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Electromagnetic pulse: Difference between revisions
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* In the second issue of ''[[Global Frequency]]'', one of the characters carries non-lethal weaponry, such as EMP grenades, when they are going against a full-body enhancile. {{spoiler|They are... not exactly non-leathal.}}
* In [[The Dark Knight Returns]] the Soviets launch a single nuclear missile at the contested island of Corto Maltese. Superman knocks it off course, but, as Batman points out, this is not a [[Nuke'Em]] weapon - the 'Coldbringer' is designed to knock out the enemies' ability to fight, without damaging infrastructure. The weapon detonates, Superman gets [[Normally I Would Be Dead Now|almost dead]], and the electrics fizzle out in most of the Americas.
* In ''[[All Fall Down]]'', the [[Colony Drop]]-sized asteroid Penumbra seems to be radiating this, making any missile attack impossible.
* ''[[Iron Man]]'' has one built into his armor. It disables his own gear as well, which then takes about six minutes to fix itself. The exact same thing is in the ''[[War Machine (Comic Book)|War Machine]]'' armor.
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* In ''[[Air Force One (film)|Air Force One]]'' a stewardess mentions [[Air Force One|the titular plane]] is protected against this, which I suppose is [[Truth in Television]].
* In [[John Woo]]'s ''[[Broken Arrow (1996 film)|Broken Arrow]]'', a nuke detonated underground produces enough EMP to knock down a helicopter flying above it.
* Speaking of EMP and helicopters, this is the favorite weapon of Blackout in the live-action ''[[Transformers (film)|Transformers]]'' film, and I'm pretty sure{{verify}} other Transformers have used such weapons, if only mentioned in their Tech Specs.
** Blaster uses an EMP gun. It blows up normal electronics but Transformers, being more resilient, only suffer from seriously impaired movement coordination (still very painful if you happen to be in jet form at the time).
* In ''[[Small Soldiers]]'', the kid blows up a power transformer in the back yard. This generates an EMP that fries the circuitry of all the evil toys. The good toys are shielded by a downed satellite dish, somehow.
* In the remake of ''[[Ocean's Eleven]]'', [[Don Cheadle]] uses an EMP generator to cause a power outage at the casino so [[George Clooney]] and [[Matt Damon]] can get past the security lasers. He even describes the device as "a nuke... without the nuke."
** Assuming that such a device could be built, the rapid restoration of power is a [[Artistic License Physics]]/[[Artistic License Engineering]] double-header. Not to mention the additional affects that would certainly kill people given the loss of power would also affect anything with an engine and anyone on any kind of life support.
*** Circuit breakers, surge protectors?
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*** It's implied in one of the stories (IG-88's section in ''Tales of the Bounty Hunters'') that it ''does'' permanently destroy circuity and such, but there are usually ways to auto-repair the damaged paths. Hence the temporary shutdown period, between "destroyed" and "repaired enough to function".
* Shows up in ''[[Escape From L.A.]]'' as part of a top-secret government project that ends up being stolen by a terrorist who threatens to zap America if the government doesn't meet his demands. The film ends with {{spoiler|Snake zapping the entire world instead}}.
* In ''[[
== [[Literature]] ==
* In [[Harry Turtledove]]'s ''[[Worldwar]]'' series, the Race begins their assault on Earth by using EMP to disrupt human technology. However, as this is set during [[World War II]], most of humanity's electronics consist of vacuum tubes and are thus unaffected, to the surprise of the invaders.
* In William Gibson's ''[[Neuromancer]]'', the US military flight unit "Operation Screaming Fist", led by Colonel Willis Corto (Armitage), is taken down by Russian EMP weapons.
** In the ''Neuromancer'' universe, many companies use Artificial Intelligences to run their computing needs, especially security. Notably, there is a regulatory agency (the Turings) that is aware that [[A.I. Is a Crapshoot]]: as such, all AI-equipped supercomputers must be built with an EMP destruct device, triggerable by any Turing agent. As one AI-savvy character puts it, "Every AI ever built has an electromagnetic shotgun wired to its forehead." This is important, as the story revolves around two
* EMP (especially handheld EMP) play a key part of [[Orson Scott Card]]'s ''[[Orson Scott Card's Empire|Empire]]'' series.
* In ''All Frequency Jamming/Full Band Interception'' by Chinese Sci-Fi writer Cixin Liu, the future Russian (or Chinese, as it's changed in the Taiwanese version) army saved themselves from the conquer of NATO by using EMP in the most [[Badass]]
* ''[[Carrera's
* In ''[[Moon Over Soho]]'' the cover story for the [[Masquerade]] is that a suspect premises had a miniature EMP bomb in it and [[Suspiciously Specific Denial|not a magical demon trap]].
* In Max Barry's ''Machine Man'', love interest Lola's {{spoiler|[[Heart Trauma]]}} is mended with a model that discharges an EMP when she gets excited. It does considerable damage and ends up as a {{spoiler|[[Chekhov's Gun]]}}.
