EMPs (Electromagnetic Pulse) are a trope that is often used in prepper fiction. We often think of an EMP attack as the worst-case, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario that is just around the corner. There’s little doubt that it would change everything, but what’s the truth?
Here’s what an expert has to say about EMPs
Nobody knows this better than Dr. Arthur T. Bradley. Dr Bradley is a NASA engineer and the leading expert on EMPs in the preparedness community. He’s the author of Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness and the must-have Disaster Preparedness for EMPs and Solar Storms. I’ve had the opportunity to speak with him before myself, and you couldn’t ask for a nicer, more down-to-earth person. He really knows what he’s talking about and he shares information without hyperbole. He is the person I trust the most for information in this genre.
In this compelling interview, Brian Duff interviews Dr. Bradley to get the real answers. If you want to separate fact from fiction, watch this video.
What are your thoughts about EMPs?
After watching the video, did any of Dr. Bradley’s information on the result of EMPs surprise you? Based on this, are you making any changes to your long-term preparedness plan?
Let’s discuss it in the comments section.
Lots of good information in the interview. Thanks for sharing it.
I’ve been reading about EMP for many years and there was little new info for me, but I do have one thing to share; where did the 90% population reduction number come from.
When the EMP goes off, you lose the power grid, so you lose refineries, municipal water, house well water, municipal sewage, fuel pipeline transportation, etc. The EMP, also referred to as a Time Machine, takes technology back to the time before it existed, say 1890.
But the problem is a bit worse than that. Back then the country was much more agrarian. People had land, horses to pull plows, hand pumped wells, and were much more self-sufficient. None of that exists today except perhaps in the Amish communities.
So, the theory is that without modern conveniences, you can only support the population at the level of the technology. In 1890, US population was about 65 million. Allowing for our lack of ‘manual infrastructure’, let’s take us back to 1870, when the population was less than 40 million.
Current population is 330-340 million, so a technology level that supports less than 40 million people means we can only support 40 million people, and about a 90% reduction is guaranteed.
Granted, there will be a few tractors that will survive, but how long will they run before they run out of fuel? Same for water, how long will your stored water last, or your pantry, etc.
If there’s ever an EMP strike on the US, things will get dicey pretty quickly. JMHO.
Your right on Rayk thanks good comment 🙂
Quite interesting. Thank you.
If you are interested in EMP protection, I am using products from EMP Shield (empshield.com). No affiliation, and I get no compensation. I’ve put their products on my house power, standby generator, 3 vehicles and one UTV. I haven’t protected my tractor because it’s diesel with mechanical fuel injection. The only thing that might be affected is the instrument display.
I’ve also built 3 Faraday cages to store IR optics, Baofeng radios, hand cranked Emergency radio, last working laptop before an upgrade, solar USB charger, Ham radio and power supply, drone and display. Anything electronic that you want to have post EMP need to either be stored in a Faraday cage, or you need to have a spare stored in a Faraday cage. Metal trash can lined with cardboard is all you need; be sure to use A/C ducting metalized tape to tape the gap between the lid and the can.
On the topic of a laptop; what can you do with that if the grid is down? Won’t be any internet, most others wouldn’t have a computer other than government and you’d probably be talking to someone you had rather not be. I know about that company and honestly, my expectations are slightly different. I don’t see that happening anyway, but if it did, it would be our own government trying to stop us from overthrowing them. It would be a Hail Mary to keep us from communicating with each other. I may be wrong, but it’s my opinion. I do have numerous radios, no NODs which I do wish I had, but my wife doesn’t think being able to see in the dark is important enough. Yet, she enjoys watching the animals at night on our security cameras.
Speaking only for myself, my laptop contains the materia media collection from the foregoing 2,000 years (herbal and other healing knowledge). It also contains numerous how-to videos for setting and splinting broken bones, stitching lacerations and other tricky activities which will most likely be needed if one is left without any outside medical support. Given that transportation will essentially vanish, a rural resident will of necessity need to know how to heal and repair many things. My laptop also contains entertainment: songs and e-books to lighten my mood and occupy my imagination. Spreadsheets from past gardening activities help plan and implement future yield increases. I also have a small solar panel and powerbank to keep my laptop and a few lamps going when the grid power vanishes.
This is a good reason to find accessible water. A 250 ft deep well may be hard to access unless you’ve already found or built a way to use it. I have one water well that stands 38 feet below the surface. I have it with a manual winch ready to use. I was also given an antique hand pump that says it is good to 25 feet. I’m not sure if I can enhance it to add another 15 feet. I may use it on a couple of 330-gallon-connected containers that I am setting up buried to collect rainwater for the garden. as for survival with or without power I’ve done both here and if not fried I have plenty of solar power available. If fried there won’t be anyone to talk to by radio or phone anyway. So just keep on keeping on.
One of our biggest homeland threats is going to be ammo. Already police departments are having trouble and with the pending sale of another big producer ready to move to a nation nearer Russia it will leave our military not just low on stock-Thanks Biden- but leaves them without a main supplier. That leaves the nation vulnerable. We are already being put in positions none of us want to see where it can lead. Today new open threats against America and Israel, made by Iran, should make us take notice of what is going on in the world around us.
Plan on food and sources. Have your friends sorted and work with those you can work with. If or when it falls apart you need already hardened defences and plans in place. Defunding the police is already happening in a lot of places. Think about going back to being ready to live or die where you are and how few places there may actually be to run to. Who do you depend on if 911 doesn’t exist? Police in many places are an hour away if you can call the county sheriff’s department. What happens if you can’t call for law enforcement, an EMT and an ambulance, or a fire department? We may get there without an EMP. Falling into the Hands of the UN with its disregard for our laws and rights will be an eye-opener. Already when the UN has held meetings in places like Utah they used their people for security and meet secretly behind closed door and our police and citizens were closed out. When they go into nations as “peacekeepers” local law is outlawed. The control is total.
