dragonofcompassion
EMP: Electromagnetic Pulse
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Death Metal: An Apocalyptic Story
previous blog article on subject:a 100 ton Monster Missile named Satan from Russia
I read about a new Russian Missile that is a 100 ton missile that they call Satan today. I then started reading about the author Pat Frank and his book, Alas, Babylon 1959
that I read in the early 1960s about a nuclear holocaust in the U.S. Only I thought it might be interesting instead to write a short piece about a 100 megaton Hydrogen Bomb missile Blast at 100 miles up above the U.S. and what the EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) would do to EVERY civilian electrical device or Electrical generating station in the U.S.
note: 100 miles up is 528,000 feet in altitude. Likely if a hydrogen bomb of any size went off at that altitude there might not be any sound because it is just so high. But there might be a concussion or change in air pressure or some other kind of experience in the air. Also, it would be so far away that even if you happened by accident to be looking directly at it you might not go blind as you would if you were within 10 miles of it here on earth. My motivation is as an intuitive wishing this not to happen. By making more people aware of what could happen it creates people to stop it from happening. By just pretending like children that this won't happen doesn't stop it. What stops this from happening is enough people aware of it to stop it. So, because of North Korea and Iran and all the problems now in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria etc. I write this to make us all realize just how high the stakes really are with all the changes and unrest now on earth.
quote from wikipedia on nuclear bombs subsection "Hydrogen bombs": The other basic type of nuclear weapon produces a large amount of its energy through nuclear fusion reactions. Such fusion weapons are generally referred to as thermonuclear weapons or more colloquially as hydrogen bombs (abbreviated as H-bombs), as they rely on fusion reactions between isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium). However, all such weapons derive a significant portion, and sometimes a majority, of their energy from fission. This is because a fission weapon is required as a "trigger" for the fusion reactions, and the fusion reactions can themselves trigger additional fission reactions.[10] Only six countries—United States, Russia, United Kingdom, People's Republic of China, France and India—have conducted thermonuclear weapon tests. (Whether India has detonated a "true", multi-staged thermonuclear weapon is controversial.)[11] All thermonuclear weapons are considered to be much more difficult to successfully design. end quote.
The Beginning of the End: George was walking on one of his familiar trails that he walked with his two dogs one or more days a week, his older dog was part long Hair german shepherd and part australian shepherd but he was getting old now for a big dog of over 70 pounds now because he was 12 years old. His daughter's Gold and white Pembroke Welsh Corgi came along. She was doing much better than the older dog because she was only 5 or 6 years old now. At one point he saw a flash in the sky out of the corner of his eye, but because he didn't hear anything he thought it might be an illusion until he thought a few seconds later that his pocket was on fire. He reached in his pocket and threw his keys out of his pocket while swearing from being burned. His metal snaps for his jeans and belt buckle started to burn him as well so he stripped his pants off and watched the arcing from his pants and his keys toward a nearby tree. Though George was a little hard of hearing it sounded like a lot of sounds like the snapping buzzing sound of the static electricity from his keys to the tree and the snapping of almost anything metal that he had. He noticed that his glasses plastic case had melted from the arcing from even his glasses. In the distance it sort of sounded almost like electric crickets buzzing in all directions. He watched a transformer explode on a telephone and power line and then watched the lines arc and melt off the poles. He sat on the ground and thought either he was near a lightning cloud and lightning was about to strike or something really strange was going on. He started going through in his mind what could have caused this strange thing. He looked up and there was a very strange sort of cloud that reminded him of pictures he had seen of mushroom clouds on earth. But this one seemed to be higher than jet passenger planes fly by twice or more. Since there was no sound he just thought it was maybe some really strange super high Thunderhead. In the last 10 or more years he had noticed that there was always some crazy kind of weather going on either near where he lived or somewhere else on the TV news or weather channel.
When he looked up into the air towards this strange high thunderhead he started to get a really bad feeling about all this. He thought, "Was that an EMP? one by one all his understanding from the 1950s to the end of the Cold War in the 1980s came true in a truly nightmarish way regarding EMPS (Electromagnetic Pulses) caused by a thermonuclear explosion at 100 miles or more altitude above a nation. He heard a banging on his front door when he returned home and his neighbor Bob was crying. George found out from him that his wife was dead in the kitchen from the EMPEMP proof two way radios. So, his neighbor took off on one of George's bikes and returned after not too much time.
