Morning after...

After last nights post I got thinking about EMP weapons and their ability to cripple a technological country.

If an enemy were to strategically deploy EMPs throughout North America and blow them up in the upper atmosphere the resulting radioactive rain that would fall to the earth would be enough to possibly throw the entire continent back 200 years and essentially destroying all the Americas data at the same time.

The crippling effect would be instantaneous.

I have included the wiki on EMPs.

In telecommunications and warfare, the term electromagnetic pulse (EMP) has the following meanings:

1. The electromagnetic radiation from an explosion (especially nuclear explosions) or an intensely fluctuating magnetic field caused by Compton-recoil electrons and photoelectrons from photons scattered in the materials of the electronic or explosive device or in a surrounding medium. The resulting electric and magnetic fields may couple with electrical/electronic systems to produce damaging current and voltage surges. The effects are usually not noticeable beyond the blast radius unless the device is nuclear or specifically designed to produce an electromagnetic shockwave.
2. A broadband, high-intensity, short-duration burst of electromagnetic energy.

In the case of a nuclear detonation, the electromagnetic pulse consists of a continuous frequency spectrum. Most of the energy is distributed throughout the lower frequencies between 3 Hz and 30 kHz.