patrick.net

You just want to buy an old car, one before all the chips.

Ditto @Patrick said.

Some alts to an old car is a bicycle or an old non-chipped ATV or motorbike with storage or the ability to pull a small trailer...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZV1zgjOhl0

The best would be an old diesel truck with mechanical fuel pump and ability to start with a crank handle. Something like Ford Model A would seem as an option but these have magnetos, which would be fried in an EMP event. So aside from diesel the only other option is something like White or Stanley Steamer steam car.

Patrick says

You just want to buy an old car, one before all the chips.

Can't run w/o ignition coils which will be toasted.

Horses! Or mules.

I have been thinking about hardening my garage. Wire mesh of the correct size, stapled across the roof and walls and grounded should block out all EMF, keeping whatever vehicle is inside safe from EMP/CME.

Oh, or a Faraday copper mesh blanket draped over your vehicle should work, assuming you attach a wire from the blanket to a decent ground. That might be the easiest solution?

Shaman says

Oh, or a Faraday copper mesh blanket draped over your vehicle should work, assuming you attach a wire from the blanket to a decent ground. That might be the easiest solution?

Major hassle with a dailiy driver, but not bad for something which just sits most of the time.

But even if you preserve your vehicle, the first time you're out and about after an EMP hit, it most probably be commandeered by the authorities "in the name of the greater good".

I never really understood why we think cars should fry.. A faraday cage is just a metal wrapper around stuff to diffuse electric charge. The charge distributes to the external shell. Well isn't a car body a giant external metal shell around the electronics? Maybe fiberglass body cars would have a problem. Alternatively, in highly radioactive environments, I can see the particles passing thru the barrier due to their momentum, then decaying and emitting charged particles inside the cage, but that would be with literal plutonium sitting within 50 yards or so of you. particle density reduces with the square of the distance from source, so unless an EMP is literally right next to you.... Even the police "EM disablers" work by going under your car on the road and shooting an EM pulse up from the bottom where there is no metal body shielding the electronics. So you could cover just the underside of your engine bay with some chicken wire if you want to "harden" against that vector.

It is seemingly more of a problem for things connected to external wiring/power grid, like Fridges, tvs, ovens. Surge protectors should help here. Even then, stucco house usually has a chicken wire "cage" , so unplugged, or DC w/ fused chargers & voltage regultaros would all have some level of "safe". stick houses will be more susceptible. Its the high voltage being induced over long external wires, then spiking thru inductors to massively burn out things like grid transformers, or solar charge controllers that would be the problem.

If you watch "Chernoble" they mostly accurately show a robot driving into a radioactive area. It has some resilience to ultra-high radiation levels with an exploded reactor literally yards away.

Satellites get fried because their entire intent is to have long em radiating and absorbing wires exposed to space to .. wait for it transmit and recieve and amplify EM waves!! Satellite isn't much good if it can't communicate!!!

Sensitive electronics have to be completely sealed off with a conductive material. A metal cage grounded is not going to stop anything mass rf will still get things.

I have an inverter and a solar charge controller sealed and stored. If such an event happened their will be plenty of car batteries and solar panels that will be useless to most. Also have some tube radio equipment that's immune to these events.

I live about 25 miles from LA. If an EMP/CME event happens, it will be Mad Max here within the week. I know the signs and would recognize the event for what it was. The plan is to get my family into my preserved vehicle and leave within HOURS of the event. I’ll be headed to my buddy’s ranch in Montana. Bit of a drive (1400 miles), but an early start should get us there in about 18 hours. Or much longer depending on conditions.

Another thing to think about: does your gun safe have one of these electronic keypad locks?

Eric Holder says

Another thing to think about: does your gun safe have one of these electronic keypad locks?

Yes, but it also has keys. Good question tho!!
If we got any warning, I’d want to have that open.

Good luck getting from LA to Montana no gas stations. You'll probably be attacked for having a working car. There are vast areas of nothing in between, going a hundred miles will be rough especially with family without modern transportation.

Gas stations will be everywhere. They look like cars broke down forever on side of the road. A screwdriver (to punch into the plastic gas tank) and a can are all that’s required to fuel up.
99.99% of vehicles will never run again.

Interesting and surprising article about a test of EMP on Cars built late 80s - 2000s.

https://www.superprepper.com/will-cars-still-run-after-an-emp/

Good point about car body being a Faraday cage in itself.

Buy a fuck ton of this and construct a blanket to lay over your vehicle:

https://www.parts-express.com/pedocs/specs/268-270-cascade-audio-vb-3-specifications-44093.pdf

It's one of the reasons that Russian jet fighters still use vacuum tubes in critical sections (I think, at least they did not too long ago). Audiophiles also like those tubes to make audio amplifiers.

EMP pulses really don't have that much impact on consumer electronics. Generally only "Long" wires (telecommunications wires and/or electrical grids) are susceptible to damage. Yes, the telecommunications and electric companies are actually sorta prepared for an event.

There has been a lot of propaganda spouted about nuclear wars being the end of civilization. This simply isn't true.

Misc says

There has been a lot of propaganda spouted about nuclear wars being the end of civilization. This simply isn't true.

It's absolutely true. You think that shipping is going to continue during nuclear war?

People be watching too damn much Discovery Channel and History Channel. Fully believed the propaganda they fed, now every Netflix, Hollywood, and Hulu production has some hyped up element of calamities, that would be the least likely to happen in our lifetimes.

EMPs are not cheap frivolous things to produce. If it were that easy, every war in the last 30 years would have been one sided.
The west would EMP the Russian Jets, and Drones out of the sky, and the Russian tanks would all be sitting idle somewhere in Ukraine otherwise perfectly in tact.

In my lifetime there has never been a solar flares that took out cars and consumer electronic. There has been blackouts and brownouts over the years, that our NEWS(yes those same propaganda spreading fear mongers that we have today) claimed was due to solar flares . But like we see today with forest fires to promote Global Warming fears, most of those are Eco Terrorists starting fires at substations then blaming the electric grid.

They claimed solar flares did it, but yet our boom boxes and cars cranked right up.

Tenpoundbass says

If it were that easy, every war in the last 30 years would have been one sided.
The west would EMP the Russian Jets, and Drones out of the sky, and the Russian tanks would all be sitting idle somewhere in Ukraine otherwise perfectly in tact.

Correct. Even the KC-135s tankers had electronics that were hardened against nuclear detonation EMP bursts. The Soviets had tanks built in such a way and had procedures to follow their doctrine of operating in an area soon after a nuke blast.