OT: EMP and Equipment

woodelf wrote: no, EMP as related to an atmospheric nuclear explosion is caused because of the release of energy from the atmosphere ionized by the radiation pulse sent by the blast. when the ionized gases recombine, they release a huge amount of radio frequency radiation in a pulse. This causes any junctions to have induced a potential across them, unrelated to being plugged into anything. This is similar to the damage from static electricity, but is not related to direct conduction and release of potential to ground, which static usually is, but is rather induced potentially deep inside any devices however well shielded. The only way to guard against this is to engineer all junctions and circuits to withstand and survive this potential. This is also the reason that vacumn tube circuits recover faster or at least they should, if the circuits don't get damaged by a sudden jump in potential passing thru them and settle back down. They don't have solid state junctions to be damaged permanently in such an event, and in theory should settle back to original function. note that satellites in orbit, or airborne aircraft can be equally at risk to EMP. Note that the high potential caused by lighting is mostly caused by conduction, not by the field of the bolt. It is an excess of electrons looking for a path that cause the damage there. Nuke EMP is blast, which is why it could be an effective threat over hundreds of miles distant.