One of the scariest survival scenarios we face today is a potential loss of the electric grid, brought about by an EMP (electromagnetic pulse).
Whether that happens due to enemy action, exploding an atomic weapon above the atmosphere or from a solar event called a CME (coronal mass ejection) is immaterial. The results would be the same.
Not only would the electric grid be shut down, due to the transformers in our 55,000 electric substations; but any electronics connected to the grid would be destroyed. Some small electronics, like cell phones, might survive; but the would be useful without the rest of the system.
We are so dependent on electrical power, that the idea of trying to live without electricity is mind-boggling. Pretty much everything we do requires electricity, making us all but helpless without it.
While our ancestors were able to live normal, healthy, productive lives before the use of electricity, we have lost most of the skills that allowed them to do that. Rather than society being thrown back into the 1800s, like some have stated, we would be in a much worse state, not having the skills or tools to survive.
This is the nightmare TEOTWAWKI scenario that motivates many preppers to become as self-sufficient as possible. It is only those who are able to do things for themselves, without the use of electricity, who will have the wherewithal to survive such a scenario. But just will going into that scenario look like?
Ground Zero – High-altitude EMP Explosion
Assuming an EMP caused by a high-altitude detonation of an atomic weapon, there will be little to nothing to give us any idea that our country has been attacked by enemies.
Exploding above the atmosphere, there will be no noise, pressure wave or heat wave to indicate the explosion.
Unless someone happens to be looking in the direction of the explosion, when it happens, it will not be visible from the ground. Even if they are looking, the explosion may not be visible if it is lined-up with the sun.
Our biggest indicator at the beginning will be the sudden loss of electrical power, just like any other power outage. There will be curiosity as to why the power went out, especially if there is no storm to blame it on.
Related: How to Tell in 5 Minutes if It’s a Power Outage or an EMP and Get a Massive Head Start
Many will take the typical actions of checking their breaker boxes, looking outside to see if others still have their lights on and attempting to call friends and neighbors in an attempt to determine just how far the power outage has spread.
At this point, the biggest reaction will be curiosity, not fear.
There are those who have written about EMPs, who have stated that cars will stop running and airplanes will fall out of the sky. But according to the report of the EMP Commission, most cars did not stop running and those that did, merely stalled but could be easily restarted.
While the increase of electronic controls in cars also increases the chances for them to be damaged by an EMP, the steel of the car’s body makes a pretty good Faraday Cage, protecting those electronics. Plastic bodied cars, on the other hand, wouldn’t fare so well.
As for airplanes, most military and commercial aircraft have aluminum bodies, meaning that they are excellent Faraday Cages too. Military aircraft, at least, are tested against EMP.
Commercial airlines are not, but their bodies are made of aluminum, making them perfect Faraday Cages. It is not uncommon for these airplanes to be hit by lightning, which just goes over the skin of the airplane, on its way down to the ground. An EMP would do the same.
Most private airplanes are also aluminum skinned, providing them with the same protection. About the only aircraft that might be damaged by EMP would be World War II or earlier aircraft that didn’t have aluminum bodies. But then, those aircraft didn’t have sophisticated electronics to be damaged by EMP.
As Awareness Dawns
Different people will come to the realization that something serious is happening at different rates. Some may get the idea that something bad has happened in mere hours, while others will take days.
Those that realize something bad has happened may not know for sure it is an EMP; but fear will drive them to take action.
According to FEMA, the average household has only three days’ worth of food on-hand at any one time. As a society, we’re used to the convenience of just picking up take-out food orders or stopping in the grocery store on the way home.
All it will take is their first trip to the refrigerator, for most of these people to realize how little food they have on hand. Once they realize that, they’ll be off to their favorite supermarket.
Related: The 6 Expired Foods That You Can Safely Eat When SHTF
This is where things are going to start falling apart. American supermarkets stock an average of three days’ worth of inventory on most items. Fresh food, like dairy, meat and produce usually arrives daily.
The larger stores have generators to produce their own electricity if the power goes out, but it is unlikely that those generators will work. Therefore, the stores will be pulling the fresh and frozen food from refrigerated cases and throwing it away, just about as soon as they realize that the power isn’t coming back on.
