Remember how you felt when your cellphone battery was dead, your GPS could not locate your position while driving, or even when your laptop wouldn’t turn on due to a computer virus? It didn’t feel good. You felt out-of-the-loop and a bit lost without access to these daily helpers throughout your day. Now imagine these small instances happening on a larger scale, affecting nearly every electronic device that operates today and being much more permanent; that’s the devastating effects of an electromagnetic pulse. If you want to learn how to survive an EMP attack, then you’ve come to the right place.

How To Survive An Emp Attack

An EMP is a very real possibility in today’s world. Not unlike other possible emergency scenarios like natural disasters, civil unrest, foreign attacks, economic collapse, and pandemics, to name just a few, an EMP strike would have a crippling effect on your normal way of living for quite a long time. 

However, you can take precautions to minimize an EMP’s effects on your personal electronics if you know where to start. Every journey starts with the first step, so here are some do-it-yourself protection tips to prevent frying your electronics. 

What Exactly is an EMP?

Simply put, an EMP is a brief burst of electromagnetic energy produced naturally in the world or manmade in various forms. The sun is the primary source of naturally occurring EMPs, along with lightning strikes to a lesser degree. During a sun storm, plasma is emitted from the sun’s surface as a long stream, disrupting the earth’s magnetic field. Manmade EMPs are caused mainly by detonating a nuclear weapon. 

The gamma radiation from the massive explosion pulls electrons directly from the air molecules at the blast site and accelerates them up to the speed of light. These super-fast particles interact with the magnetic field surrounding the planet, and an EMP occurs. All this may mean very little to the non-science enthusiast or your ordinary Joe. However, to the survival skill practitioner, those three simple letters, EMP, can create an incredible disruption to normal everyday living. Immediate Effects If Not Protected

Depending upon the severity of the EMP strike, several effects could be immediately felt. Most electronic equipment within your home becomes inoperable due to the sensitive circuits becoming overloaded. Think of lighting suddenly hitting your house directly on the main power line. Everything plugged in or directly connected would be fried.

 However, an EMP pulse takes this one step further because almost all electronic equipment would be affected. Whether it’s plugged in since a pulse sends the surge through the air, not any tangible powerlines or cords. No cellphones, GPS devices, tablets, laptops, radios, and even modern versions of coffee makers, toasters, or some children’s toys would cease to function after a pulse hits your home. 

Who Was Mr. Farady?

Michael Faraday was a physicist and chemist in the early 19th century. With quite a number of contributions to the world of science, one of them including electromagnetism. While his accomplishments could be an entire article alone, we’re going to focus on one in particular. One that can directly aid in preserving the integrity of electronics when an EMP pulse hits, and that’s the Faraday Cage. 

Faraday concluded during one of his many experimentation sessions that the excess charge on a charged conductor existed on the outside and didn’t affect whatever was on the inside. This led to him creating an experiment in which he covered the interior of a room with metal foil and, using an electrostatic generator, released a high-voltage charge to the room. 

Then, using an electroscope, he observed no charge inside the foiled room. Thus the Faraday Cage was born. Although Benjamin Franklin and Abbe Nollet also did similar experiments the name and the credit to Faraday stuck.

Around The House Supplies

Although you can buy pre-made Faraday cages, they are expensive and bulky. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to survive an EMP attack. Instead, you may create your cage, and you can do so with several items found either around your house or at the local home improvement store. One easy-to-find item would be tin foil. Get your jokes about a tinfoil hat out of the way first, then realize it can help protect your gear. 

Wrap your electronics in layers of foil and plastic wrap or line larger envelopes with foil and place your cell phone, walkie-talkies, or GPS devices inside. Additionally, if you have an old metal filing cabinet around the house, you can transform it into a working Faraday cage with minor modifications:

1. Make sure the cabinet has a metal bottom (some are bottomless.) If not, you’ll need to get a piece of sheet metal and secure it to the cabinet’s underside.
2. With some guidance from videos online (there are plenty), you’ll need to add conductivity wiring to the drawers and outer casing that leads to an exterior grounding wire and, ultimately, to the grounding rod. Now, you have a working Faraday cage (and a filing cabinet, as it will still operate as intended.)
3. Metal garbage cans can also be inexpensive to protect your expensive or essential devices.

Again, tips and techniques to build your own are online. Still, most garbage can “cages” can be constructed with a metal can, some inside insulation (for extra protection and cushioning of delicate electronics), aluminum foil tape, some cardboard, and some dedicated time on your part to get the job done. That’s it!

What Items Should You Protect?

What can you put into your homemade cage? You are only limited by the amount of space you have inside. Cellphones, key fobs, radios, flashlights, GPS trackers, or any electronic device can be placed into your cage. You can pre-wrap your equipment in tin foil for even more excellent protection. Less expensive items can be bought and held permanently within your cage, so you’re not scrambling to gather your devices when an EMP pulse does(hopefully not) hit your area. 

Better Safe Than Sorry

Although you may be a novice at prepping, simple homemade Faraday cages can offer significant protection from an EMP pulse. It’s better to be safe than sorry, so grab some tools and gather some very common items. Together we can create a “safe house” to keep all your electronics from becoming useless paperweights.