EDC compass

[Mortblanc]

Depends on your perception of what EMP can do, how devices react to it, and what a Faraday cage actually is???

Lots of ideas and arguments one way and the other on those subjects. The arguments are long and confusing and when I read them and an old R&R song cones to mind, "Why do you say you will when you won't, say you do Baby then you don't"

One of the real problems is the hype on You-tube and on the internet about EMP. It is one of the best examples of the old saying, "If you can not dazzle them with brilliance then baffle them with bu!! sh!&!".

Most of those people doing the tests on you-tube are short circuiting devises with direct voltage surges and not EMP. There is a difference between a voltage spike that can jump a closely positioned open circuit and an EMP pulse.

I think I have spoken before that I have a BIL that works as a programmer for NASA. He was on the lead staff that put the Space Station into orbit and keeps it there. He programmed the controls for the Hubble and Galileo telescopes and has done God knows what for other agencies NSA contracts for and he can not even mention.

I once asked him what NASA did when a CME (natural EMP) passed the orbit of all the satellites we depend on daily for comms and weather, as well as spy duties.

His answer was simple, "We turn them off, wait for the event to pass, and turn them back on."

If one is subjected to an EMP pulse they turn them off and turn them back on, just like resetting a computer.

It seems that in spite of all the hype, a closed circuit is needed for EMP to do its dirty work and if the item is not in use or turned on it is safe. That was an expensive lesson they learned from the Starfish event back in 1962. There was no shielding on satellites, and no provision on satellites to turn them off and back on in the early days and they lost most of them within a few months after that event.

Your car sitting parked at the curb is probably OK. If it is running it will probably stall due to EMP pulse if that pules is strong. If it stalls turn it off and wait 30 seconds, then turn it back on. If that will not work then disconnect the battery at the terminals for 10 minutes and reset the computer. When the agencies report that vehicles would not restart after EMP pulse without mechanical assistance that is what they are speaking about, resetting the computer.

If you were so close to the EMP point of origin that neither of those things works and your gear is really fried you are probably dead or will be soon anyway, go back inside and wait for your hair to start falling out.

I live 30 miles from a major U.S. city that is well known abroad, but lost its real importance soon after WW2, and 70 miles from Wright Patterson Air Force Base. I am in a target area to say the least, but not directly in the thermo-nuclear danger zone. I am in what would be the EMP danger zone due to nuclear blast. My major surrender to the EMP fear is that I have a metal storage shed with a metal floor. It was already here when I bought the place. I keep all my lawn and garden power equipment in there. The little tractor, the rotovator, chain saws, one of the gen-sets .... I figure that if the EMP thing is real, and all my ambivalence is misguided, I will still be in good shape for the garden the first year of the new dark ages.

I also live in a "metal box" covered with aluminum siding, a tin roof and a heating grid under the floor. I have to have an outside antenna to get TV or radio signal inside the box. My cell phone will not work inside the box. That is the same protection that a Faraday cage would provide and the main provision I have for any such disaster. That and the little tin mob with the pocket watch and Grandad's pen knife.

I have always wondered why people wanted to protect their comms if the guy on the other end did not protect his? You would be like that jerk at the supermarket walking around with the blue tooth in his ear pretending to talk to some imaginary person on the other end. (One survey I read stated that 1/3 of the calls on these headphone set deals had no one on the other end.)

Tablets, pads, phones with all your information??? That is only prepping for disaster. The dark ages existed because there was no paper to write things down. It was all in a "memory bank" and when that source died of disease or old age the knowledge died with it and we forgot how to make concrete for 2000 years! Make a hard copy. I can not imagine the experience of having all your life work on the thumb drive and not being able to retrieve it. (Come to think of it I do know that feeling, I have a masters degree thesis on floppy disk and no terminal within 100 miles that will read them!)

Most of the information I really need is on the bookshelf, not in a hard drive. That is one advantage to being a long term "prepper". For my first 40 years of this endeavor I did not even own a computer. There are more than 400 volumes of "prepper" related material in my shelves.

Hopefully your solar charger would provide power for the laptop and pad, if they were intact. Hopefully you can still pull up the information you need to build a good privy and hope the source you have on preserving meat really knew what they were talking about. That is especially the case for all those that feel having the information is as good as having the experience. Just wait until you cut into that first shoulder of bacon and realize the book was wrong, you did not use enough salt and the salt you did use, and the whole hog, are wasted!

I did not worry about EMP for the better part of 30 years, after the fall of the old Soviet Union. Now we have the Korean thing going on and it is a concern again. Not a real worry, just a concern, since I can do nothing about its occurrence anyway.

This time around I am not 13 years old with my whole life ahead of me and worrying about the Russians in Cuba. I am nearly 70, have lived an interesting life and if I die in the next 5 minutes I have cheated death out of 25 years once already. I can easily live without computer, walkie-talkies, cell phones or internet until the meds run out and I lay down and breathe my last.