[ben_w]

> It's not hundreds but perhaps only a few of a few dozens of them, and defence does not need to be absolute, if a few slip through, it's still OK.

No, it isn't. We can tell by all the forest fires that the USA's power grid has not been maintained. This matters in this context, because we know that a single nuke in the right place would have been able to fry most of the nation's systems by EMP a few decades ago, and no upgrades means it's almost certainly still vulnerable.

Losing all of it at the same time means losing the industrial capacity to repair it. It also means losing most logistics, not just EVs but also combustion vehicles because of the fuel pumps. It also means losing reliable refrigeration: yes, those could now be directly connected to local PV, but without reliability you get random spoilage.

The estimates from before renewables got interesting were in the order of 50-90% of the US population dying from a single high-altitude EMP, within the first 12 months.