Invisible wrote:

>> What I found most interesting in that wikipedia article (which is an
>> uncommonly good one) was that this widespread EMP effect is almost zero
>> for very low altitude airbursts or ground detonations, and is most
>> effective at nearly-orbital altitudes. Which means that a pivotal scene
>> in the movie "Broken Arrow" is particularly impossible. :)
> 
> Also, as I mentioned, millions of films seem to assume that an EMP only
> affects devices which are turned on. (E.g., War of the Worlds, only one
> working car because it wasn't turned on. WTF? Then again... War of the
> Worlds. WTF?)

Its movieland! Good science almost never makes for good drama.

Its like Captain Picard saying "Full stop!" on the Enterprise, and in ten
seconds they are at relative dead stop from going several hundred times
lightspeed. I wonder exactly how much energy you'd need to decelerate ten
grammes of mass, from, say, 100 * c to 0 in ten seconds - if
Einsteinian "thou shalt NOT exceed, or even closely approach, C" did not
apply. Nevermind a gigatonne starship.

I guess you'd need the full output of all a the Milky Way galaxy's stars for
a few minutes or something. Even 1701-D's anti-matter power generation
systems would be sucked dry in moments.

But it isn't good drama to have the crew become a biological soup one
molecule thick against the viewscreen each time Geordi or Wesley steps on
the footbrake, thus exposing them all to 100000000000000000000000000G of
deceleration.
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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