🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BsE6LI.BMH@acsu.buffalo.edu>, yaosenko@acsu.buffalo.edu (Yaosen Ko) writes:
	> I was told that ALL electronic devices are going to fail after
	> a global thermonuclear war.  It seems to have something to do with
	> strong electro-magnet field  created by nuclear weapons
	> 
	> What is your opinion?  If it is true, how could we prrevent such
	> failure on electronic devices?  Shielding them with thick lead
	> wall?
	> 

A nuclear weapon produces a very large pulse of electromagnetic radiation
(EMP), which can burn out any electronics it gets into. The effect is rather
like a very close lightning strike, and the energy usually gets into the
circuitry via cabling, which acts like an antenna. One way to protect
things is to take the same precautions you do against lightning, keep the
equipment disconnected from everything unless you're using it.

Other approaches, popular with the military, are to use either:

1) valves (tubes) in the equipment. Some older (mostly ex-Soviet) equipment
may well survive this situation simply because thermionic valves are so much
tougher than transistors when it comes to electrical shocks.

2) fibre-optic cables. Fibres don't conduct electricity, and so can't act
like antennae.


Keeping the equipment in lead boxes would protect it from other kinds of
radiation from nuclear explosions, but unless the operators are in the
box too there'll be nobody left to care if it works. EMP can damage equipment
from a long way off, without producing enough radiation to harm people.
It's been suggested that any nuclear war may well start with a dozen or
so high-altitude nuclear explosions specially designed to produce
maximum EMP to destroy communications.  Hopefully nobody will ever get
to try that theory out.

Steve