The lack of electricity is going to cause another problem in those stores; the inability for people to pay for their purchases. Most of us use plastic to pay for our purchases today, especially after the COVID pandemic. We don’t have enough cash on hand to pay for a cart full of groceries.
At this point, people will have to make a decision – do they steal the groceries they were trying to get for their families or do they abandon the groceries, leaving them in the stores. It is widely believed that most people will just leave the store, taking whatever they can with them.
As soon as that starts, it will become widespread, with people cleaning out the stores. There will be a “feeding frenzy” of people stealing for a few hours, then our grocery stores will be left a shambles, with the only inventory left being broken packages on the floors.
The Panic Spreads
As people begin to loot stores, the panic will spread. Those who would normally be calm and collected will see what is going on around them and join in, rationalizing their actions in the understanding that if they don’t, they’ll be left without.
Related: How To Looter-Proof Your Home
While the grocery stores and other big box stores that sell groceries will be the first hit, people will quickly start looting other stores which have useful items. Liquor stores, sporting goods, hardware and pharmacies will all be at the top of the list, suffering the same sort of wanton looting, as people grab whatever they think they might need.
If the police show up, they’ll be faced with wonton crime that they can’t do a thing to stop. There just aren’t enough police to protect all our stores. A few police officers showing up at a supermarket full of looters will find themselves outnumbered.
Even if they resorted to shooting people, which would be a violation of the law, they wouldn’t have enough rounds to shoot everyone. Eventually, the mob would overcome them.
By the end of the second day, the looting will have ended, as there will be nothing more to steal.
Violence Begins
Shortly after the looting begins, it will turn violent. Granted, the very act of looting is violent and store windows will be broken to allow people in. But I’m referring to the violence that looters will take against store workers and each other.
Any store employees who even look like they are going to get in the way of the mob will be crushed underfoot. But the greater violence will be looters attacking each other, trying to get something they want, that the other person has.
It won’t take long for this violence to spread to the streets. There are always people in society who are more prone to violence anyway, including people who are already criminals.
Seeing what is happening, these people will realize that it will be easier to hit someone coming out of the store over the head, grabbing their cart full of supplies, than to wade into the store themselves, to see what they can find.
By the end of the third day, that violence will move to residential areas, as criminals organize and start breaking into homes to steal whatever food and other useful supplies they can find. It’s amazing how quickly the criminal element can organize, when it is to their benefit.
That organization may not be formal, but it won’t need to be. All they will need to do is get enough of themselves together in a group, so that they will be able to overwhelm the homeowners.
It’s hard to say just how long the home invasions will last; as that depends mostly on how quickly the criminals reach the conclusion that there are no more houses to hit. But during those first few days, they will be busy, with a good chance that different groups will attack the same homes at different times.
Where’s the Government in All This?
One could easily ask where the government will be during all this. I’m sure that many government workers will be at their posts, trying to do what they can to keep things going or restart things that have stopped. Considering that just about everything requires electricity, it is doubtful that the city water works or sewage department will have much success.
At the management levels of city, state, and federal government, there will be a lot of people running around in circles, demanding to know what is happening. They will be hampered in getting the information they need by the lack of communications.
While the federal government may have some protected means of communicating when the power is out, it is unlikely that state or municipal governments will have that option available to them.
As we all know, the government doesn’t work quickly at any level. While I’m sure they’ll be doing the best they can, without the ability to communicate effectively, I doubt they will be able to do much.
Related: EMP Prevention Plan: Why Our Government Has Done Nothing
Police will be out and about, trying to do their jobs; but as I mentioned earlier, they will be woefully outnumbered, making it impossible for them to protect people and stores. Criminals always seem to know where the police are and just take their business elsewhere.
Ending the 72 Hours
We should actually see things start to settle down at the end of the first 72 hours. While criminal gangs will still be attacking homes, stealing what they can, they won’t be in the commercial areas of town.
There will still be panic, but it will be a quiet sort of panic, as people try to come to grips with the future. Few, outside the prepping community, will have any idea of what to do.
