I just picked up a book (which I haven’t started reading yet) about a world where an Electromagnetic Pulse wipes out all technology which is dependent on electronics, and, according to the book cover “plunges civilization into a new dark age.”
So, I have to ask, how much of “technology” can survive an EMP? Are there cars still being manufactured which don’t rely on electronics? How far back do we have to go to find cars that would still run? What about motorcycles? What about infrastructure?
There probably isn’t much that would be useful after such an event. As far as cars go, this article says mainly before 1980.
[Is the book called One Second After or something like that? If so, fair warning, the writing is terrible and the main character is so much of a Mary Sue that I couldn’t finish the book. My dad gave it to my husband while he was in the hospital, he only read it out of sheer boredom.]
Yeah, that’s the book. Uhoh. Oh, well, I’ll give it a try anyway. Thanks. 
“a Mary Sue”?
Ever run across a character that is so competent, talented and hot that it’s obvious it’s really just the author inserting themselves into the story? That’s a Mary Sue.
Keep in mind, though, that an EMP that could wipe out all electronics of all types is pretty much magical.
A real EMP induces a charge proportionate to the length of a wire. Very long transmission lines are clearly at a high risk then, but your cell phone plugged into a surge protector has very short wires. It just might survive an EMP that took out the power grid. In fact, it’s really the power grid that’s the issue with ending civilization because cell phones are useless if you can’t charge them. Such EMP events have already occurred, but thankfully there was no power grid at the time.
As the EMP gets stronger, it would ruin more and more devices, so it might eventually fry your phone too, but you also have to remember there are ways to protect and harden devices. It’s probably better to think of an EMP destroying 50% or 90% of devices… by the time you could get 100% of devices, you’re probably looking at something like a rogue magnetar that will go ahead and fry people at the same time.
A lot of things that weren’t intrinsically vulnerable to EMP are now because everything’s controlled by computer chips. Say, a pumping station for a city water supply: I doubt that the plumbing is much different from what was there in 1960, but fry the circuit boards that control it all and you have no way to run it. Instrumentation is another problem: sensors and displays that used to be mechanical analog devices have been replaced with digital systems. IF you had nothing else to worry about, the pumping station could probably eventually be brought back online with a lot of manual valve control; but in a SHTF scenario you’d never get the chance.
A number of other things are vulnerable even though they’re comparatively robust because they’re usually attached to long wires that would pick up and direct the EMP directly into them: generators, electric motors and transformers.
I read One Second After and the most chilling thing I took away from it is that destroy our infrastructure and almost everyone starves to death. A massive EMP event would leave most people unhurt, only to be doomed to a slow wretched death, in the process eating the country bare and tearing down what little chance some people might have had. If anything like this ever happens, my advice would be start planting potatoes. Lots of potatoes.
Thanks.
TV Tropes is quite a well written and perceptive resource.
These claims appear to be contradictory. If the risk is higher the longer the wire, why are circuit boards and microchips at any risk at all? Their wire lengths must be measures in nanometers or some other crazy-small unit.
Because they are connected to long wires…
Don’t forget that the critical components in modern military hardware are shielded, for just such contingencies.
EMP is the new TV miracle device. As a tool for disabling something quickly, it’s as wondrous as chloroform or a karate chop for knocking someone unconscious. And just as realistic. I love Leverage, but the characters have an EMP canon that temporarily (!) knocks out electronics. It’s like the writers have less than a clue as to how things work.
To elaborate on Beowulff’s point: you have to think about the wire lengths and potential surges at every step in the system. Power transmission lines connect to local distribution lines, which connect to your home’s internal wiring. Then we have a wire from the wall to the computer. It get converted in the computer to DC and then wires on the scale of many inches carry it to the circuit boards, which carry it some more inches to things like the processors. Most people already use surge protectors to try to stop every day kinds of surges from coming into the home from outside lines, but you can see how many different points there are for a surge to develop. Since these nano-meter-scale wires are so sensitive, it only takes a small failure at any of a number of points to knock them out.
But it is still worth emphasizing that the microchips in a car or a disconnected cell phone are more likely to survive an EMP than the power grid itself. No less catastrophic in its own way, but fictional uses of EMPs usually don’t understand that.
Now here is a problem.
What would they do with the millions of dangerous inmates in our nations prisons? They wont be able to feed them and many of the safeguards like the doors are electronic.
They wouldnt just let them all out would they?
Would they just start shooting them?
The devices that are energized at the time of the pulse are at risk. You know, the things that are turned on and running. Computers and other always on systems.
Most things not running at the time of the EMP will still function after, provided that they still have a power source.
Cars that are turned off will still start, at least most of them without continual PCM monitoring. Your household appliances will be fine, after the power comes back on, which could take quite a while.
There is no magical event that will ruin every electrical device in the world at once and put us back to the iron age.
I wouldn’t be so sanguine.
Any electronic device which gets enough energy induced into it is going to be damaged, whether it was powered on at the time or not. Just put your powered-off smartphone into the Microwave and see.
Still, it’s probably way-over hyped.
The ultimate issue is the power grid. It’s all about the power grid and selected choke points. Everything else not impacted by the EMP may function temporarily but once the need arises for replenishment, it all stops.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18098847&postcount=13