While I'm on the subject: we all need a little drama in our lives, some more than others. When the prepper circuit got ahold of the EMP issue, the excitement started. An EMP attack, it was held, would not only send the entire United States back to the 19th century but would also paralyze the entire government.
Recently, I was on a prepper blog reading a post about how to set up a Faraday cage. One of the commenters there politely corrected the urban legends (i.e., about using old microwaves) and explained how to build a proper Faraday cage. It turns out that this fellow was a soldier, and his tips came from the U.S. Army experimenting and testing Faraday cage units to find out what'll work and what won't.
If you're interested, he said that the only sure-fire Faraday cage was a solid box made of (preferably) copper or aluminum that, when closed, conducted electricity as if it had been welded shut. It has to be grounded with a nine-foot copper rod hammered into the earth and welded to the box itself through copper wire. The Army was buying conducting gaskets to make sure its own Faraday cages were up to snuff.
There's one aspect of the prepper world I'd like to call attention to: a kind of insider's-club attitude. It's SOP in the prepper world to not only believe that the "sheeple" will remain unprepared and helpless, but also that the U.S. government will too. I guess they're used to being ignored. The idea that soldiers, officers and out-of-the-spotlight bureaucrats will read the same material that they do, let alone take some action, doesn't even seem to occur to them.
For example, I'm quite sure that the D.C. Establishment knows all that we know about the coming debt crisis, if not more. They don't do anything about it because the person who sticks his neck out is going to have it chopped off by the electorate. So, both sides have a mutual non-action pact: they're waiting until the crisis erupts before they'll do something about it. Then, but not until then, they'll swing into action.
Not that the above paragraph is all that reassuring! I read somewhere that the TSA was blueprinted in the late Clinton Administration, so it was already "on the shelf" on 9/11. This claim makes sense, as government usually takes a long while to get anything off the ground. [Some of you may remember common-sensical solutions, like "arm the pilots," being ignored or dismissed out of hand.] It's a sure bet that FedGov has a similar contingency plan in the case of a debt crisis...or in the case of an EMP attack.
As for whether it's the best option...well, you know the track record of FedGov.