Why do elecromagnetic pulses interfere with electrical appliances but not electrical impulses in humans?

Dave - An electromagnetic pulse is essentially a very, very rapidly changing electric and magnetic field. That very, very rapidly changing magnetic field will induce very large voltages in anything metallic, anything conductive. Those large voltages will induce very large currents to flow or sparking, and it will essentially just fry electronics. But Chris, why doesn't this happen in humans?

Chris - I can only guess that it's a question of the resistivity of the tissue because you can actually induce activity in the nervous system electromagnetically. We know that because if you take transcranial magnetic stimulation, what that involves is putting a very powerful magnetic field over the head and you can alter the activity of whole populations of nerve cells because the nerves behave a bit like miniature wires. If you put those wires in a changing magnetic field, you can change the activity of the nerve cell that's connected to them. So we know that the nervous system is sensitive to things like a big magnetic field. I can only think though that in this setting, it's because the human brain does not contain physical lumps of metal and therefore, there's not enough of a surge of current, or a big enough voltage produced to do the kind of damage that you would do to a gadget or a computer or any other piece of electrical equipment that would be exposed under those circumstances and basically, blow up.