Would you be prepared, and what steps have you taken, for manmade or natural EMP?

The fastest and easiest way to piss off the really educated members of this section is to make statements of fact that are not based on facts - nobody is predicting a massive emp event, and there are protections and redundancies in place to protect against solar event which minimize the damage and outage time. Also, a solar event will only hit one side of the earth, so it won't devastate civilization.

While an emp attack could severely cripple the infrastructure of our nation, it certainly won't push us back into the 19th century. Not all nations would be effected, and it enough weapons were used to do that much emp damage, the fallout would be your biggest concern, not finding food. Any nation using an emp attack would have to rebuild the infrastructure if they sought occupation, because they cannot operate their own military without electricity.

Also, we used currency long before electricity, bartering wouldn't be needed.

You can't prepare for everything, and there is no reason to prepare for things that have an extremely low probability of happening.

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>> Power Companies in the United States are predicting just such a naturally caused event will occur sometime in the very near future, by the year 2013.

No. They're not. You're confused or lying. That's merely the solar maximum. It's a mundane event. Yes, temporary, regional blackouts have been caused by coronal mass ejections in the past. This does not equate to the world reverting to pre 12th Century lifestyle (hell, you might want to crack a history book sometime and see just when electrification actually came about). It means that in a worst-case scenario, you have to do without power for about a week, and that's if it's a once-in-500 year event. Your notions of CME "frying" computers is a work of hysterical fiction, unless you've directly connected your computer to several kilometers of outstretched cable without an intervening breaker or fusebox or otherwise engaged in perverse ingenuity.

>> If you have made preparations for such an event, please share what preparations you have made and why you have taken these steps. If you have not done so, please share why you believe such an event will not occur, or why if it does, you have no plans to make any preparations for it.

I became scientifically literate, so that I can realize when I'm confronted with abject fiction such as this. Meanwhile, aided by this knowledge, I've prepared for a wide range of non-imaginary disasters, including power outages. It's easier to develop a workable strategy when you're not distracted by stuff that simpletons on the internet just made up.

Edit: Good strawman regarding my motivations. I think you're unintelligent, but no, as a humanist, I have no desire to experiment upon you or otherwise do unnecessary harm to others. By your statement, you seem to be what's called an "anti-intellectual". I'm not sure why you feel compelled to equate scientific understanding with evil-hearted motives, or why you figure that understanding LESS makes you better, but that's your problem, not mine. Also, if you're human, you don't actually have an exoskeleton.

A CME simply does not produce the same effect as a high-altitude thermonuclear explosion. Indeed, it's effect can't even be described as an EMP because there is no PULSE. It's a geomagnetic current which builds slowly. Hell, even EMP from nuclear weapons gets overhyped in terms of effect; damaging, sure, but in popular culture it's turned into a magic wand. Your 1.4 MT "Starfish Prime" test, despite being visible from Honolulu did the following damage: 300 streetlights, setting off several burglar alarms, and damaging a telecom microwave link. Yes, there was a power outage in Quebec caused by a CME... and a VERY fussy set of circumstances, in which their own safety systems shut the line down. Nowadays, we can tell when a CME is coming our way, and in a worst-case, shut down hardware likely to be affected.

And, you're lying again. We've been in the direct path of CME before; we've been hit by multiple X-class (those are the BIG ones) CME this year. CME are spectacularly common events. Usual result: pretty auroras. Rather than being an ostrich with its head in the sand, I'm more like Argus, the many-eyed guardian who you can't sneak **** by. And you know, if the grid ever DID go for good, I'd probably be more likely to hack it than >95% of folks. Military training and good general-purpose preparation... :D

Edit2: Yeah. You can tell he's full of it when he claims that terrorists can build EMP devices for only $400. The matter-energy conversion of a nuclear warhead is what fuels nuclear EMP; this effect cannot be duplicated with non-nuclear devices. Instead, the most powerful non-nuclear EMP devices are pumped by conventional explosive. While this is a higher energy density than can be achieved with batteries, it's a drop in a very big bucket compared to the energy density of a nuclear explosive. NNEMP might be useful for surgical work (the $400 one with dubious effectiveness), but they're hardly armageddon. But, yeah. Thanks for providing a good example of how EMP is exaggerated to "magic wand" proportions by drama queens on the internet.

The Sun cannot cause an EMP in the way you describe. The most that can happen is that long conductors such as power lines may have a voltage induced in them. As for transformers blowing up, have you never heard of circuit breakers? Nothing such as you describe is going to happen. Like it or not, that's the way it is.

I am not a survivalist, or anyone that spends a lot of time thinking about things like this. I know it can and most likely will happen, so I have some survival books at my toilet for reading, I camp and have the gear for it, fire arms for protection, blades, costco boxes of canned food are used daily and kept (I have about a month worth of food), etc

What more could I do that would not require me to change my life to very much? Should I bother? Why should I? Do I want to survive after? Am I worthy of surviving the end? Do I want to?

Please give us the courtesy of expressing your own thoughts, instead of simply repeating the previously written thoughts of other.

Your "question" consists of many ideas present almost word-for-word by OTHER authors. this is ESPECIALLY true about the "natural EMP" which those of us with some scientific knowledge already know is just a "solar mass ejection", which occurs MANY times a year, and would harm us ONLY if it hits the earth DEAD ON -- which is a VERY VERY small possibility.

No, we don't believe in the Mayan Calendar, either.

What you are doing is called plagiarism. If you want to be taken seriously, learn to study your subject and present ideas in YOU OWN words, instead of cluttering up the internet with reposts of other authors presented as your own thoughts, without the express permission of the original authors to do so.to do so.

Get an education. It isn't hard and will help you understand that long stupid questions are generated by ignorance.