Misc. Jeeps and EMP
Black Thumb
Jeeper
This is a little off the wall, and perhaps a little morbid, but certainly within the realm of reason. I friend of mine brought this up when investigating under the hood of my, new-to-me, ’78 CJ7 . “Wow. You can see everything. Everything is analog.” He is somewhat of a “prepper”, not in an unusual-hobby way, but more of a “Be Prepared” Boy Scout way.
There is this very old thread, kind of in the same vein, but it is not specifically about Jeeps, whereas mine is. (Link)-> Doomsday Survival! -<
Modern cars have electronics, sensors, and computers on almost every aspect of their systems. These are milliamp systems that are VERY sensitive to EMP. All of these become toast with even a light EMP. From the CJ7s back almost everything is analog and most of it is mechanical assuming you’re not running an aftermarket EFI. Even if you are that can all be bypassed easily if you kept your old carburetor.
Really the only actual weak point that could burn out in a medium strength EMP is the condenser in the distributor (a $10 part).
Then your ignition coil (a $20 part), though this much less sensitive and could take almost double the charge a condenser could.
Third are the diodes in your alternator. Again, pretty robust, but if you were close to the point of origin they could burn out without destroying your wiring.
Batteries are actually very resistant, but if it’s strong enough to fry your battery, then it is strong enough to fry wiring, and if it’s that strong you’re talking total rewiring of the entire electric system, not to mention frying everything electric everywhere. If you are close to ground zero forget it, but if you are tens or more than a hundred miles away from the point of origin it is likely that the damage to an old Jeep would be minimal whereas almost every modern car even a mild pulse is completely catastrophic and require hundreds of hours to get it running again even if you had the hundreds of individual parts on hand. If all the diagnostic equipment was also fried you can probably just forget it.
Now, I generally don’t spend a lot of time ruminating on worst case scenarios, but I have read “One Second After” about EMP and its catastrophic consequences to modern society. Having a running car would be a game changer, could easily mean the difference between survival and death. Certainly this applies to almost every car before 1980, but Jeeps are especially a capable since they don’t need those fancy, smooth roads. A creek bed can be a perfectly acceptable “road”, and what’s more there is likely to be no other traffic on it even if everyone is on foot. I would be very leery tooling around town streets in the only running car as starving people tend to get jealous in those situations. Better to keep a low profile and stick to the back roads and trails...
If you had a couple of condensers (or a whole distributor), ignition coils (a whole HEI), and an alternator in a plastic or cardboard lined ammo can (improvised faraday case), you could have the only running, (you could even time it perfectly off the battery) vehicle going in under an hour. Anyway, just something to think about…
There is this very old thread, kind of in the same vein, but it is not specifically about Jeeps, whereas mine is. (Link)-> Doomsday Survival! -<
Modern cars have electronics, sensors, and computers on almost every aspect of their systems. These are milliamp systems that are VERY sensitive to EMP. All of these become toast with even a light EMP. From the CJ7s back almost everything is analog and most of it is mechanical assuming you’re not running an aftermarket EFI. Even if you are that can all be bypassed easily if you kept your old carburetor.
Really the only actual weak point that could burn out in a medium strength EMP is the condenser in the distributor (a $10 part).
Then your ignition coil (a $20 part), though this much less sensitive and could take almost double the charge a condenser could.
Third are the diodes in your alternator. Again, pretty robust, but if you were close to the point of origin they could burn out without destroying your wiring.
Batteries are actually very resistant, but if it’s strong enough to fry your battery, then it is strong enough to fry wiring, and if it’s that strong you’re talking total rewiring of the entire electric system, not to mention frying everything electric everywhere. If you are close to ground zero forget it, but if you are tens or more than a hundred miles away from the point of origin it is likely that the damage to an old Jeep would be minimal whereas almost every modern car even a mild pulse is completely catastrophic and require hundreds of hours to get it running again even if you had the hundreds of individual parts on hand. If all the diagnostic equipment was also fried you can probably just forget it.
Now, I generally don’t spend a lot of time ruminating on worst case scenarios, but I have read “One Second After” about EMP and its catastrophic consequences to modern society. Having a running car would be a game changer, could easily mean the difference between survival and death. Certainly this applies to almost every car before 1980, but Jeeps are especially a capable since they don’t need those fancy, smooth roads. A creek bed can be a perfectly acceptable “road”, and what’s more there is likely to be no other traffic on it even if everyone is on foot. I would be very leery tooling around town streets in the only running car as starving people tend to get jealous in those situations. Better to keep a low profile and stick to the back roads and trails...
If you had a couple of condensers (or a whole distributor), ignition coils (a whole HEI), and an alternator in a plastic or cardboard lined ammo can (improvised faraday case), you could have the only running, (you could even time it perfectly off the battery) vehicle going in under an hour. Anyway, just something to think about…