Only a few people will have died in those first three days. Those will be people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time and were either killed by criminal violence or mob violence. Most will be random people who were the victims of some sort of theft.
The first big die off won’t begin for a few more weeks, as people who need maintenance doses of medications to treat chronic conditions run out of medicine and can’t get more. Another month or so after that, people will begin to die of starvation.
Where Will You Be?
The question we need to ask ourselves, is where will we be during this time? How will we get through that first 72 hours, without becoming victims ourselves?
There will be a great temptation to go to the stores, making a last trip to see what we can get. While that may make sense, it will be a risky venture. If you decide to venture forth, do so in strength, while still leaving a strong force to watch your home. If you can’t do both, then stay home, protecting your home and stockpile.
Expect your home to be attacked, perhaps more than once. No matter how good you are at OPSEC, there’s still a chance that friends and neighbors will have come to the realization that you’re a prepper.
Some may come asking for help; while others come more forcibly. Even those who come asking may return in force, once you refuse their request. Put your defensive plan into effect, keeping your eyes peeled, to ensure you are not taken by surprise.
At the same time, you need to put your survival plan into effect, turning on your own off-grid power, water and sewage, to make up for what the city is no longer providing.
When it comes to surviving an EMP attack, one essential item stands out as indispensable: the EMP Cloth. It protects your crucial devices and equipment from the destructive effects of electromagnetic pulses, ensuring that vital communication, power generation, and navigation capabilities remain intact.
The EMP Cloth offers the most straightforward safeguarding solution I’ve encountered for crucial electronic devices. It safeguards your electronics from the E1, E2, and E3 waves of an EMP, as well as shielding them from a CME, also known as a solar EMP, which our planet is presently overdue for.
This is what you’re preparing for and it will be time to put it all into effect. Just do so with caution, keeping one eye open for any attack.
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Another area where to bury your passing of a family member when SHTF occurs and services are gone. All things we have not thought about then what is a good food recipe.
In death we are basically the same in the physical sense. Whether we are embalmed into a coffin or cremated both are exceptable. The Christian sects in the past said being cremated you won’t go to heaven, baloney.
Either way in the coffin the body disintegrates at a slower rate.
The Mortician concept is probably built on the feelings of loved ones duped into buying outrageous expensive grave sites and expensive coffins. It is better to scatter the cremated human remains in a respective fashion. After a funeral service than being immortalized into a wasted space of an above ground tomb or mausoleum that takes up space.
As mentioned in the Caddy Shack movie of a condo builder, cemeteries and golf courses are a waste of space. On the other hand don’t want to be living in a claustrophobic density living of condos either.
Which brings up the idea, when we die in the modern world of finance, why aren’t the finances totally ended or the debt is passed on to the surviving family members? The fiat money system of the world is paper money backed by thin air and digital money is controlled by blockchain computer pods all man made.
The tax system is a hypocritical mess, we don’t need millions of tax laws and the IRS corrupt tax collection services. When our political leaders all are on the second tier of bypassing the rules we mere mortals must abide by Congress’s rule for thee but not for me.
The congress squad, the elitist parties, the Marxist an Commies all preach to us that we must give, pay our fair share of taxes. While these self appointed thugs have several houses, they tell us we must switch from gas stoves to electric stoves. All while they can be seen in photos of their homes they have gas stoves.
In California for years the activists have brainwashed people to believe in conserving water, electricity, go EV dump the gas hog vehicles, all for what? Why should the people save, conserve anything when the elites, activist, politicians do the opposite, hypocritical opposite of what they profess to be gospel.
And yet the SHEEPLE keep electing these parasites into positions of power to continue to become wealthy at our taxpayer expense, will most of the sheep an goats ever learn?
For those in the Californication State:
Sue to reverse the Sanctuary Blue State Status back to the Golden State era.
In California the unions and activist save the planet groups run the political process of law. What was California like back in the 1970 era like?
They had maybe 1% homeless in the back alleys of the big cities. Two big mistakes President Reagan made in office was shutdown the mental health hospitals and give then those illegals aid an comfort to stay in America, then deporting everyone of them.
