In movies/ fictional novels, solar flare and EMP will render all electronics devices unusable. Is this true?
In: Physics
No. An EMP, whether it’s from the sun or a nuke, is really just a blast of radio waves. Like all radio waves, these require an antenna of some sort to be picked up, and they can be blocked by metal.
Small components like chips will be pretty safe, but the wires between them (if not shielded) might cause harm. Often it’s as simple has forcing the device to restart.
On paper yes in reality no. In theory you can get a EMP that is strong enough to fry anything, but this is one of those “you are going to have bigger problems situations.” Like by the time a nuclear EMP is strong enough to take out shielded electronics, the nuke is large enough and you are close enough that said electronics will be vaporized about 0.001 seconds after the EMP takes them out. At a minimum you are at a range where you are 100% going to die from thermal effects and overpressure. Same deal for a solar flare. By the time we are talking a flare that will take out your laptop we are talking a flare that will strip the ozone layer off the earth.
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