# EMP vs. Lighting rods -- work or not?



## tmttactical (Nov 23, 2015)

Another thought popped into my pea picking brain. If you installed lighting rods on your home, would it stop or help mitigate and EMP event. This is presuming you have solar or wind or another electrical source of power. If you are connected to the grid, I think most will be SOL. Your input is greatly appreciated.


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## Pessimistic2 (Jan 26, 2017)

tmttactical said:


> Another thought popped into my pea picking brain. If you installed lighting rods on your home, would it stop or help mitigate and EMP event. This is presuming you have solar or wind or another electrical source of power. If you are connected to the grid, I think most will be SOL. Your input is greatly appreciated.


Nope...lightning rods are not gonna help at all.

http://risingsbunkers.com/can-protect-emp/

Excerpt: "One major myth or misconception is that an EMP is similar to a powerful bolt of lightning. While the two (lightning and EMPs) each produce similar results; an EMP is actually more like to a super-charged radio wave. Any bright ideas about using lightning-rods, lightning arrestors or any such grounding techniques will undoubtedly fail in protecting equipment from EMP."


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## tmttactical (Nov 23, 2015)

Pessimistic2 said:


> Nope...lightning rods are not gonna help at all.
> 
> http://risingsbunkers.com/can-protect-emp/
> 
> Excerpt: "One major myth or misconception is that an EMP is similar to a powerful bolt of lightning. While the two (lightning and EMPs) each produce similar results; an EMP is actually more like to a super-charged radio wave. Any bright ideas about using lightning-rods, lightning arrestors or any such grounding techniques will undoubtedly fail in protecting equipment from EMP."


Well darn, another cool concept down in flames.


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## Pessimistic2 (Jan 26, 2017)

tmttactical said:


> Well darn, another cool concept down in flames.


Yeah, but at least you are trying to think of solutions. Most aren't even thinking! And some great ideas have come from people who look for alternatives to conventional methods. :scratch


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## CrackbottomLouis (May 20, 2012)

My next house I am looking to have an extra detached garage. I have plans on tuning it into a big faraday cage.


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## mosquitomountainman (Jan 25, 2010)

I've seen a lot of barns burned down after a lightening strike also. I don't have much faith in lightening rods for lightening either.


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## TheLazyL (Jun 5, 2012)

How about a grounded steel roof?


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## Pessimistic2 (Jan 26, 2017)

CrackbottomLouis said:


> My next house I am looking to have an extra detached garage. I have plans on tuning it into a big faraday cage.


Now there is a thought....wonder if turning the entire home into a Faraday cage would work to protect against EMP? AdmiralD7S might have some insight as to this....Admiral??? :scratch


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## Flight1630 (Jan 4, 2017)

Pessimistic2 said:


> Yeah, but at least you are trying to think of solutions. Most aren't even thinking! And some great ideas have come from people who look for alternatives to conventional methods. :scratch


My wife says if I try to think, Well I get lots of smoke pouring out of my ears. :what:


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## SheepdogPRS (Oct 8, 2017)

The subject of EMP is one of my favorites because it is so complex and there is so much misinformation regarding protection.
The first thing you need to realize is that there are two forms of EMP. 
The first is the solar event that is caused by large masses of charged particles thrown off by our sun. These clouds of protons or electrons travel through space at up to 1.3 million miles an hour. That gives us about three days to recognize and evaluate the danger and prepare for it. With three satellites watching the sun we get the raw data in about eight minutes. The numbers are then crunched and we make a decision on the level of threat. Most of the time these events miss us entirely. On the occasions that they are headed for Earth the size and charge is calculated and the events pass over giving us a bit more Aurora Borealis or Aurora Australis depending on the charge polarity. These events seem harmless unless you are in the high northern or low southern polar regions. They affect communications and electronics in the radio frequencies. If you are flying your nav system may be affected and you might lose communication during these events. The rest of the world is not affected. Once in a great while the solar emissions are strong enough and large enough to become dangerous to the worlds electrical grids. These super storms disrupt the geomagnetic fields in such a way that when the fields recombine they induce high amperages into long lines and large coils of wire. The current is so high that it will overload the lines heating them to the point of vaporizing them. That same heat is generated in large transformers and grid based generators.

