Setting the Record Straight on EMP and Geomagnetic (Solar) Storms
Everything You Thought You Knew Is Probably Wrong
I am writing tonight to provide everyone a short primer on the “EMP” threat since I’ve been hearing an incredible amount of bad information being spread. Hollywood and Doomsday books have done as much damage as politicians such as Newt Gingrich speaking out of a position of ignorance, which I’ll try to rectify. If you’ve been listening to the pundits, you probably think a solar flare and an EMP are the same thing and if one occurs, the entire world is returned to the stone age. This is fundamentally false. Although there are dangers, they are not as nearly bad as you have been led to believe and most can be mitigated. As for the stuff that can’t, it won’t matter anyway. So, if you want to know how to actually be prepared and what to actually expect, read on and let me explain.
For starters, it isn’t your fault you have gotten bad information. A lot of this information is dated and was disseminated long before we actually had done serious research into the subject. These urban legends unfortunately grew roots and have hung on in “Prepper Lore.” Honestly, I started out pretty ignorant of the facts myself. Further, it’s a highly complex subject that strains the minds of our best theoretical physicists, so you aren’t “dumb” if this doesn’t all make sense. That said, it’s fair to ask why you should listen to me then. Well, because I was involved in very high-level work on the subject that was eye-opening. The project team brought together many of the brightest minds in the world and was commissioned by Congress. With that scene setter, let me try to distill it down to some common language so you can understand the primary nuts and bolts of the subject. Here is my caveat: Those of you out there that are physicists and such, please understand that I am going to speak in generalities, and I am fully aware that with some of the details I am being overly broad or using imprecise but understandable terms in ways that may not be exactly scientifically accurate. The point is not to have everyone passing an advanced physics exam today, but to just get the necessary understanding so please hold your fire.
First, let me start with geomagnetic events (GMEs). There are multiple types of GMEs such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), but don’t stress. Understand that these represent natural phenomena such as the Carrington Event in 1859, which caused telegraph lines to electromagnetically charge and even catch fire. The implication was that if such an event were to occur today, it would bring down our grid and destroy all of our electronics. This is inaccurate. Geomagnetic storms bombard the Earth with electromagnetic radiation everyday and normally cause some disruption in navigation controls and radio communications. Further, for those living in the Northern Hemisphere, these normally are strongest closest to the North Pole…think Northern Lights. Now that said, depending on some very complex stuff related to Earth’s natural magnetic field, a strong solar storm could be canceled out or a weak one magnified. Either way, they do happen, have happened, and will happen. The good news is these DO NOT affect microelectronics. Without getting too complex, these events produce a long waveform that simply cannot propagate properly in microelectronics. These events require very long contiguous conductive lines to propagate so your most vulnerable portions of the grid are believed to be east-west long distance power lines of the northern Midwest and Canada. These lines could charge under the right circumstances, and this could cause components to burn out. However, the Department of Energy and industry have invested significant research and resources into hardening the grid against such an event. This includes working with NASA for early space weather forecasting. This can give us advance warning of an event and allow us to physically decouple the grid to mitigate widespread damage. In addition, in the event of a no warning event, the damage would be contained to the northern latitudes in areas sparsely populated. We have also stocked critical components to repair damage should it occur. The result is the possibility of damage, albeit unlikely. The worst case now is probably a couple weeks of isolated regions without power, but most of the nation would remain undamaged and none of your microelectronics would be affected if they aren’t plugged in. That said, even ones that are connected would most likely be fine since safeties such as fuses and breakers would kick before any actual damage occurred. That’s it. I hope you feel better. No Doomsday to fear.
Now that you understand the basics of a GME, let’s talk about Electromagnetic Pulse otherwise known as an EMP. EMPs are also badly misunderstood so let me say upfront that an EMP does not affect humans and has no flash, color, blast, or sound. It is simply electromagnetic energy passing through the air. Think of it like a very powerful radio or cell phone signal if it helps you conceptualize. For the sake of this article, EMPs only affect microelectronics. To generate an EMP over anything beyond a very focused and small area, you need a nuclear detonation. An effective EMP requires a massive amount of power, which makes “portable” EMPs that black out cities science fiction unless you are talking a suitcase nuke. For maximum EMP effect, a nuclear weapon would need to be detonated at a very high altitude amounting to near space over North America. This would indeed cause damage to electronics, but it’s very unlikely such an event would ever happen in isolation. The problem with the classic EMP scenario is that it would require a country to launch what amounts to an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) with a nuclear warhead. This would trigger an immediate full nuclear retaliatory strike. As such, it just doesn’t make much sense to launch a single missile when it is going to start a nuclear war. You’d either go all the way or not at all. So, if we did have a scenario where an EMP was released, we’d have bigger things to worry about like an entire country annihilated. Some may point out that a “surprise” attack could be launched by a weaponized satellite carrying a nuclear weapon and does not require a traceable missile launch. Well, this may indeed be a surprise, but not one that would be unattributable. The optimum altitude and location for an EMP generally doesn’t align with where satellites are orbiting, and we know which satellites belong to whom. Further, that club is very small and basically amounts to the US, Russia, and China so it wouldn’t be hard to figure out whose satellite was overhead when the flash went off. Remember, our military has hardened facilities and equipment based all over the globe that are specifically designed to survive an EMP so both our first- and second-strike strategic weapons would still be intact and available for use in a retaliatory strike. Knowing this, short of a full nuclear war scenario, there is no realistic scenario where an EMP gets used.
