“ ‘Hey, Dad, something strange.’
“ ‘Yeah?’
“ ‘Listen.’
“He stood there silent for a moment. It was a quiet spring evening, silent except for a few birds chirping, the distant bark of a dog . . . rather nice, actually.
“ ‘I don’t hear anything.’
“ ‘That’s it, Dad. There’s no traffic noise from the interstate.’
“He turned and faced toward the road. It was concealed by the trees . . . but she was right; there was absolute silence. When he had first purchased the house, that had been one disappointment he had not thought of while inspecting it but was aware of the first night in, the rumble of traffic from the interstate a half mile away. The only time it fell silent was in the winter during a snowstorm or an accident . . .
“ ‘Most likely the accident’s further on and people were told to pull over and wait,’ he said.
“The girls nodded . . . It was almost eerie. You figure you’d hear something, a police siren if there was indeed an accident, cars down on old Highway 70 should still be passing by.
“And then he looked up. He felt a bit of a chill.
“This time of day any high-flying jets would be pulling contrails . . . ”
But there aren’t any contrails, or jets. It’s America “one second after,” to use the title of William R. Forstchen’s novel.
One Second After what? After an EMP attack. What’s EMP? “Electromagnetic pulse.” You’re on a ship hundreds of miles offshore floating around the ocean, and you fire a nuke. Don’t worry, it doesn’t hit Cleveland, or even Winnipeg. Instead, it detonates 300 miles up in the sky at a point roughly over the middle of the continent. No mushroom cloud, no fallout, you don’t even notice it. That’s the “second” in One Second After and what comes after is America (and presumably pretty much all of Canada south of Yellowknife) circa 1875—before Edison. The cars on the interstate stop because they all run on computers, except for Grandma’s 1959 Edsel. And so do the phones and fridges and pretty much everything else. If you were taking a hairpin bend when your Toyota Corolla conked out, don’t bet on the local emergency room: they’re computerized, too. And, if you’ve only got $27.43 in your purse, better make it last. The ATM won’t be working, and anyway whatever you had in your account just vanished with the computer screen.
[More]
At last a solution.
That should end all greenhouse gas emissions. No wait, think of all the fires accidentally and intentionally set and how the sky will be blotted out over most cities as the fires rage.
Think of runaway nuclear plants, explosions at oil refineries, ships running aground, airplanes failing out of the sky. Sound pretty ominous.
Anything more technical than personal weapons would be useless, so the military wouldn’t have access to much of it’s weaponry and would be limited by how far the soldiers could march.
Society would collapse. Cheery thought for a friday afternoon
mid island mike
Mark has a very vivid imagination. That’s what makes him so great but it appears he has a bit of competition.
Aren’t we supposed to go all super pessimistic over things like this? (Like Y2K)
S*S*S*S
mid island mike