High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse
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- For other uses of the word HEMP, see Hemp (disambiguation).
A High-altitude Electromagnetic Pulse, or HEMP, is emanated from the detonation of a single nuclear warhead several kilometers into the atmosphere. In the absence of proper shielding, it can destroy electronics vital to telecommunications and computing by generating a current that will overload highly sensitive integrated circuits. The resulting infrastructure failure would debilitate response to a first-strike strategic nuclear assault and thus makes HEMPs excellent fog of war inducers. According to the Federation of American Scientists Nuclear Weapon EMP Effects a properly attenuated strike over the geographic center of the continental United States could theoretically affect the entire Lower 48 states. In fact, it could damage any material capable of carrying an electric current within the line of sight (in overall electromagnetic spectrum terms, not simply visible light) of the blast.
HEMP in the acronym soup of military electromagnetic pulse is also used as an acronym for Hydrodynamic Electromagnetic Pulse, a form of EMP that is not well described in unclassified literature, but that is of considerable concern to designers of electronic systems that must function in wartime, because it may propagate in ways that the customary design precautions against ordinary electromagnetic pulse would not attenuate adequately.
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