Any fellow survivalists utilize their truck?

Although I do not regularly practice it I do have a bug out destination/cabin set up within the Daniel Boone National Forrest. My friend purchased the property back in HS and we have been building ever since....

 

I have been going over in my head the different routes I would take if I was to ever need to hike it back to the house.

If both my wife and I were already home then we are gonna bunker down here or head over to my dads. He has a good storm shelter as well.


One thing Ive been afraid of though is if something bad ever happens and I'm at work I'm sure the base will go on lock down and no one is allowed to leave . But I do have a weapons vault 15 feet from my desk if it gets really hairy

 

I'm just going to bump this in here....

www.survivalistboards.com

 

there is lots of good info over there. Lots of bad info as well

I like the threads "I just want to head to the hills and live for...uh 40 years or so. what kind of supplies will I need?"

 

Decent forum of like minds however it makes me want to just put a bullet in my head and not worry about it...

 

You're both right. There are a few...extremists on there. But if you take the info with an open mind, you can learn a HELL of a lot.

 

That's pretty damn nice... might have to pick one up for myself. Been wanting a Gerber 06, just a bit too pricey atm

 

What do they say: "The mind is like a parachute, it works best when it's open"...

 

Carbine course in Plano for only $60

http://www.gearhog.com/



I asked my wife to get me this for my birthday

 

I saw that and was thinking about taking it myself. Its cheap enough...

 

no kidding. normally $300!

do it! maybe we could get the same class

 

I might do it as well, pretty awesome deal I just have to borrow a friends rifle

 

Not a bad looking blade... http://www.gerbergear.com/Apocalypse/Knives/DMF-Folder-Knife_31-000583

 

not a fan of gerbers, but they do look pretty beastly.

 

I made a wish list of a lot of items on Amazon and sent it out to my family. From what I hear, I got some good stuff off the list. I'm being teased about why I need this blade and that ax, etc. LOL Not a bad idea for anyone who wants to get stuff for their bags/kits but can't fork out all the $.

 

My bud did that this Christmas. Worked pretty well... I have one started myself

 

well looks like i will be able to get my bag soon! as it turns out i am kind of hard to shop for so i usually just get money from relatives lol

 

Take a few days and read the book - "One Second After" (google it) Its a fairly quick read and probably about the most realistic view of how this country would self destruct within 60 days after an attack by an EMP or electromagnetic pulse which could be deployed by any rouge country having nuclear weapons. The EMP fries everything electric instantly such as Planes, trains, trucks, cars, everything. An EMP wipes out the electrical grid of a nation. Nothing electrical will function. The book begins in a little town in North Carolina called Black Mountain and for what its worth a very interesting read. This book will forever change your views on real survival. I am glad I live on a lake, you have to have water to live. I grow much of my own food and store it. If you don't own a firearm, you are very vulnerable to say the least.


So don't worry about driving your Taco anywhere. If we ever are hit by an EMP it turns "ye ole Taco" into a large boat anchor. Read the book and take stock of where you are in life if the inevitable happens. Knowledge is power.

Here is a little info from the One Second After Website;


Although nuclear EMP was known since the earliest days of nuclear weapons testing, the magnitude of the effects of nuclear EMP were not known until a 1962 test of a thermonuclear weapon in space called the Starfish Prime test. The Starfish Prime test knocked out some of the electrical and electronic components in Hawaii, which was 897 miles (1445 kilometers) away from the nuclear explosion. The damage was very limited compared to what it would be today because the electrical and electronic components of 1962 were much more resistant to the effects of EMP than the sensitive microelectronics of today. The magnitude of the effect of an EMP attack on the United States will remain unknown until one actually happens. Unless the device is very small, it is likely that it would knock out the nearly the entire electrical power grid of the United States. It would destroy many other electrical and (especially) electronic devices. Larger microelectronic devices, and devices that are connected to antennas or to the power grid at the time of the pulse, would be especially vulnerable.

