Title is a little sensational but this is a cool project for non-technical folks who may need a mini-internet or data archive for a wide variety of reasons:
“PrepperDisk is a mini internet box that comes preloaded with offline backups of Wikipedia, street maps, survivalist information, 90,000 WikiHow guides, iFixit repair guides, government website backups (including FEMA guides and National Institutes of Health backups), TED Talks about farming and survivalism, 60,000 ebooks and various other content. It’s part external hard drive, part local hotspot antenna—the box runs on a Raspberry Pi that allows up to 20 devices to connect to it over wifi or wired connections, and can store and run additional content that users store on it. It doesn’t store a lot of content (either 256GB or 512GB), but what makes it different from buying any external hard drive is that it comes preloaded with content for the apocalypse.”
EMPs are overrated by Hollywood, who like to show sparks and electrical arcs and robots exploding and whatnot. In reality EMPs are mainly a threat to the power grid, because they operate by inducing an electrical current in a conductor and the longer the conductor is the more powerful the induced current is. Power transmission lines are thousands of kilometers long, they’ll build up fearsome currents and fry stuff plugged into them (assuming circuit breakers and fuses don’t manage to protect it). But a device like this has wires a few centimeters long, so they don’t pick up nearly as much as long as they’re not plugged in. They’re more delicate, sure, but I like my odds.
An EMP can also be shielded against by a wrapping of tinfoil, as mentioned below. As long as there aren’t large gaps (no, tinfoil hats don’t work) it acts as a simple farraday cage. So if you really want extra protection keep this in a metal box. Assuming its case isn’t metallic to begin with.