Electromagnetic pulse
Youtube has hundreds of videos on the subject. The internet is filled with web pages telling you what you should or should not do in case of one.
But how much do you really know about one? How much does anyone know? The video below will provide that information.
A nuclear electromagnetic pulse (commonly abbreviated as nuclear EMP, or NEMP) is a burst of electromagnetic radiation created by nuclear explosions. The resulting rapidly changing electric and magnetic fields may couple with electrical and electronic systems to produce damaging current and voltage surges. The specific characteristics of any particular nuclear EMP event vary according to a number of factors, the most important of which is the altitude of the detonation. A huge downward surge in particles in the ionosphere would create massive electrical currents which could “short out” all sorts of electrical power grids, transformers, and other equipment dependent on electricity.
The fact that an electromagnetic pulse is produced by a nuclear explosion was known in the earliest days of nuclear weapons testing. The magnitude of the EMP and the significance of its effects, however, were not immediately realized.
During the first United States nuclear test on 16 July 1945, electronic equipment was shielded because Enrico Fermi expected the electromagnetic pulse. The official technical history for that first nuclear test states, “All signal lines were completely shielded, in many cases doubly shielded. In spite of this many records were lost because of spurious pickup at the time of the explosion that paralyzed the recording equipment.” During British nuclear testing in 1952–1953 instrumentation failures were attributed to “radioflash”, which was their term for EMP.
The high-altitude nuclear tests of 1962, confirmed the unique results of the Yucca high-altitude test on 28 April 1958 and increased the awareness of high-altitude nuclear EMP beyond the original group of defense scientists. The larger scientific community became aware of the significance of the EMP problem after a three-article series on nuclear EMP was published in 1981 by William J. Broad in Science. – Wikipedia
