An EMP comes from two main sources, a solar event (CME) or a high-altitude nuclear detonation (HEMP). Both can knock out power and electronics, but they’re not equally likely and have some major differences. This article breaks down what each one is, real historical examples, and the honest odds of each happening, plus what to do to protect your electronics and build some resilience either way.
There’s a lot of misinformation on the internet when it comes to an electromagnetic pulse. Yes, the prospect is unsettling — terrifying, even. But when you have reliable information about what an EMP is and how likely one is, you can make commonsense decisions about how to prepare without losing sleep over scenarios that belong in fiction.
I’ve been writing about EMPs since 2012, when this article was first published. The comment section below has hosted a running debate between readers with real utility-industry experience for over a decade, and I’ve folded the best of their knowledge into this update. What’s changed since then isn’t the physics. It’s the threat picture. So let’s start with the basics and work up to what deserves your attention in 2026.
This article has been completely rewritten with the most recent data and information. July, 2026.
Some of the links in this post may contain affiliate links for your convenience. As an Amazon Associate, I may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases without any increase in price to you.
Table of contents
- What Is An EMP?
- How Does An EMP Work? Understanding E1, E2, and E3
- The Three Related Threats To Know About
- Coronal Mass Ejections: The Solar Threat
- What Should You Do In The First Moments After An EMP?
- Grid Attacks: The Threat That’s Already Here
- If The Grid Is Damaged, How Long Until It’s Fixed?
- How To Protect Your Electronics From An EMP
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Related EMP Content
- The Final Word: What Should I Do?
What Is An EMP?
An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a sudden burst of electromagnetic energy. It’s instantaneous, invisible, and the damage can be irreversible. When that burst washes over electrical equipment, it shoves current through the wires. That’s the same principle that makes a generator work — moving electromagnetic energy creates current in a conductor. The difference is a generator does it on purpose, in controlled amounts. An EMP does it all at once, uninvited, and way beyond what those circuits were built to handle. The result is fried electronics.
The longer the wire, the bigger the antenna. That’s why power lines, which stretch for miles, are the most vulnerable part of our infrastructure and why a small device sitting unplugged in a drawer is far less at risk than the transformer down the street.
How Does An EMP Work? Understanding E1, E2, and E3
EMPs can be naturally occurring or the result of a man-made device. A nuclear EMP produces three distinct pulses, and each one damages different things.
E1 is the fast one. It arrives in nanoseconds and induces voltage in even the tiny wires etched onto microchips. E1 is what fries phones, computers, and vehicle electronics, and it’s the pulse a Faraday cage is designed to stop. Only a nuclear detonation produces a significant E1.
E2 behaves like a lightning strike. It arrives a fraction of a second after E1. Here’s some rare good news: our infrastructure already deals with lightning every day, so standard surge protection handles most E2 effects.
E3 is the slow, heavy pulse. It builds over seconds to minutes and couples into very long conductors, like power lines, pipelines, railroad tracks. E3 is what threatens the grid’s large transformers. A severe solar storm produces effects almost identical to E3, which is why solar events and nuclear EMPs get discussed together. Here is a high-level summary in chart form:
One of my longtime readers, an engineer who has commented on this article since 2012, pointed out the practical takeaway years ago, and it still holds: protection is cumulative. If you protect equipment against E1 (a proper Faraday cage), you’re covered against E2 and E3 as well. If your home has quality surge protection and grounding, you’ve addressed most of what a solar storm can do to equipment inside your house. The grid is a different story, and we’ll get there.
Lightning, by the way, is a third natural source of EMP — a very localized E2. If you’ve ever lost a modem to a nearby strike, you’ve experienced a tiny EMP event firsthand.
The Three Related Threats To Know About
When this article was first written, there were two scenarios to cover: solar storms and nuclear EMP. In 2026, there’s a third to keep in mind — physical and cyber attacks on the power grid, and it’s the only one of the three that’s happening right now, repeatedly, on the record. We’ll take them in order.
Coronal Mass Ejections: The Solar Threat
A coronal mass ejection (CME) is an enormous eruption of magnetized plasma from the sun. Solar flares and CMEs often travel together, and the light from a flare reaches Earth in about eight minutes. The plasma cloud itself is much slower. It can take anywhere from fifteen hours to several days, depending on how fast the eruption was moving. That travel time matters, and I’ll explain why in a moment.
