[genetic homophobe]

I had been under the impression that a rather small nuke could EMP about a third of the US, but would need to be detonated near the atmosphere. The worry was a rouge missile from a shrimp boat or something, detonating above Earth near the atmosphere. The way it was described to me, no vehicle with an electronic ignition system would work after such an attack. I have no idea if this is scientifically accurate.

[DBrow]

Some electronic ignitions can be disabled by just the right pulse, and yes, a fairly low-yield nuke can cause significant EMP pulses.

There are a number of ifs and conditions. The nuke must have the right characteristics, so you’d need lots of expertise in getting the thing right, or a lot of luck. Placement is critical, you’d need the correct altitude, so you’d need to be very confident of your yield and temperature and burn rate beforehand. To get it right would mean plenty of experience burning pits, to know your process gets the right device.

Not getting it right would still give you an EMP pulse, but maybe not as damaging as you want.

And the retaliatory strike would be severe, the military stuff to do that is hardened against EMP just for that reason.

The ignition issue is complex in that the type of ignition and local shielding would need to be known. I don’t know that the military bothers to harden their vehicles (I do EMP hardening analyses, but for bigger structures and vessels) but that will be a clue as to the size of the threat and what to do about it.

Part of warfare is convincing your opponent that your weaponry is superior and that there is no way your enemy can defend against it. Nuclear winter, everyone dies from fallout, no point in shelters, and “EMP will zap everything” are examples (not that there is not some truth to elements of this).

In VN, there were people who planted doctored ammo, designed to blow up. This was coupled with news stories about poorly constructed AKs, bad steel being the given cause. So when you heard of someone’s rifle blowing up and hurting people, those news stories would come to mind. And there are constant stories about how our equipment does not work, cannot work, will be ineffective, and so forth.

It’s easier for the Russians to convince us that a missile shield in Europe won’t work than it is to design a counter for one, and the same is true for a “small country” with one rocket and one (maybe) nuke- if they can get us to surrender before they launch, they’ve saved a few billion in development cost.