EMP against Nuclear?

[JoeSF35]

Could an EMP be used to disable the detonation device of a nuclear missile?

Or are simple pressure sensors all that is needed for detonation?

[alt_f13]

Probly, but I'm pretty sure that type of weapon has very effective shielding... so the only EMP strong enough would have to be caused by a nuclear explosion. Kindof defeats the purpose of a defense such as that.

 

[edit]

 

Nukes can actually be destroyed without being set off, so that type of elaborate setup is not needed, as far as I know.

[ed84c]

but if they are you ahve a ery large dirty bomb

[bloodhound]

or as bush says. nucular weapons

[NSX]

What does emp stand for?

[Sayonara]

Electro-Magnetic Pulse.

[Lance]

I’m pretty sure EMP would have absolutely no effect on the bomb itself or its detonator. I think the most vulnerable part would be any type of guidance system (if any). The casing around the bomb is a faraday cage so unless there is any type of conductive metal object protruding from the case the EMP would have no effect. It wouldn’t matter the power of the EMP if there is a faraday cage.

[pulkit]

Ah ! Faradya cage : Simple and highly efficient........ physics at its best !

[5614]

this kinda mini-war inside my head just started!!!!

 

sure a faraday cage would stop any kinda electric current, but wouldnt an EMP get passed it? i mean, no electricity can get passed well, inside a faraday cage, but at the same time, isnt an EMP a bit more than an electric shock,

 

i mean, its an elctromagentic pulse, electromagnetic, as in the EM spectrum, which is radio waves, microwaves, infarred, light, ultraviolet, x-ray and gamma rays..... so its not actually an electric wave, more an electromagentic wave

 

so would a faraday cage work.... i dont think so, but i might b wrong!

 

and if the nuke missile doesnt work like a faraday cage, which i dont think it does, then the missile's electronic systems, e.g. guidance AND detonation sequence should all fail, as EMP tend to detroy electronic devices, incl. the wires, not only chips and stuff, i think everything is destroyed, so even a basic timere switch would stop working,

thats my view anyway

[alt_f13]

but if they are you ahve a ery large dirty bomb

 

That is a completely different kind of weapon... more used as a terror tactic than anything. The radiation given off by a dirty bomb is minimal compared to a Nuke.. and may not even do any damage at all, except for the explosion itself.

 

Only a moron would use a dirty bomb. (ie. suck it terrorist pigs)

[Lance]

Yes, a dirty bomb does ABSOLUTLY nothing but scare you.

 

A faraday would still work. Have you ever seen the pictures of people in faraday cages and tesla coils?

 

The cage will act as if it’s grounded, protecting any guidance system/human inside.

Edit: Wires would also be unaffected. It’s only the sensitive semiconductors that are affected

[Dave]

Yes, but all of those are examples of electrostatic discharges, not EM radiation. Look at it this way: you can strike a car with lightning and it'll protect the guy inside it. However, bombard it with gamma rays and he'll die. Just because it forms a Faraday cage doesn't imply that it can magically stop EM radiation.

[Lance]

An EMP causes a huge voltage spike. That’s why it’s so harmful to semiconductors.

 

Imagine a transformer with a shorted secondary. That’s basically what the faraday would be.

[YT2095]

the semiconductor components used are GaAs based, and really quite insensitive to EM radiation, they use similar circuitry in bomers that can drop nukes, and on occasion some of the more critical circuitry is based on the thermionic valve (completely immune with regards to breakdown by EMPs).

[pulkit]

Faraday cage implies no electric field inside implies no EM wave can exsist.

 

Are Tesla Coins loops made of magnetic materials (which shield from magnetic fields) ?

[Dave]

Faraday cage implies no electric field inside implies no EM wave can exsist.

 

By that logic, visible light (which is EM radiation last time I checked) wouldn't be able to enter a car. Unless I'm getting horribly confused, which is possible. I'll admit I know next to nothing about Faraday cages.