What happens when a CME hits Earth
When that charged plasma slams into Earth’s magnetic field, it sets the field ringing. Those fluctuations induce current in long conductors on the ground — the power lines, pipelines, and telegraph wires back in the day. Small storms give us the northern lights and not much else. A monster storm could push enough current through the grid to damage the large transformers that move power across the country.
CMEs hit Earth all the time, and most pass without notice. The question has never been whether the sun can do this. It’s whether a Carrington-class storm arrives while we’re this dependent on the grid.
CMEs From History
1859 – the Carrington Event. The benchmark solar superstorm. Auroras visible as far south as Cuba, compasses spinning, telegraph systems failing worldwide, and some operators reported sparks from their equipment.
1967 – the storm that almost started a war. The US Air Force believed the Soviets had jammed its early-warning radars, which would have been an act of war. The culprit was a solar flare powerful enough to see with the naked eye. Military space-weather forecasters caught it in time.
1989 – Quebec goes dark. A geomagnetic storm collapsed Quebec’s grid in about 90 seconds, halted trading in Toronto, and damaged a satellite.
2012 – the near miss. A Carrington-class CME crossed Earth’s orbital path and missed us by about a week’s worth of orbit. Most people never heard about it.
2022 – SpaceX loses a satellite batch. A moderate geomagnetic storm doomed most of a batch of newly launched Starlink satellites, not by frying circuits, but by puffing up the atmosphere and increasing drag until they fell.
2024 – auroras over Texas and Florida. In May 2024, the strongest geomagnetic storm in more than two decades hit Earth. It was a G5, the top of NOAA’s scale. Millions of Americans who had never seen the northern lights watched them from their backyards, including in southern states like Texas and Florida. You may remember the photos flooding social media that weekend.
How Likely Is a Damaging CME?
CMEs happen constantly. Google “how often do CMEs hit the earth,” and you’ll get quite a long list. Fortunately, in spite of the frequency, most strikes are harmless. A grid-threatening, Carrington-scale storm is a rare event, possibly once a century or longer, but it has happened before and it will happen again. The 2012 near miss is the reminder that “rare” doesn’t mean “fictional” or “never again.”
The Good News About CMEs
We can see them coming. Because the plasma takes hours to days to arrive, NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center tracks eruptions and issues geomagnetic storm watches with real lead time. When a big Earth-directed CME launches, SWPC issues a geomagnetic storm watch a day or two before arrival. That’s your warning window. They also have a free email/text alert subscription, so you don’t have to check the site; the alerts come to you. That’s the setup I’d recommend for most people. Spaceweather is another site to help you know ahead of time what to expect.
Grid operators use those warnings to protect equipment. The May 2024 storm was the real-world test. Operators got advance notice, they managed the surge, and the grid held. The most widespread disruption reported was to GPS-guided farm equipment. It was a headache for farmers mid-planting, but a long way from catastrophe.
A CME also does nothing to small, disconnected electronics. Your phone, your flashlights, your radio — all safe. A solar storm is a grid problem, not a gadget problem.
High-Altitude EMP: The Nuclear Scenario
A HEMP is a nuclear weapon detonated at high altitude, dozens to hundreds of miles up, meant to specifically blanket a huge area with all three pulses, E1 included. This is the One Second After scenario, and it’s the version that dominates EMP fiction.
What We Know From History
A lot of what we know, or think we know about the effects of HEMP come from a handful of Cold War tests. In 1962, the US detonated a 1.4-megaton device 250 miles above the Pacific in a test called Starfish Prime. It damaged satellites and knocked out streetlights in Hawaii, more than 800 miles away.
That same year, the Soviets tested a much smaller bomb over Kazakhstan and got worse ground damage because it was over land, not open ocean, and the local magnetic field caused more extreme effects. Government scientists have since concluded that one large device detonated a few hundred miles above the middle of the country would expose nearly all of the continental US to the pulse.
Now, that part is straightforward physics — line of sight from that altitude reaches both coasts. What the pulse would break (jet engines, computers, generators, pacemakers, and so on) across that huge area is far less certain because there hasn’t been a high-altitude nuclear test since 1962, and everything we think we know about the damage comes from sixty-year-old data and computer models.
That’s the honest extent of our knowledge. Nearly everything else you read is based on models, extrapolation, or, honestly, fiction. Be wary of anyone who tells you precisely what a HEMP would do, including the confident claims about mass casualties that get passed around prepping websites. Nobody knows, and the people who study this professionally are the first to say so.
How Likely Is A HEMP Attack?