This makes for a very bad day for the folks running the grid resources that power everything. They have just two choices.
1. let things run their course and hope the system survives.
2. disconnect everything they can before, during and for a short time after the storm passes around the planet.
A big storm can last two to three days so disconnecting the grid is a hard choice to make as it will shut down factories, hospitals, mass fuel delivery and power over the entire grid in either the northern or southern hemisphere. This is not a localized event it. It can effect half the surface of the Earth. The electric companies will lose millions of dollars a day and their customers will be in the dark for as long as it takes for the storm to pass and then the grid will have to be restarted from a cold grid. Nobody has ever attempted such a thing before.
On the other hand leaving it connected could destroy the grid completely leaving customers without power for decades while the component replacements are manufactured, delivered and installed. This not only takes a very long time but those who depend on power will have no chance of survival. Lets face it we can store food for a couple of years but we need to be able to replace that food from farms that one or two people can work. It will have to be done by hand and use horses or cattle as power. Twenty years or more until the rebuilding begins and another few decades to get it back to what it was.

Well it is not all that bad. We have begun to use electronic fast switches that can protect some power lines and some generators and transformers in a solar event. A very small part of the grid is protected and they are trying to protect more as time and money allows. Some day we may have a grid that is completely immune to solar EMP. In the meantime you can easily protect yourself from these gigantic solar events. First it would be low risk to you because the transformers will act like a fuse to keep most households safe from the high current loads. You can turn off all your appliances and throw the main breaker in your breaker box and/or at your electric meter. That will disconnect you from even the slightest chance of damage to your appliances and your home. After the storm passes you can reconnect and turn your stuff back on and if the grid survived you are back in business. If the grid went down you have all your appliances and nothing to power them. A little good news bad news.

I told you there were two types of EMP and we are now going to talk about the second kind. This is a man made EMP and it requires that an atomic bomb be detonated outside Earths atmosphere. This does not take a special type of bomb or a large bomb or even an efficient bomb. The source bomb can be as small as the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima and since is was only about 1% efficient it would do a dandy job of making a High altitude EMP. (HEMP)

These can be launched on a missile or placed in orbit for decades before being set off. When they are set off there will be a bright flash, though not blinding because the atmosphere protects your eyes, followed by a dislocated aurora near the blast point and growing toward the poles. There will be no blast and no direct radiation or fallout. It is completely harmless to humans, animals and even plants. So, what's the big deal?

The HEMP produces three separate EMP events.
The first is the E1 pulse. It is caused by the inefficiency of the detonation. The gamma particles that didn't get used to cause fission go traveling away from the bomb at the speed of light (or close to it) and nearly half of them will penetrate through the atmosphere knocking electrons away from the atoms in the atmosphere as they slow and dissipate. These free electrons cause a very rapid voltage rise that will go from zero to 50,000 volts per meter in a nanosecond. That very fast rise in voltage will cover the entire area from horizon to horizon from the bombs point of view. The higher the blast is located the more area is covered. Semiconductors have a designed rise time and voltage limit in order to work well in our electronics. This E1 pulse is so fast and of such high voltage that even a diode, transistor or integrated circuit sitting on a shelf in some warehouse will have the junction region inside it burned out in less than a millisecond. Even those high speed switches on the electrical grid will be burned out. This pulse will penetrate everywhere that is not protected by a solid low resistance metal covering. It can penetrate a hole just 0.1 mm to defeat shielding. Those of you with medical implants are likely to be fine because the E1 pulse doesn't penetrate your skin or body tissues well. The E1 pulse can penetrate the earth up to about 16 meters or 50 feet. You can see that grounding rods are just additional paths for this voltage to flow on. 

