in the government, the national laboratories and the industrial community."
Graham said it's not too late for Congress to take the bull by the horns and take the steps necessary to prepare for the threat – and thereby reduce it.
"A serious national commitment to address the threat of an EMP attack can lead to a national posture that would significantly reduce the payoff for such an attack and allow the United States to recover from EMP, and from other threats, man-made and natural, to the critical infrastructures," said Graham.
Graham's predecessor as chairman of the commission had equally tough words on the impact of the EMP threat.
"Their effects on systems and infrastructures dependent on electricity and electronics could be sufficiently ruinous as to qualify as catastrophic to the nation," Lowell Wood, acting chairman of the commission, told members of Congress in 2005.
The commission's previous report went so far as to suggest, in its opening sentence, that an EMP attack "might result in the defeat of our military forces."
6:22 pm Eastern
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
WASHINGTON – A top scientist today warned the House Armed Services Committee America remains vulnerable to a "catastrophe" from a nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack that could be launched with plausible deniability by hostile rogue nations or terrorists.
William R. Graham, chairman of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack and the former national science adviser to President Reagan, testified before the committee while presenting a sobering new report on "one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences."
It is the first report from the commission since 2004 and identifies vulnerabilities in the nation's critical infrastructures, "which are essential to both our civilian and military capabilities."
Not taking the steps necessary to reduce the threat in the next three to five years "can both invite and reward attack," Graham told the committee.
The scariest and most threatening kind of EMP attack is initiated by the detonation of a nuclear weapon at high altitude in the range of 25 to 250 miles above the Earth's surface. The immediate effects of EMP are disruption of, and damage to, electronic systems and electrical infrastructure. Such a detonation over the middle of the continental U.S. "has the capability to produce significant damage to critical infrastructures that support the fabric of U.S. society and the ability of the United States and Western nations to project influence and military power," said Graham.
(Story continues below)
"Several potential adversaries have the capability to attack the United States with a high-altitude nuclear weapon-generated electromagnetic pulse, and others appear to be pursuing efforts to obtain that capability," said Graham. "A determined adversary can achieve an EMP attack capability without having a high level of sophistication. For example, an adversary would not have to have long-range ballistic missiles to conduct an EMP attack against the United States. Such an attack could be launched from a freighter off the U.S. coast using a short- or medium-range missile to loft a nuclear warhead to high altitude. Terrorists sponsored by a rogue state could attempt to execute such an attack without revealing the identity of the perpetrators. Iran, the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism, has practiced launching a mobile ballistic missile from a vessel in the Caspian Sea. Iran has also tested high-altitude explosions of the Shahab-III, a test mode consistent with EMP attack, and described the tests as successful. Iranian military writings explicitly discuss a nuclear EMP attack that would gravely harm the United States. While the commission does not know the intention of Iran in conducting these activities, we are disturbed by the capability that emerges when we connect the dots."
William R. Graham
Graham reminded the committee even smaller nuclear weapons can create massive EMP effects over wide geographic areas. He also pointed out that United Nations investigators recently found that "the design for an advanced nuclear weapon, miniaturized to fit on ballistic missiles currently in the inventory of Iran, North Korea and other potentially hostile states, was in the possession of Swiss criminals affiliated with the A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network."
Theoretically, an EMP attack is devastating because of the unprecedented cascading failures of major infrastructures that could result. Because of America's heavy reliance on electricity and electronics, the impact would be far worse than on a country less advanced technologically. Graham and the commission see the potential for failure in the financial system, the system of distribution for food and water, medical care and trade and production.
"The recovery of any one of the key national infrastructures is dependent upon the recovery of others," he said. "The longer the outage, the more problematic and uncertain the recovery will be. It is possible for the functional outages to become mutually reinforcing until at some point the degradation of infrastructure could have irreversible effects on the country's ability to support its population."
Graham took the EMP debate out of the realm of science fiction by reminding the committee that as recently as May 1999, during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Russian leaders threatened a U.S. congressional delegation with the specter of such an attack that would paralyze the U.S.
He also quoted James J. Shinn, assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific Security, who two weeks ago told the same House committee that China's arms buildup includes exotic experiments with electromagnetic weapons that can devastate electronics with bursts of energy similar to those produced by a nuclear blast.
"The consequence of EMP is that you destroy the communications network," Shinn said. "And we are, as you know, and as the Chinese know, heavily dependent on sophisticated communications, satellite communications, in the conduct of our forces. And so, whether it's from an EMP or it's some kind of a coordinated [anti-satellite] effort, we could be in a very bad place if the Chinese enhanced their capability in this area."
Graham says terrorists who get their hands on one or a few unsophisticated nuclear weapons might well calculate they could get the most bang for their buck from attempting an EMP attack.
Recovery from a widespread EMP attack could take months or years, Graham warned. The fact that key components of the U.S. electrical grid are not even manufactured in America and must be ordered a year in advance from foreign suppliers suggests just how complicated and time-consuming recovery might be. The high state of automation within America's utilities further complicates recovery. There just might not be sufficient trained manpower available to get the job done in a timely way.
"The commission's view is that the federal government does not today have sufficient human and physical assets for reliably assessing and managing EMP threats," said Graham. "The commission reviewed current national capabilities to understand and to manage the effects of EMP and concluded that the U.S. is rapidly losing the technical competence and facilities that it needs in the government, the national laboratories and the industrial community."
Graham said it's not too late for Congress to take the bull by the horns and take the steps necessary to prepare for the threat – and thereby reduce it.
"A serious national commitment to address the threat of an EMP attack can lead to a national posture that would significantly reduce the payoff for such an attack and allow the United States to recover from EMP, and from other threats, man-made and natural, to the critical infrastructures," said Graham.
Graham's predecessor as chairman of the commission had equally tough words on the impact of the EMP threat.
"Their effects on systems and infrastructures dependent on electricity and electronics could be sufficiently ruinous as to qualify as catastrophic to the nation," Lowell Wood, acting chairman of the commission, told members of Congress in 2005.
The commission's previous report went so far as to suggest, in its opening sentence, that an EMP attack "might result in the defeat of our military forces."
LoupGarou
Ancient Fuzzball
The search engine here at TB2K won't work with three letter or smaller words. Try searching for "HEMP", "eBomb" (the two types of EMP) as well as "Fischer Spikeguard" or "Transtector" (the two best makers of protection devices for HEMP).
