The Worst Places to Be When an EMP Hits

 by Aaron Pattison

An Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) is a burst of energy that can damage or destroy unprotected electrical equipment and systems. Military and DIY devices can disrupt local areas, some with only a few feet of effective range, while high-altitude nuclear detonations can disrupt entire nations.

Coronal mass ejections from the sun, like the Carrington Event of 1859, can disrupt the entire world, especially the side facing the sun when the energy reaches Earth.

Though less effective than an actual EMP, coordinated cyber attacks can cause many of the same hardships and disruptions.

As with any attack, some places are better to be at than others. Here are some of the worst places to be when an EMP hits.

Dense Urban Areas

Possibly the worst place to be during an EMP strike is in dense urban areas. These areas often have high-rise buildings, complex transportation networks, and significant reliance on electricity.

Even if a river runs through a city, filtered and purified water is pumped to each dwelling, and strong pumps are needed to bring water up hills and tall buildings. Similar to water, sewage systems rely on automated controls and electronic pumps. Without clean water coming in or sewage going out, sanitation will be severely impacted, leading to dehydration and the spread of disease.

If you want to make sure the water you’re using for you and your family is safe to drink, it’s best to filter rainwater yourself. You can learn here a cheap and easy way to create an ingenious rainwater harvesting and purification system capable of storing 165 gallons of water.

Transportation systems and vehicles rely heavily on electrical components, and the system can become instantaneously immobilized.

Cities with hundreds of thousands or millions of people consume several thousand tons of food every day, requiring robust logistics and supply chains.

Without these, food scarcity will rise drastically. Without the means to quickly exit the city, masses of people will slowly expand into more rural areas in search of food. Anyone left in the city’s center will not only be searching for scraps there but will also have to travel quite far to catch up with the masses who scavenged outside of the city.

Crime is already a problem in many cities. Alarms, security cameras, and communications devices rely on electronics. When these systems go down, crime deterrence goes down with them. Criminals will be free to operate without much threat of police intervention unless they just happen to be there.

Even ordinary law-abiding citizens may descend into panic and begin looting. Survival is a more powerful instinct than following the law, meaning the city may not take long to descend into chaos and violent crime.

The Northeast Blackout of 1977 affected New York City and surrounding areas. The blackout lasted for only 25 hours but led to widespread chaos in the city. Looting, arson, and vandalism swept the city, and over 1,000 fires were reported.

Some reports suggest the crime rate jumped nearly 75 percent, and the total count of violent crimes is difficult to determine. All this was from a lightning strike on a power station that was repaired a day later. An EMP that also disables vehicles, hospitals, communications, and more can easily lead to far greater crime.

Industrial Areas

Many industrial areas can be hit with an EMP and cause little to no danger. Some, like chemical plants or those with chemical processes, can be dangerous to entire regions.

Chemical plants have many fail-safes in case of power outages, but the likelihood of catastrophic failure is greatly increased.

Even a simple fire can ravage the plant, and with communication networks down, emergency services will be unaware until it is too late. An industrial chemical plant going up in flames will spread toxic fumes and smoke regionally.

Beyond toxic fumes, some chemicals tend to create massive explosions. Ammonium nitrate is a commonly used fertilizer and was responsible for the 1947 Texas City disaster when a ship full of it caught fire and exploded, killing hundreds of people and destroying several buildings.

The same fertilizer caught fire and exploded in Beirut, Lebanon, in 2020. This explosion also killed hundreds of people and was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.

Military Bases

Military bases are generally well-defended and have significant resources in case of emergencies. The danger lies in them being intentionally targeted.

If an enemy detonates atmospheric EMPs that disrupt the nation, military bases will likely be targeted by further strikes with conventional or nuclear weapons, leading to dangers in the surrounding areas.

⇒ US Nuclear Target Map. Do You Live in the Death Zone?

If these bases are targeted, civilians in the area can easily be caught up in the attack or misidentified and purposely targeted. Even without follow-on attacks on the military base, security forces will be on high alert and may act aggressively without much provocation.

In more extreme cases of government collapse, these bases may become hotbeds for looting and exploitation, providing the looters with sophisticated and exceedingly deadly weapons they may or may not know how to use.

Cartels and organized gangs who manage to take advantage of a situation like this will become a serious threat with the aid of looted military equipment.

Similar events occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union when large military stockpiles lost centralized control and were exploited by various groups.

Island Nations or States

Highly populated islands, like the Hawaiian Islands, have a finite amount of resources they can produce themselves. Many resources are imported, and there is significant reliance on the outside world. When an EMP hits and those outside resources stop coming, the island will be left to fend for itself.

Food and water will quickly become scarce, and there is nowhere to go to look for more. Fishing, foraging, and rainwater may be enough in the short term, but concerted efforts will have to be made immediately to avoid starvation and civil strife.

Beyond food and water, other goods like manufacturing materials and medical supplies will be difficult to obtain. Antibiotics will be especially hard to come by, so you should learn here how to stockpile antibiotics without a prescription, before it’s too late.

Some estimates suggest Hawaii imports nearly 90 percent of the resources it needs, which is a significant amount of resources to suddenly have to produce itself. Islands have a finite ecosystem of resources that need to be carefully maintained.

If the island must become self-sufficient and source all of the needs of the people, deforestation and ecosystem collapse become more likely, leading to further difficulty in resource acquisition. This exact scenario is thought to have happened to the indigenous people of Easter Island, where they extracted more from the island than it could replace naturally, leading to civil collapse and the eventual extinction of the population.

An EMP can have serious effects, from within a single room to spanning the entire world. From the phones not working to societal collapse, the range of damage is immense, and precautions should be taken to prepare for it.

Coronal mass ejections can reach the earth in 12-48 hours. A modern nuclear missile can reach the US in less than 15 minutes. Cyber attacks can occur instantly.

Preparing in advance is the only sure way to keep yourself from experiencing the full brunt of the effects associated with EMPs. Avoiding the worst areas to be when an EMP hits is an easy first step. Another important step you can take right now is to wrap the essential electronic devices in an EMP-Proof Cloth.

This EMP-Proof cloth was developed after years of extensive research by top U.S. scientists and it provides 98% military-grade protection against electromagnetic waves. You can cover everything in it – as long as you’ve got enough of them – from credit cards, laptop, a fridge and even your car!

The thing is, the EMP Cloth isn’t always available. They don’t restock them that often because they’re pretty hard to produce, so it took YEARS for me to finally get my hands on it. I found a reliable website to order it from, as I wanted to make sure the material is the right one. I recommend you secure your own cloth from here. It’s a rare find and not many people get to own it, which is a shame.

What other places will you be avoiding when an EMP hits? Let us know in the comments!