I know that it would destroy active electrical equipment but if the device had no electricity going through it at the time could it be affected?
The answer is yes. unless the device is shielded and grounded to remove the electrical field that is now around it, the delicate electronics in a chip will be burnt up just because of the presence of the field itself. items with much more tolerant wiring, such as bulbs and tubes, are a little better equipped to survive. The funny thing about a Humvee is that it has a diesel engine, which is not effected by an emp pulse. that's why the US military went to diesel powered vehicles in the 1980sbecause they don't get creamed from EMP.
Yes. All wires become antennas, unless shielded. Circuit characteristics should have something to do with it, as well as power-ratings for the components. EMP is probably less destructive to electrical devices than electronic ones. From what I have heard (rumors of rumors!) the computer would be fried whether on or off. Radio would depend on its design (late or early model) and flashlight would be okay no matter what.
Yes. So, the scene in the movie Broken Arrow where they're in the HMMW-V [aka humm-vee] is all wrong--as Hollywood physics usually is. The EMP provides enough damaging energy to create current in electrical ciruits which will fry them. Move a wire through a magnetic field and it will induce a current in the wire. Well the EMP is a very very very strong propigating magnetic field. The only way around this is to have a shielded device. The shielding provides a way for the energy of the EMP to discharge away from the device wihtout damaging the internal components. A shielded radio looks like a mouse upgraded to elephant standards. An example of EMP was the solar storm that hit Canada in I think the late 1980s. First the energy fried large parts of the power grid by causing transformers and even some wires to just explode. After the power was gone, not just out but gone from certain buildings and homes, there were incidents of lamps getting bright, dimming, going off, bright, dimmming and off again. All the energy that was re-lighting them was residual effects of the energy in the grid from the EMP or solar storm.
