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This reminds me, I've been toying with the idea of starting a github repository for survival and rebuilding society if a major SHTF scenario occurred. It would be crowdsourced and bake-able into an ebook for offline reading. Anybody interested in it as a "Show HN" post?
> EMP attacks... For an EMP attack to be effective on modern electronics, you need to blow up a multimegaton nuclear bomb close enough for it to take out whomever is using that piece of electronics...
No. Optimal altitude for an EMP attack is actually a few hundred kilometers up. The "base case" usually considered in these scenarios is a nuke going off about 400 km over Omaha. At that altitude, the ionosphere helps you create a "slow" E3 pulse which induces a field in the tens of volts per kilometer at ground level; and since you can see most of the continental US, you have plenty of kilometers to work with.
What is a threat to electronics are VHF pulses from initial xray burst from the bomb.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If such a major SHTF happens that it warrants rebuilding the society and figuring out how to survive, then Github will be down, internet will be a rare occurence and your computer isn't likely to work for very long either. Electronic distribution and consumption of media isn't very resilient if one expects a large-scale SHTF event. For such a scenario, it'd be better to pump out tons of copies as cheap paperback book…
But although github is centralized, git is distributed. and tcp/ip was literally built for nuclear war. This would be like tech prepper paradise. We could sync our tech trees and rebuild!
I mean, during a nuclear war, the networks would only need to stay working until a counterattack could be coordinated and launched.
After that point, the devastation would be so large planetwide that I think any potential TCP/IP users roaming the irradiated wastelands looking for food while coughing up blood would have other things on their mind than network access in any case.
For smaller scale events, sure, but while the networking design might be robustness-focused, there is still a huge amount of auxiliary stuff required, these need power and cooling, maintenance and administration, repairs, and so on.
Some parts of the internet system might be robust and resilient, but the whole system certainly isn't.
And then experts focus on 2 unlikely generalized scenarios of an area EMP effect incidentally affecting the sites. As for the more obvious catastrophe of someone specifically targeting the locations? I guess that's being discussed separately?[1]
[1] https://money.cnn.com/2015/10/16/technology/sniper-power-gri...
The chances of an EMP attack Q: I’ve heard a lot from you about how dangerous an EMP attack could be. But how likely is it that anyone will actually try to attack us with an EMP? A: Unlike the EMP Commission, most national security experts view EMP attacks as a second rate threat. While perhaps some small terrorist groups or rogue nations might launch a localized EMP attack that might take out a substation or two, it…
Nuking a city destroys a city, destroying the electrical grid takes out most of a nations industrial production and forces them to focus on short-term survival.
An EMP taking out the power grid across the US in a way that isn't quickly recovered from would likely be a lot more devastating - definitely in terms of industrial capacity, possibly also in human losses due to starvation and general collapse - than nuking two major cities with the same yield.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
An EMP attack would destroy the power grid, your modern electronics may survive but without anything to power them.
If it's just the grid that's gone, generators are available - hell I have a mobile one sat in my driveway.
> EMP attacks... For an EMP attack to be effective on modern electronics, you need to blow up a multimegaton nuclear bomb close enough for it to take out whomever is using that piece of electronics...
No. Optimal altitude for an EMP attack is actually a few hundred kilometers up. The "base case" usually considered in these scenarios is a nuke going off about 400 km over Omaha. At that altitude, the ionosphere helps you create a "slow" E3 pulse which induces a field in the tens of volts per kilometer at ground level; and since you can see most of the continental US, you have plenty of kilometers to work with.
My understanding could be wrong, but wouldn't this mean exposing a 1 cm wide component (and/or components that have one cm long traces attached) to at least 250 V?
Wouldn't this be expected to destroy not every single component, but enough components to make enough hardware inoperable to collapse all industrial and power generation capabilities? (If you destroy 10% of ICs on only 10% of control boards in a power plant or factory, I'd assume that plant goes down hard and isn't coming up any time soon.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Optimal altitude for an EMP attack is actually a few hundred kilometers up. The "base case" usually considered in these scenarios is a nuke going off about 400 km over Omaha. At that altitude, the ionosphere helps you create a "slow" E3 pulse which induces a field in the tens of volts per kilometer at ground level; and since you can see most of the continental US, you have plenty of kilometers to work with.
That long wave EMP was only a threat to early unprotected powerlines, not electronics. What is a threat to electronics are VHF pulses from initial xray burst from the bomb.
Naively, this map makes me think that a single such EMP means enough electronics break that every major power plant or industrial plant is down and not recoverable for weeks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Optimal altitude for an EMP attack is actually a few hundred kilometers up. The "base case" usually considered in these scenarios is a nuke going off about 400 km over Omaha. At that altitude, the ionosphere helps you create a "slow" E3 pulse which induces a field in the tens of volts per kilometer at ground level; and since you can see most of the continental US, you have plenty of kilometers to work with.
That long wave EMP was only a threat to early unprotected powerlines, not electronics. What is a threat to electronics are VHF pulses from initial xray burst from the bomb.
The chances of an EMP attack Q: I’ve heard a lot from you about how dangerous an EMP attack could be. But how likely is it that anyone will actually try to attack us with an EMP? A: Unlike the EMP Commission, most national security experts view EMP attacks as a second rate threat. While perhaps some small terrorist groups or rogue nations might launch a localized EMP attack that might take out a substation or two, it…
It seems like an EMP attack would be best bet against the US for an actor with a very limited number of nukes. From the field strength maps I've seen, a single large nuke (not sure if NK's nukes are large enough) would affect all of the US, two nukes and they could hit the coasts. Nuking a city destroys a city, destroying the electrical grid takes out most of a nations industrial production and forces them to focus o…
Delivering a conventional strike on N transformer stations would probably be a better idea since there would then likely be a conventional retaliation and not a nuclear obliteration of the attacking country. I guess with North Korea you can’t know.
