Re: Electromagnetic pulse
Your first concern in any weapon of mass destruction event is proximity. The most important decisions you made about surviving a massively destructive event is where you live and where you work. If you live or work in a high risk area, you and your electronics are substantially more vulnerable to EMP pulse and everything else, because you are more likely to be in close proximity to a massively destructive event.
In instances of EMP, and every other kind of point source destructive event, the effect generally tends to follow the laws of spherical spreading loss. This is good news because the power of the destructive wave fronts are inverse cubes of the distance. There are some ground effect, transmission line, and atmospheric anomalies to be considered, but those are practically impossible for the layman to calculate due the immense number of variables involved, starting with the location and composition of the initial event. In short, however, distance from the blast is your best friend. Heading for the hills is also a good idea because terra firma stops everything but cosmic rays.
Now back in the bad old days of the Cold War when it was not beyond the range of possibility that substantial numbers of nuclear devices would fly at any given moment, the likelihood of being caught in an EMP pulse was pretty substantial and wildly irrelevant. If you were caught by an EMP pulse, you were probably about to be in hell anyway because the infrastructure of your city just went up in smoke. Today it is much more likely that if you are caught in an EMP blast, you are going to make it because most of the barbarians and dictators striving for nuclear devices do not have the capability of delivering the repeated strikes necessary to turn your bad day into your last day. Individual nuclear weapons are not nearly as overwhelmingly powerful as movies and anti-war activists would have have you believe. Don't get me wrong, they are not something I want set off anywhere near me, but getting caught in an EMP pulse is not your death warrant.
It is a good and worthwhile thing to create and maintain an emergency kit and plan. Keeping that kit in an old 20mm ammunition can will probably keep everything dry and EMP proof. I suspect that aluminum Mag Instruments based lights will probably hold up much better than plastic bodied flashlights. I very much hope that I never find out the hard way. I think it can be stated without contradiction that the more parts, the greater likelihood of part failure by definition.
