Bitcoin Forum

This is an 'argument' I've been hearing before I was into Bitcoin. This was when I would be using my Android tablet in class, doing our math classwork on it. Of course, most people thought I was showing off, others thought it was cool, but some would also say


"What if there is an EMP? That would wipe out your entire course work dude"

When I was locked up last month, I heard one guy discussing the future collapse of fiat currency, and how we would be transitioning to a gold based economy. He asked me what my investments were in, and I said "Bitcoin". He said "Don't do Bitcoin man, if there's a huge EMP bomb in the future, you will be left with nothing". Of course, my response was the exact same response that I would always have when I was in class:

"Dude, if there is ever a large EMP attack, I'm pretty sure your Bitcoins would be the last thing on your mind, I'd be more worried about the fridge, schools, banks, and elevators with people trapped inside of them"

It's pretty interesting what lengths people will go to try and justify making fun of Bitcoin as an "edgy Libertarian" thing, but the fact is, cryptocurrency is perhaps the safest way to store your money. Biometrics (ie fingerprints) can be forged or hacked, so can facial recognition, as can fiat currency, but not cryptocurrency.

Has anybody else ever heard the "What if there is an EMP" argument?

What is EMP? (ElectroMagnetic Pulse?), what does it has to do with fridges and bitcoins!
Sorry but I don't understand this, if you mean bomb then the bitcoins will not disappear if you leave the private keys to someone else or the statement in case you die.

Yes, and

of course unless we have no more electricity / internet connection lol
old discussion is old  :-\

Haha...think about it.

How do you access your bitcoin? Or better yet...how do you access the blockchain for a transaction?

Any guesses?

You use a computer or your phone. Can your computer or phone work with out electricity? No. So if there's an EMP and all electronics - including servers (the shit that keeps your information in the cloud) - are knocked off line, you, we risk losing all record of the bitcoin we own or at least the ability to make transactions.

The best thing. Keep significant amount of your coin in cold storage. It's offline. It's protected.

First, you were in jail last month? Second, there was a guy discussing a fiat transition to gold in jail?



Yes, this has come up before. First, an EMP attack probably wouldn't affect the entire planet. Remember that Bitcoin is global. That's what makes it so resilient. If computers in one part of the network go offline it's no problem. As long as there is even a single computer, anywhere in the world, that has a a copy of the blockchain Bitcoin can ramp right back up and continue forward.

yeah. this comes up pretty often. if there was an emp bitcoin will be totally and completely useless. gold is gonna be totally useless too.

in that scenario your wealth is gonna be food, bullets and antibiotics. the stuff that keeps you alive and preserves your life.

Fridges would be nuked by an EMP, my point of bringing them up was, you'd starve to death quicker than you could cry about losing your Bitcoin.


Hahaha, not jail man. There are lots of places you can be locked up that aren't jail, they're certainly like jail, but different.

Use paper wallets then. They are EMPproof :D

They can be fire/water proof too if you secure them in a right way. Bitcoin has a much serious enemy rather than an EMP.

It is Quantum Computing.

I wouldn't hold any cryptos after 2 years from this day. In 2020's or a bit later, crypto may be gone forever.

Well if the bomb affects the whole country then the bitcoins could be accessed from another country if you are still alive.
So the bitcoins will not disappear but will be hard to access to, anyway if EMP happens bitcoin will not be the first issue.

EMP would simply break down worldwide communications. We would have a multitude of blockchains depending on which local communications structures remained intact. The problem would be sorting it all out after worldwide Internet came back up.

8)

Minor error but, unlike CoD, in real life, an EMP disables electronics forever. Once a device has been damaged by the EMP, it can't ever be usable again.

Then I think with this last line you answered your own question, bitcoin will disappear together with all other online currencies.
Even the banks that have the digitalized money will be destroyed and only the cash will remain (if any).

I actually never heard this argument before, at least not in real life. If there was an EMP... We'd be screwed. Currency issues would have to be sorted out later, I guess.

The error is yours, in assuming that there would be worldwide EMP that would take out all the electronics, and the ability to rebuild.

8)

An EMP would destroy anything electronic, this includes cold storage drives used to store BTC. It doesn't matter if it is plugged in or not, it is gone unless you have it stored in a Faraday Cage which would save it.

If there was a big enough EMP detonation to disrupt an entire country then like others said BTC would be the least of anyone's worries.

