Maybe you can explain how we have had hundreds of nuclear tests without anything more than some very weak EMP effects on occasion. Do you think NK have magical technology?
Because much greater EMP is generated from a higher altitude burst that is able to interact with the Earth’s magnetic field... more so for the E1 and E3 components of EMP I believe, than the E2 component.
“Maybe you can explain how we have had hundreds of nuclear tests without anything more than some very weak EMP effects on occasion. Do you think NK have magical technology?”
While this “EMP apocalypse” stuff is overwhelmingly fearmongering, your framing is not accurate either. Nuclear explosions for EMP must be delivered at high altitude - . The US has only done a few tests on this (such as Starfish Prime), and only in remote sections of the Pacific, far from the US mainland.
Why at altitude? Because an EMP is, by definition, electromagnetic; to create it, you need moving ions. In Earth’s lower atmosphere, the X- and gamma-rays are almost instantly absorbed by the atmosphere, forming a heat blast. While this is a plasma until it dissipates, it’s a quasineutral plasma, aka, no net charge. In the upper atmosphere, however, the radiation ionizes the sparse gases, creating a huge flux of high energy electrons that can travel significant distances before colliding with anything. Their movement across Earth’s magnetic field leads to a rapidly propagating distortion in the field that induces currents in long conductors at the surface as it passes over them. This is the E1 pulse. There’s also the slower E2 pulse and the even slower E3 pulse.
The short of it: the US’s numerous ground-based tests are not going to induce a relevant EMP because the radiation is almost immediately thermalized. Bombs have to be detonated high up to cause an EMP.
Read up on EMP and solar flares. The effect is created when the radiation passes through the earths magnetosphere. It’s real, whether or not NK has the capability is another matter all together.