The threat of an EMP has been around for many decades, but in the past several years, the concept and potential for an EMP attack have become mainstream.
There are many books, TV shows, and movies on the subject, and a Google search for EMP delivers 273 million results.
The problem with preparing for an EMP attack is that we do not know what will happen in the days, weeks, and months after the lights go out.
To this end, I have compiled a list of 10 events that will probably happen after an EMP.
Confusion
The first thing that will happen after an EMP attack is mass confusion.
This will be especially so if the EMP is strong enough to destroy electronic devices such as smartphones and radios. That is why you should learn here the only way to communicate after an EMP.
We are all accustomed to power outages, but when the power outage is coupled with other electronic devices being rendered ineffective, the average person will be perplexed about what is happening.
Panic And Looting
Once the confusion wears off, the general populace will panic immediately. When the power goes out, we expect it to be restored soon.
Related: Places To Avoid: Where Looters Will Strike First When SHTF
Even after major disasters, the power never stays off permanently. As soon as people realize that the lights are not coming back on, there will be panic, and that panic will lead to widespread looting.
Food Shortages
No power means that food production will grind to a halt.
This means that what is on store shelves is all the food that will be available.
Local distribution centers will have some additional stock, which will be exhausted in only a few days.
The result will be that whatever food supplies people have in their homes will be all they can expect to live off until help arrives in the form of international disaster relief.
Water And Sanitation Will Cease
Without grid power, the pumps which supply us with water and sanitation will have to switch to backup generators.
If those generators are destroyed by the EMP or run out of fuel, we will not have a source of fresh water, and the sewage that each home produces will have nowhere to go.
The result of this is going to be a massive resurgence of waterborne diseases.
⇒ Click Here For The Awesome DIY Device That Turns Air Into Fresh Water
Furthermore, since the average person has never been forced to consider how to dispose of human waste properly, they will probably discard it in the most unsanitary ways. This will contaminate many freshwater sources in the area.
Hospitals Will Shut Down
An EMP will cut off the supply chain and the fuel for a hospital’s backup generators.
Without power or resupply, the doctors and nurses will have to cope without access to the equipment they rely on and a dwindling supply of drugs and other essentials.
Some hospitals outsource certain services, such as food, laundry, cleaning services, and security. After an EMP, the employees of these subcontractors will not show up for work.
Related: How To Properly Store Over-The-Counter Drugs And Medical Supplies
The workload placed on nurses and doctors will definitely cause most of them to go home to their families, especially when the news that the power will be out for months reaches them.
Prison Wardens Will Have Hard Choices To Make
When an EMP strikes, the electronics inside of a prison will also shut down. With prisoners outnumbering guards by a massive margin, the wardens of these facilities will have to place them under lockdown.
Once the wardens realize that the lights are not coming back on, they will have to decide what to do with the criminals.
Food, water, and supplies would cease to enter the prison; one by one, the guards would abandon their posts to return home and protect their families.
The choice would be to let the prisoners go, keep them under lockdown to die of either dehydration or starvation, or execute the lot of them.
Planes May Fall From The Sky
An EMP may knock out the electronics of the aircraft flying above us.
These planes will be turned into gliders.
Some pilots may be able to bring these planes to the ground in relative safety, but many aircraft will crash and burn.
There is little doubt that some of these planes will crash into densely populated areas causing mass casualties on the ground.
An Unprecedented Death Toll
It is estimated that an EMP attack could result in up to 90% of the US population perishing.
Without food, water, sanitation, or access to healthcare, the death toll would continuously ratchet up as the general population succumbed to dehydration, starvation, violence, preventable disease, injury, chronic illness, and a host of other causes of death.
There are a lot of people who live with illnesses that can be treated and managed through medication and regular treatments.
⇒ 10 Medical Supplies You Need To Stockpile Before It’s Too Late
Unfortunately, once these options are removed, these people will fall prey to their conditions in probably very horrific ways.
The Economy Will Drastically Change
When the electronic banking system fails, it is said that cash will be king. After an EMP, however, cash will have little value because the government that backs that cash is doomed to implode.
So instead, gold, silver, ammunition, medicines, liquor, tobacco, and other vices will be their own currency.
