Yes, google is generally what I do first. I do find that asking a question here is a great way to get more information that generally is not leading to a conclusion. There are quite a few intelligent and skilled people in this forum.

google it there are plenty of sites that have it posted.

I'm an author. I write sci-fi novels. If every search I made caused the feds concern I'd have been visited 1000 times by now and not just have a folder in some government computer somewhere. *uck 'em.

There are three basic types of components in circuits: inductors, resistors, and capacitors. All can be damaged by simply exceeding their voltage or amperage limits - and that is very easy to do for very small components like those typically found in microcircuitry. You can burn out a resistor by pushing too much current through it and instigating thermal breakdown. You can burn out a capacitor by pushing too much voltage so that the charge jumps the gaps and fuses the component. You can overload certain types of inductors with too much voltage so that they burn through their insulative materials and create gaps through which random discharges can pass. Not to mention diodes and transistors which are generally only rated for certain voltage levels.

If an EMP goes off, any electronics in the near vicinity are going to burn out due to inducted current. Your only defenses are distance (Thoritsu posted a great equation) and shielding via a Faraday cage. Keep in mind, however, that for a cage to work, the device must be completely surrounded and the gaps in the cage can't be any larger than the longest wavelength you want to allow through the cage, ie if you use the hexagonal chicken wire, it will protect you from signals down to about 2.2 cm, while if you use screen door material you're down to about 1 mm.

Now a question was brought up about batteries. Batteries are a maybe. If they are completely disconnected from everything and the terminals are capped, you can prevent arcing and they should be okay - especially heavy-duty ones like car batteries. But if the battery is hooked up to something, you can force an overload via discharge - or reverse charge - due to excessive current if the battery isn't fused. Again, car batteries and the like are built to handle a large current (amperage), but not a high voltage (only 13-14 V tops), so if there is anything hooked up to them, you may be able to generate enough induced current to damage the storage cells.

seems like you've had plenty of details here, so I will add only relevant info. EMP, generated by a nuclear or thermonuclear explosion in the outer atmosphere, will produce megawatts of power, but given the distance from the target, will result in moderate electric fields. These fields will interact with the Earth's magnetic field, so the same nuke at the same altitude will have different results depending on the latitude. More importantly, the size of the wire (acting as an antenna) that is hit is the multiplier. Thus, power lines, although they can withstand significant voltages and current flows, due to their length collect a very strong current from the pulse. As to electronic devices, no one really knows which devices will be damaged and which will not - mostly dependent on where exactly they are located and oriented. If the voltage is induced but there is no path to ground, the device will not be damaged. It is pretty much the same crap shoot with cars. Probably, most will be fine after a restart. Diesels cars and especially trucks are very resistant to induced energy, even with electronics. It may stop the engine, but a restart will be fine. Unprotected computers are very likely to be damaged, especially if powered, but probably even if not powered. Any communications system without protection, is a gonner - radios, wi-fi, radars, etc. The damage, entering through the antenna port, is likely to wipe out not only the front end, but the entire system. Hope it helps, at this late hour.

Dear Allen with those questions being asked the feds should be at your front door in no time. OR you are the fed trying to get promoted by setting people up. That is what the FBI did to John DeLorean and the court =said it was entrapment. What are you REALLY up to?

Its does help, constructive dialog always does. The people of this site are a treasure trove of information on just about any subject, which is why I ask things from time to time.

I came across 3 of those links in my searches, good stuff.

This one seems to be a good science based discussion of EMP and the difference between Solar and Nuke:
http://www.futurescience.com/emp/emp-...

This one seems a bit short on theory but might be useful:
http://www.patriotheadquarters.com/2-...

Heres one that does a good analysis of a book scenario, and what is wrong, with it and options:

http://www.endtimesreport.com/EMP.html

How to build a Faraday Cage:

http://www.thesurvivalistblog.net/bui...

Wikipedia is always a good start:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear...

I think a lot of misconceptions exist regarding just what happens when you have an EMP pulse go through. The point of the Faraday Cage is to isolate what is in it by defelcting and reflecting the energy wave that expands outwards from the dsource. The danage is always a result of the amount of the wave energy that is converted by the recption area. In the case of the grid, all the wires all over the US act as giant antennas, absorb the energy, and that results in the wire itself conducting back to the various devices (switches and transformers) which do what they always do, the switches overload with the current level, and the transformers will act like an RC circuit. The transformer becomes a giant inductor and generates a large burst of current, causing more damage.

Hope this helps.

I wonder what the impedance of the aggressor signal is. In other words, if I had two wires and wanted to pick up max pwr from EMP, what resistor would be I put between them. I guess in the 300 ohm rang.

I don't understand the physics but inductive coupling seems to drop off faster than the square of the distance. If I have a wire more than one wavelength from the aggressor signal, I can calculate the power using the free-space path loss (FSPL) equation. When it gets < 1 wavelength, however, the coupling is worse than the (FSPL) equation predicts. My hand-waving understanding of this is b/c at these distances inductive coupling and capacitive coupling start to come into play, but these mechanisms drop off rapidly behind one wavelength. I know this from experience without understanding the underlying EM fields theory well. This makes me think EMP would drop off fast
Now that I think about it, though, maybe it's different b/c my aggressors are magnetic fields from wires. Maybe a huge fluctuating field from the sky would be different. I makes me want to take EM fields again, but this time with 18 years of practical but non-theoretical knowledge behind me.

thanks, I was thinking along these lines. Especially after considering what was said here.

EMP functions from an induction principle, whether something is battery powered or grid-tied matters not. Electronics work in the range of milliwatts, EMP would be discharging megawatts of power.

True, batteries would continue to work since they work off from a chemical reaction that generates current, but some may have electronic components that could be damaged.

