Federal Logic?

I've written about the big National EAS Test coming in November -- and you readers, darn it, have been largely uncooperative about donning tinfoil hast over it; it's almost like you've got common sense or something -- now I find out that FEMA has been busily providing the key AM stations in the system with complete backup transmitting facilities, to be kept offline but ready, just in case.

These setups are EMP-hardened. It's being done with biggo Homeland Security dollars, hot off the printing press.

Update: Notice the big solar coronal mass ejection that slammed by last night, lighting up the Aurora as far south as Indiana? Those FEMA transmitter-in-a-can installations are looking smarter with every passing...solar flare! /Update

Speculation in some quarters (see comments at the link) has run rampant. (Oh, dear.)

Me, I figure FEMA is still smarting over past events; this is something they can do, something consistent with their actual mission, and they are getting whatever they can get while the checkbook is out. An offline transmitting setup in a shielded enclosure will survive nasty lighting hits and downed powerlines with ease. It's overkill but not as much as you might think. And if the Feds are gonna throw money at things (and they are), this is one of the more benign.

However -- assume the most paranoid folks are correct and The Pulse hits. I have only one question: who's gonna have a working radio receiver after a bigtime EMP? They'd all get fried! (Or the solid-state electronics in them would. FM and TV, fuggeddaboutit, the fonky blast of RF is right in their frequency range, but I don't see the front end of your pocket transistor having much better luck.)

It's like the original problem with the telephone: who'd the first guy to get one call up? Only worse. So FEMA might wanna bury a few tin cans fulla radios while they're at it. And a Diesel truck to drive around throwing them out of.