E-Bomb (More deadly than a nuke?)

[McLaren]

Last night, I was watching a program on Discovery about the EMP waves that were transmitted from Nuclear(?) bombs. After a while, it actually became quite a scary deal learning that these EMP waves could take out an entire country by killing and frying the electricity.

An EMP expert on the show said on a scale of 1-10 of it likely happening, it could be an 8. The show also concluded on how the military was working on protecting itself. Hanging on these two poles was what I am guessing a deal that simulated EMP attacks. He drove a car under it, and then as silent as can be, the car died. It wouldn't even try to start. The host concluded that the windows worked because they ran on a simple battery.

So, for me, this is actually quite a threat. Instead of killing people quickly, these EMPs could be used to wipe out an entire region of electricity (imagine the 2003 blackout of NYC).

Now, I don't know how old the episode is so I may be behind the times, but if you've seen it, I may have gotten some things wrong.

More info on E-Bombs here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_bomb
Either way, your thoughts on these EMPs?

 

[amp88]

Didn't you see the James Bond film several years ago or Ocean's Eleven, they both used this type of technology. Yes, it has the ability to totally debilitate all electrical circuits in the vicinity, but I'm not sure how feasible it'd be to strike another country. Plus, unlike 'smart' bombs, you can't only target military establishments in your chosen country, if you try to take out a military installation you'll take out all things within range. I don't know how targeted they can actually make these things, perhaps no-one does with any accuracy though.

 

[the Interceptor]

Check Wikipedia for EMP, it gives a detailed explanation of how it works and how it can be used as a weapon.

Regards
the Interceptor

 

[Danoff]

Given that the EMP is non-destructive. The question is how difficult it is to restore electical power given that the infrastructure remains intact. If it only works for a few minutes until electricity is restored it doesn't do much good.

Still, it's nowhere near as deadly as using a nuclear weapon to simply obliterate everything and everyone. If you're still wondering whether a nuke is more deadly than an EMP, keep in mind that the nuke has the emp built right in.

 

[the Interceptor]

If you're still wondering whether a nuke is more deadly than an EMP, keep in mind that the nuke has the emp built right in.

That's correct, but it also depends on where you detonate the bomb. To get the maximum EMP effect, it shpould be detonated far above the ground, causing almost no direct damage by the blow.

Regards
the Interceptor

 

[Evolution.]

If I'm not mistaken, many police forces have EMPs so they can disable cars in high speed pursuits.

 

[Danoff]

If I'm not mistaken, many police forces have EMPs so they can disable cars in high speed pursuits.

Wouldn't that disable their own cars as well?

 

[Swift]

Wouldn't that disable their own cars as well?

Not that I know much about this technology, but there must be a way to set a certain range on it.

 

[Danoff]

Not that I know much about this technology, but there must be a way to set a certain range on it.

So they deploy it ahead in the road like a spike strip? I guess that would work, but they could also just put out a spike strip.

 

[ExigeEvan]

Didn't we British invent it and plan to use it before attacking Sadam's WMD bunkers? Perfect way to prevent launch and not contaminate the area.

I remember a big thing being made of them prior to the second Gulf War but I thought they were new then.

[EDIT]
Just a bit of background on it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/2847029.stm

 

[Dave A]

If I'm not mistaken, many police forces have EMPs so they can disable cars in high speed pursuits.

That could be dangerous, very dangerous, I don't think they would do that, nor have I heared of it before.
An EMP fries electrical circuits, it sends incredibly high currents through them which burns them out, so it's not a case of a few minuets and the pulse is over and the electricity comes back on, most if not all of the circuits will need replacing. The pulse it'self lasts for just a split second. EMP is not as bad as a nuke though, it doesn't involve loss of lives at least not directly whereas a nuclear explosion leaves it's mark for decades (look at chernobyl) an EMP merely disables elecronics, it can cripple a country, but ultimately you and I are still alive after. It what the EMP can be used in preperation for that might not be so nice.

 

[McLaren]

Given that the EMP is non-destructive. The question is how difficult it is to restore electical power given that the infrastructure remains intact. If it only works for a few minutes until electricity is restored it doesn't do much good.

Still, it's nowhere near as deadly as using a nuclear weapon to simply obliterate everything and everyone. If you're still wondering whether a nuke is more deadly than an EMP, keep in mind that the nuke has the emp built right in.

Well, from the info this episode gave, it fries everything. The car that was driven through was dead. The engine and everything in it was fried. It doesn't work for a few minutes. It works for a lifetime.


And what I meany by "more deadly" was the fact that instead of killing everyone quickly, people would die out in the country from the lack of electricity they depend on.

 

[Seanman]

I've seen that episode, Futureweapons, isn't it?

You have to remember, this can also be avoided somewhat easily. I remember reading somewhere that as powerful as EMP may be, it can be negated by a simple Faraday Cage. Also, EMPs don't necessarily work on all items. The U.S. was trying to use EMP on MIGs in the Cold War, but because they used advanced vacuum tubes in the MIG, the EMPs won't work. So, basically, the basic low-tech equipment will still be ok. If a E-bomb does hit us, the country will certainly be crippled, but not destroyed.

