The Energon Pub

Transformers are robots, with electronic circuits.

How come EMP don't affect them?

Auto Bot wrote:Transformers are robots, with electronic circuits.

How come EMP don't affect them?

First off because they aren't ordinary robots. As Prime himself put it, "We are autonomous robotic organisms from the planet Cybertron." (emphasis mine.) Their bein gliving beings, and not just robots is one primary reason. The second is that they are hardened against EMP, whcih is something even we can do with our technology, though it is an expensive process. Hardening is a process of insulating circuitry and wiring against EMP, thus protecting it from the damaging effects.

In that case, why do they have to carry EMP around? Not that they're own guns have any effect on themselves.

Auto Bot wrote:In that case, why do they have to carry EMP around? Not that they're own guns have any effect on themselves.

Haha, good question Maybe they have an assortment of different weapons, or are able to create different types of weapons that would affect the indigenous organisms whose planet they happen to be on, as a safety defensive thing.

Auto Bot wrote:In that case, why do they have to carry EMP around?

Only one of them (Blackout) has an EMP, and he's pretty much the Decepticons go-in,-blast-destroy bot.
Maybe on Cybertron only the transformers are hardened, with most technology not hardened.
It's also likely Blackout prepared for meeting a less advanced species & took along his old, rusty, rarely used EMP device.

Maybe Blackout is the only EMP-proof transformer.

In the film, during the battle inside Mission City, he doesn't use his EMP weapon. Perhaps, because there are other transformers, including his Decepticon friends who might be affected by the weapon as well.

CMIIW

Auto Bot wrote:In that case, why do they have to carry EMP around? Not that they're own guns have any effect on themselves.

Good point. There's probably some super-EMP guns that can bust through EMP insulation and knock a bot down. Kind of like human soldiers have armor piercing rounds to punch through body armor. Blackout, being so big, might be a platform big enough to mount such a weapon.

I think it's kinda like (at least in the fiction I've seen) Flamthrower soldiers wear flame retardant clothing, the EMP slinging Decepticon is specially shielded against it.

There was all that buildup for Blackout weilding the EMP, and then he only used it once or twice in the first scene. It had to be one of the best parts of the preview and the movie, and we barely got to see it. And was it really an EMP wave? It looked more like some kind of force shockwave the way everything blew away from him when it went off. EMP is an electromagnetic wave, not a physical force...right? Sure used with a bomb it has physical force, but the EMP itself doesn't I don't think.

Unicron's Head wrote:There was all that buildup for Blackout weilding the EMP, and then he only used it once or twice in the first scene. It had to be one of the best parts of the preview and the movie, and we barely got to see it. And was it really an EMP wave? It looked more like some kind of force shockwave the way everything blew away from him when it went off. EMP is an electromagnetic wave, not a physical force...right? Sure used with a bomb it has physical force, but the EMP itself doesn't I don't think.

Also an EMP alone wouldn't shatter glass...
I'd always thought it was an EMP with some sort of shockwave during detonation, explaining the force & the shattered glass.

Justicity wrote:

Unicron's Head wrote:There was all that buildup for Blackout weilding the EMP, and then he only used it once or twice in the first scene. It had to be one of the best parts of the preview and the movie, and we barely got to see it. And was it really an EMP wave? It looked more like some kind of force shockwave the way everything blew away from him when it went off. EMP is an electromagnetic wave, not a physical force...right? Sure used with a bomb it has physical force, but the EMP itself doesn't I don't think.

Also an EMP alone wouldn't shatter glass...
I'd always thought it was an EMP with some sort of shockwave during detonation, explaining the force & the shattered glass.

Bingo. EMP won't cause that. Not unless the electronic devices blow up (which I don't think EMP is capable of doing, it just kills 'em.) Either way, it's a particularly nasty weapon and Blackout was too kick ass for our feeble human minds to comprehend.

Blackout could kick my ass any day and I'd enjoy it because he's just that friggin' cool!

It is unlikely that an advanced race will develop a kind of weapon that is practically useless to them, useless against their usual and most formidable enemy.

