CT - EMP Proofing - Thoughts / Advice?

[CyberJay]

From doh.wa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/Documents/Pubs/320-090_elecpuls_fs.pdf

TLDR: Hard to shield things, but unlikely to affect you as non-nuclear military grade weapons (if they even exist yet) would likely be limited to a few square miles. My take: Move away from anything important and the nukes would kill you before EMP was an issue. If you did survive the nukes, everyone without a working vehicle would be trying to kill you to take yours.

WHAT CAN BE DONE TO PROTECT ELECTRONICS
There are two basic ways to protect or harden items against EMP effects. The first method is metallic shielding. Shields are made of a continuous piece of metal such as steel or copper. A metal enclosure generally does not fully shield the interior because of the small holes that are likely to exist. Therefore, this type of shielding often contains additional elements to create the barrier. Commonly, only a fraction of a millimeter of a metal is needed to supply adequate protection. This shield must completely surround the item to be hardened. The second method, tailored hardening, is a more cost-effective way of hardening. In this method, only the most vulnerable elements and circuits are redesigned to be more rugged. The more rugged elements will be able to withstand much higher currents. This method has shown unpredictable failures in testing, though it is thought it may be useful to make existing systems less vulnerable.

EMP AS A WEAPON The non-lethal nature of electromagnetic weapons makes their use far less politically damaging than that of conventional munitions, and therefore broadens the range of military options available. For weapons purposes EMP producing sources other than nuclear detonations have been successfully developed. Several nations, with United States at the forefront, are reported to have developed non-nuclear bombs capable of generating EMPs. Electromagnetic bombs (E-bombs) are specialized, non-nuclear tools designed to destroy information systems. These devices are primarily intended for battlefield application, and their effects would be restricted to a relatively small area. An EMP shock wave can be produced by a device small enough to fit in a briefcase. High Power Electromagnetic Pulse generation techniques and High Power Microwave technology have matured to the point where practical E-bombs are becoming technically feasible, with new applications in both Strategic and Tactical Information Warfare. Although much of this work is classified, it's believed that current efforts are based on using high-temperature superconductors to create intense magnetic fields. The development of conventional E-bomb devices allows their use in non-nuclear confrontations to defeat an enemy without causing loss of life. Regardless of the method of delivery, experts agree that EMPs can be powerful enough to cripple electronic wiring and circuitry over a geographic area as large as several square miles, posing a real threat to the nation's critical infrastructure. In addition, the Defense Department's reliance on satellites and commercial computer equipment to

WOW - thanks and insightful.

What about severe Solar interference?

Sponsored

 

[Derektsla]

What about severe Solar interference?

No idea. All of this is out of my expertise.

 

[Jabman]

It's where I started. Had a science instructor in highschool who was a ham instructor and did vocational courses in electronics and ham radio. He was a radar operator pre-WWII. (Yes, pre. Scary smart guy.) Super old guy who didn't survive my tenure in highschool, but was very interesting.

But I'd always been pretty interested in how things worked! I went to University for aerospace but ran out of funds and did computers instead. My spouse does that really well so I went into retail, and then have been doing volunteer work, so I'm super-rusty.

But the essentials are there ^-^

-Crissa

Hhmmm, this explains a lot. You’re curiosity with electric vehicles and you’re understanding of electrical systems makes much more sense now. Your input has been invaluable in this forum. I am surprised and impressed that you continue to provide insight into a place where many find themselves to be novices in the realm of EE and all things EV. I know I am not alone in this sentiment, but I do think members of this forum have gained more insight into the intricacies of EV technology because of your input over the years.
my question must ultimately be: do you see EVs as the true future of transportation? Or are we the outliers in a population doomed to fossil fuels for the foreseeable future?

 

[JBee]

From doh.wa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/Documents/Pubs/320-090_elecpuls_fs.pdf

TLDR: Hard to shield things, but unlikely to affect you as non-nuclear military grade weapons (if they even exist yet) would likely be limited to a few square miles. My take: Move away from anything important and the nukes would kill you before EMP was an issue. If you did survive the nukes, everyone without a working vehicle would be trying to kill you to take yours.

