One thing that wouldn’t be hit hard is communications. Most long-distance communications nowadays is via fiber optic cable, and glass, being nonconductive, is unaffected by EMP.
Also, only hardened equipment would be unaffected, but “unaffected” vs. “destroyed” is a false dichotomy. At least some equipment would blow a fuse or trip a surge protector, and be otherwise unharmed.
Plus, of course, there’s the question of who would have the capability to do this. The US and Russia definitely can, France probably, and China maybe, but that’s about it. A bomb big enough to fry the entire US, and the means to get it into space above the US, is far beyond the reach of any rogue state or terrorist group. That doesn’t mean we should get totally complacent, of course, but it does mean we should be no more worried about this now than we were during the Cold War (which, in case you didn’t notice, ended).
I haven’t read up on the technical details of an EMP attack. But if we’re talking about a magnetic field exerting a force on a wire, then the force is proportionate to the current flowing through the wire.
I’ve read in the past that it’s not all that hard to make a non-nuclear EMP bomb; IIRC it basically consists of wrapping an electromagnet around explosives. You don’t get nearly the same radius of effect you would with a nuke though. Supposedly the US dropped some on Iraq in the first Gulf War.
I don’t believe that fuses make much difference, since the effect hits the whole system from outside, instead of travelling along a wire. It’s rather like expecting a dike to stop rain falling from the sky.
I never watched it, but according to Wikipedia they used a “pinch device”, something that actually exists, so it’s not pure fantasy. Whether the effects the device has in the film are fantasy I don’t know ( since I don’t know what they were, and never heard of a pinch device before now ).
The energy is coming from the sky, but the current is flowing along the wire just like any other current. The limitation on fuses isn’t where the energy is coming from, but that many fuses wouldn’t react quickly enough. Still, some would.
Sorry, wrong answer. EMP does cause severe hardware damage to anything with modern semiconductor devices that is not properly shielded. It induces voltage spikes in circuits that will destroy transistors and integrated circuits.
Even if it wasn’t, it was only localized to Las Vegas.
First of all, the only thing that could create an EMP blast across all of the US is a high altitude detonation of an atomic bomb. Something only a few countries could do.
Second, there were several high altitude A-bomb detonations back when we used to test the things, so why didn’t they black out the entire US?
And finally, even if it did work, we’ve experienced mass blackouts before. It would be expensive and annoying, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
I don’t think we’re talking about a magnetic field, but rather an electromagnetic field (hence the “E” in EMP), which is quite a different beastie. The physical force that you are talking about being induced is irrelevant.
Exactly, even when there was a massive blackout (2003 North America blackout), the amount of people who just say back and hung out with their family/friends/neighbors far outstripped the looting, criminal jackasses.
It might have something to do with the fact that the tests were conducted at Johnston Island, 1400 km west of Hawaii. They did cause problems in the Hawaiian Islands.
