Name:   MrHodja - Subject:   OK, Here it is, Goofy Date:   5/13/2021 11:01:54 AM

One answer is to protect electronics within a Faraday Cage, something that is trivial to do for small items but becomes exponentially more difficult as the item(s) to be protected grow in size and/or number.  You can't wrap a car or a house in aluminum foil, and like you say, even if one has a generator that was kept enclosed in a Faraday Cage and survived the EMP, there would soon be no gas to run it. 

My concern is that someone who is properly prepared and had the basic necessities would be attacked by those not prepared as soon as that word got out.  There would be roving bands, almost surely armed, intent on taking whatever they could to just survive. The food supply would dry up as well - or be taken by those strong enough to take it from those who have it but aren't prepared to defend themselves.

It would take years to recover the most basic society, and even that would depend on help from nations in the parts of the earth that weren't affected by the EMP (a single EMP burst over the US probably wouldn't affect most of Asia).  And regarding the question about a retalitory EMP strike, what leader would order such a strike?  Does it make sense to destroy the rest of civilization as we know it?