What does an EMP do, & how would we come back from it?
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An EMP generates random high voltages in electronics, which can fry more sensitive pieces of equipment by forcing electricity to flow where it should not and break very small parts of the device.
Replacing broken systems would be the way to recover from EMP damage. They are, however, possible to protect against using metal casings and more robust electronic components.
An electromagnetic pulse takes advantage of the fact that magnetism, electricity, and all forms of light are all manifestations of the same phenomenon. If you’ve ever done or seen that experiment where you make a coil of wires, then run a magnet through the coil to turn on a lightbulb, you’ve seen the process causing the problem here in miniature. The EMP is like an absolutely gigantic magnet, all of your electronics are the coil of wire, and the current generated by the moving magnetic field is enough to fry all of your lightbulbs.
There is no way to recover from this. Everything that gets fried would need to be replaced, and the most susceptible parts – every microchip – are also the slowest, most expensive ones to replace.
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