I have posted quite a bit of info on the subject. I was one of the lead scientists in a R&D lab that did EMP testing and protection for the biggest targets of EMP in CONUS. As far as the basic gist of the topic, there are two types that could (read possibility, not probability) be used against us here in the US:
HEMP:
HEMP, High-altitude ElectroMagnetic Pulse. Set off by several nuclear blasts in the upper atmosphere to cause a Compton's field. To cover CONUS effectively a minimum of four large nuclear detonations would be needed with no more than 5.8 seconds in between one detonation and it's neighboring detonation. Large HF (high frequency (1-15MHz "shortwave") RF (Radio Frequency)) signals are the outcome of these Compton's fields. Since these fields are a field source and not a point source, they do not conform to point source rules, such as inverse square law. This is the reason that just four detonations can effect a very large area like CONUS. Damage is done by the reception of the different fields' outputs that arrive at different times along the different long wires at different distances and angles. All of the different incoming pulses setup areas of constructive and destructive interference that either create nodes where power is added to each other, or null points where out of phase pulses collide and cause damage. This process can continue from several seconds to a few minutes, so damage is not going to be limited to just the first pulse or pulses. The probability of damage increases with the number of grid connections that your equipment is using (a television that uses rabbit ears is far less likely to have damage than one that is connected to your cable TV cable likewise, your computer that is connected to phone, power, AND cable for internet is really asking for it). The ONLY damage that HEMP can do comes from long line signal reception (wires that are over a certain length), and this has to do with the lower frequency of the pulse(s), which are all in the HF and lower frequency range. At these frequencies, the wires need to be several dozens of feet long, at minimum, to even start "collecting" a good portion of the pulse. This is why it damages things that are connected to the grid, but leaves portable devices alone. Your laptop, running on battery power and not connected to anything with a cable or cord will be fine during a HEMP blast, even if using WiFi to connect to the internet. The WiFi Access Point (your router) will have a much tougher ordeal as it will be connected to at least one grid (the power grid), and possibly wither the phone or cable grid as well. Upstream, the cable company, power company and phone company WILL have major issues, and massive damage as they are connected to SEVERAL different levels of grids, and are the meeting point for many at one location. This means that the probability of a null point (destructive interference, where the pulses meet out of phase) is almost 100 percent at their location. As far as protection against HEMP damage, nothing beats unplugging the equipment if it is a small device. Your computer, laptop, radio, TV, or other small electronics WILL NOT BE DAMAGED BY HEMP IF UNPLUGGED from all cables and cords, and the antennas folded down. This does not change if the device is on or off. Even an unplugged form the grid 12 foot power cord is NOT enough to receive enough signal to damage anything. Faraday cages are not needed for protection of small items during a HEMP attack. Faraday cages can be helpful with larger items (think large computer room with hundreds of feet of cables, not the thing that most people have at home). IF, you have to have equipment plugged into the grids, constantly AND you want them protected, then I would suggest spending some money (read: "not cheap") and going with real EMP (HEMP) protection like Transtector, Fischer "Spikeguard", PolyPhaser, Alpha Delta, and a few others make. I use a mixture of several layers of them at my locations, not just for EMP protection, but also because they will protect against lightning. I can guarantee that HEMP pulses will not make it through the snubber networks that I am using, but you have to be able to justify the cost (one location is over $40K, but my computer equipment inside that location justifies that easily).
eBombs:
eBombs are the other type of EMP attack. They are also called HPM attacks (High Powered Microwave) They are different in many ways from HEMP attacks, especially in the frequencies used and the protection against.them. eBombs are made by using a high powered, NON-NUCLEAR generator (usually a one shot deal, like a MHD or FCG (MagnetoHydroDynamic or Flux Compression Generator)), and directing that massive electrical DC pulse towards a microwave tube such as a Vircator. This creates an enormous pulse in the several GHz range in an angle out form the front of the microwave tube. Now, because of the fact that the frequencies are MUCH higher than HEMP pulses are, the probability of damage to ANY electronic device becomes MUCH higher. As the frequency increases, the length of conductor needed to receive the pulses becomes shorter. At 1GHz, any wire that is 2.8 inches long can effectively receive a good amount of signal, and eBombs work in frequencies up as far as 70-90GHz, so the leads on most of the components and ALL of the traces on a PCB (printed circuit board) act as very effective antennas. COMPLETE Faraday shielding is the ONLY way your are going to have any device protected against eBombs. Unlike HEMP, just unplugging the device from the grid won't help. Faraday shielding does not need to be grounded for it to work, and grounding in some instances will make things worse. Faraday shielding DOES have to be perfect, since at the several GHz frequency range, even a small opening will let a LOT of signal in. But, shielding does not need to be expensive, all you have to do is remember two things about how Faraday shields work: you need a completely insulated interior so that the device you are trying to protect is NOT touching the sides of the metal enclosure. And you need to make sure that the metal enclosure is continuous with no gaps or holes. An effective Faraday shield can be as simple as putting the device in a sock, and then wrapping that sock covered device in several layers of aluminum foil. Now, the good news about eBombs... This form of generation is a point source and DOES have to conform to point source rules. This is the reason that an eBomb attack can only effect things in a several block area to at most a square mile or two. eBombs are a surgical strike weapon, good for small areas such as a communications complex or power generation/power transmission area. Because it is a point source, if they double the distance to target to enlarge the area, they cut the power density on target to 25% of what it was. This means that unless you are right next to a high value target, the chances of being effected by an eBomb are slim to none. They are not going to carpet bomb CONUS with eBombs to make sure that everybody has fried devices. Unless you live right next door to a communications facility, military target, or other high value target, I would not worry about eBomb damage.
Loup
I worked for many years as a broadcast engineer. At one point our station changed owners and the new owner decided that he could save money by locating the studios at the transmitter site.
We built the new studios 30 feet from the antennas which were pumping out 50,000 watts on the AM band.
We had to buy many rolls of fine-mesh pure copper screening and completely surround that part of the building with this shielding. The screens were soldered continuously at all joints to create one big shield.
All doors had screening fastened to them and we installed numerous groundstraps along the hinge side.
THEN, the whole "cage" had to be grounded at many points.
It was quite an expensive task in terms of material and labor.
We built the new studios 30 feet from the antennas which were pumping out 50,000 watts on the AM band.
We had to buy many rolls of fine-mesh pure copper screening and completely surround that part of the building with this shielding. The screens were soldered continuously at all joints to create one big shield.
All doors had screening fastened to them and we installed numerous groundstraps along the hinge side.
THEN, the whole "cage" had to be grounded at many points.
It was quite an expensive task in terms of material and labor.
Heh, it just happens that my house IS wrapped in foil. Due to allergies, I used builders foil instead of Tyvek for the housewrap. I even have foil between the rafters in the roof. I used Reflectix insulation (bubble pack between two foil layers) to create a foundation for the foamed-in-place insulation I had put there - and to leave an air barrier above it.Wrap it in foil
But I don't think this will help much re: EMP. At least not the kind that comes through the phone lines, electric wires, etc. But, admitedly, I don't know as much as I'd like to on the subject. I've been planning to do a little more research and I think this is a good time.
My biggest question is whether or not EMP will affect my propane-powered generator that's permanently connected to the electrical system in my house. I'm guessing that it will. So I'm prepared to not have use of the generator.
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You made an effort, thank you. I'm assuming you've real Loup's post on your thread. He and a couple others have posted alot of info as Loup says.
The threat comes from two sources as Loup has said and I will defer to his expertise as most of my knowledge comes from technical journels IEEE and others as oppose to practical experience.
But a couple points.
First off, you need to understand one thing about radiowaves and antennas. The reason why your rooftop TV antenna has different length metal tubes is because each different length, is tuned to receive maximum energy according to the radio wavelength. Short wavelengths have short antennas, Long Wave lengths require long antennas.
This is important because there are two sources of EMP damage. They orginate from two sources and require different approaches to protection.
Nuclear explosion EMP is low frequency in nature (long wavelength) and typically is most destructive to electronics connected to long enough wires (antennas, phonelines, electrial power grid) to collect sufficient damaging energy. It requires long antennas, inches, feet, miles.
eBombs are Non-nuclear explosive devices designed to create intense electromagnetic fields by the physical construction of the bomb. They operate in a geographically small, local area. They generate super ultra high frequencies with wavelengths measured in less than a milimeter. The implications for those protecting equipment is that different methods must be used as destructive energy can worm it's way in gaps, cracks and pinholes smaller that a milimeter.
