EMP is vastly over rated for cars. Every lightning strike is a small localized EMP. I have never heard of a nearby lightning taking out a car. TVs, radios, computers yes. Cars no.
Your spark plugs radiate EMP, so cars have protection built in.
Without electricity there will not be gas at the gas station. Ergo, no cars.
“EMP is vastly over rated for cars. Every lightning strike is a small localized EMP. I have never heard of a nearby lightning taking out a car”
The truth is....we don’t know.
a 600V/m field is possible under the hood, according to data I have seen. An emp is up to 50,000 v/m. The EMP commission testing is not as conclusive as is sometimes claimed.
Lighting EMP will definitely take out a car. It also is known to take out yachts.
My boat was subjected to a CLOSE lightning strike a couple of years ago. The insurance company at first fought like a knucklehead moron when I could NOT show blackened grounds or fried antenna or anything like that. They quit fighting when they had to address the boat behind me at the dock when it was documented his VHF antenna was fried (vaporized, literally GONE) all of his DC and AC motors/controllers etc were fried.....
As a ham radio operator, I ALWAYS disconnect antennas when not in use (I had a 20 meter antenna 130 feet above ground on top of a hill and I've seen what lighting induced voltage will do). Both VHF marine radios were fine. The DC power to both was opened by a small air gap. The HF Icom radio antenna and DC were disconnected. All radios functioned correctly.
A dc power inverter was damaged (solid state). It was connected to DC batteries and the DC bus which runs the length of the boat with numerous branches.
The solid state Raymarine Autopilot was fried and does not work although some of the wind/depth/speed functions still work. All of this goes through a RAYMARINE computer (some things work, some don't).
The air conditioning solid state controller worked for a few hours and then failed. It was three years old and likely failed as a result of the large voltage pulse. It was the only AC component I have had trouble with.
BOTH Yanmar Diesel engines function fine. The only thing is the electrical switches and the starter that might have been effected for the engines.
For that lightning strike and the distance from the boat (about 50 feet), the voltage induced on the boats wiring was enough to take out some solid state components BUT not enough to fry larger components such as the Diesel starting motors (I do have one issue in that the starter of one is sluggish, it used to be a touch and immediate start but one engine now has to be held for a second before the starter turns it over. I suspect a manual DC transfer switch is the problem. I am going to measure the voltage drop to the starter before I replace it then I will disassemble the switch to see if there is any visible damage).
I had a laptop in the boat that was totally disconnected and it works fine. The solar panels and controller were NOT damaged but a DC ckt breaker was manually opened so the controller was not connected to the DC/battery bus and the solar panels were disconnected from the solar controller.
I have not done any research on what the typical amperage is for a lightning strike and what the E field might have been generated for it and then compared that to what a Nuclear blast EMP might generate per published data. I have seen some published E field predictions for a Nuclear blast EMP but I don't know where that came from (SWAGs, WAGS or measured data).
SUMMARY: My boat damage caused by a close lightning strike was consistent with what you postulated: Solid state instruments failed that were hooked up to a long bus (DC and AC wiring) but components that were basically sitting in a cabinet not connected to any wiring more than a few feet did NOT fail. DC starters and an anchor winch that were connected to the DC bus but only disconnected by a starter switch/solenoid (small air gap) did NOT fail.
My brother got zapped by lightning. He got thrown across his garage. He reset after a few minutes.
Right as rain now. Mostly. Be he was always a little “off”.
A direct lightning strike will take out a car.
Buddy of mines brand new truck (paper license plate) was hit in the parking lot.
Long story short, it took the dealer several months to get it to run again as they replaced component after component. When they plugged it in on the master diagnostic computer, it did not even register that anything was connected. It left the dealer numerous times on test drives and came back on the wrecker.
He asked me what to do and I said take every wire and electrical component out, throw it in the trash and start over. Insurance wouldn’t do it.
He drove it from the service bay to the other side of the dealer and traded it in with 500 miles on it.