Practical EMP protection?

stugpanzer · May 23, 2012

In the event of an EMP/Solar Flare, I would still want at least a radio to get national/international updates. I might also want some two-way radios. So, I am looking at placing those types of electronics in a Faraday cage, along with batteries. As for cell phones, I wouldn't bother as what you said is correct, the Cell Phone infrastructure would be toast!

joydivision6 · May 23, 2012

stugpanzer said:
In the event of an EMP/Solar Flare, I would still want at least a radio to get national/international updates. I might also want some two-way radios. So, I am looking at placing those types of electronics in a Faraday cage, along with batteries. As for cell phones, I wouldn't bother as what you said is correct, the Cell Phone infrastructure would be toast!

and so will all of the Radio and TV stations... cable/dish are not protected. broadcast towers are not protected. there will be no "national/international updates" it will just be dorks on HAMs talking to each other about how cool they are to be dorks with HAMs...

Fenrell · May 23, 2012

joydivision6 said:
so whats the point? why do i care if my flat screen shot craps, when the lights don't work and the toilet doesn't flush? who cares if i shielded my car when the gas stations are closed?

people take this as a real threat. good. but protecting my stuff wont stop the world from going to hell around me... so whats the point, again?

Are you going to just give up because things go to hell around you? If so, you are on the wrong board.

Just because the power company can't get the power to you to run your electrical items does not mean you can't generate sufficient power to operate low-power consumption items yourself if you've taken precautions against EMP. Things like smoke/fire/intruder alarms, night vision devices, radios, flashlights and whatnot run on batteries, which can be recharged via various means (solar, wind, whatever). Some folks may even be able to power refrigerators, freezers and well pumps for periods of time sufficient to preserve food/medicine and refill water tanks. As for cars, if yours is running you can likely keep it going for quite a while simply by siphoning from vehicles that don't run, at least until the gas goes bad and you run out of additive. Having an operating vehicle to get away from danger is much better than not having it.

Do you need electricity to live? No. Does electricity make it easier to survive? Heck yeah!

stugpanzer · May 23, 2012

joydivision6 said:
and so will all of the Radio and TV stations... cable/dish are not protected. broadcast towers are not protected. there will be no "national/international updates" it will just be dorks on HAMs talking to each other about how cool they are to be dorks with HAMs...

I would still want a radio...I have a couple shortwave radios. Would I hear our governments propaganda...yes, most likely! I believe, though, I could glean something from those broadcasts as well as international ones and yes, even from ham radio chatter. It might be useful to hear from the outside world. Even if it's our government broadcasting instructions for people to 'report' to FEMA camps (for example), so I can AVOID that yet also realize that 'they' might be coming for us if we don't. Then we can have certain contingency plans in place. You can bet the government will be broadcasting after such an event.

ram4venturing · May 24, 2012

Unless the emp is world wide there would be radio stations of some sort
What about some sort of electric shield? Is an emp like light that would only hit things in line of sight or like radio waves that go everywhere? would you ground your vehicle or keep it insolated by the tires?would it burn a person or mess up there heart like an electric shock?

stugpanzer · May 24, 2012

An EMP will not affect people (maybe). That is, it might shock you if you are touching certain metals, but generally you wouldn't even know it happened. People with Pace makers most likely would be affected as well in that their pace makers would no longer function. In 1859, there was a massive solar storm also known as the Carrington Event: "Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases even shocking telegraph operators." Solar Storm of 1859

EMP will go beyond line of sight and will affect any (unshielded) electronics that is not buried deep in the ground or otherwise protected. The only way to protect electronics against an EMP is to place them in a well grounded Faraday cage. That is one of the maddening things about EMP; it can fry your computer, tv, etc even if there is a surge suppressor.

Tires on a car will not help (most) cars.

Look at this video to see the effects:

As mentioned before, read "One Second After" and "Lights Out" which are both excellent accounts of what it might be like after an EMP attack.

ram4venturing · May 24, 2012

My wife has a pacemaker, she hashad it since she was 14, so I guess she will die because she is now 100 percent dependent on it, anyway to shield her?

Robot · May 24, 2012

stugpanzer said:
Tires on a car will not help (most) cars.

.

What do the tires on a car have to do with anything? How would they help any car?

Fenrell · May 24, 2012

ram4venturing said:
My wife has a pacemaker, she hashad it since she was 14, so I guess she will die because she is now 100 percent dependent on it, anyway to shield her?

