Okay, I’m finding all sorts of things as I unpack the files in the garage. Some of this stuff has been stored for a long time. Sometimes I can even figure out why I stored it in the first place!
For example, I ripped this ad page out of the September 2004 issue of Military & AeroSpace Electronics, and saved it in a file labeled “EMP protection,” because, well, that’s what they’re advertising.Â
Now, when I go to the company’s website, they don’t seem to be advertising EMP protection anymore, just lightning protection. Guess that’s more PC, or something.
Anyway, the whole reason I used to pick up journals like Military & AeroSpace Electronics, even though I have no electronics background at all, was for info like this. I mean, presumably if it’s discussed or advertised in a professional journal, it probably works, right?
Anyway, does anybody out there with a military or electronics background know about these little doodads in the ad? Do they work? (The ten-year warranty sounds pretty good to me.) Perhaps more importantly, do they cost more than your typical ham or VHF radio? Am I better off using the old store-your-radio-in-an-ammo-can Faraday cage trick?
The lightning protectors work on filtering your powersupply line and protecting it from the surge that would hapen when lightning hits your house wiring. Am EMP as in afterafect from a RNS (he he) is an electromagnetic wave that travels though the air and fries low voltave circuitboards with a high voltage pulse, which contrary to Hollywood (and we know how acuate they always are) now makes that part inoprable in toltal, no more comming back to life after a couple of minutes. The Faraday cage is the onlyway to protect from a EMP. The ammo can idea is better than not, but if you could say line a room with a properly grounded faraday cage, that would be the best as far a armageddon type protection.
That makes sense. I was wondering how snapping a doohicky on the antenna or power coupling (which is what I thought you’d do with these) could protect against EMP going through the radio body, as opposed to the EMP traveling through the power lines and antenna.
It doesn’t show up very well in the scanned image, but the original ad boasted protection against “NEMP” or Nuclear EMP effects. So at least I learned a new acronym!
The EMP pulse from a NuDet will not penetrate very far in moist earth, either.
I’ve not done any EMP-hardening yet, but it’s on my mind, and when I do, I’ll merely excavate part of my back yard, put in a preformed concrete collector box with no holes in it and arrange a tackle for lifting the lid when necessary.
Of course, all that is quite a drudge to do, and one also has to maintain a second set of whatever electronic equipment one wants to protect from EMP.
Another solution is to use all vacuum-tube equipment, but the only stuff readily accessible anymore are AM receivers. The Soviet Bloc built quite an array of battlefield radio equipment with vacuum tubes well into the 70’s, just for this reason.
A Farraday Room is expensive to build. The copper mesh alone to make a room in your house equal to the specs would cost thousands, and the tedium of soldering all those copper-mesh panels together would get to most of us. I’ve only ever seen one good one built to spec, and that was in the Radio Shop of the County Shops where they handled all the two-way comm needs of all the county vehicles. I believe the chief tech out there told me that the room cost $11,000 to build, and that was for materials only, and back in the 70’s to boot.
For less than $1,000, could you properly ground a gun safe to provide enough protection? Maybe an older commercial safe if the gun safe wasn’t heavy enough?
Also, this subject brings up another peeve of mine: everybody’s going to red-dot sights, but they will all be fried in the EMP, then what do you have? Better practice with the old iron sights, boys.
BTW, I recall my nuclear war training said that you can’t simply filter out EMP. The problem is that the entire atmosphere becomes a carrier of the high-energy radiation, so putting an insulator of some kind inline won’t help.
You have to build a shelter from the wave pulse (Farraday Room), or be deep enough in the ground. So the antenna do-hickus you are thinking about is probably not going to work.
Great info. Good to see you back, Rivrdog!
Rivrdog pretty much nailed it. Lighting protectors help a little with EMP but are not a complete solution because of the intensity of the EMP fields. Also, the rise time for EMP is a couple of orders of magnitude faster (IIRC) as compared to lightning. In other words, the EMP wave gets past the lightning suppessor before it can react and quench the spike.
One high-speed protection scenario I’ve seen implemented, for your consideration:
Store your HF, VHF, and AM BCB rigs in a 55-gal drum also lined with copper mesh. Mount the lid with a hinge but cross the hinge with copper mesh/strapping. Ground said container using the heaviest copper strap you can afford, to a 8×8′ grid of 4 ground rods likewise bonded together. This grid also serves as your lighting protection, but you don’t leave the rigs connected to antennas unless you’re actually using them.
An EMP attack, if/when it occurs, will also create a power failure. When the power fails, pull out the AM BCB rig and try to find any local station still on the air. Having a battery-powered AC failure detector will alert you if the attack occurs at night. If stations are heard, then most likely an EMP attack has not occurred and the problem is localized. If no stations can be found, assume an EMP attack has occurred and take shelter for whatever follow-on attack might happen.
