One Second After by William R. Forstchen
|
List Price: Our Price: $13.97 You Save: $12.02 (46%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $10.93 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of One Second After
Book Review: A frightening piece of fiction about what may be tomorrow's reality
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book the same week that North Korea set off another nuclear weapon and launched several missiles. Iran, as well, launched a missile or two. Washington politicians talked a little more than those in Europe about proliferation, but the reality is that the apocalypse described in "One Second After" is getting closer all the time.
"One Second After" is based upon scientific fact or, at worst in some places, on educated conjecture. The science largely comes from the "Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack". You can find this fascinating, if very depressing, study online.
One moment, Black Mountain, North Carolina is a small, exurban town, host to a college with 600 hundred students, no large businesses, just a pleasant little place gaining favor as summer hideaway for people from the larger cities. Black Mountain is, however, strategically located on the Interstate highway system and provides the water supply to a larger nearby city.
Suddenly, the phones die along with all the electrical appliances. Just a second before, everything worked - and now, one second after, they don't.
John Matherson is a former U. S. Army Colonel who came to this town with his wife, when she was dying of cancer. She had grown up here. Matherson is now a Professor of history at the local college. Widowed father of two daughters, Matherson is respected within the community.
Within hours it becomes clear that the power is off - perhaps forever. Every modern electrical device is dead, fried by a suspected Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack on the United States by, at this time, parties unknown. The United States has, in an instant, been thrown back into the 19th Century.
21st Century people aren't well equipped to live under 19th Century conditions.
Matherson's immediate concern is his 12 year old daughter who has Type 1 diabetes. Without a constant supply of insulin, she will die.
The story shifts quickly to how the community reacts. Matherson is at first a respected outsider, his military experience and standing as Professor and his level headedness appreciated.
First, there are hundreds of people whose cars and trucks simply stopped on the Interstates. They flow into town, some of them being less than wanted. There is an immediate concern about food. How are these several thousand people going to be fed for any appreciable time? No refrigerators or freezers are running; no trucks are bringing in fresh supplies every day.
What about the nursing home in town? The elderly and frail who need refrigerated drugs and constant attendant care?|
There are no radio broadcasts, no television, no internet: no communication with anyone outside the town.
Author Forstchen pulls together the pieces, scaring the reader in the process. This can happen - and, thanks to the our politicians, likely will happen. Forschen resorts to a few plot devices that strain a bit: the fortuitousness of his wife's family being sort of car collectors and having a couple of Fords so old that the EMP didn't affect them: no electronics. A local towny has a vintage airplane that comes in very handy. Again, it is so old that it has no vulnerable electronics.
The human story becomes everything. Without modern utilities and supplies, disease surges. The social order begins to break down. It is too late in the year to plant crops - and, anyway, few people here know how to farm. Skills that haven't been needed in several generations become indispensably vital. The town must organize its young people to defend itself against marauding bands. Choices must be made about who gets how much food - and what people are to be deliberately underfed to the point of starvation.
Forstchen is unsparing: the United States is no longer the land of plenty it once was.
It falls to Matherson and a few others, however, to keep the United States a nation of laws, of individual freedom, individual responsibility and moral decency in the sense of treating people as you would want to be treated,
Amidst the action of a post-apocalypse survival story, Forstchen writes a morality tale as well. Increasingly, Matherson is forced by circumstances to assume a leadership role as the circumstances become more dire.
This is not a happy book. This is not a pleasant book. It is, in fact, a frightening book, one that is calculated to have the reader asking US leaders why we are not doing more to prepare for this attack that will come, while doing our best to defend against it.
For me, this was one of the most frightening books I've read in a long time. It is, unfortunately, prophetic and in the not too distant future - unless the nation takes action - the scenarios described here may well become painfully real. This is a book that concerned citizens should read - and then move on to the "Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack" Executive Summary, 62 pages of data that will have you writing your Congressman.
