and frankly, using nukes to create EMP would be the most "humane" and
attractive option to an opfor that I can recognize. take out all the
"Bygollians" infrastructure and ability to react and defend, and watch
'em kill each other off in paranoia, wackiness, disruption of food
supply due to loss of the toys, and harvest the spoils without any nasty
radiation in a few months.

think about it. clear out the power grid, communications, personal
electronics, emergency services command and control systems... cars and
trucks can't be used because the engine computers and coils are fried,
the same for locomotives... easy pickings as soon as the enraged and
frustrated locals kill each other off or just starve under bushes.

so just why in hell would you WANT to drop one to several thousand feet
above ground level and try to pulverize stuff and poison the ground?
you can't use anything then, and the fallout would be brutal world-wide.

Ed Price wrote:

"Dick Carroll;" wrote in message
...


Chuck Harris wrote:

Hi Dick,

EMP testing was done in the open air blasts in the Marshal Islands.
EMP testing was done under the desert in the Nevada tests.
EMP testing was done above ground in the US Army's facilities.

It is very well understood.

I wasn't clear. One's proximity to the event will mean everything, that's
the uncertainty,
along with the device yield.
. Close enough and you will certainly have problems. No one will know how
far away you have to
be to avoid them.


Both ground and air nuclear burst will cause an EMP. Further, the power will
fall off at 1/r^^2, but the field strength decays at 1/r. Devices may fail
due to induced power or voltage (for instance, a high impedance FET gate
might easily fail with only a very modest induced voltage).

The air burst NEMP can be optimized by placing the detonation just at the
outer fringe of the Earth's atmosphere. The device is designed to direct an
intense x-ray burst downward into the atmosphere. This energy interacts with
the Earth's magnetic field, causing an intense EM field to propagate toward
the Earth's surface. Since the optimum burst height is defined by the
density of the atmosphere, there's not much you can do to increase your
separation distance (short of digging a very deep hole).

Back in the good old days of the USA / USSR cold war, when both sides had
plenty of nukes, any serious exchange of weapons would have made diverting a
few to NEMP optimization a cheap investment (considering the potential for
disruption).

Ed
WB6WSN

-- If it's a "new economy," why do they want my obsolete old money?