EMP Shakedown

[Taz Baby]

Not sure if this is the right category to post this under, but...

The night before last I got a chance to try out my lighting preps. A car hit a power pole about a mile up the road and knocked out power to 2000 homes in my town. Power was out for about two hours. It gave me an excuse to light up some candles, some oil lamps and some battery lamps. All I know is that if we ever get hit by an EMP, I hope it's in cool weather... those oil lamps put out some heat!




I have lamp oil, kerosene, plenty of candles, three 20 pound tanks of propane and about a dozen one pound propane canisters. The big hole in my lighting preps, as I found out, was solar-rechargeable "D" cells to power my electric lanterns. They put out so much more light and run so much cooler. Plus, they're a lot safer. I think the next thing I'm going to try as far as my PAW lighting is going to be a bunch of those solar powered lawn lights. Just stick 'em out in the backyard during the day, and bring 'em in at night.

We use solar lights for almost everything here. I even have solar Christmas tree lights. The spot lights are great. We have the walkways lit up with them also. We also have the solar security motion lights which work well, except they go off with every movement. We have bought most of ours from Harbor freight which are cheap. When we build our kitchen onto our little trailer we are going to use the string of white Christmas solar lights inside around the top molding and put the solar box outside. I say you can never have to many solar lights of any kind.

[Evolver]

Redundancy is the key. Have a backup for the backup all the way down to knowing how to make fire to knowing what to do without fire.

[austinrob]

the big question is always of course what will an EMP fry. understand that what does the frying is the EM field passing through conductive matter and inducing an electric current. If that current is higher than that part is designed for, it MAY fry. So just about anything with an antenna (or an unintentional antenna) will generate significant amounts of current in an EMP. A solar light? dunno... also don't know how much it can handle. How to protect electronics from an EMP? Is a grounded metal box enough? Opinions vary. My plan is a metal gun cabinet with electronics stored inside and grounded. Keep in mind that the shorter your run of your grounding wire from your ground post to your object to be grounded the better. I don't fully understand it, but a long ground wire can be essentially useless for grounding EM. Braided ground straps do better than solid core, but shorter is still better. (it has to do with EM travelling primarily on the surface of the conductive material).

[The Expendable]

From what I have read, a steel cabinet is not very resistant to EM fields. Copper is about the best, and aluminum is nearly as good. I will repost an experiment that I conducted in another thread.

[patdow1]

Don't forget to store a spare ECU in the event you plan on using your post 79 vehicles.

[RedJohn]

Don't forget to store a spare ECU in the event you plan on using your post 79 vehicles.

What's an ECU? E..something Control Unit?

[patdow1]

ECU stands for Engine Control Unit and without it you car won't run because all modern vehicles are so computer reliant. ECU's are usuallly located in the passenger side foot well if you are curious to see what one looks like. I've got spares for all my vehicles with the exception of my 11 300C. I'm currently researching methods of protecting them from a EMP.

[patdow1]

Ladies and Gentlemen, I've been consulting with my Special Forces contacts and they have advised me not to throw out those dryers that no longer work as they are the "Perfect" Faraday Cage that will protect electronics from a EMP attack. Just thought i would share that info with those willing to listen.

[The Stig]

......they have advised me not to throw out those dryers that no longer work as they are the "Perfect" Faraday Cage that will protect electronics from a EMP attack.

By dryers I'm assuming you mean clothes dryers?

[patdow1]

Yes sir! The only modifiction I was advised to make to the dryer was to install a grounding strap.