EMP

Like on my other blog, I have been on a long hiatus from writing. Most of what kept me away from my blogs is finished now and I should be able to get back to a once a week entry.

EMP or electro-magnetic pulse is something that could happen if a nuclear bomb were exploded in the atmosphere. By exploding a two megaton bomb at an altitude of two hundred miles over Kansas, the EMP would cover the entire continental United States. What would happen is that most of the electrical plants would be knocked off line and also most of the telephones and TV and radio would be affected. The pulse from EMP goes into the power lines, phone lines, etc. and follows them to points of beginning or end. In other words, if a pulse got into an electric line to which you are hooked, it could go one way and take out the power plant and would also come into your home via the electric wires and take out whatever you had plugged in at the time. Think of the chaos this would cause over the entire country.

If another country wanted to start a war with us, a large nuclear device exploded above our country would be a good way to begin. A nuclear blast would put out a large amount of electronic energy which would get into all of our electronic equipment. There are differences of opinion on how some things would be affected. Some believe that most cars on the road would be affected and come to a stop. They also believe that it could affect airplanes and that they could fall from the sky. Trains and buses would also be affected under those circumstances. The military hardened most of its equipment back during the cold war. However, since the end of the cold war they have been pretty lax about keeping it up. That means it is hard to know how well our military could react to something like this. Homeland security, both state and federal agencies, have done very little to either get a handle on this project or to notify the public about what could happen and how to prepare for it.

While I do not know how to harden equipment to withstand EMP, I do know how to protect some of your equipment: it is called a Faraday Box. A Faraday Box need be little more than a cardboard box into which you put a radio of something else you wish to protect. You then cover the box with aluminum foil. The box must be completely covered with no seams showing and no open areas. The aluminum foil will stop the EMP pulse and the cardboard will insulate it from the metal. You could use an old ammo box as long as you put cardboard on the bottom and the item being protected was not touching the metal of the inside of the box.

My suggestion for all survivalists is to put a few items into these Faraday boxes and store them for the possibility they will be needed. A short wave radio, a CB radio, a regular AM and FM radio (or a combination type radio). You might also want to put in an older computer hard drive if you think that you would need one. I do not believe the phone lines will be up very soon so I do not have one. You will need a good supply of batteries to power all of your equipment as there may not be electricity for quite a length of time. If your cars are all newer and have all of the electronic computers and gadgets to keep them running, you will want to put a complete ignition setup into a Faraday Box so that if ye EMP takes out your car you can get it back on the road. However, if the EMP takes out the electricity, you may not be able to buy gasoline anyway. I have a 1967 small motorcycle that would use very little gas and would allow me to get around.

You are going to make up your own mind what you think you will need as the power comes back on. Those of you who may have the old vacuum tube radios are lucky, all you need to do is keep them unplugged when not in actual use.

There are more things that I could say about this but I will wait until my next post. Until then check out; http://www.therealamericanpolitics.blogspot.com