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A lot of sci fi has "EMP grenades". I don't believe they've been declassified but I'd bet something like them exist. Whether they're quite down to "grenade" size I don't know, though my gut leans "yes". Most people's intuitions about what is possible in what volume of space are tuned for machines we want to be able to use and reuse. If you don't mind destroying the machine in the process, which you've already accepted if you're using the explosively-pumped flux compression generator, you have some options for generating a lot of charge very quickly in a small space, and there are people with experience using them in other applications out there to be hired.
Nuclear blasts can cause EMPs [1]. This is honestly the thing I am most scared about someone trying in a WW3 scenario - one high altitude EMP for Europe, one for North America, and everyone not in the military is back to the digital stone age.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse
Interesting. The most scared I'm in that situation is suffering 3rd degree burns at the same time everyone else does in a few tens of kilometer radius.
Or you know what would be even worse? Not suffering that injury personally, but trying to ease the last hours of friends and family who did.
That feels like it would suck more than getting back to the digital stone age.
Is the fear overblown? I don't know. Nuclear has a long history of people grotesquely over-exaggerating the dangers. Makes it hard to tell. But even if it took 10 aerial-burst nukes to take out a country rather than just one, it's still a rather effective way to use the arsenal right now, arguably more effectively than detonating them on the ground. And it tightens the defense window quite a bit.
> A nuke detonated for this purpose would kill no one... directly.
Yes. I’m aware of that fact. And that is why I fear an EMP less than the alternatives.
Don’t get me wrong. It would suck. But it would suck in a “gosh the economy just collapsed, and there is a good chance we will starve or freeze in the next few months/years” sense.
Which is less bad than the alternative where they bomb cities and millions of people like you and me die in incredible agony hours/days after the bomb. And that is why i fear the second more. Things like where the hospitals are so overwhelmed that your burn treatment involves moving you to a field where your screams won’t bother others as much. Or a situation where we have to stop euthanizing mortaly wounded people because we run out of bullets (locally).
> Is the fear overblown?
I don’t know if your fear of the EMP is overblown. Probably not. I know my fear of a conventionally employed nuclear weapon is not overblown because we have the data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and it is not pretty.
I for one know which one I fear more and it is not the EMP. Of course this is all quite academic because by all chance they will choose to do both.