She would need to be in a shielded room when the EMP pulse hit. I don't know how you would manage that unless you knew when it was coming.

joydivision6 · May 24, 2012

Fenrell said:
Are you going to just give up because things go to hell around you? If so, you are on the wrong board.

give up? nope i'm not even going to waste my time trying to "protect" against something thats not a threat. and as far as being on the wrong board... yea i feel sometimes that i am.

Do you need electricity to live? No. Does electricity make it easier to survive? Heck yeah!

...yep, you got that right.

my group all have PRC 25 radios. all of us have a motorcycle/scooter (with points). these will work after an EMP. but an EMP is only a local event. it will only be a matter of days or weeks for everything to be back up and running. sooner for those in the city. i just can't justify getting all worried about this very low level "threat". as in: not likely to happen. and life threatening(to me).

Fenrell · May 24, 2012

joydivision6 said:
my group all have PRC 25 radios. all of us have a motorcycle/scooter (with points). these will work after an EMP.

Looks like you are already prepared then. Why castigate someone else who hasn't prepped those things and wants to? Besides, it's not like a Faraday cage is expensive or difficult to make, and every little bit of capability you preserve means less time doing things the old time consuming ways should the event come about.

As I've said earlier, the real threat of a nuclear EMP is the destruction of the power grid pretty much nation-wide, not the loss of personal electronic consumer goods. Even if the EMP only hit the east coast, the cascading effect of massive voltages propagating down the power lines would take out the infrastructure well outside the immediate area, likely bringing down the grid nationwide. The long term loss of the power grid is a guaranteed SHTF of massive proportions. It will directly effect the distribution and preservation of food, fuel and medicine, which likely means a breakdown of order when people get hungry and all that entails (i.e. significant loss of life). It could also cause secondary damage from at least some spent nuclear fuel rods boiling off their cooling ponds and releasing radioactivity into their surrounding communities within a couple of weeks. There would be immediate plane crashes, train wrecks and monumental traffic jams to deal with. There would be many immediate fires, many of which could not be reached or fought by fire departments. The damage would be widespread and time consuming to repair.

In short, an EMP (natural or otherwise) is one of the worst things that could happen to us. Most of the preps against it (storing food, water treatment, etc.) are equally useful for many other SHTF situations too, so really the only extra effort is adding a Faraday cage or two along with some electrical devices you want to preserve and dealing with transportation.

Robot · May 24, 2012

Fenrell said:
As I've said earlier, the real threat of a nuclear EMP is the destruction of the power grid pretty much nation-wide, not the loss of personal electronic consumer goods. Even if the EMP only hit the east coast, the cascading effect of massive voltages propagating down the power lines would take out the infrastructure well outside the immediate area, likely bringing down the grid nationwide. .

My guess would be not....................

I would be interested in any documentation that supports the idea of the entire nation going dark from one specific area being hit by an EMP.

You assume this massive induced voltage is not shunted anywhere,(nation wide), along the way through fuses, surge supression, or simply shorted transformers, etc

Sounds like some, bad science, fear mongering to me.......................

"By sidelining objective expertise and utilizing biased experts who are quick to offer distorted, exaggerated pictures of a potential threat, politicians remove the checks built into the system.

This happened with EMP."

http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/20...11/12/renowned-physicists-cast-doubt-on-gingrichs-far-fetched-emp-scenario.html

..................................................................................................................................................................

Fenrell · May 24, 2012

Robot said:
My guess would be not....................

I would be interested in any documentation that supports the idea of the entire nation going dark from one specific area being hit by an EMP.

You assume this massive induced voltage is not shunted anywhere along the way through fuses, surge supression, or simply shorted transformers, etc

Sounds like some, bad science, fear mongering to me.......................

Possibly (no one knows for sure what will happen), yet who would argue the power grid *isn't* susceptible to cascade effects, particularly after regional blackouts (one of which was caused by a *single* transformer failure) have already happened on several occasions? Keep in mind those happened when the SCADA control systems were *working*. If one mundane failure can have that effect, what makes you think thousands happening more or less simultaneously over a very much wider area,(including damage to the SCADA controls) would have a lesser effect? At the minimum, the dropping out of large portions of the grid should cause loss of load damage to adjacent power plants, which in turn causes ripple effects on down the line. Both of you are also assuming an EMP attack would be "local". Why would anyone make that assumption? If an enemy can lob one bomb a few hundred miles up, they can lob two or three or more. If they are risking nuclear retaliation in the first place, why would they not go "all in" and cover the country? In the case of a Carrington Event type CME, the E3 effect that does most of the line damage may be global depending upon the duration of the flare.

