BugoutBoys
Enlightened
MY logic is, wouldn't AAs, C and D be the first that people would loot in this scenario? Not many "Normal" people care about CR123s. Meaning that they would probably last longer in stores.
What light would you use in a SHTF situation? (Zombies, anarchy, society downfall)
- Thread starter BugoutBoys
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I'd agree with you...if we as a group weren't well armed.If there are threats out there. And total darkness. Then they will see you, long before you see them if you use any flashlight at all. So that might be a bad idea. You see a couple of hundred meters with the light at full blast, but you will be seen, by everyone, for miles
Being we are, I choose light domination.
BugoutBoys
Enlightened
Beautifully said. +1
Yeah I got 10 18650 cells and about 16 Eneloop AA
using Convoys, Nitecore P12, Skilhunt H03F, Eagle Eye X2R and X6 and Jetbeam Jet-1 MK
I got a 30W solar panel with 12V Lead charger as well
Problem is with poop like a huge EMP from Solar flares or nuclear war renders most LED flashlights and chargers useless
so have some bulb 18650/AA lights may be good as well
using Convoys, Nitecore P12, Skilhunt H03F, Eagle Eye X2R and X6 and Jetbeam Jet-1 MK
I got a 30W solar panel with 12V Lead charger as well
Problem is with poop like a huge EMP from Solar flares or nuclear war renders most LED flashlights and chargers useless
so have some bulb 18650/AA lights may be good as well
Forget about using 18650s in any incandescent light. Well, the high-output ones anyway. The cells will drain down to nothing in just a few minutes. Found that out the hard way at one of my old jobs.... while patrolling a set of enclosed and very dark tank farms with plenty of sharp corners to bump into, at night. Back-up flashlight to the rescue!
BugoutBoys
Enlightened
Hence a reason to use a Farraday box! =)
wouldnt aluminum/metal bodied lights be fine though? Like Surefire's
Might work against zombies. But problem is, most pepole might be well armed. And in situations like that, the ones that get spotted first, is usually the ones that end up with the short stick. In the millitary i trained to be behind enemy lines. And no matter how well armed my squad was, i would go mental on pepole that turned on a light during patrols. Its like going around shouting: wooohooo, here we are, come ambush us!!!
night optics would be far better if you want to go from a to b, and want to avoid troublesome pepole. Joe Talmadge
Flashlight Enthusiast
Hmmm, I've seen discussion and debate on this in various places over the years. I came away with the impression that the induced current was in direct relation to the size of the "wire", and in LEDs they are small enough that it's unlikely they'd blow out from something like even a huge solar flare or far-enough-away-that-you-could-survive nuclear EMP. Whereas big things like power lines, things connected to power lines, things with long wires or metal surface area (e.g., electronics in your car) could get fried. Wrong? Still being debated?
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BugoutBoys
Enlightened
Lol why thank you Seery!
Phlogiston
Enlightened
That depends.
Geomagnetic storm induced current - what you get when the coronal mass ejection (CME) from a solar flare hits the Earth's magnetic field - is a problem for long conductors like power lines. At best, it'll trip the breakers on the power grid, at worst, it'll burn out transformers and the like.
Household equipment which isn't connected to the power grid is safe in this scenario, so your self-contained battery-powered stuff will be fine. Items which are plugged into the wall will be at risk, whether switched on or off. You can protect those items by completely unplugging them and removing the power lead (if possible) - for example, you'd want to unplug your computer from the wall socket and pull the power lead out of the back.
This is all known good information, because geomagnetic storms have brought power grids down before. I'm aware of cases in Quebec and Sweden. The power grid crashed in both cases, but equipment that wasn't connected to grid power was undamaged. In those cases, there was no warning of the event, but the solar scientists have satellites and monitoring systems nowadays, so hopefully we'd get a last-minute warning via the news to unplug our stuff.
Nuclear EMP is less well-understood, for lack of experimental data
We know that power grids can be affected - the effect is similar to that of a geomagnetic storm - but virtually all of the above-ground nuclear tests were conducted before semiconductors entered widespread use. For that reason, we know that equipment running on vacuum tubes does relatively well in this scenario, but there's next to no empirical data on semiconductors. However, the nature of semiconductor junctions means that they fail very easily when exposed to over-voltage or reverse voltage. That's why components and circuit boards containing semiconductors often come in an anti-static bag. As nuclear EMP can generate similar voltages to static electricity, we infer that semiconductors will be highly vulnerable to nuclear EMP.
