| Electromagnetic Pulse was reputed to the H-bomb atomic nuclear air-tests of the 1950's [*], and has been studied and designed since: Militial, naval, national security, stealth satellites, communications systems, (MILSTAR, UFO, SAC Post, KG, ARPANET), were engineered to ensure their own survivability under atomic detonation EMP jamming. The Q-bomb made famous in a 1959 movie (The Mouse That Roared: cf deafened), in recent decades named, E-bomb (misnomer from the popular Internet), converts chemical or nuclear detonation energy to electromagnetic pulse reducing the energy-dimensionality to increase its arrival impact power |
DEFINITION:
Q-bomb - electric/magnetic-Q-efficient exploder; electromagnetic pulse generator;
(by its device technology);
E-bomb - Electric/magnetic pulse generator (bomb); essentially the same emphasized for
its target application;
It is essentially a Radio-Frequency "Photon" bomb, that is particularly effective on electric-wired circuitries.
Q - electric element Q is the Quality (comparative, retentive), ratio, of energy load, to dissipation: magnetic inductance or electric capacitance over resistance (L/R, C/R; LC/R); also the electric charge storage capacitance Quantity without respect to resistance.
Furthermore for nomenclature, the Q-bomb design employs an autotransformer electromagnetic dynamo effect that instantaneously super-multiplies its magnetic field: Whence it -"explodes Q"- of the L/R-type specifically (while the device itself more implodes).
THEORY:
The damaging efficiency of EMPulse is in thinness of its two-dimensional wavefront effectively compressing all its energy in a short impulse,- leaving an expanding shell interior space of damaged electric elements that need no further taunting (cf the fireball-filled space of an ordinary explosion, even atomic nuclear, retaining most of its energy inside its three-dimensional sphere long after it's done),- and by the susceptibility of electric and electronic circuits and equipments to rapidly changing electric and magnetic fields,- which are installed and used everywhere, in most every appliance and device, inside and outside, residence home, business office, and in-between and in-transit, automobile, truck, airplane, boat; engine, radio, navigation, light, heater, telephone, television, computer,... anything above coal-age technology;-- and it's not stopped at the edge of the atmosphere, until it's spread to ineffectual thinness.
(It also imparts significant more-powerful-than-lightning strikes to power line grids, for a so-called newyorkleer-brownout winter.)
It outruns everything (except its own photon-burst if atomic) and can even detonate chemical explosives by sparks and spot heating.
By generating EMP, a standard explosion is converted to E-M energy traveling-efficiency upgrading a rather small device to greater radius, and threatening technology preferentially: An "E-Winter" by Q-nuke is a realistic national emergency threat (electrical and electronic, power grids, communications outage); it eludes political detente and tends to massive first strike: There may be no second or retaliatory strike capability as the ability to launch-and-detonate may be so destroyed. Q-nuke EMP devices are space-orbitable and ICBM-launchable; even under-desert-hidable for destroying industrial and commercial satellites, potentially triggering a massive first-strike; and conventional Q-bombs are truckable and hidable for nationalwide massive "first-implosion". A best defense beyond new-order global Inter-United-States (*), is, better-grounded public thinking in design of electricals and electronics.
* (Cooperation more finely resolved than the United Nations, as capacity to build and stockpile simpler chemical Q-bombs effectual against utilities, typically Statewide, larger than city-and-county-size, resides at sovereign State-size geo-dimensionality)
TECHNOLOGY: [basics hereïn, not concerned with superconductor super-efficiencies]
The Q-bomb, and derivative Q-cannon (essentially a heavy bore constraining a Q-bomb, allowing the cannon to be reütilized), consists of an explosive wrapped in a conductive shell below an electric winding energized by a quickly-discharging capacitor the instant afore detonation, building its magnetic field to peak before the expanding inner shell shorts the first winding,- enabling the autotransformer dynamo effect: and explosive compression multiplies the magnetic field to instantaneous super-intensity for maximal energy-to-impulse conversion, in a short microsecond pulse with significant, nanoseconds risetime breaking free from the detonation. The ordinary design has a hypersonic burn, explosion, begun at one end of a tube, traveling the length in a millisecond; the design symmetries regulating the brevity of the pulse. More advanced devices use faster cooler dissociative-burning (cooler, means less residual energy loss to thermal flash, less thermal-pre-destruction, more compression on the magnetic fields; faster, means nonsuperconductor windings might be used; dissociative-burning, means simpler logistics of energy storage and release with less inefficient entropy). Large-advanced devices use nuclear-fission, a bomb, to implode a slightly-conic core winding to plasma shorting itself; and may include lithium-deuteride H-bomb-core replosion triggered by the fission device, for EMPulse enhancement. And most-advanced small-device technologies optimize the scissors-end effect to achieve a very narrow pulse edge from focused precision explosive and shaped shell delaying the point of contact to span nanoseconds with picoseconds risetime (as in a Q-cannon, which has narrow beam focus).
