Survive Infinite Dangers: The Family Survival Guide of 21st Century Dangers by Gary Yantis Read Free Book Online Page A

as the most likely of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) by terrorists if such a disaster ever occurs?
     
    First, because it is 19 th century technology; it is very simple to build with parts that can be bought commercially no questions asked. Properly built, an “EMP bomb” will work 95%+ of the time. It would do the maximum amount of damage to our civilization short of carpet bombing the entire country with nuclear bombs. By the way, nuclear bombs send out EMP as well. Listen to “experts” and they talk or write as if only nuclear bombs send out EMP electrical spikes. That is not true! What is EMP? Imagine a thousand lightning bolts simultaneously hitting a power pole 500 feet from your house for a tenth of a microsecond. The amperage (current) is very small but the voltage will be in the billions or trillions of volts. Imagine one static burst on your radio or TV so loud it is ten million times stronger than the loudest station on the dial. What happens to the “semiconductors” in your radio, furnace control, television and virtually everything that plugs in the wall or runs on batteries? This includes diodes and anything called “solid-state”. Vacuum tubes found in radios and most electronics from the early 1960’s and before used vacuum tubes. The transistor was invented in 1947 and by the late 1950’s was replacing most vacuum tubes in electronic devices. Transistors are immensely smaller and use a small fraction of the electricity of vacuum tubes.
     
    Transistors have an Achilles’ heel. Most are made of silicon (processed sand) and attached wires to junctions that can only be seen with a microscope. On the other hand, the same function in a vacuum tube is a wire the diameter a hundred times the size of a human hair. A nearby static pulse will burn out the very tiny transistor junction but not harm the vacuum tube wires. Close enough and even vacuum tubes are destroyed but the difference is perhaps a million to one. Even a few miles away vacuum tubes might be OK, but not semiconductors! Put an EMP device (two huge capacitor banks one charged with negative volts and the other charged with positive volts then create a picosecond gigantic spark (when brought close enough together they neutralize to zero volts (with the spark) and the wires in every semiconductor smaller in diameter than one thousandth the diameter of a human hair will blow out like a fuse. There is no repairing them without replacing every semiconductor device. A typical simple handheld radio may have a hundred thousand junctions (counting the multitude of junctions that are in integrated circuits (an integrated circuit is basically thousands of transistors in a small package).
     
    If a group, country or whoever wants to put their high technology 1 st world country enemy back to the 14 th century, they’d use an EMP bomb or bombs. There would be little, or no, physical damage but even automobiles are destroyed. Planes crash, trains stop, busses stop. If your life depends on a pacemaker you drop dead. Unless you have a horse, transportation is walking. Hopefully, you are very close to your safe area as an EMP bomb will immediately create a total breakdown in civil society faster than even a nuclear bomb. Police will be hopelessly outnumbered by looters. The one or two percent of mankind who wait for such opportunities (i.e. “the Rodney King riots”) are out in full-force in no time. If you have more than a mile or two to reach your safe area, run fast and good luck! Get everyone inside and barricade with guns ready preparing for the looters as they go block by block (see the Civil Unrest chapter for some “tricks” to maybe get passed by).
     
    An old DC-3 would probably be big enough to carry a medium sized EMP bomb (I’m a non PhD level EE and I could build a ground based EMP bomb with a dozen technician assistants, a few months of time and do so for well under a million dollars. If the “bombs” are lifted into the air by