Likewise, food, clean water, and survival gear will be big-ticket barter items, and local economic systems will be formed based on the supply and demand of those areas.
One of the most valuable commodities that one could have to trade for anything is knowledge and skills. A jack of all trades could live like a king in a post-EMP economy.
Nuclear Plants May Meltdown
An EMP would trigger nuclear plants to do an emergency shutdown. The problem is that the fuel rods will still need to be cooled, so the pumps will still need to circulate the cooling water.
These pumps require power, and the diesel generators will only run for as long as there is fuel. Eventually, these plants will melt unless creative measures are taken to prevent it.
These meltdowns will result in an unprecedented nuclear catastrophe.
These are only ten probable events that an EMP will bring along with it. If we experience an EMP attack, we will likely see many unforeseen circumstances.
This means that the best thing we can do to prepare is to expect the unexpected and be as adaptable and creative as possible.
It is also critical that you develop as many practical off-grid skills as possible so that when the grid fails, you can stand a fighting chance at being around when the lights turn back on.
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Strange how planes can take a lighting strike…..
Your already out of food
People are already looting
Hospitals are falling apart
Author needs to get out of the 90s doomer porn and look around
Lighting vs weapons grade EMP is one apple’s to potatoes comparison.
They harden military aircraft against EMP.
Not really. Emp makes a great little story to sell doomer porn and fake security blankets
It is a big faraday cage.
Good points about possibilities. I’m still working on hubby to move further away from civilization.
We left the largest populated city an moved very rural. So much nicer. And, we made sure we weren’t near major freeways or prisons.
The 90% figure is the estimate for the first year after the EMP. The remaining 10% will have a difficult go of it, transitioning to a subsistence lifestyle on their hardscrabble farms. In my state, before the natives got pushed out, the most resource abundant area (coastal) had a carrying capacity of 2.5 people per square mile, and the least resource abundant area (desert) had a carrying capacity of 10 square miles per person. There are much fewer natural resources now than when the settlers came in.
This is not meant to discourage anyone, merely to alert people to hone their native, or stone age survival skills, among other skills, and plan ahead for success.
The 90% figure is not the first year it is the first 2 weeks to a month. The reason is within 2 to 5 days hospitals will shut down due to no fuel, utilites such as water, sanitaion and sewage will shut down then is when the unsanitized water will be drank, then because of sewage backed up people will start getting sick due to the germs. The big cities with high populations will be the most hurt losing up to 90% of their population that does not leave within the first couple days. The the smaller communities will be hit because of outsiders bringing the deseases in. So between 1 to two months of no power you will see 90% population drop.
Not sure your description of a nucleat power point is accurate. Would not the emergency generators or other power supplies be able to power the mechanisms to pull the fuel rods back into the lead protective sheaths where they would remain thus preventing a meltdown?
In the event of an EMP the emergency generators would be down too, unless shunted to protect them from the EMP. Most will not be shunted because the responsible people do not take the threat of an EMP seriously, so don’t protect them. With the US and Germany sending tanks to the Ukraine the threat of an EMP strike increases. Poke the bear and get the claws. What is in question is will Russia’s response be an EMP strike or a full on Nuclear strike to take out D.C. and all major cities in the US as well as Europe. As far as the nuclear power plants if the protection of the reactor is electronic we are doomed. If retracting the fuel rods is a hydraulic process that can be manually operated then we could avoid a nuclear disaster at the power plants. If the attack is a full on nuclear strike then depopulation and meltdown will be almost instantaneous. The liberal population centers(large cities) will nearly cease to exist.
Meh Russian won’t nuke or emp us. Hack us for sure
I think this scenario is very likely. As I have done some work for the nuclear industry. Don’t forget Fukushima in Japan what happened we cannot power the plant. I would bet that none of them have been hardened against an EMP of any sort. The best you could hope for is that some of them have planned for this but I will guarantee you not all.