You would be more concerned with why your vehicle no longer works and how you are going to obtain food and water once your supplies run out.

For those that think something like that wouldn't happen or is a joke, let me remind you that a single EMP detonation 2 miles above any country would effectively  destroy all communications and the vast majority of all electronics for a huge span of area.

Lol Are you trying to scare everyone away from Bitcoin or something? Of course you can use EMP damaged items again. Just replace what is damaged. That's like saying if you drop your phone or a hair dryer in the bathtub it is never usable again. Of course these things can be fixed. Sometimes it's not worth the cost of fixing, but then just replace it. As it relates to Bitcoin, as I said as long as even a single copy of the blockchain existed anywhere in the world Bitcoin could ramp right back up.

That's why the wise person will place a few of his more important electronic devices in Faraday cages deep underground.

8)

It's not necessary to place it deep underground, you could have it sitting out in the middle of your yard and it would be fine. The issue I see is electricity and internet access, both of which are required to operate BTC.

Even if the cold storage was in a Faraday Cage it wouldn't matter as it would still effectively be gone for years while the grid is restored. That is if there is anyone left to do so.

Most people would be dead within the month just from starvation, this isn't including an invading army who detonated the bomb.

You do realize the true way to do cold storage is to print out private keys on paper  ;)

This doesn't really mean anything without at least the first and last transactions of every Bitcoin address printed out as well. An EMP means that the whole blockchain has the potential of being lost. Without the printouts of those two transactions, at least, there would be no way anyone could ever re-start the blockchain.

The re-start would take manually inputting all the info of the first and last, accurately, by honest hand.

8)

You'll be using that paper to wipe your ass with when you run out of toilet paper, that is if you live of course.

I don't think you realize what would really happen if an EMP detonation were to occur. You won't just be sitting in your house waiting for the electricity and internet to come back on. You'll be watching your house burn to the ground as your neighborhood goes up in flames before you are herded off to concentration camps.

The fact that you think I'm scaremongering just shows that you didn't read my entire post, you just read the title

It depends how many bitcoins were on there. If it's more than one I think I'd find something else, even leaves would be better  ;)


Oh come on. You're being over dramatic. We're talking about an EMP attack right? Like just another kind of warfare? Well the world has seen wars before and people's houses didn't burn to the ground. Okay, maybe in some places, but that's in the extreme. That didn't happen in the U.S. or Britain for example.

I did read your post, the whole thing. I was only talking about your statement about making electronics permanently unusable. An EMP pulse is just that, a pulse. It doesn't last forever. It does whatever damage it will do and then it's over, meaning whatever was damaged (resistors etc.) can be fixed. If something is too expensive to fix then replace it entirely.

I'm being real, nothing dramatic. The U.S. homeland hasn't been invaded in a long time but when it did the British burned down entire areas.

Britain's major cities were reduced to rubble by the Germans.

You don't seem to realize that a lot of stuff depends on electricity to operate properly, things such as Nuclear Power Plants would wipe out entire areas in an instant. Things such as a small overload in your neighbors house starting a fire would burn your entire neighborhood to the ground as emergency crews would be unable to help you.

I strongly believe you should do some research before you continue to post here on a topic you clearly know nothing about.

Glad you mentioned the antibiotics.  I have a stockpile that's growing:  Cephalosporins, Cipro and some other quinolones, Bactrim DS, and of course clindamycin.  You also need stuff like aspirin and nitroglycerin, a well-stocked first aid kit, and a crash cart full of resuscitation drugs if you can get them.  Skills in medicine will be in high demand (see Walking Dead season 5). :P

Aaaand on topic.  In the event of an EMP, about which I know just a little, screw bitcoin.  You need all of the above things, and seeds and land.  People here underestimate the importance of owning property.

God damn it, you killed it. Like Baloo would say, it's all about the bare necessities, man. People do underestimate the importance of property, especially private property. Just that alone could open discussions about gun control, but I'm not getting into that much depth. Why are you stockpiling ABs? Preparing for an EMP detonation? :P

You're going back to the American Revolutionary War?!? That's your evidence we need to worry about people's houses being burned down if we go to war? Let me explain something. The United States of America is a nuclear superpower. No other country in the world comes close to the military resources of the U.S. It's not even close. Don't take my word for it. President Obama said exactly this in his last SOTU. You're not going to have many countries looking to be on the other end of that, and threatening to invade.



