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What you need to know about EMP weapons

aardvark.co.nz

61–70 of 213 posts

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#61
post #28

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.

I think it’s important to understand fictional stories, even reasonable speculative ones, will usually have very little to do with actual reality. Don’t base your choices on what you saw in a movie.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#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 strong enough to fry a silicon chip. There can be radio waves strong enough to melt glass vacuum tubes. This article provides no parameters by which one can make these calculations.

You might as well say "don't get nuked" which is admittedly sound advice.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#63
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.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#64
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end of the cold war didn't also end the threat of nuclear war. Russia has threatened to use nukes if aid to Ukraine continues, while they haven't followed through on those threats it's not impossible that they will eventually.

> it's not impossible that they will eventually. Please stop believing the ridiculous Russian propaganda. Using even a single tactical nuclear weapon would be game-over for Putin's Russia.

Why? Because you expect we’d nuke them for it? Hadn’t heard this before and honestly am not sure why they don’t at this point, it seems like they have less and less to lose as the war goes on. I read in the NYT a few weeks ago the pentagon estimated the escalation back in dec/jan had a 50/50 shot of going nuclear.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#65
post #42
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

for a few minutes / hours I guess

Outside of acute radiation poisoning and blast damage, it's still a big planet.

The real problem is what happens over the next 3 to 12 months, since global trade and agriculture would fall apart.

Most projections of casualties from nuclear war have much higher fatalities from famine then bombardment.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#66
post #28

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.

Funny that you mention "The Day After", I watched that movie in high school then went to lunch in a school that overlooks the Kansas City skyline.

No chance that had anything to do with the panic attack I had when Putin put his nuclear troops on high alert after invading Ukraine. No sir, not at all.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#67
post #34
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.

Surviving will be a miserable ordeal. That being said, all of my ancestors have survived every major calamity in the history of life on earth. The way I see it, I owe it to them to try surviving whatever comes next. A few select generations lived through much, much worse.

It may sound bizarre, but I don’t believe in an afterlife so I might as well lean into something to give me inspiration. The idea that I exist because my extremely distant ancestors survived every mass extinction gives me a sense of wonder.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#68

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)

Not all uses of nuclear weapons necessarily escalate to the doomsday maximum exchange scenarios. There are many interesting points of equilibrium in between. For example - if far right extremists took over Turkey and attacked Russia, then Russia nuked a Turkish airbase, what would the US/UK/France do? It's not actually that obvious.

You’re going to see the most strongly worded letter in the history of human civilization.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> And unless you're in the hyped-up headline business, the attack fell well short of "devastating". All other comparable attacks have been considered devastating in history.

sigh all of that history existed before the development of ICBMs and submarine launched ICBMs particularly. Which happened around the 1960s-ish depending how you count it.

ICBMs, and in particular submarine based ICBMs, are what provide nuclear deterrence in a serious fashion. They arrive faster, and are effectively unstoppable at scale.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#70
post #28

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.

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.
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