When I was researching 'Road to Armageddon' I looked into the best information that was available online as to the likely effects of EMP ... and, from what I understood, and I'm neither a physicist or an engineer, there seemed to be no real consensus as to what would happen.
The best I could glean was that some scientists felt that the problem was being over-egged and others said it was a real problem but more or less refused to define it in any meaningful, practical, real world way ... merely offering mouthy and meaningless generalities.
Then there were the experiments in EMP 'guns' to immobilise cars (for Police use) ... so unreliable as to be worthless in any practical sense. Even the frame of modern vehicles is usually enough to reduce the range and effectiveness to negligible levels.
Best I could figure out is that a nuclear exchange would knock out a fair few vehicles, but nowhere near all of them, and probably nowhere even near a majority.
What would likely be the kicker would be tyres. Just like in WW2 ... as most of you know, the reason for fuel rationing in the US was not because of fuel shortages so much as it was because of rubber shortages. Rationing fuel cut down on tyre wear and reduced the consumption of tyres, keeping stockpiles intact until synthetic rubber production could step in (about 43, from memory) and, even then, so many things in OD still needed those tyres that they kept rationing of fuel.
Keeping fuel supplies ... ethanol or biodiesel, for example, means you could keep the engines running, but even scavenging tyres from EMP immobilised vehicles won't keep you in tyres nearly as long.
(Fuel rationing in the UK, Australia and NZ was done for different reasons ... in the former case because all oil was imported, in the latter two cases because all oil, cars and trucks and rubber were imported).
Phil
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