Electromagnetic pulses in history

A test the same year by Soviet scientists in Kazakhstan triggered power plant fires in the city of Karaganda.

The United States set up a commission to assess the threat from an EMP attack in 2001. It concluded that North Korea, Russian, China, India, Pakistan, Iran and Cuba understand how such an attack could work - and that many countries believe the US is able and willing to make an EMP strike "under a broad range of circumstances".

In 2010 Dr Liam Fox, then the defence secretary, warned that North Korea and Iran may seek to detonate a device high over Britain in order to disrupt electronic equipment.

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In fiction, the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye saw the villain, a rogue MI6 agent, plan to use an EMP weapon to rob the Bank of England and trigger a financial crisis.