The only issue I see with the above is what if an EMP attack occurs while you have radios connected to the antennas because you’re using, or getting ready to, use them. Probably need to have a backup set of everything to cover.
The person who showed me this setup had a full-blown buried blast and fallout shelter constructed from corrugated drain pipe 7′ in diameter. Plans for these, I’m sure, can be found using Google.
Hello Gentleman,
nice overall info here, mostly right on the money about EMP/faraday cages and grounding. FYI, my company is building a hardened mesh-networked radio system for NSA/security networks for the city of LA. EMP pulse protected by micro-farady cages and lighning spikes + dual battery powered radios. Cheap off-the-shelf hardware.
like this website too, keep up the good work,
m
Welcome Michael,
Very cool — any chance you might have some “recommendations” on some cheap off-the-shelf hardware for the rest of us? Completely unrelated to your LA contract work, of course, just based on your experience. 😉
Hello,
I have been reading a lot about EMP, but there does not seem to be anything that the regular civilian should do to prepare against it. Should I get a HAM radio, stock up on provisions or get a firearm just in case? It would be nice to think I am somewhat prepared since we are so dependent on electronics in our everyday lives. Like the website!
Hi Erin, welcome!
I’d suggest a couple of things:
First, scroll down the sidebar to the “Categories” section and click on “By Ourselves, for Ourselves.” That’s my co-blogger Analog Kid’s series on preparing for a disaster. It’s still a work in progress, but there’s lots of good info there.
Second, figure out what’s the most likely thing that could happen to you where you live and prepare for that first. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area where I am, that’s earthquake. Where you are, the most likely danger might be tornado, hurricane, blackout, or dealing with civil disturbance from a major city nearby. Happily, you’ll find that once you’ve gotten some supplies together to prepare for that most likely danger, you’re also well along the way to being prepared for other things as well (civil disturbance, “dirty” radiation terrorist bomb, or even EMP due to a nuclear strike or super solar storm). Generally you’ll just need to add a few things to your basic kit to prepare for a specific danger. For EMP, my main worries are about the civil disturbances and social disruption afterwards, so I’ve prepared for that. I have a shortwave radio, and based on the above comments I’m storing it now in an old ammo can. Other than that I’m not specifically preparing for EMP. Prepare for a disaster generally, and you’ll be pretty well up for an EMP-related disaster should it occur.
You ask about firearms. I don’t think a firearm should necessarily be the very first thing you purchase, but it is a very important part of any serious disaster survival kit, so you should definitely think about getting one. My wife and I have firearms to protect ourselves in our emergency kits, and more importantly have taken the time to learn how to use them, and we go to the shooting range from time to time to practice.
My wife and I have a four-stage disaster plan. First stage is to deal with a disaster while we’re away from home. We have three days’ worth of food and supplies in backpacks we keep in the trunks of our cars. There’s an additional week of food and water in a separate box in the trunk. If we had to flee our place of work, we could run out to the car, grab the backpack and go. If we had to “shelter in place” at work, we’ve got a total of ten days’ food and water.
Second stage is at home. We have plenty of goodies at our home so that we could “shelter in place” or ride out a temporary disruption of public services for weeks or months.
Third stage is Grandma’s house. In the event that we decided we needed to leave our home and shelter someplace else, we could pack up our supplies and drive 30 minutes to Grandma’s old farm, which is on a relatively easily-defended hilltop in an industrial area, away from residences. Rioters and looters might overlook it. Also, it’s surrounded by chain-link fence, has a well and generator, and lots of distance between the fence and the buildings (clear fields of fire). Our other family members in the Bay Area would likely go here, too.
Fourth stage is my brother’s place in the mountains. He lives in a relatively small town above Sacramento, about two hours’ drive from our place, and off of the major highways. If the whole San Francisco Bay Area was unsafe, that’s where we’d head, towing our food, water, medical and other supplies in trailers behind us, both for our use and to share.
That’s just some ideas for you.
Oh, I should have mentioned: a ways down on my “to do” list is to get a set of spare ignition parts for our Toyota pickup and Nissan Pathfinder — and be sure I know how to install them — in the event an EMP strike is powerful enough to knock out the electronics in the cars. Other folks just buy an old pre-electronic car or truck and keep it around as their EMP-proof vehicle.
I haven’t been considering EMP as all that likely right now (famous last words!) so I’ve been concentrating on beefing up other aspects of our preparedness supplies instead.