This is where I part ways with a lot of what you’ll read elsewhere. A HEMP attack is an unambiguous military, nuclear attack. It immediately opens the door to massive retaliation at the nuclear level and would be detectable. Beyond that, an adversary who tries to launch a coast-to-coast EMP attack destroys the infrastructure’s value for everyone, including themselves, with nuclear power plants potentially leaking dangerous radiation, municipal water treatment plants inoperable, and not much left worth conquering.
A handful of nations have the capability, but whether any of them has a rational reason to use it is a different question, and I’ve come to believe the answer is — not the scenario in the novels.
What worries me much more are the smaller, more frequent attacks, which brings us to the threat that isn’t hypothetical.
What Should You Do In The First Moments After An EMP?
Grid Attacks: The Threat That’s Already Here
When I was researching and tracking down the most recent grid attacks, I was shocked to find out how many there have been. Forget Hollywood! The power grid is being attacked with rifles, drones, arson, and malware right now, today. Consider just the recent record:
Moore County, North Carolina, December 2022. Someone shot up two substations and knocked out power to more than 40,000 people for five days. In winter. An 87-year-old woman died when her oxygen machine lost power, and her death was ruled a homicide. That case is unsolved.
San Jose, California. An engineer used homemade explosives to bomb PG&E transformers in two separate attacks, which cut power to more than 1,500 households. He was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison in December 2025, and the trial’s prosecutors emphasized the attacks were premeditated and extensively researched. His motivation is unknown.
Nashville, Tennessee. In late 2024, the FBI arrested a man just moments before he launched a drone carrying what he believed were explosives at a substation. He has since pleaded guilty. Only very recently have utilities started to build any defenses against drones.
And those are just the famous ones. NERC, the organization that oversees grid reliability, logged more than 3,500 physical security incidents against grid infrastructure in 2025, up from about 2,800 in 2023.
This isn’t only an American problem. An arson attack on a Berlin cable bridge in January 2026 cut power to roughly 45,000 households for more than four days. That was the longest outage that city has seen since World War II in 1945.
Weeks earlier, hackers linked to Russian intelligence attacked more than 30 wind and solar farms and a heat-and-power plant in Poland with malware designed and built to destroy control systems. Polish defenders caught it before the lights went out. The plant they targeted supplies heat to nearly half a million people, and that happened in the middle of winter.
American utilities now run a major exercise called GridEx specifically to practice defending against physical and cyber attacks.
None of these events involved an EM, but every one of them produced, or aimed to produce, the same result an EMP would produce for the people affected. The power goes out without warning, for days.
That’s the realistic version of this threat in 2026. Not a secret weapon in the sky, but a person with a rifle, a drone, or a keyboard. I believe it’s the version your preparedness plan should be built around, because it’s the one with a long and recent track record — and far easier to plan and carry out than an HEMP.
If The Grid Is Damaged, How Long Until It’s Fixed?
This is where internet opinion swings to extremes. It’s either “the grid can be fixed in a matter of weeks” or “we’re in the stone age for a decade.” The truth is most likely somewhere in the middle, and you can read that debate here in this article’s own comment section, between a reader who consulted for a federal power administration and a reader with grid engineering experience.
Most electrical equipment is protected by breakers and fuses designed to fail first, the same way they do in an ordinary storm. Smaller transformers, the kind on utility poles, are stocked and swapped routinely. A localized attack like Moore County gets repaired in a few days.
The bottleneck for a quicker recovery is the large substation and grid-backbone transformers. Few are manufactured each year, most of that capacity is overseas, and current lead times run roughly two to four years, with some specialized units taking even longer. If a coordinated attack or a severe solar storm damaged many of them at once, the repair timeline would be measured in years, not weeks. That’s the real vulnerability. Not that the grid is fragile everywhere, but that a small number of hard-to-replace components are at its very center.
For your family, the planning takeaway is the same either way: a long-term power outage plan is the single most useful preparation for every scenario in this article. It’s also useful for ice storms, hurricanes, and every other way the power goes out, which is why it’s where I tell everyone to start.
How To Protect Your Electronics From An EMP
The tool you’ll use to protect your smaller from E1 is a Faraday cage: a fully enclosed, electrically conductive container. Remember, you don’t need to protect them from E2 or E3.
The design of a Faraday cage, or container, causes the electronic pulse to flow around the conductive exterior instead of reaching what’s inside. To be effective, the cage needs to have three things in place:
- The conductive layer must be continuous. Gaps and seams are the enemy. A metal container with a tight-fitting lid works. A cardboard box covered with layers of aluminum foil taped securely in place works. A metal locker with ventilation slots does not.