Edit: From the article you posted, and I quote "EMP is real, but several key details about the threat of an EMP attack—including the difficulty in pulling it off and the amount of damage it would cause—remain in serious dispute."

It seems the article's main point of contention is the plausibility of someone using a SCUD to get a nuclear warhead high enough to cause serious damage. You'll note he still advocates hardening the power infrastructure though, which means he recognizes the power grid is vulnerable. Food for thought.

Let me ask you. As a prepper, do you prepare for the minimum possibility?

Robot · May 24, 2012

Fenrell said:
Possibly, yet who would argue the power grid *isn't* susceptible to cascade effects, .

Cascade effects that cover an entire nation at one time?

I would argue this, so would my neighbor who supervises transformer construction for Virginia Power.

Midlothian, Virginia lost a capacitor bank back in 1993 due to CME. It is just this type of thing that dissipates energies from traveling across the country.

"GIC risk can, to some extent, be reduced by capacitor blocking systems"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_current

I simply see a lot of opinion from you, but some supporting documentation would be nice.

Robot · May 24, 2012

Fenrell said:
Let me ask you. As a prepper, do you prepare for the minimum possibility?

I have a generator, Adjustable Power Suppy 0-150VAC and 0-250VAC and boxes of electronic components,transformers,etc. I have a motorcycle with points. If an EMP or CME were to occur, I can get any voltage AC or DC that I desire.

My father would throw a pole over live power lines during WWII to get power for their Radar shack.

I can get what I "need" from my generator, and I bet my neighbor and I can get what we need from the line, if the line is hot.

EMP and CME has been so hyped that my neighbor works with IEEE on standards for power distribution regarding CME-EMP threat, they have one full time physicist. This pressure has recently prompted Mitsubishi to change transformer design.

I have asked some hard questions. I am satisfied we have adequate protection in place.

Unless our nation is vaporized, I doubt the whole thing could ever go dark.

Robot · May 24, 2012

Fenrell said:
In the case of a Carrington Event type CME, the E3 effect that does most of the line damage may be global depending upon the duration of the flare.

According to my neighbor and other sources I can link to. CME is likely never take out huge sections of the U.S/Canadian grid again.

Solar activity is now too closely monitored. We would always have hours to days of notice. Given this, if worse comes to worse, rolling blackouts would protect the grid.

"February 2012, scientists with JASON, a government advisory group, recently published a report on the vulnerability of the nation’s electrical grid to solar flares. “Impacts of Severe Space Weather on the Electric Grid” concludes that while energy blasts from the sun, called coronal mass ejections, can damage transmission lines, it’s unlikely the entire grid could be brought down."

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine....e/2012/February/Pages/CatastrophicSolarFlareScenarioTouchesOffStormyDebate.aspx

homelandsecurityham · May 24, 2012

ALTHOUGH I MAY BE SELLING IT SOON. 1990 suburban 4X4 (manual locking hubs), no power anything except steering and brakes it is not emp proof, but crank windows, manual locks, no tilt, no cruise control to go bad, no third row seating.

The good news BARN DOORS and a carnivorus interior. New dash pad, head liner, and rug.

Fighting with the better half for now. I want to make it army green she says the new GM gun mettal blue and maybe two tone with some silver.

Wish me luck for now if I keep it.

Sneeky · May 24, 2012

Robot said:
My guess would be not....................

I would be interested in any documentation that supports the idea of the entire nation going dark from one specific area being hit by an EMP.

................................................................................................................................................................

From the EMP Commission Exec Summary:

What is significant about an EMP attack is that one or a few high-altitude nuclear detonations can produce EMP effects that can potentially disrupt or damage electronic
and electrical systems over much of the United States, virtually simultaneously

It is not surprising that a single EMP attack may well encompass and degrade at least 70% of the Nation’s electrical service, all in one instant.

Fenrell · May 24, 2012

Robot said:
Cascade effects that cover an entire nation at one time?

I would argue this, so would my neighbor who supervises transformer construction for Virginia Power.

Midlothian, Virginia lost a capacitor bank back in 1993 due to CME. It is just this type of thing that dissipates energies from traveling across the country.

"GIC risk can, to some extent, be reduced by capacitor blocking systems"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_current

I simply see a lot of opinion from you, but some supporting documentation would be nice.