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The problem with this story Warthog is that it was NOT written by Graham himself.
We have no idea of how consistant the thoughts expressed in this article are with reality.... it was written by a reporter who lacking Graham's background did his best to interpret the information and made it dramatic enough to get people's attention.
We have no idea of how consistant the thoughts expressed in this article are with reality.... it was written by a reporter who lacking Graham's background did his best to interpret the information and made it dramatic enough to get people's attention.
This oughta help 
see more here
http://tinani.c7f.net/michelle/tinfoil
and here
http://blacktable.com/elder040114.htm
see more here
http://tinani.c7f.net/michelle/tinfoil
and here
http://blacktable.com/elder040114.htm
Hansa44
Justine Case
This oughta help
see more here
http://tinani.c7f.net/michelle/tinfoil
and here
http://blacktable.com/elder040114.htm
HOLY CRAP! How in the 'ell did you get a picture of my computer room!!!!!!
I'm sitting here in the corner rocking back 'n forth sucking my thumb and caressing my SigP229 in fear.
Who's going to be the next person through that door......!
gonewacky
Veteran Member
What you are about to read may sound like something out of a science-fiction movie, but it is true and could happen. Take the time to ask yourself what you would do, and how you would handle something like this. This information was gathered from my research of the Congressional Record: June 9, 2005 (House). Dr. Lowell Wood, and his research of this effect. Dr. Lowell Wood is known and respected as the most knowable expert on this area. Dr. William Graham, the Commission chairman, was science advisor to President Reagan, and many more.
The next Pearl Harbor or 9/11will not announce itself with a searing flash of nuclear light. Noir will it appear with thousands of people dying of the plague or its genetically engineered twin. You will hear nothing as you wonder what it was. The civilized world will have become unhinged. Fluorescent lights and television sets will glow eerily bright, even though they are turned off. The smell of ozone mixed with smoldering plastic will fill the air as electric wires arc and telephone lines melt. Your cell-phone, Palm Pilot, or MP3 player will feel warm to the touch, with their batteries overloaded.
Then you will notice that the world sounds different. It has turn eerily quiet, and the background noise of civilization has faded away. The pounding drum of internal-combustion engines has stopped. Like being in a time machine, you have just been thrust backward 200 years. A time when the only electricity was a lightning bolt from the sky. You quickly realize that the world you know is gone, and nothing works, and find the only way to get around is to walk or ride a bike. Unless you are lucky enough to have one of the few diesel engines that still work, but this to will be short lived. With no gas pumps working, their time is limited to the fuel they have, and then they will be just like all the rest.
What happened, was five hundred miles away high up in the atmosphere, a nuke had exploded. The Electro Magnetic Pulse had just acted like a giant continental time machine turning us back to the technology of 200 years ago. Electromagnetic Pulse or EMP is the eminence of gamma rays that interact with the surrounding air, shooting off electrons. The electrons scatter wildly, creating a rolling electrical field that travels through the air at the speed of light. It can burn up all electrical equipment. The computer in your car, your radio, your TV, your cell-phone, power transformers, every computer will be a paperweight. If it has a circuit board, it is toast. Plugged in or not, turned on or not, it dose not matter, EMP flows through the air.
The second concern is known as the "late-time EMP effect," and may be the most worrisome aspect of high security devices. It occurs in the 15 minutes after detonation. During this period, the EMP that surged through electrical systems creates localized magnetic fields. When these magnetic fields collapse, they cause electric surges to travel through the power and telecommunication infrastructure. This string-of-firecrackers effect means that sites such as telephone switching centers and electronic funds-transfer exchanges, would be attacked through their electric and telecommunication connections. The Guards would find themselves helpless, and have nothing left to protect.
Why the semiconductor Fails
The electrical field produced by the EMP only lasts a very short time before it quickly tails off. The electric field has a rise time of about 1 nanosecond, and even with such a short pulse. The effects can be tremendous. Failure of semi-conductive chips happen very quickly. Semiconductor devices fail when they encounter an EMP because of the local heating that occurs. When a semi-conductive device absorbs the EMP energy, it displaces the resulting heat that is produced relatively slowly when compared to the time scale of the EMP. Because the heat is not dissipated quickly, the semiconductor can quickly heat up to temperatures near the melting point of the material. Soon the device will short and fail. This type of failure is call thermal second-breakdown failure.
EMP Hardening
It is very hard to harden something that is being used. But the theory is that an enclosed metal container is protected. It has to be completely sealed, even an opening a fraction of a millimeter will mean failure. What most pour men do is use a metal trash can with a tight fitting lid. They line the in side of it with a non-conductive material. (cardboard) Nothing can touch the metal of the can, or everything is toast. Things that most people would put inside, laptop, radio, CD player, and 12V-power inverter. The first emergency frequencies to operate will be AM 640 and AM 1240. These are clear channel stations, and part of the original Emergency Broadcast System.
http://www.bartlett.house.gov/SupportingFiles/documents/EMP_Speech_June_21_2005.pdf
Congressman Roscoe Bartlett
ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE
Congressional Record
US House of Representatives
June 21, 2005
[Pages: H4888 – H4891] GPO's PDF
---
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. BARTLETT. Mr. Speaker, what I want to spend a few moments talking about this evening is something that will be new to most Americans. They will not have heard about this subject. Indeed, nobody knew about this until 1962; that is, no one in this country knew about it.
There was an experiment over Johnston Island out in the Pacific Ocean that was called Operation Starfish. It was part of a series of nuclear tests that were called the Fishbowl Series. This was a unique one. The others had all been at ground level or some little distance above the ground. This one was an extra-atmospheric, a detonation above the atmosphere.
Nobody knew what was going to happen. It was the first time we had detonated a nuclear weapon in a test series above the atmosphere, and there were a number of ships and airplanes and radar, theater-like, that were tracking the missile that launched this nuclear bomb and noted its explosion. The explosion occurred about 400 above Johnston Island. That is well above the atmosphere.
Now, the Soviets have had very extensive experience with this kind of testing. This was our first and, indeed, our only experience with this. So our knowledge about this phenomenon comes from this single test, what we have learned from the Soviets and now the Russians and the number of simulations that we have done since that time.
There were no diagnostics to test the effects on Hawaii, which was about 800 miles away, because nobody expected there to be any effect there. Many of the instruments we were using for testing around Johnston Island were pegged; that is, they did not have enough capacity to register the effects that were produced by this extra-atmospheric explosion.
What happened in Hawaii may be open to some controversy, but there were some lights that went out. This was largely electrical. In those days it was not all of the electronics that we have today. A number of lights went out, and in the last couple of years, some of the evidence of what happened to that equipment was shown to a commission that I will talk about in a little bit that was set up in 2001 to investigate this phenomenon, and they submitted their report in 2004.
This phenomenon that we observed there that exceeded the capacity of the instruments at the test site, that went all the way, 800 miles away, to Hawaii, have been called electromagnetic pulse, EMP . We have learned since then that every extra-atmospheric explosion produces an EMP . You can develop a nuclear weapon, as we designed but as I understand never built and the Soviets both designed and have built, enhanced EMP weapons that limit the explosion but increased the electromagnetic effects.
What are the implications of EMP and why are we talking about it tonight? EMP could be probably the most asymmetric weapon that any adversary could use against us. By asymmetric, we mean a weapon that has a relatively small impact in terms of its local effect but could have an enormous impact on our military or our society because of its effect.