 

[YSSMAN]

An E-Bomb in certainly a more effective weapon against a modernized society of the western and far-eastern world. A single EMP detonation in a city like New York, Berlin, Moscow or Tokyo could have devestating effects not only in the given country, but across the world.

Clarkson's little tidbit about EMPs was quite interesting, one that I had seen on YouTube a while back. He pretty much described it as those power-outages that happened on the East Coast (of the US) magnified by 100X, simply devestating in some instances. Afterwards, you could even compare it to things like New Orleans and Hurricanne Katrina.

It is scary technology, and in the wrong hands it could have devestating effects on our modern world.

---

Someone mentioned the Iraq war. I had herd on the news that we (US and UK) were "testing" our EMP bombs on Iraq in the opening days of the war, but since then, I have herd little about the use of the weapons in the US Millitary.

 

[wfooshee]

To clear up confusion about what damage it does, EMP affects solid state circuits. Anything that uses silicon, basically. What we enjoy today in almost everything we use, the circuits are geneally low voltage, low current. The same kind of things that get damaged in thunderstorms, but EMP is worse because it induces the overvoltage in the whole of the device. The device is permanently fried afterwards, not recoverable or repairable at all. It doesn't recover after a time. Any recovery from EMP damage is done by replacing EVERYTHING electronic in un-protected devices.

It's easy for equipment to be "hardened" against EMP, and just about anything military is certainly done that way; as said before, simple metal shielding does the trick for the most part.

YSSMAN, Clarkson is amusing, but he's not God. Get over it.

 

[Danoff]

I don't think an EMP would keep power down for long in a city. It wouldn't fry power lines. It would fry computers, but lots of things would survive. There is no way it would do more damage than a nuke. I mean we're talking orders of magnitude less damage. Sure, maybe an EMP takes out all your computers/cars/phones etc. But a nuke will obliterate those items into dust and leave you with NO chance.

Sorry, just no comparison.

Death Toll for EMP on New York City << Death Toll for Nuke on New York City

 

[Casio]

Death Toll for EMP on New York City << Death Toll for Nuke on New York City

I don't know. They'd be a pretty huge number of Middle-Aged businessman suicides when their Blackberry's fail.

 

[Dave A]

Power might not be down in a city long, but everything the power is going to would be. Though you could get the basics such as communcations withiin areas like the police forces and such back up quite quickly. The protect something from EMP you either need a farraday cage or to wrap the object completely in tin foil with no gaps in the foil.

 

[ledhed]

US military equipment is shielded against EMP so as to still be useable after an attack...so it must be a real concern..and a nice weapon...but I wouldnt go all "matrix " over it..unshielded circuits will all fry ..the shielded ones will fire back and fry the attackers and by that time I think electricity will be the least of our worries.

 

[FoolKiller]

When I was in school and learning about the creation of the Internet (the non-Al Gore story) we discussed this. In a nuclear attack your first bomb should go off in the atmosphere above the city destroying all communications and then you rain the bombs down on the ground (or as close as nukes get).

To protect against this the Department of Defense created the first stage of the Internet that they called ARPANET. The goal was that the lines were underground and protected and all information was spread over a network. This way if Washington DC were struck by a nuclear attack the initial EMP would not wipe out any data and a retaliation could be ordered from somewhere else before the first ground-level explosion hit.

Not long after its completion the DOD went public with this. While it seems like it could have been beneficial as a classified project to keep the Russians off guard showing it off to the world essentially told Russia that a strategically planned first strike would not stop America from being able to retaliate. Pretty much they said, "Go ahead and try, but you will pay."

I sometimes worry that if someone did get a little crazy what it would do today. Everything is trending towards wireless, which is highly susceptible to EMPs. While defense technology would still be protected, as attacks can be organized from things as small as airplanes, it would cripple a city. We took technology intended to protect us from EMPs and made its public uses highly vulnerable while it has become a crutch which we all need to perform everyday activities.

Computers in general have become necessities. In the example of the car it isn't the engine itself that was affected but all the computer controlled parts that make the engine run now. The windows still worked because it was batteries running power down a wire to a switch, no computer bits. A simple car, like a Model T, could have rolled through and it wouldn't have noticed.


All that said, is am EMP more deadly than a nuke? No. You can walk away from an EMP and find places that aren't affected. Unless there is a massive, and I mean severly massive (think solar flare big), EMP weapon it can't cripple a whole country (unless you count the Vatican). The only way that would happen is if an entire country ran on one power station or was very, very tiny.

 

[Solid Lifters]

Anybody who played MGS2: Sons of Liberty should know what a EMP weapon is. After that game, a bunch of movies and now TV shows are talking about it.

But why all the talk now? The media is pushing it... because of this... a new TV drama series "Jericho."

 

[ledhed]

I farted once and the lights went out . i was accused of laying an EMP .

 

[Snortin Norton]

If I'm not mistaken, many police forces have EMPs so they can disable cars in high speed pursuits.

2Fast 2Furious.

