Which Devices Will Survive a Putin Tactical EMP Strike? | Rob Braxman Tech
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In addition to being a privacy evangelist, my mindset is always about being aware of my environment, and that gives me a prepper mentality as well. A prepper attuned to tech. And this is a question that the average person definitely does not know much about. You’ve all heard of emps and how this will wipe out all of your electronic devices, but the reality is that if you actually understand how emps work, you will discover that it will not destroy every single device.
Additionally, there are other threats that are very similar to emps, like coronal mass ejection, and it is actually more likely that this will strike damage somewhere in the world. And man made portable devices could be made that produce an EMP pulse but not be tied to a nuclear explosion, though these have a shorter range. So this kind of threat is not as theoretical as you might imagine. The effect of wiping out electronics in most people’s minds is the same as turning back civilization to the 18 hundreds.
Now, world events make us think of this more than usual, especially with a war involving a nuclear equipped nation like Russia. But with a little bit of knowledge, we can actually be a little prepared so we can still have some electronics function in spite of an EMP or EMP like event. Maybe we don’t all have to have an 18 hundreds experience. This is a highly interesting topic that you will enjoy, so please stay right there.
Just a little bit of a background on me that fits the this topic. Not only am I a tech guy, but I also have a deep interest in radio. In fact, I hold a general ham license, and of course, many of my tech topics involve radio, since that is how most of our portable devices work today. Fortunately, this helps me understand a little bit more about the technologies involved, and I will explain it hopefully.
In layman’s terms. An EMP, or electromagnetic pulse, is, as the name suggests, a very strong projection of electromagnetic energy in a very brief period of time. That’s why it’s called a pulse. You can actually think of an EMP as radio frequency interference, or RFI, except it is very strong. Parts of it occur in nanoseconds, and other parts of it can occur 30 seconds later. If a nuclear explosion occurs in the upper atmosphere, like 25 miles above ground, the atmosphere at that level actually protects us from any ionizing radiation emitted by the explosion, and this same atmosphere protects us from that dangerous radiation that comes from the sun.
What happens though, is that this explosion separates the electrons from the atoms in the atmosphere and causes an electric charge to occur. And while dangerous radiation or ionizing radiation cannot cross this level of atmosphere. The nonionizing radiation or lower frequency radiation does in fact cross the lower atmosphere and causes strong magnetic effects on the ground. It does not affect your body, but it can affect electronics. Let me do this quick demonstration to show you what happens.
This is a coil of copper. I’ve attached it to a multimeter so you can see what the voltage is. You can see that to start with, there is no voltage. But if I run a magnetic field through these coils using these magnets, you will see that it generates electricity. This phenomenon is called induction. Magnetic fields moving over wires moves electrons and thus creates electricity. This is a very simplistic explanation of this phenomenon.
In physics, the longer the wires and the stronger and faster moving the magnetic fields, the stronger the flow of electricity. It is estimated that during an EMP, the voltages in the electric grid wires that send electricity to every home would be around 50 in some incredible amount of amps, which is quite a bit more than the 110 volts and typical 15 amps we use in typical us home circuits.
The effect of this is of course to burn circuits of anything connected to the electrical grid. This will burn transformers at the grid end, and any device plugged in will also get this huge pulse of electricity. I would imagine that this would also cause fires in homes. The parts that most people don’t realize is that at a voltage of 50,000 volts and thousands of amps, even if the breakers in your home trigger this high voltage, would cause current sparks and it will cross even gaps in wiring on the breakers.
Devices that are switched off but are attached to house wiring will also receive the pulse via sparks that cross the gaps in switches. Now, theres actually another element in emps that is quite interesting. Scientists have tracked that emps actually cause three separate events. The first pulse is called e one, which occurs in the first few nanoseconds and are high frequency pulses. This stops off around 100 GHz. So something higher frequency than 5g phone signals, but lower than microwave.
Then an e two burst follows shortly, which is a wideband radio frequency event similar to lightning, but it is not as damaging. So I wont focus on this. The most significant event is actually the e three event. During explosion, the earths magnetic field is actually shifted out of position. But then this slowly shifts back at around 30 seconds after the explosion and lasts for 30 seconds. This earth magnetic field movement is low frequency and has a very long wavelength and causes particular damage to long wires like electrical transmission lines.