Jerry
Book Review: An emotional and gut-wrenching story of survival after an EMP attack...
Summary: 5 Stars
Imagine that one day, just like any other day, you're driving down the highway and your car dies for no reason... as do the thousands of other cars around you. Electricity? Out. Radio broadcast? Nothing there but static (provided the radio even works). Cell phones? No signal, same as the landlines. It doesn't *look* like a storm took out power, but how do you explain the utter failure of everything that you depend on in your life? It could be an EMP... an electromagnetic pulse generated by a nuclear detonation high in the atmosphere that creates an electrical surge that destroys electrical devices as it races along. This is the premise of William R. Forstchen's book One Second After. The book can easily be thrown into the apocalyptic genre, but not so deeply that it loses its touch to people like you and me. I found myself emotionally spent after reading this book, having experienced a few "wet eye" moments along the way due to some similarities between the lead character's situation and my own should that ever happen to me. I really couldn't put the book down.
After the pulse renders much of modern civilization in the United States inoperable, the small town of Black Mountain, North Carolina starts to come together to try and make sense of it all. John Matherson, a history professor with a military background, quickly figures out that an EMP is the most likely cause of the situation, and people start to look to him for leadership and moral guidance. And the testing starts early... People stranded on the freeway wander into the town looking for food and lodging. Stores begin to run out of food, and people start reverting to looting. Most importantly for Matherson, medical supplies dwindle, and he has a daughter who is a type 1 diabetic, dependent on insulin for her survival. He himself needs to tread a very thin line between playing by the rules or getting the extra insulin by force if necessary. His wife has already died of breast cancer, and he is not going to let another family member die if he can help it.
As the days unfold, the news only continues to get worse. Asheville is demanding that Black Mountain take 5000 refugees. They refuse the request as they don't have enough supplies for their own survival. Food continues to dwindle, and severe rationing is put in place. Martial law is imposed with death penalties for actions that endanger the survival of others. As more and more people die off due to existing medical conditions, disease starts to decimate the community given the lack of sanitary conditions. And the US government, the hope of survival for everyone in the town, is seemingly non-existent. The townspeople start to come up with "old-time" methods for doing things we take for granted, but it still doesn't solve the problems related to no food and no medical supplies, as Matherson soon finds out as his daughter's insulin supply continues to shrink with no chance to obtain any more.
One Second After is definitely not a story with a happy or "feel good" ending. Life has forever changed, sacrifice and duty are hard but necessary, and death is a daily companion, either for yourself or someone close to you. Reading Matherson's frustration and despair when it comes to his daughter's diabetes was especially hard, as I have a son with the same condition. I would end up in the same position as Matherson, with the same outcome in all likelihood. The scenes of battle against superior forces attacking the town were also emotional, knowing that kids who had weeks before been attending college were now spread out on the front line with rifles, ready to die to protect their fellow townspeople. It was hard not to get choked up over the heroic and selflessness displayed.
This is an excellent book on many different levels. It shows our vulnerability to a weapon such as an EMP attack. It exposes the true nature of human beings when societal controls are removed. It also shows how people can come together and sacrifice for the common good if they have a leader who is strong enough to make the hard decisions. This is definitely worth reading.
Disclosure:
Obtained From: Library
Payment: Borrowed
Book Review: EMP - perhaps the single greatest threat to America
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a post-apocalyptic tale of small town Americans trying to survive after a devastating EMP attack on the US. If you don't know what EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse), it is one of the nasty side effects of a nuclear detonation that will fry most/all electronics within line-of-sight to the blast. Several nuclear weapons detonated high above the US could destroy virtually every electronic device currently in use. Just imaging what would happen if every computer, every car, every cell phone, anything with any electronic circuits suddenly stopped working. We would be thrown back to the 19th century in a microsecond. As Forschen states in his intro, he wrote this book to help spread awareness of this potentially devastating attack that the vast majority of Americans are blissfully unaware of. There has been a heightened awareness of terrorism, airliner hijackings, etc. after 9-11, but those threats pale to the potential damage an EMP attack could do - and it would require a large country with the resources of China or Russia to carry out such an attack. As the recent government commission on EMP states (linked off Wikipedia if you are interested), such an attack is one of the few threats to the US that would/could end our way of life.
