One Second After is a horrifying novel about life after an EMP.
John and his family are surviving. John has started moving on after the death of his beloved wife Mary four years ago to cancer. He is raising his two daughters Elizabeth and Jennifer with the help of his mother-in-law Jen, who is also finding a way to adjust to life without her husband who is now in a nursing home.
Life is good. It's not easy, but it's good. That is until the day America collapses from an EMP strike. EMP-Electromagnetic Pulse is a high altitude explosion caused by the detonation of a nuclear bomb in the atmosphere. Anything electronic can no longer operate. This means more than TV, video game systems and radios. This means electric stoves, refrigerators, cell phones and even automobiles.
Suddenly John's little mountain town of Black Mountain is cut off from the rest of the world. Once word gets out to the residents that this is more than your average power outage, people begin to panic. They loot the local grocery store and raid the pharmacy to get supplies knowing this could last not only for weeks, but possibly months or even years.
Eventually the food starts to run out and the town is put on rations. Plans are made to not only determine how to survive for an extended amount of time with no food being shipped in, but how to grow a new food supply, prepare for the future, rebuild, and protect the community from other desperate citizens of nearby areas who are in the same boat as they are and are also starving.
One Second After is chilling. Even the book's Afterword gave me goosebumps. It's so chilling because this absolutely COULD happen. How prepared are we to handle a catastrophe of this magnitude? 4/5 Stars
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