[AndTheGuy]

There was a show on The Discovery Channel Wednesday called "Future Weapons". Basically it talked about new weapons technology but one that I found very interesting was an EMP or Electromagnetic Pulse weapon.

An electromagnetic pulse was dicovered as a by product of a nuclear explosion. 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 400500 km over Kansas would affect all of the continental United States. The signal from such an event extends to the visual horizon as seen from the burst point.

The field can be sufficiently strong to produce short lived transient voltages of thousands of Volts (ie kiloVolts) on exposed electrical conductors, such as wires, or conductive tracks on printed circuit boards, where exposed effectivly frying them.

We are close to developing an EMP Bomb which does not use nuclear energy.

The EMP has no effect on living organisms just electronic devices.

Sorry robots and cyborgs.

Balls!