Thank you for the info……I am glad there are others out there that think the way I do. I find that my peers and friend’s (I am 27) have a “nothing’s going to happen to us” attitude and just live for the moment. I am trying to get a plan together for my family so that if anything happens we will be safe as well as a help instead of a hindrance. Thanks again!
I appreciated the number of thoughtful and informed comments and welcome any helpful criticism on information I have been posting on my website, http://www.stop-EMP.com. This is intended to be somewhat of a one-stop shop of info on the topic from experts who have formed consensus, in particular the Congressional EMP Commission. (See white paper section.)
I have written an all-hazards intro to EMP for public safety officials and like the all-hazards approach commenters have taken. (It was presented to the Public Technology Institute national meeting in Chicago and will be posted on their site soon. You can also find it on stop-EMP.com. It has an annotated bibliography that should be helpful.) When you have an all-hazards plan, you begin to do things that have multiple benefits. In the area of EMP, there has been a “Perfect Disaster” series from Discovery Channel that includes a program on solar storms that shows the potential for a global EMP event from the sun during one of the peak solar events at some time in the future. There are also a number of ways the electric grid can be disrupted or damaged causing the National Academy of Sciences to urge the development of micro-grids.
Anyway, I think many of you are on the right track and I welcome your commments by email if you get a chance to critique the stop-EMP website.
Respectfully,
Chuck
Wow. Nice website, Chuck!
The most interesting thing I noticed in my brief look at the site was the news that the committee in charge of the NFPA 1221 standard is meeting this summer to adopt language requiring facilities to be protected against EMP from a nuclear blast within 50 miles. If adopted, I would think that would provide a lot of contracting opportunities and business to EMP protection companies such as yours — which is also good news to preparedness-minded individuals such as read this blog, as it would mean more and cheaper protection equipment, research and techniques would be available in the civilian marketplace in the near future.
The white papers and resource links on your site look particularly valuable and worth further study by anyone interested. It’s nice to see a link to IEEE, they’ve always put out top-notch stuff in my opinion.
David,
Thanks for the kind comments and encouragement.
I also added some material on alternative energy and microgrids. Hope that will also help.
Chuck
Am I missing the obvious? If an EMP affected any circut and you are able to fix it by replacing componets. What if all secondary (radio’s vehicle’s etc.)
where seperated from power. If a new part fix’s the problem, the question is, is seperation from power the only action needed for a complex problem?
Mark
California
Mark,
Yes, separating a component from a connection to the power grid helps protect against an EMP strike because EMP can be transmitted along the power grid as though the grid were a long antenna.
On the other hand, if you have your spare shortwave in the garage, unpowered, but hooked up to an antenna, you can still get fried.
The reason is that EMP can travel along any antenna.
In addition, even if you have separated your component from both the power grid and any antenna, an extreme EMP event could still fry it. Thus the advice to store components in Faraday cages.
Now, if you’re thinking that all you have to protect against is a 10kt or smaller ground blast (say, like the one gamed out in the recent RAND study of the port of Long Beach) you can be immune from EMP effects just by being far enough away.
Faraday-cage scenarios involve airbursts where the effect of EMP can be felt over a much wider area. Basically (oversimplified) it’s line-of-sight: if a nuke goes off high in the air, and it’s powerful enough, the EMP will zap any component below the nuke out to the horizon.
I do endeavor to be prepared for potential problems, though I don’t go overboard. I’ve been reading up on EMP be it a nearby lightning strike, a major storm on the sun (solar EMP event) or a blackout bomb from an enemy of which we seem to have more everyday. I think many other risks are greater, but I have some thoughts.
I already have an emergency evacuation and disaster kit. I pack it in a wheeled suitcase so even if I had to abandon my vehicle I could take the bag down the road with little effort.
In reading this site and the posts I think I will modify my kit slightly. I think I will pick up another 50 cal ammo case from the army navy store and add a layer of bubble-pack for insulation and padding. These cases are water tight and make an excellent faraday cage. To this I will add in zip-lock bags:
1. My last good working cell phone and all its required accessories along with the information needed to reactivate it account no., web sites etc.
2. Spare automotive fuse assortment.
3. Portable battery operated radio *
4. Inexpensive two way radio set. *
5. Solar AA battery charger. *
6. Two led waterproof flashlights and two 6 volt florescent closet lights. *
7. One set each for above, regular and rechargeable batteries separately bagged. *
8. 800 watt 12 VDC to 120/60 inverter *
* Things I already had in my evac kit but not in a waterproof faraday cage.
In the house I intend to build a faraday box to store my spare compact florescent bulbs as well as a retired but still functional phone, along with several small faraday boxes for idle misc. electronics.
For the house in plastic bags; two or three replacement breakers for the critical locations in my fuse box. (Imagine how hard it would be to get replacements if everyone’s system was overloaded and fried random breakers.)
