One Second After

One Second After
Author(s)	William R. Forstchen
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Post-apocalyptic novel
Publisher	Forge
Publication date	March 17, 2009
Media type	Print (hardcover and trade paperback) and audiobook (audio-CD)
Pages	350 pages
ISBN	0-7653-1758-3
OCLC Number	243544624
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 22
LC Classification	PS3556.O7418 O54 2009

One Second After is a 2009 novel by American writer William R. Forstchen. The novel deals with an unexpected electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States as it affects the people living in and around the town of Black Mountain, North Carolina.

The book was released on March 17, 2009 and reached the number 11 position on the New York Times Best Seller list in fiction on May 3, 2009.^[1]

The option for the film rights to One Second After was initially sold to Warner Bros., where it subsequently expired. A new option is currently being negotiated with another studio as of August 2011.^[2]

A trade paperback edition was released on November 24, 2009.^[3]

Plot summary

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 nearby Ashville.

At 16h50m (4:50pm) EST on 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 black-out, 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. John remarks near the book's end that the survivors have the technology of the early 16th century.

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. Two months post-pulse, a working antique telephone is set up to connect Black Mountain with Swannanoa.

The family of Matherson's late wife have been car collectors on a small scale, and they happen to have a 1959 Ford Edsel and a Mustang 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 cannibals, 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. The Black Mountain militia get more rations than the other citizens.

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.

A full year post-pulse American soldiers appear to take over, 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 - described as from off the Icelandic coast - and near Japan and Korea.

America is described as having 30 million survivors, with China occupying the West Coast with 500,000 soldiers; meanwhile Mexico occupied Texas and the American SouthWest as a protectorate against the Chinese.

The book also describes the increasingly intimate relationship John develops with a un-married and childless nurse called Makala Turner stranded by the pulse.

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 easy hygiene, 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 (although John's young daughter manages to survive until Day 163). 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 refugees from the cities 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. New York City and Florida had a 95% die-off from its infighting among their large populations, low levels of cultivated land, high elderly population, the lack of air conditioning, rampant transmission of disease, and natural disasters such as hurricanes.

Non-Fiction Afterword

The book contains a brief non-fiction afterword by United States Navy Captain William Sanders about EMP, which includes references to the reports of the United States EMP Commission ^[4] and the book The Effects of Nuclear Weapons by Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, published by the United States Department of Defense, which is considered to be the standard reference on nuclear weapons effects^[5].

References

1. ^ New York Times Best Seller list, fiction, May 3, 2009
2. ^ One Second After, Official Book Web Site
3. ^ MacMillan, One Second After - publisher's book webpage
4. ^ US Government, Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack website
5. ^ Glasstone, Samuel and Dolan, Philip J., The Effects of Nuclear Weapons. Chapter 11. United States Department of Defense. 1977. [1]

External links

• Official Website: One Second After (www.onesecondafter.com)
• US Government, Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack website

See also

Novels portal

• Electromagnetic pulse in fiction and popular culture