DEFENSIVE MEASURES:--
LOW LEVEL: [FRINGE OF THE MAGNETIC RANGE SPHERE, AND BEYOND]
Good grounding and shielding: electric-pulse blocking-dumping (on differential signals), routing wiring and electrical conduits through ferrite beads (nonsaturating toroids; yes, sewage pipes, too: EMP bumps the ground); semiconductor overvoltage breakdown rectifiers, TVS diodes, thyristers, diacs, zeners, on signal lines; electrooptical signaling (may suffer momentary data lapses due to photon flashes at impurities in the fiber); bit error recovery coding. Solid metal chassis and walls -rather than open mesh and twisted mesh, Faraday, cages- must withstand the (bomb, cannon) blast force transmitted electromagnetically; transient-power suppressors; surge protectors.
HIGH LEVEL: [SURVIVING JUST OUTSIDE THE DIRECT BLAST IMPACT]
-GASHED NICHROME SPONGE-WOOL, THORIUM OXIDE COATED, NEON FILLING, UNDER PLEXIGLASS-
About the best defense is to dissipate the electromagnetic blast before it reaches equipment---outer walls, inner walls, and lastly in the room (keeping equipment away from protective e-walls where practicable): The following is probably least expensive:
Alternative and specialized applications and designs may use tungsten wool immersed in neon-halogen, carbon wool, closed metal foam, multi-bandgap semiconductive coatings (that step-up on infrared photons and emit visible photons before ever ionizing and melting).
The basic pulse concept is the inductive receptivity of standard electrical and electronic wiring, and the susceptibility to single-point failure of equipments: Thus, detected pulse lengths are at typically centimeter length (PC interior wiring), to meter (interbox cabling) and 100-meter length (power lines, broadside; construction rebar).
The basic defensive dissipation concept is the Wien efficiency in upconverting radio frequency magnetic waves (approximately UHF, SHF or EHF range pulse-duration) to infrared or (preferred) visible photons: Higher frequencies are shorter wavelengths generated (emitted) faster, thus dissipating more rapidly. Visible dissipation less affects electricals and electronics; and also aids in immediate pulse-detection recognition.
EMP PRACTICAL USES:
It probably has little home use: cooking by microwave pulse may result in less after-temperature, less need for water, maybe cook frozen, but it tends to create instantaneously stranger chemistries not ordinarily deemed cooking of food-- a technology to explore.
Q-cannon may be accurate enough to provide ICBM trigger-defection (but also recall-defection) in the most advanced nuclear missile designs, but not in the cruder impact-slider-detonated, bunker-complex-blaster designs.
FOOTNOTE: [1950'S HISTORIC]
* [The usual explanation given for the EMPulse from H-bomb air-tests was that the explosion reached the upper atmosphere (layers) where it became asymmetric, and whence generated e-m-field distortion. However it is noteworthy that the H-bomb design itself, in then-contemporary technology (*), employed a fission trigger,- which at detonation temperature becomes a charged-gas-plasma cloud of electrons streaming-out 60-times faster than nuclei, -and then,- its immediately subsequent fusion detonation at one side, though itself symmetric, blasts the remnant proton-rich cloud, even a hundred Coulombs, asymmetrically:-- thus easily a billion-ampere bolt with its attendant electromagnetic spike "pulse"]
* (One of Sakharov's proposals featured a tubular magnetic field explosively collapsed to super-multiply its magnetic field to create electro-plasma containment condition characteristics not unlike the tokamak sustained-fusion plasma devices. He was reputedly unable to get sufficient fusion by chemical implosion -whence modern H-bomb design uses a fission trigger,- but he was obviously designing a football-size, fusion-powered, Q-bomb, that could have reduced entire cities to concrete rubble and melted rebar ... uninteresting to modern video-gamers, but a passing romp in said comedy movie.)