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Wanna chew on another shoe? Consider assuring design efficacy and quality assurance on EMP hardened infrastructure. Talk about weighing the odds between charging $20,000 for a $500 transformer and fleecing the public with almost zero chance of being held accountable because someone set off a nuclear bomb for Christ's Sake?

A simple three phase 400MHZ feed thru capacitor sold to the government for EMP hardened facilities servicing aircraft sells for about $1,200 each. A common, off the shelf critter of the same performance runs about $75. I think in most cases, just replacing a few dozen at $75 a copy on an item which begins to dielectrictaly deteriorate on it's own every 10,000 hours under load is a better option in the event of an EMP than to prepare for it at a 1000% inflated cost.

You techie diehards out there may want to consider a second option........Change FCC, UL, EU, and CISPR standards to phase in all devices be manufactured to withstand EMP, including your VCR, coffee pot, and automobile so that economy of scale makes EMP affordable and implemented over the lifetime of a few cycles of consumer goods. It could be done without a national dog and pony show in the house and senate.

You techie diehards out there may want to consider a second option........Change FCC, UL, EU, and CISPR standards to phase in all devices be manufactured to withstand EMP, including your VCR, coffee pot, and automobile so that economy of scale makes EMP affordable and implemented over the lifetime of a few cycles of consumer goods.

Unfortunately this is not really a feasible option. More and more electronic devices are being implemented as a single chip design. It is much more expensive to design a chip that can withstand any serious amount of EM radiation without malfuncioning that one that cannot. It took an amazing amount of money, work, and time to develop the radiation hardened Pentium, and that was simply modifying a working design. Basically radiation hardening really restricts what you can do in VLSI, and it is hard enough to squeeze that many transistors into that small of a space without any additional constraints.

There is a reason that radhard processors or so far behind conventional ones, and it isn't a lack of money or interest.

If you are talking about shielding for the devices themselves that means instead of slapping a simply plastic box on the device you would have to spend a lot more money on first designing the enclosure, on the raw materials (metal rather than plastic), and finally on the manufacturing. Plastic injection molding is a lot cheaper than metal fabrication.

Besides, more and more devices are becoming wireless. How exactly are going going to protect a laptop when it has two 12" antennas in its screen, or your cell phone, the receiver on top of your TV with the 12' FM dipole dangling off the back, etc. For that matter I expect that the 6' cord connecting your headphones to your ipod is a liability.

Not saying that certain devices can't be made impervious, but those should be the ones really necessary to preserve human life. You were right in saying that the extra expense isn't really worth it for consumer electronics.

-paridel

You techie diehards out there may want to consider a second option........Change FCC, UL, EU, and CISPR standards to phase in all devices be manufactured to withstand EMP, including your VCR, coffee pot, and automobile so that economy of scale makes EMP affordable and implemented over the lifetime of a few cycles of consumer goods. It could be done without a national dog and pony show in the house and senate.

I would prefer a tax break for companies which spend money on EMP-proofing their products and tax breaks for individuals and companies buying EMP-proof equipment. There would be a dog and pony show, but in the end, the tax-breaks would create a manufacturing incentive and a market for EMP-proof items without having to deal with more regulation.