The majority of the population and all major man made infrastructure, yeah. Every square mile of land, no.

There'd be a few survivors here and there and some structures left, but for the most part the world would be destroyed.

Our current(even downscaled) fleet of Ohio missile subs, if properly positioned, can cover enough area with strike capability to put 85% of the world's population at risk of death in 30 minutes. That's a helluva deterrent.

 

Hey But Manswers said so! So it has to be true, right!!!

JKing!

It amazes me how many Ex and Serving Military is on this forum.

 

The manswers answer like I said, was to turn the planet into dust. Complete destruction of earth as if it never existed. Which is why I asked the interpretation of "destroy". If destroy just ment kill everything off the planet then yes.

 

Yeah. Population is concentrated mostly in larger cities in certain regions of the world. But the world has a LOT of land. We could wipe out most of the world's population and destroy most of the infrastructure, but the majority of the area of the world itself would remain for the most part untouched. It's the population concentration that even makes nuclear weapons feasible, otherwise they'd be a hugely expensive waste.

 

Funny you only quoted that one sentence as I could have sworn I gave more examples why I am paranoid this way. I remember also saying that EE's I knew in college knew how to make these things, and rather cheaply too.


I also addressed the lotto chances too. Didn't I say that more people die in car wrecks than even cancer? Look, I know that there are so many other things that will f*** up my car before the EMP, at least for now.
Those other concerns (vandals, other drivers, etc.) are a concern of mine as they are a concern for everyone else with a vehicle.
But I meant this thread to focus on one possible cause of ruining your ride, even though right now, my concern is still an unlikely event.
For those other concerns (vandals, getting into a wreck, etc.), those are best discussed in other threads.

Look, I am not here to bash on a fellow serviceman, much less on fellow Air Force brethren.
You made you opinion known, and I have duly taken note. I just ask that unless you can share you knowledge of EMP shielding, just stop driving your opinion in an abrasive manner.
If you have useful knowledge from our experience about how an Eagle's avionics is shielded, please share. I you don't care too because you think my thoughts are silly, fine, that is your opinion.
Just stop continuing to pound your disdaining opinion; I already get your point.

Again, I ask as one serviceman to another, just give me some mutual respect even though my thoughts and opinion on the EMP issue sounds silly and trivial to you.

 

Definitely. Nuclear target preparation are primarily based on strategic concerns; the priority of course being military targets, and secondary strategic targets (ports and airfields so the enemy cannot transport men and material to fight the war, factories so more weapons cannot be made, power plants so electricity cannot be fed to the factories to make weapons, infrastructure such as rail, road, and highway hubs so you disrupt the movement or military hardware and also disrupt the movement of parts and components needed to make weapons) etc.

And to attack the electrical infrastructure (electric grid including the transmission lines, electrical stations, etc), that is where you rely on the EMP from the nuclear blast.

And you are right; DARPA has been experimenting for decades on an EMP weapon that does not require a nuclear explosion to generate a very powerful EMP.

For now, EMP devices are little known of. But sooner or later, they will become more prolific as more and more guys learn by one way or another how to make these very troublesome devices.

As the detractors say, your chances of your car becoming F*** up by EMP today is like winning the lottery (say, 1 in over 100 million), but seeing how simple it is to make EMP devices, those odds will become more and more likely. Those chances could drop to 1 in 100,000 in a year, 1 in 1,000 a couple more years after that, until cars sooner or later will be made stock with EMP shielding from the factory.

I know I am sticking my head out and have already received considerable ridicule, but oh well, that is just my opinion from what I have studied and observed in my lifetime.