WHAT CAN BE DONE TO PROTECT ELECTRONICS
There are two basic ways to protect or harden items against EMP effects. The first method is metallic shielding. Shields are made of a continuous piece of metal such as steel or copper. A metal enclosure generally does not fully shield the interior because of the small holes that are likely to exist. Therefore, this type of shielding often contains additional elements to create the barrier. Commonly, only a fraction of a millimeter of a metal is needed to supply adequate protection. This shield must completely surround the item to be hardened. The second method, tailored hardening, is a more cost-effective way of hardening. In this method, only the most vulnerable elements and circuits are redesigned to be more rugged. The more rugged elements will be able to withstand much higher currents. This method has shown unpredictable failures in testing, though it is thought it may be useful to make existing systems less vulnerable.

EMP AS A WEAPON The non-lethal nature of electromagnetic weapons makes their use far less politically damaging than that of conventional munitions, and therefore broadens the range of military options available. For weapons purposes EMP producing sources other than nuclear detonations have been successfully developed. Several nations, with United States at the forefront, are reported to have developed non-nuclear bombs capable of generating EMPs. Electromagnetic bombs (E-bombs) are specialized, non-nuclear tools designed to destroy information systems. These devices are primarily intended for battlefield application, and their effects would be restricted to a relatively small area. An EMP shock wave can be produced by a device small enough to fit in a briefcase. High Power Electromagnetic Pulse generation techniques and High Power Microwave technology have matured to the point where practical E-bombs are becoming technically feasible, with new applications in both Strategic and Tactical Information Warfare. Although much of this work is classified, it's believed that current efforts are based on using high-temperature superconductors to create intense magnetic fields. The development of conventional E-bomb devices allows their use in non-nuclear confrontations to defeat an enemy without causing loss of life. Regardless of the method of delivery, experts agree that EMPs can be powerful enough to cripple electronic wiring and circuitry over a geographic area as large as several square miles, posing a real threat to the nation's critical infrastructure. In addition, the Defense Department's reliance on satellites and commercial computer equipment to

WOW - thanks and insightful.

What about severe Solar interference?

The above was pretty much the only post with valid info on the EMP subject.

First question is simply do you live near a target for a potential EMP? If so, move...for various reasons. If not, don't worry about a EMP like, at all. Solar events are in it's own category, are not as location dependant as EMP, and are typically much more severe and cover a much larger area.
Don't believe the EMP movie hype, they only work if you are close enough, and even then, the way you point your CT could determine the result. (being made of SS etc)

Even blocking or jamming radio is more difficult than it once was, a lot of products are RF hardened due to FCC regs and digitalisation, look at drone use in conflicts, or how Starlink still works, despite the countermeasures trying to take them down. The CT will unlikely be affected unless you're close to it, and they would only ever use one on critical infrastructure, like a military base or critical electrical grid systems, or for that matter as a much more effective weapon at ground level to make sure it actually does some damage at all. EMP's simply don't have a "proven" effectiveness, rather they are powered more by hype and fear, if all things are considered.

Besides a green grassy field with a homestead is not a high priority target for a EMP. Right?

There are two parts to the EMP problem. One is your gear surviving the EMP, the second is you surviving after the EMP. Being prepared or surviving one event, doesn’t mean you will survive the next. What's a few days between friends?

Also being "in" a "survival situation" is itself a misnomer. In principal, you are either prepared now, and in a survival situation now, or you are not going to survive. In fact aren't we all just "trying to survive" since birth? With that mind set you will be better prepared, and prepare better.

Being prepared is also meaningless, if you aren't there to use what you prepared, or are in a location you can't escape or avoid a locally occurring calamity. Remember, not everything happens everywhere at once, so mobility is important, as are options for redundancy. Don't put all your eggs in the same basket, as they say.

So living near a target or area of risk is always going to increase your likelihood of severe consequence. Often the risk is not what you think it is.