I used to work at a nuke plant, there is a way to remove decay heat should the emergency diesel generators fail. There are auxiliary feedwater pumps which are turbine driven from the steam generators which provide steam from the decay heat in the reactor. Even if the the reactor coolant pumps are down the primary coolant loop components are arranged in such a manner to have natural circulation in order to have the hottest coolant at the steam generator elevation to produce steam for the aux feedwater pumps. The real problem that should be a concern is the spent fuel pool decay heat. The pools are normally cooled, and that is the real problem. After Fukishima all US plants have beyond design bassis equipment that can tie into the various cooling systems at the plants. The equipment is stored in hardened buildings on site and at several depots around the country.
Out of dozens of articles regarding EMP’s and recessions, none have happened, what next, zombies? Time to move on folks
Lisa’s got a point. I remember back in the day of Y2K, and all of the panic-mongers preaching how it was the end of the world annnnd yada yada yada. Good grief!
The key is preparedness. Maybe nuclear war will happen, and maybe it won’t. “Maybe this and maybe not that” exists for every imaginable crisis.
We should not be shooting each other down because of opinions. That’s why I left this group a year back. And I see that names may have changed, the group bickering hasn’t.
SO TRUE
If this is too stressful good luck
This forum is as hostile as twitter. My guess is it is loaded sufficiently with the corrupt intelligence community trying to influence people.
Yeah because the wealth of knowledge here is so what the fed would consider top secret.
So far not a single article was written about the upcoming pistol braces ban starting tomorrow
There WAS an EMP event in the N.E. – US, back in the early 1900’s. Shut down the limited grid that was available at the time.
Before the invention of a nuclear weapon sure
@MILF
You are aware EMPs have naturally occurring sources yes? They don’t require a nuclear weapon. Solar flares have shut down power grids in recorded history before. It’s not “impossible” for it to happen on a larger scale again. However, unlikely.
The whole point of prepping is to be ready for reasonable threats that haven’t happened “yet”.
As for “zombies”, consider this: A viral outbreak or dirty bomb in a populated area. Thousands of sick or irradiated people streaming out of a city looking for help, food, water, etc. If that isn’t a zombie apocalypse, what is?
Be prepared for the hundreds of things that happen to thousands of people every day, and chances are you will survive a larger event that you didn’t see coming. The checklist is the same!
A thought provoking article although not necessarily realistic in some respects. Each of us has to look at it from his own perspective. City folks will be the hardest hit obviously, all the more reason for city folk to be as prepared as humanly possible and hope for the best.
I live in a very rural area well away from any large cities and from any major traffic routes. That limits my concern about some things but still have plenty of things to worry about.
We just have to do what we can to prep relative to our unique circumstances and use good old common sense.
If you were to look up the Russian EMP testing you would see that house fires is a serious problem.
EMP Surge JUMPED disconnected switches so pulling your main circuit breaker might not help.
So even us country folks might find that a real problem as Fire Departments will not be able to fight fires all over the country.
Handle it yourself
Rural isn’t immune
Spent fuel rods stored at nuclear power plants will burn if not contentiously cooled! Fukushima came very close to an extinction event. When the spent fuel rods burn…extinction event! No amount of preparation will prevent this. Only being in the right place at that point will preserve life. Better to prepare to meet your maker! The meek shall inherit.
Fukushima times 440 no one survives. The earth will become uninhabitable very quickly. I for one do not want to live through a nuclear holocaust. Struggling to survive with no hope of things ever getting better…no thanks.
Greedy stupid people will kill us all.
Oh well we die
Greedy?
MilfHunter akaYa way highway aka Raven
Hush now the adults are talking.Your attempts to be relevant
are like pissing into the wind.
As far as Lisa Blake is concerned. You can’t fix stupid but can
slow it down some with a 2×4.
Not even with duct tape!!!
I see this from another perspective. We use to live without any of this stuff so why would it be so hard and 90% of people perish. Anyone on here reading this is already prepared for some disasters or we wouldnt be here to learn, and the Amish people all over the country already live without electric or phones, and even cars. At least where Im from. I hope that if this ever happens, my survival instincts set in we all have them, we just need to not panic. Once you panic its all over.
Pamela
US population today 338 Million
US Population 1860 (Pre electricity, mostly animal power for farming) 31.5 million
And it wasn’t for lack of large families. Food production and food storage and food distribution are HIGHLY Energy dependent.
