[backwoods-engineer]

All they need is about a 10kt nuke lobbed about 50km above Wichita, KS or so, and it’s LIGHTS OUT in the US. Forever.

[Campion]

Unlikely. There were megaton devices set off at altitude over the Pacific in the 1950’s. (That’s how we discovered EMP in the first place.). Last I checked, Hawaii hadn’t reverted to the stone age.

[struggle]

They haven’t even made a 10kt charge yet, and I think their “nukes” are just large charges of urea/nitrate fertilizer they get for free from South Korea (they’ve received 1,000,000 tons free in the last 10 years) to simulate a nuke. The real nuke will come not from the plutonium bombin’ NK but from the weaponized uranium Iran.

North Korea knows that any missile with a nuclear signature will be shot down by 4-20 Aegis ships before it even gets CLOSE to the atmosphere.

[Strategerist]

There’s an immense amount of ill-informed EMP hype out there.

[Campion]

Re-reading your post again ... 50 km is only 80,0000 feet. You could stand directly under a 10kt airburst at 80,000 feet and suffer no ill effects whatsoever, as long as you didn't look directly at the flash without eye protection.

To get EMP effects at all, the detonation altitude would need to be closer to 500 km. I'm sure that a 10 KT device would cause measurable effects, but "lights out in the US forever" would require much higher yields.