- The contents can’t touch the metal. Line the container with cardboard or set items inside boxes before placing them into the Faraday container.
- Grounding is not required. This surprises people, but an ungrounded cage protects its contents as well as a grounded one. Dr. Arthur Bradley covers the engineering in detail here.
You don’t need to buy anything exotic to have a Faraday container. One reader described her setup, and it remains the classic budget approach — a galvanized steel trash can lined with cardboard, holding a battery radio, walkie-talkies, LED flashlights, chargers, and a small solar panel.
She pointed out something I’ve repeated ever since. That type of container doubles as excellent waterproof storage for hurricane season, so it’s handy even if an EMP never comes. Metal ammo cans work for smaller kits.
What goes in the cage? Communication and information gear first to ensure you have access to both. Add things like a battery or crank radio, inexpensive walkie-talkies, a spare charger and battery bank. My full guide to protecting your gear, with step-by-step Faraday cage instructions and photos, is here, and this list covers the EMP preparedness items most people overlook.
Frequently Asked Questions
It depends which kind you mean. A nuclear HEMP attack is the least likely version. It’s a direct act of nuclear war that invites an all-out nuclear retaliation, and it’s unlikely, although not completely impossible, that an adversary has a rational reason to launch one. A severe solar storm is a certainty at some point, but Carrington-scale events are rare and we get advance warning. The most likely version isn’t technically an EMP — physical and cyber attacks on grid infrastructure, which are already happening thousands of times a year. That’s the type of outage you want to be ready for.
I want to be straightforward here instead of confident — nobody has good data on this. Most devices with electronic components are potentially vulnerable to strong E1 effects, and that would include implanted devices. But there’s no solid research that can give us the real-world risk. Manufacturers don’t publish EMP-hardening specs. If someone in your family depends on a device like this, the most useful step isn’t worrying about a Faraday cage for something inside a human body. It’s talking with their cardiologist about contingencies and building a plan for extended power outages, since that’s the situation an EMP would create.
Equipment that’s unplugged and stored is at much lower risk than equipment in use. Some families keep an older, simpler backup unit in Faraday storage for this reason. Also check whether your model has a DC power option. Many can run on battery or solar, which matters in any extended outage, EMP or not. Again, focus on strategies for a long-term power outage before losing sleep of an EMP.
Geomagnetic storms play out over hours to a few days, and NOAA tracks them in real time. Keep protected gear stored until the Space Weather Prediction Center shows the geomagnetic storm watch has ended. Remember, though, a solar storm threatens the grid, not small disconnected devices. The main reason to keep gear stored during a storm is simple caution, since strong storms can arrive in waves.
Very likely, yes. A transformer sitting disconnected in a warehouse has no miles of wire attached to it, so it’s in roughly the same situation as your unplugged gear in a closet. The problem isn’t that spares would be destroyed. It’s that so few spares exist.
Probably, is the best possible answer. The only public testing we have exposed a few dozen vehicles to simulated E1 pulses. Some stalled or had electronics glitch, but nearly all restarted. Modern cars have far more electronics than the test vehicles did, so the honest answer is that nobody knows for certain.
An EMP is the pulse itself; a nuclear HEMP produces all three components (E1, E2, E3) and can destroy small electronics. A CME is a solar event whose effects resemble only the slow E3 pulse. It’s dangerous to the power grid, but not to your phone, your car, or anything unplugged.
Related EMP Content
- What to Do After an EMP: 15 Immediate Steps to Protect Your Family
- Protect Your Gear from an EMP
- How to Prepare for a Long-Term Power Outage
- One Second After: 15 Survival Lessons From the EMP Novel
The Final Word: What Should I Do?
Start where you are and be confident that you can put many preps in plade that are practical and commonsense. The best way to prepare for an EMP is to prepare for a long power outage, because that’s what an EMP would mean for your family, regardless of what caused it.
Build self-sufficiency into your everyday life in basic ways: a backup power plan, food set aside in an emergency pantry, a way to purify water. Simple steps like these build on each other without overreacting out of panic. Whether it’s a grid attack three counties over, a hurricane, or an ice storm, the preparations are the same, and they pay off no matter which one shows up.