There are a number of asymmetric weapons. Terrorism is an asymmetric weapon. It does not cost them much money or take very big explosives, but it has a big effect on us. 9/11, of course, was a major asymmetric attack on us because those few people in those four airplanes have cost us billions and billions of dollars and totally changed our society. This is an example of an asymmetric attack.
Most Americans will not know about electromagnetic pulse and what it could do to our military, to our society, but I will guarantee my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, that all of our potential enemies know everything about EMP . In a little bit, I will show you some quotes from countries that could be our enemy that will indicate that they know all about EMP .
In 1999, I was sitting in a hotel room in Vienna, Austria. We were there near the end of the Kosovo conflict. There were ten Members of Congress there, several staff members, three members of the Russian Duma and a personal representative of Slobodan Milosevic. We developed a framework agreement for ending the Kosovo conflict that was adopted 8 days later by the G-8.
One of the Russians who was there was a very senior Russian. His name is Vladimir Lukin. He was the ambassador to this country at the end of Bush I and the beginning of Clinton. At that time he was chair of their equivalent of our Committee on International Relations, a very senior and very respected Russian. He is a little short fellow with short arms and stocky build.
He sat in that hotel room in Vienna for 2 days with his arms folded across his chest, looking at the ceiling. He was very angry. He said at one point, “You spit on us; now why should we help you?”
What he meant by that was that the United States, the Clinton administration at that time, had indicated to the Russians that they really were not needed to help resolve this conflict, that we were big boys and we would handle this on our own. It soon became obvious to the Clinton administration that the only country in the world that had the real confidence of the Serbs was Russia, and they were added to the G-7 to make the G-8, which 5 days after we came back resolved the Kosovo conflict with the framework agreement that we had developed there.
The next statement that Vladimir Lukin made was a startling statement. The chairman of our delegation was the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) who had been to Russia thirty-some times and he speaks some Russian and understands more. When Vladimir Lukin was speaking, he turned to me and said, “Did you hear what he said?” Yes, I heard what he said, but of course, I did not understand it; I just heard Russian words.
When it was translated, this was what he said, and by the way, he did not need a translator. Vladimir Lukin speaks very good English, but when you are talking with these folks, they frequently will speak in their native tongue so it has to be translated and then translated back to them when we speak so that gives them twice as long to formulate their answer. So if you do not know both languages, you are at somewhat of a disadvantage in dialoguing with them because they have twice as long to formulate an answer.
This was what surprised the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), and this is what he said: “If we really wanted to hurt you, with no fear of retaliation, we would launch an SLBM.” [That's a submarine-launched ballistic missile.] “We would launch an SLBM. We would detonate a nuclear weapon high above your country, and we would shut down your power grid for 6 months or so.”
Now, he made the observation that without fear of retaliation, because you would not know for certain where it came from, particularly today. Factor in the Cold War with only two superpowers, we absolutely would have known where it came from, but today, how would you know? There are many countries out there who can get a tramp steamer and a Scud launcher and a crude nuclear weapon and that is all it would take to produce an EMP attack because a Scud
launcher goes about 180 miles apogee, and that is plenty high. It would not cover all of the United States, of course.
The third ranking Communist was there, a handsome, tall, blond fellow by the name of Aleksandr Shabonov, and he smiled and said, “if one weapon would not do it, we have some spares.” I think at that time it was something like 7,000 spares that they had.
This was a very startling remark, and what it said was that the detonation of a single, large, appropriately designed nuclear weapon above our country could shut down our power grid and shut down our communications, he said, for 6 months or so. If that were true, and there is increasing evidence, as I will indicate, from the report that this commission gave us that it is true, that would mean that you would be in a world, Mr. Speaker, where the only person you could talk to was the person next to you unless you happened to have a vacuum tube handset, then you could talk because they are about a million times less susceptible to EMP than our current microelectronic systems, and the only way you could go anywhere was to walk.
Several years ago, we had a field hearing at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab [JHU-APL], and a Dr. Lowell Wood was there. I met Dr. Lowell Wood through Tom Clancy who lives on the eastern shore of Maryland and I know him. He has come to do several political events for me. I knew that he had done a book where EMP was a part of the scenario, and I knew he did very good research and he could tell me something about EMP . This was several years ago.
I called Tom Clancy and I asked him, and he said, gee, if you read my book you know all about EMP that I know, but he said let me refer you to the smartest man hired by the U.S. government. He referred me to a Dr. Lowell Wood from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California. We got his pager number. In those days it was pagers rather than cell phones that are so ubiquitous today, and I paged him, believing that he was in California. The pager signal went up to a satellite and back down, and he was in Washington, and within an hour, he was sitting in my office.
Dr. Lowell Wood at this field hearing out at the Applied Physics Lab out in Howard County made the observation that an EMP lay down would be the equivalent of a giant continental time machine that would move us back a century in technology. What this would mean, of course, is that we would have no more capability for moving around, for communicating to each other, for plowing our fields, for moving our equipment and our food around than we had 100 years ago.
I said that, Dr. Wood, the population we have today, 285 million people and its distribution, largely in large cities and suburbia, could not be supported by the technology of a century ago. His unemotional response was, “Yes, I know.
[Time: 21:30]
The population will shrink until it can be supported by the technology.”
The point I am trying to make is this could be a devastating asymmetric weapon. It may not be known to most Americans. I suspect not one in 100 have heard of nuclear electromagnetic pulse, but I can assure Members that all of our potential enemies know a great deal about EMP.
The first chart shows the effects of a single nuclear weapon. This one is detonated in the northwest corner of Iowa, and it blankets all of the United States.
The colors here indicate the intensity of the pulse you get from that. The purple as you can see from the scale is 50 percent. So what this says is whatever the intensity was at ground zero, and we are several hundred miles above that, but the intensity at that level which is the red here in the center, will be half that out at the margins of our country.
This little smile here and the distortion here is due to the magnetic field of the Earth that bends the electrons that I will describe in just a moment.
What is this electromagnetic pulse? It is produced from strong gamma rays from the nuclear explosion which produce electrons that move at the speed of light. They move now to everything within line of sight. If you are about 300 or 400 miles high over the center of the country, Iowa or Nebraska, that will blanket all of the United States.
If the voltage is high enough, it will disrupt or fry these microelectronics.
Mr. Speaker, if you want to work on the inside of your computer, you need to be very careful that the static electricity that you produce just by rubbing your clothes together will not damage
it. You need to put a little wrist band on and ground yourself. At factories where most of these computers are made, and it is almost all women that I have seen there, this is one area where women do it better than men, and they are grounded to the floor. They have a metal anklet on, and they are grounded to the floor because static from just their movement could damage these very sensitive, very tiny microelectronics.
A little later I will show a chart that says the interview with some Russian generals have indicated that they have weapons that can produce 200 kilovolts per meter. They told us, and I cannot tell Members the exact voltage to which we have harkened, but I can say that the Russian generals told us they believe that this signal was several times higher than the voltage to which we had hardened. And even out at the periphery with 50 percent degradation, it was higher than we had hardened. By ``hardening'' I mean we have put some buffers in there that would intercept this pulse, like the surge protectors that we have for our computers which we have for lightning which will do no good for EMP because this pulse has such a rapid rise time measured in nanoseconds.
This pulse will be through the surge protector before the protector sees it. If you are 200 kilovolts at ground zero, it is 100 out at the periphery, and that is probably enough to weld, to fry all of our microelectronics, which is why Vladimir Lukin said they would detonate a nuclear weapon high above our country, shut down our power grid and our communications for 6 months or so.