Note: I'm not sure why but pieces of my writing keep disappearing almost every time I proof read it. Since I'm composing online this is becoming sort of problematic for me. However, I think people need to understand that what I'm writing about could happen anywhere on Earth. And though it is theoretical none of it is a fictional concept but rather what scientists have basically told us what would happen if someone set off a nuclear missile at 100 miles or more above a country like the U.S., Europe, Russia, China or anywhere else here on earth.
Colonel Bob said, "I found out at the fire station that it was a terrorist from the middle east who set off the Russian 100 ton missile called "Satan".
George said, "Well, That's a relief! At least it wasn't a country." Bob Said, "Yes. But it does also make our country vulnerable to our enemies." George said, "But don't we have doomsday weapons?" Bob said, "That actually is our biggest problem right now because they are set to go off soon and I don't know if any vehicle is running so that the doomsday weapons can be stopped at this point." George said, 'Where will they go?" Oh. They are programmed to return a devastating blow to whatever nation that missile sprang from. That is why this is so problematic." George was starting to get an even sicker feeling as he thought about this. He said, "What percentage of people in the U.S. has died?" Bob said, "Well. They said at the Fire Station that at least 50 to 70 million people have died from being near pieces of metal like cars toasters, sinks, bathtubs sliding glass doors and the like. But I would say from what I was taught about stuff like this that it is between 1/3 and 1/2 of the U.S. population in the lower 48 states." George felt sick again and said, "I'm sorry about your wife, Bob." Bob said, "I can't think about that right now. You and I have to maintain order here until things start to get better and that could be anywhere from weeks to months." George said, "We could starve by then." Bob said, "No. Our biggest problem likely will eventually be looters who become desperate." Bob said, " I think you and I should gather all the canned goods and bread and things like that from all the houses where everyone died or where they are visiting another area." George said, "What if they return?" Bob said, "Well. Then we will share food with them after we show them their friends and relatives graves that we dug."
George who had been a survivalist in the early 1980s said, "We need to dig a latrine behind each of our houses because we can't waste water on flushing a toilet." Bob agreed but said, We need to keep the bowl filled with water because if it dries up the smell from the sewers might become unsanitary." George agree that at least for now this would be a good idea." He said, "What about showers?" Bob said, "Even though this is onerous for now, I think we might need to bathe in the ocean." George said, "Do you remember what it feels like to have salt on your skin?" Bob looked George in the eye and said, "George. We are in survival mode. We don't know how long we will have to hold out with candles, no refrigeration, no cars, no markets, no nothing here. We may even have to start shooting looters." George didn't like this idea. But after all, Bob was the military man. George said, "Will canned foods be edible? What if the EMP weakened all the cans or blew holes through them." Bob looked stunned but realized George might be right about any metal container. He said, "We need to look at canned foods carefully to see if they look edible or if there is any leakage from inside.
Around this same time a bus drove up and at this point George and Bob felt like they might have re-entered some kind of normal world that they had lived in up to about 6 hours ago when the EMP hit.
It was a military bus wired and designed especially for exactly this kind of problem delivering his wife and daughter. It had been going to schools and malls and police stations and fire stations and city halls to try to return anyone home who wanted to go there if that area was safe to return to. Since they had radioed ahead to George and Bob's Fire Station, they had heard about George and Bob as appointed Volunteer Sheriffs for the duration and knew this area was secured and that the dead in that area had already been buried with the homes marked that there were shallow graves in the back of each home and the names of the dead on the house as per military protocol developed during Hurricane Katrina and before. In this way mortuaries and relatives could gather their dead whenever they were able to. And yet, the neighborhood would be free from disease from rotting corpses out in the open.
As Bob and George came out when they heard the bus, George found a tear coming to his eye at seeing his wife and daughter coming off the bus. He could tell they both had been crying but were now hanging tough as they knew it was necessary. George and his wife and daughter fell into each others arms and Bob could not help but letting a tear run down his face because he and George had buried his wife and many of their neighbors the last few hours. A Sargent Major with a pistol strapped to his hip got off the bus along with a corporal from a local Army base carrying a sub machine gun over his shoulder. The Sargent major handed a two way hand crank radio to Bob since he was known to be a retired Army Colonel and told him how to use it and what frequencies to transmit on for different purposes. It turned out that the local Army base had most of its weapons and transportation EMP ready for just such an occurrence. He told Colonel Bob that NATO had been mobilized and that the U.S. bases around the world were mostly returning home to defend the U.S. from any further problems and to help gather and bury the dead in areas where literally all able bodied men and women had died. There were many children that needed to be gathered up various places that had been playing out in school playing fields when this had occurred who had survived all this and they needed to be found if they weren't with a responsible adult. Orphanages needed to be organized even in their own area. The Sargent major pulled off a motor driven Bicycle for Colonel Bob off the rack on the back of the bus so he could perform his new assignment as a local officer in the re-establishment of order to his area.