A few places to start:
- Decide now how you’d get home if you were away when the power went out
- Build in some backup solar power so you’re not fully dependent on the grid
- Review this list of overlooked EMP prepping items, the ones that don’t show up on the usual checklists
An EMP, whether from a solar storm, a weapon, or an attack on a substation you’ve never heard of, is a risk worth knowing about and understanding, but the goal isn’t to prepare for the end of the world. It’s to build a few layers of resilience so that if the power goes out, for any reason, you’re not starting from zero.
Originally published June 15, 2012 and substantially updated.
There are three sources of EMP – the one missing is lightening. These three sources produce three distinct types of EMP with some very different effects. E1 is a non-second scale burst of electrons from HEMP. E2 is a 500 ms to one second burst of electrons naturally produced by lightening. E3 is the hours to days scale bombardment of electrons from a CME or Geomagnetic Storm (which can be triggered by non-CME events …).
So why is understanding all three types critical? The effect and protective measures are to a degree cumulative. So if you prepare for an E1 type EMP (HEMP) then E2 and E3 are also covered. Ditto E2 and E3.
HEMP (nuclear blast 60 miles or higher) produces E1 and E2 effects.
Lightening only produces E2 effects.
CME/GMS produces some E2 but mostly E3 effects.
In regards to this article, if you have equipment that has been protected against lightening strikes then you are also protected against CMEs and GMSs. During a CME the effect will primarily hit long lines — power, telephone (older copper infrastructure), large generator windings, etc. Line lengths need to be in the 10’s of miles to pick up a charge. This is similar to a ground voltage being produced during very cold, dry conditions. Where the impact occurs is in large three phase devices. Each phase is 120 degrees off of the other two. When you have very small (it turns out) additional current on one of the three phases you then throw that leg off and crash the entire device. Hence transformers, generators, etc. all get fried.
Briefly, if you have a good grounding or surge protection system set up at home, you don’t have to worry about E3 EMP effects. Backup generators, solar panels, etc. should all continue to work. Treat it as if it were a regional power outage due to an ice storm for example, and you should be OK. The power distribution backbone will be trashed, but local systems should be OK.
OK back from dinner and the kids …
E2 is what you get with lightening and outside the primary effect radius of a HEMP. Lightening protection we should all understand, especially those of us who own/use antennas.
Lets move to HEMP now (E1 plus wider ranged E2). This is the only scenario under which you will need a Faraday cage. This is because E1 effects occur in nanoseconds or at best milliseconds after the blast. The good news is that the range of the E1 effects are limited.
For large countries with advanced weapons/space programs (China, Russia, France, Britain, Israel, US, etc.) the optimal burst height is 100 km (edge of space) using a 20 megaton device (according to what I’ve read). This gives us an effective E1 radius of 700 or so miles. For example, a HEMP over Chicago would impact everything from roughly Ft. Pierre SD to North Platte Nebraska on the west, down to Hutchinson KS in the SW, the Arkansas – Louisiana border in the south, Jackson MS in the SE, DC and NY in the E, and just shy of Boston in the NE. With a HEMP, the E1 will fry most IC (integrated circuits) as well as larger equipment up to and including the large transformers and electrical engines used as overhead cranes in factories. Within the E1 zone, its the stone age. E2 effects will be felt anywhere within line of sight of the blast (apx. 1120 miles) but remember E2 is basically like a lightening strike. Normal surge protectors will guard against it most of the time.
So what, we lose the liberal upper midwest you say. Well we also lose a good part of the electrical grid at the same time. There are three grids in the US – Eastern, Western, and Texas. The interconnects between them are DC (not AC) and control signals do not pass back and forth. What is key is a HEMP over the Eastern grid will basically destroy the Eastern grid. But it won’t destroy the Western or Texas grids. And the DC interconnects are far enough West and South that a HEMP over Chicago won’t take them out.
Now for the “terrorist” attack (or Iranian HEMP which is more likely). Using a SCUD missile the max altitude that a SCUD can lift a payload is 40 kms or so – much lower than an more advanced missile can do. This reduces the radius of the E1 to 480 miles or so (using a 20 kt warhead which is about the max the SCUD can lift. Draw a circle around Chicago (I really don’t like Chicago do I?) that touches Omaha in the West, Nashville in the South, and Pittsburgh in the East. Sorry, Toronto has to go as well. This is the area where electronics will be destroyed (and the same Eastern grid will go as well, but not as much of it will be totally destroyed, merely offline for months).
