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On 10/10/10 17:50, Simon Waters wrote:
EMP is pretty hard to secure against. When you can generate a pulse that will create ~5000v over a meter of cable in a few tens of nanoseconds its pretty likely going to fry just about anything capable of working above a few hundred hertz. From what I remember from my time at BT was local comms might stay up if they had a Strowger exchange but an EMP attack over the midlands would take just about everything out. The mobile in your pocket might survive but there would be nothing to talk to - there would be a few hardened military installations still functioning but they'd be too busy to worry about lost budgies. You have to remember that every few years the grid in the northern US/Canada trips out from a gentle aurora and thats nothing quite like a deliberate EMP!On 09/10/10 19:25, Rob Beard wrote:I do wonder if post Armageddon things like telephone exchanges would still work?Depends greatly on the nature of "Armageddon". They all have redundant power, so assuming Armageddon didn't cause physical damage to the exchange, and any electrical pulses were minimal, they'll presumably work till the batteries run down. Some government telecommunications were hardened to survive nuclear attack during the cold war. How much of this is anything to do with BT I'm not sure, the contracts weren't directly with BT when I last read about it in the Financial Times. With their comparative lack of wires, and lots of use of microwave links, might be interesting to compare robustness of mobile phone networks. I'm guessing bits might survive better against certain common types of catastrophic event, but I doubt they'd be usefully usable unless it was designed in given how fragile a lot of the technology is.
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