Megatron sees human as a disgusting primitive and useless species. I don't think he will instruct his lieutenants or top brass scientist to waste time developing a special weapon specifically targetted against them.

It wasnt emp because the comps didnt shut down either, when blackout was hacking the drive with his hand the army guys saw what he was scanning on their monitor.

I don't know if I'd call it useless. I mean it may be as powerful as a toothpick or terrifying as toilet paper to them, but it helped a single Decepticon wipe out an entire US military base on his own. They don't always deal with robot/robot conflict anyways, they visited a good few other worlds before getting here. Worlds that were likely not populated by robots, but used technology as a tool or weapons. And yeah, I'm thinking that it can't just be an EM pulse. It's gotta be some kind of awesome super weapon that only a Decepticon could/would love, that just happens to have an EM byproduct-if only on a limited scale. And I think we'd all be smiling if Blackout personally kicked our fanboy a$$es...you know, if you're into that sort of thing.

Here's why Blackout used the wave. His name is BLACKOUT. He is designed to go in, knock out and gather info. The wave was what seemed to be pure energy, like the Maximals and Predacons could release in the BW:Transmetals video game. He also seemed to add a rather loud sound to the wave. (Noted by the Sec. Of Def.) which I bet is what shattered the windows. cause I don't remember Blackout actually screaming.

riveting

Here's why Blackout used the wave. His name is BLACKOUT. He is designed to go in, knock out and gather info. The wave was what seemed to be pure energy, like the Maximals and Predacons could release in the BW:Transmetals video game. He also seemed to add a rather loud sound to the wave. (Noted by the Sec. Of Def.) which I bet is what shattered the windows. cause I don't remember Blackout actually screaming.

I think, if it's the screeching sound your refering to, that it is from when he is hacking into the bases computer network. The EMP weapon he uses definately has some kind of force to it and I think it maybe a directed concussion type of weapon, it would explain why the aircraft he fired at was lifted into the air and disintegrated after the wave hit.

you actally make a damn good point frostliger.
love the avatar btw.

Dirty bomb?

Auto Bot wrote:Dirty bomb?

A dirty bomb is a conventional bomb that also contains radioactive material. Unlike a true nuclear weapon though, a dirty bomb doesn't cause a nuclear chain-reacton when it explodes, it's just an ordinary explosion resulting from a chemical reaction. What makes it so nasty though, is that it throws all of this radioactive material all over the place contaminating everything wihtin the blast radius and a good distance beyond, wherever the dust settles or the wind carries it.

Could be a FOAB.

What he used wasn't a EMP blast. As someone else mentioned the computers and such weren't knocked out by the blast. Any and all online electronic devices within the blast radius would have been fried by an EMP blast. Computers, Phones, laser sights, even the ignition systems of cars and other vehicles would have been shut down by it. In fact a strong enough pulse will disable a person because it jacks up the synapses.

Based on what actually happened in the movie it was just a shock wave he sent out. They might have called it an EMP in the script, but it had none of the effects of one nor did they ever call it such in the movie.

And no where was it stated that any of the Transformers were shielded from EMP. Its probably simply because with all their traveling and such its likely they'd have encountered them before and being what they are it wouldn't be an enjoyable experience, but its never stated that they are actually protected from it.

I would think the military computers are shielded from EMP.

Mybe the ones ar NORAD, but not most of them. It would cost too much.

The term electromagnetic pulse (EMP) has the following meanings:

electromagnetic radiation from an explosion (especially a nuclear explosion) 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. See Electromagnetic bomb for details on the damages resulting to electronic devices. The effects are usually not noticeable beyond the blast radius unless the device is nuclear or specifically designed to produce an electromagnetic shockwave.

