Nobody's bothered to try to figure out how to create a small-scale EMP without a nuclear blast and then tried subjecting modern cars and computers and phones and such to them.
More of that was done during the Cold War. In my aerospace days I used to get reports on things such as tests of AUTODIN nodes using a truck-mounted EMP generator. One observation was that if you welded together the wire mesh used in reinforced concrete, before pouring the concrete, you had a rather coarse Faraday cage. That was enough to attenuate EMP to the point that the switching equipment was unaffected.
L-3 Services makes an EMP generator now for testing US military equipment.[1] The US military does pay some attention to this. But the general military view is that EMP effects are secondary to blast effects of nuclear weapons. The blast effects will knock out more than EMP does. If you're going to harden something against EMP, it also needs to be blast-hardened.
More of that was done during the Cold War. In my aerospace days I used to get reports on things such as tests of AUTODIN nodes using a truck-mounted EMP generator. One observation was that if you welded together the wire mesh used in reinforced concrete, before pouring the concrete, you had a rather coarse Faraday cage. That was enough to attenuate EMP to the point that the switching equipment was unaffected.
L-3 Services makes an EMP generator now for testing US military equipment.[1] The US military does pay some attention to this. But the general military view is that EMP effects are secondary to blast effects of nuclear weapons. The blast effects will knock out more than EMP does. If you're going to harden something against EMP, it also needs to be blast-hardened.
[1] http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/74M-for-an-EMP-Generator...