How damaging would an EMP attack be?

Question

How damaging would an EMP attack be?

Answer 1

Id say somewhere between the stone and iron age.

Answer 2

To disrupt Civvy life? Pretty damaging but the government has put in measure's to protect there computer's and system's from EMP attacks. Do you really think they would make it that easy?

Answer 3

well first you would have to prove that a man-made EMP, capable of performing what nature can do, would be possible...

I don't know that it is....it would take alot of energy to create an EMP strong enough to knock out power to a city, jam everyones cell phones, prevent cars from starting, etc.

An effective EMP would be used to shut down every electronic device for a period of time in a large area... if that area was something like New York...Wall Street, Chicago, or Washington DC.... then it could be very damaging.  Planes wouldn't be able to take off or land, subways would halt, you would have gridlock everywhere, all communications down... hospitals would be shut down.... the entire city would be in the dark ages.

The psychological damage would be the worst.... mass hysteria.

Answer 4

Devastating

All Are I-Pods wouldn't work!

Answer 5

An EMP attack can be generated one of three ways:

1) High-atmospheric nuclear detonation. This doesn't cause any radiation on the ground, but the EMP generated can be targeted to within 10 square miles, and up to one thousand (the size of most small cities). The resulting power surge then damages surrounding power-generation machinery.

2) An "EMP generator" has been known to exist, and has been demonstrated on vehicles. Such a device would necessarily have to target electrical machinery and be placed by hand. However, the effect is very limited and only requires minor repairs on a power generator, and so is not practical for large-scale use.

3) A micro-nuclear device can generate an EMP which is localized to 50 yards, such as a microwave. Shielded devices (those contained in a Faraday cage) will be unaffected by these.

Other than the machinery directly effected, an EMP attack would simply not be very effective in the long term. However, the disruption itself could further the aims of terrorism in disrupting lives and making people fearful of further actions.

EMP's do have a devastating effect on operating electronics. However, in order to effectively attack a developed country (let's say the UK, the USA is just too large), several atmospheric nukes would need to be detonated at once, risking the possibility of fallout reaching the ground instead of burning up in relatively harmlessly the atmosphere. If the aim is lethal, it would be easier to simply make a nuclear attack; it the aim was nonlethal and merely disruptive, risking the lives of the people would be likewise counterproductive.

In other words, an EMP attack would be highly impractical and probably fairly difficult to pull off to start with, and might disrupt lives for a whole 15 minutes.

Answer 6

Very.

Back in the 1950s when the USA was pushing for a ban to above ground testing, the USSR was doing some very high altitude testing.   Once they were done,  they were very eager to sign a treaty.   It now appears what they were doing was evaluating high altitude nuclear weapons in regards to their EMP effects on electronics.  Remember,  the transistor had just been introduced and the first transistor radios had been marketed.  

One indication of this was when the Russian Mig25 landed in Japan in 1976 and we got a look at it,  we were surprised how primitive its electronic systems were.  They actually used old vacuum tubes.   It was not till later that we realized vacuum tubes are not susceptible to damage from an EMP.  In other words,  a large EMP would knock our planes right out of the air and the Russian planes would keep on flying.

Today we have the same situation with our cars and trucks.  Engines run by solid state electronic systems.   EMP will fry them and nothing will move.   There are articles being written today about how to generate an EMP without a nuclear device.  There is even research under way for a police EMP generator that will stop a fleeing car cold.  Zap its computer and it stops.

Bottom line,  if a nuclear attack is done in a major way,  some of the first bombs will go off at high altitude for the EMP effect.  After that,  we will pretty much come to a standstill.   (Except newer military equipment is probably made to withstand it.  But that is something they do not generally talk about when they talk about the new stuff.)  

Answer 7

An effective attack would be catastrophic.