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* A key element of the plot of Charles Sheffield's novel ''[[Aftermath]]''.
== [[Live
* In ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'', an EMP is generated by a Naquadah generator overload and is [[Stargate Atlantis/Recap/S01/E13 Hot Zone|used to destroy some runaway nanites.]]
** Also used in ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' to remotely knock out an alien device through the Stargate (it didn't work).
* [[The BBC]]'s nuclear holocaust drama ''[[Threads]]'' had an EMP knocking out Britain's electronics before the missiles strike.
* Also in the US [[Made for TV Movie]] nuclear holocaust drama [[The Day After]].
* [[Jericho]]{{context}}
* An EMP is used to disable the robot angels in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "Voyage of the Damned".
** "Age of Steel", Mrs. Moore uses an EMP bomb to disable a cyberman, who revealed to {{spoiler|bride to be}}. This gives the Doctor a clue on the effects of humans being [[Unwilling Roboticisation|"upgraded"]].
* In the first season of ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'', {{spoiler|HRG got Nuclear Ted to emit an EMP instead of his normal nukes in order to shut out the power at Primatech so they could escape.}}
* In ''[[Dark Angel]]'' the United States is a third world country because of a terrorist EMP attack.
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*** Solves one issue, raises another: if no one has personal phones anymore (all cells are NSA issued), how is {{spoiler|Dana}} communicating with the terrorists without being noticed?
*** Actually she eventually does get tracked down and caught precisely because they traced the NSA-issued phone to her.
* ''[[Leverage]]'' features both a handheld version and the much larger bomb version. The handheld version is a much smaller version of the kind that is in development for use in police pursuits. The bomb version actually averts the mistake of Ocean's Eleven, [[The Smart Guy|Hardison]] explains that setting off the device would make them the largest terrorists in American history.
* In the [[Bugs]] episode "''Pulse''", the EMP is referred to as a "pulse bomb", which the protagonists use to escape a heavily armed villain.
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** Certain rockets have this as an effect in ''[[Armored Core]]'': They temporarily stun the enemy mech.
** EMP grenades in [[Transformers: War for Cybertron]] scramble the HUD and cause static to appear on screen, while leaving movement and weapons operational. They're used by the Scout class.
* ''[[Outpost]] 2''{{context}}
* In ''[[Banjo-Kazooie|Banjo-Tooie]]'', Mumbo can use an EMP spell in Grunty Industries to shut down factory machinery.
* ''[[StarCraft]]'' features an EMP wielding giant spaceship. The EMP knocks out shields, making it only useful against one race, but only REALLY useful against Archons, who have 300 shield and only 10 life.
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== [[Web Comics]] ==
* ''[[Megatokyo]]'' Largo uses one as a rickroll.
* ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'':
** Aylee from had her [[Involuntary Shapeshifting]] mutate her into a living EMP generator in response to a [[Nanotechnology|nanite infection]]. It caused problems as she had to routinely run away from the house for fear of accidentally setting off one of Riff's inventions. Or worse, erasing Bun-Bun's ''[[Baywatch]]'' video tapes!
** Torg at one point [http://archives.sluggy.com/book.php?chapter=61#2010-08-17 used] an EMP bomb to fry Dr. Nofun's lab. That's also how he discovered "Doesn't hurt ''people''!" comes with "
* An EMP effect was used by the protagonists of ''[[Molten Blade]]'' to aid their escape from a research facility, generated from a device referred to as an "e-bomb" by one of the characters.
* In the ''[[Bob and George]]'' comics, during the ''[[Mega Man 3]]'' storyline, Mega Man was able to convert the Magnet Missiles into an EMP. It's very effective, but {{spoiler|he burns them out after two uses.}}
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== Real Life ==
* Naturally occurring magnetic storms can be quite rough. The strongest known was [[w:Solar storm of 1859|Carrington Event]] (1–2 September 1859) induced by solar events, that took out the entire telegraph system in Europe and North America and parts of Australia and Asia. The strongest ''measured'' was Quebec Storm (13-14 March 1989), tripped enough of fuses on the grid to leave more than six million people for nine hours. The largest geomagnetic storms of solar origin measured in the latest decades were Halloween Storms (29-31 October 2003) - a big blackout happened in Sweden, though still less than a hour long, and some transformers burned out even in South Africa. Naturally, such things happened before late XIX century too, but that's known only by auroras observed far from the polar regions.
** If you want to know what could this do now, there's a study done for the insurance industry: ''[//www.lloyds.com/news-and-risk-insight/risk-reports/library/natural-environment/solar-storm Solar storm risk to the North American electric grid]''. The conclusion is, Carrington level events are expectable once per 100-250 years, Quebec level events once per 35-70 years. Depending on things like soil conductivity in the affected area and just how thoroughly the grid is hardened, damage can vary a lot, but results of a big one can still be comparable to major earthquakes and volcano eruptions.
{{reflist}}
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