No electronic Ignition after?

 This guy was on C-span Books today. Fascinating concept, It is Semi
Fiction. EMP is real, the story is fiction, set 1 second after a
nuclear device sends out an electro-magnetic pulse....and the world
goes  quiet...



New York Times best selling author William R. Forstchen now brings us
a story which can be all too terrifyingly real...a story in which one
man struggles to save his family and his small North Carolina town
after America loses a war, in one second, a war that will send America
back to the Dark Ages...A war based upon a weapon, an Electro Magnetic
Pulse (EMP).  A weapon that may already be in the hands of our
enemies.

Months before publication, One Second After has already been cited on
the floor of Congress as a book all Americans should read, a book
already being discussed in the corridors of the Pentagon as a truly
realistic look at a weapon and its awesome power to destroy the entire
United States, literally within one second. It is a weapon that the
Wall Street Journal warns could shatter America. In the tradition of
On the Beach, Fail Safe and Testament, this book, set in a typical
American town, is a dire warning of what might be our future...and our
end.

 

So what else is new? When I was working on the B-1B bomber back in the
mid-1980's, much of the wiring was shielded from EMP disruption.

And back around 1979, the effects of EMP on car ignition systems were
depicted in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" when a character's
vehicle wouldn't start after the UFO's flew over.

 Will wrote:

Let's say you are a general in charge of nuclear weapons for an enemy of
the USA for one minute. You have a choice between A) a neutron bomb that
kills everyone but leaves buildings intact B) a fusion bomb that will
melt every building within 50 miles of ground zero, kill every person,
and leave the area unfit for human habitation for 1,000 years C) an EMF
device that breaks little Timmy's 50cc Chinese scooter's electronic
ignition while leaving all hardened military equipment, ICBMs, nuclear
submarines, et cetera intact and the button pushers alive.

What do you use?

This topic came up when we got our hands on some MIGs from ~Korean
police action and from Six Day War. As I heard the story The Russian
equipment used vacuum tubes with analog targeting computers and at first
we were pretty smug about our superior digital technology. Then we
figured out the Russians had the capability to use semiconductors and
digital computers so they chosen to use vacuum tubes. They did this
because vacuum tubes are better able to survive an EMF pulse.

Most motorcycle electronic ignitions and cars for that matter are pretty
robust, they typically have output stages that can handle 400V and 7-15
amps. If they are done right, internally they have clamp diodes
protection circuits on all input that can handle amp level screw ups and
RF shielding so they don't produce static on radios. This RF shielding
works in the reverse protecting the circuit from EMF. Short of being at
ground zero I seriously doubt they would be disabled. If your motorcycle
is at ground zero under you, at your job, or in your garage, a busted
CDI would be the least of your worries.

Rick

 

Which will fail short-circuit, rendering the ignition box inoperable.

 Will wrote:

So we go back to the telegraph, big deal. We need a reset. We are in
legal gridlock.