Electromagnetic pulse in fiction and popular culture

In the early 1980s, a number of articles on nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) in the popular press spread knowledge of the EMP phenomenon into the popular culture.  EMP has been subsequently used in a wide variety of fiction and other aspects of popular culture.

Television

In the 1983 made for television motion picture, The Day After, the fictional Soviet nuclear attack on civilian targets begins with an nuclear EMP attack in order to disable as much of the United States retaliatory capability as possible. This scenario accurately conforms to the Cold War nuclear attack scenarios as understood by military officials and nuclear weapons designers (although post Cold War scenarios are generally much different).

The setting of the Fox television series Dark Angel, produced by James Cameron and Charles H. Eglee, was in the United States after it has been devastated by a [...] nuclear EMP attack on 1 June 2009. The setting of the Dark Angel series is in the period of 2019 to 2021, although the United States is still suffering from a deep economic depression caused by the EMP attack a decade earlier. Time periods in the television series are commonly referred to as either pre-pulse or post-pulse.

In episode number 4 of the 2006 CBS series, Jericho, a missile launched by unknown agents from within the United States causes a nuclear electromagnetic pulse.

Motion Pictures

In 1995's GoldenEye, the main plot involves the Soviet Union using a satellite called GoldenEye to annihilate the Russian town of Severnaya. GoldenEye uses EMP to destroy 3 MiGs, one of which crashes into a satellite station and sends the place up in flames as well as disabling the British satellites surveiling the town. (After the attack, satellite footoage shows a bright white flash and then nothing. In response to this, one of the workers says, "What the bloody hell was that?".) After they are restored, MI6 can only see what's left of Severnaya. The only vehicle that survives the pulse is a Tiger helicopter specially engineered to be able to withstand just this. One of the main antagonists, double agent Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean), planned to use GoldenEye to siphon money from the Bank of England then use GoldenEye to destroy the British Economy and cover up the theft, as Severnaya was only a test. However, after the main dish in Cuba is destroyed, the satellite explodes in space attempting to reenter the Earth's atmosphere before Trevelyan can lock onto England. (He is killed by the burning wreckage of the dish after Bond (Pierce Brosnan) jams the gears with a pipe).

In the 2001 version of the Ocean's Eleven film, a non-nuclear EMP device in a van is used to shut down the electrical power to Las Vegas. It is not explained how such a small non-nuclear device can shut down the power to an entire large city. It is also not explained how the power could be predictably brought back on line in only 30 minutes after such a disastrous event. In a 2003 film called, Battle Royale II: Requiem, a EMB was used to deactivate the collars on the students.

Books

Electromagnetic pulse is a very prominent concept in the novel Warday, published in 1984.  Warday is about a limited, but nevertheless devastating, nuclear war that occurs on a single day in October 1988.  Warday contains a fictional government report, several pages long, about the fictional Soviet nuclear EMP attack of 28 October 1988 against the United States.  The fictional government EMP report is titled, "Summary of Effects Induced by Electromagnetic Pulse in the October 1988 Attack by the Soviet Union, and their Implications for Recovery."  The war begins with six high-altitude nuclear EMP detonations over the United States, each with energy yields of 8 to 10 megatons.  The six nuclear EMP weapons are detonated in two triangular patterns in order to cover both the eastern and western halves of the continental United States with fairly evenly-spaced EMP detonations.

The 2009 novel One Second After by William R. Forstchen is about a nuclear EMP attack against the United States told from the perspective of a small community in North Carolina. The community is cut off from nearly all outside information by the EMP attack.  Large numbers of people die from starvation, lack of medicines and the lack of medical care. In addition, there are deadly fights for scarce resources such as food and water.  Unlike most EMP fiction, One Second After was written specifically as a warning about the dangers of an EMP attack on modern society in hopes of causing readers to take action to prevent such a disaster. The EMP attacks in One Second After are launched from missiles in container ships.  After the book was released, a Russian company started advertising missile launchers hidden inside shipping containers made for launching from such ships.

Video Games

In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, An EMP missile was seen in in the campaign missions "Contingency" and "Second Sun". In "Contingency", Captain Price, aware of the Rangers' struggle against the Russians in Washington D.C., uses a submarine to release a nuclear warhead into the higher atmosphere that disables all electronic devices in range, effectively destroying the Russian and American forces' vehicles and equipment there. However, the International Space Station is inconveniently unaware of the war on Earth and identifies the missile as an aircraft. As the EMP is released, the shock wave shreds through the station.

Players can obtain an EMP bomb in a multiplayer game (if unlocked and selected for their killstreak reward) after obtaining a 15 kill streak. When used, all enemy killstreak rewards are disabled, holographic sight, red dot sight, thermal scope and ACOG scope attachments lose their electronic features (such as their targeting reticle) and all aircraft in the airspace are disabled and fall from the sky (including AC-130s and UAVs).

See also

• Electromagnetic Pulse
• List of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
• List of nuclear holocaust fiction
• Nuclear holocaust
• Nuclear optimism
• Survivalism
• Popular culture