Dots, holosights, illuminated scopes and range finders after EMP strike?

[IMtheNRA]

Theoretically speaking, just as an intellectual excersise... Are any of these things going to work?

[50 shooter]

I would think that your safe would act as a Faraday Box and protect all the electronics inside of it. Easy way to test it is to put your cell phone inside of it, if you can call it, it's not sealed well enough.

Look up Faraday Boxes for more information on how to protect your electronics and yourself from an EMP strike.

[Scorch]

Theoretically speaking, after a nuclear strike you will probably not be looking for a way to use your pre-strike technology. You will more than likely be rapidly approaching ambient temperature and becoming an archaeological data point.

As a child of the 1960s growing up within 11 miles of a major SAC base, we were frequently put through drills where we would hide under our desks until the all-clear signal was given. If this does not strike you as gruesomely funny, google "hydrogen bomb". I am positive that some archaeologist upon finding such a neatly assembled classroom full of children's skeletal remains a few centuries after a thermonuclear war would have thought it was a ritual sacrifice of some sort.

[shootbrownelk]

Ahhh....the old "Duck & Cover" routine. Sure dates a guy doesn't it?

[Mobuck]

My understanding of "EMP" was that it didn't have to be a greatly destructive device. The major damage was the electrical pulse rather than overwhelming shockwave so physical destruction only occurs in close proximity to the actual detonation or maybe not much at all if a high altitude air burst.
I would expect that devices with diodes and such would be damaged.

[ShootistPRS]

Mobuck,
You are referring to a High altitude nuclear EMP. When the device (any nuclear device) is detonated high in the atmosphere or from orbital altitudes It causes three EMP pulses. The E1 pulse is the one that fries electronics and can only be protected against in an H.E.M.P. protection device. the other pulses E2 and E3 are very similar to a solar EMP and only affect long line transmission lines and large transformers.
There are very few reasons to protect your electronics other than for access to your own documents because the access to the internet or other communications will be gone. All the protection for our electric grid uses high speed digital circuits which will work fine for a solar event but with the H.E.M.P. those protections will be fried in the first few nano-seconds after the detonation. As altitude increases the EMP covers more area so if you choose the right altitude you can take out just one state or an entire hemisphere. At 150 miles the entire USA, northern Mexico and southern Canada would be instantly thrust into the 18th century. No Power, water, fuel, which means no food and no manufacturing. You could wait the tens of years to get the grid up if you grow your own food and have a good water supply. You don't have to worry about the blast or the radiation because that is all stopped by the atmosphere - which causes the E1 pulse.
Happy thoughts!

[spacemanspiff]

Sounds to me like Alaskas gonna be fairly safe!

[ShootistPRS]

Alaska could be safe as long as the detonation is only 150 miles high and they are not connected to any affected grid. They will be fine because they have oil to fuel them but they will need to build refineries. All their digital communications are connected at the main junction in the lower 48 - the same goes for Hawaii. Hawaii does have fiber optic that go to Asia so they might be better off - until they need medicine, food or oil shipped from the states. It does little good to have hospitals without antibiotics, analgesics, diabetic needs and antidepressants. I know that won't affect Alaskans because they are real men and women in Alaska and don't need antibiotics or pain meds for surgery and post surgery. They just chew on a bone or smile and bear it. <-- there is a joke there if you look for it.

[IMtheNRA]

So the dots and LRFs and illuminated scopes will be toast?

[50 shooter]

If there's an EMP strike on America and your electronics are not protected then yes, they'll be destroyed. If you protect them from the EMP strike then no, they'll be fine.

Plus location to the strike, if they're going to do it they'll make sure it will be placed in the best spot to take out as much of our infrastructure as possible. I would think that if they did it right it would only take a couple high altitude blasts to wipe out America's electronics from coast to coast.

Building a Faraday Box is pretty simple and can be made cheaply and quick. Like I said, your safe should act as one but the inside needs to be lined with something non conductive with the outside. If you're red dots and other electronics are mounted on the weapons, they should be safe. Put a battery powered radio inside of your safe also, it'll be protected with the other stuff.

[rickyrick]

I think it'd depend and it would not be a predictable outcome. Probably an earth grounded gun safe would protect gun electronics fairly well. The magnetic field is only part of it, a small circuit with few conductors may not be effected at all. A circuit containing lots of conductors and especially if it contains inductive components (coils) would experience some fairly large voltage spikes. Most industrial equipment is protected in a way because switch-gear, motors and transformers already cause voltage spikes if not addressed; those type of circuits are protected from transients. There's still some damage that occurs, like I said, the severity is unpredictable. The magnetic field moving through conductive material is what causes the spikes. Angle of the field flux relative to the the conductor will effect the strength of induced voltage, as does the number of turns in a coil and the actual strength of the magnetic field. If you earthed your metal gun safe, that would create a complete circuit to shunt to ground this would be like a shield or a faraday cage.

[TXAZ]

If the equipment is consumer grade electronic (semiconductor) vs electrical (no electronics) it's likely toast. I wrote my thesis on a related subject.

EMP is much harder to effectively accomplish than most people think.
You need a space-qualified nuclear weapon.
You need a missile that can place the weapon at an appropriate location and altitude.
You need *the will* to start a nuclear war against an opponent who has 1,000's of precision nuclear weapons, many of which are tactical cruise missile based and can fly thru a window, or large strategic ICBM's that will likely hit within a few car lengths of the target.

It is an act of nuclear war. If you have iron or glass sights you will be fine.
If you have a ballistics calculator, learn Kentucky windage.