The Starfish Prime test was detonated at 59 minutes and 51 seconds before midnight, Honolulu time, on the night of July 8, 1962. (Official documents give the date as July 9 because that was the date at the Greenwich meridian, known as Coordinated Universal Time.) It was considered an important scientific event, and was monitored by hundreds of scientific instruments across the Pacific and in space. Although an electromagnetic pulse was expected, an accurate measurement of the size of the pulse could not be made immediately because a respected physicist had made calculations that hugely underestimated the size of the EMP. Consequently, the amplitude of the pulse went completely off the scale at which the scientific instruments near the test site had been set. Although many of the scientific instruments malfunctioned, a large amount of data was obtained and analyzed in the following months.

When the 1.44 megaton W49 thermonuclear warhead detonated at an altitude of 250 miles (400 km), it made no sound. There was a very brief and very bright white flash in the sky that witnesses described as being like a huge flashbulb going off in the sky. The flash could be easily seen even through the overcast sky at Kwajalein Island, about 2000 km. to the west-southwest.

After the white flash, the entire sky glowed green over the mid-Pacific for a second, then a bright red glow formed at "sky zero" where the detonation had occurred. Long-range radio communication was disrupted a period of time ranging from a few minutes to several hours after the detonation (depending upon the frequency and the radio path being used).

In a phenomenon unrelated to the EMP, the radiation cloud from the Starfish Prime test subsequently destroyed at least 5 United States satellites and one Soviet satellite. The most well-known of the satellites was Telstar I, the world's first active communications satellite. Telstar I was launched the day after the Starfish Prime test, and it did make a dramatic demonstration of the value of active communication satellites with live trans-Atlantic television broadcasts before it orbited through radiation produced by Starfish Prime (and other subsequent nuclear tests in space). Telstar I was damaged by the radiation cloud, and failed completely a few months later.

Nuclear EMP is actually an electromagnetic multi-pulse. The EMP is usually described in terms of 3 components. The E1 pulse is a very fast pulse that generates very high voltages. E1 is the component that destroys computers and communications equipment and is too fast for ordinary lightning protectors. The E2 component of the pulse is the easiest to protect against, and has similarities in strength and timing to the electrical pulses produced by lightning. The E3 component of the pulse is a very slow pulse, lasting tens to hundreds of seconds, that is caused by the nuclear detonation heaving the Earth's magnetic field out of the way, followed by the restoration of the magnetic field to its natural place. The E3 component has similarities to a geomagnetic storm caused by a very severe solar flare.

In writings on the internet, there is nearly always much confusion about the very different aspects of the various components of nuclear EMP. In addition, there is much confusion in distinguishing high-altitude nuclear EMP, non-nuclear EMP weapons and solar geomagnetic storms. There are very large differences among these very different electromagnetic disturbances; although there are many similarities linking solar geomagnetic storms and the E3 component (but not the other components) of high-altitude nuclear EMP.

It is important to note that nuclear EMP cannot be understood without an understanding of the differences between the E1 and E3 components of nuclear EMP. Many otherwise intelligent technologists have caused an enormous amount of confusion by making statements without any clear understanding of the vastly different components generated by nuclear EMP. For a more detailed discussion of these components, see the E1-E2-E3 Page.

The E1 component of the pulse is the component that is the most frequently discussed component. The gamma rays from a nuclear detonation in space can travel great distances. When these gamma rays hit the upper atmosphere, they knock out electrons in the atoms in the upper atmosphere, which travel in a generally downward direction at relativistic speeds. This forms what is essentially a very large coherent vertical burst of electrical current in the upper atmosphere over the entire affected area. This current interacts with the Earth's magnetic field to produce a strong electromagnetic pulse, which originates a few miles overhead, even though the nuclear detonation point may be a thousand miles away or more. Since the E1 pulse is generated locally, even though the original gamma ray energy source may be in space at a great distance away, the pulse can cover extremely large areas, and with an extremely large EMP field over the entire affected area.