An EV isn't particularly happy when it gets hit by lightning or power surge whilst charging, or flood, or flipped by a tornado, a puncture from debris (no spare on CT?) or theft, vandalism etc. A CT sticks out like a sore thumb to boot. If the grid is down you won't travel further than one charge. These are all things many more times likely to happen to you than a EMP, or a solar event. This is your real risk, and it's good to understand these before exploring the unlikely ones if you are serious about prepping.

The reality is you can't control every facet of technology or society, or environment. But you can reduce the consequences of those risks, and you can most importantly reduce your exposure to those risks. This starts with location, location, location.

If you live in or near a populous centre, you are both in a target area, and in a resource constrained area, meaning that people need to be fed and supplied from the "outside" of that area.

The reason you see empty streets in "end of the world" movies is because city streets don't make food people can eat, so to stay there means to starve, so everyone moves to where the food is, if it can't be shipped in anymore. The larger the population the worse the situation, just because you have prepared, doesn't mean someone else can't take it from you, and there are a lot of "someone's" out there who will want/need to at that point. You main risk here, and living in a city, is other desperate people who have not prepared for themselves, but are prepared to take it from you.

Lone wolf survival is a myth, community is essential, and there's no greater enemy than the one you don't know.

This is not only a food problem though. If the water system fails, there are going to be a lot of very desperate and "sick" people on top of this, and it all escalates very quickly, within days, if no help comes in from the outside. The water system, as also the grid is largely electrically/electronically controlled via old flimsy SCADA systems that are super exposed to various external threats including hack/EMP/Solar events. There is also significant amounts of water purity monitoring and filtering on municipal water supplies.

It is noteworthy here that the electrical grid cannot easily be started up in individual sections in isolation, it's designed so it is all interdependent, because the electrical phases have to be "in sync" (no not the band!). This means one section has to start, and then the next section is added and so on until it's all connected. The US grid has been up an running for a hundred years, and new parts of the grid have simply been added to the "synced" ones. This is not trivial, and of severe consequence for travelling with a EV. In fact over 95% of distributed embedded residential solar cannot operate without being synchronised to the grid either, so they don't help the problem either. No power often means no pumping for water either, and so losing one leads to cascading failures of other essentials. Install a large water tank.

Get a liquid fuel generator (portable 5kVa will do) and enough fuel storage to get where you need to go, that fits in the CT. If for some reason you aren't where you should be already, well before you need to be. Liquid fuel is still the easiest way to store energy. Have different options and directions to leave, but also investigate and have pre-planned locations to go to. On paper maps.

The point here is that your supply chains are the only thing that is keeping cities alive. They are on "life support" from the rural country that supplies them.

As a rule of thumb you have up to 3 days to leave a city before everyone else tries and fuel runs out (if you can even pump it in your car or the roads aren't blocked), after that without outside help you have about 1-2 weeks before martial law is imposed because of the looting etc, and then if still no help arrives, you will see cities abandoned in about 1-2months and gangs take over to "modulate" whatever supplies are left. Even if you hid in a bunker, it's unlikely nobody would notice your house or solar or Powerwall's, or CT/EVs, and would come around to see what can be had, and in this case, for free. Seeing currency is already not worth a dime.

But if you insist on staying on a target area and want to reduce your exposure to a EMP, then consider that shielding for EMP/Solar events are by far not all the same. It really depends on wavelength/intensity/frequency/distance the radiation is, as it cannot even permeate the idiocy those of us that still believe that wearing a tinfoil hat helps against ionising radiation.

The point here is that modifying the CT to be EMP hardened, and operate within the confines of the effective area of a EMP, would require a complete rebuild of the vehicle itself. Of all vehicles an EV would be the hardest to do, making the CT potentially the hardest. Buy a pre 90's ICE without motor management instead. Sure you could park it in a container in a underground steel reinforced bunker under 12ft of dirt, but unless it also just so happened to be there when the EMP occurred, it's completely pointless. The notion that you would know prior to such an first strike event occurring, in time to park your CT quick, is the equivalent of winning the lottery or better. Unless of course you propose to only use the CT after the EMP, in which case you're more likely to die from old age and a full life, than ever witnessing a EMP in the first place.

