EMP wars!!!!!

With all the talk about war with Russia, which leads to talk about nuclear war, I don't think any of the major powers will ever use nukes in there traditional way again.

IMHO a rogue state with no chance of winning a war might launch a nuke, but I think the major world powers will swap EMPs back and forth.

If you set a nuke off in the upper atmosphere. Apparently the. EMP is somehow magnified. Spreading over a huge distance and , if I'm right, increases in strength as well.


With the ability to do this. I just don't see the benefit in a ground nuke attack. As long as you have as an army big enough for an invasion .

Using EMPs would also not enrage the rest of the world like millions of dead people and irradiated country side.

reply to post by ArtemisE


A real war could use E.M.P. or even cyber warfare to a great effect - cyber warfare could be used to shut down power plants or whatever as well.

reply to post by ArtemisE


This is exactly the way they would be used. No country with the ability to make nukes would waste them on ground detonation.

edit: I should clarify. Countries with experienced nuclear programs would use them this way. If the country has no delivery program and plans on dropping it out of a stolen plane, or building one in situ to detonate, then obviously they just can't.

How would you deliver an EMP device over a country without being shot down before you reached the desired location..?

reply to post by ArtemisE

IMHO a rogue state with no chance of winning a war might launch a nuke, but I think the major world powers will swap EMPs back and forth.

Lots of satellites up there these days. They are at risk for EMP, too. Blinding your own eyes and ears is not a first choice of many commanders.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

An electromagnetic pulse, also sometimes called a transient electromagnetic disturbance, is a short burst of electromagnetic energy.

source


How could a electromagnetic pulse be used as a weapon?

Thurisaz

An electromagnetic pulse, also sometimes called a transient electromagnetic disturbance, is a short burst of electromagnetic energy.

source


How could a electromagnetic pulse be used as a weapon?

It will disable, often permanently electrical devices including power generation sites etc. No power and a wrecked power grid for a few major cities...that kind of damage (aside from radioactive fallout) would devastate society for months/years/possibly decades before things were restored on a large scale.

You have to remember, no matter how quickly we could rebuild the power grid in an ideal setting (now with everything working), every end user etc, may be damaged as well. Every electrical component in the home/office/military etc. could be damaged. After a nuke, who is going to show up for work the next day bright and early to start fixing everything. Where is all of your digital money? Things would be in pretty bad shape. Even if you had a working generator and some equipment, who are you going to communicate with and how, for any large scale combined effort.

reply to post by ArtemisE


Yeah. Why would nuclear war be used today when it devastates the land and makes it inhabitable.
Part of war has always been to go in and take over/invade an area to utilize it for various reasons.
An EMP would weaken an area and cause loss and or weakness of power overall. Power as in electrical "power" and the "power" players that control that area/country.

However... an EMP strike might not work either. Like you said unless they have the army's capable of coming in fast this might not work. The factions that arise after the EMP strike bringing down the "power" would be very dangerous and there would be many to deal with in a country like USA.

leolady

reply to post by leolady

I don't think anyone would be nuking us to invade or take over, but to just get us out of an equation. The most effective use of the nuke though is to detonate at altitude to take advantage of the EMP radius.

reply to post by Halfswede


Yes I see your point.

But... I don't think it would be wise to nuke any large area on Earths land. If this has not been learned yet how devastating that would be to the world... need I say it...We have issues !

leolady

Their are a few things I am not worried about .

1. Large scale nuclear exchange by warring nations ..MAD is still applicable and everyone knows it.
2. Conventional ground based invasions of the Mainland US, Russia or China. Geographic size, boundaries, supply chain and infrastructure make anything like that a tactical improbability. It is even more of an improbability with the mainland US.
3. A single nuke triggered EMP over the US shutting the power down on just the US infrastructure(civilian\military) within minutes.

What I am worried about are non-conventional attacks like a dirty bomb, chemical\biological attacks. Im worried about a cyber attack bringing down key infrastructure. I am worried about a financial collapse in the world.. All of those things and anything similar are much more likely than items 1-3 listed above.

reply to post by Thurisaz


An EMP would take out almost all circuit boards in the effected area. No planes no computers no cars after 1985.

