Well, it’s a darn good thing it doesn’t remove it! We’d lose our atmosphere pretty quick! The magnetosphere is the only thing stopping the solar wind from blowing our atmosphere away.
Hmmm, you got me thinking- I wasn’t aware that the solar wind had any noticeable effect on the magnetosphere. The speed at which the magnetic lines are moved and return to their original position determines the amplitude of the current induced. Is this pushing and bending from the ejecta occuring at the same rate as say, an EMP blast? I’m wondering if the effect is less due to the rate of change…
The high altitude burst is not meant to harm humans, it’s intent is to knock out your response capabilities. They don’t need a large capacity weapon to have the desired effect. If they can knock out street lighting of the era (which is very low tech) imagine what can happen to sub-micron electronics that we have today! ZZZZT!
If you see the first light from the EMP weapon, you can bend over and kiss your @ss goodbye because in a few minutes or less, the “ground” weapons will follow. With respect to the movies exaggerating the usage or effects, if you watch the movie cited by the OP, I think you’ll find it to be fairly accurate for the time it was made.
“Most operational weapons today are in the 5 to 15 megaton range.”
Maybe in 1970 that was true. Of the folks who might drop a big one on the USA China’s biggest is 5MT and Russia has mostly phased out the big 18-25MT in favor of multiple warhead missiles of 1MT or less.
That was low powered bombs, and the Enola Gay did not have transistors or other semiconductor circuitry in it that will fail with EMP at that low power level.
Before I retired, I tested electronics for the B-2. Every box had to be EMP tested.
This meant testing it at great length for normal operation, including in extreme temperatures, and vibration testing, and after final test, it went to EMP lab.
There, they took a 1KW transmitter, and every input pin, and there were a large number of them, I can’t remember now,but probably hundreds, had to be connected to that 1KW transmitter one at a time. Each pin was specified as voltage or current sensitive, and this had to be applied at several frequencies.
Once they tested each pin at the several frequencies, we had to run a complete operational test on it. Any failure meant tens of thousands of dollars of paperwork begging for mercy, and apologizing and making excuses, heh, heh. It was expected to never fail and after early failures were fixed with minor design changes, it didn’t.
By the way, so certain people don’t have to waste time typing in angry but meaningless messages, this involves no secret or confidential information at all. The Russians and Chinese probably know more about the B-2 then we did at my level. I had no clearance of any kind. It was offered, but since my wife and most people I associated with outside work were foreigners, I declined the dubious honor.
v/m = volts/meter, the strength of the electric field created by the EMP. As for the shape of the areas, that must be the result of the interaction between the burst and the earth’s magnetic field (not that I know much about this).
Okay I’ve heard that most explosions of any type will create EMP effects of various degrees,true or false(now another thought, this pertains to GUT- is energy a breed or a species?)-Kevin
The magnetosphere is the only thing stopping the solar wind from blowing our atmosphere away.