So how much damage from EMP pulses?

Brighton which is ground zero for the closest nuclear strike to Boston is about 5 to 10 miles from downtown Boston?

Course Tube technology is suppose to be more resistant.

a Faraday cage could mitigate a lot of EMP, depending on what you're asking. If you're looking to shield a building, a wire mesh could be installed in the walls. Given that there is a lot of work with electronics, where induction could be an issue, it may be a consideration for some labs- they would even most likely have their own dedicated power source.

I would imagine anything that's hooked up to an exposed wire grid (power/phone lines) are gonna be pretty jacked up, even some tube tech. Its more resilient, but not immune. Also any RX/TX arrays (towers, dishes, waveguides, and associated circuitry) that is energized when the bombs hit.

So MIT is sure to have some shielded labs and mainframes.

The rest of the Boston Electronics are toast.

Wonder how Codsworth and the other robots survived.

Double Post

I think it's plausible that MIT, or parts of it, are shielded, somehow. And it may be that buildings built with concrete and re-bar would offer some dampening. Many buildings have their own dedicated reactors for power as well, which i assume would require shielding due to radioactivity.

As for codsworth and robots at large, they aren't hooked up to the grid, if they're wondering about. It could be assumed that some shielding plus tubes- internal to robots means they are afforded some resistance.
We do see a lot of hostile robots in f3, so perhaps they're functioning, but a bit scrambled up, due to emp.

For the subject of communications, though. Most of it that was energized would be fried. Think of it along the lines of someone yelling directly into your eardrum.

There are phones.. they're everywhere. In higher populated areas you'd see phones sitting on desks. Just because we didn't see anybody using them didn't mean they weren't in use. In fallout world they'd probably only be used for local communication since nobody is running around the country setting up phone lines.