More likely you'll have your red dot stolen by a left handed Pygmy than experience EMP.

[precision_shooter]

Am I mistaken that emp will only affect electronics that have a current running through them, such as ones that are turned on at the time of the pulse?

[ShootistPRS]

An H.E.M.P. can be caused by an antique atomic bomb like the ones we dropped on Japan. It only has to be placed higher than 20000 feet in order to cause the three EMP pulses. A Faraday cage will not protect against the E1 pulse. You can't test the effectiveness of a protective device with your cell phone. A continuous aluminum, copper, silver or gold metal covering around your device with continuous insulation on the inside will work as long as there are no holes or seam gaps. A hole just 0.1mm will be penetrated by an E1 pulse. The H.E.M.P. penetrates the ground up to 50 feet so grounding your protective device is just adding an "antenna" that directs the rapid pulse to it. Disconnecting your electronics from the grid won't help because the extremely fast rise time and high voltages of the E1 pulse will destroy electronics even if they are just sitting on a warehouse shelf. The E1 pulse will even destroy the diodes used in solar panels and the regulators in alternators in cars.
Neither solar nor nuclear EMPs will affect batteries or very small transformers whether connected to the grid or not. A decent information packet can be found HERE.
There is a lot of very bad information on the internet about how to protect your electronics from the E1 pulse. Even the best information available has never been tested under an actual E1 pulse. For more information you can search for "Starfish Prime" and the results of very early tests that went very wrong.

[rickyrick]

Interesting information. From the above guys that actually know the strength and characteristics of an EMP, their explanations sound pretty solid. I don't know the strength admittedly, but I do deal with "normal" transients on a daily basis. A very short duration pulse, equates to a high frequency even if there is only one pulse. Rate of change will effect the damage and high frequency is a high rate change. I don't know what is capable from a nuclear device, however, so I'll listen to what the others say. Reading the links provided when I have time
I never really put much thought into the EMP phenomenon, because honestly it's not on my radar. A highly unlikely scenario to start with, and if it did happen I'd have bigger fish to fry. I do not include electricity as needed for basic human survival.

[jmr40]

Am I mistaken that emp will only affect electronics that have a current running through them, such as ones that are turned on at the time of the pulse?

That has always been my impression too. If so lots of things will still work.

[std7mag]

Just not cell phones. Only time my daughters is off is when we are in the woods. Lol

Luckily i have 2 scopes that do not rely on electronics to rangefind.
Redfield Revenge 4-12x42 with Accu-ranger Varmint reticle.

[TXAZ]

Quote:
Am I mistaken that emp will only affect electronics that have a current running through them, such as ones that are turned on at the time of the pulse?

That has always been my impression too. If so lots of things will still work.

That is not correct.
The issue with it is the semiconductor junctions. The actual distance across the junction is nanometers. The field strength of the pulse is enough to "punch thru" the junction causing a short.
Doesn't matter if the gear is on or off.
There are ways to prevent EMP damage to semiconductors but that design info is not commercially available.

[rickyrick]

Read up a lot more on EMP this afternoon, it's pretty fascinating, if you're into electrical sort of things. 1000GHz and a high amplitude pulse is gunna be a punch, more than I imagined.

[TXAZ]

I had to look up the reference but MIL-STD-188-125-1 will give you an overview of protection.

And by the way, your safe is going to be worthless in protection against HEMP.

[rickyrick]

No I get it, I had a misunderstanding of an EMP really.

[kozak6]

Some optics utilize fiber optics and/or tritium to generate the dot.

An ACOG or some of Trijicon's other optics would be perfectly fine.

[ShootistPRS]

Most of the red dot and green dot holo sights use diodes so they would be toast.
Protecting small things is pretty easy to do. You place the item in a plastic zip-lock baggie (sandwich to 1 gallon freezer bag), make an envelope of heavy duty aluminum foil (like used to bake the turkey on thanksgiving), place the bag with the item in the foil envelope and double roll the opening so it seals. Place the foil envelope in another bag, put that bag into another aluminum foil envelope, put the whole thing into another bag and seal all of it in a third foil envelope. That will likely protect your item from an HEMP. If you need to use the item you can unfold the foil envelopes and open the zip-lock bags and when you are done you can put it all back together and store it.
It would be harder to place a rifle into that package but you could save a scope, range finder, ballistics calculator or radio that way. If you are close enough to me after the HEMP I'll be listening on 11 and 80 meters.

[rickyrick]

Y'all just swing by and pick me up afterwards... I'll have plenty of ammunition... and no electricity hahahahahaha. I'm not so worried about dot scopes, those rifles have irons anyway most of my optics are non powered.
This actually has been pretty interesting to me, I've done quite a bit of reading on the subject now since this one was posted.
I had originally assumed that a nuclear EMP was similar to switching transients, and it is not. Not at least the E1 pulse mentioned above; the E1 pulse would damage most of the transient voltage suppression devices designed to protect against your everyday pulses.
That's a kick in the rear, because a second pulse would come that is more like a switching event or a lightning strike and finish off some more electrical stuff that had been weakened by the first.
Now I haven't looked into this next item, so I'm going to make an assumption that since the earth's magnetic took what we could equate to a punch in the groin, that the field is going to rebound as it recovers in a long slow wave. Not sure what the last wave will do but I can assume that any surviving electrical devices would have some odd effects. Definitely some grid voltage anomalies.
Thanks for setting me straight.

[std7mag]

Wow! We really don't over think things on here at all, do we??!! Lol