If you're worried about nuclear EMP, you can protect small items by wrapping them in several alternating layers of aluminium foil and plastic bags. This is essentially a form-fitting Faraday cage for your flashlight / radio / old mobile phone / whatever you're storing. These items can then serve as a backup to the equipment you normally have in use.
Bear in mind that protected cells and battery packs with electronic battery management circuitry will also need to be stored in the same way. Personally, I'd be storing a set of cells wrapped up with each device anyway, whether vulnerable to EMP or not. That way, I'd have the cells right there when I needed them.
Larger items will need solutions like metal ammo boxes or garbage cans - remember to cover the inside of the container with insulation - and really big stuff needs a whole room with walls, ceiling and floor made of metal or covered in metal mesh.
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Yes, nuclear high-altitude EMP lacks hard data because we agreed to suspend high-altitude testing after our Starfish Prime shot which is where we learned about the Compton effect and the thousand-fold increase it causes to electromagnetic pulse. The Russians covertly monitored that test and performed their own high-altitude testing in Kazakhstan and based on their observation of the Starfish Prime shot, electrified and monitored some very long sections of telecom wire before agreeing to the test ban so they got much better data and big head start developing super-EMP weapons which they have and have threatened to use on more than one occasion.
The problem with most of math on EMP is exactly that lack of hard data. Before Starfish Prime, we had no idea of the effect of high-energy electrons and the Compton effect. All of the non-secret compartmented information available to academia is based on the 50Kv/m EM field strength number produced by the Starfish Prime shot, but that nuke pretty much couldn't have been designed to produce a lower electromagnetic energy yield they tried because the design used a super-thick bomb casing which greatly reduced the proportion of energy expressed in gamma rays, which greatly decreased the EM yield.
The world has had 50+ years to perfect EM yield from EMP weapons, so the 50Kv/m EM field strength number should probably be more like 5 times that. This could cause big problems when you are trying to shield the delicate low-voltage transistors in flashlight circuits. EM attenuation from a nuclear HEMP is mostly a function of conductor length and polarization or orientation. This is why super-long conductors like the power grid and phone lines are at such risk even from geomagnetic (magnetohydrodynamic) EMP like would happen in a coronal mass ejection of the sun because they pick up just few volts per km in this type of event but you multiply that by thousands of kilometers of conductor length and you start melting big step-down transformers in the electrical grid that are all custom built one at a time and have a lead time measured in years to replace them. So, that is correct that it would not affect shorter conductor lengths like a flashlight in your backpack as opposed to one connected to the power grid. If you use the 50Kv/m field strength number than pretty much all private sector math is based on, then smaller flashlights, even thought they are somewhat vulnerable to nuclear HEMP, lack the conductor length. The problem is that Super-EMP weapons will produce many times that field strength, so you can't shield against that with a Faraday bag that gives you 45 dB of EM shielding at the frequency range that would damage the semi-conductors we are talking about if you are right under "sky zero." You start needing something like an aluminum pressure cooker lined with a non-conductor. Better still would be alternating layers of conductor/non-conductor.
Then, let's say you take that little flashlight and mount it on a Barret Light .50 in a conductive clamp. Now you substantially increased your conductor length ... or your flashlight recharges via USB and connect it to a power receptacle in your home, which is connected to the electrical grid. Now your flashlight is vulnerable to even a geomagnetic event.
The problem with most of math on EMP is exactly that lack of hard data. Before Starfish Prime, we had no idea of the effect of high-energy electrons and the Compton effect. All of the non-secret compartmented information available to academia is based on the 50Kv/m EM field strength number produced by the Starfish Prime shot, but that nuke pretty much couldn't have been designed to produce a lower electromagnetic energy yield they tried because the design used a super-thick bomb casing which greatly reduced the proportion of energy expressed in gamma rays, which greatly decreased the EM yield.
The world has had 50+ years to perfect EM yield from EMP weapons, so the 50Kv/m EM field strength number should probably be more like 5 times that. This could cause big problems when you are trying to shield the delicate low-voltage transistors in flashlight circuits. EM attenuation from a nuclear HEMP is mostly a function of conductor length and polarization or orientation. This is why super-long conductors like the power grid and phone lines are at such risk even from geomagnetic (magnetohydrodynamic) EMP like would happen in a coronal mass ejection of the sun because they pick up just few volts per km in this type of event but you multiply that by thousands of kilometers of conductor length and you start melting big step-down transformers in the electrical grid that are all custom built one at a time and have a lead time measured in years to replace them. So, that is correct that it would not affect shorter conductor lengths like a flashlight in your backpack as opposed to one connected to the power grid. If you use the 50Kv/m field strength number than pretty much all private sector math is based on, then smaller flashlights, even thought they are somewhat vulnerable to nuclear HEMP, lack the conductor length. The problem is that Super-EMP weapons will produce many times that field strength, so you can't shield against that with a Faraday bag that gives you 45 dB of EM shielding at the frequency range that would damage the semi-conductors we are talking about if you are right under "sky zero." You start needing something like an aluminum pressure cooker lined with a non-conductor. Better still would be alternating layers of conductor/non-conductor.
