Make an EMP can for your backup hard drives.

[Magus]

Materials:
One STEEL ammo can big enough for your drives.
1 sheet of white insulation Styrofoam to be cut to match the top, bottom, and sides of the inside of the can.
three packages of copper scouring pads.
a 1/4" drill bit, a 1/4" bolt, a nut, and two washers.
As much insulated copper electrical house wire as you need to reach a ground source, IE a water pipe or fuse box ground.
an alligator clip for the wire.

Step (1) drill the hole in the can and scour the paint off in an area as big as a quarter around the hole.
Step (2) Insert the bolt, nut, and washer kit, shave 1" of the wire, and attach it to the bolt tightly. then attach the clip.
Step (3) Line the can with the Styrofoam.
Step (4) Place your hard drives or Kindle/cell phone/ whatever in the box and carefully pack around them with the copper scouring pads.
Step (5) Pour in several of those moisture-grabber silica gel desiccant tabs you get with your medication. (you do save those right?!) Great for long-term camera and electronics storage!
Step (7) hook it to a ground source!

With a little extra fiddling and a USB splicer and a bit of waterproof caulk, you can make one that you can use on the go and never open the can again! One can will hold up to ten solid-state external drives, so shell out for the 4+ TB ones! OH, and be sure to copy relevant info to thumb drives and put them on top!

 

[Haertig]

What would be the point of saving your hard drives, Kindles and cell phones when the infrastructure and support devices/components that they rely on no longer work? You might be able to squeeze a ham radio handheld in an ammo box. And that might give you some communications ability. But only over a few miles max. The repeaters will be down due to the EMP.

 

[jazzy]

the point is if you protet them you an still use them later on. get some foldinmg solar panel, a jakery or oupes solar generator and you have these things to use when it goes to poop.
i ant read books any more. i have a kindle and bak up and a mp3 bible use every day. the kindle also has all sorts of info on different topis to help me. onve a book is downloaded it is good.

there are faraday bags, turn a garbage an into one, radios--yup-my son set me up with these big thumb drive thinhys that he downloaded hours of my fav tunes-----all sorts of things worth saving.
will everything work, probably not but it sure is worth trying

 

[OldSchool]

What would be the point of saving your hard drives, Kindles and cell phones when the infrastructure and support devices/components that they rely on no longer work? You might be able to squeeze a ham radio handheld in an ammo box. And that might give you some communications ability. But only over a few miles max. The repeaters will be down due to the EMP.

Data. Survivalist books in pdf form in particular, for those of us who don't have them memorized or might just need to reference such things occasionally.

 

[Peanut]

I used to live near a military base that had an emp testing facility. The test building had 7 floors above ground. Could see that much from a hwy.

Sometimes when testing every pager, internet connection/land line phone… Everything for 30 miles in any direction stopped working. Usually it was 2 or 3 minutes. Pagers or the rare cell phone wouldn't receive for 20min sometimes. I played darts with an engineer who worked there. Pretty amazing technology.

I worked on mri's a few years, can't count the times i've had to get new credit cards so i could relate. Those big magnets can move metal objects and wipe a credit card.

I've seen mri's installed. The room is basically a large scale faraday cage. They are very good at shielding even small rf energy.

The systems i worked on had to be shielded from magnetic fields. I've spent weeks chasing small magnetic fields over several floors of a hospital, lots of fun. Our systems were primarily lead shielded but also used something called Mu-metal (Mu-metal is a nickel–iron soft ferromagnetic alloy with very high permeability, which is used for shielding sensitive electronic equipment against static or low-frequency magnetic fields). A royal pain to work around, it'd slice through gloves. I got a dozen stitches once.

Anyway, here's a faraday bag on the zit...

https://www.amazon.com/Faraday-BLACKOUT®-Premium-Prepping-Smartphones/dp/B01BCV7JMW

 

[Tim Horton]

I believe people have loaded things in ammo cans like described... Then stored that ammo can in another ammo can... Like putting a 50 cal can in a 20mm size can...
Will that work ??

 

[CrocDundee]

Why not simply get those lead film bags???

 

[Caribou]

I believe people have loaded things in ammo cans like described... Then stored that ammo can in another ammo can... Like putting a 50 cal can in a 20mm size can...
Will that work ??

That should work just fine. You will need to insulate between the cans otherwise the inside of the one can will contact the outside of the smaller can and conduct the electricity. A simple layer of plastic should do well. Straight lines are an invite for the electrical waves. If you are using an ammo can I recommend foil tape over the seams at the lid. The same applies to a metal trash can.

 

[dademoss]

The real question is do you have a device stored with the drives that can access the data, and a way to power it?

A drive without a way to read it is a paperweight.

 

[Magus]

What would be the point of saving your hard drives, Kindles and cell phones when the infrastructure and support devices/components that they rely on no longer work? You might be able to squeeze a ham radio handheld in an ammo box. And that might give you some communications ability. But only over a few miles max. The repeaters will be down due to the EMP.

An astute question. unless it was WW3, things will be back, not all computers will fry. any gov/fed that requires such things will have functioning computers.

 

[Haertig]

An astute question. unless it was WW3, things will be back, not all computers will fry. any gov/fed that requires such things will have functioning computers.