Perish is for those trying to loot and kill. Not against that prospect. They determine their fate.
Everyone loots
Pamela,
As Michael said our population was a lot less. We now depend on high tech that requires fuel, coal, and nuclear power. There will be no fuel because how can you pump fuel without electricty? The coal has to be trucked to the power plants but no fuel for those trucks. The nuclear power stations will have to shut down quick or end up with a nuclear melt down like Russia had but there will not be anyone that can encase it in concrete if there is a melt down. So you will have radiation to worry about too.
The amish people will be likely to survive if their water remains good for some period but they rely on rain water and dug wells mostly less than 50 ft. A well that removes the bad things that will be released from manufactures because of the power outtage will have to be at least 100 ft with a rocky bottom. But then the rain could contaminate the land and crops to an extent too.
So even preppers have no guarantee of survival unless they are rich enough to put back two years of food or have a hothouse for growing food and have built some type of water filtration system etc.
The problem has to be looked at like you are going to be living on Mars only without having to worry much about air.
Back then people knew how to survive without power. Most today do not. They knew things like how long to boil water, how to make bread, how to hunt, can and preserve food and had established outhouses for sanitation. They had enough animals to use for farming, today we don’t have nearly enough animals to farm the amount of land needed to sustain such a large population. The machines needed for farming with animals are antiques. Today we rely on food trucked in from long distances. We expect our cooking appliances to turn on. We don’t have fire places or wood burning stoves for heat. If this happened in winter, many people would die of hypothermia. Many people would die at the hands of looters, rapists and general malcontents who now have free rein without policing. Die of diseases from poor hygiene and without meds, a simple cut or toothache can be fatal without antibiotics. What happens if you get appendicitis or have a complicated childbirth? The average age increasing has much to do with medical technology including vaccines which require refrigeration. Never mind all the people, young and old, reliant on prescription meds. My son is diabetic. There is no way to keep insulin effective indefinitely without refrigerating it. And when the supply is gone that’s it. Some people give up and commit suicide in times of such great upheaval. So many ways to die without power.
Oh and survival is taught and learned behaviour. It isn’t an instinct that suddenly takes over.
It does not matter if it is an EMP or power loss because of the 9 main substations going down. If the whole of the use goes down then the following will happen.
DO NOT DEPEND ON ANY AID COMING FROM OUTSIDE BECAUSE IT MOST LIKE WON”T. Other countries even though they are allies mostly do not like the USA. The UN will talk about aid but it may take months for it to come. The reason is MONEY they like us have large debt.
I read a report that is now listed as unclassified from Homeland security wriiten way back.
It said if the power grid were to go down for more than two weeks desease will be rampid in the major cities. That 90% of the population which resides in those cites will die from violence, desease and the surviors might survive for a month but will die from thrist or starvation.
The 90% figure D said not correct it is not the first year it is the first 2 weeks to a month. The reason is within 2 to 5 days hospitals will shut down due to no fuel, utilites such as water, sanitaion and sewage will shut down then is when the unsanitized water will be drank, then because of sewage backed up people will start getting sick due to the germs. The big cities with high populations will be the most hurt losing up to 90% of their population that does not leave within the first couple days. The the smaller communities will be hit because of outsiders bringing the deseases in. So between 1 to two months of no power you will see 90% population drop.
Now as to rural areas they have a better chance of survival if they know how to hunt, gather and grow crops. But sadly most do not have the skills of our gandfathers. So the survivors who don’t know how will turn to killing and taking from those who has those skills.
Won’t be that fast…
Sorry but it will be that fast. Desease such as salmonella does not take long to kill and that is only one of many deseases that will happen in a very short period when the sewage starts backing up and the bottle drinking water runs out. They have at most a weeks fuel back up for the utilities and hospitals most of the time 2 to 3 days. The only medications will be what is at drug stores and in the hospital stock and that is not even a weeks supply of the most need drugs. The drugs that need refridgeration will be bad in a day.
Just how much back up fuel do you think utilities have for suppling water?
Most I have seen is 200 gallon propane tank(most are 100 Gallon) Now your running a pump that most likley uses 2 gallon an hour with a 200 gallon tank you have 50 hrs back up.
