Mission possible: Here’s what Faraday bags can and can’t do



Have you ever lain in bed wondering how to (hypothetically) evade capture by federal agents?

No? Well, that probably just means you’re normal. However, if you were to engage in this hypothetical, you might have considered Faraday bags. These bags, which are just small, flexible containers that block electromagnetic fields, have a number of potential uses.

You can, as I’ve written previously, use them as low-tech screen timers. However, their advertised use is a bit more ambitious. Need to survive an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, attack; avoid data harvesting by the NSA; or go on the run from the FBI? These bags, according to their sellers, have you covered.

In today’s world, true privacy is impossible for most people without either a massive financial investment or a complete lifestyle and location change.

All joking aside, it’s worth taking a look at the specifics of what these bags are advertised for, the degree to which they actually live up to that advertising, and whether or not the advantages they provide are even all that useful.

Let’s talk about EMPs for a second. Faraday bags, since they are EMF-blocking, protect anything inside them from being harmed by some sort of EMP. Although never put to the ultimate test, hypothetically, in the event of some massive EMP attack, Faraday bags would protect your electronics from harm.

However, given the fact that an EMP attack would disable all the cell towers, it probably wouldn’t be much help. There is a chance that, if you were on T-Mobile’s new satellite cell coverage plan, you might still have service. (At the time of publication, T-Mobile has not responded to inquiries about potential coverage under such circumstances. So we’ll have to leave that idea in the realm of speculation.)

A more useful practice, if you wanted to venture into prepper territory, would be taking a device like a phone or tablet, downloading all sorts of useful instructions and information on it, and storing it in a Faraday bag. That way, when the EMP goes off, you’ll still have access to whatever you stored on there. This example is emblematic of Faraday bag usage more generally. They are most useful for specific needs and circumstances rather than being relied upon to preserve your way of life.

Say you and your girlfriend have that lamentable iPhone feature where you can see one another’s locations, and you need to scope out a proposal spot without giving the game away. (This is not a personal anecdote — I remain a loyal Motorola customer.) By slipping your phone into a Faraday bag, you can location-scout to your heart’s content and still be able to call 911 if you get a little too close to that scenic cliff.

RELATED: Why today's kids don't know how anything works

Photo by Hulton Archive / Contributor via Getty Images

Say you work somewhere in the intricate world of the conservative movement, you’re meeting in a back room with some associates, and you would rather not have the contents of your conversation leaked to the New York Times. Having everyone put their phones in their bags for the meeting is a quick way to ensure your privacy. (Assuming, of course, that the curtains are drawn to prevent anyone from shooting a laser at the glass and analyzing the vibrations to figure out what you’re saying — yes, that’s a real thing.)

Now, if you really are some sort of Jason Bourne character on the run from your country’s intelligence agencies, a Faraday bag will absolutely come in handy. However, those sorts of characters have particular sets of skills which allow them to disappear and outwit the combined forces of whatever agency or country is trying to find or capture them. Unlike Ethan Hunt or Mitch Rapp, the average person does not have years of counterintelligence training and access to a global network of shadowy underworld experts. “Disappearing” is a lot harder than the movies make it look. Most people have regular jobs and live in regular houses. (Well, these days it’s probably a regular apartment if you’re under 40 and don’t make six figures.) This normal life means that, in the event of some situation where the FBI becomes intent on hunting you down, the means to your demise are already out there.

A friend of mine recently had to give his Social Security number just to get hot water in his house. That’s just one example, but it shows just how much about you and your habits is already in some federal database. Have you flown on an airline recently? Well, TSA has a scan of your face now. Oh, you declined the scan? Yeah, that’s cute. Does your car have a license plate? You’re going to need to ditch that, which is illegal, which means the police can pull you over, run your name (because you need to hand over that photo ID or you’ll be arrested), and immediately call it in to whatever sinister agency is hunting you down.

Say you evade the cops after a high-speed chase, so they don’t know who you are (assuming one of the many toll centers or other camera systems around our roadways didn’t scan your VIN and send it to law enforcement.) You’ll need food and shelter. Unless you’re dumb enough to use a credit card, you’ll have to bring all your cash along with you. Unless you’re sleeping in the woods, you’ll need a hotel (unless you plan to get your friends or family arrested for sheltering you). Hotels almost always require DOB, name, and address — and they probably won’t take cash. If you are hiding out in the woods, remember not to light a fire. Actually, go ahead. The thermal drone they’re using will pick up your body heat either way.

These are only a few of the ways in which normal people can be tracked and apprehended. The point of this digression is not to blackpill you or even to rail against post-Patriot Act America. It’s simply a reminder to have realistic expectations when purchasing or using tech such as Faraday bags. They aren’t going to turn your life around and make you into a covert operative, but they can make certain situations a little less stressful. They are one small part of a much larger apparatus and game plan in the event that you actually need to drop off the grid.