From chart 3, I want to give some quotes from potential enemies to indicate that I am not letting the genie out of the bottle this evening. They know all about it. Not one in 50 Americans may know about EMP , but I want to assure Members our potential enemies know all about EMP.
This first quote is the quote that I heard myself sitting in that hotel room in Vienna, Austria when Vladimir Lukin said they could shut down our power grid and our communications. That was May 2, 1999. There were 10 other Congressmen there and several staff members.
Chinese military writings describe EMP as the key to victory and describe scenarios where EMP is used against U.S. aircraft carriers in a conflict over Taiwan. It is not like our potential enemies don’t know about it. And they know that we know about it, so they feel free to put it in their public writings.
A survey of worldwide military and scientific literature sponsored by the EMP commission was set up, and they functioned for 2 years. They submitted a report and they are now continuously briefing additional entities, different organizations and people. They found widespread knowledge about EMP and its potential military utility, including in Taiwan, Israel, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea. Iran has tested launching a scud missile from a
surface vessel, a launch mode that could support a national or transnational terrorist EMP attack against the United States.
By the way, we thought that launch was a failure because the device was detonated before it reached land. Now, that is exactly what you would do if you were rehearsing an EMP attack. By the way, there is no way that a nuclear weapon could do anywhere near as much damage against a sophisticated country like ours by dropping it on one of our cities as you could do to our country by detonating it at altitude. And you would not know it happened unless you were looking at it.
We are totally immune to EMP. It will not hurt us or damage buildings. All it does is to knock out all of our microelectronics, which means all of our computers. For instance, your car has several computers. Indeed, if you have a new car, they cannot even work on it in a shop without hooking it up to a computer to tell what is wrong with the vehicle. So an EMP with a high enough pulse would fry the computers in the car. They would not run. If you happen to have an old car with a coil and a distributor, that is probably going to work. That is probably less susceptible to EMP.
This chart shows additional quotes: ``If the world's industrial countries fail to devise effective ways to defend themselves against dangerous electronic assaults, they will disintegrate within a few years. 150,000 computers belong to the U.S. Army. If the enemy forces succeed in infiltrating the information network of the U.S. Army, then the whole organization would collapse.
The American soldiers could not find food to eat nor would they be able to fire a single shot.'' This is from Iranian Journal, December 1998.
``Terrorist information warfare includes using the technology directed energy weapons or electromagnetic pulse.'' This is from Iranian Journal of March 2000.
Terrorists have attempted to acquire non-nuclear radio frequency weapons. These are the weapons that would produce the directed energy effect. These produce a similar kind of pulse to EMP but does not have the broad spectrum. It only has part of the frequency involved. But if intense enough, if set up in this room, for instance, it could fry the computers in the cloak room which is not that far away. If it was set up in a van and went down Wall Street, if it were a really sophisticated device, it could take out all of the computers there, which would shut down our trading for quite a while if they were all taken down.
Some people might think that things similar to a Pearl Harbor incident are unlikely to take place during the Information Age. And this is a writing from China. Yet it could be regarded as a Pearl Harbor incident of the 21st century, if a surprise attack is conducted against the enemy's crucial information systems of command, control, and communication by such means as EMP weapons. Even a superpower, China says, like the United States, which possesses nuclear
missiles and powerful armed forces, cannot guarantee its immunity. In their words, an open society like the United States is extremely vulnerable to electronic attacks. This is May 14, 1996 from a Chinese journal.
Iran has conducted tests with Shahab-3 missiles which have been described as failures. I mention that because they detonated it before it reached the ground. That is exactly what they would do if they were planning for an EMP attack. Iran Shahab-3 is a medium-range mobile missile that could be driven onto a freighter and transported to a point near the United States for an EMP attack.
By the way, an EMP laydown is always an early event in Chinese and Russian war games because it is the most asymmetric attack that they could lodge against our country.
Just a little bit of a time line here. Operation Starfish occurred in 1962. In 1995, there was a very interesting event that nearly started World War III. It has been written up in several books now. Most people never knew about it, but the Norwegians launched an atmospheric test rocket. They are fairly close to Russia, and they told the Russians that they were launching this rocket; but in the bureaucracy of Russia, that did not get communicated to the right people and when they launched it, it was interpreted as a first salvo from the United States. You do not have very long to respond if your enemy is about a half hour away in terms of these ballistic missiles. The Russians came very near to launching a major salvo of missiles with nuclear warheads on them against our country. This was a very narrow brush with destiny that tells us how important it is that we understand the potential of these weapons and how they could be misunderstood by an enemy.
The next Pearl Harbor or 9/11will not announce itself with a searing flash of nuclear light. Noir will it appear with thousands of people dying of the plague or its genetically engineered twin. You will hear nothing as you wonder what it was. The civilized world will have become unhinged. Fluorescent lights and television sets will glow eerily bright, even though they are turned off. The smell of ozone mixed with smoldering plastic will fill the air as electric wires arc and telephone lines melt. Your cell-phone, Palm Pilot, or MP3 player will feel warm to the touch, with their batteries overloaded.
Then you will notice that the world sounds different. It has turn eerily quiet, and the background noise of civilization has faded away. The pounding drum of internal-combustion engines has stopped. Like being in a time machine, you have just been thrust backward 200 years. A time when the only electricity was a lightning bolt from the sky. You quickly realize that the world you know is gone, and nothing works, and find the only way to get around is to walk or ride a bike. Unless you are lucky enough to have one of the few diesel engines that still work, but this to will be short lived. With no gas pumps working, their time is limited to the fuel they have, and then they will be just like all the rest.
What happened, was five hundred miles away high up in the atmosphere, a nuke had exploded. The Electro Magnetic Pulse had just acted like a giant continental time machine turning us back to the technology of 200 years ago. Electromagnetic Pulse or EMP is the eminence of gamma rays that interact with the surrounding air, shooting off electrons. The electrons scatter wildly, creating a rolling electrical field that travels through the air at the speed of light. It can burn up all electrical equipment. The computer in your car, your radio, your TV, your cell-phone, power transformers, every computer will be a paperweight. If it has a circuit board, it is toast. Plugged in or not, turned on or not, it dose not matter, EMP flows through the air.
The second concern is known as the "late-time EMP effect," and may be the most worrisome aspect of high security devices. It occurs in the 15 minutes after detonation. During this period, the EMP that surged through electrical systems creates localized magnetic fields. When these magnetic fields collapse, they cause electric surges to travel through the power and telecommunication infrastructure. This string-of-firecrackers effect means that sites such as telephone switching centers and electronic funds-transfer exchanges, would be attacked through their electric and telecommunication connections. The Guards would find themselves helpless, and have nothing left to protect.
Why the semiconductor Fails
The electrical field produced by the EMP only lasts a very short time before it quickly tails off. The electric field has a rise time of about 1 nanosecond, and even with such a short pulse. The effects can be tremendous. Failure of semi-conductive chips happen very quickly. Semiconductor devices fail when they encounter an EMP because of the local heating that occurs. When a semi-conductive device absorbs the EMP energy, it displaces the resulting heat that is produced relatively slowly when compared to the time scale of the EMP. Because the heat is not dissipated quickly, the semiconductor can quickly heat up to temperatures near the melting point of the material. Soon the device will short and fail. This type of failure is call thermal second-breakdown failure.