So overall, given the above I would not worry to much about an EMP, if in reality you are exposed to other real and present dangers all around you, that don't make for good cataclysmic movie plots.

 

[Wraven]

faraday cage garage?

 

[Crissa]

faraday cage garage?

That's fairly expensive. But a hardened structure to keep your emergency 'stuff' is always a good idea. Ours is a deck box out in the woods under a tarp, but if you can afford enough layered and grounded metal go right ahead. You'll also want to make sure that it's blocking wifi, and there's cut-offs outside for the repeater inside. Shielding the cabling and making sure it all cuts off during interfering pulses is going to be the biggie.

my question must ultimately be: do you see EVs as the true future of transportation? Or are we the outliers in a population doomed to fossil fuels for the foreseeable future?

Yes. It's always been a matter of 'how do you get power to the vehicle'. We could have done this years ago with overhead catenary, but the science behind motors have stayed pretty stable for a century. It's only now we can even think about some of the more out-there designs with advances in wire looms and 3D printed metals.

And batteries have paths to beat pretty much everything when you measure the whole drive-train now. That solves the two big problems with electricity: How to get it there, and what about peak usage.

They also solve other problems, and for the most part just don't care about EMF. As long as the BMS is grounded and wired, it should come back to life when the interference abates.

-Crissa

 

[Wraven]

That's fairly expensive. But a hardened structure to keep your emergency 'stuff' is always a good idea. Ours is a deck box out in the woods under a tarp, but if you can afford enough layered and grounded metal go right ahead. You'll also want to make sure that it's blocking wifi, and there's cut-offs outside for the repeater inside. Shielding the cabling and making sure it all cuts off during interfering pulses is going to be the biggie.


-Crissa

I don't have any real world examples of this product in use but less expensive and "intrusive" as one might think.

https://hollandshielding.com/en/amucor-faraday-cage

 

[Cyber Man]

The above was pretty much the only post with valid info on the EMP subject.

First question is simply do you live near a target for a potential EMP? If so, move...for various reasons. If not, don't worry about a EMP like, at all. Solar events are in it's own category, are not as location dependant as EMP, and are typically much more severe and cover a much larger area.
Don't believe the EMP movie hype, they only work if you are close enough, and even then, the way you point your CT could determine the result. (being made of SS etc)

Even blocking or jamming radio is more difficult than it once was, a lot of products are RF hardened due to FCC regs and digitalisation, look at drone use in conflicts, or how Starlink still works, despite the countermeasures trying to take them down. The CT will unlikely be affected unless you're close to it, and they would only ever use one on critical infrastructure, like a military base or critical electrical grid systems, or for that matter as a much more effective weapon at ground level to make sure it actually does some damage at all. EMP's simply don't have a "proven" effectiveness, rather they are powered more by hype and fear, if all things are considered.

Besides a green grassy field with a homestead is not a high priority target for a EMP. Right?

There are two parts to the EMP problem. One is your gear surviving the EMP, the second is you surviving after the EMP. Being prepared or surviving one event, doesn’t mean you will survive the next. What's a few days between friends?

Also being "in" a "survival situation" is itself a misnomer. In principal, you are either prepared now, and in a survival situation now, or you are not going to survive. In fact aren't we all just "trying to survive" since birth? With that mind set you will be better prepared, and prepare better.

Being prepared is also meaningless, if you aren't there to use what you prepared, or are in a location you can't escape or avoid a locally occurring calamity. Remember, not everything happens everywhere at once, so mobility is important, as are options for redundancy. Don't put all your eggs in the same basket, as they say.

So living near a target or area of risk is always going to increase your likelihood of severe consequence. Often the risk is not what you think it is.

