Sunday
(0)Glenn Reynolds put me on the trail of this one: EMP weapons.
I personally don't know what all the fuss is about. New Scientist published an article a year or three ago which shows how to build one of these in your garage. Perhaps getting things right for targeting from a moving cruise missile and accurately controlling the output energy are the special part... but the main concept is dead easy.
If you are interested, go dig it up yourself. I'm not going to tell you how.
Once WWIII is over with... perhaps.
There's a significant difference between an overgrown radio such that you could park it opposite some office and glitch their computers, and a missile-caried microwave bomb that could thoroughly toast every chip or low-power electrical board within two-tenths of a mile.
Posted by Julian Morrison at January 20, 2003 08:46 AM
There is no radio gear involved. It's a bomb, not a ham radio.
Posted by Dale Amon at January 20, 2003 01:17 PM
Technically, Dale, it is a radio. Because it broadcasts radio waves, if only for a short time.
It's fairly easy (but time-consuming) to harden electronics to this kind of weapon. denBeste elaborates a bit more, but suffice it to say that all you have to do is encase everything in a conducting enclosure whose largest hole is less than the smallest wavelength being broadcast.
Of course, they'd actually have to do it. And also of course, this could just be a clever bit of misdirection to confuse them. Not that we couldn't make such devices, mind you; just that we might not be planning on relying on them.
Posted by David Perron at January 20, 2003 05:06 PM
My own contribution is to be working, low-key and unhurriedly, on mounting an old microwave in the trunk of my car, with a horn facing rearward, like a trailer hitch. It could be turned on in response to people driving too closely behind, hopefully before they turn on those bothersome red and blue lights.
500 watts isn't enough to bother a driver at 30 feet, but the cars electronics might not appreciate it.
If I ever get it done and working, I'll deny everything.
Posted by Bill at January 20, 2003 10:12 PM