 

This conversation is more or less pointless anyway, since these things are almost certainly designed with EMP in mind, especially if they're going to be used in nuclear war.

[YT2095]

Dave a farraday cage is metal "Cage" that EM radiation when trying to penetrate it, gets turned into a current and then basicly rendered useless.

it can be anything from solid metal plating to chickenwire or tinfoil (depending on the radiation it`s meant to block), the cage is then usualy Earthed (but not always needed to be).

 

that`s simplified, but adequate for these purposes

[Dave]

Fair enough, I'll admit when I'm wrong.

[YT2095]

you weren`t wrong per se, a car can and will act as a perfectly good farraday cage at low frequencies, as will chicken wire, and both will let light through

 

the difference is that light is at a much higher frequency, nothing more. although with a car it takes on the role of of insulator as well, with respect to lightening, and also has the advantage of exploiting the "Skin Effect" and usualy a Stereo to listen to

[pulkit]

I'd like to add a little footnote ........

 

A car is not an ideal faraday cage because theoretically a farday cage is a metallic closed surface. The car is not completely metallic. What probably saves you from lightening is well explained by YT. Another point there is that sitting in the car you can't possibly complete an electric circuit(given that you do not try to attain some very weird positions inside the car whereby you manage to ground a part of your body) and hence no shock is possible.

 

The bottom line is that [MATH]\bigtriangledown . \vec{E} = 0[/MATH] which means no electric field inside cage, hence no induced magnetic field either and so no EM waves.

[USMA German]

Lets define EMP.

 

Electro-magnetic pulse.

 

Can be produced from a Nuclear device. The degree of EMP produced from a Nuclear device depends upon the altitude of burst. The higher the burst the stronger the EMP field is created.

 

In a high altitude burst (100,000 ft) there is initially a large flux of gamma rays produced. These gamma rays react with the earth's magnetic field and produce secondary gamma rays and strip off highly energetic electrons. This creates a field of highly energetic beta particles. This field is what the Electro-magnetic pulse is. The field is no more than negatively charged particles. That is why electronics are either disrupted or severely damaged based on the intensity of the EMP. EMP can be defended by layering AL preferrably with thicknesses depending upon the frequency of the EMP field. Different frequency means a different thickness of Al or other metals. Any circuit or any devise using electricity is in danger unless some level of protection is applied.

 

If you have watched Oceans 11 do not take the example of thier EMP devise to heart. They have it all wrong.

 

Fischhaber

Go Army

Branch: EN

[flyboy]

an EMP would most likely set the nuke off instead of actually disabling it

[calbiterol]

Out of curiosity, flyboy, are you basing that on knowledge, or just speculating?

 

Also, howstuffworks has two great articles for this thread:

How nukes work

How e-bombs work

[YT2095]

a propper nuke (not something knocked up in a terrorists garage) has more failsafes that than the Federal Reserve! an emp could never trigger a detonation sequence, thery`re designed NOT to go off more than they are to explode, if that makes sense.

even when a nuke is "Hot" you`de have a very hard time getting it blow without some significant equipment!

[jdurg]

Exactly, the precise timing required to get all the subcritical masses fusing at the same time is remarkable. If the timing is off by just a fraction of a second, the bomb basically becomes a dud. In order to go critical, the masses have to come together and form one supercritical mass before the explosive compositions themselves blow the mass apart. This is why you can't get a nuclear bomb to 'go off' even if you hit it with another missile. The explosion that would happen is not the impeccably timed explosion needed to create the supercritical mass. With modern bombs, the circuitry inside the bomb that controls the initiation of the explosion is quite complex. It's also VERY well protected from any type of electrical/EM interference. I mean, the circuitry is in an enclosed area with several kilograms of highly radioactive material. It should definitely be able to withstand EM and any other electrical interference, otherwise the nuclear 'fuel' itself would damage the circuitry.