A broadband, high-intensity, short-duration burst of electromagnetic energy.
In the case of a nuclear detonation or an asteroid impact, most of the energy of the electromagnetic pulse is distributed in the frequency band between 3 Hz and 30 kHz

The worst of the pulse lasts for only a second, but any unprotected electrical equipment — and anything connected to electrical cables, which act as giant lightning rods or antennae — will be affected by the pulse. Older, vacuum tube (valve) based equipment is much less vulnerable to EMP; Soviet Cold War–era military aircraft often had avionics based on vacuum tubes. There are a number of websites that explore methods for protecting equipment in the home or business from the effects of an EMP attack. [citation needed]

It is important to note that many nuclear detonations have taken place using bombs dropped by aircraft. The aircraft that delivered the atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not fall out of the sky due to damage to their electrical or electronic systems. This is simply because electrons (ejected from the air by gamma rays) are stopped quickly in normal air for bursts below 10 km, so they do not get a chance to be significantly deflected by the Earth's magnetic field (the deflection causes the powerful EMP seen in high altitude bursts), but it does point out the limited use of smaller burst altitudes for widespread EMP.[citation needed]

If the B-29 planes had been within the intense nuclear radiation zone when the bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then they would have suffered effects from the charge separation (radial) EMP. But this only occurs within the severe blast radius for detonations below about 10 km altitude. EMP disruptions were suffered aboard KC-135 photographic aircraft flying 300 km from the 410 kt Bluegill and 410 kt Kingfish detonations (48 and 95 km burst altitude, respectively) in 1962 [1], but the vital aircraft electronics then were far less sophisticated than today and did not crash the aircraft.

Several major factors control the effectiveness of an EMP weapon. These are:

The altitude of the weapon when detonated;
The yield of the weapon;
The distance from the weapon when detonated;
Geographical depth or intervening geographical features.
Beyond a certain altitude a nuclear weapon will not produce any EMP, as the gamma rays will have had sufficient distance to disperse. In deep space or on worlds with no magnetic field (the moon or Mars for example) there will be little or no EMP. This has implications for certain kinds of nuclear rocket engines. See Project Orion.




According to an internet primer published by the Federation of American Scientists[1]

A high-altitude nuclear detonation produces an immediate flux of gamma rays from the nuclear reactions within the device. These photons in turn produce high energy free electrons by Compton scattering at altitudes between (roughly) 20 and 40 km. These electrons are then trapped in the Earth's magnetic field, giving rise to an oscillating electric current. This current is asymmetric in general and gives rise to a rapidly rising radiated electromagnetic field called an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Because the electrons are trapped essentially simultaneously, a very large electromagnetic source radiates coherently.
The pulse can easily span continent-sized areas, and this radiation can affect systems on land, sea, and air. The first recorded EMP incident accompanied a high-altitude nuclear test over the South Pacific and resulted in power system failures as far away as Hawaii. A large device detonated at 400–500 km (250 to 312 miles) over Kansas would affect all of CONUS. The signal from such an event extends to the visual horizon as seen from the burst point.
Thus, for equipment to be affected, the weapon needs to be above the visual horizon. Because of the nature of the pulse as a large, long, high powered, noisy spike, it is doubtful that there would be much protection if the explosion were seen in the sky just below the tops of hills or mountains. The circumstances inside the bottom of deeper valleys may be different, and locations with a large mountain range in-between (such as the Rocky Mountains) likely have some protection.[citation needed] Thus a weapon detonated high over Kansas might have only indirect effects on the US West Coast.[citation needed]

The altitude indicated above is greater than that of the International Space Station and many low Earth orbit satellites. Large weapons could have a dramatic impact on satellite operations and communications; smaller weapons have less such potential.


[edit] Weapon yield
Typical nuclear weapon yields quoted in such scenarios are in the range of 20 megatons. This is roughly 1,000 times the sizes of the weapons the United States used in Japan at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.


[edit] Weapon distance
The major energy in an EMP is electromagnetic, and radiates out from the point of detonation in a sphere. EMP is electromagnetic radiation. The intensity of these fields decreases in proportion to the circumference and distance from explosion. The actual amount of EMP energy deposited per unit area is entirely different, and that falls off as the inverse-square of distance.

The range of deposition of gamma rays would be smaller for a surface burst because of the greater air density, which shields the initial gamma rays that cause the EMP. Conversely, for a burst at greater altitudes, the range of the deposition would be far greater than 10 miles, because the gamma rays could travel much further in the low density air before being stopped. The actual energy deposited per unit area, if emitted from an isotropic point source, is always governed by the inverse-square law.

