Originally Posted By: Astro14
I think that you under-estimate the effect of an EMP. It can create a field of about 40,000 volts/meter. Anything, and I mean anything, not in a Faraday cage (shielded) will be fried. Every electronic box. Most electrical systems. Grid goes down instantly and for years. It's an instant reversion to 1850 technology. If it worked then, it'll work now.
Then the cascading effects because the EMP would be over an area of several hundred miles across.
Every vehicle (except, perhaps, pre-1970 cars that have points and a carb) stops instantly. Roads are impassable. Most airplanes crash if they were in the pulse area. No emergency services. No fire. No police. Not even National Guard. No phones, including land-lines. No radio.
Anyone who needs electricity dies within hours. Anyone in an ICU, on dialysis, a ventilator, getting oxygen, gone and gone quickly. Nursing homes and hospitals become uninhabitable in hours with all the dead bodies.
Fresh water becomes an instant problem. Wells stop, permanently, and water systems lose pressure. It won't be coming back for years. No fresh water, but if you can find it, then your next problem becomes food.
Anyone who plans to eat gets in trouble in days. No refrigeration. No trucks to deliver food. Areas that are heavily populated are in deep trouble. Huge numbers of starving people in a few days, and absolutely no way to get them any food. New York City alone would have millions of casualties in a week.
Sanitation becomes an issue in a couple of days. No sewers. No system. Disease follows. Disease that can't be treated because the hospitals are already full of dead people, doctors will be starving and thirsty and there will be no resupply of drugs or medical necessities like sterile bandages.
People on medication (insulin, etc.) are in trouble in days as well. Insulin has to be refrigerated. Most people who need drugs to survive won't make it past the first week, assuming that they can even get food. Let's not even consider what happens when the 25% of the population on some form of psychotropic drugs go off their meds by the end of the first week...most of them will have starved first...
Areas with farms might be OK, for a while - no way to harvest and no way to preserve what food is there. Can't feed the livestock, so eat well for the first few months, before starvation sets in there, too*...
There will be a mass die-off in a week...and then a second round of die-offs in about a month...for those that need ongoing medical care...then the starvation sets in. Ignoring the need for shelter in northern climates, survival without food, water, sanitation, or medical care will be difficult.
Various projections put the death rate by year one at around 80% of population...but it'll be closer to 99% in big metropolitan areas.
*It's my opinion that hunting won't be viable after a few weeks as every hunter shoots every viable game animal as soon as they realize that the grocery store will be closed for years.
While the rest of the nation will survive, those in the affected area will probably not survive and the death toll will be near 100 million if an EMP hits CONUS. A nuke going off in a major US city is a small, manageable crisis by comparison.
https://jalopnik.com/5937778/how-to-prepare-your-car-to-handle-an-emp-and-why-you-shouldnt-bother
Quote:
We tested a sample of 37 cars in an EMP simulation laboratory, with automobile vintages ranging from 1986 through 2002. Automobiles of these vintages include extensive electronics and represent a significant fraction of automobiles on the road today. The testing was conducted by exposing running and nonrunning automobiles to sequentially increasing EMP field intensities. If anomalous response (either temporary or permanent) was observed, the testing of that particular automobile was stopped. If no anomalous response was observed, the testing was continued up to the field intensity limits of the simulation capability (approximately 50 kV/m).
Automobiles were subjected to EMP environments under both engine turned off and engine turned on conditions. No effects were subsequently observed in those automobiles that were not turned on during EMP exposure. The most serious effect observed on running automobiles was that the motors in three cars stopped at field strengths of approximately 30 kV/m or above. In an actual EMP exposure, these vehicles would glide to a stop and require the driver to restart them. Electronics in the dashboard of one automobile were damaged and required repair. Other effects were relatively . Twenty-five automobiles exhibited malfunctions that could be considered only a nuisance (e.g., blinking dashboard lights) and did not require driver intervention to correct. Eight of the 37 cars tested did not exhibit any anomalous response.
It seems like unless there is multiple EMP bombs set off, to get large areas with very high field strength(above 50kv) there will still be some electronics functioning. But I agree that simply cutting electricity to large areas would be disaster enough.
I'd assume stuff like a chainsaw in a aluminum truck box would survive, maybe stuff in metal cabinets? Maybe an inverter generator in steel shed as its pretty much in 2 metal boxes?
In our municipality there were actually more people living here in 1900 than now, with the majority of them being large farming families, so the land is quite capable of supporting the population and even one in twenty large tractors getting functioning again should easily feed the population if the resources were used efficiently...
The trick would be keeping everyone working together and fed as the grocery stores and gas stations emptied and food would have to be sourced locally in an organized manner.
