5 ms·

I read one of those disaster porn books on an EMP attack. It was a pretty good story, but I tried to look into the real effects of these things, as I didn't thi

by ufmace 10y ago

I read one of those disaster porn books on an EMP attack. It was a pretty good story, but I tried to look into the real effects of these things, as I didn't think it sounded very plausible to create that much destruction. I don't claim to have done extensive research, but I got the distinct idea that we really don't have any idea what the effects of a large-scale EMP attack would be. Nobody's bothered to try to figure out how to create a small-scale EMP without a nuclear blast and then tried subjecting modern cars and computers and phones and such to them. As far as I can tell, it tends to affect things with long antennas and lengths of wire most strongly. Would we expect it to disrupt a modern car? Cellphone? Cellular base station, broadband base station? Hard to say for sure. I have worked with shielding electronics from EM interference, where interference can sneak in through unexpected routes. Not sure if EMP style effects could penetrate in the same way, though. Cars seem like kind of a tricky case - there are some moderate length wires, like 6-8 feet probably, but they may be somewhat shielded. Could they pick up enough energy to damage essential electronics? I don't think anybody knows. Part of the book's premise was also that the weapons were launched on rockets loaded onto anonymous cargo ships and timed to detonate at the same time over the continental US and Western Europe. Sounds pretty implausible to me that anybody could pull off a complex attack like that without a lot of mistakes and/or obvious preparation work. How long did it take us to get SLBMs working right? And I don't think even the rouge states would be willing to use a untested Rube Goldberg delivery system to launch an EMP attack whose effect on the target nations will be unknown.

Animats 10y ago
Nobody's bothered to try to figure out how to create a small-scale EMP without a nuclear blast and then tried subjecting modern cars and computers and phones and such to them. More of that was done during the Cold War. In my aerospace days I used to get reports on things such as tests of AUTODIN nodes using a truck-mounted EMP generator. One observation was that if you welded together the wire mesh used in reinforced concrete, before pouring the concrete, you had a rather coarse Faraday cage. That was enough to attenuate EMP to the point that the switching equipment was unaffected. L-3 Services makes an EMP generator now for testing US military equipment.[1] The US military does pay some attention to this. But the general military view is that EMP effects are secondary to blast effects of nuclear weapons. The blast effects will knock out more than EMP does. If you're going to harden something against EMP, it also needs to be blast-hardened. [1] http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/74M-for-an-EMP-Generator-05022/ http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/74M-for-an-EMP-Generator...
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  In the olden days, Sandia used to run a big-ass EMP tester. It was large enough to fit a B-52 on the laminated wood platform, which remains the worlds biggest wood-and-glue-only structure. Officially, it's not been in service since 1980, so I assume the boys in the know have EMP shielding of military aircraft under control. I also assume that knowledge, where applicable, has been passed on to areas vital for national security such as electricity generation and distribution. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATLAS-I https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATLAS-I
- stevenrace 10y ago
  >Nobody's bothered to try to figure out how to create a small-scale EMP without a nuclear blast Additionally the US DoD has an EMP weapon that comes in guided missile form via Raytheon/Boeing Phantom Works' CHAMP (publicly tested in 2012, confirmed in operation thereafter [1][2]) for taking out buildings, power grids, and such. It can be discharged 100 times per sortie. Targeting power grids 'the old fashioned way' in Desert Storm, Lockheed F-117As dropped a cluster bomb full of carbon graphite filaments (BLU-114/B). This shorted out power lines/transformers and destroyed 85% of Iraq's power grid. Later used in Serbia and accidentally in SoCal during testing [3]. --- [1] http://www.boeing.com/features/2012/10/bds-champ-10-22-12.page http://www.boeing.com/features/2012/10/bds-champ-10-22-12.pa... [2] http://mil-embedded.com/3908-air-forceboeing-emp-weapon-moving-forward/ http://mil-embedded.com/3908-air-forceboeing-emp-weapon-movi... [3] http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/blu-114.htm http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/blu-114.htm
  - TrevorJ 10y ago
    Could you expand on the accidental power outage in SoCal during testing? I couldn't find a source on that, sounds interesting.