But the damaging effect of EMP is determined largely by the peak electric field (measured in volts/metre), which falls only inversely with distance. The amount of EMP energy passing through a unit of area is proportional to the square of the field strength. Within the range of gamma ray deposition, these simple laws no longer hold as the air is ionised and there are other EMP effects such as a radial (non-radiated) electric field due to the separation of Compton electrons from air molecules, and other complex phenomena. so its energy = 1/d^2

Non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NNEMP) is an electromagnetic pulse generated without use of nuclear weapons. There are a number of devices to achieve this objective, ranging from a large low-inductance capacitor bank discharged into a single-loop antenna or a microwave generator to an explosively pumped flux compression generator. To achieve the frequency characteristics of the pulse needed for optimal coupling into the target, wave-shaping circuits and/or microwave generators are added between the pulse source and the antenna. A vacuum tube particularly suitable for microwave conversion of high energy pulses is the vircator.

NNEMP generators can be carried as a payload of bombs and cruise missiles, allowing construction of electromagnetic bombs with diminished mechanical, thermal and ionizing radiation effects and without the political consequences of deploying nuclear weapons.

NNEMP generators also include large structures built to generate EMP for testing of electronics to determine how well it survives EMP.[citation needed] In addition, the use of ultra-wideband radars can generate EMP in areas immediately adjacent to the radar;[citation needed] this phenomenon is only partly understood.

Typical modern scenarios seen in news accounts speculate about the use of nuclear weapons by rogue states or terrorists in an attack on the United States. These typically involve weapons similar to those used over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Aerial detonation would require the use of aircraft, or surface launched missiles of limited range (typically a range 100 to 300 miles). The scenarios have the detonations typically occurring within the earth's atmosphere, and likely relatively close to the ground (within a dozen or so miles).

This would limit the EMP effect because the altitude of the explosion would be much lower than that needed to be above the visual horizon of the entire United States. Also, the power of the weapons would typically be hundreds if not thousands of times smaller than optimum, and thus the effect would be significantly smaller than that of a larger weapon.

However, the EMP at a fixed distance from a nuclear weapon does not depend directly on the yield but at most only increases as the square root of the yield (see illustration above). This means that although a 10 kt weapon has only 0.7% of the total energy release of the 1.4 Mt Starfish Prime test, the EMP will be at least 8% as powerful. Since the EMP depends on the prompt gamma ray output, which was only 0.1% of yield in Starfish Prime but can be 0.5% of yield in pure fission weapons of low yield, a 10 kt bomb can easily be 5 x 8% = 40% as powerful as the 1.4 Mt Starfish Prime at producing EMP [2].

The total prompt gamma ray energy in a fission explosion is 3.5% of the yield, but in a 10 kt detonation the high explosive around the bomb core absorbs about 85% of the prompt gamma rays, so the output is only about 0.5% of the yield in kilotons. In the thermonuclear Starfish Prime the fission yield was less than 100% to begin with, and then the thicker outer casing absorbed about 95% of the prompt gamma rays from the pusher around the fusion stage. Thermonuclear weapons are also less efficient at producing EMP because the first stage can pre-ionise the air [3], which becomes conductive and hence rapidly shorts out the electron Compton currents generated by the final, larger yield thermonuclear stage. Hence, small pure fission weapons with thin cases are far more efficient at causing EMP than most megaton bombs.

A terrorist EMP attack might profoundly affect any major city; however, since the high cost of real estate and traffic issues, many major businesses have relocated valuable assets outside of major urban areas, and have taken other measures to protect themselves. Therefore, the long-term economic and technological impact of such an event might not be as grave as previously imagined, depending on the nature of the original attack. [citation needed]

A common scenario is detonation of a device over the middle of the U.S. using long-range missiles available only to major military powers. An offshore detonation at high altitude, by contrast, would present less technical difficulty and would disrupt both an entire coast and regions hundreds of miles inland (e.g. 120 mile altitude, 1000 mile EMP radius). Moreover, a high altitude burst could be positioned over international waters by means of a missile of low accuracy, launched from a ship, also in international waters. North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan (for example) have Scud-derived missiles of more than adequate capability