REVIEW: One Second After

One Second After
Author: William R. Forstchen

Imagine this: One day out of the blue....no forewarning....everything stops. From simple things like digital watches to the most complex such as the entire power grid....everything shuts off. Gone. No power. No cars. Airplanes drop out of the sky. No communication. No weekly grocery deliveries to stores. No refrigeration. No restocks of drugs at the pharmacy. No nothing. All gone.

What would happen?

A friend recommended the After series to me because it's set in Western NC where I live. It made this story a bit more chilling because I know all the places, highways, towns....it really brought the idea close to home.

The basics: an EMP attack shuts down everything electronic....power, communications, most of the vehicles....everything shuts down in the blink of an eye without any warning. And it doesn't come back.  A small community in NC faces an apocalyptic event.....what do they do about all the people stranded on the Interstate? What about roaming bands of thieves? Do they enforce martial law? How do they handle distribution of food? Medicine? How can they survive?

This book really got me to thinking about how much we depend on modern conveniences.....and how many days my family could survive on what we have in the house (even our can opener is electric, not to mention the stove, the refrigerator.....)  What would happen (and how fast would things get dicey) if suddenly we blipped back to a world where we had to sustain ourselves DAILY. Waste management, water purification, safe food....it would all become very very important immediately. People with medical conditions would suffer immediately as medication supplies dwindled. The very young. The elderly. The infirm.

Yikes!

And the scariest part of the entire story is the fact that it could actually happen. EMP is not sci-fi....it's actually possible.

This book is not only an exciting story about survival....but it is also quite thought provoking. How many people in America know how to hunt? Grow their own food? Go without running water, electricity, a vehicle? Not just for a few hours...or a day....but for weeks, months, years....possibly forever. What if we all had to learn how to sustain ourselves.....who would survive? And who would die? For me, the setting near where I live really brought that message home....literally.

Chilling and very interesting premise! Well-told and expertly written. I already have book 2, One Year After, downloaded and ready to go.