    - stevenrace 10y ago
      "The idea for these soft bombs apparently grew out of a training accident in souther California. Military aircraft were dropping chaff - hundres of metallic strips used to confuse enemy radar. An airplane released its chaff near a power switching station and many of the strips fell onto a power switching station, blacking out a large area of Orange County." - Weapons of Mass Casualties and Terrorism Responce Handbook - Charles Stewart MD FACEP https://books.google.com/books?id=7ZnXZfwWwgcC&pg=PA221&lpg=PA221&dq=Blackout+Led+to+Weapon+that+Darkened+Serbia&source=bl&ots=NBu5t2mURB&sig=p3sF_g0mbMyuobFIOOa3-1Ss0SY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwilnbHV8I_OAhVIbB4KHXHjD3kQ6AEIKzAC#v=onepage&q=souther%20california&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=7ZnXZfwWwgcC&pg=PA221&lpg=... referencing a Boston Globe article: May 4th 1999 page A27 --- I recall reading of another accident, but can't easily find the source.
VLM 10y ago
There's enough detail in your post to identify the book as "lights out" by Crawford. There's at least three books with that title and insane as it sounds Ted Koppel wrote an EMP realistic fiction on the exact same topic, yeah that Ted Koppel you're thinking of... Crawford's book is ground zero for the entire genre AFAIK and maybe 25 years ago he was discussing early revisions of it online on the internet probably on usenet. Way back when it was unusual for book authors to be involved on the internet or BBSes before "everyone's on social media" I was astounded to check out the copypasta near clone books on Amazon. Much as its impossible to buy real cables or real chargers on Amazon we're getting to the point of there's going to be 1000 copypasta for every real or original ebook as per the linked story. There are five interesting points about the original book and the copypasta phenomena and EMP in general. 1) I've done the EE stuff and read the QST/QEX articles about hardening radio gear for EMP and some of the professional stuff and I guarantee nobody writing or talking about the topic has done even that much research. From a commo point of view its harder, faster rise and fall lightning and you have to do lightning protection anyway, so... People who fail at lightning protection like to claim nothing can be made lightning proof; their either pedantically correct that you can only reduce the rate of damage by a factor of a million or so which is usually economically useful, or they're bad or non- engineers and they don't know what they're doing. 2) To the technical illiterate its all magic so its a variety of technobabble with no relationship to reality. For example actual (simulated) nuclear EMP testing of modern cars is pretty much a bust. In the genre all diesel electric locomotives burn out which is technologically speaking, hilarious. Its almost like zombie fic where the zombie stands for anything but actual zombies. This hand wavy magic IS how the general public sees EE or telecom stuff. Sure to people in the know their idea of magic is all ha ha funny alchemical but the fact remains there is no reason or rationality involved in the general public vs EE stuff. 3) The prepper - survivalist community is not by any means unified and this kind of fiction sells very well to a very small subgroup although most are interested in surviving hurricanes or blizzards while living in rural areas or living thru likely economic collapse (along the lines of 1930s, 2007, etc). I would guess the average city slicker wouldn't last more than a year in the country, so some prepper stuff is very much "back to the soil" propaganda. I guess I'm a prepper because I have a decent first aid kit in my car (and some training to use it and up to date CPR cert etc) and I have a fire extinguisher and some MREs and stuff in case I get stuck in a blizzard (which has in fact personally happened to me, and because I was prepared its an incredibly boring story, also I've been trapped in a house with no electricity during a blizzard and that was also very boring, oh and I was trapped in a cabin after tornados went thru the area and covered all the roads with trees, but I'm old, this stuff doesn't happen every decade, etc, none the less you can prepare or you can prepare to suffer, your choice...) 4) Most prepper fiction is highly escapist like bad sci fi. Real societal collapse looks a lot like Venezuela, Brazil, "the middle east" during periodic wars, Somalia, West Virginia (only halfway kidding) etc. Everyone's not gonna die although a lot will, and its gonna suck a lot worse than you think no matter how pessimistic you are. But we come from a long evolutionary line of survivors and even in the worst case its mostly not that big of a deal. 5) Some of the tropes are just funny. Outlaw cannibal biker gangs. The retired Marine who either saves everyone or is a complete PITA or both. Hillary is gonna take all our gunz.

