A durable metal body is crucial for your SHTF vehicle, as is EMP-hardening your auto. Rebuilding your vehicle may be necessary especially if you don't have the funds to buy another vehicle. However, by investing your time to make sure your auto has the correct features for when an EMP arrives, you'll be glad you took the time to make sure everything was setup correctly.
via Old Cars Weekly
9. Conductive Metal Body
For the best EMP-resistance, choose a vehicle with conductive metal body enclosing the engine and passenger compartment or cab over a vehicle with body panels made of fiberglass, plastic or any other non-conductive material.
How to EMP-Harden Your Auto
If your vehicle already has these features or you are already doing these things, then you are already part of the way there. There are many features to look for and modifications to make to both your vehicle and your SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) regarding that vehicle.
No matter which automobile you choose, there is always more that can be done to minimize the effect of HEMP on the vehicle.• Ground all conductive components of the vehicle to a single point on the chassis. Do not ground them to the earth.
• Rewire with shielded wiring: Verify that your wiring is shielded or replace all you can with shielded wiring.
• Re-bond metal body panels: Remove body panels and make sure that you have good conductive bonds between body panels by removing paint and installing conductive gasket material or make sure you have metal on metal contact with as much overlap as possible. This will help the body conduct energy through the vehicle skin like the skin of a Faraday cage. Just do not allow yourself to be fooled into thinking that the vehicle skin is without holes that compromise its integrity.
• Route wiring close to the vehicle frame
• Install ferrite clamps or snap on cores on cable ends
• Protect cable entry and exit points with surge suppression: This will need to be fast-clamping surge protection faster than one millisecond that will handle high voltages. (Think lightening protection.)
• Mechanical ignition (points and condenser)
• Install EMP-rated surge protection on antennas
• Mechanical fuel & water pumps
• Carburetor or mechanical fuel injection
• Keep spares of vulnerable parts you cannot replace in a Faraday cage: You may have a vehicle that is mostly good to go, but it still parts like a starter, alternator and voltage regulator that do not contain microelectronics, but could still conceivably be affected.
• Manual transmission: Some will surely disagree with me on this one, but they are easier to repair and make it possible to push start vehicles even if the battery is shot or missing. Even some diesels can be push or roll started if you wire open the fuel valve.
An EMP seems like a remote threat until you realize how many “rogue” nations have nuclear weapons or are desperately trying to get them. Add into that mix terrorists who are determined to alter our way of life and the threat becomes more real.
So real the US federal government has indicated they are worried and if they admit that, we all should be very worried.
To learn more about vehicles that will stand up better against an EMP, please visit Survivorpedia.
Featured Image via Wikipedia / Turbo Mopar
If an emp goes off every car on the road is disabled and your not getting around that with your “emp safe” vehicle
Wow, pretty special.
“The question of EMP damage to automobiles is so complex that it cannot be answered definitely for the reasons discussed below.” http://www.futurescience.com/emp/vehicles.html
Any vehicle with a lot of fancy technology in it goes shitfaced
I’d be driving an older model vehicle, like from the 60s
I guess I don’t understand how EMP works.
I guess I don’t understand how EMP works.
An EMP simply kills each and every piece of technology in an area. Cars, lights, tvs, pacemakers, etc.
Got most of those, except the fuel capacity. 16 gallons does not go far.
Kent
True, no such thing
If it uses electricity, it could get damaged. Depends if it’s shielded or not.
If it uses electricity, it could get damaged. Modern vehicles are all controlled with a lot of electronics, so they more than likely wouldn’t run. Not necessarily, but very likely.
Mmmmm 1978 Dodge Ram……..
Unless you have an old$#%&!@*crank engine or a Faraday Cage built around your truck, it’s fucked with an EMP
You could have it stored inside a Faraday Cage. Other than that, it’s fucked
My point is all other cars not in a whatever cage will be blocking your path
It closes all circuits with every other circuit at the same time and fries everything
How strong of a magnetic pulse does it take to disrupt the flow of electrons in a circuit? Seems like that kind of pulse would do other kinds of damage too.
Except the fact that there has never been a large scale emp to prove definitively what would happen to vehicles that have metal bodies.
Conor Callahan
The effects of EMP vary according to several variables. There were EMP related incidents in the 1950s during the time period of nuclear bomb testing, ways the EMP skips through the ionosphere and can cause damage hundreds of miles away, but depending on atmospheric and magnetic conditions, vehicles as close as 25 miles were not affected. In many cases, the effect is entirely temporary. It causes a disruption in the vehicle ignition system, you restart the vehicle, and you drive on. Vehicles which were in areas shaded by large granite formations may be unaffected, as may be vehicles which were being serviced at the time of the EMP and had the ignition computers disconnected from batteries or external wiring.
The article is pure speculative clickbait, with very little substantive information and the guy does not show the nuts and bolts of an actual EMP resistant vehicle. I seriously doubt he even has put any effort into an EMP resistant vehicle that he actually has or plans to use.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3WrXthPEAg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlQLG16OqiI
The car, with all its structural metal parts, is basically a faraday cage anyway. What you have in the article and the comments is fear mongering.
Well you have that at least. For those who are interested in reading about the testing the link is there. Bye bye!