What you need to know about EMP weapons • Hacker News Board

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#111

Post by themadturk » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 9:03 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #46

muzani wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I don't live in any of those places. Also I believe India-Pakistan has nukes too. And possibly Israel-Iran. North Korea too? The peace loving nations are well within fallout range. My biggest fear with MAD is that it only takes a single irrational leader, and we've seen so many of them lately.

I don't want to jinx it, but even the most deranged leaders don't want to rule over a nuclear wasteland. And they especially don't want to go down in their history as the worst person who ruined everything for their party.

No, but some might have a "take the world down with me" attitude.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#112

Post by NotCamelCase » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 9:09 PM UTC

armada651 wrote: post #70

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.

If there is a chance at survival, no matter how slim I would take it. Even if it brings me suffering at least I tried to escape death. Whether my end was peaceful or dignified is of no relevance to me, because I won't be around to regret my end.

This discussion reminds me a beautiful sentence I read in 'The Power and the Glory' by Graham Greene: "Hope is an instinct that only the reasoning human mind can kill."

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#113

Post by ufmace » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 9:13 PM UTC

I'm not sure about most of this. The great majority of the articles and stories about this I've read trace back to layman speculation and disaster porn fiction written by people who have never claimed to actually be informed about how these things work. There's damn little stuff out there that traces back to actual experiments with real hardware. Probably most of the serious experiments are by various militaries and are highly classified. I've seen some more believable stuff suggesting that most consumer electronics and automobiles are not vulnerable at all to the much-fictionalized high-altitude nuclear EMP.

Either way, the author of this article does not cite any sources or relevant experience, and he doesn't include any biographical information about himself to judge how qualified he is to speak on such subjects. There's not much reason I see to take this any more seriously than any piece of fictional disaster porn you could buy on Amazon.

I don't know the truth for sure myself, but hopefully we all know better than to believe everything we read, especially about subjects like this where there appears to be very little hard science published.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#114

Post by wat10000 » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 9:22 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #105

Workaccount2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They let out enough to interfere with radios operating around 2.4GHz. They'll attenuate the stuff, quite strongly if built well (the only reason interference is a problem is because the oven is 3+ orders of magnitude more powerful than a typical 2.4GHz radio), but it's not a total block.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#115

Post by themadturk » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 9:27 PM UTC

bell-cot wrote: post #37

closewith wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following a devastating recent strike on the air leg of the Russian nuclear triad by Ukranian drones, some analysts believe the use of nuclear weapons by Russian has become much less unlikely.

I'd replace "some analysts" with "some alarmists". And unless you're in the hyped-up headline business, the attack fell well short of "devastating". Plus, the pre-attack triad cred of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-95 bombers was pretty limited. Notice that they are turboprops. From the 1950's. Hitting hard against the western nuclear powers (US/UK/France) ain't in their talent set.

The point is that Tu-95s are still an integral part of Moscow's aircraft leg of their nuclear triad. They are fully capable of carrying nuclear-tipped standoff weapons and attacking Europe. They fulfill the same role as the B-52 (also a 1940s-1950s design) does for the USAF. Their apparent cruising speed is roughly 100kph less than the B-52 and they are comparable in range.

Part of the reason it's so critical to Moscow is the uncertainty over the viability of their missile-based systems (both the land-based and sea-based legs of the triad). Maintenance has been so poor on these systems that no one is sure how reliable they are.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#116

Post by jvanderbot » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 9:30 PM UTC

ufmace wrote: post #113

I'm not sure about most of this. The great majority of the articles and stories about this I've read trace back to layman speculation and disaster porn fiction written by people who have never claimed to actually be informed about how these things work. There's damn little stuff out there that traces back to actual experiments with real hardware. Probably most of the serious experiments are by various militaries and…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime

> Starfish Prime caused an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that was far larger than expected, so much larger that it drove much of the instrumentation off scale, causing great difficulty in getting accurate measurements. The Starfish Prime electromagnetic pulse also made those effects known to the public by causing electrical damage in Hawaii, about 900 miles (1,450 km) away from the detonation point, knocking out about 300 streetlights,[1]: 5 setting off numerous burglar alarms, and damaging a telephone company microwave link.[6] The EMP damage to the microwave link shut down telephone calls from Kauai to the other Hawaiian Islands.[7]

This was a 1 Mt bomb 10x as far from the surface as the article discusses.

All that to say, it's plausible.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#117

Post by wat10000 » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 9:31 PM UTC

Calwestjobs wrote: post #63

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…

1. google how many lightning strikes are there per day 2. google how many millions of miles/kilometers of electric wires is hanging in air all over the world providing people with electricity 3. do not google how many of those millions of lightning strikes PER DAY disabled those billions of miles of wires per day, by applying energy bigger than nuclear EMP. do not google that.

Starfish Prime blew streetlight fuses 900 miles away. I don't think lighting can do that.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#118

Post by wat10000 » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 9:38 PM UTC

southernplaces7 wrote: post #78

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.

I truly, really, forcefully recommend reading the novel "Warday" by Witley Strieber and James Kunetka It takes place in the early 90s, several years after an accidentally limited nuclear exchange between the United States and the USSR. The story traces the journey of two reporters crossing the devastated country and chronicling the stories of survivors and how they got by, while also slowly developing the journalists…

Finally, someone else who appreciates Warday!

It's really good. And as far as I can tell, as a layman who reads way too much about this stuff, quite accurate in terms of what the sort of limited strike depicted in the book would do in the short and long term. (I have quibbles, such as what happens to San Antonio and Manhattan, but nothing major.)

Highly recommended to anyone who like the genre.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#119

Post by toss1 » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 9:45 PM UTC

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.

That sounds like a good idea but the physics mean you have a far greater likelihood of painfully regretting that choice; "It seemed like a good idea at the time" will be no solace.

Using an example of a 350kt airburst on NukeMap[0], the fireball radius is 700m with an area of 1.53 km². The Thermal Radiation Radius with 3rd degree burns is 7.67 km with an area of 185 km². The Light Blast Damage Radius is 13.9 km with an area of 610 km². While the numbers will be different for different yields, the basic ratios will be the same.

This means that your person in the lawn chair is highly unlikely to get to unconscious bliss in 20ms. They are 120 times more likely to enjoy the full experience of 3rd degree burns and ~400 times more likely to get significant injury while still being alive.

It seems far better to take shelter and do all you can to survive intact, and help others. If the situation on the other side is intolerably bad, you'll likely be able to find ways to end your situation far less painfully vs being naked against a nuke blast.

[0] https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#120

Post by rl3 » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 9:46 PM UTC

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.

>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.

If Sarah Connor's dreams taught me anything, it's that there's an optimal middle ground to be had here.

You don't want to be exposed to the flash nor the heat pulse seconds later, because it's pretty much instant blindness followed by your skin melting off.

What you do want is the blast wave that sends large objects plus the pulverized debris with it in your direction, so you probably just get crushed instantly.

I'd only recommend the lawn chair part if you've got a protective suit and flash blinders, in which case the real question is what you're drinking and/or smoking at the time.