An EV isn't particularly happy when it gets hit by lightning or power surge whilst charging, or flood, or flipped by a tornado, a puncture from debris (no spare on CT?) or theft, vandalism etc. A CT sticks out like a sore thumb to boot. If the grid is down you won't travel further than one charge. These are all things many more times likely to happen to you than a EMP, or a solar event. This is your real risk, and it's good to understand these before exploring the unlikely ones if you are serious about prepping.

The reality is you can't control every facet of technology or society, or environment. But you can reduce the consequences of those risks, and you can most importantly reduce your exposure to those risks. This starts with location, location, location.

If you live in or near a populous centre, you are both in a target area, and in a resource constrained area, meaning that people need to be fed and supplied from the "outside" of that area.

The reason you see empty streets in "end of the world" movies is because city streets don't make food people can eat, so to stay there means to starve, so everyone moves to where the food is, if it can't be shipped in anymore. The larger the population the worse the situation, just because you have prepared, doesn't mean someone else can't take it from you, and there are a lot of "someone's" out there who will want/need to at that point. You main risk here, and living in a city, is other desperate people who have not prepared for themselves, but are prepared to take it from you.

Lone wolf survival is a myth, community is essential, and there's no greater enemy than the one you don't know.

This is not only a food problem though. If the water system fails, there are going to be a lot of very desperate and "sick" people on top of this, and it all escalates very quickly, within days, if no help comes in from the outside. The water system, as also the grid is largely electrically/electronically controlled via old flimsy SCADA systems that are super exposed to various external threats including hack/EMP/Solar events. There is also significant amounts of water purity monitoring and filtering on municipal water supplies.

It is noteworthy here that the electrical grid cannot easily be started up in individual sections in isolation, it's designed so it is all interdependent, because the electrical phases have to be "in sync" (no not the band!). This means one section has to start, and then the next section is added and so on until it's all connected. The US grid has been up an running for a hundred years, and new parts of the grid have simply been added to the "synced" ones. This is not trivial, and of severe consequence for travelling with a EV. In fact over 95% of distributed embedded residential solar cannot operate without being synchronised to the grid either, so they don't help the problem either. No power often means no pumping for water either, and so losing one leads to cascading failures of other essentials. Install a large water tank.

Get a liquid fuel generator (portable 5kVa will do) and enough fuel storage to get where you need to go, that fits in the CT. If for some reason you aren't where you should be already, well before you need to be. Liquid fuel is still the easiest way to store energy. Have different options and directions to leave, but also investigate and have pre-planned locations to go to. On paper maps.

The point here is that your supply chains are the only thing that is keeping cities alive. They are on "life support" from the rural country that supplies them.

As a rule of thumb you have up to 3 days to leave a city before everyone else tries and fuel runs out (if you can even pump it in your car or the roads aren't blocked), after that without outside help you have about 1-2 weeks before martial law is imposed because of the looting etc, and then if still no help arrives, you will see cities abandoned in about 1-2months and gangs take over to "modulate" whatever supplies are left. Even if you hid in a bunker, it's unlikely nobody would notice your house or solar or Powerwall's, or CT/EVs, and would come around to see what can be had, and in this case, for free. Seeing currency is already not worth a dime.

But if you insist on staying on a target area and want to reduce your exposure to a EMP, then consider that shielding for EMP/Solar events are by far not all the same. It really depends on wavelength/intensity/frequency/distance the radiation is, as it cannot even permeate the idiocy those of us that still believe that wearing a tinfoil hat helps against ionising radiation.

The point here is that modifying the CT to be EMP hardened, and operate within the confines of the effective area of a EMP, would require a complete rebuild of the vehicle itself. Of all vehicles an EV would be the hardest to do, making the CT potentially the hardest. Buy a pre 90's ICE without motor management instead. Sure you could park it in a container in a underground steel reinforced bunker under 12ft of dirt, but unless it also just so happened to be there when the EMP occurred, it's completely pointless. The notion that you would know prior to such an first strike event occurring, in time to park your CT quick, is the equivalent of winning the lottery or better. Unless of course you propose to only use the CT after the EMP, in which case you're more likely to die from old age and a full life, than ever witnessing a EMP in the first place.

