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What you need to know about EMP weapons

aardvark.co.nz

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Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#101

Post by dragonwriter »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #90
rjsw wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turkey is a member of NATO.

That’s the point. In theory Turkey is covered by the NATO nuclear umbrella. But in practice how many Americans would be willing to go nuclear in support of a Turkish war against the Russians? In circumstances where Turkey was considered the aggressor state.

> But in practice how many Americans would be willing to go nuclear in support of a Turkish war against the Russians? In circumstances where Turkey was considered the aggressor state.

The question is how many would be willing to go nuclear in response to Russia nuking US forces in Türkiye in response to a conventional attack by Türkiye, which any plausible "Russia nukes Türkiye" scenario would involve.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#102

Post by palmotea »

yabones wrote: post #28
lenerdenator wrote: post #4

1) Don't worry about it. If one goes off over a NATO country or Russia/China, you'll soon have much, much bigger problems to worry about. 2) There is no 2)

Yeah, what I've learned from films like "Threads" and "The Day After" is that you very much want to die in the first 20ms of a nuclear war. Don't dig a hole to hide in, put your lawn chair on the roof and hope you're close enough to ground zero to get a peaceful and dignified end.

> Yeah, what I've learned from films like "Threads" and "The Day After" is that you very much want to die in the first 20ms of a nuclear war. Don't dig a hole to hide in, put your lawn chair on the roof and hope you're close enough to ground zero to get a peaceful and dignified end.

That's all fine and dandy if you only have yourself to think about...

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#103

Post by ianburrell »

nancyminusone wrote: post #62

>You can also forget about the inverse square law to protect you No, you don't get to ignore physics because the source is not a point source >Very large area of EMP How large? >Induces currents in any conducting material So does a magnet falling off my fridge. What magnitude of currents, at what distance, in what sized conductor? >During E1 the frequencies are so high How high are they? There can be radio waves stro…

My understanding is that nearby nuke and high altitude produce different EMP. The nearby one destroys electronic, but less of concern since close to nuclear blast. The high altitude one covers a large area, but it is more like solar flare, causing current in large conductors and primarily affecting the grid.

The problem is that the recent government studies that say high altitude can hurt electronics are all made by alarmists. When we should be focusing effort on grounding the grid, both for EMPs and for flares.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#104

Post by mopsi »

clutchdude wrote: post #95
mopsi wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One has to recognize the genre of "Threads" and "The Day After" - they represent suffering porn that has little to do with how actual disasters play out. In "Threads", the way people suddenly lose the ability to speak and rapidly turn into cavemen after a nuclear strike is comical. Kids grunt instead of talk, everyone shuffles around like zombies, and basic things like farming or using tools just vanish. How is anyon…

Those events happened when widespread support and supply were brought into to deal with the relatively limited destruction. This is destruction on a scale that has not been seen in the likes of civilization outside the bronze age collapse. The fact is there is going to be no one coming to help replace burned up hoes and shovels. Threads and the Day after weren't a snapshot of one single city - they were a snapshot of…

> The fact is there is going to be no one coming to help replace burned up hoes and shovels.

Why?

Why would it be happening everywhere - in South America, Africa, Asia, and many other places - at the same time?

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#105

Post by jerf »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #41
tomxor wrote: post #15

> wrap that in aluminium foil, making sure that the ends are folded over and pressed down hard to provide good inter-layer contact I've tried this many times, it's impossible to prevent gaps without welding it shut. Obviously I wasn't testing with an EMP or nuke, but trying to block 2.4GHz WiFi... But that is well within the E1 range the author states. I think the problem with folding is it's too uniform, it's still…

Let me tell you something from first hand field experience with faraday cages... They attenuate signals, they do not block them. The common verbiage is to say "faraday cages block EM radiation", so people naturally assume that it blocks EM radiation. But I learned the hard way while doing compliance testing that no, they do not block EM radiation, they just weaken it (and it's highly frequency dependent on top of tha…

"(and it's highly frequency dependent on top of that.)"

Well, sure. Can people inside the cage see outside? (Or a hypothetical person for a small cage.) If so, then clearly, not all frequencies are being blocked. A lot of "Faraday cages" are explicitly designed for radio and deliberately let other frequencies, particularly the visual range, through.

In fact we all have direct experience with that. Our microwaves use a Faraday cage to keep them in. But we can still see through the mesh, and you can tell that the inside can see out because outside light can go in and bounce back out. (That is, while there's probably a light in your microwave, it's obviously not the sole source of light.) Blocks microwaves well, but visible light goes right through the holes.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#106

Post by georgeecollins »

andybp85 wrote: post #45
yabones wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, what I've learned from films like "Threads" and "The Day After" is that you very much want to die in the first 20ms of a nuclear war. Don't dig a hole to hide in, put your lawn chair on the roof and hope you're close enough to ground zero to get a peaceful and dignified end.

yup. "the survivors are the lucky ones" is fantasy.

It is a well understood phenomena of human nature to say that "I would rather die then go through X" and then when you go through X (or worse) you don't want to die. This is well understood because it happens a lot with illness or accident. Also its a very adaptive trait that we want to avoid terrible situations but most of us don't quit.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#107

Post by mopenstein »

Gud wrote: post #34
yabones wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, what I've learned from films like "Threads" and "The Day After" is that you very much want to die in the first 20ms of a nuclear war. Don't dig a hole to hide in, put your lawn chair on the roof and hope you're close enough to ground zero to get a peaceful and dignified end.

Fuck that. I’m going to resist dying. I am going to keep those around me, alive.

And you'll survive. You'll build the cornerstones of future civilization! They'll erect statues of you!

And then in 100 years they'll curse you and tear down those statues because they found out you ate the last kangaroo in order to survive.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#109

Post by spacebanana7 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #101
spacebanana7 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the point. In theory Turkey is covered by the NATO nuclear umbrella. But in practice how many Americans would be willing to go nuclear in support of a Turkish war against the Russians? In circumstances where Turkey was considered the aggressor state.

> But in practice how many Americans would be willing to go nuclear in support of a Turkish war against the Russians? In circumstances where Turkey was considered the aggressor state. The question is how many would be willing to go nuclear in response to Russia nuking US forces in Türkiye in response to a conventional attack by Türkiye, which any plausible "Russia nukes Türkiye" scenario would involve.

It’s not obvious how many casualties the US itself would tolerate before going nuclear.

In circumstances where there were only a couple thousand American casualties, and those were incurred as collateral damage rather than as primary targets, it might make sense for the US to respond with conventional airstrikes and for Russia accept those and not escalate further.

This would depend a lot on the individual president though, like I could imagine Trump/Obama being much more risk averse than personalities like Bush 2 or JFK.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#110

Post by margalabargala »

dragonwriter wrote: post #100
rjsw wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turkey is a member of NATO.

More than that, Turkey is a member of NATO that participates in US nuclear sharing and has substantial US forces (aside from the nuclear weapons) deployed. A nuclear attack by Russia on Turkey would not be merely legally and abstractly an attack on the US under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty which it would do massive irreparable damage to US credibility to ignore, but would almost certainly be a nuclear attac…

> A nuclear attack by Russia on Turkey would not be merely legally and abstractly an attack on the US under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty

In the given scenario above, Turkey attacks first, in which case Article 5 would not apply to a retaliation.

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