[EE]:: A blast from the past - Starfish Prime and the Hawaiian Streetlights

Reason for posting: Only paper I've seen that analyses EMP occurrence in a
real world situation with examples of why it did and didn't happen in
various cases.

This Sandia report from 1989 (almost 40 years!) analyses the link between
the 1962 (64 years!*) high Altitude Starfish Prime H bomb and damage to the
Hawaiian streetlights 900 miles away.
It confirms that the damage was caused by the H Bomb, and explains why only
a small percentage of lights were damaged.

       https://ece-research.unm.edu/summa/notes/SDAN/0031.pdf

The implications (that I see are) are that at closer distances EMP damage
may be generally as likely as is often claimed and that at extreme
distances (non-)fortuitous alignment of circuits may lead to significant
damage.
_______

Much has been said about the dangers of EMP in a nuclear event. Little
substantive material exists (that I know of).
It has long been claimed that the Starfish Prime explosion damaged Hawaiian
streetlights 900 miles away. Many have denied the link, and point out that
30 strings of lights were damaged but that the very large majority were
not.  This Sania report analyses how the damaged lights were aligned in a
way that caused icreasede coupling to the EMP pulse. The effect of ground
effect reflections in providing EMP protection is of interest.

* 4000 miles away in NZ The sunsets were pretty for a while. No EMP.


       Russell