So overall, given the above I would not worry to much about an EMP, if in reality you are exposed to other real and present dangers all around you, that don't make for good cataclysmic movie plots.

Very thorough answer. Thanks for taking time to put this through. I agree with everything you said.

Any modern car cannot be 100% EMP proof, and lone wolf method won’t work in apocalyptic scenarios. Elon has said that multiple times.

@CyberJay - the only option I can think off is learn horse riding plus firearm/bow and arrow, buy two CTs, and keep one in your Nuke bunker.

If you are within EMP blast radius, your vehicle will be inoperable. Run to your horse. Ride on your horse to your bunker. Bikes won’t work as all roads will be blocked. Use firearm for protection. Use CT in the bunker and live like a Legend! If this scenario really unfolds, one thing I can say for sure is that your CT price would have appreciated like crazy to compensate for the one you lost from EMP impact.

 

[Crissa]

I don't have any real world examples of this product in use but less expensive and "intrusive" as one might think.

https://hollandshielding.com/en/amucor-faraday-cage

That's not going to stop a damaging pulse. It's just a noise filter. The body of a car probably does more. You also have to filter all network and energy inputs.

-Crissa

 

[Diveflyfish]

Huuummmm this is a very fascinating thing to contemplate. Can an equivalent of active noise cancellation be possible electrically? What if the CT were able to generate a pulsed “anti-pulse profile based upon an impulse that would most likely be produced by an EMP. Would an active outflow of energy into the system using the larger surface area of the CT skin as a very temporary micro plasma surface or resistive sink prevent inductive destruction to the electrical system?

 

[CyberJay]

Huuummmm this is a very fascinating thing to contemplate. Can an equivalent of active noise cancellation be possible electrically? What if the CT were able to generate a pulsed “anti-pulse profile based upon an impulse that would most likely be produced by an EMP. Would an active outflow of energy into the system using the larger surface area of the CT skin as a very temporary micro plasma surface or resistive sink prevent inductive destruction to the electrical system?

Very interesting idea (LOVE the thinking) but would likely involve quantum approach
The velocity of noise is roughly ONE TEN THOUSANDS OF ONE PERCENT the speed of light.

Unlike the "velocity of noise" which is molasses compared to microchip ability to detect and issue counter-wave, doing the same thing for electromagnetic phenomena is breaking conventional non-quantum physics.

If the wave is predictable at an infinitessimal level, then perhaps it can be tried but the results can also be counterproductive.

 

[CyberGus]

I'm gonna use EMP to charge

 

[Diveflyfish]

Very interesting idea (LOVE the thinking) but would likely involve quantum approach
The velocity of noise is roughly ONE TEN THOUSANDS OF ONE PERCENT the speed of light.

Unlike the "velocity of noise" which is molasses compared to microchip ability to detect and issue counter-wave, doing the same thing for electromagnetic phenomena is breaking conventional non-quantum physics.

If the wave is predictable at an infinitessimal level, then perhaps it can be tried but the results can also be counterproductive.

All true. One would perhaps be able to detect things that are of super/luminal speed if perhaps the wave propagation was longitudinal and not transverse…. EMP initiation might produce that and the key is having a receiver response that would be fast enough. Having a circuit that makes a plasma that essentially elicits a longitudinal wave type output is readily noted by N. Tesla himself….. its spectral output is, well let’s say really broad spectrum. For sure I need to study a bit more on the nuance of such a burst…….. thank you lots to contemplate.

 

[Diveflyfish]

I saw that a few days ago.

The thing that still bewilders me a little, how we can successfully get landers on Mars, but not the moon. It seems that we assume that powered, controlled descents are the only way to land on the moon, but on Mars, we expect all sorts of issues, so we basically use bouncing ball packages that unfold and self-right.
Just because we got it right with Apollo doesn't mean we should get doing these types of descents.
I guess Mars allows parachutes, but still, tuck and roll is a common concept.

The answer is electrostatics……. One must be able to match charge or shield it…..

Sponsored