I do not “believe” in a high-altitude EMP. Why? Because it would take an enormously powerful EMP to take out a significant portion of the power grid. I suppose the pulse could be directed at a particular facility, but how many EMP generators would be required to do significant damage? Just my somewhat-educated opinion, but I think this is much ado about nothing.
“Because it would take an enormously powerful EMP to take out a significant portion of the power grid. “
a 1-kiloton blast can create an EMP almost as strong as a 100-kiloton blast. That creates a vast area of the atmosphere when exposed to gamma rays that emits a brief but powerful RF pulse. Because the atmosphere for thousands of mile around (for a sufficiently high nuclear detonation) is effectively an “antenna” everything underneath is effectively in the “near field” where fields do not decay exponentially - but decay linearly.
Your conclusion is incorrect.