Superman Movieverse Forum

That's one of the things I like about this fic, a realism about EMP's that the movie didn't have. Electronics hit by an EMP do not miraculously start working afterwards.

For the other readers:
When active and unshielded electronics are hit by an electromagnetic pulse, they're FRIED; the power supply shorts out and the wiring (usually copper or iron/steel) is rendered incapable of conducting electricity (even if a new battery is installed) due to a massive jumbling of the electromagnetic "poles" of the atoms that make up the molecules. While the wires seem intact on the mundane (macro) level of reality, on the atomic/subatomic microscale they have been shattered into their component atoms (which then realign into molecular bonds, but incorrectly) instead of remaining in their old molecular chains.

If you've seen the movie Broken Arrow with John Travolta and Christian Slater, the jeeps they were driving (when they detonated the nuke in the copper mine) were military issue, the wiring and engine parts are made from alloys 'doped' with minerals to prevent this realignment as long as there is no electricity flowing through the wiring at the time.
(Which is why Travolta shut off the jeep right before the EMP hit them.) They still had to replace the batteries afterwards, though, but they had planned for it, and spares were in lead-lined cases in the jeep.

One CAN argue that what was depicted in the movie wasn't an EMP (which is a massive energy burst) but a massive energy drain. A drain wouldn't toast the electronics, but would crash the power grid and drain any batteries that are in use. (Of course, then you have to wonder why people are still standing since they use electro-chemical energy too.) And we've all forgotten those people on pacemakers. 

Miss Lois wrote on Apr 4^th, 2009 at 1:22am:

In either scenario, though, cell-phones and Jimmy's digital camera should not have started back up afterwards. The batteries would either have been blown or drained dry.

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Ewww...