This story is the fictional tale of a small town college history professor in North Carolina (based, I believe, on the author himself) who must struggle to survive after the America that we know has been destroyed in an instant. No cities are destroyed in nuclear fireballs, the bombs themselves do little damage. The day after the attack, little has changed in the small NC town. Nothing electronic works, but people think it is a power failure, a weird Solar occurrence, and that power will quickly be restore by the authorities. It rapidly becomes clear that the power isn't coming back soon, if at all, as it slowly dawns on the residents of this small town that they are own their own.
If you like Alas Babylon and Earth Abides (and similar post-apocalypse tales), I think that you'll find this one particularly compelling. One aspect of this genre that I find particularly enjoyable is how the author examines the effects of the removal of things/services/functionalities of everyday life once Doomsday has arrived. In this book, the author examines the effect of the termination of electricity and regular deliveries of food and medicine on the sick (the main character's daughter is diabetic) and the elderly. There is a scene in which the main character visits a nursing home several days after the power is gone that I don't think you'll forget quickly. As time passes, the survivor overcome one difficulty after another - the most significant is hunger though. For all those survivalists types, the author makes it pretty clear that there aren't enough deer, bear, squirrels, wild hogs, racoons, etc. in the woods to feed more than a small fraction of the current US population. Living in a relatively rural area would only give such survivors a bit of breathing space, nothing more, until the local food was exhausted and large numbers of refugees from the large cities descended upon the small towns like locusts.
One thing that I (really) didn't like was that the author kept trying to subtly insert new-con politics and ideology into the text. There is an intro by Newt Gingrich (and it is clear that Forschen and Gingrich are friendly - having I believe written several other books together). The message in the text is pretty clear that if you aren't a Gingrich conservative in world view, you aren't `prepared' for such an apocalyptic disaster. Additionally, the story never states who actually attacked the US, just that the vague members of the Axis of Evil (North Korea, Iran, etc.) are singled out for retribution - more Gingrichian/neo-con boogey man politics. Forschen obviously has his political axe to grind, but don't let this stop you from reading this book. I think this is destined to be linked with classics such as Alas Babylon and Earth Abides, definitely worth reading.
Book Review: A MUST READ - A very timely, well thought out, and important work - Everyone should read this book and learn more about EMP
Summary: 5 Stars
My first exposure to the dangers of EMP came through reading this exellent book. This author takes you on what I've recently learned would be an all-too-realistic journey about what would happen when there's a large-scale EMP attack if we don't wake up and do something about it fast. After getting into the book, I started looking into some of the facts and science. Once a read the congressional reports on this subject and other materials that I came across online, I was shocked. First of all, I couldn't believe that I hadn't heard more about this before through the media. Second, I couldn't believe just how likely and devastating this type of scenario would be. And, lastly, I was (and still am) amazed that nothing is being done about it.
In addition to reading this book, you at least need to look at the preface and the first 5-10 pages of the 2004 Congressional EMP report (available at www.empactamerica.net or directly at http://www.empcommission.org/docs/empc_exec_rpt.pdf). Be prepared to be shocked. If you read that report and aren't interested in this book and learning more about EMP, you might want to check your pulse.
Just to give you an idea about how timely this book is, on Tuesday, July 21, 2009, there was a little known hearing by the House Homeland Security subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, and Science and Technology about "Securing the Modern Electric Grid from Physical and Cyber Attacks" in which the bi-partisan congressional sub-committee openly discussed this threat with great urgency as a clear and present danger to our nation, and pointed out that we are woefully unprepared and need to act now. I've never seen anything like it. I highly recommend that you watch a video of that hearing (available at www.empactamerica.net or directly at http://homeland.edgeboss.net/wmedia/homeland/chs/elecgrid.wvx).