Why did I mention the likelihood of an Iranian attack? Because the supply ship Kharg and destroyer Shaid Qandi are either in Venezuela or Cuba depending on the week. And the Kharq is the same freighter that the Iranians used in the late 1990’s to test fire freighter launched SCUD missiles up in the Black Sea (buying the launchers and missiles from Russia at the time). What would a likely Iranian response be to an Israeli or US strike on their nuclear facilities? I.e. I don’t place the likelihood of HEMP as low as the author of the article does.
My husband and I have been Hurricane Prepping for a while.. Concerned over SHTF we have extended our food, clothing, medical supplies etc.at this point to six months or so.. to include our daughter and our 12 month granddaughter.
I read an article on the Internet… ( Getting Prepared for an Electromagnetic Pulse Attack or Severe Storm) by Jerry Emanuelson and decided to use some of his ideas to store small electronics such as DC fans, DC TV, CB radios, small solar panel with controller, batteries, and chargers. If we don’t have an EMP it makes a great protective storage container in case of hurricanes.
The Farraday Cage we are using to store the small electronics is a 20 gallon Galvanized Garbage Can lined with cardboard. There is a video on the Internet that shows how to make and test it using an FM radio.
We also bought large ammo cans, a suggestion from a survival blog, lined them with cardboard to store a small CCrane radio that has AM, FM, Weather, and Ham bands, a CCrane Base Walkie Talkie with radio bands, and two small Walkie Talkies with batteries. In a second ammo can we have our emergency lights-LED “head” lights and LED flashlights with batteries and DC charger. Again, great storage for hurricane or EMP.. and easily carried if you have to GOOD..
I am still concerned about EMP damage to our backup generator and have considered some type of Farraday cage for it . Working on an idea of aluminum screen. Maybe someone else might have a few suggestions there.
Pam
Assuming the electric grid was damaged it can be repaired. It is unlikely that an EMP would destroy a transformer because the amount of short term energy necessary to do that would burn out one of the many weak links and fuses before the transformer overloaded. But if a transformer is destroyed repairing it is actually easy and even local utility companies could do this. Even in a worst case scenario electricity could be restored to critical systems in a matter of days to weeks and then to everyone within urban areas within weeks to months. But it is probable that even the most powerful EMP will not impact most of the grid or most of the electronics. It is a very hit or miss device easily blocked by geographic features and terrain. And the power of an electronic pulse decreases rapidly over distance (inverse square law) and it is likely that even 50 -300 miles from an EMP device it may not be powerful enough to destroy anything. This is an over rated threat. In fact an enemy would be incredibly stupid to attack the U.S. with an EMP device. It would only piss us off. It is an act of war. and it is a nuclear attack which would provoke a nuclear response.
Just wondering, Gone, what is the source of your information ?.. Education background, Work Experience..
I guess as the author stated.. I go with the Worse Case Scenerio option but you seem to say.. no big deal..” its over rated.”
Thank you… Pam
I was a consultant for the largest federal electric power adminiatration in the U.S. I also worked for a smaller electric utility. I understand how the grid is designed and installed. I also know the skills and dedication of the lineman and associated workers. There are four major classes of power transformer:
1. The small transformers you see hanging on utility poles outside your home. These are easily portable to bring back to the local shop to be repaired. This is not generally done today because it is easier and cheaper to send them back to the manufacturer and replace with a new or rebuilt. 2. The much larger transformers you see at substations behind chain link fences. These transformers can also be rebuilt by local utility workers but again they are not because it is again easier and cheaper to R&R them. 3. The very large high voltage transfomers that feed the high voltage power lines. These are typically found at the power generation source; dams, power stations, etc. They are very robust and the least likely to be damaged by an EMT or any cause. They too “could” be rebuilt or repaired in situ. Understand that all of these class of transformers use such heavy copper wire or strap for their windings that it is not fine detail work and breaks in the windings could be repaired using existing older technologies every utility has avaible to them. 4. The ultra high voltage transformers used in a very few power generation plants in the U.S. These are very large and more complex then the other three classes of transfomers. Arguably a team of skilled workers could indeed repair or rebuild one of these in situ but it would be a bigger task then the smaller transfomers. There aren’t a lot of these in the U.S., perhaps less the 50. They are expensive and difficult to transport. I don’t think these transformers are the future of electricity distribution and we may not install many more in the future.