EMP Hardening
It is very hard to harden something that is being used. But the theory is that an enclosed metal container is protected. It has to be completely sealed, even an opening a fraction of a millimeter will mean failure. What most pour men do is use a metal trash can with a tight fitting lid. They line the in side of it with a non-conductive material. (cardboard) Nothing can touch the metal of the can, or everything is toast. Things that most people would put inside, laptop, radio, CD player, and 12V-power inverter. The first emergency frequencies to operate will be AM 640 and AM 1240. These are clear channel stations, and part of the original Emergency Broadcast System.
http://www.bartlett.house.gov/SupportingFiles/documents/EMP_Speech_June_21_2005.pdf
Congressman Roscoe Bartlett
ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE
Congressional Record
US House of Representatives
June 21, 2005
[Pages: H4888 – H4891] GPO's PDF
---
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. BARTLETT. Mr. Speaker, what I want to spend a few moments talking about this evening is something that will be new to most Americans. They will not have heard about this subject. Indeed, nobody knew about this until 1962; that is, no one in this country knew about it.
There was an experiment over Johnston Island out in the Pacific Ocean that was called Operation Starfish. It was part of a series of nuclear tests that were called the Fishbowl Series. This was a unique one. The others had all been at ground level or some little distance above the ground. This one was an extra-atmospheric, a detonation above the atmosphere.
Nobody knew what was going to happen. It was the first time we had detonated a nuclear weapon in a test series above the atmosphere, and there were a number of ships and airplanes and radar, theater-like, that were tracking the missile that launched this nuclear bomb and noted its explosion. The explosion occurred about 400 above Johnston Island. That is well above the atmosphere.
Now, the Soviets have had very extensive experience with this kind of testing. This was our first and, indeed, our only experience with this. So our knowledge about this phenomenon comes from this single test, what we have learned from the Soviets and now the Russians and the number of simulations that we have done since that time.
There were no diagnostics to test the effects on Hawaii, which was about 800 miles away, because nobody expected there to be any effect there. Many of the instruments we were using for testing around Johnston Island were pegged; that is, they did not have enough capacity to register the effects that were produced by this extra-atmospheric explosion.
What happened in Hawaii may be open to some controversy, but there were some lights that went out. This was largely electrical. In those days it was not all of the electronics that we have today. A number of lights went out, and in the last couple of years, some of the evidence of what happened to that equipment was shown to a commission that I will talk about in a little bit that was set up in 2001 to investigate this phenomenon, and they submitted their report in 2004.
This phenomenon that we observed there that exceeded the capacity of the instruments at the test site, that went all the way, 800 miles away, to Hawaii, have been called electromagnetic pulse, EMP . We have learned since then that every extra-atmospheric explosion produces an EMP . You can develop a nuclear weapon, as we designed but as I understand never built and the Soviets both designed and have built, enhanced EMP weapons that limit the explosion but increased the electromagnetic effects.
What are the implications of EMP and why are we talking about it tonight? EMP could be probably the most asymmetric weapon that any adversary could use against us. By asymmetric, we mean a weapon that has a relatively small impact in terms of its local effect but could have an enormous impact on our military or our society because of its effect.
There are a number of asymmetric weapons. Terrorism is an asymmetric weapon. It does not cost them much money or take very big explosives, but it has a big effect on us. 9/11, of course, was a major asymmetric attack on us because those few people in those four airplanes have cost us billions and billions of dollars and totally changed our society. This is an example of an asymmetric attack.
Most Americans will not know about electromagnetic pulse and what it could do to our military, to our society, but I will guarantee my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, that all of our potential enemies know everything about EMP . In a little bit, I will show you some quotes from countries that could be our enemy that will indicate that they know all about EMP .
In 1999, I was sitting in a hotel room in Vienna, Austria. We were there near the end of the Kosovo conflict. There were ten Members of Congress there, several staff members, three members of the Russian Duma and a personal representative of Slobodan Milosevic. We developed a framework agreement for ending the Kosovo conflict that was adopted 8 days later by the G-8.
One of the Russians who was there was a very senior Russian. His name is Vladimir Lukin. He was the ambassador to this country at the end of Bush I and the beginning of Clinton. At that time he was chair of their equivalent of our Committee on International Relations, a very senior and very respected Russian. He is a little short fellow with short arms and stocky build.
He sat in that hotel room in Vienna for 2 days with his arms folded across his chest, looking at the ceiling. He was very angry. He said at one point, “You spit on us; now why should we help you?”
What he meant by that was that the United States, the Clinton administration at that time, had indicated to the Russians that they really were not needed to help resolve this conflict, that we were big boys and we would handle this on our own. It soon became obvious to the Clinton administration that the only country in the world that had the real confidence of the Serbs was Russia, and they were added to the G-7 to make the G-8, which 5 days after we came back resolved the Kosovo conflict with the framework agreement that we had developed there.
The next statement that Vladimir Lukin made was a startling statement. The chairman of our delegation was the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) who had been to Russia thirty-some times and he speaks some Russian and understands more. When Vladimir Lukin was speaking, he turned to me and said, “Did you hear what he said?” Yes, I heard what he said, but of course, I did not understand it; I just heard Russian words.
When it was translated, this was what he said, and by the way, he did not need a translator. Vladimir Lukin speaks very good English, but when you are talking with these folks, they frequently will speak in their native tongue so it has to be translated and then translated back to them when we speak so that gives them twice as long to formulate their answer. So if you do not know both languages, you are at somewhat of a disadvantage in dialoguing with them because they have twice as long to formulate an answer.
This was what surprised the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), and this is what he said: “If we really wanted to hurt you, with no fear of retaliation, we would launch an SLBM.” [That's a submarine-launched ballistic missile.] “We would launch an SLBM. We would detonate a nuclear weapon high above your country, and we would shut down your power grid for 6 months or so.”
Now, he made the observation that without fear of retaliation, because you would not know for certain where it came from, particularly today. Factor in the Cold War with only two superpowers, we absolutely would have known where it came from, but today, how would you know? There are many countries out there who can get a tramp steamer and a Scud launcher and a crude nuclear weapon and that is all it would take to produce an EMP attack because a Scud
launcher goes about 180 miles apogee, and that is plenty high. It would not cover all of the United States, of course.
The third ranking Communist was there, a handsome, tall, blond fellow by the name of Aleksandr Shabonov, and he smiled and said, “if one weapon would not do it, we have some spares.” I think at that time it was something like 7,000 spares that they had.
This was a very startling remark, and what it said was that the detonation of a single, large, appropriately designed nuclear weapon above our country could shut down our power grid and shut down our communications, he said, for 6 months or so. If that were true, and there is increasing evidence, as I will indicate, from the report that this commission gave us that it is true, that would mean that you would be in a world, Mr. Speaker, where the only person you could talk to was the person next to you unless you happened to have a vacuum tube handset, then you could talk because they are about a million times less susceptible to EMP than our current microelectronic systems, and the only way you could go anywhere was to walk.
Several years ago, we had a field hearing at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab [JHU-APL], and a Dr. Lowell Wood was there. I met Dr. Lowell Wood through Tom Clancy who lives on the eastern shore of Maryland and I know him. He has come to do several political events for me. I knew that he had done a book where EMP was a part of the scenario, and I knew he did very good research and he could tell me something about EMP . This was several years ago.
