EMP detonations

[The Green Heron]

A microwave oven is a Faraway cage.

If you are worried about a EMP just put all you stuff in a microwave.

Cut the cord off you you will have a EDP safe box.

Note to self.
Park Polaris in microwave.

Faraday....not Faraway.
A Faraway cage it what you need to put someone in to force them to see that
$#!πY far and away movie.

Other note to self:
Buy 6 gallons of astroglide, to aid parking Super Duty in microwave.

 

[noway2]

First, let me say that it's really small comfort to know that the military will be safe if/when TSHTF from an EMP. As if the boomer subs won't make quick work of who ever is responsible.

Second, most consumer grade electronics are junk. I did a "noise" test once of a system I and another guy designed as a controller for a fire suppression system. I wired two 120VAC relays together with the NC contacts in series with the power and put a cheater cord on it. The result was that the relays would doorbell themselves making and breaking the contacts giving off wide spectrum EMI. When I plugged it in, a nearby PC went total ape feces and it did the Windows blue screen of death. A warm reboot brought it back up but it still acted squirrelly with things like the right and left mouse buttons reversed. It took a full power down to recover it.

Our device under test? Well it shrugged off the interference, counted a few bad communication packets on the test program we had running between the control boards to measure the effect and kept on chugging.

The boards I designed weren't particularly hardened, but they did employ good EMI principles, things that cheep Chinese electronics undoubtedly don't.

This experience has left me somewhat middle of the road in terms of my thoughts on an EMP as a weapon to take down the nation. On one hand, our power transmission lines are long antennas. When a sufficiently strong field cuts across them, it can induce voltage and current. History saw this back in the day of the telegraph. However, today the system is more resilient and we have breakers and other protective devices that would trip. Smaller electronics simply don't have the wire lentgth, etc, to act as antennas like this. The EMI could cause malfunctions, but I am not convinced that it is going to destroy everything, especially just a device sitting there. Remember that all current flows in a complete circuit. It's akin to there being no voltage at a point. If an EM field cuts across the circuit it would be "common mode" noise and the circuit path to develop devastating voltages wouldn't really exist.

I think a lot of it is fear of the unknown and for many people electricity and electronics are black magic and like magic, the unseen, unknown, and unexpected scares them. There was a power outage a few weeks ago apparently caused by a line fault near my home. The automatic circuits at the substation activated three times and when he fault didn't clear, they stayed open causing an outage. When they would surge on activating, large currents flowed though the transmission lines at the end if the street causing large magnetic fields that in turn caused the lines to sway and move as the fields generated force on the wires. The neighborhood was abuzz with scared talk about what was wrong with and happening to the power lines. Like I said, black magic.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

What was concluded in that article from 2011 was to just repeat the conclusion from the 2004 article which was:


So, GPS and military communications would be unaffected as would our spy satellites. A few decades ago a lot of telecom companies used satellite in their networks, but that's almost all gone to fiber now except for extremely rural areas like parts of AK and remote portions of the SW. The same is true for a great deal of video distribution, although I suppose we'd lose Direct Broadcast Satellite video (i.e. dish). Even things like most vehicle tracking have gone from satellite to cell networks. There is a bunch of telemetry data for remote oil wells sent over satellite, but that's hardly critical.

Which LEO satellites are you thinking are critical infrastructure?

Well, first of all LEO isn't a specific altitude. It's an altitude band, 99 to 1,243 miles. That's quite a range of altitude.

Medium Earth Orbit is 1,234 to 22,236 miles. And geostationary is 22,236 miles. High Earth Orbit is above 22,236 miles. (For those who don't know...and I had to use google-fu to refresh myself on the specific altitudes, myself.)

Earth observation satellites, including spy satellites, use LEO for resolution purposes. It's much easier to get high resolution images from LEO than from higher orbits.

Many communications satellites use LEO. LEO means lower power requirements, not to mention faster communications times. Some do use geostationary orbits, which are most definitely NOT LEO. But all your communications via satellite constellations are from LEO.

Polar Orbiting meteorological satellites and the military's DMSP meteorological satellites orbit in LEO.

And let's not forget that those occupying the ISS in LEO probably wouldn't appreciate this, either.

How much of the satellite infrastructure in LEO would be affected would depend largely on the size of the nuclear detonation and the specific altitude in which it occurred.

How badly would the loss of 90% of the LEO satellites affect us planet side? In one aspect, you are correct. Their loss wouldn't likely affect critical infrastructure much. A lot of short-term nuisance, I'm sure, but a very costly one nonetheless.

The other beauty of LEO is that it's cheaper to get replacement satellites back up there. So it's not as if any damage wouldn't be taken care of in relatively short order. But it's still a rather large loss to the organizations which use and maintain the satellites in LEO.

 

[GymB]

I didn't think about Inmarsat and its use for tracking ships. The new ones will almost certainly be hardened (not because of fears of nuclear explosion, but due to potential radiation spikes from the sun) but the older ones might not survive.

It would suck to lose the international space station and the Hubble ahead of plan, assuming that they are vulnerable.

This all brings us back to what decision is the NK leader likely to make, and it still seem like a nuke on a diesel freighter pulling into LA harbor gets him the most bang for the buck and the highest probability of success.