Washington Examiner Article
Going back some years the threat of an EMP was considered tin foil hat material, since then I have watched as the Gov has steadily increased the danger and and possibility of such an attack.
From Article-
In an extraordinary and sobering report meant to educate the nation on a growing threat, a new military study warns that an electromagnetic pulse weapon attack such as those developed by North Korea, Russia, and Iran could essentially challenge the United States and displace millions.

"Based on the totality of available data," said the report from the Air Force's Air University and provided to Secrets, "an electromagnetic spectrum attack may be a threat to the United States, democracy, and the world order."

The report, titled, "Electromagnetic Defense Task Force," and the product of a mostly classified summit of officials from 40 agencies just outside of Washington earlier this year, is a forceful call for a new focus on preparing for either an enemy EMP attack or a natural hit such as a solar storm.

While it is focused on the devastating impact an EMP hit would have on the military, it appears to support a congressional warning that up to 90 percent of the population on the East Coast would die in a year of an attack that would dismantle or interfere with electricity, transportation, food processing, and healthcare.

Consider just some of the warnings in the report from the United States Air Force Air University and the Curtis E. LeMay Center for Doctrine Development and Education. Citing figures from the Union of Concerned Scientists, the report:

99 nuclear reactors would likely melt down without electricity to cool them.
4.1 million would be displaced from areas around the nuclear plants as the radioactive cloud spread.
Military and commercial jets, such as those built by Airbus, could be degraded. "Alarmingly, aircraft designed to carry large numbers of people and sizable cargo are allowed to operate without certainty about their level of resilience."
Bases would be cut off, making defense and counter-attacks impossible.
Civil unrest would start in "hours."
Power and GPS could go dark. "An EMP would cause instantaneous and simultaneous loss of many technologies reliant on electrical power and computer circuit boards, such as cell phones and GPS devices."
"Failures may include long-term loss of electrical power (due to loss of emergency generators), sewage, fresh water, banking, landlines, cellular service, vehicles."
18 months or more are required to replace key elements of the electric grid that would be damaged or knocked out.

"The potential for an adversary to inflict damage on states through EMS attack has grown significantly," said the 69-page report, which warned, "An EMP attack affects all devices with solid-state electronics and could render inoperative the main grid and backup power systems, such as on-site generators."
It highlighted the lack of a reaction plan or major focus on an EMP attack, even if just from a solar flare. "In some areas, there is a complete absence of strategy," said the report. It added, "EMP is a tragedy of the commons as 'no one's job jar.'"

I only posted some of the article due to the TL;DR factor.

Is this becoming an increasing danger? Some feel this treat was always exaggerated and others feel that it was played down by the powers that be. What do you think?

PS- I highlighted their reference to "vehicles" being disabled because there has always been disagreement on what effects EMP would have on cars and such.

You need long conductors for EMP to have an effect over any kind of distance.  Remember the field strength weakens with the cube of distance.

So could the grid be knocked out?  Possibly.  Is your phone or car going to be knocked out?  Unlikely, unless you're pretty close to the blast.  Besides, most computers and vehicles have a Faraday cage around the electronics.  The 35,000-volt coils that energize your spark plugs mere inches from your powertrain control module are a much bigger threat to your car than the EMP blast 200 miles away.

Is EMP a real threat?  Absolutely.  But would it instantly plunge the country into another Stone Age?  No.

EMP is the militarys equivalent to climate change.
Again.

Any nation that hits us with EMP, would also be starting a nuclear war.    It’s prudent to consider the effects of both, together.  I’m 99% sure that planes would keep flying (even Airbus). They're built to withstand lightning strikes.

Not to be dismissive, but any government agency needs/wants money.  A good way to get money is to jump on the bandwagon and ride it.  Sometimes that bandwagon is climate change.  Sometimes it is EMP.  Funding is doled out by congress, and even the best and brightest in the capital don't have time to read many, if any, of these reports.  The worst don't read any and don't feel guilty that they don't.  If you can tie a funding request to a hot-button issue: EMP threat, gender sensitivity training, climate change, etc. then from the beauracratic politics angle that is a "good idea." Maybe not morally right, but right in terms of  a way to get what you want.

Also, there is a cottage industry of "specialists," in any industry that are more than willing to write reports in their particular field for any government agency that will underwrite it.  I saw one report titled something like, "Rare Earth Metal Concerns in Military Operations in Mega-Cities."  As a former infantry guy, if I have to go into Mexico City or Lagos Nigeria Stalingrad style, I'm not going to give a tin shit about rare earth metals, and neither is anybody else.

I'm sure EMP is a threat.  I'm equally sure that there is a financial incentive to overestimate the threat.

close, but no.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_propagation#Free_space_propagation

this is a very simplistic and overly general statement.

I fear that EMP has been sensationalized to the point that a legitimate threat is being downplayed by people that should know better. If this thread was in GD posters would be saying, "EMP is overblown. Cars will still run. You don't need a Faraday cage for your Aimpoints." IMO that kind of thinking is short sighted when power generation and distribution systems are going to be offline for days or weeks on a national scale.

Free space calculations are just guesses, Ain't been proven in fact.

The scale of disruption an EMP would have is mostly due to the electric grid collapse that would act much like a domino in a cascading chain of events.

With purportedly 9 nodal transformers on the US grid, just taking those out out would prove catastrophic with an estimated 18 month lead time on replacement.

If those are targeted in a military attack, then it’s likely there are other phased attacks to happen in concert.

If the EMP is natural like the Carrington Event of 1859, then we’d likely need not sweat the outside world.

The Carrington Event resulted in telegraph fires back then. By extension how well would we today be able to suppress fire if all building connected to the grid started on fire at the same time?

If such events were to happen and say our cities, rural homes attached to the grid, forests all started burning across the country simultaneously while the grid went down, how well would we recover?

If all your and most everyone else’s preps burn up, how long until there is a recovery?

We get our transformers from China, each custom made for a specific location. If the EMP is caused by them, they likely won’t send us a replacement.

http://www.futurescience.com/emp.html

its a plea for more money

E&M physics is not fact?   really.