George's wife while the Sargent Major and Colonel Bob talked showed him a diagram of a way to make his motorcycle able to operate again by using any household wiring that wasn't damaged in the EMP. Since most motorcycles can be push started without using a starter, work arounds had been created by Military mechanics to make motorcycles and motorbikes usable again. This is much more problematic for most cars, however, unless they are also light enough to push start and have manual transmissions. Because this will not work with automatic transmissions.
As the Sargent Major left again he said the corporal would be guarding this area at night from looters with his assault weapon and would be under Colonel Bob's direct command for the present and that he would stay at the fire station during the day to assist the Firemen keeping locals supplied and alive.
Colonel Bob and George and his wife all sat in George's living room while Colonel Bob told them of some of the changes. He said, "Well. The Sargent Major told me of my responsibilities regarding our community. I need some help gathering kids before it gets any darker to make sure they are all okay from local schools. Also, I need to check houses beyond where you and I went, George. George nodded not wanting his daughter to know about how many people they had already buried that day. Bob understood as well as he had grown kids himself that he also wanted to know if they were alive. Bob said, "I need to radio to Denver where my son lives and to Fort Lauderdale, Florida where my daughter lives and see if anyone had seen them." George and his wife looked kind of worried as Colonel Bob did this. In about ten minutes Colonel Bob was sort of upset and he said, "Well. My son and daughter are okay but my son's children are missing from their school and his wife died in the garage getting into her car. So my grandchildren have to be found. However, I can't do anything about that here on the Pacific Ocean but I can help people here. Corporal Mark here and I are going to travel around and try and find any kids and adults left alive in this area and to do what we can to help for a few hours. After that, I'll drop Corporal Mark off at the Fire station and introduce him to the fire Captain and the firemen left alive there. George, do you have any firearms and bullets?" George didn't like the sound of this but he knew it was coming and said, "I have bullets for a pistol and an old Army M1 with bullets for that as well. But it hasn't been shot in about 20 years." Bob said, "Give it to Corporal Mark so he can test it as he is trained in things like this." Corporal Mark took the rifle and put the base of the rifle on the far side of a tree with his arms around the tree and fired the rifle into the ground and said, "I think it is okay. If it were going to explode the barrel it would have then. I think the gun is usable and safe for now." George after seeing this technique of checking for the safety of a gun did the same as the corporal for 3 more shots before he felt safe using this rifle in an emergency. He knew the pistol was usable because it had been shot in the last 5 years or so. George handed the small caliber pistol to his wife and she strapped a belt through the holster and put it on for safe keeping during the night. He said, "Because there is no electricity I'll build a fire in the fireplace but we are going to have to use candles. We should also put wicks in any bacon grease from any bacon we eat tonight to make bacon grease candles for use outside gathering wood at night, because the Bacon has to be eaten tonight because it won't be safe tomorrow to eat without refrigeration." George's wife said, "Will the canned goods be safe?" George ran out the door to ask the corporal if he knew anything about canned goods. The corporal said, "I have a card here that tells me that you have to smell it before you open the can to see if you can smell anything bad on the can. And you also need to look carefully at the can to look for irregularities. But this soon you could probably get away with eating most things in cans. It's going to be after tomorrow when you really have to be careful." George said, "I wonder how many Americans are going to die of spoiled food in the next few days and weeks?" The Corporal said, "I can't think about that. We all have to keep those still alive alive any way we can think of and that's my assignment tonight for this area.
So, after a dinner of bacon and anything else that looked ultimately perishable and putting everything else in with the remaining ice in the freezer section of the refrigerator, George and his wife started to read about how to convert his motorcycle to use by converting household wiring for use in the ignition system of his motorcycle. George's wife said, "Now that you have filled all the bath tubs with water, how are we going to take showers?" George said, "we can only sponge bathe for a while. We can go into the bathroom with a few cups of water and a rag and basically wipe off for now. The other choice is to go down to the ocean." His wife nodded sadly. She went into the other room where her daughter was reading by candlelight. George heard a few shots in the distance. He hoped they were just warning shots scaring off looters and hoped no one new was dead.
