Diodes, Semiconductors, Integrated Circuits and an EMP strike.

Electronic circuits come in flavors.

Diodes: these are also called rectifiers, solar cells and just plain diodes.

Semiconductors. These are more commonly refered to as transistors

Integrated Circuits. "Chips" computer circuits, surface mounted components, core processors - these will be the main targets of a man-made EMP strike. These items contain millions and possibly billions of transistors, and are so small that any electrical disturbance blows them out.

That flash drive that you use as a backup device for your computer has many billions of transistors in it. One good EMP punch, and it's junk Doubt that it has billions of transistors?

Consider this:

1 million bits usualy equals 4 million transistors. That's only 1/8 of a million information bytes.

An 8 GB flash drive contains at least 32 billion transistors, plus supporting circuitry. All in a really tiny "less than 1/2 square inch" silicon chip. EMP's deliver 1000's of volts, and just a very few volts would kill your flash drive. The outcome is obvious.

And to be cheap and affordable, they are not made to be rugged, nor capable of fending off an EMP

I've put up a few posts in the past about building a cheap and effective EMP proof container. Let me know if you need this info again.