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Nebakenezzer posted:Soooooo, for us non-physicists, how do you make a lightning gun? My understanding of lighting is that it is a massive buildup of charge trying to get to the ground; I don't see how'd you aim that effect. You want to use a laser to ionise the air, then build up some stupid amount of charge in a capacitor bank and hope that the thing you're pointing the beam at, arcs to ground rather than your facility. Every single step of that is stupid complex.
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Jun 28, 2016 00:32
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TTerrible posted:I read something once about using some kind of lower powered beam to create an ionised/polarised/something path between emitter and target that the larger discharge would use as a path of least resistance? It could have been in a dumb game though. That's referred to as an electrolaser, I believe. There's been some thinking of using low-powered ones as "air tasers", capable of zapping people instantaneously without the need for physical darts with trailing wires. Black Vault is a pretty good site for declassified stuff. It's a conspiracy theory website so there's a lot of bullshit, but they love doing FOIA requests to get as many documents as possible to upload. Like this very neat report from 1991 out of China Lake on the Soviet method for weapon system procurement and design. It's a good resource for debunking the "Soviet technology was primitive yet indestructible so it could be used by illiterate peasants" myth.
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Jun 28, 2016 00:35
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bitcoin bastard posted:I disagree with this chart because it implies that escalation will go from 41->1 linearly. In reality you'll be down in the 30s but someone will escalate to 5 (looking at you Turkey) to send a political message, then fall back down into the 30s. Also large scale evacuations are not in the 20s, that poo poo is single digit for sure. Once again it's about the message; if the US/Russia evacuates their cities, that's a pretty loving clear message to the other side that the initiating side is planning on sucking up a first strike. Also nothing happens in a vacuum, and this handy 41 point list completely ignores context. should read the book, Khan does a much better job explaining it. Its not a linear list. Its a ladder!
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Jun 28, 2016 01:15
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DesperateDan posted:Yeah Phanatic's post and the ramifications of a sufficient series of EMP bursts alone are pretty horrifying. Nah, your car's almost certainly fine. There's been a bunch of testing on this, odds are it's perfectly functional. Maybe a check engine light or something, but it'll still work. Trouble is that there are a lot of cars on the roads, and the few that did break mean urban streets are going to be pretty impassible. Plus the traffic lights all stopped working, and when you do run out of gas the pumps down at the gas station don't have any power. On the individual level, okay, maybe you've got a generator in the basement that you could throw in a wheelbarrow and haul on down to the Sunoco and get something running, or pry the lids off the tanks and use a bailing pump from your Sunfish in the garage, but that doesn't really scale well.
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Jun 28, 2016 01:55
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Do EMPs actually wreck unpowered devices? Is the trickle of energy from turning off a device but leaving it plugged into an outlet enough to fry it? I thought they would only gently caress up electrical devices with actual power coming to them.
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Jun 28, 2016 02:08
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IIRC the car thing was back when the cars were steel bumper to bumper and had mechanical points. They are pretty insulated nowadays.
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Jun 28, 2016 02:11
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chitoryu12 posted:Do EMPs actually wreck unpowered devices? Is the trickle of energy from turning off a device but leaving it plugged into an outlet enough to fry it? I thought they would only gently caress up electrical devices with actual power coming to them. If you plug it into the wall it'd be much more likely to be fried. If it's unplugged maybe or maybe not. If it's behind any kind of shielding - probably not. The problem is essentially the power grid itself becoming a huge antenna and frying a nice sized chunk of the infrastructure that distributes power along with a significant number of random things plugged into it.
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Jun 28, 2016 02:12
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Also your phone won't work if the towers are all fried.
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Jun 28, 2016 02:13
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VikingSkull posted:IIRC the car thing was back when the cars were steel bumper to bumper and had mechanical points. They are pretty insulated nowadays. The processors are also more delicate. Testing over the past few decades was always a crapshoot, even the direction the vehicle is pointing can be a factor.
