I was reading this months Popular Mechanics Mag and the Cover story is about the E-Bomb. The wave of the future for military destruction.
Basically, its a device that when detonated creates a ramping current, when unleashed ramp times of tens of hundreds of microseconds and peak currents of tens of millions of amps are eminated for miles. Basically, disables every electronic device we have. Unless of course it is housed in some kind of casing that disperses the amperage.
Anyway, the question is, what could the possible range be for one of these, and how much destruction could one actually have? And what are the possibilites for the future of warfare, could we be getting away from tactical physical combat and more towards an ‘E-WAR’ society? Imagine living today with absolutely no electronics?? Impossible? improbable? Stone-Age?
It is my understanding-- albeit from the Discovery Channel-- that EMP devices have been around for some time in use for terrorist response teams, attack squads which handle Koresh-style groups, etc.
Since I have absolutely no idea how the things actually work, I have nothing else to say on the matter. My only concern is, how easy is it to build one?
The’re moderatedly complicated, and use conventional explosives to compress a magnetic field to generate a current surge. This can be used to generate another magnetic field, or fed into a big microwave generator.
A lot of detail can be found at
While these things have their uses, I don’t see them being particularly devastating compared to conventional munitions. If you’re using the microwave beam variety you may be able to deactivate a radar station many miles away, but otherwise the range of the pulse is a few tens of yards.
EMP bombs are moderatedly complicated, but probably not beyond the capability of a dedicated hobbyist working in a garage. For some reason :rolleyes: it’s hard to find detailed descriptions of how to build the things.
The EMP blasts used to knock out satellites and paralyze countries are generated by atomic bombs. You get a smaller footprint when the pulse is triggered with conventional explosives.
Erhm, that site you link to gives their killing radius as hundreds of metres.
I could see a lot of use for a bomb that detonates a couple of hundred meters up, and wipes out every electronic device in that radius - you could bring an opponent to a standstill without casualties.
Erhm, that site you link to gives their killing radius as hundreds of metres
Depends what you’re targeting. Maybe you could fry all the PCs and mobile phones within a few hundred metres of detonation. Whether you could do the same to the electronics on board a tank is another question. Resistance to EMP has been a strategic consideration for quite some time and there are some fairly simple strategies for guarding against it - just sealing your electronics in metal boxes is a big help.
I had some friends who worked at Lockheed, he told me a story about how they tested aircraft’s hardness against EMP. They had to go way out in the desert to build a nonconductive wooden platform to set the aircraft on, then zap it with their big EMP device. They hadn’t done a test like this in years, and one thing escaped their notice: cars had all converted to electronic ignition. When the test was concluded, none of the cars they’d driven to the site would start up. They had to send someone hiking to get help, they eventually got buses to take everyone home.
Interesting! Any data as to how the aircraft fared?
I must confess that I’m actually quite skeptical about the claims made for conventional-explosive powered EMP weapons - I linked to that site only because it describes how they work. I haven’t had any luck tracking down actual test data.
This site is quite good with details of how nuclear EMP is generated, what it does and how potentially threatening it is, and it makes grim reading. Non nuclear EMP devices work by an entirely different mechanism so I’m not sure how relevant it is to the OP.
Alas, he wouldn’t tell me because it was classified. He wouldn’t even tell me which aircraft was being tested. Hmm… this would have been around the mid '80s, what were they secretly developing around then? I presume it passed the tests, I figure they’d have reengineered anything that failed, and reworked it until it could pass.
Anyway, this sort of testing is fairly common, all military fighters and bombers have to be tested for this, to assure they’d survive in a nuclear battlefield. And commercial aircraft have to be tested to survive lightning strikes, somewhere or other I saw pictures of a huge tesla coil they use to hit planes with big bolts of lightning.
Why would the cars not start if the EMP waves that disrupted it had passed it when the cars were not running?
I don’t know a whole lot about the electrical starting setup of modern cars, but why would they have chips to start the car?
The reason the cars got zapped was because the EMP was a serious one, enough to simulate the plane being taking a nearby hit from a nuclear antiaircraft missile. It wouldn’t just disrupt a chip in an electronic ignition, it would fry it permanently.
A little Tid bit for you folks, Oddly enough after writing this thread I remembered a discovery channel exclusive on the future of law enforcement. And one of the new weapons they had in certain parts of this country (USA) was a rocket powered projectile that was used in a police chase.
Basically it was mounted under the grill of the squad car and when that officer gave chase to someone, he could at his leisure deploy the rocket powered unit, that would thrust on wheels under the chased car and deliver a certain voltage to the car, and disable it. Rendering the chased car inoperable. This program was on some 3 or 4 years ago. I wonder what has kept this technology from being used on a wider spectrum. Or maybe it is being used and the general public doesn’t even know it…
Epimethus asked: “Why would the cars not start if the EMP waves that disrupted it had passed it when the cars were not running?
I don’t know a whole lot about the electrical starting setup of modern cars, but why would they have chips to start the car?”
The idea is that the currents induced by the EMP in the metal conductor tracks of the chips are high enough to melt them. High currents and reverse voltages will also kill the semiconductor components.
Having said that, in the movie Broken Arrow it was implied that your electronics would be unaffected by EMP if they were switched off when the EMP hit. This makes sense to me, as the inductance of the power supply loop will typically be many orders of magnitude larger than the tiny inductance of a chip, and so will intercept much more EMP energy. But then again, the bomb detonated under ground in Broken Arrow so there shouldn’t have been any EMP (no gamma-ray - atmosphere interaction.)
Onboard chips control the fuel injection system, regulating the fuel-air mixture as the power level varies. They also govern the ignition timing for different engine speeds. Lose those chips and you get no sparks and no fuel.
Phlosphr: I’ve seen that gadget as well! Have you seen a demo of why your car is a safe place in a lightning storm? I’ve seen footage of a car being driven under high voltage electrodes with continous lightning arcing into it. The car wasn’t affected at all.
I’d bet money on that gadget not working.
