John raised his Glock, muzzle touching the man\u2019s forehead. \u201cGo on, you bastard,\u201d he whispered. \u201cBe like me; drink my blood once I am dead as I would have drunk yours. I know you are hungry. You do it, and all who follow you will join in, for they are hungry, too.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
A minute later, another ten were shot, their deaths greeted with angry shouts of approval. And it was as if at that moment a film was winding through John\u2019s memory. Old grainy film, Russians hanging from makeshift gallows in that cold winter of 1941; the etchings of Goya, Spanish prisoners pleading, holding up their hands as French soldiers of Napoleon gunned them down; naked prisoners being led to a pit by the SS, kneeling down, shot, bodies tumbling forward. It was the face of war, of all wars, and now it was here and it was us against ourselves, John thought, as we fought for the last scrap of bread and now even for the bodies of the dead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
A battlefield, he thought. Memories of photos of the dead at Gettysburg, bodies lying in the surf at Tarawa, the dead and wounded marines aboard a tank at Hue. Always photos, but never in a photograph was there the stench. The battlefield stank not just of cordite but also the coppery smell of blood, feces, urine, vomit, the smell of open raw meat, but this raw meat was human, or once human. Mixed in, the smell of vehicles burning, gasoline, rubber, oil, and, horrifying, burning bodies, roasting, bloating, bursting open as they fried.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The few elderly in the community still alive were pressed into service to teach the now all but forgotten art of canning. The problem was, there were hardly any proper canning jars and gaskets, which sealed them, to be found.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Black Mountain had lost close to eighty percent of its population in exactly one year, the college just over sixty percent, including the casualties from the war.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat percentage survived here?\u201d \u201cAround twenty percent, maybe a bit less if we count those who came in after it happened.\u201d Wright shook his head. \u201cIs that bad?\u201d John asked nervously, wondering now if he had failed. \u201cBad. Christ, it\u2019s incredible up here. Places like the Midwest, with lots of farmland and low populations, more than half survived, but the East Coast?\u201d He sighed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey say in all of New York City there\u2019s not much more than twenty-five thousand people now and those are either savages or people hiding and living off scraps of garbage. A thermonuclear bomb hitting it directly would have been more humane.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe had our asses handed to us, that\u2019s the truth. Just several bombs, and we had our asses handed to us. With luck there might be thirty million people still alive in what was the United States.\u201d \u201cWhat do you mean, was?\u201d The general shook his head. \u201cCourse you wouldn\u2019t know; we\u2019re not talking about it on Voice of America. You can write off the Southwest, including Texas, unless we can dig up another Sam Houston and Davy Crockett. During the winter, Mexico moved in. Claimed it was a protectorate to counter the Chinese.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cChina. Oh, they came with aid, plenty of aid for the few survivors after sixty days of anarchy and disease. And now there\u2019s five hundred thousand of them on the West Coast, California to Washington State, clear up to the Rockies.\u201d \u201cWho?\u201d \u201cChinese troops. Here to help us of course,\u201d Wright said, his voice bitter. \u201cOh, they\u2019re giving out aid, even helping with some rebuilding, but there\u2019s no sign they ever plan to leave.\u201d \u201cSo it was them?\u201d The general shrugged. \u201cWe\u2019ll never know, most likely.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJohn, three missiles total. One launched from a containership out in the Gulf of Mexico and burst over Kansas, Utah, and Ohio. The cargo ship, typical, had Liberian registry and had docked at half a dozen places, including Oman. We think the weapons might have been loaded aboard there, a medium-range missile capped with a nuke inside an oversized container. That ship, by the way, blew up right after the launch, no one survived, so it fits the terrorist model. Another over Russia, launched from another containership from near Iceland, same scenario, the ship blew up right after the launch. We don\u2019t know why over Russia rather than over Central Europe. Maybe its guidance was screwy, but that did mean England and parts of Spain were spared. Last one burst lower, but still high enough to knock out Japan and Korea.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOh, we might of gotten even, John, but America a world power? They won; we\u2019re finished. We\u2019ve retreated from around the world, trying to save what\u2019s left, and for those that hated us that\u2019s victory even if we flattened their country in retaliation, and John, frankly, we might never know who really did it to start with. \u201cThere were no red meatballs, swastikas, or red stars on planes dropping bombs this time. Just three missiles launched from freighters out in the ocean, which then were blown up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
A well-designed nuclear weapon detonated at a high altitude over Kansas could have damaging effects over virtually all of the continental United States. Our technologically oriented society and its heavy dependence on advanced electronics systems could be brought to its knees with cascading failures of our critical infrastructure. Our vulnerability increases daily as our use and dependence on electronics continues to accelerate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
As former Speaker Newt Gingrich describes the potential catastrophic consequences of an EMP attack over the United States, he notes that \u201cthis is not idle speculation but taken from the consensus findings of nine distinguished American scientists who authored the Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
These highlights are from the Kindle version of One Second […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":15162,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"yoast_head":"\n
"One Second After" Highlights<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n