Opinion is really all anyone can offer until it happens, "experts" included. No one knows 100% for sure what will happen. The closest empirical data that has ever been observed directly over an inhabited area was the Soviet test in 1962. This was at a time when more robust electro-mechanical control systems were used, not the electronics based ones we use in the US today that are far more vulnerable to EMP.

http://www.futurescience.com/emp/test184.html

The pertinent portion reads "Other known effects of Test 184 were that it knocked out a major 1000-kilometer (600-mile) underground power line running from Astana (then called Aqmola), now the capital city of Kazakhstan, to the city of Almaty. Several fires were reported. In the city of Karagandy, the EMP started a fire in the city's electrical power plant, which was connected to the long underground power line. The shielded electrical cable was buried 3 feet (90 cm.) underground. The geomagnetic-storm-like E3 component of the EMP (also called MHD-EMP) can easily penetrate into the ground. The E3 component of the Test 184 detonation (caused by the movement of the Earth's magnetic field) began rising immediately after the detonation, but did not reach its peak until 20 seconds after the detonation. The E3 pulse then decayed over the next minute or so. The E3 component only affects equipment connected to long electrical conductors.

The E3 component of the EMP that caused the failure of the underground power cable was 1300 nT/min (nanotelsas per minute) in the Karagandy region during the first 20 seconds after the detonation. For comparison, the solar storm that shut down the entire power grid of Quebec on March 13, 1989 had a magnitude of 480 nT/min, and caused the Quebec power grid to go from normal operation to complete collapse in 92 seconds. Solar storms on other occasions have been known to produce disturbances of 2000 nT/min, and a solar storm on May 14-15 in 1921 produced a disturbance of 4800 nT/min.

If the United States W49 warhead used for the Starfish Prime test had been used in Test 184, the E3 component would have been more than 5000 nT/min in the Karagandy region. According to recent studies, a disturbance in the present-day United States of 4800 nT/min would likely damage about 365 large transformers in the U.S. power grid, and would leave about 40 percent of the U.S. population without electrical power for as long as 4 to 10 years due to the loss of large transformers that would have to be custom-built in other countries. "

Proof? No. Evidence? I think it is a strong clue towards what would happen here. The discussion above really doesn't address the architecture of the US system which is *heavily* reliant on SCADA control systems. The EMP commission's tests revealed SCADA was particularly vulnerable to the E1 component of EMP (which hits before the E3 component).

Here is a study published in 2010, two years after the EMP commission's report. It concentrates on the E1 component in particular.

http://www.ornl.gov/sci/ees/etsd/pes/pubs/ferc_Meta-R-320.pdf

Combine those described effects with the effects of the E3 and I think you'll begin to see where I'm coming from.

Here is an example of what can happen to a turbine in a loss of load incident. http://depletedcranium.com/deadly-catastrophic-failure-at-russian-hydroelectric-dam/

Even if I'm totally off base and the most an EMP bomb will do is knock down 40% of the country's power in a single blow, you still can't ignore the likelihood an attacker would use more than one device, displaced in both time and area of detonation.

joydivision6 · May 24, 2012

Fenrell said:
Looks like you are already prepared then. Why castigate someone else who hasn't prepped those things and wants to?
i didn't... and i apologize if it sounded that way.

As I've said earlier, the real threat of a nuclear EMP is the destruction of the power grid pretty much nation-wide, not the loss of personal electronic consumer goods...
...which likely means a breakdown of order when people get hungry and all that entails (i.e. significant loss of life). It could also cause secondary damage from at least some spent nuclear fuel rods boiling off their cooling ponds and releasing radioactivity into their surrounding communities within a couple of weeks. There would be immediate plane crashes, train wrecks and monumental traffic jams to deal with. There would be many immediate fires, many of which could not be reached or fought by fire departments. The damage would be widespread and time consuming to repair.

NO ARGUMENT THERE. but whats the odds of a nuclear attack? and it would have to be an air-burst of high altitude...
In short, an EMP (natural or otherwise) is one of the worst things that could happen to us. ...well natural, maybe. but i think that a nuclear attack that caused the EMP would worse..

natural occurring EMPs could cause a catastrophic change of events. true enough. and all my preps are capable of helping me to survive any "event" including EMP. i guess i can't see how me protecting my electronics is going to help me if reactors are melting down and airliners are crashing on my house?

Practical EMP protection?

stugpanzer

joydivision6

Fenrell

stugpanzer

ram4venturing

stugpanzer

ram4venturing

Robot

Fenrell

joydivision6

Fenrell

Robot

Fenrell

Robot

Robot

Robot

homelandsecurityham

Sneeky

Fenrell

joydivision6

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