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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

#71

Post by bell-cot »

closewith wrote: post #43
bell-cot wrote: post #37

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.

Yet the passably professional military news sites I've read describe the attack in terms like "substantial", "demoralizing", and "temporarily constrain Russia's ability to conduct long-range drone and missile strikes into Ukraine". Not "devastating", nor any similar (emotive or maximal) terminology.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#72

Post by pjc50 »

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.

Do you want to link your answers for comparison? The lightning strike issue seems to be mostly fuses with occasional more serious events. https://ewh.ieee.org/soc/pes/lpdl/archive/4_Bill_Chisholm_pa...

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#73

Post by pjc50 »

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…

Yeah, this reads like alarmism with no numbers.

It's been a long time since atmospheric nuclear testing, but the US did carry out a bunch of tests to measure such effects, and it would be good to dig up the numbers from them.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#74

Post by closewith »

XorNot wrote: post #69
closewith wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

An attack can be devastating without harming any military capabilities at all.

9/11 was devastating. October 7th was devastating. Pahalgam was devastating.

The drone attacks against Russian airbases were highly destructive, caused extreme shock, and were extremely impressive - the literal definitions of devastating.

The response will depend on the emotional and political reality within Russia. Although they have not lost their nuclear strike capabilities, they have lost face and now Putin may feel the need to act to retain his strongman hold on the country, or risk being Ceaușescu'd.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#76

Post by flufluflufluffy »

imglorp wrote: post #39
tronicjester wrote: post #8

To prevent nuclear war YouTube has now blocked videos related to faraday cages.

Not surprised, but is there a source? I guess hiding your electronics from The Man is subversive. And front page today, Jeff discovered that media servers are also verboten: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/self-hosting-your-own... Is someone keeping a list of all the various censorship triggers on YT?

I think this was a joke related to Jeff’s post xD

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#77

Post by [deleted] »

flufluflufluffy wrote: post #76
imglorp wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not surprised, but is there a source? I guess hiding your electronics from The Man is subversive. And front page today, Jeff discovered that media servers are also verboten: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/self-hosting-your-own... Is someone keeping a list of all the various censorship triggers on YT?

I think this was a joke related to Jeff’s post xD

[deleted]

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#78

Post by southernplaces7 »

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.

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' own survival narratives.

In a very well written, visceral way, this novel showcases the barbarities that even such a limited nuclear can unleash on a society, like few others I've read. On the other hand it also underscores the hopeful recovery efforts that people are capable of.

For anyone who appreciated those films, I can't imagine them disliking Warday. It's also delivers an unusually powerful emotional punch with its character development, well above the average for apocalypse literature.

One of the frighteningly realistic elements of the storyline is how it describes the nuclear bombardment as "moderate", at least compared to what was intended by the Soviets. However, because a large part of the fallout completely ruins the agricultural capacity of the country, the resulting development of widespread malnutrition turns a later flu epidemic into something truly murderous, causing far more death on top of what the bombs produced.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#79

Post by Onavo »

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…

Well, I am not sure how you expect redneck prepper types to pick up on enough RF theory to manufacture homemade metamaterials.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#80

Post by tomxor »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #53
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…

That seems intuitive, though. EM radiation is either reflected or absorbed, and optimizing for that requires both a pretty complex understanding of RF behavior and generally knowing that materials are generally radiopaque and radiolucent at different frequencies and wattages. Sometimes we're trying to keep things (eg- information) outside from getting in, and other times we want to prevent things inside from getting…

> EM radiation is either reflected or absorbed

By interfaces yes, but it can also be cancelled out through destructive interference as a side effect of reflection, which is my theory of how a "big ball of crumply aluminium" is so effective compared to less chaotic solutions.

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