Illustration above is from the United States Defense Threat Reduction Agency about the E1 component of nuclear electromagnetic pulse. The source region is the region of the upper atmosphere where gamma radiation from the weapon knocks out electrons from atoms in the atmosphere, which travel in a generally downward direction at roughly 94 percent of the speed of light, and are acted upon by the Earth's magnetic field to generate a powerful burst of electromagnetic energy. This source region is in the middle of the stratosphere. (In the map on the right side of the illustration, HOB is the height of the nuclear burst in kilometers.)

The magnitude of a nuclear EMP over the United States would be much larger than the tests in the Pacific would indicate. For any particular weapon, the magnitude of the all of the components of an EMP are roughly proportional to the strength of the Earth's magnetic field. The Earth's magnetic field over the center of the continental United States is about twice the strength as at the location of the Starfish Prime test.

See the separate article on the high-altitude nuclear tests of Operation Fishbowl.

Although Starfish Prime was a 1.44 megaton thermonuclear weapon, it was actually extremely inefficient at producing EMP. Much smaller nuclear fission weapons, requiring far less expertise, would be much more efficient at producing EMP, especially the very fast E1 component. In general, the simpler the nuclear weapon, the more efficient it is at producing EMP. (See the the notes on EMP page.) Thermonuclear weapons (so-called hydrogen bombs) are very inefficient at generating the fast-rise-time E1 pulse. (Weapons with a high energy yield are much better at generating the slower E3 pulse that can damage transformers in the power grid, which would take years to replace. This E3 pulse can induce large currents even in long underground lines. Solar superstorms can cause the same type of damage.)

Several countries have produced single-stage nuclear weapons with energy yields of well over 100 kilotons. These would be much more efficient at producing EMP than the Starfish Prime detonation. (The very first nuclear weapon tested by France had a yield of 70 kilotons). In the early 1950s, the United States had a stockpile of 90 of the Mark 18 500 kiloton single-stage fission bombs that would have made very effective EMP weapons, even though very little was known about EMP at the time. The only actual test of the Mark 18 bomb was done at the Pacific Ocean test range on November 16, 1952 at an altitude of only 1480 feet (450 meters), so nothing was known about its possibilities for high-altitude EMP. (Later analysis showed that the weapon yield was closer to 540 kilotons, higher than its design yield of 500 kilotons.) By now, some countries undoubtedly have very advanced enhanced-EMP nuclear weapons, although these details are highly classified.

The Mark 18 bomb, tested in 1952, was also known as the super oralloy bomb. It was made of a spherical shell of very highly-enriched uranium surrounded by a sophisticated symmetrical implosion system. Although it is often described as a very advanced device, it was designed by people who did not have computers of a power that is anything even approaching the power of computer that you are using to read this web page. More than a half-century ago, at least 90 of these bombs were built by the United States. In 1952, they were trying to conserve the highly-enriched uranium in the stockpile, so the Mark 18 was surrounded with a natural uranium tamper. Anyone making a similar weapon for EMP use could probably greatly enhance its EMP effects by using a tamper made of enriched uranium and by using a relatively thin outer casing made of an aluminum alloy. There are also techniques for increasing the energy of the gamma rays beyond the levels available in first and second generation nuclear weapons. These techniques would increase the electric field of the EMP beyond the old maximum of 50,000 volts per meter.

Today, if just one of these 500 kiloton bombs like the Mark 18 were detonated 300 miles above the central United States, the economy of the country would be essentially destroyed instantaneously. Very little of the country's electrical or electronic infrastructure would still be functional. (This is not to say that every device would be destroyed, but the interdependence of different electrical and electronic infrastructures makes it possible to stop nearly all economic activity with only limited damage to critical infrastructures.) It would likely be months or years before the electrical grid could be repaired because of the destruction of large numbers of the largest transformers in the electrical power grid. Spares for these large and very heavy transformers are not kept on hand, and they are no longer made in the United States. Several countries today have the ability to produce a weapon similar to this 1952 bomb, and send it to the necessary altitude. (England tested an even larger single-stage weapon with a yield of 720 kilotons, called Orange Herald, on May 31, 1957.) The number of countries with this ability will undoubtedly be increasing in the coming years.

