Like how you can fry your electronics if they’re plugged in when the power comes back on from an outage, why can’t we “unplug” everything so to speak?
In: Planetary Science
It depends on the EMP, the object, and how it’s turned off.
The things that are going to be messed up the most by an EMP are unshielded magnetic storage and semiconductors. Unshielded meaning that there’s nothing in place to mitigate or redirect the pulse, such as conductive outer casing that is insulated from the main body (a Faraday cage). Semiconductors are used on every type of modern electronics and are prone to experience significant chemical changes when enough electromagnetic energy is passed through them in the wrong direction, burning out the chip. Magnetic storage can have its data corrupted and rendered unreadable by a strong enough EMP.
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