About a half an hour later Colonel Bob came back to his house and came over and talked to George and said, "About 3/4 of the people in this area are dead. We didn't have time to bury them all but we notified the fire station and surviving neighbors from all around are being taught how to dig shallow graves that can easily be dug up by authorities or relatives at sometime in the future. We put a grave marker on the grave with the name and the date of the person if we know who it is. I left Corporal Mark at the Fire Station. He will be assigned as one of the guards of the station and will range out through the area looking for looters. Every neighbor that I could I introduced to him and also told them that I am the Military incident commander and that I'm working alongside the local fire captain at our fire station."
After that, George and Colonel Bob sat in the living room taking turns cranking the radio to see what they could find out locally and nationally regarding all this. It appeared that most of the nation was in a sort of panic and chaos. George and his family and Colonel Bob were lucky to be in a nice surburban community along the Pacific Ocean where at its worst they could boil seawater and distill it to have water to drink in an emergency. Colonel Bob told George of a method where you take seawater with a piece of plastic like they used to hold water in the bath tubs and create a pool of it there near the ocean. Then using black plastic on could create a solar distillery to create at the very least a cup of pure drinking water on a sunny day or even more if you had enough plastic to create a bigger pool and catch basin for pure distilled water to drip down on into a separate small pool of pure distilled water.
By listening to the hand crank radio that had solar cells for collecting enough battery power during sunny days as well, they found out that all the NATO countries had already mobilized their Red Cross groups and military planes and were landing at major airports throughout the U.S. with bottled water and MRE's (meals ready to eat) to keep people alive in the short run. Also, tractors and skip loaders were being shipped to bury the up to 100 million bodies of Americans decomposing throughout the land. Though 2/3 of the population likely was still alive, the priority now was to prevent the deaths of up to 1/3 more during the next month from bad food and water panics and looting and mayhem throughout the U.S. during this first month of basic survival without electricity for the whole lower 48 states and parts of Canada and Mexico. George and Colonel Bob listened very carefully as they heard that a Cargo plane from Canada was arriving tomorrow morning at 6 am at their local passenger jet airport. Colonel Bob said that he wanted to see if he could get some radios to pass out to some of the more distant neighbors in his area. He said, "Some of the older people are starting to lose hope and don't see how they can survive this. Some of the younger people likely are feeling like that as well. But most people over about 25 to about 55 or 60 seem to be taking all this in stride as much as possible. So, I'm going to get up and take a back pack of some sort. Do you have a big backpack like a Kelty or something, George, that I can borrow?" George said, "Yes. I used to be a Sierra Backpacker so I have one big enough to be useful. However, you have to be careful keeping your balance carrying a lot of weight. Remember it's only a motorized bicycle. Also, do you need more gas before you go so you can get all the way there and back on a single tank of gas?" Colonel Bob said, "Thanks for reminding me, there's no gas gauge on this thing, you're right. I think there is a reserve tank but I'm not used to using a reserve spigot." George said, "There's a reserve spigot on my motorcycle too, but I usually use the trip indicator like a gas gauge." Colonel Bob said, "I've got one of those on the motorbike. Maybe if you and I syphon some gas out of my car and put it into the motorbike I can reset the trip indicator and use that like a gas gauge like you do on your motorcycle."
George said, "By the way, what was all the shooting about?" Colonel Bob looked glum and said, "Well. The looters are beginning to show up from poorer communities. We were able to scare them off with warning shots so far but by tomorrow it's possible we might have to shoot some of the more crazy and desperate ones if they come back and start making trouble again. I wish we had a phone line working. That's one reason I want every house to have a two way hand crank radio working as soon as possible. We need a network to protect everyone here in this community now." George nodded.Then on the news came another disturbing fact, all planes that were jets mostly crashed at the time of the EMP or shortly thereafter in the U.S. This likely meant that 6,000 planes crashed that were jets when the EMP happened. If one took an average of 100 people on board all these passenger planes then 600,000 died in those crashes alone. Whereas private planes because they have mostly mechanical (without electrical and hydraulic assist) rudders and flaps might have glided in safely if the occupants didn't immediately get electrocuted and at least one person was left alive on board who could actually land the private plane.