So yes the speed of this happening will be a month maybe even less. You need to think about and check out the city your in and find out how long they can run on back fuel. Most cities will not fund a large backup for say a month they know most of the time it is only a day with power.
opps Ment 100 gallon tank not 200 gets you 50 hrs.200 gets you 100 hrs or 4 days. Most back ups have a 100 gallon tank.
The UN best find a new hole to do their meeting in because New York won’t be very accommodating after the EMP.
Some People want to paint the picture with roses but sadly that picture is of thorns.
I will most likely not survive more that a few months and not because I don’t have the skills because I am 72 years old and know what it take to live without electricty. See I worked on a farm when I was young. Then I became a mechanic and did not like it so I went to electronics in college became an electronics technician. It takes getting up before daylight and working until after dark every day with good food to survive(There is no free time to set around and read). Most people think oh I can plant the food and just let it grow but you have to keep it clean of grass, protect it from animals and make sure it gets enough water. But that is not all in your days work things have to constantly repaired. Then you can not survive on vegetables alone you have to have fat to go along with it. Mountian men found that vegetables and lean meat did not give them what they had to have to live so they killed bears because deer and elk does not have much fat.
Also those farmers did not have to worry about people killing them and taking what they worked so hard for.
There is so much more to living a situation like this than meets the eye.
The lucky ones will be at ground zero. You don’t want to be a survivor for a Nuclear Attack, using Mutual Assured Destruction [MAD] targeting. the only survivors in a MAD attack would be those that are quartered in large underground harden facilities that could support 1000 individuals [Government Assets & VIP’s which would also include military staff. for a long period of time. The decision was made a long time ago that our citizens were expendable because it would cost too much to build and stock nuclear shelters for the general population.
I worked for 7 years in an underground harden site, buried deep in bed rock. It was hardened for all WMD’s, but our mission was only to keep it running for 90 days, so the country could respond to an attack. After 90 days we were expendable. If the Russians use warheads that are cadmium, the fall out fields will be hot for 100 years.
I don’t fish, but hunt, a little. Initially I scoffed at surviving by hunting. However, over the last 15-20 years feral pigs have become more than just pests. Yes, they will tear up field crops in a few hours and they are extremely hazardous to motorists.
YouTube is replete with videos about capturing wild pigs, with all of the smaller ones being killed and the larger ones being butchered. Maybe it’s time to go on a hog hunt, specifically to watch the butchering process.
It’s ok to eat fish, cuz they don’t have ant feeeeeliiiings.
Its a guessing game as to what we would face after an EMP but several years ago I came across the story One second after. I consider it to be a very likely prediction of what will happen. He uses the figure of 90% die off in one year, most of that in the first winter, and more in the cities, less in rural areas. Although it is fiction, it is backed up by a lot of research of the subject at hand.
I was just about to post on the one of three in the trilogy books “One Second After”, as well as “One Year After”. Very well written books. It’s almost as if William Forstchen was a prophet in writing these books. I’ve been prepping for almost two decades now, and these novels made a pretty good shift in my preps after reading them last year. I’m ordering”The Final Day” (last one of the trilogy) this week. These books seem very real as far as what would happen in this country if we were hit by an EMP. Talk about a read that keeps you on the edge of your seat.
I agree. Reading his work changed my mind. I went from thinking prepping might be a good idea, to I have take action and do this.
I got it on “Audible”. I listened whilst commuting.
The “One Second After” trilogy really gave us something to think about, irrespective of it being fiction. Not to mention it was a very well written storyline, and depicted (to me, at least) a pretty realistic scenario.
Add to that Ted Koppels’ “Lights Out”, a NON-fiction, and you have a somewhat reputable person scaring the bejeezus out of me. And kinda pissing me off.
The facts in it state how lax the Gov’t has been in “hardening” our power grid. Yeah, we pay taxes to the government to provide us with a secure life, huh? Nahhhh!
Wouldn’t even be that expensive, if you compare it to what we are spending/wasting elsewhere.
At my age, I’m doing what I can, to at least make it thru the first few rounds of the trying period we are all but DESTINED to be going through.
I live next to a prison. If prisoners become a problem, I can handle that.