So then please explain why there are pictures of mushroom clouds from nuclear tests near Las Vegas, and yet the EMP didn’t seem to affect the Las Vegas strip at all.
Yes... EMP is a real phenomenon. But it also a fairly short-range effect. Like a blast wave, or a sound wave... It diminishes with the square of the radius of the distance. Close-up... Yes it will fry electronics. But the long range effects of an EMP are minimal.
Gadzooks, did you even read any of the above and comprehend any of it? In addition, those atom bomb tests in Nevada were in the 1950s and early 1960s before the Partial Test Ban Treaty was passed in 1963, which banned nuclear tests in the atmosphere, underwater and in space, but not underground. In the early 1960s we were were still mainly on vacuum tubes electronics and points & condenser auto ignition that are highly resistant to EMP.
Again, it is the solid-state electronics that are in just about everything nowadays that would be damage or destroyed by a EMP weapon exploded high above the center of the US.
Yet you and AppyPappy cannot seem to understand that simple fact.
Even a massive electromagnetic pulse triggered by a super sized solar storm on the sun would do the same. Read "Solar storm of 1859" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859