The world is a fragile place, even though it might not seem that way all of the time. After all, the wide majority of people are located in lives that work perfectly fine. They get up in the morning, drink their cup of coffee, start their car or set out to the subway entrance, start their work in an office and then come back home for some leisure time behind their computer, gaming console, or a TV. This is how life works for most individuals and it seems like nothing could disrupt it in any significant way, no matter how disastrous event might occur. For most people, even in the case of a complete catastrophe, all of the mentioned things would be there or eventually come back.
Yet, there is a scenario that allows for all of those things to go away and do so in a blink of an eye. Every one of those mentioned objects, from the metro line to the coffee maker, could be gone in an instant. The possibility of this comes with the phenomena of the EMP or an electromagnetic pulse. What is even stranger about that scenario is that it would not necessarily bring about fire, ruin, and everything else that usually comes with an apocalypse. For most people, this eventuality would look and feel like nothing out of the ordinary. In spite of that “quietness” of the EMP disaster, the results would be equally catastrophic. Depending on the strength of the EMP, airplanes could fall from the sky, communications could go down and all electronic or even electric devices could stop working.
All the while, the rest of the world will appear normal, houses and buildings would stand and people be unharmed (unless they are using a pacemaker). This might sound like science fiction, but the threat of an EMP has been real for decades. The modern world is no different. Today, a single strong enough burst of EMP and its energies could literally overload and fry the world in seconds. Once it has passed, all electronics and equipment that uses electronics would be rendered useless. They would not be repairable nor would there be any tools that could produce them from scratch.
All of that is related to the actual nature of EMP. But, what is an EMP? The answer is relatively simple. An electromagnetic pulse is a terrible destructive power that comes both in natural forms and man-made ones. Basically, it represents an occurrence of an entity (human or nature-made) emitting a huge amount of electromagnetic energy. Instead of keeping up with a continuous emission over a period of time, the same source puts out a pulse or a burst of the same energies. In its mixture, EMP includes electric fields, magnetic fields, electromagnetic radiation and electrical conduction. These spread out spherically from the source, but lose almost nothing of their starting energy. As they expand, anything made out of metal becomes a conductive material.
But, because of the intensity of the pulse, the same metal elements cannot transfer power further afield, but absorb it themselves. This results in the metal either melting or overloading out of working shape. EMP effects would occur in all parts of a device and there is no way to insulate them from this possibility, except if they are some important piece of equipment that has EMP shielding. A wide majority of all electronics on the planet have nothing like that at their disposal. This is why EMP is not something a person can easily hide or run away from. Once this moment of electromagnetic pulse passes, any territory it passes would be completely devoid of any working electronics.
Simply put, the EMP disaster, especially one on a global scale, is the death of the modern world. In a moment, the entire planet would be, technologically speaking, returned to the start of the 20th century. This is, however, the best case scenario where some types of equipment would survive. In fact, a global EMP event could render all electronic or electric elements completely useless. That would put the world at the very start of the 19th century where the biggest piece of tech at humanity’s disposal would be a steam-powered locomotive.
This all seems like a quiet nightmare scenario and a possibility of an EMP really is that. With the same fact in mind, anyone who is of a prepper mentality has to have a comprehensive knowledge about it. With it, they also must possess a plan how will they and their loved ones survive in a world after a catastrophic electromagnetic pulse.
Learn more about EMPs:
EMP Survival: Preparing for a Disaster
3 Most Important Potential Causes of an EMP
The Best All-Around Homemade Faraday Cage (To protect your electronic devices from an EMP)
