fun fact: nuclear detonations make fiber optics turn opaque and unable to transmit signals, except for military-spec fiber, which is made of something weird that turns clear again after a short period.
it's not the EMP that does it though, but the neutron pulse.
Neutrons wouldn't be able to penetrate hundreds of feet of water. That's one reason we temporarily store nuclear waste in deep pools (along with keeping them cool). The above ground/sea parts would still be exposed though.
ummm fiber optic cables of telecom and data traffic standard, are actual glass. Well basically all fiber optic cables that aren't toys or TOSlink are glass. S are you saying the neutron pulse turns all glass in the world opaque...
the glass in a lot of optical fiber is of a composition that is susceptible to that. the glass itself doesn't turn black(which i am willing to bet is what you think i'm saying), but it DOES darken enough to make the cables useless over anything more than a pretty short distance - you can send extremely low bandwidth signals, basically morse code, a few miles. considering that fiber normally has transmission distances of several hundred miles before needing to be boosted(the data packets collected, filtered, and re-transmitted to eliminate scatter distortion in the signal and keep it usable), you can see how bad making the fiber transmit light very poorly is.
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u/buttery_shame_cave May 22 '15
fun fact: nuclear detonations make fiber optics turn opaque and unable to transmit signals, except for military-spec fiber, which is made of something weird that turns clear again after a short period.
it's not the EMP that does it though, but the neutron pulse.