The instantaneous destruction of the power grid would occur primarily because of the widespread use of solid-state SCADAs (supervisory control and data acquisition devices) in the power grid. These would be destroyed by the E1 pulse, but could probably be replaced within a few weeks. The greater problem would be in re-starting the power grid. (No procedures have ever been developed for a "black start" of the entire power grid. Starting a large power generating station actually requires electricity.) The greatest problem would be the loss of many critical large power transformers from geomagnetically induced currents, for which no replacements could be obtained for at least a few years. The loss of many of these power transformers would greatly complicate the re-start of the parts of the grid that could be more quickly repaired.

The consequences of the potential dangers to the electric power grid have changed dramatically over the past few decades -- as the availability of electricity has changed from being a convenience to something upon which our lives now depend. This transition of electricity from a convenience to a necessity for sustaining human life has happened so gradually that most of us haven't noticed this profound change. The knowledge and the technology of earlier times for surviving for long periods of time without electricity has been mostly lost in modern societies.

By mentioning the 1952 Mark 18 bomb, I do not want to imply that countries developing nuclear weapons would start with such an old technology. New automobile companies do not start with a Stanley Steamer or the Model T; and new radio companies do not start with Marconi circuits and Fleming valves. Modern techniques and materials, as well as advanced computing power, enable new nuclear weapons projects to leapfrog far past the Manhattan Project. A related fallacy is the belief that, because of the difficulty that the United States and the old Soviet Union had in going from basic fission weapons to thermonuclear weapons, all nations would experience similar difficulties and delays. Producing basic fission weapons requires a significant industrial capacity to produce the fissionable material. Scaling up from there just requires computing power and knowledge.

Many years after he left the nuclear weapons laboratories, the principal designer of the Mark 18 bomb wrote an article for Scientific American describing, in general terms, how specific effects of nuclear weapons (including EMP) can be greatly enhanced, and how such effects can be concentrated in one direction from the detonation. (See Scientific American, Theodore B. Taylor "Third-Generation Nuclear Weapons", pages 30-39. Vol. 256, No. 4. April, 1987.)

The Soviet Union got its surprise introduction to the severity of nuclear EMP effects over a much more heavily populated area than the Pacific Ocean. The most damaging nuclear EMP event in history (so far), much worse than the Starfish Prime test, occurred in October of 1962 over central Asia. Written documents give the time and date as 3:41 GMT/UTC on the morning of October 22, 1962. The warhead was launched from Kapustin Yar on a Soviet R-12 missile. Although the primary purpose of the test was to discover the effects of EMP on certain military systems, the magnitude of some of the effects on the civilian infrastructure were quite unexpected.

A few hours after the sun rose in Kazakhstan on that cloudy October morning, the Soviet Union detonated a 300 kiloton thermonuclear warhead in space at an altitude of 290 kilometers (about 180 miles) roughly over the city of Zhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan. The test was generally known only as Test 184 (although some Soviet documents refer to it as K-3). It knocked out a major 1000-kilometer (600-mile) underground power line running from Astana (then called Aqmola), 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 EMP also knocked out a major 570 kilometer long overhead telephone line by inducing currents of 1500 to 3400 amperes in the line. (The line was separated into several sub-lines connected by repeater stations.) There were numerous gas-filled overvoltage protectors and fuses along the telephone line. All of the overvoltage protectors fired, and all of the fuses on the line were blown. The EMP damaged radios at 600 kilometers (360 miles) from the test and knocked out a radar 1000 kilometers (600 miles) from the detonation. Some military diesel generators were also damaged. The repeated damage to diesel generators from the E1 component of the pulse after the series of high-altitude tests was the most surprising aspect of the damage for the Soviet scientists.