Moving such an amount of a magnetic field will create a lot of electromagnetic energy. This is the one that causes the most damage to the electric grid. What you can tell from what I said here is that there are different frequencies involved and radio frequencies are typically described by their wavelength. Antennas react to frequencies in the same wavelength and ignore frequencies not in that wavelength. This is referred to as resonance.
In an e three event, the very long wavelengths will match the long wires in in the electric transmission wires, and those wires are resonant to these long frequencies and will capture that energy. In contrast, your phones are designed with antennas resonant in the sub 1 range. This means that it ignores the frequencies in the 100 GHz range or the low frequencies like 1 MHz. So induction will not have any significant effect on a device that doesnt have a wire at the length of the wavelength of the EMP frequency.
It will still capture some of that electromagnetic energy, but very weakly, like a weak radio signal. Think of any existing wire as an antenna and this is what captures the electromagnetic energy. But as I said, it would only capture a significant portion of that energy only if the antenna is resonant to that frequency. There are two types of effects to consider with small home devices. First, small devices that are near outlets or circuits that can cause a spark will of course suffer from the effects of e three.
Sparks will cause that 500 volts to cross through to the device. Nowadays, extremely small transistors and computers have very small nanometer gaps in the circuitry, which could easily spark even at lower voltages. And this is why plugged in devices normally wouldnt be expected to survive an EMP e three the other indirect effect is if the e one level pulse, which goes up to 100 GHz reaches the phone.
Now this is a wideband signal, and some of it can match the frequency of the antennas in 5G phones for example, but only some of it will reach the phone since most of the frequencies will not be resonant to the phones wires. Additionally, phones have a lot of EMF shielding to exchange its frequency, so unless it’s near some other circuitry attached to the grid, it could actually survive the EMP.
Now just to be clear, there’s hardly a chance that your near cell tower would survive an EMP because of course that equipment is plugged into the grid, so there won’t be a cell infrastructure in place at all that will be wiped out. It should be obvious too that the entire Internet in that area will be wiped out, but your fonts may operate as fonts without SIm cards. Very interesting, right? So if you have some book reader like Kindle and have downloaded survival books, you might actually have something to read.
Now let’s progress further here. Let me extend the scenario a little bit more so I can generalize what can happen. Any device that is not plugged into the grid, like most portable devices running on battery, as long as they do not have long wires that match the frequency of the EMP or have no antennas, will not generate that induction effect that causes excessive high voltage. For example, if you have raspberry PI unused and unplugged, even unused laptops or old phones, they might survive.
Batteries unplugged may survive. Now how do you power these? How about solar panels? Interestingly, solar panels themselves don’t have long wires, though they may have long wires that are connected to charge controllers, inverters, and batteries. Again, think about this. Solar panels unplugged may survive. Here’s a little proper tidbit. If you have backup devices that you don’t use, like spares, you can wrap them completely in aluminum foil, then store them far away from any house wiring.
Better yet, you could put these devices in a metal container like a sheet metal office cabinet or a gun safe. Additionally, keeping them in aluminum foil keeps out rf frequencies that can cause induction and enter into small holes. Id also wrap them in non conductive addition. Of course, with something kept in a metal safe, the only fear is that RF can enter through small holes in the cabinetry, and these will be limited to wavelengths that are smaller than the size of the hull.
Small holes would be close to the 100 GHz range, which incidentally is not that damaging to phones. For example, the wavelength of 2 mm equates to about 148 GHz. Thus, if roughly 100 GHz is the maximum frequency we expect, then we should be ok with holes less than two mm. Now if I’m thinking of basic prepper things to plan for, I would definitely prepare old phones, maybe those with a full load of books on Kindle, MP3 files and other digital resources.
Spare electronics like Raspberry PI’s, especially older versions, could be useful things you’re not using anymore. Solar panels, particularly the smaller ones that are easy to store and can power up small electronics, would be important to do this. Aluminum foil storage and radios. You can get UHF VHF ham radios like Baofeng UV five R models for as cheap as $20. These have tremendous range. Normally these require a ham license, but obviously after an EMP there will be no government.