In total I think I’ll be spending about twenty bucks except for the spare breakers.
Can you think of anything I forgot?
D’oh! I hadn’t even thought about protecting light bulbs! We’re switching over to the compact fluorescents (as the existing incandescent dies out, I make sure to replace it with a CF).
Storing spare breakers is a good idea, too. Obviously you must know how to install them. That’s another thing I’ll put down on my list of skills to learn (I need to brush up on house wiring anyway).
Otherwise, your list looks good to me. I like that you’ve considered waterproofing the contents of your faraday box with the plastic bags. I’m in sunny California, and I still have most things in our Bugout Bags encased in a Ziplock of one size or another.
On a practical side I was looking at an electronics surplus catalog and found EMP proof gasketing at:
http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/item/EFG-2/search/EMI_LOW_CLOSURE_FORCE_GASKET_.html
A self-adhesive, urethane foam gasket covered with a mesh EMI shield. They had two sizes
I ordered about 20 feet to upgrade the gasket on my surplus 50 cal ammo cans.
In my previous post I talked about protecting compact florescent bulbs stored in my closet. I think they are probably quite safe as is when not connected but it costs nothing to cover the inside of handy sized boxes like old shoeboxes with heavy duty aluminum foil and then a layer of cardboard for insulation and keep the bulbs and misc electronics in these.
I have started a new habit of diconnecting cords from all electronics when not in use. For example an MP3 player with the earphone attached might get fried whereas an identical one with the headphone disconnected might do fine.
Don’t discount surge protectors for home electronics. A nuclear EMP may be too fast for the MOV’s in standard surge protectors, but the surges from a crashing power grid could finish things that survive the initial spike. EMP from a solar event are also a threat worth evaluating and it is a threat, that is a more likely event. They in fact occur on a regular basis and it is quite worth while to have surge protectors on all expensive electronics along with critical appliances. When the power come back on you’ll want to still have appliances that work.
One post above talked about the EMP effect from a ground blast. If you are close enough for the EMP blast you are too close period. The assumed delivery of a terrorist nuclear weapon by truck would toss up vast amounts of radio active stuff. You would need to get out before the dust starts coming down as in minutes after the flash is over.
In the bombs dropped in WW2 the US went to great pains to insure the bombs detonated high enough that the fission fireball did not touch the earth and convert millions of tons of random elements into their radioactive isotopes. A terrorist a-bomb detonated at ground level would be massively dirty. Where ever you are move away from the blast area and towards the prevailing winds or find shelter and plan on staying in it for a minimum of two weeks.
Enjoyed reading the thoughts of folks here. Was watching the movie “The Day After” (with Jason Robards) the other night. Got to wondering if there is any practical ways to provide EMP protection to a vehicle ??? The only thing I found was steel chain attached to vehicle, dragging on the asphalt, like I used to see fuel-tankers do.
Any thoughts ?
Thank you for the website.
Dude, you need to read the first comment on this post by Christopher. Grounding your vehicle would not protect the components against an EMP electromagnetic wave.
Try it if you like, but if you’re serious about it you’ll get a set of spare ignition and other electronic components for your vehicle, and store ’em in a Faraday cage in your trunk. Easy Faraday cage = surplus ammo can + the surplus gasket material from Bill’s post, above. Easy to store a handheld radio in the cage too.
Automobiles in the US might surprise everyone by how many might work after an EMP attack. Most automobiles can take a direct lighting strikes and once the charge on its body shell dissipates they usually run, though the strike often causes them to shut down temporarily. Because of the high voltage ignition systems and other misc electrical noise they need to deal with the computer and other critical devices are well shielded with heavy spike suppression.
The MOV’s used for spike suppression in most surge suppressors are not fast enough for an EMP attack. The zener diodes used in many computer and electronic devices are very fast and would provide considerable protection. These are what the computers in cars use for surge suppression for the sensor and servo interfaces.
It would be interesting to see what factors affect a cars survivability. Could be silly things like sun roofs, window size and angle as well as what direction the car was pointed and was it running at the time of the EMP. I assume the government has this data, but we ain’t on the cc list.
As side note, neon bulbs are excellent surge suppressors (direct connect type, some have a resistor in series with the lamp that diminishes the ability to absorb EMP). They are already in a conductive state and provide a spark gap which is the fastest type of surge protector recommended for EMP events. If you plugged a dozen of these 1/4 watt night lights in random outlets around your house you would probably find more appliances would survive an EMP event. You would also have some light to escape in a night time fire as well as light to deal with intruders, both of which are more likely than an EMP attack.
Incandescent light bulbs will soon be phased out because they waste a lot of energy.~.*