In today’s world, true privacy is impossible for most people without either a massive financial investment or a complete lifestyle and location change. If you have the ability to do either of those things, good for you. If not, my advice would be to focus on using the means you have at your disposal to protect specific, manageable areas. Sometimes it’s using Signal or Telegram instead of SMS, or taking notes in a physical notebook instead of an app. Sometimes it’s using a Faraday bag to keep a conversation private or protect your favorite iPhone game from an EMP. At the end of the day, the choices you make are going to have a far greater impact on your privacy than the tech you use.

A Faraday keeps the doomscroll away: Try these no-screen-time bags



Funny how you never hear anyone say, “I really wish I spent more time on my phone.”

In a world that requires us to spend an increasing amount of time in front of screens, we're all looking for ways to unplug. Products and services claiming to help us do this have become their own rapidly expanding market.

Faraday bags have many uses: protection against EMP attacks, eavesdropping, GPS tracking, and meddling NSA operatives.

There are more apps dedicated to this endeavor than can possibly be categorized, but they all have one thing in common: They all live on the very device you're hoping to escape.

Apps can be helpful, of course — provided you have sufficient willpower. I don't, which is why I've started to employ a simple, low-tech solution to keep me off my phone: a Faraday bag.

Secure the bag

What is a Faraday bag? Put simply, it’s a bag that prevents any electromagnetic fields from going in or out. That’s really it. Not only will it prevent all calls, texts, and emails from reaching your device, it will disable its GPS and bluetooth. In other words, total lockdown.

Once you retrieve your phone from its prison, everything you missed pops up just as if you'd turned it on after leaving it off for a while. Which raises the question: Why not just turn your phone off and save yourself the money?

Well, the bag has the advantage of not making you wait for your phone to boot up again before you can use it, and it also has the psychological advantage of keeping the phone out of sight. In my experience, staying off social media for an evening is much easier when the phone isn’t sitting on my desk, calling to me like Norman Osborn’s Green Goblin mask.

'Coward! We have a new world to conquer!" (Michael Tullberg/Getty Images)

Slipping my phone and laptop into the bag and sealing it shut have really helped with the mental side of minimizing distractions. “Out of sight, out of mind,” as the saying goes.

Set it and forget it

Faraday bags have many uses: protection against EMP attacks, eavesdropping, GPS tracking, and meddling NSA operatives, for example. I don’t doubt that they are quite useful in that world, but I’ve found that simply using them to mentally unplug for a while has been worth the investment.

Speaking of investment, you’re probably wondering about the price tag on one of these bags. You can pick one up from MOS Equipment for $23, or $90 if you want it to fit your laptop as well. The other brand I’ve used is GoDark. Their bags go for $55 if you just want to stow your phone, or $130 for the laptop size. GoDark products, though more expensive, have the benefit of some waterproofing, more premium materials, and more convenient closures. Having used both brands, I haven’t noticed any difference in actual EMF blocking.

RELATED: The real spyware threat could be in your pocket

Moor Studio via iStock/Getty Images

A one-time investment

I have been warned to avoid cheap bags off of Amazon or other generic sellers. If you want a bag that will work reliably, it’s best to stick with established brands. The cost is certainly something to consider, but for many folks, a one-time purchase that will consistently help them to focus and save time is probably worth the investment.

Are you working on a bit of writing and can’t seem to focus? Put the phone in the bag, leave it under the desk, and lock in for a couple hours. Having trouble sleeping? Putting the screens away for 30 minutes before turning in has been shown to improve sleep quality. My preferred method is to put my devices into the bag before starting the bedtime routine. How will you set your alarm? Clocks are easy to find, quite cheap, and come in all shapes and sizes.

Try it for a week, and thank me later. Having tried different screen-time apps and digital timers, I’ve found that the best solution is to go as low-tech and simple as possible. Plus, if you do find yourself on the run from the NSA, the Faraday bag you’ve already got gives you a head start on gearing up for life off the grid.

How an EMP attack could send the US 'instantly into the Stone Age': No phones, computers, or cars



The effects of an electromagnetic pulse are far worse than most Americans can imagine, a leading space policy expert has warned.

With foreign adversaries like Russia and China officially classifying the EMPs outside of the purview of nuclear arms treaties, the infrastructure-shattering weapons could be used against Western nations with little to no direct casualties.

"Gen Z is gonna learn how to make a fire and sharpen spears."

Space policy expert and former Trump administration advisor Greg Autry told Blaze News that EMP technology and its effects have been known for over 50 years.

"EMP is an electronic, magnetic pulse weapon and it's usually initiated with a large nuclear blast, typically at high altitude outside the atmosphere in space," Autry explained. "You basically detonate a nuclear bomb, it ionizes or charges atoms in the atmosphere and it creates a large electrical field on the ground that can basically destroy all the electronics in a city or a wider area."

"We know this works because the Russians and the United States both actually detonated a lot of nuclear weapons in space in the early 1960s, particularly during the Cuban Missile Crisis to kind of show each other we could."

The disturbing history of the EMPs included testing the nuclear arms off the southwest coast of Hawaii. This caused measurable effects in Honolulu such as auroras in the sky and the disabling of portions of the electric grid and radio systems in the city.

