🚀 go-pugleaf

Thus spoke the keyboard of jfw@ksr.com (John F. Woods):
>tilden@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Robert Tilden) writes:
>>	I'm sure you're correct about ground or air burst nuclear
>>explosions, but much of the concern about the effects of EMP is centered
>>around the possibility of a high (20-50 miles) altitude burst. During the
>>early days of nuclear testing, a high altitude hydrogen bomb test had a
>>definite effect on the Hawaiian Island chain, some hundreds of miles away.
>>As I remember, the EMP blew breakers (fuses?) on commercial power grids, as
>>well as causing other problems. 
>
>One thing to note about commercial power grids is that they are hundreds of
>miles long (well, dozens of miles on Hawaii :-).  This makes them very good
>antennas for EMP.  That same EMP may not have necessarily destroyed every
>semiconductor consumer device on Hawaii (had the test happened late enough
>to find any :-).  But high-altitude blasts do generate more EMP than low
>altitude blasts, due to interaction with the ionosphere (which acts sort of
>like a big transmitting antenna for it :-).

Strong aurora activity may generate so high voltage on the power grids
that the result is power failure. I know that there has been large
power dropouts in parts of Norway and Sweden due to very strong aurora.

Also the telehpone lines, radio communication and the computer network
may fail due to aurora activity. I guess the aurora also generate some
sort of EMP, but not in the same way as a nuclear bomb will.

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* I went back to my mother,           * Joern Yngve Dahl-Stamnes           *
* I said, "I'm crazy ma, help me!"    * University of Trondheim            *
* She said, "I know how it feels son, * The Norwegian Institute of Tech.   *
* 'cause it runs in the family."      * Division of Physical Electronics   *
*       - The Who, Quadrophenia       * e-mail: dahls@fhydra.dnet.unit.no  *
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