Can't profiteer if your equipment's down.

In the event of a nuclear war, most of the company - who live in cities - will be dead. Equipment failures are a non-issue.

Factories aren't in major population centers, besides, we're talking about the magic "EMP" that supposedly will end civilization. A nuclear warhead is devastating, but it won't shut down a country.

We mentioned that all transport, both private and public, has been made non-functional, right? It's all electric-based. :party:

If it doesn't cost them too much extra to have such precautions, then I guess that would be possible, but this is guesswork on my part.

People can only be paranoid if they can afford it. Usually big companies use their extra revenues to secure even more financial ground via all possible manners, as Intel did with its monopoly on the CPU market back in the day, and is now practically the only serious player in the x86 industry these days. It's even possible that they will surpass ARM in the mobile space when they move to small enough manufacturing processes, because they have unfair advantage in having their own fabrication facilities.

It's ironic that I use their products while I still loathe the company itself, but then again I'm sucker for quality products, and that can't be denied on their part, because they have the money and technology to deliver such products that others can't. Ethics is an unknown concept in the system that our society is built upon.

Anyhow, I'm a master of rambling stuff that bears little to no relevance to the topic at hand.

You're forgetting that a fictional EMP of the type in the fictional article in the OP would have to be several thousand megatons. There wouldn't be anyone left, anywhere, at all. The only country THAT stupid is iran, not even north korea.

The electromagnetics do strange things in the upper atmosphere, AFAIK. It's entirely possible to wipe out the American continent with a single-megaton bomb or less, you just have to do it several kilometres up. (And so waste the conventional effects of a nuke.)

True. I remember hearing in a documentary, that a nuke detonated several (hundred, I believe) kilometres above Alabama would shut down the whole U.S.

Alabama? That's weird placement, considering it's on the edge of the country :S

I think it was Alabama. This was way back last year. :P

I believe most modern flight controls are such are hardened to some degree, so they probably won't go out. Navigation systems and radar will take a bigger hit though. Oh well, not as bad as planes falling out of the sky.

And this is why I keep a back up computer, and other electronic whatsits in a nice secure anti-EMP box. Right next to my freeze dried food, bow, arrows, canned meats, and bottlecap collection.

Bring on the end of the world. I'm ready!!

Though I do rather like the idea of an EMP wiping out the world instead of a nuke...hmm...steals idea for book. Clarke you know the one I'm thinking of.

I would have said the same thing just a few months back, but now I'm scared that the end of the world is indeed coming, one way or another, and I don't want to go anymore...

I would hope, as fly-by-wire is the new thing. Even Boeing is done with conventional flight-cables. Though the fact that aircraft fly in the upper atmosphere will put them closer to the center of the electrical activity in the event of an EMP, and even any hardening might be rather pointless.

I'm fine with go, to hell with this horrid place. Though if I survive I am certainly carving out my own little nation. You are all free to join.