As modern society heavily relies on electronics, and preppers depend on various equipment, it's essential to understand how long our devices might be out of commission due to an EMP.
Although EMPs usually occur within a second or two, their effects can last for hours, days, or even permanently, depending on the affected equipment's vulnerability and the extent of the damage.
Preparing for a powerful EMP is similar to skating in the dark: theoretically possible but significantly more challenging than anticipated. Numerous factors influence both the EMP's strength and your equipment's vulnerability.
What Exactly is an EMP?
An EMP is an electromagnetic pulse, a burst or wave of electromagnetic radiation. While it's common to associate EMPs with nuclear warhead detonations or specialized weapons, they occur daily due to electricity generation and electronic equipment operation.
However, we're primarily concerned with the most potent EMPs, those capable of causing extensive damage and disruption to localized or regional areas.
How Does an EMP Affect Electronics?
EMPs impact electronics, conductive materials, equipment, and other vulnerable devices by inducing high voltages that can overheat or short-circuit these technologies.
Many standard electronic devices are susceptible to malfunction or damage from EMPs significantly weaker than those produced by a nuclear explosion, EMP generator weapon, powerful solar storm, or coronal mass ejection.
Depending on the event's intensity and the affected components' vulnerability, various electronic parts may need a temporary reboot, minor part replacements, or a complete overhaul to become operational again.
Items like personal electronics and computers will be entirely destroyed by an EMP if not protected. Larger systems, such as the power grid, will experience overloads, leading to fires and cascading failures, resulting in catastrophic consequences. All unshielded affected equipment will be taken offline, with the duration being the main concern.
What Affects the Duration of an EMP?
Most powerful EMPs causing significant damage to equipment and electrical infrastructure dissipate within a fraction of a second.
Nuclear EMPs, non-nuclear EMP generators, lightning, and similar events have an instantaneous duration. However, natural phenomena like geomagnetic storms and other cosmic activities can last much longer.
It's crucial to understand that a potent EMP can cause immense damage in an instant and doesn't necessarily require a long duration to be destructive.
The effects of the EMP will last much longer than the EMP itself.
As mentioned earlier, the real "time sink" associated with EMP is not that the event itself will last very long, but that the effects of the event will last very long, or at least as long as it takes to fix them, assuming they can be fixed.
Imagine having to replace critical components fried by an EMP that might be on your vehicle or having to replace all your personal electronics including phones, GPS systems, and so on. The second- and third-order effects of the EMP could take weeks, months or even years to repair, assuming men and materials could actually be tasked to do so.
A total destruction of the power grid would take who knows how long to repair.
Subsequent disabling of critical computer control and asset management interfaces, refrigeration, medical care, navigation equipment, and so on would result in an ever-increasing wave of destruction and damage.
Each of these failures is a disaster in its own right and will affect every other dependent system, sector and activity. Food will go bad, essential supplies will be lost, life support machines for employees and the sick could go offline. It will be pandemonium.
So while an EMP might start and end in the blink of an eye, the damage and devastation it inflicts will be felt and remembered for a long time afterward.
Some naturally occurring EMPs could last for hours or days
Now, the assumption is that any EMP capable of doing this to our country will end very quickly, and I am referring to the event itself. However, it is not excluded that certain cosmic phenomena occurring in nature could persist for hours, days, weeks or perhaps even months. This means that EMP effects could be continuous and vary in intensity for a period of unspecified duration.
For example, solar storms can send huge masses of electromagnetic energy drifting through the vacuum of space and slowly flood the planet over time with damaging or potentially destructive results. The intensity of this EMP effect is directly proportional to the intensity and nature of the solar event.
And this is not conjecture or science fiction either: here is an example of the Carrington event of 1859, and imagine how much worse, even more powerful and longer lasting such an event would be today, now that every level of society is so much more dependent on electricity and electronics.
Is there anything you can do to prepare and protect vulnerable systems?
Yes, as a matter of fact there is. Any device vulnerable to the effects of an EMP, whatever its size, can be effectively protected by a properly designed and constructed Faraday cage.
A Faraday cage is nothing more than a conductive barrier, typically consisting of thin wire mesh or solid metal plates, that completely encloses the vulnerable object, allowing the energy of an EMP to circulate around it and eventually dissipate harmlessly.
The principle behind the EMP's protective factor is easy to understand, but an in-depth discussion of the construction and implementation of the Faraday cage is beyond the scope of this article. In any case, a good example of a Faraday cage can be the passenger compartment of an automobile.
It is quite easy, however, to build your own Faraday cage with the right materials and a little do-it-yourself ingenuity, and there are numerous options available commercially. One thing is certain: a properly designed and implemented Faraday cage is one of the few protective measures you have to prevent an EMP.
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