ALL economic activity requires oil. How many gallons to write Microsoft Windows XX ?  But labor was the dominant cost for repairs.  My informed guess, 90%.

In other words, the 10 nuke EMP scenario was meant to do two different things - avoid the massive deaths which would make retaliation with a massive U.S. strike revenge, not suicide, and to so cripple an industrial society that apart from committing suicide, it had no other options.

I may add, this scenario was explicitly designed to remove the oil refineries in California, the Gulf Coast, and the Northeast - never think we are talking about new ideas here, except for the occasional brilliant insight or neglected observation being brought to light.

This fairly elegant Cold War nightmare hinged on oil, as did much of the late 70s and 80s strategic war planning.

And the major reason for EMP becoming so critical was the defection of a Russian pilot with his MiG to Japan in 1975? - the plane still used vacuum tubes, which seemed incredibly primitive or even a deception, until someone realized that this meant the MiG was immune to EMP. To be honest, I'm still not sure what the final verdict on the MiG was - deception, primitive, or proof that the Soviets would fight dirty by fighting clean in the ionosphere, so to speak.

These devices do not put out sufficient RF energy to cause widespead damage. The largest devices constructed (about 2 tons) are capable of affect an area less than a 1km radius.

>say a park, garage, or neighborhood, and the EMP would still have a crippling effect on a fairly broad region.

This is incorrect. for a EMP device to be affective it must be detenated high above its target. These devices radiate RF energy in line of sight. if the pulse is blocked by a hill, building or other obstructions, it cannot affect electronic devices behind the obstruction. The RF energy produced by an EMP is mostly limited the lower bands ( < 300 Mhz) which limits its pentration through obstructions.

The stories hyped by the media, sci-fi, etc have exaggerated the potential of EMP. The story goes that a terrorist group gets a hold of a tactical nuke and detenates it high above the US disabling all of the country's infrastructure. Such a device would not be powerful enough to do this level of distruction. Even a large Multi-megaton device would not be affective enough, since these devices are implosion devices that pre-ionize the surrounding air which shorts out most of the RF energy before it reaches the ground.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/1988/CM2.htm

To disable the entire US infrastructure it would probably require a dozen or more medium yield devices deployed regionally. This would not be possible accept for the large nuclear powers (US, Russia and possibly China).