The nation:
America hates people jumping ahead of the line. Illegals do just that. The immigrants who come here legally are solid stand up citizens, willing to learn English, integrate into society for the American dream.
The current Bidenomics illegals are not coming to become Americans. They are here for the free ride of welfare benefits, the is reserved for many hardship Americans who vote one party line for free stuff.
If that is you, shame on you! Deport, build the wall, deport, deport, drill for oil, deport everyday.
Let those who want to come to America, without duress of the Mexican drug cartels, sex, slave trafficking. Come through the vetted legal immigration legal system, all others get deported.
Why is Bill Gates and China buying up as much American farmland as possible?
The UN says with the Paris Climate Agreement which the American Taxpayers front the blunt of the financial costs worldwide to the globalist in charge.
They say cows, eating meat causes methane gas with all the related greenhouse gas elimination, we Americans must eat insects. Vegans will worship the global UN meat industry elimination of stupidity.
Climate Change is a forced fraud on America and the world as the Covid lockdowns were. The Covid vaccine didn’t stop Covid, it caused more side effects. The military personnel has been experiencing heart issues and related health issues to debilitate the USA fighting forces, against the enemy.
We have health issues coming from illegals with communicable diseases we eliminated in the previous century. When we see diseases coming back into epidemic outbreak we can thank the Demoncrat Sheeple who voted for the Bidenomics president. Biden is worse than president Carter.
People don’t believe that history repeats it’s self, well we are living in the same history repeating like the Carter years was.
This time Biden has more surveillance technology then previous tyrants have had.
He also has at least a couple lost indoctrinated young generations of Marxist, socialist, communism taught who hate America.
Will we begin the past Brown Shirt Germany snitches again?
Stop stressing about the SHTF or a Swan Event.
Don’t care to help others as they may become a loosing proposition as they can turn on you and steal everything we have in a crisis.
The crunch of the middle class is what the Covid Plandemic was about.
The Covid shot was a demonstration of the wills of citizens versus the Dr. Anthony Fauci mandate government, who won, who lost?
You are an enabler to get liberals to move to other States and mess them up.
People in the growing popular States are seeing their cost of living and real estate goes up in costs as the influx of people move into a State.
So too the myth of bugging out to the country the open space becomes crowded too.
Prepping is mostly to stabilize where we live to be comfortable in a crisis for a short period. Prepping is not the be all, end all of SHTF, it is part of the puzzle pieces.
You didn’t include Martial Law. That’s a given. Remember Hurricane Katrina? I sure do. That’s what you have to worry about.
If it’s a true nuclear event, 90% of police and military would desert their posts to secure their friends and families. The remaining few would barely be enough to “martial law” a large walmart. (They can barely do that now.)
The most dangerous criminals after an EMP event will be cops. They will try to use their authority (which ends the day the grid goes down) to confiscate food, guns and wealth from those lucky enough or prepared enough to survive the nuclear attack. They will form gangs of deputies to consolidate the supplies in the name of the greater good for all the people. This is just the same lie that is perpetuated now to confiscate wealth to preserve the power of the few, ( i.e. the cops and former politicians). These are the very people that has brought the world to the possibility of an EMP attack and are the first people that survivors need to exterminate. Then they can worry about petty theft looters and roaming gangs of targets. In order to be a cop today you by nature have to be a psychopath.
I recommend a book, One Second After, by William R. Forstchen. It is fictional, but a pretty good read about the degradation of society and one town’s will to survive. Check it out.
If you haven’t already, the sensible thing to do right now is start preparing. You will need food, clean water, winter clothing (and summer clothing), dependable heat, some way to cook food and boil water, lighting, medication (prescription and over the counter), first aid, alcohol, tools (for building, sawing firewood, etc), physically fit to go the long term.
Water, food, and plenty of bullets. At lease for the first 90 days. After that, most of the danger form outside influences will be over.
