Faraday cages only isolate against electrostatic charges, such as discharge from a capacitor. High altitude EMP (HEMP) devices produce three distinct regimes of pulse, referred to as E1, E2, and E3. Microelectronics are most sensitive to E1, which is due to interaction of x-ray and gamma ray radiation with the rarified upper atmosphere and the geomagnetic field resulting an a nearly coherent, widely distributed pulse, sort of like a very large free electron maser. The E1 electromagnetic pulses that electronics are sensitive to consist of rapidly varying electromagnetic waves that are not stopped by a conductive cage.
Military electronic hardware, save for acceptable commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components, area built to specific interface standards like MIL-STD-464 (Electromagnetic Effects Requirements for Systems), MIL-STD-461 (Requirements for the Control of Electromagnetic Interference Characteristics of Subsystems and Equipment), and MIL-STD-2169 (Classified) (High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse Environment). However, the ugly truth about high altitude EMP is that no amount of shielding, save being buried deep under hundreds of feet of rock or dirt, is really adequate to protect sensitive microelectronics. By their nature, the electronics are delicate and sensitive to small levels of excess voltage, and it is nearly impossible to make a practicable sensor, communication system, or avionics control that has to interface with the outside world and yet is adequately isolated against large pulses.
I was there, too. But there were still things like radios. And gravity-fed water from the reservoirs. Lots of other locations rely on electric pumps. Imagine when all of the control circuitry for all of that stuff is fried.
Also, I don’t recall too many reports of deaths due to the blackout. This would be different-- all the planes taking off and landing at JFK, LGA, etc. would power down and crash. Probably 95% of the cars, trucks, and buses would be shut down ( and without power steering/brakes and brake lights, I think there would be tremendous casualties from car crashes at the instant of the blast). No ambulances. No backup generators kicking in at hospitals–they would be fried, too.
Nuclear attack, which weakens America considerably (perhaps several nukes at once)
A majority of survivors are unhappy with the government - perhaps they feel it is the government’s fault, perhaps the government has already enshrined too much on civil liberties on the domestic front, whatever
America breaks up into smaller city-states
Or there’s a virus that wipes out half the population.
Or the government does something terrible and there’s an uprising.
EMP (E1) works by essentially oversaturating electronic components. Unplugging or isolationg systems from the power grid will protect against spikes caused by the E2 component, but the only thing that can protect against E1 is mass that will attentuate the electromagnetic pulse, or making the components sufficiently robust that they don’t undergo breakdown, which is contrary to the high efficiency, low energy components used in modern commercial systems.
At the rsik of whatever might happen by disagreeing with the posters here…
[Lex Luthor]WROOOOOOOOOOOONG![/Lex Luthor]
You’re all looking at the physical, what will happen to destroy the land on which Americans live, or somehow kills America by ending Facebook. That cannot destroy America. What can destroy America is if Americans simply stop believing in it. America is an idea, and ideas can’t be stabbed or shot or bombed. A people can survive the utter destruction of their government, technology, and society as long as the idea remains.
smiling bandit: you would seem to be excluding the middle step: a severe social, economic, or military event that leads to the collapse of our way of life – including the loss of faith in the idea and ideals of America.
But you are right in adding the idea of simple and perhaps gradual change, a kind of social evolution, that could lead away from what we now hold to be American ideals. For instance, a new religion might spring up and become hugely popular, leading to catastrophic divisiveness.
Apologies for missing this. I don’t think any social, economic, or military event could do so, short of nearly-obliterating all Americans. A catastrophe would never destroy America without being so bad as to wipe out a good chunk of the globe. It would take something far slower and deeper.
In that sense, I agree with foolsguinea, but only on that aspect.m America isn’t a nation, but while it doesn’t have the same kind of identity that Germany does, it is an identity.
Besides the Native nations located within the USA, it is. Heck, when asked, most people of The South don’t self-identify as anything other than American or African-American. What nation could they possibly belong to, other than the USA? As for the rest of the map, all those blue counties, they belong to the German-American nation? I think not. In times of crisis, we have no more or no less coherence than other nations.
[QUOTE=foolsguinea]
The USA is not a nation, it’s a political structure.
[/QUOTE]
Only insofar as EVERY conglomerate of people is ‘not a nation’ but only a ‘political structure’. But, unless you are saying that there are no nations and only political structures, the US is indeed a nation AND a political structure.
Certainly…any nation can be destroyed and disintegrate. It would, IMHO, take something fairly epic to cause the US to collapse right now, but with enough shocks to our system? Yeah, I can see a lot of ways it could happen. And once the central idea holding the nation together as a whole goes, then disintegration is pretty much inevitable.
Well, even a proper nation could be exterminated, exiled and enslaved, or diverge into new different nations. Pointing out that the USA is not a nation is beside the point.
But really, the USA just isn’t a nation. It’s ridiculous to call it one. Its dominant culture is racially, linguistically, culturally, ethnically part of the Anglophone continuum, part of the same supernation, bound by language and heritage, as Anglophone Canada, Jamaica, great chunks of the Lesser Antilles, and Great Britain. The USA is properly a state.
When you say the historical state of Palestine in 1948, do you mean the 31 year old British Mandate? The Ottoman Empire, of which Palestine was a province, had already ceased to exist between 1918 and 1922.
