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Always trust rumrunner to have the details down.
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be a politician. Nobody could ever suspect your lies.
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Aw, crap. They're catching on to my secret plan....
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What is meant by 'hardening' a device from EMP?
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Pretty much what it sounds like -- think of, say, a "hardened" bunker. It's strengthened so that it takes a bigger bomb to penetrate it. Same thing is true of hardening against EMP. I'm not an expert on methods of achieving this, but I imagine you could go two ways. You could use components that can absorb a higher stray voltage, which usually involves an increase in size or a decrease in efficiency. For example, replacing transistors with valve tubes is one way around it, but considering a modern IC may contain thousands of transistors, replacing one with valves is pretty impractical. Alternatively, you could insulate the entire piece of equipment in some way. The number of stray electrons created in an EMP is finite; if you can divert or deflect enough of them, say onto a different conductor or conducting shell, you could protect the equipment within from most damage.
But in either case, to get around this, the enemy just has to make a bigger EMP. Which is why it's called "hardening," not "proofing."
Hmm. Optical computing. That's an interesting idea. Presumably the input and output mechanisms would require conversion back to electrical signals in order to be able to interface with other devices. But you might be able to limit the amount of conductive material that way, at least reducing the vulnerability. You would still have to generate the light/laser pulses used by the system, though... Chemoluminescence might work, under certain conditions it's possible to induce laser light with chemical reactions, I'm really not sure about that being usable for optical computing, though.
