by Robert M. Traxler

This may be a large surprise to the good folks on the left, but those of us on the right do read books.

A series of three books was recommended to me: One Second After, One Year After and The Final Day by William Forstchen. The premise of the series is that terrorists, with the assistance of North Korea and Iran, detonate a few atomic warheads many miles over the United States. Launched from the sea, the origin of the weapons cannot be readily identified.

The detonations, fallout or blast do not in themselves damage any property or take any lives; they are standard nuclear warheads that are used as EMP weapons, standard nukes that emit an Electronic Magnetic Pulse (EMP) that fries every unhardened electronic chip in a massively large area under the detonations.

Passenger aircraft fall out of the sky; modern commercial aircraft, some three thousand, are in the air at any one time over the United States, all depend on electronics to fly. If you think about it, the number of vital items and systems containing microchips is astonishing.

Cars, trucks, vans, trains, phones, computers and electronically controlled devices. Generators, pumps, medical devices, manufactured items that use a chip-controlled machines, like most producing lifesaving drugs, manufacturing machines for items we use every day, are all fried. Food distribution and farm machines also will not function. No distribution of food, fuel, drugs, purified water, no police protection, fire services, government support, no refrigeration or commercial canning to preserve food, no heat or air-conditioning. The lack of sanitation will see the rise of diseases like dysentery, cholera and typhoid fever. Urban areas will be hit the hardest.

Money will have no value; even if you have a mountain of cash on hand, it will be good to burn as fuel and not much more. Those stores not looted will be stripped or out of food inside of a week and no restocking capability will exist. The drugs we depend on for life will be worth more than gold. No drugs for diabetics or heart patients, no lifesaving surgery involving computer imaging. No antibiotics to stave off post-operation infection will be available, as hospitals would be looted for life saving drugs. Infections we cure with an antibiotic without much thought will kill mostly the young and old, and above all (horrors of horrors) Starbucks will not have designer coffee.

Good honest folks will kill for food. Recovery from the attack will take years; stocking up on food and fuel will only stave off the inevitable.

The EMP weapon-tipped missiles the North Koreans are equipped with (twenty or more and counting) and an unknown number for the Iranians do not need to be accurate or sophisticated to be effective. Our anti-missile systems look to destroy a missile after it reaches its maximum height and begins to descend; with an EMP weapon it can be effectively detonated any time during its flight if it is over an intended target like the United States. Please remember the North Korean leader (AKA Little Rocket Man) has sent rockets over Japan already and his weapons can reach the west coast of the United States. Launched from a ship at sea, they can completely cover our nation.

After reading the series I was surprised and concerned; the ease of use and large area of destruction of an EMP brings home the need to limit the power of religiously or politically driven fanatics with access to nukes. Sure, our boomers, missile submarines, can destroy Iran or North Korea, but to determine what group, with help from what other group, is responsible for the attack will take time, and depending on the resolve of our government may never happen. No other country in the world will be destroyed by an EMP as totally as the United States. The author estimates 25% of the population dies in the first year, 57.5 million, with no food, sanitation or medical care, and that number is probably low.

The series of books walks you through the very believable scenario of such an attack and will educate and concern all who have the intestinal fortitude to read them. Warning: it just may scare the crap out of you.