Subsequent analysis has shown that the warhead used in the 1962 Soviet test was particularly ineffective at generating EMP. If the W49 warhead used in the U.S. Starfish Prime test had been used in the Soviet tests, the EMP damage over Kazakhstan would have been far greater.

Both the United States and the Soviet Union detonated EMP-generating nuclear weapons tests in space during the darkest days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world was already on the brink of nuclear war.

The Soviet Union detonated additional 300 kiloton weapons over Kazakhstan on October 28 and November 1, 1962. The United States detonated a relatively small nuclear weapon (probably about 7 kilotons) in space over the Pacific on October 20, 1962, and also detonated 410 kiloton nuclear weapons in space over the Pacific on October 26 and November 1, 1962. (During the period of October 13 to November 1, 1962 there were 16 Soviet and 6 United States above-ground nuclear explosions.) Two people suffered retinal burns when they looked toward the nighttime the flash of the October 26 (Bluegill Triple Prime) detonation directly overhead, which occurred at an altitude of 50 kilometers. (Due to a guidance system malfunction, the October 26 detonation occurred almost directly above Johnston Island.)

Johnston Island is now somewhat larger than it was in 1962 (due to a dredging project in 1964), and the airport is now closed. There have been at least three launch pad sites on Johnston Island for high-altitude nuclear tests. The 1958 tests (Hardtack-Teak and Hardtack-Orange) were launched from one end of the island, and the Operation Fishbowl tests, including Starfish Prime, were launched from the other end. After the Bluegill Prime launch resulted in a catastrophic explosion shortly after the successful Starfish Prime test, the destroyed launch pad was re-built, along with a spare launch pad. You can see the current (unoccupied) island in this Wikimapia satellite view of Johnston Island.

Most of the EMP data on the United States Bluegill Triple Prime, Checkmate and Kingfish high altitude tests of 1962, as well as the Hardtack-Teak and Hardtack-Orange tests of 1958 remains classified decades after the tests were completed. The secrecy regarding these tests poses a danger to the United States since it does not allow vulnerable United States citizens to fully educate themselves about the effects of weapons that could have a dramatic effect on their lives in the future.

Test 184 was launched from Russian territory about 30 miles from the Kazakhstan border. If Test 184 were to be duplicated today using the same launch and detonation points, it would probably be considered as a nuclear attack against another country. (At the time, of course, Kazakhstan was a part of the Soviet Union.)

There is a separate page with many more details about the Soviet nuclear EMP tests in 1962.

This site is written by an electronics engineer who has been concerned about the possibility of an EMP attack on the United States for decades. We are entering a period of special vulnerability to EMP in the coming years, with the fictional June 1, 2009 Dark Angel EMP attack marking a point in time that is close to the beginning of a period of years when the U.S. is most likely to be the victim of a pulse attack. (Among Dark Angel fans, June 1, 2009 has long been called the Day of the Pulse.) Most people who have some knowledge in this subject, and who have given some serious thought to the problem, consider the probability of an EMP attack on the United States during the next ten years at somewhere between 20 and 70 percent. (My own guess is that the probability of a long-term loss of much of the world's power grid from a solar superstorm is probably much larger than the chance of a nuclear EMP attack on the United States.)

The time that it would take to recover from an EMP attack has generally been estimated to be anywhere from two months to ten years or more. There would almost certainly be a time of great economic hardship. Whether this time of economic hardship is of short or long duration will depend upon the reaction of the American people. In widespread power outages of the past in the United States, people have reacted with behavior ranging from rioting and looting (as many did during the July 13, 1977 New York power outage) to patiently waiting for the crisis to be over (as has occurred with some more recent power outages such as the widespread August 14, 2003 outage in the northeastern U.S.). The Power Grid DVD from the History Channel examines the electric power grid with special emphasis on the August 14, 2003 blackout.

