Sunday, March 24All That Matters

Practical Engineering – How would a nuclear EMP affect the power grid?


Practical Engineering – How would a nuclear EMP affect the power grid?




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9 Comments

  • MasterArCtiK

    I love this channel, found it about a year ago and watch every one when they release. Always super educational and interesting topics

  • Africa_versus_NASA

    The real danger (which he somewhat alluded to) is not so much from a nuclear weapon, but instead from naturally occurring geomagnetic storms originating from solar flares, like the Carrington Event:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event

    That event occurred in 1859 and was so intense it made telegraph stations catch on fire. You can somewhat imagine what it would do in our modern age of highly sensitive digital technology. The good news is, we can kind of see this coming by monitoring the sun and space weather, and might be able to disconnect some of the more sensitive portions of the power grid ahead of time. The bad news is, it is difficult to EMP-harden the power transmission lines; about the most effective thing would be bury all of them, but that would be extremely expensive, time consuming, and in many places impossible.

  • The_Real_Dundarious

    DNA EM-1 – Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons is a good read (though heavily redacted).

    “Detonations above about 130,000 feet
    produce EMP effects on the ground over areas
    that may encompass thousands of square miles.
    Although the strengths of these fields are less
    than half those in the highly ionized region surrounding a surface burst, they are of sufficient
    magnitude to damage electrical and electronic
    equipment. The mechanisms of formation of
    EMP are treated in Chapter 7. “

  • FOTBWN

    Countries that have strategic nuclear weapons include this ability with strikes. A weapon is detonated in the atmosphere to create the EMP to knock out electronics which include communications and defence systems (good reason why military hardware is generally EMP hardened) shortly afterward the actual strikes happen.

    If there’s a time when a nuclear exchange could happen at any time and you’re driving to work but suddenly everyone’s car stops along with everything electronic for a seemingly unknown reason. You may as well step out of the car, put the sunglasses on and make peace with your maker.

  • Alrightmyluvver

    Ah yes… the regular nuclear scaremongering posts are back I see. Here’s the thing Vladolf… We all know you ain’t gonna do shit or you would have already. Just get out of Ukraine already. It’s not yours.

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