By Man Talk Blog
Colorado –-(Ammoland.com)- If you have electric locks on anything such as your impenetrable firearm safe or anything of that nature consider this.
People are concerned about EMP (electronic magnetic pulse) weapons being detonated above our country.
Are they real? You bet they are and in the event of a nuclear strike they may be the first devices launched.
Working theory is that two or three big ones detonated above Nebraska (central U.S. location) would shut down the entire electric grid for many years (and they will) and EMP will also smoke nearly all things electronic and all modern circuitry that is not seriously EMP proofed.
Basically devices of this type could take our modern society instantly back to the mid-1700s or earlier.
Additional information suggest that if the effects are complete enough these devices through their destruction of all things electronic will result in something between 75-90 percent of our population dying of various causes within a year or so. Suddenly that non electronic 1954 Buick and other past-era vehicles and even your bicycle will become very high-tech–until they are taken from you by gangs, the military or law enforcement.
And don’ think your backup generator will fire up, and if it were to do so where are you going to get the pump gas when it runs dry-and how will you transport it if you could get it pumped by those electronic gas pumps?
This disaster list can just go on and on, so let’s back to the original premise of this for gun owners
Getting back to the theme of our little story. If you have electronic locks on anything, they will be frozen and locked up tight as a wedge. Now consider what kind of lock you may have on your firearm safe, if you have one–hummmmm? If you have a Liberty, Winchester, Remington, Browning, Cannon, Colt, AMSEC, S&W, or whatever that has an electronic lock and an EMP event were to occur–what then?
You are locked out, period!Â
Small stuff for one or two hand guns like Gun Vault you can defeat to open fairly easily, but the big stuff is another story.
We know of several folks in our area who have electronic safes and when informed of this potential SNAFU and after their eyes quit bugging out immediately contacted the company whose name is on the safe or that made or services their safe and got them refitting it with mechanical combination locks ASAP.
This conversion is a fairly easy conversion for most all brands since basically the doors are built the same and it is just the lock choice they install for the particular customer.
This is something for firearm safe owners (and your bank) to consider as the safes are made to keep bad guys out–and now may keep you out too.
So what do you think about this little bit of paranoia from us?
About the Man Talk Blog;
This is a guy blog and will cater to stuff we guys like such as food and drink (cigars too). We will talk about outdoor, hunting, fishing and survival and other interesting stuff (we hope). And of course guy toys which means cars, boats, guns, grills or whatever. Visit: www.mantalkblog.com
Maybe its just my luck but i have changed out 10 times more mechanical locks than electronic. The pins in the lock have a life span and regular use of the combination dial speeds up that process. The sad truth is, if its a reasonably priced safe, the locking mechanism is going to be cheapy made no matter if its electronic or mechanical. Forget your combination on a mechanical, your calling me to drill it open. On a electronic safe, take out the battery for 30 days and it resets to factory defaults, but you can pay me to open… Read more »
I have a Cannon safe with a mechanical combination lock. I have not been able to open it using the combination. I called customer service and they advised me the combination pins only last a couple of years and then they start to stick together. I finally got it open by trial and error of using numbers on each side of my original 3. Cannon was of no help and basically told me that is common for their locks to fail like that. They offered no warranty or replacement lock for me. I have a $700 dollar “Unsafe” because I’m… Read more »
Forget EMP. The bigger issue is failure of the electronic lock.
I just returned a gun safe from Costco that did not have a key backup. It was powered by a 9 volt battery. I placed the guns in the safe and locked it. When I started to unlock it the keypad went dead. I was able to wiggle the battery cable enough to remake the connection to the pad and unlock the safe. After that final time, the connection was permanently failed.
I wll only consider a safe with a mechanical backup.
Utter garbage, a battery powered luck attached to a large metal box would be virtually impervious to EMP. This ‘article’ is nothing but a pile of conjecture and BS.
An EMP event is extremely unlikely to affect somethting like a gun-safe’s electronic lock, since the lock is neither connected to the power grid nor does it contain long lengths of wire that would act as an antenna to capture the radiated electromagnetic pulse. This is silly marketing, nothing more. And as Mike points out above, most electronic safes have a mechanical over-ride. Which is not a point in their favor: that mechanical over-ride makes the safe’s locking mechanism no more secure than the cheap pickable or drillable lock core used in the mechanical over-ride. Might as well save yourself… Read more »
Most electronic safes have a mechanical key release system in case of power failure.