If the recovery period were long, and especially if electronic communication were down for a period of months, civilization in the United States could reach a tipping point where a 10+ year depression, with the conditions depicted in Dark Angel, could actually occur. Many people who have thought about the problem believe that the Dark Angel scenario is actually overly optimistic.

The electric power grid in use today has changed very little from the system devised by Nikola Tesla and implemented by Westinghouse, beginning in the 1890s, as described in the Mad Electricity DVD, which describes the power grid from the historical perspective of Tesla's early battle against Thomas Edison for the adaption of alternating current. This adaption of alternating current made modern electrification possible, but also made the power grid very vulnerable to geomagnetically induced currents, which includes the E3 component of an EMP, as well as severe solar storms.

A thin-cased 100 kiloton weapon optimized for gamma ray production (or even the relatively-primitive super oralloy bomb of more than 56 years ago) detonated 250 to 300 miles above Nebraska, would destroy just about every unprotected electronic device in the continental United States, southern Canada and northern Mexico. Such a weapon would also knock out 70 to 100 percent of the electrical grid in this very large area. Nearly all unprotected electronic communications systems would be knocked out. In the best of circumstances, if the weapons were very large, as completely unprepared for such an event as we are now, reconstruction would take at least three years because of the destruction of large numbers of the largest transformers in the electrical power grid. Spares for these extremely heavy transformers are not kept on hand, and they are no longer made in the United States.

The more that preparations are made for an EMP attack, the less severe the long-term consequences are likely to become. Being ready for an EMP attack would not cost a lot, and the benefits would include a much higher reliability of the electrical and electronic infrastructure, even if a nuclear EMP attack never occurred. Adequate preparation and protection could keep recovery time to a month or two, but such preparations have never been made.

Hardening the electronic and electrical infrastructure of the United States against an EMP attack is the best way to assure that such an attack does not occur. Leaving ourselves as totally vulnerable as we are now makes the United States a very tempting target for this kind of attack.

By not protecting its electrical and electronic infrastructure against nuclear EMP, the United States invites and encourages nuclear proliferation. These unprotected infrastructures allow countries without a nuclear weapons program to gain the capability to effectively destroy the United States with one, or a few, relatively simple nuclear weapons.

Severe solar storms can cause current overloads on the power grid that are very similar to the slower E3 component of a nuclear electromagnetic pulse. There is good reason to believe that the past century of strong human reliance on the electrical systems has also, fortunately for us, been an unusually quiet period for solar activity. We may not always be so lucky. In 1859, a solar flare produced a geomagnetic storm that was many times greater than anything that has occurred since the electrical grid has been in place. We know something about the electrical disruption that the 1859 Carrington event caused because of the destruction that it caused on telegraph systems in Europe and North America. Many people who have studied the 1859 event believe that if such a geomagnetic storm were to occur today, it would shut down the entire electrical grid of the United States. It is likely that such a geomagnetic storm would destroy most of the largest transformers in the electrical grid. Protection against nuclear EMP is also protection against many kinds of unpredictable natural phenomena that could be catastrophic.

Although it is possible that a nuclear EMP attack will never occur, a solar superstorm that will completely shut down the electrical grid (for a very long period of time) almost certainly will eventually occur unless adequate protections are put in place. For a comprehensive recent report on the effects of geomagnetic storms and the EMP E3 component, see Severe Space Weather Events -- Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts by the National Research Council of the United States National Academies. A solar storm of the size of the 1859 event, or even a smaller geomagnetic storm that occurred on May 14-15 in 1921, could simultaneously knock out the power grids of the United States, Canada, northern Europe and Australia, with recovery times of 4 to 10 years (since the solar storm would burn up large transformers worldwide, for which very few spares exist.) The United States has no capacity for building replacements for these large transformers.