Another problem that has to be considered is what it will take to keep the protected hard drives up to date. And will people continue to follow the required routine of removing the hard drives from protection, updating them, and then returning them to protection. My thoughts on that are "no, required updating will fall by the wayside fairly soon". You mentioned having an external cable so you could use the drives while in their protective enclosure. But there are a couple of problems with that. One, will a protective case with this hole drilled in it actually protect from EMP's? Two, will there be heat issues for drives that have zero ventilation, and in fact, insulation that will keep in the heat? But the biggest problem I see is, three, if the hard drive is constantly connected to your computer to facilitate frequent updates, that exposes the hard drive to destructive events that are much more common than EMP's. Namely brownouts and power surges. To be honest, I think that these brownout/surges are the root cause of your continued computer problems that force you offline (glad you're back now!) Electronics just don't like that kind of stuff. So really, the EMP protected hard drives need to be detached from power and data interfaces to a computer. Ideally they would be updated redundantly and stored off-site in different locations to mitigate fires or floods. All this makes keeping them updated a rather tedious process that will probably be abandoned fairly soon after initial implementation.

I had a similar problem years ago trying to keep my photographs updated. Pictures that were important to me - the family and friends. I would burn my collection to CD's (the available media of the time) and take those CD's over to the bank and put them in my safe deposit box. As I took more and more pictures, I had to create new CD's and swap them out at the bank. And then, after several years, I starting thinking about the lifespan of CD's. So I started recreating the older ones (that weren't changing, since I store photos by date taken). Even though the contents weren't changing, they were becoming susceptible to bit rot of the CD media. In other words - it was a headache and I ultimately abandoned the effort. I still backup my photos, but not to CD's in a safe deposit box. I see the plan to use external drives in sealed containers to be a lot like that cumbersome CD/bank process I abandoned. Maybe it would work for stuff that is static and never needs to be updated. But a printed copy would cover that need as well, and not be subject to EMP damage. Of course you're not going to print out your photo collection for archival storage, so you still have to deal with that aspect of things. But things like birth certificates, marriage licenses, etc. can be archived in paper form (store copies in multiple remote locations for best security).

I'm thinking maybe the best storage solution is encrypting your stuff and storing it in multiple locations across the USA via online backups/updating. Chances are an EMP is not going to take out Maine and Oregon and Texas at the same time (other locations as appropriate for non-USA folk). One of your copies will probably survive. You may loose access to it for a while if your current location was subject to the EMP, but it could still be accessed from other non-EMP-affected locations.

 

[Magus]

1 build the "on the go version" and unhook it every time it's updated.
I update once a month. it takes all of 5 seconds to hook up a USB.

But there are a couple of problems with that. One, will a protective case with this hole drilled in it actually protect from EMP's? Two, will there be heat issues for drives that have zero ventilation, and in fact, insulation that will keep in the heat?

Hence all the copper scrubbers.
No heat issues at all so far and the solid-state ones don't seem to mind a bit of heat. I normally keep mine in a stack here on the desk and have for a very long time. no problems so far! Also, in the can, dead air space tends to block heat, the can itself makes a dandy heat sink no?

 

[havasu]

On the same line, my grandson asked if it is possible to keep an extra computer brain for his Ford 350 diesel, lined in lead, so his truck could run after a computer brain swap out after an EMP event. Is this reasonable?

 

[Haertig]

keep an extra computer brain for his Ford 350 diesel, lined in lead

Lead is used to block radiation (e.g., gamma rays). I don't think it will help much, if any, around an EMP. Mu-metal is used to block magnetic fields. These are the concern for EMP's, not radiation. "EMP" stands for "electromagnetic pulse". Any metal that is high in ferrous (iron) content can be used (iron, steel, etc.) Copper works, Nickle does too (I think). Mu-metal is a combination of some of these metals, and I believe, has very high performance if not the best performance in shielding from magnetic fields.

Lead "blocks" radiation because it is super dense. But you don't "block" magnetic fields, your "redirect" them somewhere else. Which is why you use conductive metals.

I'm thinking that modern cars have electronics scattered everywhere - sensors and control modules and such. Protecting a spare computer chip may not be enough if all the other sensors and do-hickeys get fried too.

 

[Caribou]

On the same line, my grandson asked if it is possible to keep an extra computer brain for his Ford 350 diesel, lined in lead, so his truck could run after a computer brain swap out after an EMP event. Is this reasonable?

Yes, I have changed out the computer in my Jeep. If you have a truck more than ten years old you will have to get one out of the junkyard. You will need the motherboard, the ignition switch, and another computer that I don’t remember. They will have to be re-programmed to your vehicle serial number. All three have to match.

 

[Magus]

Oh look, someone is making them.
https://www.amazon.com/Samfolk-Fara...W_tcLJZSpBmvrDqPuiqWGOgDTbNs82dBoCfoUQAvD_BwE

 

[AMC]

Do they sell bigger ones for a laptop?

 

[OldSchool]

On the same line, my grandson asked if it is possible to keep an extra computer brain for his Ford 350 diesel, lined in lead, so his truck could run after a computer brain swap out after an EMP event. Is this reasonable?

That's a great idea in theory, but I'm not sure it would work in practical application as a strong EMP could take out a multitude of sensors, relays and solenoids necessary for the 'saved' computer brain to function properly with.