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

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#81

Post by sharpshadow » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 3:55 PM UTC

hcfman wrote: post #26

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.

Somehow I don't see those as related. Any use of nukes will not be an act of rationality. That's the utter stupidity behind this belief in MAD keeping us safe.

Exactly, there is no official communication that the attack on nuclear capable planes is revenged with a nuclear attack. What has been very clearly communicated though is that the attack on the personal transport trains has been counted as a terrorist attack and now Russia is about to declare Ukraine leadership as a terrorist organisation. A change from special operation to a terrorist hunt involves various changes.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#82

Post by XorNot » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 4:10 PM UTC

closewith wrote: post #74

XorNot wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And no one responded to any of those with strategic nuclear attacks.

Russia certainly hasn't actually ramped up any nuclear rhetoric in response, which it's been happy to do at other times when it would be taken less seriously (and ramped it down significantly in late-2022 after it's US back channels communicated their intentions if any nuclear weapons or nuclear terrorism was used in Ukraine).

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#83

Post by akkartik » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 6:46 PM UTC

What about turning devices off, does that protect against one or two of the three phases?

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#84

Post by b112 » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 6:52 PM UTC

tomxor wrote: post #80

washadjeffmad wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Every time my friends make fun of my hat, every time I think of shedding the 'Luminum Life, something convinces me to stand fast.

Thank you brother.

Thank you.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#85

Post by leptons » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 6:58 PM UTC

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #67

Gud wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 beca…

>Surviving will be a miserable ordeal

Life is already a miserable ordeal for far too many people.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#86

Post by mopsi » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 6:58 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.

One has to recognize the genre of "Threads" and "The Day After" - they represent suffering porn that has little to do with how actual disasters play out. In "Threads", the way people suddenly lose the ability to speak and rapidly turn into cavemen after a nuclear strike is comical. Kids grunt instead of talk, everyone shuffles around like zombies, and basic things like farming or using tools just vanish. How is anyone supposed to take that seriously? Is that how Cologne, Dresden, Würzburg and Pforzheim, or Hiroshima and Nagasaki looked a decade after they had been destroyed in Allied bombing raids? The truth is that even after infrastructure gets bombed back to the Middle Ages, life remains surprisingly normal, and people quickly rebuild.

Hiroshima in 1957, about a mile from the epicenter of the nuclear strike: https://img.i-scmp.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=contain,width=1024,...

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#87

Post by tintor » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 7:05 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.

The problem is how much of your resources and time right now will you spend "prepping" for that "no matter how slim" chance in the future.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#88

Post by Henchman21 » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 7:07 PM UTC

leptons wrote: post #85

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 beca…

>Surviving will be a miserable ordeal Life is already a miserable ordeal for far too many people.

Which is why if I ever see a mushroom cloud, I’m running towards it.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#89

Post by rjsw » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 7:16 PM UTC

spacebanana7 wrote: post #50

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)

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.

Turkey is a member of NATO.

Re: What you need to know about EMP weapons

#90

Post by spacebanana7 » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 7:24 PM UTC

rjsw wrote: post #89

spacebanana7 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Turkey is a member of NATO.

That’s the point. In theory Turkey is covered by the NATO nuclear umbrella.

But in practice how many Americans would be willing to go nuclear in support of a Turkish war against the Russians? In circumstances where Turkey was considered the aggressor state.