What I Think about "One Second After" by William Forstchen

For those of you who don't know, "One Second After" is a story about how the small town of Black Mountain, North Carolina tries to survive after an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is detonated over the U.S. The story follows Colonel John Matherson (ret), a local professor and widower with two daughters, who finds himself in a leadership position in the community as all social order begins to break down. Ultimately he becomes the leader of a local militia who repel a massive attack by scavengers and raiders while balancing the many other problems within the community and his own family. The book is designed to demonstrate on a small scale just how devastating the impact an EMP attack on the U.S. would be, and I think Forstchen makes his point clear. Thankfully, he abstains from preaching about our current unpreparedness until the last 1/3 of the book.

Forstchen makes it clear that a modern U.S. community would all but break down and barely survive after an EMP attack. Food and medical supplies would be insufficient to support our vast populations, and any patriotism or neighborly ways would be quickly replaced by selfishness and savagery to the point where people would do just about anything to survive. The doctor of the town is the prophetic voice for the town and us throughout the book, outlining step by step the decline of society by disease, insanity, etc. and an objective view of the outline must concede it to be accurate. In the end, the community finds a state of balance where it can support its own population, but not after losing thousands and thousands of people. The final number across the nation was 250 million. Sadly, I think those numbers would be accurate too.

Imagine the vastness of the infrastructure needed to sustain our current population, and then consider how much of that relies on electricity to operate. All of the food and medical supplies that are constantly shipping and arriving across the nation is staggering. In the event of an EMP attack, communities would no doubt find themselves isolated, forced to fend for themselves and in most cases completely breakdown and self-destruct. While that is not the focus of this book, I think it's pretty clear that is what was happening in the larger cities throughout the country at the same time as the events in the story.

An EMP attack on the U.S. is not an impossibility, no more than any sort of chemical or nuclear strike. What this book solidified in my mind is how our enemies would benefit the most from this type of strike over any other. Sure, the body count from your action wouldn't be high at all, but imagine the scope of a victory over an opponent that you bring down and barely lifting a finger to do it. The United States would, in the words of Lincoln, "die by suicide." We would quickly turn on ourselves, our neighbors, our communities and our country in order to survive. We'd destroy ourselves. Isn't that a greater victory than just destroying a few buildings? I say it is, and it's a frightening concept, particularly since I know I lack the survival and manual skills necessary to survive in a world without electricity. I would surely be one of the millions who would die from starvation or something far worse in the aftermath.

As a fictional work, "One Second After" is good as long as it doesn't preach, and it does not for the majority of the book. Unfortunately, the foreword by Newt Gingrich immediately puts the reader into the mindset that this is an analysis of what could be, and that we should be looking deep into the story and worry about what could happen to ourselves. We're not permitted to enjoy the work as a pure work of fiction, and that diminishes the work. But on the whole I think this was a very well-written, well-thoughtout book. Forstchen definitely looked at the big picture to imagine the multitude of things that would breakdown and worked many of them into his story. The fortune of Black Mountain to have the location and resources to survive as well as they did allows the story to work, and the characters move the story forward well. The scenes of loss are particularly strong.

I really only have two complaints. I've mentioned how the preachy message of the book diminishes the fictional pleasure of the read. The other is how the massive battle towards the end of the book is told in the past tense, looking back over sections of the battle after the fact. It allowed Forstchen to move on to the rest of the story but really killed any tension that had been built up in the previous chapters and threw the pace of the story off significantly.

If you're into post-apocalyptic novels, this is one definitely worth reading. If you'd rather not think about if you'd be willing to pick up a gun and shoot your neighbors to get food or go hunting instead of visiting the grocery store, better to stay in ignorance.