by ufmace 10y ago

Animats 10y ago

Nobody's bothered to try to figure out how to create a small-scale EMP without a nuclear blast and then tried subjecting modern cars and computers and phones and such to them. More of that was done during the Cold War. In my aerospace days I used to get reports on things such as tests of AUTODIN nodes using a truck-mounted EMP generator. One observation was that if you welded together the wire mesh used in reinforced concrete, before pouring the concrete, you had a rather coarse Faraday cage. That was enough to attenuate EMP to the point that the switching equipment was unaffected. L-3 Services makes an EMP generator now for testing US military equipment.[1] The US military does pay some attention to this. But the general military view is that EMP effects are secondary to blast effects of nuclear weapons. The blast effects will knock out more than EMP does. If you're going to harden something against EMP, it also needs to be blast-hardened. [1] http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/74M-for-an-EMP-Generator-05022/ http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/74M-for-an-EMP-Generator...

semi-extrinsic 10y ago
In the olden days, Sandia used to run a big-ass EMP tester. It was large enough to fit a B-52 on the laminated wood platform, which remains the worlds biggest wood-and-glue-only structure. Officially, it's not been in service since 1980, so I assume the boys in the know have EMP shielding of military aircraft under control. I also assume that knowledge, where applicable, has been passed on to areas vital for national security such as electricity generation and distribution. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATLAS-I https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATLAS-I
stevenrace 10y ago
>Nobody's bothered to try to figure out how to create a small-scale EMP without a nuclear blast Additionally the US DoD has an EMP weapon that comes in guided missile form via Raytheon/Boeing Phantom Works' CHAMP (publicly tested in 2012, confirmed in operation thereafter [1][2]) for taking out buildings, power grids, and such. It can be discharged 100 times per sortie. Targeting power grids 'the old fashioned way' in Desert Storm, Lockheed F-117As dropped a cluster bomb full of carbon graphite filaments (BLU-114/B). This shorted out power lines/transformers and destroyed 85% of Iraq's power grid. Later used in Serbia and accidentally in SoCal during testing [3]. --- [1] http://www.boeing.com/features/2012/10/bds-champ-10-22-12.page http://www.boeing.com/features/2012/10/bds-champ-10-22-12.pa... [2] http://mil-embedded.com/3908-air-forceboeing-emp-weapon-moving-forward/ http://mil-embedded.com/3908-air-forceboeing-emp-weapon-movi... [3] http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/blu-114.htm http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/blu-114.htm
- TrevorJ 10y ago
  Could you expand on the accidental power outage in SoCal during testing? I couldn't find a source on that, sounds interesting.
  - stevenrace 10y ago
    "The idea for these soft bombs apparently grew out of a training accident in souther California. Military aircraft were dropping chaff - hundres of metallic strips used to confuse enemy radar. An airplane released its chaff near a power switching station and many of the strips fell onto a power switching station, blacking out a large area of Orange County." - Weapons of Mass Casualties and Terrorism Responce Handbook - Charles Stewart MD FACEP https://books.google.com/books?id=7ZnXZfwWwgcC&pg=PA221&lpg=PA221&dq=Blackout+Led+to+Weapon+that+Darkened+Serbia&source=bl&ots=NBu5t2mURB&sig=p3sF_g0mbMyuobFIOOa3-1Ss0SY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwilnbHV8I_OAhVIbB4KHXHjD3kQ6AEIKzAC#v=onepage&q=souther%20california&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=7ZnXZfwWwgcC&pg=PA221&lpg=... referencing a Boston Globe article: May 4th 1999 page A27 --- I recall reading of another accident, but can't easily find the source.

VLM 10y ago

There's enough detail in your post to identify the book as "lights out" by Crawford. There's at least three books with that title and insane as it sounds Ted Koppel wrote an EMP realistic fiction on the exact same topic, yeah that Ted Koppel you're thinking of... Crawford's book is ground zero for the entire genre AFAIK and maybe 25 years ago he was discussing early revisions of it online on the internet probably on usenet. Way back when it was unusual for book authors to be involved on the internet or BBSes before "everyone's on social media" I was astounded to check out the copypasta near clone books on Amazon. Much as its impossible to buy real cables or real chargers on Amazon we're getting to the point of there's going to be 1000 copypasta for every real or original ebook as per the linked story. There are five interesting points about the original book and the copypasta phenomena and EMP in general. 1) I've done the EE stuff and read the QST/QEX articles about hardening radio gear for EMP and some of the professional stuff and I guarantee nobody writing or talking about the topic has done even that much research. From a commo point of view its harder, faster rise and fall lightning and you have to do lightning protection anyway, so... People who fail at lightning protection like to claim nothing can be made lightning proof; their either pedantically correct that you can only reduce the rate of damage by a factor of a million or so which is usually economically useful, or they're bad or non- engineers and they don't know what they're doing. 2) To the technical illiterate its all magic so its a variety of technobabble with no relationship to reality. For example actual (simulated) nuclear EMP testing of modern cars is pretty much a bust. In the genre all diesel electric locomotives burn out which is technologically speaking, hilarious. Its almost like zombie fic where the zombie stands for anything but actual zombies. This hand wavy magic IS how the general public sees EE or telecom stuff. Sure to people in the know their idea of magic is all ha ha funny alchemical but the fact remains there is no reason or rationality involved in the general public vs EE stuff. 3) The prepper - survivalist community is not by any means unified and this kind of fiction sells very well to a very small subgroup although most are interested in surviving hurricanes or blizzards while living in rural areas or living thru likely economic collapse (along the lines of 1930s, 2007, etc). I would guess the average city slicker wouldn't last more than a year in the country, so some prepper stuff is very much "back to the soil" propaganda. I guess I'm a prepper because I have a decent first aid kit in my car (and some training to use it and up to date CPR cert etc) and I have a fire extinguisher and some MREs and stuff in case I get stuck in a blizzard (which has in fact personally happened to me, and because I was prepared its an incredibly boring story, also I've been trapped in a house with no electricity during a blizzard and that was also very boring, oh and I was trapped in a cabin after tornados went thru the area and covered all the roads with trees, but I'm old, this stuff doesn't happen every decade, etc, none the less you can prepare or you can prepare to suffer, your choice...) 4) Most prepper fiction is highly escapist like bad sci fi. Real societal collapse looks a lot like Venezuela, Brazil, "the middle east" during periodic wars, Somalia, West Virginia (only halfway kidding) etc. Everyone's not gonna die although a lot will, and its gonna suck a lot worse than you think no matter how pessimistic you are. But we come from a long evolutionary line of survivors and even in the worst case its mostly not that big of a deal. 5) Some of the tropes are just funny. Outlaw cannibal biker gangs. The retired Marine who either saves everyone or is a complete PITA or both. Hillary is gonna take all our gunz.