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Jun 28, 2016 03:40
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VikingSkull posted:IIRC the car thing was back when the cars were steel bumper to bumper and had mechanical points. They are pretty insulated nowadays. The car thing was always a myth. A car with mechanical points is going to be more resistant to EMP than a car whose ignition timing depends on an IC, and an old mechanical diesel's going to be more resistant yet. And a big steel body is a much better approximation of a Faraday cage than something built out of a lot of fiberglass and composites. EMP was never going to kill more than a small fraction of the cars exposed to it until you got to simply absurd field strengths. But it's a myth that made it into The Day After, etc, so there you go. http://www.empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP_Commission-7MB.pdf quote:We tested a sample of 37 cars in an EMP simulation laboratory, with automobile vintages ranging from 1986 through 2002. Automobiles of these vintages include extensive electronics and represent a significant fraction of automobiles on the road today. The testing was conducted by exposing running and nonrunning automobiles to sequentially increasing EMP field intensities. If anomalous response (either tem porary or permanent) was observed, the testing of that particular automobile was stopped. If no anomalous response was observed, the testing was continued up to the field intensity limits of the simulation capability (approximately 50 kV/m). Automobiles were subjected to EMP environments under both engine turned off and engine turned on conditions. No effects were subsequently observed in those automobiles that were not turned on during EMP exposure. The most serious effect observed on running automobiles was that the motors in three *Your* car will probably be fine. Getting anywhere in it is another issue. Trucks were even less of an issue. If the truck wasn't running at the time of the pulse, it was fine. Out of 18 trucks tested while running, three motors stopped but two of them were immediately restartable, only the other vehicle went tits-up. In reference to "New York had a blackout and it wasn't that bad," check out pages 43-45. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Jun 28, 2016 |
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Jun 28, 2016 03:47
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People who have plaster walls w/chicken wire type substrate are living in incomplete faraday cages. IT people occasionally bitch about them for making wireless networks impossible to build properly. Wonder how common that is.
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Jun 28, 2016 05:00
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Arglebargle III posted:People who have plaster walls w/chicken wire type substrate are living in incomplete faraday cages. IT people occasionally bitch about them for making wireless networks impossible to build properly. Wonder how common that is. Depends on the age of the building, if there has been a remodel, etc.
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Jun 28, 2016 05:48
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Reinforced concrete. gently caress you, rebar. 
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Jun 28, 2016 09:23
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Force de Fappe posted:Reinforced concrete. gently caress you, rebar. Considering what rebar has given us I am willing to sacrifice cell signal for modern infrastructure.
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Jun 28, 2016 11:59
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lol at putting the Air Force song lyrics in this graphic
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Jun 28, 2016 14:17
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mlmp08 posted:lol at putting the Air Force song lyrics in this graphic How does that graphic look if you include "Times plane failed to boot up"?
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Jun 28, 2016 15:16
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mlmp08 posted:lol at putting the Air Force song lyrics in this graphic Pew Pew Pew?
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Jun 28, 2016 15:22
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Gervasius posted:Pew Pew Pew? Enter the Grover.
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Jun 28, 2016 15:30
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mlmp08 posted:lol at putting the Air Force song lyrics in this graphic Should have changed "go down" to "take off".
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Jun 28, 2016 16:10
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chitoryu12 posted:Do EMPs actually wreck unpowered devices? Is the trickle of energy from turning off a device but leaving it plugged into an outlet enough to fry it? I thought they would only gently caress up electrical devices with actual power coming to them. It doesn't matter whether the device is on or off, or even unplugged. The emp itself is the source of the destructive current.
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Jun 28, 2016 17:09
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A device that's unplugged won't be as sensitive to an EMP though, because it doesn't have the grid acting as a giant antenna, correct? I'm not saying that it won't be effected, simply that say, a desktop computer that isn't plugged into anything might require a more powerful pulse to generate a destructive induced current, since the internal circuits simply aren't long enough to pick up enough of the pulse? Or am I way the gently caress off?
