I did a much lower fidelity experiment this past week with one of my kids.
I have some radios I threw in metal boxes on the off chance something like this happened so we’d have some way to get emergency alerts. To check how well it shielded we threw my phone in it and they called to see if it rang. It did.
So we tried some other things - the microwave (worked), a tool chest (didn’t), a faraday bag (worked), miscellaneous storage boxes (didn’t).
Fortunately, the box with the radio was an old box and some paint had worn from the edges. We made a “seal” out of aluminum foil and tried again. It worked.
This only tested high frequency signals and probably doesn’t reflect real EMP risk in any way, but it was fun to do.
When you say "worked", do you mean the phone worked in the microwave or that the microwave worked as a Faraday cage and prevented the phone from ringing?
For my money, a triple burrito wrap of foil and ziploc gives 90+ dB attenuation plus moisture and mechanical protection.
Also nitpick, but the E1 pulse doesn't fry beefy transformers, instead it's the long-period E3 pulse (seconds to minutes) that raises the grid voltage and overvolts the transformers.
Technically I'm measuring in the "wrong direction" since I would be very surprised if an EMP were initiated inside a trash can in my basement, but shielding works the same in both directions so this doesn't matter.
It really doesn't, with 1.5GHz you're still in near field regime inside the can.
When apple started doing mac address randomization on the iphone, we used a metal trash can to test that in a controlled environment. It worked quite well for wifi isolation. We did not tape the lid.
Since you already suspect that any EMP will come from above why didn't this guy simply turn the trash can upside down and place it over the test setup?
There would be no need to seal anything since the can has a continuous rolled seam. Just use a standard trash can instead of one of those kitchen trash cans that likely has a plastic bottom for easy clean-up.
This is a cool test and a great use of (relatively cheap) rtlsdr dongles.
A much better faraday cage is matroiska doll nesting of two trash cans with a non-conductive platform supporting inside can. The air gap and double conducting surfaces really help. And with the different size of the internal trash can and different circumference of the rim there'll be a different resonant freq that gets let in so while the outside may pass ~339 MHz without any attenuation the inner one might pass ~450 MHz and so both will get at least the normal ~20dB minimum attenuation.
This kind of prepping is silly. I suppose it's a way for adults to build pillow forts.
AI isn't likely to deliberately kill anyone. It's likely to make them entirely economically uncompetitive.
Today, if people go on strike, the economy grinds to a halt. This gives them a good deal of political power. If the economically useless go on strike, nobody cares. That turns into violence, and the police forces that we've been automating should be effective at suppression.
Automating the economy is the risk to humans, not EMPs.
I have some radios I threw in metal boxes on the off chance something like this happened so we’d have some way to get emergency alerts. To check how well it shielded we threw my phone in it and they called to see if it rang. It did.
So we tried some other things - the microwave (worked), a tool chest (didn’t), a faraday bag (worked), miscellaneous storage boxes (didn’t).
Fortunately, the box with the radio was an old box and some paint had worn from the edges. We made a “seal” out of aluminum foil and tried again. It worked.
This only tested high frequency signals and probably doesn’t reflect real EMP risk in any way, but it was fun to do.
The storage boxes and tool boxes did not function as a faraday cage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMct99DiZak
For my money, a triple burrito wrap of foil and ziploc gives 90+ dB attenuation plus moisture and mechanical protection.
Also nitpick, but the E1 pulse doesn't fry beefy transformers, instead it's the long-period E3 pulse (seconds to minutes) that raises the grid voltage and overvolts the transformers.
It really doesn't, with 1.5GHz you're still in near field regime inside the can.
Yeah, you put a transmitter inside the can, and a receiver inside the can, and the receiver is gonna get signal.
There would be no need to seal anything since the can has a continuous rolled seam. Just use a standard trash can instead of one of those kitchen trash cans that likely has a plastic bottom for easy clean-up.
A much better faraday cage is matroiska doll nesting of two trash cans with a non-conductive platform supporting inside can. The air gap and double conducting surfaces really help. And with the different size of the internal trash can and different circumference of the rim there'll be a different resonant freq that gets let in so while the outside may pass ~339 MHz without any attenuation the inner one might pass ~450 MHz and so both will get at least the normal ~20dB minimum attenuation.
AI isn't likely to deliberately kill anyone. It's likely to make them entirely economically uncompetitive.
Today, if people go on strike, the economy grinds to a halt. This gives them a good deal of political power. If the economically useless go on strike, nobody cares. That turns into violence, and the police forces that we've been automating should be effective at suppression.
Automating the economy is the risk to humans, not EMPs.
So, of course not. Those humans won't exist.