In general, the only electronics that would survive an EMP blast would be those with shielding around them designed to inhibit induction.

Fortunately, there is nothing that we can do that would even come close to energy associated with another such a CME event.

Couldn't of answered better but I will note that that many non electronic electrical systems could be saved by shutting them down..
Solar panels are not charged and therefore should be disconnected from the system...including their ground...if I understand it correctly.
Faraday cages should be grounded but the things your protecting in the cage should not be.

Old cars...(non electronic) should survive with maybe a re-gap and cleanup of the distributor points.

well perhaps - it's not like I really studied it much

I have had a talk with my Brother-in-law about EPMs. I'm a HAM radio operator and have had some concerns about Little Kim in North Korea. My brother-in-law has his degree in electrical engineering. Also, he spent 23 years in the USAF running radar installations, including trouble shooting and repairing. He says the systems they used were in double shielded Faraday cages with a spark gap between the cages to dissipate the power. Also, all connections in and out had very robust band pass filters to shunt out the pulse. According to him, if you have anything that can act as an antenna (think wire, battery plates of all types, IC circuits, metal plates, etc.) it can be subject to an EMP depending on how close to the EMP source and shielding. Since all modern cars are run by computers, there is a good chance that they will have voltage overloads in the brain box, which will fry the circuits and immediately kill the car. Even old cars are subject to having their ballast capacitors shorted out due to voltage overload.
He also suggests that everything have an earth ground since many items will maintain a capacitive charge after the event unless the charge is shunted to ground.
In the USSR their military did not switch to ICs and stayed with vacuum tubes for a lot longer than the US partly due to the belief that vacuum tubes are more EMP resistant.

Yes, DB can explain the physics on this far better than I ever can.

The cause of the EMP is important too. A focussed microwave burst, like our military uses to disrupt things is far different than say a nuclear air burst.

Heres my full range of knowledge regarding EMP - 1 : It will be worse in the city than in the woods.<br>2: My old Harley will still run.<br>3: I keep several handheld walkies, a small 12V CB and an all band crank radio inside an old microwave in the pole barn.<br>4: Me and mine will be fine. ( degüello for any one that attempts to screw with my plan simply because they didnt make one.)

Fascinating! I hadn't heard of this event.

EMP is a very strong electromagnetic field.

Essentially all wires are antennas, which convert electric fields into voltage. Various geometries do this better/worse. Coaxial cables are self-sheilding, and very poor antennas. Long wires with large loop area from end to end, are very good.

An EMP makes such a strong field, small innocuous wires become voltage sources that damage the electronics they are connected to. Cell phones, computers, other low-voltage electronics are very susceptible. More rugged equipment, like transformers, generators and alternators are less susceptible because they have better insulation; however, they can generate very high voltages from the coils inside.

The field from an EMP (or any other point EM source) disperses with distance, roughly by the area of the sphere at that distance (E = k/r^2).

Solar cells have a large electrical connection area, and are low voltage. They would surely be destroyed.

It is less relevant that the equipment in question is grid connected or not. Batteries them selves may be destroyed depending on the construction. A cylindrically rolled battery is sort of self-shielding. A plate battery will develop some real voltage.

I'd have to think about a Tesla coil, and refresh the construction of them, but given the voltages they develop, they would probably be fine, particularly if they were no operating.

Mechanical diesel engines are the most resistant. Modern electronic infection and gasoline spark ignition engines are susceptible.

It is not that complicated to figure out the susceptibility. There are just a few rules governing what happens.

If you look online you can find information about high intensity electric field generators using a "Marks Device" (which is cool on its own, as are the spark gap triggers used). These simulate a lower intensity EMP, and are used for various purposes, including killing communications and stopping vehicles.

In addition, some military equipment is designed to provide EMP attenuation (e.g. a building or enclosure), and there are HEMP limits that define the success of these enclosures (Milw-Std-188-125): https://www.wbdg.org/ccb/FEDMIL/std18....
Also check out: http://empengineering.com/

It would fry any unprotected semi conductor based electronics. That includes your solar panels.
I read on some guberment site that the military has tested the problem of an emp, and have concluded most electronics will likely survive. The computers in cars are shielded to some extent. There would be failures, but not to the extent of Hollywood movies. The best thing you can do is makes sure your homes electrical system is properly grounded and has a whole house surge protector. Battery operated is no guarantee. In fact they could be more susceptible because they aren't grounded.

Obviously the answer depends on how close you are to the EMP event. The reason power girds are so susceptible is that have these long lines that act like huge antenna.

I think most cars would survive - again depending on the distance from the EMP event. In Pendulum of Justice Hank creates an EMP event to disable a car and there are such devices out there, but it takes a lot of focused EM energy. Present EMP disabling devices use high focused microwaves. Tech is certainly right that electronics are more vulnerable, but if they are not connected to the electrical grid then they do not have the problem of a huge electrical spike. However, they are much more vulnerable to gamma rays and other high frequency radiation. The answer is actually quite complicated.

There is a post on EMP and solar power in the Gulch. Unfortunately, Robbie was involved and it deteriorated into non-sense because he did not understand basic antenna design issues.

Tesla coil - yes it would act like a large antenna.

I've been told my 7.3 diesel (because it has an electronic control module) would be fried by an EMP. But ONLY if operating at the time.

I seems to me that if an EMP can fry NON operating circuits, there's enough destructive energy to fry ME!!

In short, does the circuity have to be ON when the EMP hits to be destroyed or......???

My understanding is that the more modern the electronics the more susceptible to EMP they are. Basically a new car would be worthless but say something like a 1960's car would likely hiccup and keep on keeping on. Something running on transistors might or might not be ok, integrated circuits fried, things electrical without electronics basically ok.

It does help. I try to, for the most part, be accurate when I write. What you've provided helps. Thank you.