Lol no
None
First, it is now on my bucket list to prep by visiting my 3 local grocery stores and offering to BUY everything in case of this event TO BE DISTRIBUTED “FOR FREE (i will pay for it)” to those who come into the grocery store with IOUs on paper only. Nothing will work anyway, so why not set this up ahead of time? I asked the head of my bank years ago, “Do you have a plan in case of a SHTF scenario? Or a banking failure?” and they said No. I said it’s simple. You print out some temporary city money (you ARE a bank right??) And you keep track that way. Yes, some people might be able to make copies but in an EMP scenario, it will be unlikely. A bank could keep the local economy going if they were on top of their game. Unfortunately, those working there have no outside-the-box abilities. Neither does the head of the grocery store. Neither does the head of the city, or anyone elected thereof. But YOU are thinking outside the box, or you would NOT be reading this. So get out there and ask people what their plans are. Try to feed them information that gives them the ability to think outside the box and act with decisions to keep people in their comfort zone. If someone can buy food at the local grocery store with an IOU during this stressful time, there will be no incentive to “go rogue” or get crazy, in fact, they will be more likely to help police the grocery store to prevent theft. (I live in an area where 2 out of 5 people carry openly or concealed). Imagine that banks are not working, but they say that they are printing city money (or using an actual city stamp on top of used paper) for currency to keep the city going until further notice. It would help commerce continue until things got more balanced. This requires communication, cooperation, and some preparedness in your local community. If the banks don’t do this, SOMEONE WILL. And they will be top dog, controlling the money supply (which is just paper – but that’s all the dollar is).
Also need self protection. Got no pow pow? Strong sticks and rocks can useful. Don’t know how to cook? You better start learning how.
There is a North Korean satellite that flies over the U.S. daily, that is not transmitting any data back to that country. It’s at the exact height it needs to be to detonate a high level EMP. They are just waiting for the command to push that button to weaponize it and take down our electrical grid. We must assume that none of our regular services will be working after that, so our plans must include ways to become independent off the grid. The problem is we are so far removed from the generations that hunted, smoked food, canned, gathered water, chopped wood, cooked over an open fire, applied home remedies and taught children at home TO SURVIVE that if our lives truly depended on us being able to provide for our families like the pioneers did, could we? We all can’t know everything. We need a community to be able to survive, for neighborhood defense and for the skills we don’t have. Make plans now. We may not have much time left to prepare.
Community is wonderful. But can you trust community? Of course, there are pockets of good people, but most people these days cannot be trusted. Most family can be trusted to a point (a greedy family member won’t hesitate to take what you got). Husband, wife and children really need to stick together. This culture is not a friend to honest people.
If it’s a nuclear EMP, there will be retaliation … followed by a cascade effect of return fire, and international panic, likely resulting in defensive firing of multiple nukes from other nations in all directions. It’s unlikely to be a “one off” event. So during the first 72 hours, it would probably be a bad idea to be outside or traveling for any reason at all. (It won’t matter if vehicles can run … since fuel will soon be a missing component)
I got to thinking:
1. I’m not sure there will be that much of a police presence, even right after the event.
2. There will probably be more than a “few” deaths and they won’t just be from being “in the wrong place at the wrong time”.
The police are human beings, too and they will probably be “in the know” sooner than the rest of us and many will be taking care of themselves and their families.
The number of deaths will likely be higher as the criminal element meets their end at the hands of citizens who are better prepared than the author conveys.
“If the police show up, they’ll be faced with wonton crime that they can’t do a thing to stop.”
Wonton is a food item, wanton is random, useless in the context used
Not picking nits, but noticing the details.
I’ve read a fair bit of the current EMP fiction out there, and noticed that the view on America’s social situation is very dim. I don’t foresee random stranger on stranger violence becoming a thing on the first day. I may be looking on the bright side, but having been through a couple of large blackout events out west I didn’t see violence, just looting during the first 12 hours, the violence may come when it is realized no one is looking, coming, and the rules are suspended. Joe Normal I don’t think would jump straight to “Let’s kill them all” in a 24 hour period, but we do have more than our fair share of barely restrained serial killers, and murders.
Question regarding EMP: Isn’t a faraday box suppose to be grounded? Should you ground your car?
Doc