As bad as the results of an EMP could be, there may be worse just waiting to happen.
Any foreign troops, armed, on U.S. soil is grounds for immediate attack by our military. That’s when the war will begin, I think. EMP or no. ‘It’s me, Jessica’ is about as close to real as I think it will probably get. Just be as prepared as you can, and that’s all you can do.
Blessings,
OD
I will assume that your “Any… armed” is referring to troops we did not ask to come over, as we do with various NATO forces when doing joint exercises on U.S. soil.
A well, with a way to get to the water would be convenient, but we don’t live far from a river, and I have the means to make distilled water, not to mention several water barrels around the house to store rainwater. We’ll be okay in that regard.
I might suggest looking up this book on Amazon:
DIY: How to Build a Solar Water Distiller: Do It Yourself – Make a Solar Still to Purify H20 Without Electricity or Water Pressure Paperback – September 4, 2015,
by Sharon Buydens
There are a number of families along the US/Mexico border depending on such distillers because local politicians were not cooperating to clean up local water supplies. The design begins with a piece of clear glass about door size. A discarded sliding glass door can be made to work easily. Mounted on top of a waterproof box at about a 9 degree angle the sun’s heat can easily distill enough water. There are some YouTube videos that demo this but the Buydens book above has better detail.
Back on the power outage problem. Whether it is caused by an EMP or a less identifiable perpetrator committing a Cyber Polygon style attack … if that potentially long term power outage is timed to wait until CBDC money (dependant on the internet) has made physical and bankable cash worthless … we revert to a barter economy where even crypto currencies dependant on the internet don’t work.
The numbers I’ve seen reported that around 80% of the US population lived on farms and had gardening skills in the 1880s. By about 1930 as the Great Depression was beginning those numbers had dropped to about 30%. I’ve read that some 7 million people starved to death. I don’t know how accurate that number was. Today the number of people living on farms is closer to 1-2%.
I can’t think of a better term to describe the possible outcome of all-digital money than NATIONAL SUICIDE.
–Lewis
One thing I noticed in the talk is the necessity for an antenna to focus the power of the EMP. The electricity grid is one humongous antenna. But what about electronics not attached to that antenna? Will an EMP have enough power to melt the fine wires inside of chips? If it’s not connected to the grid, it won’t be effected by the third wave of the EMP that is the most damaging. If the EMP is far enough away or the force attenuated enough by geographic features, there’s a good chance that electronics not attached to the grid will survive.
I read of an experiment where a car was hit with an EMP. The EMP scrambled the bits inside the electronics and the car stopped. After the experiment was over and the cameras being packed up, the mechanic driving the car shut off all electricity in the car. Then he rebooted the electronics, started the car, and drove off. The chips had not been physically destroyed.
Actually, I don’t expect a nationwide EMP. I expect the country to be invaded by a occupying enemy who will want an operating electrical grid for their uses in their occupation of the country. That country has already infiltrated tens of thousands of troops into the U.S. They have also smuggled weapons for those troops. But they may shut off electricity to areas that they don’t control to hamper our ability to fight back. We’ll see if my expectation is correct.
I was in an auto shop when a couple arrived to check on their luxury car. The car had been parked when lightning struck the ground not far away. The repair shop detailed a long list of the circuits in the car which had been fried by the lightning’s EMP emissions. Not only were they having to replace the most critical systems and many sensors, but there were a handful of chips which were not available because of trade restrictions.
That was from LIGHTNING, which could happen to anyone, anywhere. I left that auto shop quite happy with my 1972 family-heirloom car, glad to know its circuits will still function except for a direct lightning strike on my car.
It is not if a car can survive a EMP that concerns me.
It is what if a EMP attack happens at peak rush hour.
Imagine driving along on a busy highway doing 65 or 70mph and suddenly your vehicle shuts down. Everything. To include power steering and brakes. How many people do you know would not panic, and guide the vehicle to a coast on the side of the road?
How many heavy duty trucks and 18-wheeler drivers could do it?
Hundreds of thousands of wrecks, perhaps millions. Many with fatalities.
Even not on a highway, there would be auto accidents, blocking up roadways and turning them into parking lots.
As for an invasion, would it not make more sense to launch an EMP attack, let natural population reduction occur to reduce the number of people who could resist and then there would be no need to feed them.
Everything you need to know about EMP’s: If one is detonated it’s back to the stone age and cave dwelling what else is there to know?
Here’s the big problem with surviving an EMP… assume you make it past the first 6 months of refugees seeking food and shelter and find a place to settle and survive long term. Assume you find a horse and some arable land.
How do you harness that horse to a plow? How do you make a harness? How do you make a plow? How do you grow crops with nothing but manual and animal labor? How do you harvest it, process it, store it? How do you adapt to a non-electrical world?
The skills of the pre-electrical age have been lost and few, if any, know them.
Start building a Library of books of old knowledge, skills and technology. Go to places like the Survivor Library or look for The Book of the Farm which is a full farming manual written in the pre-electrical age.
It’s Knowledge that will keep you alive in the long run.
I agree with you 100%.
Selco’s advice of “Dont be there in the first place,” comes to mind when it comes to location. I know that is not possible for everyone but I went out of my way to find that arable land in a rural area, far from major cities.
In the Marines, we did everything the hard way first so we knew we could do it, then did it the easy way. I have been trying to do everything as if it was a post-SHTF/EMP world. From hauling water manually, to using a scythe to cut hay for the livestock for the winter.
While I have a number of books like “Back to Basics,” I also live in a area with a large Amish community and am on very good terms with them.