Can you protect your electronics from the E1 event? Can you protect your data from this E1 event? Yes you can if you either know when the event will happen or you back your data on another device that can be put away in storage. The storage package is inexpensive and relatively easy to make. The shield contains three layers each of an insulating substance and a very good conductive path over the insulator. Place your GPS, radio, or laptop computer into a heavy plastic bag. for the radio or GPS you can use zip-lock bags For a laptop you will need a trash bag and some tape to seal it. That is the first of six layers. The second layer has to be a good conductor that is thin enough to form double seams. The only conductors that are good enough are gold, silver, copper and aluminum. Steel has too much resistance and the E1 pulse will penetrate it before it can travel around it. So the best thing to use is aluminum. That heavy duty foil you get to wrap your turkey in on thanksgiving is perfect! Us a piece that is big enough to go around your device two and a half times and leave a couple of inches on either side. place your bagged device on the foil an fold the foil to line up the edges. Make a 3/4 inch fold on both sides from end to end giving yourself four layers of foil on the sides and fold the folded edge about 3/8 of an inch in from the edge giving you 8 layers of foil on each folded side all the way from the folded single layer to the open end at the opposite side. Carefully fold the open side from your already folded sides across the entire width. You will need to compress the folds made earlier to get it to make a tight fold but it must be done. Then you fold this last completed fold in half to lock it and completely seal the foil. Place this in another plastic bag, seal it and then wrap it in another layer of foil sealing the edges and top in the same way as before. One more bag and one more foil sheet and your device is protected from the E1 pulse. This containment package works as a shield against the E1 pulse for two reasons. 
1. the aluminum on the outside conducts the electrical charge around the object inside
2. the layers slow down the charges penetration through capacitive reactance of the three layers. It doesn't penetrate the layers because there isn't enough time for the charge to build on the multiple layers.
After your computer is all protected save your information on CD or DVD because the EMP will not affect the discs. You now have a way to save your data and save the means with which to use it. Congratulations!
We have only discussed the first of the three pulses caused by the HEMP so now the second pulse which is called the E2 pulse. The E2 pulse is part reaction to the E1 and a transition to the E3 pulse. The E1 pulse completely ionized the atmosphere and the electrical imbalance begins to normalize by producing the E2 pulse. It is of lower voltage but higher amperage. It affects smaller transformers more than anything else. It can cause temporary brown-outs or burn small closely wound transformers like the one on the utility poles. It will not affect your backup generator, cars starter or the alternator. (the diodes and electronics are already fried so it won't work anyway) The E2 pulse might affect the transformers in small substations and the smaller transformers in larger substations. Large auxiliary generators and transformers that are used as backup generators for businesses and hospitals may be affected as well. In the larger picture the E2 is more a nuisance than a large scale dame producer. It will begin a minute or so after the E1 pulse and last for up to 45 minutes. 

The last pulse from the HEMP is the E3 pulse. It is exactly like the solar EMP but effects the area limited by its proximity to the geomagnetic field and the Earth. The E3 pulse will burn the long transmission lines, the large generators at plants, dams and nuclear power stations all over the area affected. It will begin following the E2 pulse and could last hours. It is unlikely that this event will affect homes or household appliances but it will cripple the entire grid over the affected area.

Since the E2 and E3 pulses damage things beyond your control there is really nothing you can or need to do to protect yourself from them. You do need to know that the pumps that distribute water, fuel and oil will not be working after this event. The grid and all that it powers will likely not be repaired for years so food, water heat and shelter will be up to you. Your garden, well, home and reserves will be in high demand just four days after this event. You need to have a way to grow food, supply water, and maintain your shelter when those around you do not or can not.

I suggest that you contact your local emergency preparedness council as well as FEMA to let them know this is a concern that can topple their emergency plans. It is not that they don't know about it, just that they are overwhelmed by it and have no active plan. They are thinking that they can just wing it and that will put them in a dangerous place.
I looked over the multiple plans that my community services had in place and then wrote to them with ways that they could be prepared. I got a very polite thank you note that was an obvious form letter and have seen no response. 

I will continue to go to their meetings and remind them but I doubt it will do any good.


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## Viking (Mar 16, 2009)

TheLazyL said:


> How about a grounded steel roof?


I have done this and I use a ground rods at each corner. It does cut down on radio signals from getting into the home but for a complete faraday cage, all sides of the home need to be metal or screen that is also grounded. I'm considering installing metal siding but I would also need to have metal shutters for the windows and doors as well. In other words, a grounded metal roof might help some, but metal siding would make things more secure, EMP wise.


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## SheepdogPRS (Oct 8, 2017)

If you are talking about solar EMP you are spending money needlessly. A solar EMP won't hurt your electronics. Any surges can be stopped by the little ferrite rings that come on your cabling and a surge suppressor.
If you are talking about an HEMP you are wasting your time trying to stop the E1 pulse from getting into your house. It will enter through your plumbing, electrical system, the grounding system and any gap or hole down to 0.1 mm. A Faraday cage will make your house safer in a lightning storm but it won't protect you against the E1 pulse of an HEMP.


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## DrPrepper (Apr 17, 2016)

SheepdogPRS said:


> The subject of EMP is one of my favorites because it is so complex and there is so much misinformation regarding protection.


Sheepdog,
Thank you for one of the best EMP explanations I have seen. One thing confuses me. If the E1 can penetrate even tiny openings, why do people talk about building Farraday cages out of mesh? Wouldn't the E1 penetrate through the mesh and damage contents?

Electricity is not one of my areas of expertise, but EMP is one of my major concerns, so I appreciate any chance to learn more about it!


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

DrDianaAnderson said:


> If the E1 can penetrate even tiny openings, why do people talk about building Farraday cages out of mesh? Wouldn't the E1 penetrate through the mesh and damage contents?