That's not homes being burned. That's cities being bombed. There is a difference. BTW the Germans were far more bombed out - and they still recovered faster economically after the war.


My friend, we're on a forum discussing Bitcoin, not credible world threats. You may as well worry about aliens attacking and disrupting Bitcoin. We can play apocalyptic scenario all day. The reality is, things just don't play out the way you describe.

In case I get infected and all the doctors have been eaten by walkers and the pharmacies have been looted.  You just never know.  :)

And in that extreme case, I really would hate to lose bitcoin but it would be the furthest thing from my mind.

Also:  10 Cloverfield Lane is kind of an awesome movie.  That's how unimportant things would become.  You just worry about the immediate things in your bunker, like if the person next to you is going to kill you.

Don't be stupid.. An EMP would cause a major overload of electricity running through your house. This will cause devices plugged in to catch fire. Your BTC would burn to a crisp if it is written on a piece of paper.

I don't have time to teach common sense to fools so from now on you can live in your ignorance.

Here is an example of fire proof safe storage for $30.00.

https://www.amazon.com/SentrySafe-1210-Fire-Safe-Security-Chest/dp/B008HZUI34/ref=sr_1_10?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1473553402&sr=1-10&keywords=fireproof+safe



Ouch! Who woke up on the wrong side of the bed? I disagree with you about how concerned we should be about an EMP attack / invasion and suddenly I'm an ignorant fool? Sheesh.

Yes, you are. Facts cannot be disregarded and tossed to the side because you don't 'agree' with them. That makes you a fool.

Even your example is ridiculous. The 'fire safe' box you linked to is only going to protect your documents for up to 30 minutes. Do you honestly think a house fire is going to just spark up and fizzle out within 30 minutes?

As I said before, I strongly suggest you do your research before trying to act like you know what you are talking about. Hell you didn't even research your example before trying to stand behind it.

Just to add some real research to your example, that very same safe you linked to can be opened within seconds using an extremely common swiss army knife. That's not very safe is it?

I'm quite comfortable in my position as EMP's are one of the many things I have researched in depth in the past and what I say as fact has been proven by scientists.

What you say is your opinion, and it is wrong.

With the madness going on in the US about North Korea, this topic is actually something to keep in mind. However, a strong electromagnetic pulse could also just as well be blown up by the sun any time. The last heavy coronal mass ejection happened just in 1859 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859)). If this event re-occurs nowadays (and it is most likely just a matter of time) it will heavily impact the eworldwide electric grid, leaving many devices and computers damaged or broken.

Considering this it is probably a good idea to diversify cryptocurrency assets into precious metals, as banks would be impacted by such events as well.

As a matter of fact, I believe cryptocurrency - gold/silver exchanges will be very popular in the years to come.

If there is an electro magnetic pulse attack, I think bitcoin is the last thing to care. Have you ever watched Jerico, tv series? Watch it and see what will people do If something happens like that and how can you protect yourself from this attack  8)

Doesn't matter, an emp would wipe out banking, credit cards, communications, some automobiles, wrap your house in tinfoil you will be fine, an emp would wipe out our entire financial system. Btc would be the least of our worries. Getting food and water would be a bigger concern. Get gold in grams, ounces are difficult to barter with as at that point one ounce will be worth 20k. Also, stock up on ammo to fight off the marauding hordes a rapists and rioters

That is if a person directly lives in an impacted EMP area. People in other countries would primarily be concerned about their assets. With a coronal mess ejection things would be completely turned upside down though. Nevertheless, this is relevant for anyone holding substantial virtual assets.


Storing some regular paper money and coins would also be an option. Gold is great but silver might be even easier to barter due to its lower value.

My opinion for the EMP bomb that could cover the Earth is the world would be in a lawless state where all people will start panic and from there many things could start happening. For example, war, disease, fighting over food and much more. Ya, the Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency would be the last thing you need to worry about.

Yes, so my opinion would be the same with others. If the EMP only able to cover a town, there are nothing to scare about it unless your hardware wallet(Cold wallet) are within the area(Without any proper protection).

People are watching too many apocalyptic movies lately...

This has nothing to do with "movies" or "apocalypse". You should be following politics and sun activity more closely.

If we have an emp attack it would screw everything up, when ur without power for a few months u won't care about btc, food and water will be the focus