One Second After

One Second After Black Mountain, North Carolina is a small town, host to a college with about six hundred students, no large businesses, but gaining favor as a 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. On the afternoon of the first day described in the book's narration, the phones suddenly go dead along with all the electrical appliances. Just a second before, everything worked; but now, just one second after, nothing seems to work. John Matherson is a former U.S. Army Colonel who came to Black Mountain with his wife when she was dying of cancer. She had grown up in the town. Matherson is now a Professor of history at the local Montreat College. The widowed father of two daughters, Matherson is respected within the community. Within hours it becomes clear that this is no ordinary power outage, and that the power may be off for a very long time. Every modern electrical device is dead, destroyed by what Matherson is beginning to suspect is an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the United States by unknown attackers. The United States has, in an instant, been thrown back into the 19th century; but the narration in the book points out that 21st century people are not at all equipped to live under 19th century conditions. Matherson's immediate concern is his twelve year old daughter who has Type 1 diabetes. Without a constant supply of insulin, which requires refrigeration, she will die. The story shifts quickly to how the community reacts. Matherson is a respected outsider, his military experience and standing as Professor and his levelheadedness are appreciated. There are hundreds of people whose cars and trucks simply stopped on the nearby Interstate highway. Those people make their way into town, where some of them are clearly unwanted. There is an immediate concern about food. The leaders of the community soon begin wondering how these several thousand people going to be fed for any appreciable length of time. No refrigerators or freezers are running. No trucks are bringing in fresh supplies every day. Concerns immediately arise about the nursing home in town where Matherson's cancer-stricken elderly father-in-law resides. The elderly and frail need refrigerated medicines, and many require constant nursing care. The EMP has damaged the nursing home's standby generator, which cannot be started. There are no radio broadcasts, no television, no internet: no communication with anyone outside the town. The family of Matherson's late wife have been car collectors on a small scale, and they happen to have a couple of Ford automobiles that are so old that the EMP did not affect them because they have no modern EMP-sensitive electronics. Another local resident owns a vintage airplane that later becomes very useful because it is so old that it has no vulnerable electronics. Without modern utilities and supplies, diseases surge. Minor wounds sometimes become seriously infected, but the community has soon exhausted its supply of antibiotics. The social order begins to break down. It is too late in the year to plant crops, and few people in the area know how to farm anyway. Skills that haven't been needed in several generations have become critically necessary. The town must organize its young people to defend itself against a marauding band of criminals, who eventually attack the community, resulting in a violent and deadly conflict. After a time, the extreme shortages of food necessitate difficult choices about who gets how much food and which people are to be deliberately underfed to the point of starvation. Increasingly, Matherson is forced by circumstances to assume a leadership role as the situation continues to deteriorate. Matherson, along with a few others, try their best to maintain a balance between the multiple necessities of rationing scarce resources, maintaining orderly law and individual freedom, as well as personal responsibility and moral behavior in the midst of deeply deteriorating physical and social conditions. Toward the end of the novel, it is revealed that the EMP was generated by three nuclear warheads launched from container ships. One was launched from the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of the United States and detonated in space over the states of "Utah, Kansas, and Ohio." The container ship was sunk by an explosion immediately after the missile launch, and no indication remained of who was responsible for the attacks. The other two weapons were detonated over Russia and near Japan and Korea. Die-off Sequence The book's premise sets the stage for a series of "die-offs." The first takes place within a week (those in hospitals and assisted living). After about 15 days, salmonella induced Typhoid fever and Cholera set in from eating tainted food, drinking tainted water, and generally poor sanitation. Americans have lived in an environment of vaccinations, sterilization, and antibiotics making them prime targets for third- world diseases. The lack of bathing and poor diet will lead to rampant feminine hygiene infections; deep cuts, rusty nail punctures, and dog bites go untreated with antibiotics, tetanus shots, or rabies treatment as more die from common infections. Critical medical supply and food thieves and others are executed in public as enforcement of martial law. In 30 days cardiac and other drug-dependent patients die-off. In 60 or so days, the pacemaker and Type I diabetics patients begin to die-off. Next, come the cold-turkey withdrawal for hard- core alcoholics and consumers of other addictive compounds such as Oxcodine, Prozac, and Xanax. The 5% of population having severe psychotic disorders that no longer have medication will re- create Bedlam. Jury rigged wood-burning stoves lead to carbon monoxide deaths and fires that cannot be controlled for the lack of a fire department. Then emigrants show up looking for food and shelter and the fight over scarce resources leads to confrontation, home invasion, and more violence-related die-offs. The community becomes an inviting target for free prisoners and organized gangs and more violence-related die-off. Ration cards are issued to conserve the little remaining food; regardless, the community slowly starves with the elderly the first to die-off. Next parents starve themselves to save their children. Throughout this period suicides are common. After a year, approximately 20% of the initial population has "survived." This was the "average" die-off for the country. Food-rich Iowa had the highest survival rate with a 50% die-off while New York city and Florida had a 95% die-off from its fighting among the large populations, high elderly population, and, in Florida, the lack of air conditioning, rampant transmission of disease, and natural disasters such as hurricanes. This book is available at: http://www.amazon.com/One-Second-After-William-Forstchen/dp/0765317583.

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