Every electric distributiion network has multiple fuses and weak links distributed throughout the system. In the event of an EMP that was strong enough to burn out a large heavy duty transformer it would first sever the line at one of these points. keep in mind that these transformers are designed to be heavily loaded for long periods of time. Where delicate or even military level of electronics is designed to handle a few hundred watts typically or a few thousand at most. The transfomers in the electric distribution system are designed to handle HUGE loads into the Megawatts or easily millions of times more power then circuitry we are familiar with around the home, office or military. They very rarely ever “burn out” and then ONLY as a result of a very long overload and certainly not from a short transitory pulse such as an EMP.
It would be a big deal to someone on life support or seriously ill in a hospital. It could also be life threatening for some people in bad weather etc. It would certainly be an inconvenience for everyone until power was restored. And it would take a long time to get back to 100%. The “big deal” would be the military threat. There is no practical way to create a large EMP except with a nuclear device and thus it would be a nuclear attack against the U.S. This would not be treated lightly and would probably result in a nuclear response of some kind.
Thank you for your reply.
Its always good to be able to glean more information on a topic that is being discussed by many at this time.
Pam
From what limited research I’ve done, it seems to me that there is quite a bit of disagreement on the amount of damage an EMP will cause. Some say it will fry any circuits, others say it will fry anything with a chip, while others say the devastation will be far less than total for electronics. Still, I go with worst case scenario. I’ve been wrapping my surplus electronics with aluminum foil and taping the edges with metal tape.
You’re right, Rob. An EMP on the scale that many of us imagine has never happened and it’s impossible to extrapolate a whole lot from the limited number that have occurred. I wrote about EMP in my book and offered suggestions to prepare, but there’s no doubt that Americans would suffer far beyond what most of us could imagine.
Every nuclear device can be traced back to it’s country of origin by it’s radioactive and chemical signature. The methodology is accurate enough to even determine, in many cases, a time period in which the device was built. If an EMP (or any nuclear device) were detonated in the U.S. within a week we would know where it was built, about when it was built and if it was transferred to someone who did it and who received it. Most likely any device available to terrorists would have originated from Russia, North Korea or Pakistan. Your point is valid, If Russia was the original source and not the country that depployed it what could we do to Russia. However if Iran backed the terrorist group that did actually deploy the device I’m guessing we would nuke Iran. Is this good or bad, right or wrong? Doesn’t matter, 300 million people would demand it and no politician would oppose it. If someone sets off a nuke here then they will get ten more back.
Gone with the Wind — HEMP from a nuclear source is subject to the inverse square law however CME/GMS operate more off of an electron cascade than direct impingement. E2 is a combination of the two … optimal HEMP is 20 megatons at 100 kms altitude, SCUD type HEMP is 10 – 20 kt at 40 kms of altitude. Big difference. Yet the interconnectedness of the grid and the SCADA controls make it such that any major disruption in the Eastern grid will take out the Eastern grid (either trip or damage) ditto the Texas and Western. Each type of EMP (different sources) has different pluses and minuses. Worst case though is something that nails three phase power from long distance — then the major transformers and the major electrical (industrial) components are toast due to the imbalances in the loads on the three phases. When we tested some transformers we found that as little as a 2% imbalance would not just trip the transformer, but destroy it. And you can get that imbalance over the entire grid. Best case is that you lose the backbone, but not the single phase feeders except in an area directly under the HEMP (400-700 mile radius of the blast with the normal distortions for electron flow along the geomagnetic lines).
A CME is something we cannot control. However we have had examples of CME recently with zero effects. Certainly it is possible that a much larger event will someday take place.
The HEMP is of course what we are talking about. Can you imagine a scenario where Russia or China or anyone sets off a 20 megaton nuclear bomb over our country and we do nothing? Who would be that stupid? Certainly not Russia or China. If they decide to attack us in a nuclear armegeddon they will use about 4000 nukes not one. Could terrorists get a 20 megaton nuke and deliver it 100 kms above Kansas? Of course not. So the odds are greater that the sun will explode then someone will set off a single enormous nuke above our country. But the good news is IF someone does set of a nuke/HEMP over Kansas it will probably affect less then 25 % of our grid and our existing utilities have the ability to fix it given a few weeks to a few months. Is that “ideal”? No, wouldn’t it be great if the grid was so strong that no HEMP could destroy it? But that is impossible because you simply cannot harden a system of wires out in the open sufficiently to prevent damage. So while you worry about a scenario that either cannot or will not happen that at best will affect less then 25% of our grid and cvan be repaired in weeks I prefer to worry about real risks (and there are many).