For a map of the locations of the most highly at-risk power grid transformers in the United States, see this page from the 2008 Report on Severe Space Weather Events.

There is hope that people are beginning to realize the importance of this problem. In 2010, at least one major company that makes small and medium sized power grid transformers announced plans to begin to build the capability at a United States facility to move toward the production of some of the largest transformers. (See this press release from Waukesha Electric which indicates that they have a serious interest in getting into the very large transformer business if the electric utilities show any interest in buying these critical spare parts.) In addition, in early 2011, Mitsubishi Electric announced plans to begin building the largest transformers by early 2013 in a new plant in Memphis, Tennessee.

It is important to understand that severe solar storms produce only the E3 component that burns out power grid transformers and induce DC-like currents in very long electrical conductors. Solar storms do not produce the fast E1 component that can be so damaging to electronics. Some astronomical phenomena can produce a gamma ray burst that could produce an extremely large E1 pulse, but those are extremely rare and only hit the Earth on time scales of every several million to hundreds of millions of years. Solar storms can damage satellites, and therefore satellite communications, but the only direct harm to electronics equipment on the ground comes from the loss of electrical power.

A page has been developed about the things that individuals can do to help protect themselves against the EMP threat -- and there is much that individuals can do.

See the EMP personal protection page.
A part of the U.S. military system is protected against EMP. Nearly all of the commercial sector is not protected. Most data backups of commercial systems are protected from just about every other threat, but not protected against EMP; and most backups are located within the area likely to be affected by the EMP attack. Computer systems and the information they contain are especially vulnerable. As Max says in the narration in the first episode of Dark Angel, " . . . the electromagnetic pulse turned all the one and zeros into plain old zeros . . ." An EMP attack would literally send thousands of small and mid-sized businesses in the United States into bankruptcy in less than a millisecond. Although computer hard drives would not be erased, the electronics in hard drives that are not specifically protected against EMP would be destroyed. Also, some of the data would be corrupted on any computer hard drives that were spinning at the time of the EMP attack.

Nearly all broadcast stations, especially television stations, would go off the air. Due to the high level of computerized automation, the equipment in most radio and television studios would be so completely destroyed that most commercial stations would be damaged beyond repair. Radio broadcast studios are actually more vulnerable to permanent damage than many portable radio receivers.

In the current situation, broadcast television transmitters would actually be more easily repairable than studio equipment. With the transition to digital television broadcasting in the United States, the digital encoders would be the extremely weak link in the fragile digital television broadcast chain. It is likely that a few FM stations could get back on the air within a week of the EMP attack if emergency broadcasts were originated from the FM transmitter sites, but they would only be on until fuel for their generator ran out, and some standby generators would be destroyed by the pulse.

A nuclear EMP attack would likely make a permanent change the structure of television broadcasting in the United States since it would not be financially feasible to re-build most local television stations (except possibly in the largest cities). The television broadcast re-build would probably be with a satellite and cable infrastructure, with local news being provided by subsidiaries of national news companies over their national freshly-EMP-hardened post-pulse infrastructure. An all-fiber-optic internet would assume greatly increased importance. Making predictions about what a post-pulse world would be like is very difficult, though, since a severe EMP would cause a level of destruction to the electrical and electronic infrastructure that would make the United States incapable of supporting anything close to its present population.

Since this website was started, the awareness of the EMP problem has increased significantly. A new emergency broadcast system in the United States known as IPAWS is currently under development. According to a statement of Damon Penn, a DHS official, made to a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives on July 8, 2011, a limited number of critical radio stations are being retrofitted with some EMP protection. The EMP protected stations are the ones that are known as Primary Entry Point (PEP) stations:

"The PEP system is a nationwide network of broadcast stations and other entities that is used to distribute a message from the President or designated national authorities in the event of a national emergency. The IPAWS Program Management Office continues to expand the number of PEP Stations across the U.S. In August 2009, the system originally had 36 PEP stations providing direct coverage to 67 percent of the American people. Currently, there are 49 operational PEP Stations and five PEP Stations under construction, resulting in direct coverage of 75 percent of the American people. By the end of 2012, the number of PEP Stations will increase to 77 and will directly cover over 90 percent of the American people.