Last but not least, there is an unprecedented conference coming up on September 9th and 10th, 2009, in Niagara Falls, NY on protecting America from continental shutdown from an EMP attack. Featured speakers include the Author of "One Second After" William Forstchen, Former Governor & Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee, Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, Members of the EMP Commission itself, and many other EMP experts from the military, industry, and academia. I strongly encourage everyone to go to the conference if you can. If you can't go, please at least take the time to learn more about this subject and get involved as much as you can. You can learn more about that at www.empactamerica.net.
One great way to learn more, and get a realistic understanding about the subject matter of EMP and what we could all face at anytime, is to read the book "One Second After." I've come to realize that it's not just another book; it truly is a very timely "must-read" about a present-day and potentially devastating threat to our country and our lives. I think that this book could have a profound effect on our country when enough people read it. It could turn out to be an alarm bell that spurs action by our government and/or the private sector to protect our power grids and other critical assets before it's too late. If not, it may turn out to be an invaluable survival guide for those of us who do read it and are better prepared to act as individuals. I've been giving this book as a gift to my family and friends, and have been highly recommending it to everyone else - including you now.
Book Review: A National Table Top Exercise for Long-term Disasters such as EMP and Solar Storms
Summary: 5 Stars
On August 7, 2009, the first table top exercise for a year-long power outage was conducted by local emergency management planning officials from Erie County, the city of Buffalo, local towns and mission critical infrastructure managers. This is unique since table top disaster planning scenarios are crafted to encourage us to use our interoperable communications tools and work more effectively together. The EMP/100 year solar storm scenario is qualitatively different from all the other DHS scenarios in that in can take those tools away from us. As in much of the Katrina disaster, we can't be interoperable if we are not operable. (This exercise will be reviewed at the Niagara Falls, NY EMP conference Sep 8-10.)
One Second After is helpful, not only because it walks us through what might be a worst case scenario for EMP, it also prepares us to think about how to work through similar scenarios that can affect power and communications for an extended period of time. The recent warning from the scientific and engineering community presented at August Congressional cyber security hearings has been the recalibration of the worst case 100 yr solar storm scenario. Previously, most thought it might result in a week long black out. Now, consensus from the Space Forum, which includes NASA and NOAA, shows that such a storm could cause a one year black out with power rationing for the subsequent 4-10 years forcing $trillions in economic loss not to mention loss of life.
Once managers of critical infrastructure and emergency management professionals work through these scenarios, they can adjust the reality of such an event for their local environment. Low, medium and high-impact EMP scenarios were outlined in an economic impact assessment of a regional EMP event reported by the updated Congressional Research Service report on EMP from July 21, 2008. The good news is that the underlying economic impact assessment showed that protecting even 10% of critical infrastructure can minimize economic losses by maintaining core infrastructure and situational awareness. That kind of assessment and work is exactly what is called for by the fire code for business continuity, the NFPA 1600.
Unfortunately, many may get caught up in the argument as to whether the EMP issue is a way to push a missile defense program and get stuck in sometimes mean and too often mindless political debate. Since a solar storm can't be shot down with a missile, we can replace that bickering with a call to prepare by hardening 10 per cent or so of our critical infrastructure and think through "work-arounds" while that effort is in progress.
Recent research projects in public-private partnerships with the University of Maryland and the state of Maryland look at the use of EMP-hardened renewable energy systems and fiber optic networks as ways to create robust communication networks and local power alternatives in addition to what might be done to harden the grids. Others are exploring more local food production and storage.
At the end of the book, the question is raised, "why didn't anybody do anything about this ahead of time?" Hopefully, this book, and others like it, will motivate us to work through the issues in our local communities and do something rather than take the easy path of merely arguing over smaller details and partisan political agendas.