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What you need to know about EMP weapons

aardvark.co.nz

131–140 of 213 posts

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Responding to conventional weapons with a nuke ? Unlikely.

The USA did it against Japan. Of course those were special circumstances, but all wars have their own set of special circumstances to some extent. There’s also the argument that using nuclear weapons make sense when a nuclear state has a weaker conventional force that its opponent. Russia still has a pretty strong conventional force, but for example North Korea is in this position against most likely adversaries.

The irony is that if your defenses consist of, on the one hand, nuclear weapons, and on the other hand, pitchforks brandished by several farmers... You are going to be very, very respected.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#132
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…

Not under the Trump doctrine

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#133
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 f…

[dead]

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#134
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…

You can experiment by putting a cell phone in various kinds of faraday cages and seeing if it rings when called.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#135
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Asia, because there are a lot of targets there.

South America and Africa would probably get off pretty lightly. And then they'd experience the worst economic depression that has ever been seen due to the complete collapse of global trade. They're not going to be up for the job of rescuing entire continents.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA did it against Japan. Of course those were special circumstances, but all wars have their own set of special circumstances to some extent. There’s also the argument that using nuclear weapons make sense when a nuclear state has a weaker conventional force that its opponent. Russia still has a pretty strong conventional force, but for example North Korea is in this position against most likely adversaries.

The irony is that if your defenses consist of, on the one hand, nuclear weapons, and on the other hand, pitchforks brandished by several farmers... You are going to be very, very respected.

Until someone calls your bluff, perhaps accidentally, and realizes much of the nuclear saber-rattling was just that. Of course, since it wasn't entirely a bluff, this is the easiest way to get a nuclear war going. (Get a country with nukes but limited conventional capabilities into a brinksmanship contest.)

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Netanyahu?

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#138
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…

Why not try a large Stanley cup? Double layered, top seals shut, pretty easy to get a hold of.

Your microwave oven is pretty good at attenuating 2.45 GHz signals.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#140

The book Nuclear War: A Scenario Hardcover by Annie Jacobsen should be essential reading for all politicians and those profiteering from the Military Industrial Complex https://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-War-Scenario-Annie-Jacobsen/d...

I read it and was not impressed. It starts with North Korea launching two ICBMs against DC and a nuclear plant in California. Interceptors fail and the warheads hit their targets. This is unlikely, but possible. The launch is explicitly irrational, the act of a mad dictator. In response, the US counterstrikes with Minuteman, despite having perfectly serviceable air deliverable nukes. Russia detects the launch, and th…

A similar book of this category may be The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States which describes how a series of events, which have separately happened in the past, may lead to NK launching nukes. But it is not framed as the irrational actions of a mad dictator, but a series of coincidences that suggest NK was itself being attacked.

It was not fun seeing the saber-rattling on Twitter after reading, as Twitter does have a significant part in the story.

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