I called Tom Clancy and I asked him, and he said, gee, if you read my book you know all about EMP that I know, but he said let me refer you to the smartest man hired by the U.S. government. He referred me to a Dr. Lowell Wood from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California. We got his pager number. In those days it was pagers rather than cell phones that are so ubiquitous today, and I paged him, believing that he was in California. The pager signal went up to a satellite and back down, and he was in Washington, and within an hour, he was sitting in my office.
Dr. Lowell Wood at this field hearing out at the Applied Physics Lab out in Howard County made the observation that an EMP lay down would be the equivalent of a giant continental time machine that would move us back a century in technology. What this would mean, of course, is that we would have no more capability for moving around, for communicating to each other, for plowing our fields, for moving our equipment and our food around than we had 100 years ago.
I said that, Dr. Wood, the population we have today, 285 million people and its distribution, largely in large cities and suburbia, could not be supported by the technology of a century ago. His unemotional response was, “Yes, I know.
[Time: 21:30]
The population will shrink until it can be supported by the technology.”
The point I am trying to make is this could be a devastating asymmetric weapon. It may not be known to most Americans. I suspect not one in 100 have heard of nuclear electromagnetic pulse, but I can assure Members that all of our potential enemies know a great deal about EMP.
The first chart shows the effects of a single nuclear weapon. This one is detonated in the northwest corner of Iowa, and it blankets all of the United States.
The colors here indicate the intensity of the pulse you get from that. The purple as you can see from the scale is 50 percent. So what this says is whatever the intensity was at ground zero, and we are several hundred miles above that, but the intensity at that level which is the red here in the center, will be half that out at the margins of our country.
This little smile here and the distortion here is due to the magnetic field of the Earth that bends the electrons that I will describe in just a moment.
What is this electromagnetic pulse? It is produced from strong gamma rays from the nuclear explosion which produce electrons that move at the speed of light. They move now to everything within line of sight. If you are about 300 or 400 miles high over the center of the country, Iowa or Nebraska, that will blanket all of the United States.
If the voltage is high enough, it will disrupt or fry these microelectronics.
Mr. Speaker, if you want to work on the inside of your computer, you need to be very careful that the static electricity that you produce just by rubbing your clothes together will not damage
it. You need to put a little wrist band on and ground yourself. At factories where most of these computers are made, and it is almost all women that I have seen there, this is one area where women do it better than men, and they are grounded to the floor. They have a metal anklet on, and they are grounded to the floor because static from just their movement could damage these very sensitive, very tiny microelectronics.
A little later I will show a chart that says the interview with some Russian generals have indicated that they have weapons that can produce 200 kilovolts per meter. They told us, and I cannot tell Members the exact voltage to which we have harkened, but I can say that the Russian generals told us they believe that this signal was several times higher than the voltage to which we had hardened. And even out at the periphery with 50 percent degradation, it was higher than we had hardened. By ``hardening'' I mean we have put some buffers in there that would intercept this pulse, like the surge protectors that we have for our computers which we have for lightning which will do no good for EMP because this pulse has such a rapid rise time measured in nanoseconds.
This pulse will be through the surge protector before the protector sees it. If you are 200 kilovolts at ground zero, it is 100 out at the periphery, and that is probably enough to weld, to fry all of our microelectronics, which is why Vladimir Lukin said they would detonate a nuclear weapon high above our country, shut down our power grid and our communications for 6 months or so.
From chart 3, I want to give some quotes from potential enemies to indicate that I am not letting the genie out of the bottle this evening. They know all about it. Not one in 50 Americans may know about EMP , but I want to assure Members our potential enemies know all about EMP.
This first quote is the quote that I heard myself sitting in that hotel room in Vienna, Austria when Vladimir Lukin said they could shut down our power grid and our communications. That was May 2, 1999. There were 10 other Congressmen there and several staff members.
Chinese military writings describe EMP as the key to victory and describe scenarios where EMP is used against U.S. aircraft carriers in a conflict over Taiwan. It is not like our potential enemies don’t know about it. And they know that we know about it, so they feel free to put it in their public writings.
A survey of worldwide military and scientific literature sponsored by the EMP commission was set up, and they functioned for 2 years. They submitted a report and they are now continuously briefing additional entities, different organizations and people. They found widespread knowledge about EMP and its potential military utility, including in Taiwan, Israel, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea. Iran has tested launching a scud missile from a
surface vessel, a launch mode that could support a national or transnational terrorist EMP attack against the United States.
By the way, we thought that launch was a failure because the device was detonated before it reached land. Now, that is exactly what you would do if you were rehearsing an EMP attack. By the way, there is no way that a nuclear weapon could do anywhere near as much damage against a sophisticated country like ours by dropping it on one of our cities as you could do to our country by detonating it at altitude. And you would not know it happened unless you were looking at it.
We are totally immune to EMP. It will not hurt us or damage buildings. All it does is to knock out all of our microelectronics, which means all of our computers. For instance, your car has several computers. Indeed, if you have a new car, they cannot even work on it in a shop without hooking it up to a computer to tell what is wrong with the vehicle. So an EMP with a high enough pulse would fry the computers in the car. They would not run. If you happen to have an old car with a coil and a distributor, that is probably going to work. That is probably less susceptible to EMP.
This chart shows additional quotes: ``If the world's industrial countries fail to devise effective ways to defend themselves against dangerous electronic assaults, they will disintegrate within a few years. 150,000 computers belong to the U.S. Army. If the enemy forces succeed in infiltrating the information network of the U.S. Army, then the whole organization would collapse.
The American soldiers could not find food to eat nor would they be able to fire a single shot.'' This is from Iranian Journal, December 1998.
``Terrorist information warfare includes using the technology directed energy weapons or electromagnetic pulse.'' This is from Iranian Journal of March 2000.
Terrorists have attempted to acquire non-nuclear radio frequency weapons. These are the weapons that would produce the directed energy effect. These produce a similar kind of pulse to EMP but does not have the broad spectrum. It only has part of the frequency involved. But if intense enough, if set up in this room, for instance, it could fry the computers in the cloak room which is not that far away. If it was set up in a van and went down Wall Street, if it were a really sophisticated device, it could take out all of the computers there, which would shut down our trading for quite a while if they were all taken down.
Some people might think that things similar to a Pearl Harbor incident are unlikely to take place during the Information Age. And this is a writing from China. Yet it could be regarded as a Pearl Harbor incident of the 21st century, if a surprise attack is conducted against the enemy's crucial information systems of command, control, and communication by such means as EMP weapons. Even a superpower, China says, like the United States, which possesses nuclear
missiles and powerful armed forces, cannot guarantee its immunity. In their words, an open society like the United States is extremely vulnerable to electronic attacks. This is May 14, 1996 from a Chinese journal.
Iran has conducted tests with Shahab-3 missiles which have been described as failures. I mention that because they detonated it before it reached the ground. That is exactly what they would do if they were planning for an EMP attack. Iran Shahab-3 is a medium-range mobile missile that could be driven onto a freighter and transported to a point near the United States for an EMP attack.
By the way, an EMP laydown is always an early event in Chinese and Russian war games because it is the most asymmetric attack that they could lodge against our country.
Just a little bit of a time line here. Operation Starfish occurred in 1962. In 1995, there was a very interesting event that nearly started World War III. It has been written up in several books now. Most people never knew about it, but the Norwegians launched an atmospheric test rocket. They are fairly close to Russia, and they told the Russians that they were launching this rocket; but in the bureaucracy of Russia, that did not get communicated to the right people and when they launched it, it was interpreted as a first salvo from the United States. You do not have very long to respond if your enemy is about a half hour away in terms of these ballistic missiles. The Russians came very near to launching a major salvo of missiles with nuclear warheads on them against our country. This was a very narrow brush with destiny that tells us how important it is that we understand the potential of these weapons and how they could be misunderstood by an enemy.
