On 25/10/2018 07:06, Jeff wrote:

Jeff's problems began when his nuclear-weapons handbook didn't appear to
explain what the purpose was of the test under discussion. As a result
he limited himself to EMP in a test that used a weapon that wasn't
designed to produce it, and which was in fact being tested for different
effects[1] so had to have this explained to him. Anyway this is all far
above any pay grade you ever held so I would not have expected you to
understand the difference, either then or now, but it was generous of
you to remind us all once more of your shortcomings.

[1] Jeff wrote "The Russian K program was there to investigate EMP just
as were the
Starfish and Fish-bowl US programmes, They were high altitude tests and
produced no ground effects other than EMP, not good for blowing thing up
on the ground", which of course ignores what the K tests were actually
designed to test - which wasn't EMP.

You were trying to deflect the argument, which was that low level bursts
do no produce wide area EMP. To do that requires a high altitude burst,
in the region of 50km +, which is outside the capabilities of most
terrorist groups, which was what was bing discussed (although looking at
the behaviour of some states these days the definition might be a little
fudged).

IIRC that's what Reay has claimed as well, but his first contribution to
the thread was an attack on Cummins, one of several of his in that
thread. Note that the Trinity test in 1945 had screened/hardened test
equipment because of the EMP threat, and some of it failed due to the
EMP. In any case Gareth's original post that started the thread makes no
mention of the burst height, so there was nothing to 'fudge', as you put
it, although it should be noted that you did say "Low altitude or ground
level bursts produce little in the way of EMP, this is due to the
mechanism that produces the pulse which requires a
large mean free path between electrons in the atmosphere that only
exists at very high altitudes.". 'Little' does not equal 'none', as they
found out at Alamogordo.


--
Spike

"Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character,
give him an internet group to manage"