As King Shere noted, we have had a long discussion of it. I think the consensus view is that EMP works pretty well against human-made nanoswarms but TITAN swarms are tougher. My take on it would be that the first time you EMP something on Earth it usually works well, but then the local hives and swarmlets adapt and after a few minutes the EMP is nearly useless. The swarms are evolving (perhaps in competition and definitely through intelligent design) and optimizing, so as long as there are no EMPs they will tend to be vulnerable - but they can quickly recover past solutions if needed. The real problem might be that even EMP vulnerable nanoswarms will find ways of attacking from safety. They go into termite mode and dig tunnels instead. They convert a nearby mountain top to a phased array laser. They project subliminal sounds that drive the slightly edgy team member into full psychosis. They manufacture mustard gas.

After reading the post about the EMP vs. Nanobot swarm, I am honestly in favor of the physics backed statements. EP is hard sci-fi, which means you should always apply the rules of known science before turning towards 'It Just Works' as an explanation. That's a weakness. Singularity is not a catch-all MacGuffin for super science. The real horror in EP lies in that it is supposed to be believable. Push the Singularity MacGuffin, and you start harming that believability. I would argue that yes, EMPs would be very effective against nanoswarms, but much less effective against the larger, and thusly shielded TITAN constructs. So, you have a weapon that can take out one of your enemies myriad, highly effective superweapons. Why didn't Earth bring it to bear? The answer lies more in sociology and panic responses than in technological edges. Transhumanity did not have the time nor the resources to effectively eliminate the nanoswarms with EMP weaponry. Due to their size and ability to replicate, you would have had to blanket large swaths of the planet with EMP blasts in order to take them out, and that still wouldn't remove all of them, or the TITANs ability to create more. Also, remember that nearly everyone's consciousness is at least partially based on technology that may or may not be shielded. Dropping an EMP blast on a nanoswarm in a population center, where you could potentially destroy any chance of survivors escaping through egocasting by disrupting their signals? Would cause people to hesitate. And all the TITANs needed to win was that hesitation. And by the time that people with the weapons would not hesitate, it had become a moot point, and the TITANs had destroyed any hope of a united, concentrated strike through the removal of communication. So, yes, you can use EMP blasts to disrupt nanoswarms. Why didn't transhumanity do it? Because they hesitated early on due to collateral damage, and did not have the organization later on to do it effectively. Why doesn't transhumanity do it in AF 10? Because the people with the guns who can do it? Don't care about Earth. But if I was gatecrashing, and doing an Earth run? I would so totally bring one down with me as a Get Out of Hell Free card.

The main issue to shielding your nanorobots is size. It takes material to shield them, and in order for them to do what they are described as doing, and be the size as they are described as being, it is impossible to either shield them with material (they are too small) or construct them of a material (too inefficient) where the EMP doesn't disrupt them. Now, you offer a good point. One option might be having, maybe two parts per million of the swarm which exist solely to survive an EMP blast, after which, they switch they become active, and begin cannibalizing and rebuilding the parts of the dead swarm. I think that might be feasible. Still, the EMP blast would probably destroy most of a swarm, and it would take it at least several minutes before it reached the necessary mass to be a threat again.

eclipsephase_errata_all_1.0 pg. 6

Quote:

p. 329, Nanoswarms and Microswarms In the fourth paragraph (the last paragraph before the Cleaners entry), add the following sentence right before the last sentence (“Swarms are not affected by vacuum.”): “EMP weapons (p. 340) are very effective against swarms, inflicting 2d10 + 5 damage and a -10 modifier to all tests due to their damaging effects on the swarm’s communication abilities until repaired.”