Every four months there are a rash of EMP articles. This came up last week too.
I have a contact who works in the electronics field who tells me that EMP, or more specifically HEMP and CME-type disruptions are WAY overhyped. The grid, even as tattered as it is, can more than handle a single airburst nuke. Yes, some (easily-replaced) components may be damaged directly under the blast, and there is of course the chance that the odd big stepdown transformer might go, but the grid is redundant enough to route around that kind of thing. Only a synchronized multiple-burst attack could cover enough of the grid to prevent the EM transient from being dissipated. No country that really has a hate on for us has the capabilities or the technology to put multiple nukes in orbit and trigger them all over us with enough simultaneity to do that kind of damage.
Further, the vast majority of consumer electronics are insulated enough that they won’t be toasted permanently. Only things actually plugged into the wall will really be affected at all, and then only slightly. The military only worries about this kind of thing because they’re likely to need to be able to function after a close strike from a nuke, not an orbital one.
A lot of the “information” about the damage caused by EMP is propaganda left over from the cold war, when our scientists vastly overstated the effects as an attempt to make the Soviets think that their stuff was in too much danger to risk a war.
Just put a really big Faraday cage over the US. Problem solved.
Does anyone know whether or not the aircraft that dropped the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were damaged by EMP?
Other than 90% or more of the country’s population starving to death after a successful EMP attack, I have NO CLUE why people are panicking about it.
I’m much more mature than that, and don’t have a problem with a slight disruption to my daily lifestyle.