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Jun 28, 2016 18:11
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Crigit posted:It doesn't matter whether the device is on or off, or even unplugged. It absolutely *can* matter. Consider a transformer. There's some level of current that will result in overheating and damage, let's say that's 1000 amps. If the transformer is not being used, if it's in a powered-off state, and you hit it with a E3 pulse that induces 200 amps of current flow, you have no problem, it's just going to sit there and take it. If the transformer is in operation and is already close to its design limit with 900 amps flowing through it, now that same EMP comes along, 1100 > 1000, and now you need a new transformer. Similarly with E1, if your circuit board is powered of everything is at 0V relative to everything else; it's less likely that something's going to be made to arc to something else than if some parts of it are already at 12V relative to other parts of it; it's easier for the pulse to push something over the cliff and result in damage if the system's already powered on than if it's not. There's a range of field strengths where you're going to be hosed either way, and there's a range of field strengths where nothing is going to happen, but where in that spectrum your device is can definitely be affected by whether it's turned on or not. MrYenko posted:A device that's unplugged won't be as sensitive to an EMP though, because it doesn't have the grid acting as a giant antenna, correct? I'm not saying that it won't be effected, simply that say, a desktop computer that isn't plugged into anything might require a more powerful pulse to generate a destructive induced current, since the internal circuits simply aren't long enough to pick up enough of the pulse? Again, there are different components. E1 is from the Compton-scattered electrons spiraling around at near-light-need in the Earth's magnetic field. Contains very high-frequency components, very quick rise-time, this damages poo poo by creating localized voltages so high that breakdown and arcing occurs, field strengths are tens of thousands of volts per meter. This damage mode doesn't rely on the grid acting like a giant antenna, it relies on the fact that two bits of PCB that are right next to each other might now have a 400V potential between them and that's enough to arc and blast the trace right off the board. E2 is produced by the neutrons flying out of the blast scattering off of air molecules and producing additional gamma rays. The fundamental mechanism of how the pulse is created is similar, but the rise time is longer and it's a weaker field-strength. It's similar to the pulse from a lightning strike, but it covers a much wider area. *By itself* E2 wouldn't be much of a problem, but it's not by itself, it's coming right on the heels of the E1, so the devices you were relying to provide protection against a lightning strike are very possibly already damaged by the E1 pulse. It's E3 that's your big long-duration low-frequency pulse that kills stuff by inducing serious currents in transmission lines and generator/transformer windings and so forth. Yeah, if your computer's not plugged into the grid, E3's not going to do much to it, but the concern about this pulse is that it's going to collapse the grid over much of the US and do it in such a way that it takes a long time to get the lights back on again.
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Jun 28, 2016 18:29
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Phanatic posted:It absolutely *can* matter. Consider a transformer. There's some level of current that will result in overheating and damage, let's say that's 1000 amps. If the transformer is not being used, if it's in a powered-off state, and you hit it with a E3 pulse that induces 200 amps of current flow, you have no problem, it's just going to sit there and take it. If the transformer is in operation and is already close to its design limit with 900 amps flowing through it, now that same EMP comes along, 1100 > 1000, and now you need a new transformer. Similarly with E1, if your circuit board is powered of everything is at 0V relative to everything else; it's less likely that something's going to be made to arc to something else than if some parts of it are already at 12V relative to other parts of it; it's easier for the pulse to push something over the cliff and result in damage if the system's already powered on than if it's not. There's a range of field strengths where you're going to be hosed either way, and there's a range of field strengths where nothing is going to happen, but where in that spectrum your device is can definitely be affected by whether it's turned on or not. This is an awesome post. Thanks. 
