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Comment by scohesc | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if it's the whole "russia might drop nukes or EMP-blast a large portion of the globe because of what's happening with ukraine, i better EMP protect my electronics in case they get fried"

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From my casual research EMP is much less of a problem than people seem to think it is. Modern electronics are small, and don’t have large antennas where a large current can build up. Power lines and such would be vulnerable, but that’s about it, unless you were sitting right underneath or within a few miles of a nuclear explosion, in which case you have bigger problems to worry about.

And raspberrypi's will probably know where the nuclear explosion has taken place.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/xenon-death-flash-a-free-ph...

Its the airburst nukes (ones that detonate just above the ground) that are most harmful for life as it spreads more, its what the Chinese had been testing which got them some criticism a few years or so ago.

I think it is this that has been making the rounds. https://defconwarningsystem.com/digest/wp-content/uploads/20...

I'll post it new in case more people want to panic ;)

Ah, that looks... likely. Thanks! I know it's been a concern of various groups at a low level for some while, but it's been popping up far more than I'd expect lately, and I was curious as to what triggered it. The people who've brought it up (at least in person) don't seem particularly well informed as to the technical details, so I assumed there was something talking about it, I just wasn't sure what.

It’s pretty interesting to compare the report from a year ago when Russia was still seen as some super advanced military threat with the actual performance of the Russian military in Ukraine over the past almost 3 months.

Russia is still a military threat, despite their performance.

There were a lot of instances of Roman millitary in their prime performing poorly (ex Septimus Severus's wars in Caledonia) for a long period of time.

It's just 3 months of poor performance, but their potential for war is still very high.

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