I immediately wondered that; a low yield dirty bomb, at say, the UN on the Upper East Side would be a different EMP profile, I presume, from a higher yielded ship born bomb inside, say, a container which had cleared customs in Pakistan, and that would be different from a high altitude air burst, right? So, and the physics seems calculable if annoyingly in my past--you should be able to calculate a range of EMP from various yields?

The "Quora" answers are: a ground-based (ship based?) lower yield weapon has EMP effects of note to the 3 mile range.

An airburst would be a different issue. "Starfish Prime”. In this high altitude nuclear test, carried out in 1962, a 1.44 Mt warhead was detonated at a height of 400 km. Electrical damage, including burning out hundreds of street lamps was caused in Hawaii - about 1500 km from the point of detonation.

By contrast there was no direct blast damage at all at that range.

The maximal electric fields induced in the Starfish Prime EMP in Hawaii were estimated at 6 kV/m. At high latitudes the value could easily be ten times higher.

For electrical equipment to be damaged by an EMP from a nuclear detonation, the detonation point must be above the visual horizon.

A large yield weapon detonated 400 km above Kansas would have an EMP that extended across the entire continental US, but the ground intensity pattern of that EMP would be peaked towards the South of ground zero, it would not be symmetrical."

the starfish

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That's pretty scary too but starfish are a keystone species, meaning when/if they go, the entire ecosystem changes...again. I've heard stories here in the west that the anemones are having trouble because the shellfish that the starfish ate are now taking over the tide waters and displacing them...I wonder what happens when the anemones go, surely something else needs them in order to live, and something needs that thing...and so on, and so on....talk about a slippery slope (pun intended).
We need a "we're all going to die" channel. :-)

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↑↑↑ Horror titles...

Night of the Starfish
Death Star (fish)
Star Light, Star Blight
Echinodermocalpyse
Countdown: Sea Star

Oh, the Asteroideanity

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I'm tired and my starfish melted, gimme a break! ;-)
Where was spell check when I needed it? fixed.

*related= http://videosift.com/video/update-on-the-starfish-die-off-on-both-coasts

Plugged them into a starfish!

Poor starfish... sacrificing so much for his love.

How stable are the nodes if you keep it at one of the resonant frequencies that made the "starfish" type patterns? It looked to me like it would create a revolving wave around the circumference that would be stable, but it would be really cool if it would stay like that without revolving at some particular frequency.

I read about this the other day:

http://news.yahoo.com/gumby-flexible-robot-crawls-tight-spaces-200129817.html

excerpt:

Harvard scientists have built a new type of flexible robot that is limber enough to wiggle and worm through tight spaces.

It's the latest prototype in the growing field of soft-bodied robots. Researchers are increasingly drawing inspiration from nature to create machines that are more bendable and versatile than those made of metal.

The Harvard team, led by chemist George M. Whitesides, borrowed from squids, starfish and other animals without hard skeletons to fashion a small, four-legged rubber robot that calls to mind the clay animation character Gumby.

You can argue about the naturalness of it all you like, but I'm not comfy with people leaving little chocolate starfish kisses on the furniture.

I thought jellyfish was a misnomer like starfish. Neither are "fish" and the preferred terminology now is sea jelly and sea star.