EMP's are just precious!



Personally, I am not too worried about it.

leolady
reply to post by ArtemisE

 

Yeah. Why would nuclear war be used today when it devastates the land and makes it inhabitable.
Part of war has always been to go in and take over/invade an area to utilize it for various reasons.
An EMP would weaken an area and cause loss and or weakness of power overall. Power as in electrical "power" and the "power" players that control that area/country.

However... an EMP strike might not work either. Like you said unless they have the army's capable of coming in fast this might not work. The factions that arise after the EMP strike bringing down the "power" would be very dangerous and there would be many to deal with in a country like USA.

leolady

Remember the neutron bomb. It's an airburst that kills everybody with radiation and it doesn't hang around.

reply to post by rjbaggins


Neutron bombs are not very effective. That's why everyone stopped making them.
The problem is above a 10 Kiloton yield the blast radius outstrips the effective range of the neutron blast.
The damaging range from the neutrons is only about 1,000 to 2,000 meters at on a good day.
The idea has been around since the 1950's and in the 1980's they thought they could be used to break up
mass formations of Soviet tanks in a war in Europe.
The idea was never very workable plus the weapons themselves required a lot of maintenance and upkeep
to make them worth the effort.
The thinking at the time became "if your going to nuke someone then go all out and really NUKE them for real"

I love that people are going on and on about nuclear this and emp that.

Just a head up-if youve heard of it, its already a dated weapon.

If the S does really HTF on a global scale, youll be seeing weapons and tactics that you never even considered, or that you thought were purely sci-fi, not the ones you know about.

I was under the impression that a nuke was also an emp in high altitude .

Wiki link

EMP generation The strong electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that results has several components. In the first few tens of nanoseconds, about a tenth of a percent of the weapon yield appears as powerful gamma rays with energies of one to three mega-electron volts (MeV, a unit of energy). The gamma rays penetrate the atmosphere and collide with air molecules, depositing their energy to produce huge quantities of positive ions and recoil electrons (also known as Compton electrons). The impacts create MeV-energy Compton electrons that then accelerate and spiral along the Earth's magnetic field lines. The resulting transient electric fields and currents that arise generate electromagnetic emissions in the radio frequency range of 15 to 250 megahertz (MHz, or one million cycles per second). This high-altitude EMP occurs between 30 and 50 kilometers (18 and 31 miles) above the Earth's surface. The potential as an anti-satellite weapon became apparent in August 1958 during Hardtack Teak. The EMP observed at the Apia Observatory at Samoa was four times more powerful than any created by solar storms, while in July 1962 the Starfish Prime test damaged electronics in Honolulu and New Zealand (approximately 1,300 kilometers away), fused 300 street lights on Oahu (Hawaii), set off about 100 burglar alarms, and caused the failure of a microwave repeating station on Kauai, which cut off the sturdy telephone system from the other Hawaiian islands. The radius for an effective satellite kill for the various prompt radiations produced by such a nuclear weapon in space was determined to be roughly 80 km. Further testing to this end was carried out, and embodied in a Department of Defense program, Program 437.

anyone remember the starwars defense program

reply to post by freedomSlave


A nuke causes an emp. When detonated at a high altitude, the emp emitted travels quite a ways.

reply to post by captaintyinknots


That's a really good point...

So what sort of weaponry are you talking about? LaZers? Or walking through walls Camelot Project #...?

~Toady

f4andHALFtoads
reply to post by captaintyinknots

 

That's a really good point...

So what sort of weaponry are you talking about? LaZers? Or walking through walls Camelot Project #...?

~Toady

If I knew, itd be classified, and I wouldnt be able to tell you. Thats the point. Just like, prior to WW2, nukes were an unheard of tech. The only reason they are widely known about is because of that war.

My guess would be starwars based tech, but thats all it is, a guess.