Now that you know a bit more about what actually creates and EMP, let’s discuss in more detail how it works and its actual effects. Unlike CMEs, EMPs work on short fast pulsed wavelengths. These do affect microelectronics but have little effect on electrical systems. Further, most modern electronics that were tested actually held up well to EMPs. Items such as cell towers often handled over three times the anticipated pulse strength of an EMP event before experiencing any failures. Even cell phones did pretty well, but they were finnicky. Something as simple as the difference between the phone lying flat or the phone lying on its side created differing effects. Additionally, many factors can attenuate or completely mitigate the effects such as shielding, which could be as accidental as simply being in a metal building. I mentioned it requires a nuclear detonation to create an EMP that will propagate with enough strength to have any noticeable effects. Generally speaking, the higher the nuclear weapon is when it detonates, the broader the area affected by the EMP. However, using 100 kilotons as an average yield of a single nuclear weapon, you can expect the EMP to only travel about 10 kilometers if it is a ground burst. To put that a different way, if you are close enough to the detonation to be affected by the EMP, you are also close enough to be affected by the actual nuclear blast. This means that even if you have an electronic device that still works, there probably won’t be a grid to connect it to, a road to drive it on, or another device to talk to because everything is fried or incinerated in that immediate blast zone. Some also note that “multiple” EMPs could be used over North America to achieve a compounding effect. This is also fiction. In reality, it just doesn’t work this way. Multiple detonations would actually cancel each other out if they were relatively close in their timing. Think of the waves on the beach. If the waves are harmonized, they can be amplified, but otherwise they cancel each other out. Multiple EMPs don’t harmonize but cancel each other out. I may be risking getting a bit too technical, but it is worth mentioning when an EMP occurs, it charges the atmosphere. This charge must first dissipate before another EMP could even pass through it. I also hear people use the terms like EMP “detonation.” I think people understand what is meant, but it’s not really a good word. An EMP is a high energy biproduct released from a nuclear detonation, but there is no actual EMP detonation.
Hopefully, that clears up a lot of misconceptions. Now, I’ll give you a couple scenarios to give you some better context and processes to use to know what you are dealing with. For example, the power grid goes down, but your wristwatch and other microelectronic devices are still working, and you don’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary. You check items that are plugged in, and they seem to work okay on backup or battery power. Was there an EMP? If you said no, you are correct. That “could” be the result of a GME, cyber-attack, storm, sabotage, or intentional disconnect, but the grid won’t go offline while leaving your microelectronics intact due to an EMP. My caveat here is that if you see anything, it would most likely be at night and look like the Northern Lights in areas much further south if we did get hit by a strong GME. On the other hand, if you notice all or most of your electronics either stopped working or began to act erratically, could that be an EMP? If you answered yes, then you are getting this. However, you should immediately seek a hardened shelter like a basement because somewhere a nuclear detonation just occurred and within seconds or minutes, all hell is going to break loose. As you can see, these aren’t gotcha questions. These are just basic processes of elimination you can do quickly to assess what just happened. If you experience any type of combined event where the grid goes down and your microelectronics also fail, this again is not a GME, but probably the result of a combined nuclear ground or near ground burst and resultant EMP. The blast would destroy the grid, but the EMP would radiate out and fry microelectronics. This again though should be almost immediately followed-up by a blast and mushroom cloud. Remember, for low altitude air bursts and ground bursts, the EMP will travel roughly the same distance as the blast wave so you should be aware of what just happened and take immediate action to find cover.
Last points…what can you do to protect yourself from these events? For a GME, there isn’t much you can or need to do. If you are worried about a specific space weather event, you could unplug sensitive items from direct connections to power. For example, maybe it would be good to disconnect your Tesla from the charger in your garage. The more important thing is to have backup power and the ability to comfortably live for a couple weeks of grid down assuming a worst-case scenario similar to an area after a hurricane hits and it takes a couple weeks to get things all back online. As for an EMP, you want either very old school electrical equipment and/or the newest electronic equipment that has better shielding built into it. You can also store critical electronic items in what amount to Faraday cages, ensuring they are not in direct contact with the surrounding mesh or metal. This effectively shields electronic items. Again, you want redundancy in your backups for power, heating/cooling, cooking, water, and communications. Further, if you are really preparing for an EMP event, you must prioritize preparing for a nuclear event because you won’t have one without the other. My recommendation is if we are getting very close to the outbreak of WW3, leave North America. Go rent an AirBnB in Santiago or something for a few months, but don’t hang around and wait for the strike because there will be no warning.
I hope this helps. Feel free to write in with comments or questions. As always, please like, share, and subscribe.
Till next time,
D.t.Y.