"New PEP Stations use a standard configuration, saving maintenance costs and ensuring an ease of movement between stations. The stations have double-walled fuel containers with spill containment and a modern fuel management system and Electromagnetic Pulse-protected backup power and transmitters. Legacy stations are being retrofitted to meet current PEP Station resiliency standards."

In the Dark Angel series, the vehicles appear to be mostly pre-1980 and post-2009 models. There is a good reason for this. Many, but not all, conventional gasoline vehicles produced since around 1980 would not function after an EMP attack due to their dependence upon electronics. This would obviously produce a huge problem for the United States after an EMP attack. Merely moving disabled vehicles off the road would be a major undertaking. Non-functioning traffic lights would add to the traffic problem.

In one episode of the FutureWeapons Season 1 DVD Set, which was broadcast in 2006, a Ford Taurus driven on to a nuclear EMP simulator in New Mexico and pulsed. You can buy the DVD from the Discovery Channel, but you have to buy the entire 2006 FutureWeapons series (which does include more information on EMP), or you can see what happened to the Ford Taurus in this video excerpt on YouTube.

See the page on EMP and motor vehicles.

Many of the effects of nuclear EMP are very difficult to predict on the 21st century United States. Many vehicles that one would expect to be disabled by an EMP due to their dependence on sensitive electronics might be shielded well enough to continue to operate. Automotive electronic ignition systems in general are much better shielded and protected against EMP than other electronics. (After all, the purpose of an electronic ignition is to make high-voltage sparks.) Circuits in the automobile outside of the electronic ignition are actually the most vulnerable. Actual tests on vehicles in simulators have been very inconsistent. Even if only ten percent of the automobiles on the highways during the day were abruptly disabled, the resultant traffic jams would be nearly incomprehensible. (Having ten percent of the cars suddenly disabled might actually be more chaotic than having nearly all of them suddenly disabled.) Of course, there is no practical way to do a real nuclear EMP test. Even a nuclear test in space over the Pacific would likely do billions of dollars in damage to today's electrical and electronic infrastructure in the Pacific region.

Tests done on 37 automobiles (that used electronic ignition systems) by the United States EMP Commission showed that all of the tested cars would still run after a simulated EMP, although most sustained some (mostly nuisance) electronic damage. Individuals associated with the EMP Commission have stated that their tests on vehicles were somewhat misleading since the EMP simulator pulses were started at low levels and repeated until the vehicle experienced some sort of electronic upset. After that point was reached, the vehicle was not tested at higher levels since the vehicles were borrowed, and the Commission was liable for any damage to the vehicles. So we don't know at what point the automobiles would have been permanently damaged.

Additional tests were done on 18 trucks, ranging from light pickup trucks to large diesel trucks. Results were generally similar to the tests on automobiles, although one pickup could not be re-started at all after the simulated EMP and had to be towed to a garage for repairs.

Reports about the effects of the 1962 Starfish Prime test that have been declassified in recent years state that some of the automobiles in Hawaii had their old non-electronic ignition systems damaged by the EMP, so automobile damage may be much higher that we previously thought. Most of the people whose cars were damaged by the Starfish Prime test probably never related their car ignition problems to the nuclear test. The repeated damage to military diesel generators in the 1962 Soviet nuclear EMP tests indicates that some of the electrical damage doesn't show up right away. Although many people would like to know exactly which vehicles would continue to function after an EMP, the number of variables are enormous, and include the orientation of the vehicle with respect to the detonation point at the particular time that the device is detonated.

 

^ is that the whole book?



J/k

 

but seriously...