I could have sworn I made a post about Faraday Bags, but after searching, it seems I did not.
With all the government tracking being done to your phones with the excuse of Wuhan V. I decided to buy Faraday Cage Bags.
They come in three sizes: Phone, Tablet (both shown) and Laptop; two of each. The test I made was simple: Can it receive calls and texts? Can it be tracked by the LOCATE/FIND YOUR PHONE function?
They work as advertised. No call or texts came in inside the bag and both Google and the phone’s manufacturer’s location function failed to find the phone. I have no way to test the credit cards’ RIFD chips, but I would imagine it will block them too.
Applications? It is up to you the when, where and why.
Seems rather expensive for what a bit of aluminum foil will do just as well. These things look like standard electrostatic protection bags, not sure if that’s actually what they are. If so, regular protective bags are definitely cheaper; for example, Uline lists 4×6 inch bags for $18 for a carton of 100, and offers many other sizes too.
They are thicker that standard electrostatic bags. you may want to run tests first
Go to your local hardware store. Go find the metal trash/garbage/ash cans. The ones like grandma use to have out back.
Line with cardboard.
Put the big things you want to protect from EMPs in there.
Good to go.
I have personal experience with EMP testing.
I’ve seen a man made (non-nuke) EMP cause a spark to jump a 1/4 inch gap on a standard radiator. I’ve seen EMPs cause the OFF/ON switch of a TV fuse from OFF to on, and the following EMPs fry all of the internals. I watched my 10 Band radio cease to function after just a few EMP pulses. That stuff is nasty.
I’ve seen much smaller EMP pulses turn a bunch of computers into junk. (Morons decided it was too hot to work in the trailers while testing EMP against a target. So they moved the computers outside under an awning and then couldn’t figure out why the unhardened CoTS computers all failed while they were testing a military target for EMP resistance some 30 ft from the computers. We had to actually explain to the testers why they were in the hot trailers.)
Don’t take chances on EMPs if you can afford the backups.
My suggestion for the Garbage Can storage was to put a Kindle (old style) loaded with PDFs. Put a laptop, two spare batteries, three power supplies, and as much info on CD/DVD as you can. Add an external CD/DVD drive. If you can afford it, put a second kindle and a second laptop in the can.
(There is a bit more, such as grounding but I don’t have that off hand. Making sure that there is an air gap inside and good grounding outside is extremely important)
Would putting each item in a heavy plastic bag wrapped with aluminum foil help? Would it provide a second barrier to attenuate the Pulse?
Are there any manuals or documents that you would suggest for learning more about EMP, or Solar CME and Carrington Events?
One source about lightning protection, with a side order of EMP, is the small book “The Grounds for Lightning Protection” by PolyPhaser Co. I’m not sure who owns them these days; I hope the book is still in print. It’s an excellent source describing how to do lightning protection for things like mountain top transmitters. Serious professional grade protection. It’s not a simple matter.
I wonder about EMP, never mind CME. Suppose you shield your cell phone when one of those hits, will that do any good at all? I suspect cellular base station and the rest of the infrastructure aren’t EMP-protected and will be destroyed. For communication under those circumstances, ham radio is your best bet. Even there, transistorized equipment is likely to be fried. My 1950s tube era receiver (Collins 51-J3) will undoubtedly still work if I can power it. If I had a matching tube transmitter that too would be ok, which I don’t but I can build it.
Any other communication system, from telephone to Internet to cellular, is full of highly vulnerable semiconductors and computers. While in theory that can be protected and some military equipment indeed is, I rather doubt that much of this is done with commercial equipment. For example, I think EMP protection requires screen rooms. Cellular equipment sheds certainly have lightning protectors on them, but they aren’t screen rooms as far as I know.
In short, no your tube radio is not immune to EMP. EMP can fry the traces and cause hard fusing of tube components. See above about TV.
Traces? No such thing in my 51J, it’s point to point wired with actual wire, not PCB traces.
If this is for more than a few minutes, turn the phone off before putting it in the bag.
The “soft” power-off state most phones use now isn’t actually off, unless the battery is pulled. However, modern cell phones will ramp up their broadcast power to try to connect to cell towers, and putting one in a Faraday cage will generally cause it to drain the battery considerably faster. Turning the phone “off” will help reduce the drain
Yes, make sure everything you put into a Faraday cage is OFF. As much as possible. Pull batteries if you can.
Digital cell phones are always attempting to reduce the power draw. To do this they reduce the power used in transmitting until they are at a particular error rate. That error rate is always higher than 0 errors.
The digital cell system has the ability to recover from a certain number of errors per amount of data. When a cell tower receives a signal from your phone it sends back an “error rate”. If the error rate is too good, the cell phone reduces the power it is using to transmit. If the error rate is to low, it increases the power used.
This is why your phone losses charge faster in areas with bad coverage.
Look up ECC and and Hamming Code if you want to know how this works. NASA uses/used Hamming codes for some(all?) of its long distance communications.
I thought they used Viterbi codes.
Anyway, good points on EMP. That’s an entirely different problem from security shielding, which I think is what Miguel had in mind. It’s a nice technique if you want to protect your gear from nearby lightning strikes, too.
When I did my research into ECC back in the 80’s they were saying NASA used hamming codes on probes. That was 80’s tech and I haven’t talked to anyone at NASA about it in 20+ years.
I was privileged to work with some really sharp computer scientists starting in the late 80’s.
I remember four of us talking out a hard problem. One of them said “come on guys, it isn’t rocket science…”. And all of us came to a full stop. One of us was a NASA scientist, another was a lead scientist for a NASA contractor, the team lead was tasked by his command chain to work the problem. And little old me, a computer scientist. It was rocket science we were doing that day.
Lots of cool things to learn hanging with those guys.
arts and craft stores sell small metal tins like sucrets / altoid containers. amzn et al probably too. i liked your testing though the bags do not always seal. see italian cia cell phones. different bags yes though ziplocks fail.
If you real cheap like me, drive around on trash day and get an old microwave oven. Instant faraday cage. Put phone inside close door. Try to call phone. It wont work. My buddy tried it with his home microwave- he told me his phone rang. I said get another oven! That one leaks
I’d say possibly just as relevant is don’t forget to encrypt your electronics and to turn them off when crossing borders or gong through TSA. Law varies by state and federally as to if you have a 5th aneent protection to not divulge a passcode, but I personally will never willingly provide a passcode to a device so any passcode obtained is one taken under duress and therefore invalid; that is the legal theory I’m operating under.
I’m not a lawyer, this is not advice, your milage may vary, results not guaranteed, etc.
Regarding backups, I’ve started printing manuals that are actually important or that I reference often just to have them to look at when my hands and/or body are all greased up and I don’t want to touch my phone or computer.
Regarding tracking, they’re tracking you 100% of the time anyways if your phone is on they don’t need any excuses and you consent to it. Google has just admitted that they track you through maps even when you aren’t using it, a fact that was easily deteined by the end user if maps was consuming lots of battery and you haven’t used it in ages. You microphone and cameras are always rolling as well.