Say Anything Blog

Today’s book report is on the novel One Second After.  This is a work of fiction written to help raise awareness of the dangers of an attack on the US with EMP, electro magnetic pulse, weapons.

The story was reminiscent of books such as Alas Babylon by Pat Frank and Lucifer’s Hammer by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven.  I understand that Niven and Pournelle are in the process of writing a sequel, 30 some years later than they should have. 

I have to compare the story telling unfavorably with those two books.  On the other hand it was a good book and a good read.  The story follows a retired army officer who lives in an idyllic college town in North Carolina.  Early in the story he’s on his cell phone talking to an old friend in the Pentagon when his phone and everything else in the country JUST QUITS WORKING. 

The story follows the normal predictable path for the genre as the main character deals with hunger, cannibals and sickness.  While the story line is predictable I have to say that it’s upsetting to read the personal struggles that the main character has dealing with his daughters diabetes in a apocalyptic world.

If you liked the books I compared it to, you’ll like this book.  If you read those books and hated them then I guess you shouldn’t waste your time.

The author wrote this book to help warn the public about the dangers of EMP.  He’s even got a website more concerned about alerting the public than in selling books. (Although it does say that he’s working on a movie deal.) 

After finishing this book last weekend I looked into the subject a bit.  We’ve known about the dangers of EMP for years, but every year as we get higher tech we are more in danger.

One thing I found out was that we don’t have to only worry about EMP weapons.  Solar flares could do a lot of damage as well.  These are rare events but they do happen.  I guess there was a solar flare around an hundred years ago that would do a ton of damage today if it were to happen.

EMP weapons don’t seem to be that hard to build for a nuclear power.  The bigger problem right now would be getting them in place (hundreds of miles above the atmosphere.)  I don’t think we have to worry about an Iran or North Korea being able to do it right now, but give them 10 years I think it would be possible.  Certainly China could do it and Russia has had the capability for years and years.

That leads me to wonder what we can do about it, which was the purpose of the book after all.  It seems to me that we need to decide what needs to be protected and what doesn’t. 

I can live without my Ipod and my cell phone but I can’t live without my refrigerator or my hot water heater.  Industrial equipment needs to work as do trucks and tractors.  I don’t think we’d get along very well without cars.  All of those would fail in the case of an EMP attack as the electrical supply grid would fail beyond repair.

But things aren’t all that bleak.  In the spirit of Carrick style research I began by looking at the Wikipedia article on EMP.    The article had the picture below of the effects of an EMP bomb burst above the center of the US. 

“Because of the curvature and downward tilt of Earth’s magnetic field over the USA, the maximum EMP occurs south of the detonation and the minimum occurs to the north.[23]”

So anyway the EMP will occur and the entire country will be out.  Meanwhile I’ll be sitting in that little green zone listening to my Ipod and blogging to myself.  Won’t really be that much of a change really.