 

[Speedy Samurai]

I saw a show years ago which showed police using their latest EMP technology. They had a little rocket on a sled mounted to the front of their car and they would fire it under the car they were pursuing. It would detonate underneath the suspect car and kill the engine. They said it was too expensive to put into use.

 

[niky]

To clear up confusion about what damage it does, EMP affects solid state circuits. Anything that uses silicon, basically. What we enjoy today in almost everything we use, the circuits are geneally low voltage, low current. The same kind of things that get damaged in thunderstorms, but EMP is worse because it induces the overvoltage in the whole of the device. The device is permanently fried afterwards, not recoverable or repairable at all. It doesn't recover after a time. Any recovery from EMP damage is done by replacing EVERYTHING electronic in un-protected devices.

It's easy for equipment to be "hardened" against EMP, and just about anything military is certainly done that way; as said before, simple metal shielding does the trick for the most part.

YSSMAN, Clarkson is amusing, but he's not God. Get over it.

Clarkson is God. God of bad hair and fashion sense... No, he's not a genius, but he's generally correct, and actually humble enough to retract a statement when proven wrong... sometimes.

RE: EMP. It's funny how pretty much misrepresented it is in movies and on TV. I actually chuckled to myself when all the power went back on after the first EMP in Superman. Didn't let it ruin the movie for me, but it was funny nonetheless.

The most realistic I've seen an E-Bomb depicted in media is in "The Dark Knight Returns"... blackouts, panic, fires, planes crashing into buildings... it's the perfect psychological/terror weapon. Despite the lower amount of physical damage, 10+ million panic-stricken, looting, mobbing, starving, bleeding, etcetera citizens in a major city is a bigger problem for the government than 1 million dead ones.

An interesting variation postulated by Thomas T. Thomas (Mask of Loki, with Roger Zelazny) is a small (shoulder launched) missile equipped with a warhead of deuterium, primed with lasers. X-Ray lasers emit a very short burst of high energy, causing nuclear Fusion in the deuterium warhead and a relatively small explosion, but an EMP effect over a couple of hundred yards.

-----

Yes, the EMP weapon seen in such flicks as 2Fast2Furious and that old Viper series isn't in practical use, yet, but people have been working on the idea for years.

Plus, it's a pretty dangerous thing for a high speed chase, to make a car die suddenly... at least spike strips force the driver to slow down.

 

[FoolKiller]

I actually chuckled to myself when all the power went back on after the first EMP in Superman. Didn't let it ruin the movie for me, but it was funny nonetheless.

I ignored that since they never actually explained it as an EMP but just assumed it was. I just figured it was something cool about Kryptonian technology.

Plus, it's a pretty dangerous thing for a high speed chase, to make a car die suddenly... at least spike strips force the driver to slow down.

I would hope that they would wait until they were on a straight stretch with no cars ahead of them. Imagine no power brakes and no power steering working at 90mph+.

 

[wfooshee]

I would hope that they would wait until they were on a straight stretch with no cars ahead of them. Imagine no power brakes and no power steering working at 90mph+.

Power brakes run on a vacuum reservoir, and will continue to work until the vacuum is equalized to atmospheric. Then the brakes still work, just at a higher effort.

Power steering works without the engine, just at a higher effort, again. But if the ignition is interrupted, the engine doesn't stop. It is coasting, in gear, and pulling vacuum and turning the steering pump, as long as it's not put into neutral. That includes an automatic: since the engine was turning and the tranny hydraulics were pressurized, the car's momentum will keep the engine turning over without ignition.

But his police scanner will be dead.

 

[FoolKiller]

Power brakes run on a vacuum reservoir, and will continue to work until the vacuum is equalized to atmospheric. Then the brakes still work, just at a higher effort.

Power steering works without the engine, just at a higher effort, again. But if the ignition is interrupted, the engine doesn't stop. It is coasting, in gear, and pulling vacuum and turning the steering pump, as long as it's not put into neutral. That includes an automatic: since the engine was turning and the tranny hydraulics were pressurized, the car's momentum will keep the engine turning over without ignition.

But his police scanner will be dead.

I guess I just imagined it being like when my alternator belt broke and I was trying everything I could to steer the thing out of traffic. That was at 35mph and I wouldn't want to know how it would be if I was going at a high speed weaving through traffic.

While it still moves I just imagine going from whipping in and out of traffic to having to use actual force without warning being enough to cause an accident.

I know some cars come equipped with radio controlled devices to kill the engine in the event of a theft and cops use those. That's probably cheaper than an EMP, when it's installed.

 

[RedFordKiller]

An EMP would be more deadly than most people think it would. Mainly because of hospitals. if theyre electronics dont work then the people that rely on those electronics will die. Secondly, if someone needs to call an ambulance then they wont be able to. Thirdly people that rely on insulin pumps, pacemakers and the like could die too. and someone mention people going crazy, that would have alot to do with it too.

 

[Holdenhsvgtsr]

If I'm not mistaken, many police forces have EMPs so they can disable cars in high speed pursuits.

someones been watching 2 fast 2 furious