Posted: 4/20/2010 9:14:39 AM EDT
| Okay - I have this elderly friend who unfortunately read One Second After and now is a little EMP crazy.... Anyway she asked me the other day if a volcano can cause an EMP - I'm 99% certain it couldn't other than cause a lot of the same problems - no power, no transportation, etc etc but is there anything out there that says otherwise? I suppose if we were dealing with a super caldera type situation - but in the event of that an EMP is the least of our worries. |
|
Quoted: the worst that a volcano would produce would be some lightning, lightning storms are pretty common with ash plums, and at close range, lightning has some EMP effects. again, if your close enough to the bolt.  A really powerful thunderstorm can cause minor emp's. Many years ago we had a nasty series of storms roll through michigan. My Dads mustang started acting up (brand new), stalled a couple times, engine started missing, then the lightning came. Damn, did the lightning come. Hard, fast, and struck the ground feet from were we were, and I was out of the car too. |
|
Any lightning causes EMP. A nearby lightning strike will far exced the fields produced by NEMP (N being nuclear). NEMP has a sharper rise time, which means some types of lighting protection arefar less effective, So NEMP may destroy something that would survive lightning. OTOH, the higher frequencies mean chokes (intentional or otherwise) are more effective, so less signal my be traveling down a coax inside a conduit,
NASA, NWS/FAA and DOD all detect lightning by looking at lightning created EMP. Downscoped detectors are used in certain blasting operations so that operations can be stopped as lightning approaches. Even aircraft too small for weather radar may have lightning detectors. This is 100 yr old technolody. While one could argue that an errupting volcano produces EMP in that there is an electromagnetiic signature associated with volcanos, it is in no way compairable to the EMP produced by lightning or nuclear weapons. Basically its over a million times weaker, and lasts a billion times longer (pulse length.) |
|
Quoted:
Quoted:
the worst that a volcano would produce would be some lightning, lightning storms are pretty common with ash plums, and at close range, lightning has some EMP effects. again, if your close enough to the bolt. A really powerful thunderstorm can cause minor emp's. Many years ago we had a nasty series of storms roll through michigan. My Dads mustang started acting up (brand new), stalled a couple times, engine started missing, then the lightning came. Damn, did the lightning come. Hard, fast, and struck the ground feet from were we were, and I was out of the car too. that had nothing to do with lighting/EMP and everything to do with the car being a f*rd. |