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Jun 28, 2016 19:58
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Can EMP/flare effects interact with people directly? Can the latent charge ever be so high as to mess with humans directly, like interfering with the heart? Is there a risk of getting electrocuted from nearby objects gaining a shitload of charge? These posts have been super interesting to me, my understanding of electricity in general is really poo poo, but I've always been curious. Mazz fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Jun 28, 2016 |
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Jun 28, 2016 20:59
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Phanatic posted:It absolutely *can* matter. Consider a transformer. There's some level of current that will result in overheating and damage, let's say that's 1000 amps. If the transformer is not being used, if it's in a powered-off state, and you hit it with a E3 pulse that induces 200 amps of current flow, you have no problem, it's just going to sit there and take it. If the transformer is in operation and is already close to its design limit with 900 amps flowing through it, now that same EMP comes along, 1100 > 1000, and now you need a new transformer. Similarly with E1, if your circuit board is powered of everything is at 0V relative to everything else; it's less likely that something's going to be made to arc to something else than if some parts of it are already at 12V relative to other parts of it; it's easier for the pulse to push something over the cliff and result in damage if the system's already powered on than if it's not. There's a range of field strengths where you're going to be hosed either way, and there's a range of field strengths where nothing is going to happen, but where in that spectrum your device is can definitely be affected by whether it's turned on or not. Interesting. So the Russian/Chinese/Nork high altitude nukes will come on 4th of July or some hot day in August?
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Jun 28, 2016 21:06
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chitoryu12 posted:How does that graphic look if you include "Times plane failed to boot up"? Wouldn't be too different...sounds like the rev they're on now for the 3i OFP fixed a lot of those stability problems they ran into during the last "deployment" to Mountain Home earlier this year. Only 2 ground aborts in 88 sorties is actually really good, a 2.3% ground abort rate is something any mx officer would take. Granted it's a small sample size, but I guarantee you a comparable deployment event involving F-16s or F-15s would have a GA rate somewhere upwards of 10-15% at a minimum.
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Jun 28, 2016 22:20
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Mazz posted:Can EMP/flare effects interact with people directly? Can the latent charge ever be so high as to mess with humans directly, like interfering with the heart? Well, it's the result of broadband EM radiation. It's nonionizing but that still doesn't mean you'd want to be in a microwave oven. Enough radiation's going to dump enough energy into you to cook you, but that's a level far beyond what the EMP is delivering. quote:Is there a risk of getting electrocuted from nearby objects gaining a shitload of charge? It's not charge, just potential. The E1 pulse isn't dumping a bunch of charge carriers into an object and giving it a big electrostatic charge, it's creating a large potential difference which can result in current flowing where it shouldn't. Yes, a big-enough electromagnetic field strength across you can have bad effects, from just heating you up, to setting up voltage gradients in your various tissues and loving with your action potentials; there are occupational limits for RF fields that are set with those things in mind. But the peak field strengths for that sort of EMP are for a vanishingly short duration, the time constant is only a few hundred nanoseconds; any reasonably-sized nuclear blast sure isn't going to do that. If you keep cranking the field strength to arbitrary values, eventually you'll just get dielectric breakdown; like if the field strength is high enough for there to be 1000 volts potential between the outside of your skin and the inside of your skin, ouch, but again, you're not getting that from anywhere outside a textbook.
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Jun 28, 2016 23:20
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Just wanna say Command Modern Air Naval Operations models EMP attacksquote:* New major weapon feature: Nuclear detonations now produce a broadband EMP wave.  quote:EMP effects from nuclear detonations are not new; we introduced them already in v1.09 and they have been a lot of fun to use and experiment with. They were not however easy to use from an end-user perspective unless one was willing to get down and dirty with Lua in the scenario editor. v1.10 changes that. Now even aunt Elma can paralyze your country.
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Jun 28, 2016 23:29
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AceRimmer posted:Map of all the other ex-ICBM sites around Tucson: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1ZYaMhFJqpTcCrLX_HFyZ39ZdNW8&hl=en I guess they weren't really planning on using any of the poo poo in the boneyard once World War III kicked off.
