bobhenstra wrote:DrJones wrote:Hardly just a "nuisance"! And note that the N. Koreans have the EMP weapon... I think this is worth preparing for! big time.
OK Well, as I said, I'll stand by my training. I'm well prepared for whatever happens! But my disagreement with what you said has to do with high altitude EMPs, something in the neighborhood of 250 miles high? The report I supplied explains why a detonation at such altitudes would not be effective. I didn't say that there would be no EMP blasts, just that they would have to be well within the earths atmosphere to be effective, and 250 miles is well outside the earths atmosphere. I also said that any EMP blast within the earths atmosphere would also kill most people below it from neutron radiation, therefore the loss of electricity would have little effect on them. It's the slower Gamma radiation that causes the EMP effect.
I wasn't arguing that nukes wouldn't be used, I know they will be, my point is EMP detonations will hardly be of any practical value, why not just kill the people, they're going to die anyway!
I'm not sure what training you've had, but what you've written here is not consistent with high-altitude nuclear testing done in the 1960s before the treaty stopped them. In those tests people on the ground were fine, but equipment was damaged and radio signals were interfered with.
For the Compton effect (causing an electrical pulse from a gamma burst) to be effective it must detonate above around 30km, and will be effective to hundreds of miles up... getting a more diffuse effect as it gets higher (around 300 miles for one bomb to cover the USA... though IMO more would be used closer to the ground for greater effect, especially if from a nation that likely has hundreds of such bombs). Nuclear blasts at that altitude, especially those designed for an EMP effect, are safe for humans on the ground.
You referred to a neutron bomb before as one to kill people without doing quite as much damage to infrastructure (though those are still large bombs, but the neutrons released are high enough energy to kill outside of the blast radius, unlike standard nukes), but that is a very different design than a high-gamma bomb. The high-energy neutron effect comes from a fusion reaction (ie fusing tritium or the like) whereas super-EMP bombs are just high-yield fission bombs which produces the gamma burst.


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I think this is a better aproach to sickness.