I’ll put links to the devices I mentioned in the description. If you store these radios without the antennas, they will still have an even better chance of surviving I have a portable HF radio, for example, that is easily stored and could communicate with radios on the other side of the earth, but unfortunately packing it means I cant use it. However, normally it is not stored with antennas, so it could survive.
Now I havent done this yet, but I should plan on putting it in a Faraday bag for storage and not keep it near the antennas, which could get induction. If you have any car, likely newer than 1970s, then it’s going to have electronics. There’s a lot of wiring in cars that’s going to get hit by that e three wave. They’ve actually tested some cars and some survived because the wiring was next to the metal body.
But some cars have the wiring running underneath the body and the EMp waves actually bounce off the ground, but I would not expect it to survive. Obviously EV cars have even more wiring and electronics, so that will definitely not survive. Besides, there will be no grid to charge them. Now I happen to have a bolt with a diesel engine. Mine comes with an electronics module which has broken before.
What is interesting is that assuming the battery wiring survives, and it likely will because it is very short, I can bypass the electronic module and start it. Ive actually done this bypass already. However, since theres a lot of wiring in the alternator, I I would assume the alternator would suffer induction effects and burn up. So it would be an engine. Without an alternator. You’d have to charge the battery using solar.
Now there’s almost zero chance of anything surviving in your house wiring system. Even if you turned off all the breakers. As I said, 50,000 volts would spark over a breaker pretty easily and even larger distances. So your house will be back to the 18 hundreds. But hold on, its not all problematic. Assuming you havent put large solar panels in storage wrapped in aluminum foil, there is a huge chance that generators would survive, especially one not in use during the EMP event.
Storing a generator with some sort of COVID like a copper fabric, would ensure that the coils do not get induction, and that’s extra insurance. Just to be careful though, since I mentioned earlier, the highest frequency that can be received has a wavelength of only 2 mm, so even a two millimeter hole will allow that frequency to enter. So just be aware of the protection needed for larger equipment and the fact that loose protection may not be enough, though it may survive.
If it doesn’t have anything that could operate as an antenna at those gigahertz frequencies, which is usually inches, is there a chance of a plugged in device like a ham radio surviving an EMP. Now, there are different approaches here for active protection of devices in use. There’s actually a specialty type of surge protector that prevents sparks. I think they likely enclose the connectors in some sort of inert gas.
Then when the electronics detect a spike and it breaks the connection before the damage is done, this could really be useful for protecting certain devices that are important to survival. Your lifestyle in case of an emergency event like an EMP, can be enhanced with really just a few changes. If you have older phones and electronics that are functional, maybe wrap it in aluminum foil and store it. Get some inexpensive small solar panels and store it.
Get a couple of cheap radios and store it. You could do this kind of prepping for $100. Now, this video is not about survival during an event with rampant lawlessness, so you have to think beyond what I’ve said here. For example, I have a sailboat that can travel large distances and has a solar and water maker and can be self reliant as long as there’s a food supply.
Now, you might think this idea of protecting against an EMP is far fetched and not likely something to worry about. Let me talk to you about a CME or coronal mass ejection. Apparently, there’s a 12% chance of this happening every ten years. We haven’t had this happen since 1859 in a populated area. But in 1859, the CME caused telegraph lines to spark up and cause fires again. Long wires equals high voltage.
I think this happened in Quebec, Canada. When this happens, it will tend to be more localized and also it will be equivalent to the e three event long wires and low frequencies, so likely affecting the grid and plugged in devices and less effect on portable devices. Unfortunately, most of the world is unprepared for this kind of impact on the electrical grid. If transformers blow up from high voltage, it may take years to get replacements.
So for several years, a location hit by an EMP or some other electromagnetic disturbance will be in the middle ages for an extended period of time. Folks, I have a privacy oriented platform called Braxmen, and we have over 100,000 users there exchanging information about how to maintain their privacy. Please join us in that community. On my platform, we also have a store that has various technologies that support our goal of maintaining privacy.
These products include the SIM free Brax, virtual phone, de Google phones, identity free Braxmail, and our bytes VPN service. Thank you very much for watching and I’ll see you next time. .
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