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Jun 28, 2016 23:33
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I'm on the Acela right now and the train just passed Martin State Airport. There was what looked a hell of a lot like a Catalina with MD AIR GUARD painted on the side; definitely a seaplane. Do we still have any in service?
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Jun 28, 2016 23:44
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The Maryland ANG flies A-10s, so I have no idea what that was.
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Jun 29, 2016 00:14
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Mortabis posted:I'm on the Acela right now and the train just passed Martin State Airport. There was what looked a hell of a lot like a Catalina with MD AIR GUARD painted on the side; definitely a seaplane. Do we still have any in service? Per Wikipedia's article on the MD Air National Guard, it was almost certainly one of these, a military version of the Grumman Mallard, which was itself a later version of the beautiful and beloved Grumman Goose: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_HU-16_Albatross
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Jun 29, 2016 00:48
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Kesper North posted:Per Wikipedia's article on the MD Air National Guard, it was almost certainly one of these, a military version of the Grumman Mallard, which was itself a later version of the beautiful and beloved Grumman Goose: The Albatross is a size bigger than the Mallard, and the largest of Grumman's amphibians, as far as I know. There's some survivors still flying but I'm not sure I've ever seen one.
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Jun 29, 2016 01:29
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Kesper North posted:Per Wikipedia's article on the MD Air National Guard, it was almost certainly one of these, a military version of the Grumman Mallard, which was itself a later version of the beautiful and beloved Grumman Goose: That looks exactly like it. It had two engines (I forgot the Catalina had four). It was painted gray.
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Jun 29, 2016 01:43
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Mortabis posted:That looks exactly like it. It had two engines (I forgot the Catalina had four). It was painted gray. The catalina had 2 engines.
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Jun 29, 2016 01:45
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StandardVC10 posted:The Albatross is a size bigger than the Mallard, and the largest of Grumman's amphibians, as far as I know. There's some survivors still flying but I'm not sure I've ever seen one. I think Chalk's owned basically all the last "airworthy" Albatrosses before they restructured. There may be a few left, but I personally wouldn't want to be in one, in the air or on the water.
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Jun 29, 2016 02:15
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kill me now posted:The catalina had 2 engines. ... You are right. I looked at the wiki picture and at low resolution it looked like 4 to me for some reason. 
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Jun 29, 2016 02:19
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Thanks for the EMP chat. Now I don't feel so much like I ought to be a prepper  Just out of morbid curiosity, what happens to people who have pacemakers metal plates in them? I'm assuming a pacemaker would be bad, a metal plate probably no big deal?
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Jun 29, 2016 04:46
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Buttcoin purse posted:Thanks for the EMP chat. Now I don't feel so much like I ought to be a prepper Holy poo poo yes good question. And what about people with cybernetic limbs? Now that that's actually getting to be a real thing.
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Jun 29, 2016 06:34
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Buttcoin purse posted:Thanks for the EMP chat. Now I don't feel so much like I ought to be a prepper Think about it like this (this is a guess), if the electric field differential across you isn't enough to knock out a natural pacemaker, it probably won't knock out an electronic unit doing the same thing, there are loads of other considerations but it's pretty hard to get a current going through a human's chest unless you really try. The human heart is really cool, it has a whole bunch of oscillating currents balanced around it to govern operation. You'd need a huge potential difference across your chest to kill you, like a defibrillator, and that's never gonna happen with any kind of EMP bomb, whether it's nuclear or one of the funky things that have been experimented with blowing up superconducting magnets. You'd be having other problems rather than your heart stopping, like being on fire. Cybernetic limbs, oh dear, they have conductors on the order of say a foot, and sensitive electronics that won't explode, just be interfered with. That's near microwave wavelength, and they propagate through the atmosphere rather well (hence all our mobile phones). I suspect that'd be pain.
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Jun 29, 2016 12:23
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