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For my story an Imperial Guard army lands on a planet and... gets hit by a massive enemy EMP strike.

My question is what would happen to their lasguns, their equipment and vehicles. Titans aren't involved but Valks and Vendettas are. The only thing I have to base what happens in an EMP strike on is Modern Warfare 2, and its reliability is questionable at best.

Any help appreciated, thanks

As far as i know if a modern engine is already running electricity isn't a problem but i'm not sure about that.
Weapons... no idea i suppose they would all start using back-up weapons that weren't effective and any autoguns etc they had until they are re-supplied.

An EMP would have an absolutely catastrophic effect on an IG army. Anything with an engine would stop, as there wouldn't be any way for the fuel to be ignited, all the las guns would simply cease to work, and titans would ground to a halt. Simply put, like the current armies of the modern world, the Imperium would be totally if an EMP was ever used.

Although i think the more valuable stuff would have some sort of shielding but anyone standing near a plasma weapon would be doomed.

extermikator wrote:An EMP would have an absolutely catastrophic effect on an IG army. Anything with an engine would stop, as there wouldn't be any way for the fuel to be ignited, all the las guns would simply cease to work, and titans would ground to a halt. Simply put, like the current armies of the modern world, the Imperium would be totally if an EMP was ever used.

Not really.

You do realize that Chimeras, Leman Russes, Basilisk, etc can run on anything in terms of fuel, right?
And that, while it's a lengthy process, it's completely doable for the Mechanicus to convert Russes+Chimera chassis vehicles to run on simple combustibles, ala coal-powered trains.

Im pretty sure this far in the future Imperial vehicles would have sufficient EMP shielding and stuff like marine power armor definatly would. As for lasguns I vote they would be screwed, but easy to fix. Im pretty sure anything with void shields would resist EMPs. (Tau use EMPs in their grenades, still only kill a tank on a 6)

Diesel engines 'fire' by compression and are immune to EMP as long as you can crank them hard enough.

Petrol engines rely on the sparking circuit, which might be damaged by EMP.

The standard fuel of Imperial vehicles is Promethium. This ignites spontaneously on contact with oxygen, so the engines do not need an electrical circuit. (Let's ignore that fact that they would be insanely dangerous, and wouldn't work due to basic science. 40K fluff is always best kept well shielded from the impact of scientific fact.)

Modern military equipment is supposedly hardened against EMP but of course there is a limit, so a big enough bomb would destroy it.

Well... there you go then.
But also the fact that many if not most IG units have back-up weapons which are usually solid slug weapons.

Very informative guys, thanks