Re: EM pulse

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

At 20:02 -0600 9/5/02, Gary Karshner wrote:

>          Have you heard about what happens to a CD in a microwave. I
> suspect that the same would probably happen to a CD in an EM Pulse. A high
> field strengths many of our general rules break down. When I worked a Kitt
> Peak, we had a TV camera on the roof of the solar telescope that was
> enclosed in a 1/2"  thick walled aluminum tube with 3/4" thick end plates.
> It took a hit from lightening and the entire insides were fried even though
> I would have thought that the enclosure was an almost ideal Faraday shield.

It takes a few seconds in a microwave to toast a CD, and I suspect
the energy levels are higher in the microwave. An EMP only lasts for
a few microseconds, as I recall, and the damage is due to the fact
that the high voltages induced are way higher than the solid-state
electronics at the input end of most electronic devices can handle,
to the input circuits are easily fried. I had some contact with the
Navy's EMP program back in the 70s, and was told by some of the
people working on the problem, that, because we used light-weight,
state-of-the-art electronics in our military equipment, we were
especially vulnerable to EMP, while, at the time, Soviet electronics
was still almost all vacuum tube-based, and that as a result they
were much less susceptible to EMP than we were. At one point the Navy
was planning to do some tests on animals to see how they would handle
an EMP, but I don't think they could ever get DoD to clear the use of
the animals. That was one of the times when PETA was making a lot of
noise in the DC area.

It was estimated that a 1 MT bomb detonated 100 miles over Kansas
could knock out just about every piece of electronic equipment in the
US. A similar explosion over Russia would have far less effect.

Perhaps it would depend on where the CD was located when the EMP was
delivered. But unless high enough currents could be induced inside
the CD to cause the aluminum to flow, and I doubt there is enough
energy associated with an EMP to do that sort of damage, I suspect
that CD damage would not be a big factor.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
******************************************************