Loup and others...
Regarding the search here on TB2K...
It is quite flexible and there is a way to get those 3 character searches to work.
Use a wildcard...either ? or *
In the case of searching the forum for EMP the emp? search works best.
The emp* search finds too many other variations like any post/thread with the word "empty" in it.
The emp? search only finds emp or any other 4 character word which starts with emp...of which there are none...at least on TB2K.
Hope this little tidbit helps in your searches of TB2K.
Kris
Regarding the search here on TB2K...
It is quite flexible and there is a way to get those 3 character searches to work.
Use a wildcard...either ? or *
In the case of searching the forum for EMP the emp? search works best.
The emp* search finds too many other variations like any post/thread with the word "empty" in it.
The emp? search only finds emp or any other 4 character word which starts with emp...of which there are none...at least on TB2K.
Hope this little tidbit helps in your searches of TB2K.
Kris
Hansa44
Justine Case
Kris, I found using emps gave a lot more posts and threads than emp? did.
emp* gave next to zero.
jed turtle
a brother in the Lord
so, if i covered my solar panels with metal "hardware cloth" (galvanized screen with about 1/4 or 1/2" grids), enclosed all connecting wires in metal pipe, enclosed all peripheral accessories (controller, fuses, inverters), then all the distributory wiring,) and lastly, all the appliances, the system would be emp proof?
and if i just took it all down and packed it away in boxes, or rather, had a backup system packed away in faraday cages, taking it out after the EMP event might then expose it to future, follow-up EMP events (just to take out the back-up systems ).
tough call. and if you did manage to have a backup system survive, how long before your neighbors or the government shows up to demand it for "national security" purposes? not long most likely.
glad i'm set up with a wood stove, shallow well, and candles.
and if i just took it all down and packed it away in boxes, or rather, had a backup system packed away in faraday cages, taking it out after the EMP event might then expose it to future, follow-up EMP events (just to take out the back-up systems ).
tough call. and if you did manage to have a backup system survive, how long before your neighbors or the government shows up to demand it for "national security" purposes? not long most likely.
glad i'm set up with a wood stove, shallow well, and candles.
Hansa:
Yes...it looks like maybe the new version of vBulletin doesn't handle the wildcards quite as well as the previous version now that I try it again....especially the ?. It should have also found all the emps that you found but it doesn't.
Not sure why emp* turns up next to nothing for you....I get the max of 500 matches back but they are mainly longer words that start with emp like empty, employee and employment, etc so sifting through them is a pain.
Kris
Yes...it looks like maybe the new version of vBulletin doesn't handle the wildcards quite as well as the previous version now that I try it again....especially the ?. It should have also found all the emps that you found but it doesn't.
Not sure why emp* turns up next to nothing for you....I get the max of 500 matches back but they are mainly longer words that start with emp like empty, employee and employment, etc so sifting through them is a pain.
Kris
LoupGarou
Ancient Fuzzball
Two things first before I start that I feel that I should say to everybody again.
First, the chance of a HEMP attack is unlikely. China and russia want us out of the picture financially and militarily, not technologically. If we were hit with a HEMP attack how would china get all of it's cheap natural resources that it is getting form us now? The same with russia, they both would starve (both literally and through infrastructure growth). Plus, if they damaged our grids, they would have to rebuild them if they had plans of taking over here (remember, we owe them a LOT of money in the form of debt, and that debt might not be covered by them just taking over our companies and manufacturing plants that have been outsourced to china). Secondly, the chance of eBomb attack is VERY UNLIKELY, to the point of being near 0%. With a device that has a target coverage of less than 10 square miles guaranteed, there is NO way that ANY country could afford to carpet bomb us back to the stone age. We might see them used by china against SK and Japan, but even there it would be highly improbable.
Now as far as protection for a non-grid tied PV system. If the total length of wire run from the solar panel to the charge controller is less than 120 feet, then you can get by with simply adding ferrite cores or ferrite clamps on each line at both ends. This will effectively null the small amount of RF that could be received on those lines. The same should be done on the outputs of the charge controller. After that, your battery bank will act as a VERY good snubber for RF, so as long as you keep your inverter's power cables short (it should be done that way anyway to minimize losses), you should have no problems. This approach has been tested with all three of the main nominal voltages (12/24/48) with no problems.
Tokin makes some very good snap on ferrite cores and chokes.
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103222
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103979
Better prices can be found at sites like this:
http://www.radiodan.com/Henry/parts/RF_chokes.htm
Now, if you have a grid tied system all bets are off. And most of the grid tied systems wouldn't be useful after a the grid went down anyway because without a grid to synchronize to, they can't start up or keep running, and you don't want to try to synchronize to a generator, that can get expensive and dangerous. If you have a grid tied system, and you have a backup "standard" inverter to work after TSHTF, my suggestion would be to use the ferrite chokes listed above on the DC side of your system, and invest in at least one set of Transtector or Fischer Spikeguard based EMP grade suppressors on YOUR side of your fast acting 10,000AIC fuses. That way when the pulse comes in, the suppressor shunts, blows your fuse (and it will blow), and you go dark but undamaged. Once the pulse and it's series of interference patterns pass by, you can pull the grid tied inverter completely offline, throw in the batteries and your "normal" inverter and keep going.
Just remember to "black out" at night, so that the neighbors won't figure out that you still have power. And you might want to charge the batteries in your night vision and alarm system just in case they DO figure that out...
Moving at the speed of dark sucks. And there are a LOT of VERY unprepared people out there that are going to get VERY needy of a LOT of things...
jed turtle said:
Exactly!
That is the real question anyway. I don't see EMP taking away our power, I see it failing for financial reasons, after all, if you can't pay your bills, how is the power company going to pay their bills? Sure they could become nationalized (and probably will), but the end result is the same, no power once the "load" on the financial system gets as big as the load on the grid was. Once the masses are without power, they will be willing to do anything to get that back. The majority of people in the US have never had to live without CHEAP power, much less ANY power. It will get nasty, and relatively quick.
Loup
Ranger Rainier
Inactive
thankyou Gonewacky for the good read. Key presentation by Mr. Bartlett.
jed turtle
a brother in the Lord
thanks for the valuable info (and parts links!). you are a treasure for the board!
also i wanted to comment on part bolded above. while true that very few in the current population of this country have ever experienced prolonged loss of power, let us not forget that those who were responsible for colonizing, creating, and building this country for the first 150 years knew nothing about power grids, and still managed to do just fine. of course, as an old timer who passed away 10 years ago told me once, "once my generation is gone, yours won't know what a real man can do."
and he was right. but, then, his generation had no idea what the men of our generation would be capable of either, and it truly is phenomenal (ie: science fiction is indeed becoming fact...)
momof23goats
Deceased
well, you could probably take everything you have, like your computer, radio's, a small tv, and put them in an old chest type freezer, with the cord cut off. but I would take the cords off every thing first. This would probably work.
OH and get lanterns, fuel, wood stove, woodcook stove, a couple of dutch ovens,and your in business, oh, better get that hand pump, soon.
OH and get lanterns, fuel, wood stove, woodcook stove, a couple of dutch ovens,and your in business, oh, better get that hand pump, soon.
