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(Jon sez:)
Nuclear explosions generate large, strong electromagnetic (EM) fields.
These EM fields can damage electronics over a wide area and are known by the
acronym EMP, for electromagnetic pulse.
Electronics which utilize small components and low voltages are particularly
vulnerable to EMP. Autonomous robots would use quite a lot of small,
low-voltage computer chips, and so would be very prone to failure after an
EM pulse. An EM pulse would scramble a robot's brain until it could reset
itself (presuming the pulse didn't completely fry the robot's computer
chips). Electronics can be hardened against EMP, but commercial civilian
equipment almost never is.
I've been writing entirely too many columns about nuclear weapons lately.
Perhaps I'll write the next one about fluffy bunnies.
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(Mark sez:)
It's a pity Captain al-Zarqa's line of dialogue is so long in the first panel, because I drew a really cool-looking light fixture on the wall behind her that got covered up by the word balloon. Seriously, it was really nice. Oh well.
Jon, who just happens to posess an archive of all past MoS pages including the associated "Mark sez" and "Jon sez" columns for each page, notifies me that MoS's first birthday is in fact coming up on June 3, not June 6 as I had previously asserted. And you know what that means -- two birthday cakes! Yay!
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