Emp will burn out all chips not in a Faraday cage or 'hardened'
My only beef with Blackout was that it took three days for riots to start, unless of course that was because there were no social sites to organise them.
One story I remember hearing about a Russian pilot who defected to the west during the cold war had to do with the scientists examining his aircraft and laughing about the fact it was still using valves rather than microchips, until of course one bought up the fact that it would still be flying after the EMP effects of nuclear weapons had fried all the Wests aircraft.