The Effect of Emps On Digital Systems

Published April 29, 2020 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hi guys,

The Passed Pawn episode tried to borrow from the Matrix in its reliance on an electromagnetic pulse to be the ultimate weapon against the machine world. It kind of made sense in the Matrix because presumably the squid machines were not organic but semiconductor based objects. The way EMPs actually work is that they release a very intense spike of electromagnetic energy at a particular frequency range that induces a current in the transistor junctions in microchips. These junctions can only tolerate current flow in one direction and the EMP basically reverses the current and burns out the junction so that it stops acting like a transistor. For computers this means all the ram, processors, signal processors, and basically all hard circuits are burned out just like a power surge would do.

The problem with using this on the Westworld hosts is that they seem to be manufactured from organic components that use biochemical logic components like the human brain. The squishing of Hector’s pearl seems to confirm this. The EMP would certainly wipe out Solomon and all the other digital components in the facility that weren’t “hardened” (i.e. shielded to conduct the EMP wave around the components like a Tesla cage) but unless the hosts CPU interface was built from microchip transistor components they would not be any more affected by the EMP than Caleb was.

Still love the show even with its use of artistic license.

Thanks,
Dave Wright

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