Can anyone, anywhere, tell me the certain duration of a CME? We can’t know, it’s a natural event! If the period of activity is for a few months, then we should leave everything in the Faraday boxes for…. how long…. or they will get zapped by the next flare. Of course, if we knew it was a HEMP then it would be easier to know when to get that stuff out of storage.
Gone,
Can you please list the recent CME’s we’ve had? And their strength on some scale that we can measure against say the Carrington event and the Ontario blackouts?
Also, the supply ship Kharg and destroyer Shaid Qandi (Iranian Navy 18th flotilla) are on this side of the Atlantic. The Kharg was the vessel used by the Iranian Navy to test fire the shipping container (CONEX) SCUD launchers. As such it represents an asymmetric threat to the US, not hundreds of warheads.
And again, in testing (not theoretical testing, field testing) it only took as little as a 2% imbalance in voltages in the three phases to physically destroy three phase transformers and motors. The imbalance created vibrational instabilities that tore the rotor/windings apart after a short time. So while I agree that the most damage will be tripped transformers and fuses, there will be a significant portion of the impacted grid that will go down hard.
Medium sized three phase transformers are produced at around 100 per month with a minimum 30 day lead time. These are the pad mounted ones you see outside office buildings and the like.
Currently I can find 62 substation transformers (10 MVA or higher) in inventory worldwide. And Power Grid International lists the average order to installation time for the backbone or substation transformers as 3–5 years.
So the statement about being able to fix the grid in a few weeks or months is utter nonsense.
The solar storm of 1859, also known as the Carrington Event, was a powerful geomagnetic solar storm in 1859 during solar cycle 10. A solar coronal mass ejection hit Earth’s magnetosphere and induced one of the largest geomagnetic storms on record. The associated “white light flare” in the solar photosphere was observed and recorded by English astronomers Richard C. Carrington and Richard Hodgson.
Studies have shown that a solar storm of this magnitude occurring today would likely cause widespread problems for modern civilization. There is an estimated 12% chance of a similar event occurring between 2012 and 2022 – From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Very informative article/discussion. I have a question though and have found very little info on during my research. How will an EMP/Solar Storm effect a pacemaker? My husband had an “On-Demand”! Only kicks in if needed. And so far, as far as we know, it has never kicked in “As Needed”! Which just brought up an another interesting question. Can the “on-demand usage” be tracked/downloaded? He just went in the other day because it popped on for no know reason. Dr. just turned down the voltage. We were near a lot of aircraft electrical equipment and thought that may have had some effect. IDK! Anyway I would like your thoughts on this question. I have three faraday cages. One is a galvanized trash can with two layers of cardboard. The other is two medium sized wall lockers, like school with multiple shelves added in and a thick layer of cardboard. After reading thoughts here yesterday, rethinking the wall lockers. They have the open vents. Now thinking, seal those off with Air Conditioning tape? Yes/No? In my cages have, new mobile ham radio w/power supply(just got the antenna house set-up day before yesterday/ also have complete equipment for installation in vehicle, so set-up for house base station and vehicle); extra flashlights w/extra batteries; emergency battery/hand crank/ solar power radio that gets wx alerts from NOAA, “receives only” on ham channels, and built-in flashlight; two handheld ham radios w/chargers and vehicle antenna; various other electronics i.e. extra printer, flashdrives w/survival info, extra C-Pac machine for husband, etc. I have a large number of ammo cans, but rethinking that after what I read on another link on this site yesterday. Have various other metal “suitcase like containers” that are waiting to be finished off.
There are a lot of unknowns when it comes to EMP and the effects of coronal mass ejections. However, the consensus is that most everything with an electronic component will be affected, and that would include electronic pacemakers. The wall lockers will not make effective Faraday cages because, as you mentioned, they are not fully and completely sealed. It sounds like you have put together a pretty impressive array of items, so be sure everything is as protected as possible.
I have a hypothetical question. What would happen to these Extra High Voltage transformers that are sitting in warehouses around the world? I know there are only a few, but would a pulse affect them as well, since they are not “plugged in”, so to speak? So if there was a global emp (hypothetically of course), would humanity have to start from scratch and build new ones?
Thank you in advance for any light shed on this.
I’m reading that book, again. It is a reality check.
Another thing, did you know that FOX news has broadcast the location of the power sources for all the world to know? I know that we as Americans want to know, but now the whole world knows. I just read 2 books about the EMPs. Yes, they are fiction, but scarey to me. I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop since 9/11. I’m surprised it hasn’t dropped yet.