It depends on the frequency.

The wavelength of EMF generated inside of a microwave oven is easily contained by the perforated mesh behind the glass in the door, as you watch your food cook. 
It is fine for that bandwidth.

As I understand it, a EMP from a high altitude pulse is much higher frequency and broader bandwidth, which is why it can find flaws and holes. However, there is a function of joules per meter squared that I think results in a far lessened energy pulse, *IF* it does find a hole somewhere. If the circuitry is stout enough, the device should survive.


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## SheepdogPRS (Oct 8, 2017)

DrDianaAnderson said:


> Sheepdog,
> Thank you for one of the best EMP explanations I have seen. One thing confuses me. If the E1 can penetrate even tiny openings, why do people talk about building Farraday cages out of mesh? Wouldn't the E1 penetrate through the mesh and damage contents?
> 
> Electricity is not one of my areas of expertise, but EMP is one of my major concerns, so I appreciate any chance to learn more about it!


DrDiana,
The entire E1 pulse is so short in duration and such high voltage that the wavelength is similar to x-rays. If you convert the rise time and energy you get a wave length of *0.0000248* *μm and a frequency of 12088405564.5 Ghz with an energy of 50000 eV. 
*There is no real way to compare it to anything else. That is why you need the metals with lowest resistance possible. If it takes longer to go over the shielding than it takes to go through it the voltage penetrates it. There is a lot of bad information on the net of how you can protect against it and it comes from people who don't understand the process using common practices for microwave protection. There is no mesh that I know of that will protect against the E1 pulse, not event "silver cloth gauze". The triple layer conductor and insulator uses the pulse against itself to build capacitive reactance which prevents the pulse from charging the internal contents.


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## SheepdogPRS (Oct 8, 2017)

LincTex said:


> It depends on the frequency.
> 
> The wavelength of EMF generated inside of a microwave oven is easily contained by the perforated mesh behind the glass in the door, as you watch your food cook.
> It is fine for that bandwidth.
> ...


LincTex,
The E1 pulse is not generated by the bomb. It is generated locally over the entire area by displacing electrons. The standards for radio emission over distance don't apply because the pulse is generated locally. The air around you is the source, not the bomb.
The pulse is extremely high frequency and the band width is nonexistent because it is a single pulse. It is actually not even a full wave length. It is more like a side band half wave.


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## Flight1630 (Jan 4, 2017)

It's all Chinese to me.:what:


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## terri9630 (Jun 2, 2016)

If it's like an xray would a lead shield/box work?


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## SheepdogPRS (Oct 8, 2017)

No, Lead won't work. You are shielding an electronic pulse and not X-ray light. The similarity is the frequency and that is all. The old metal trash can doesn't work either. The outside is zinc plating and the can is made of steel. The E1 pulse will go right through because steel is four times as resistive as aluminum and no matter how tight the lid is it isn't even water tight much less air tight. 
Any gap or hole that is 0.1mm allows the E1 pulse to go through. a hole or gap of 0.1 mm is about as big at the period at the end of a sentence You would need twelve layers of steel and insulation to be as good a shield as three layers of aluminum foil with insulation between layers. 
There just isn't any short cut for this one.


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## frankd4 (Oct 22, 2010)

tmttactical said:


> Another thought popped into my pea picking brain. If you installed lighting rods on your home, would it stop or help mitigate and EMP event. This is presuming you have solar or wind or another electrical source of power. If you are connected to the grid, I think most will be SOL. Your input is greatly appreciated.


Silicon substrates are less than a micron thick an EMP is a massive electrical pulse that punches through blowing out the chip up the only way to save your devices is to shield them from the pulse using some kind of Faraday cage.


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## Tom Wlazlak (May 11, 2021)

Assuming there is an EMP most likely it is from atomic blast that is near your location: The least of your problems may be that your electronics may not work, if you survived the blast of heat the fall out will make the food you eat toxic, So having a electric device that may not work may not be so much of an issue. Caveman have a better chance of dealing with an EMP event than a person that has electrical machines. because they can live without the use of electric power in a cave safe from the outside world that caused the EMP to happen in the first place. 200 years ago People were living fine without the use of more than they could make with there own two hands. Steam Power will still work if no electric power works. Oil lamps work, Fire can cook food, If you need a TV after a atomic bomb is dropped. An EMP only last a short time, If there is anyone left in a day or so. It's how you learn to live with the atomic bomb. 
I hope this answered a little of the question about EMP and electrical equipment.
Tom Wlazlak EttCM Energy to torque Conversion Motor - systems.- Energy that runs without the use of electric input.


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