The real worry for a modern society is our vast reliance on electronics, Autry warned.

"If somebody did one of these today, your phone would be a brick. Anybody with a pacemaker would drop dead, instantly. Every piece of your electronics... your laptop computer, your internet router, would be gone, and most of the relays in our power grid would be gone so there would be no power."

What makes the threat even more dire is the likely inability to replace some of the serviceable parts that would be destroyed during such an attack.

"Guess what?" Autry asked rhetorically. "The people most likely to have sent that EMP to us are the Chinese, and they're not sending you any more iPhones or letting anybody ship them. Guess what? They make all of our electrical transformers, or if they don't, they make the steel that's required to make the electrical transformers. There's only one U.S. company left that can make that steel," Autry continued.

Electrical vehicles could be turned into "fireballs" the space expert noted, while "every internal combustion car on the road is going to be dead because they're all run by computers and electronic ignition system."

"We are instantly transported into the Stone Age," Autry described before laughing that in his book "Red Moon Rising," he joked that "Gen Z is gonna learn how to make a fire and sharpen spears" without the help of a YouTuber.

"It's going to be a really bad day."

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Classification workaround and preparation

"The thing that scares me more," Autry piled on, was the way America's enemies have avoided classifying EMPs in the same category as nukes.

"Both Russia and China have classified these weapons not as strategic nuclear weapons but as cyber weapons, and they've made it clear that they consider the use of them not to impinge upon any obligations they may have made, or any treaties involving nuclear weapons. They can just use these things as cyber tools."

Autry revealed that he sees previous cyber attacks from the aforementioned nations as possible acts of war, but he prefers to focus on solutions rather than pontificate about past occurrences.

The policy expert said that the "Space Force is not unaware" of the possibilities of an attack and that the government agency's job is to "develop defensive systems against such an attack" that would defend assets on the ground.

"We could do a lot better at the state level, and the federal law could help mandate that our critical infrastructure be protected from EMPs. It's not actually super hard to do. You need to put these things inside what we call a faraday cage, which is a metal box or or even a mesh box."

Faraday boxes exist commercially, and while somewhat pricy for larger units, companies like Defender Shield and SLNT have popped up to sell products for a few hundred dollars. Phone sleeves, laptop carriers, backpacks, and duffle bags that block magnetic waves and RFID signals are suggested for the average consumer.

Another concern of Autry's was the United States being dragged into a conflict by another nation using an EMP. Providing examples like Russia against Ukraine or China against Taiwan, Autry said the countries could act as if it wasn't a real attack on the population because there would be limited casualties.

One thing he was certain of is that both the state and the individual could stand to be a lot more prepared.

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Americans across the country are experiencing drops in cell service, in some cases hindering 911 calls



Tens of thousands of Americans awoke Thursday morning to discover their cell phones were bereft of signal. In addition to being unable to touch base with friends, families, and coworkers, some users apparently were unable to hail 911.

While those affected by the cascading cellular service outages appear to be predominantly AT&T customers, clients of other service providers are reportedly experiencing issues.

Around 3 a.m., there was a spike in reports of AT&T outages on the website Downdetector. As of 9:02 a.m. ET, there were over 73,000 reporters of customers experiencing service issues.

While Verizon, T-Mobile and other providers similarly saw spikes, Downdetector indicated they were orders of magnitude smaller. Verizon and T-Mobile maintain that their networks were unaffected and operating normally.

A spokesman for T-Mobile told CBS News, "Downdetector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks."

"Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier," Verizon said in a statement obtained by the New York Times. "We are continuing to monitor the situation."

While AT&T has confirmed that it is experiencing rampant outages, it failed to provide an explanation for why the failure occurred in the first place, reported CNN.

"Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them," the company said in a statement. "We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored."

A spokesman for the company indicated further that AT&T's first responder network nevertheless remains operational.

The outages prompted some speculation online about possibly wicked causes, such as an electromagnetic pulse strike or a cyberattack; however, an industry source who spoke to CNN under the condition of anonymity suggested the issue is likely linked to a process known as peering, whereby cellphone services pass off calls from one network to the next.

CNN noted that the company was experiencing sporadic outages earlier this week, including a drop in 911 service in various southeastern states.

Blaze News reached out to AT&T for comment on the extent and cause of the outages as well as a projected timeline on a remedy but did not immediately receive a reply.

Various municipalities and local authorities across the country have confirmed the outages, in some cases highlighting corresponding difficulties reaching first responders by phone.

The City of Upper Arlington in Ohio noted that outages were affecting fire alarms, such that first responders "may not be notified of an activation." The city advised residents to follow up alarms with a 911 call "for the foreseeable future."

The San Francisco Fire Department noted that while the San Francisco 911 center was still operational, 911 calls had reportedly been impacted for some customers.

Various other official channels, including the X accounts for the City of Little Rock, Arkansas, the Rockville City Police Department of Maryland, and Orlando Police Department in Florida noted similar difficulties. A common recommendation: Use family or friends as proxies for 911 calls or call from a landline.

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