Then, let's say you take that little flashlight and mount it on a Barret Light .50 in a conductive clamp. Now you substantially increased your conductor length ... or your flashlight recharges via USB and connect it to a power receptacle in your home, which is connected to the electrical grid. Now your flashlight is vulnerable to even a geomagnetic event.
Yes, for metal mesh over windows of a room, to protect the frequency range that we are concerned about, (about 80MHz to 1 GHz) the mesh would need to be 20 opi (opening per inch) and I would use 2 layers since in this application the mesh is exposed to the elements. The mesh and all other joints must also be bonded along all edges to the conductive skin of the structure. The structure would need unimpeded flow of electrons throughout the entire surface of the skin, so you should remove any paint, rubber gaskets or adhesives wherever panels are joined unless you are certain that they are conductive. You can replace them with conductive paint, adhesives and gaskets if you like, as those would be fine, of course. A hole as small as 1/4" could compromise the integrity of the Faraday cage at our wavelength range.
A conductive metal trash can is fine as long as the lid is tight-fitting as on the Behren's brand. Just go with a model with a locking lid like you would use to protect feed from rodents.
Ammo can is also fine, but be sure to remove any paint where the lid contacts the body and remove the rubber gasket, replacing it with a conductive one if you like. Most folks overlook details like this and that's part of why EM shielding isn't always as easy as it they think it ought to be. : )
Even with EMP that we think we understand, such as EMP generated by non-nuclear weapons systems like THAAD, has imperfectly-understood aspects. When they tested THAAD, even the guys who designed the system (not just rocket scientists, but black project military EMP rocket scientists) couldn't manage to protect many of the cameras that were supposed to document the tests. Even these guys who cart their brains around in wheelbarrows were unable to properly shield cameras against their own weapon system in order to document the testing.
So, as you alluded to, when we consider nuclear HEMP, that lack of actual real-world test data leaves us with an understanding that is far from perfect. We may have detonated a lot of nuclear weapons, but we are still learning about high-energy electrons in the upper atmosphere. We just had a major change in our understanding of the nature of lightning, just a year or two ago and are still learning to better protect our satellites and space craft from "killer" HE electrons. I would have to agree that "the best academia has to offer in order to sell student loans at any given point in time" should not be confused with "the truth" or a complete understanding of a given subject.
There is a lot of non-nuclear EMP testing that happens at White Sands, but that's all secret-compartmented material. If someone in the general domain tells you that they have absolute certainty that they can protect gear against nuclear HEMP, I'd consider that statement with a healthy degree of skepticism. That said, we can certainly share our best understanding at this point, which we are confident is pretty solid within certain limitations ... certainly solid-enough to warrant getting off your duff and shielding some gear.
A lot of folks won't be under "sky zero" anyway and field strength diminishes with distance from the portion of of earth's magnetic field re-radiating the EMP (kind of like a web of rubber bands getting pulled and snapping back into place.) There are many other factors that will the effect of an EM field on a particular piece of microelectronics.
Joe Talmadge
Flashlight Enthusiast
Fascinating stuff, glad I asked. Thanks guys!
Genius1
Newly Enlightened
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2015
- Messages
- 24
Finding charging place will be one of the most dangerous action in those situation.So C or AA light is the best choice for me. C battery is high-capacity that can used on high lumens light, and AA light to satisfied living.
Compared with dangerous, I willing to stock lots batteries.
Compared with dangerous, I willing to stock lots batteries.
BugoutBoys
Enlightened
Finding charging place will be one of the most dangerous action in those situation.So C or AA light is the best choice for me. C battery is high-capacity that can used on high lumens light, and AA light to satisfied living.
Compared with dangerous, I willing to stock lots batteries.
Not dangerous with a solar charger!
What if there is no sun?
vadimax
Flashlight Enthusiast
If there is no Sun, Earth's ambient temperature will soon drop to some 10°K. Period.
If there is a global nuclear conflict just go out and enjoy the last beautiful performance. Human body is unable to survive the consequences even if you don't appear to be within direct blast effect area.
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