A cutaway illustration of an E-bomb (illustration by HowStuffWorks.com)

It’s been a short week at the HowStuffWorks.com office due to our observation of Labor Day. But that just means we pack more universal demystification into the days we have left. Our dedicated staff of writers, editors and producers work tirelessly to keep the information dial set to 11. And you never even see us sweat — because we don’t give people tours of the office.

Chrispy and I have done our part. This week we bring to you two episodes of TechStuff packed with data, puns and acronyms. On Monday, we started off with ARGs. This isn’t just an invective shouted out by drunken tourists on a pirate ship tour in Key West — it stands for Alternate Reality Games and comes to us as a request from our listener Emily. An ARG is sort of a cross between a live action role-playing game, a scavenger hunt and puzzles straight from the mind of Ernõ Rubik (creator of the Rubik’s Cube).

In an ARG, players interact with a fictional world through real-world interfaces. These can include Web pages, telephone calls, faxes and even real-life encounters. The players may need to solve a mystery or achieve some other goal. To do so, they usually must solve a series of puzzles. The puzzles can be diverse and incredibly challenging. For this reason, many players will form cooperative groups. The collective intelligence of the group can crack a puzzle much faster than any individual player. The game becomes a race between the people running the game — commonly known as puppetmasters — and the people playing it. Learn more by listening to the podcast.

On Wednesday, we discussed EMPs — electromagnetic pulses. This topic came to us by request from Larry, another one of our cool listeners. An EMP is an intense burst of electromagnetic energy so powerful that it can cause electronic devices to shut down or even give up the ghost completely. They are a side effect of a nuclear explosion. With a large enough nuclear bomb, you could wipe out an entire nation’s power grid. While some portions of the grid might survive the blast, coverage would be spotty at best.

Perhaps more troubling is that it’s possible to generate an EMP without going nuclear. According to Popular Mechanics, a determined individual could assemble what is known as an E-bomb for about $400. These devices are no where near as powerful as a nuclear explosion, but it would be possible to direct the EMP at a target area and wipe out the electronics in a single blast. Devices that are unplugged and turned off might stand a chance and a few could simply malfunction temporarily but many would stop working forever. Find out more in our podcast.

Thanks for listening! To learn more about fun games and frightening weaponry, visit HowStuffWorks.com:

How E-bombs Work
How LARP Works
How Nuclear Bombs Work