Another thing that Colonel Bob and George spoke about, "Oh George. I almost forgot. the last time I visited the Fire station the Fire Captain there told me that the doomsday weapons hadn't gone off. Somehow someone was able to disarm them." George said, "Well. That's a relief. That could have really been a problem for the world to deal with on top of this." Colonel Bob said, "I'm really beginning to realize that we are sort of in a temporary stone age here in the U.S." And I'm not sure how we are going to be able to pull out of this. We were already trying to survive a Great Recession and now this." George said, "I think that the old ways of thinking have to be rendered obsolete to make any sense of this at all, Bob." Colonel Bob said, "What to you mean, George?" George said, "Well. What if you were in a plane that crashed? Does it really matter what is happening in the rest of the world if you don't survive.?If if you are way out in the sticks trying to survive nothing else matters at that point but whether you survive or not." Colonel Bob said, "So, what you're saying is that our whole country are like survivors of a plane crash in the wilderness with no one to help them?" George said, "Sort of. Yes."
Colonel Bob said, "So, how do you reconcile other countries helping us now?" George said, "As far as you an I are concerned, it is as if there are about 100 to 200 people trying to survive remotely and only one person is hiking in with food. That one person can't save everyone. But they might save 5 or 10 people's lives. You would need 25 people hiking in and helping those 100 people for it really to make a difference." Colonel Bob said, "I think you are right, George. That is probably the best way of thinking about this that I have heard yet."
Colonel Bob said, "So, how would you see the survival strategy for the man in the street of our nation?" George thought a moment and said, "Well. I would say it is sort of Nobles Oblige which is the "obligation of those with the means to help those that don't wherever possible." Colonel Bob said, "And how does that play out in real time?" George said, "Well. That's the million dollar question isn't it?" Colonel Bob smiled and said, "Yes. That is the real test of any nation in how it treats the have nots during a real crisis like this one."
George said, "I'm thinking that if we get enough help from our military in Alaska and Hawaii and overseas deployments that it might greatly reduce casualties here in the U.S. Do you think we will have a problem with cannibalism in the cities?" Colonel Bob said, "Well. When people have various drugs and no food that is always going to be a problem isn't it? Even though most people when they come down might have to commit suicide or self destruct in other ways, that could become a problem for Americans especially who are very spoiled and not used to hardships of any kind. So, this will really be a test for the survival and basic sanity and order of the U.S."
Colonel Bob said, "What do you think about help from the outside world?" George said, "Well. All nations might be vulnerable because the main policeman nation isn't there to protect them during this time. So likely nations like Iran and North Korea and to some degree China might run roughshod over the rest of the world during these times. We'll have to wait and see what the outcome is while everyone is off balance worldwide from this. Remember what happened when the Earthquake and Tsunami hit Japan and none of the big companies had 24 hour electricity anymore. And then on top of that the floods in Thailand stopped all kinds of electronics and other car production there? Many cars couldn't be manufactured easily in every part of the world for a long time after those two events. Having the whole U.S. down will have a similar effect on multiple levels worldwide." Colonel Bob realized George spent a whole lot of time thinking about these sorts of things whereas Bob was more of an in the moment with enough discipline to solve any situation kind of guy. He didn't like to think about all the details until some task was assigned to him. So, George and Bob were a contrast in two styles of dealing with the problems of life as they arose.
Just about this time both men were sort of made sick by one of George's dogs sauntering by with a human hand in its mouth. George hoped it wasn't Bob's wife's hand from her buried body. They were allowing the dogs more freedom in their neighborhood so they could warn better of incoming looters and strange people. George and Bob now wore Colt .45 pistols given to them by the Army and badges as Volunteer Sheriff's Deputies. However, their duty was limited to their own neighborhood and the area covered by their nearest fire station.
Bob said, "Damn it I hope that isn't my wife's hand!"
George's german shepherd was old but he was also really smart. So when George said, "Where did you find it, Boy?" the german shepherd mix started walking to where he found it. About two blocks away they found what looked to be a looter that had been shot by one of the locals. Unfortunately, the local had died too. Luckily, (or not luckily) the Dog had chosen the looter's hand to take rather than the neighbor that the dog knew. George said, "This is awful! Here Boy! Give me the hand!" And both men set to dig shallow graves in the back yard of that home so the hand was buried with the looter in the back yard. On the front of the house was written the deceased owner's name and the word "Looter" because they had no other explanation for what had occurred and no police to call to investigate. This turned both of their moods more glum and they didn't speak much the rest of the day.
About 5 days after "The End of Electricity" the water to both Colonel Bob's house and George's house stopped running for good. So, they both knew that this was going to make life more difficult. George and Bob put plastic containers at all of their downspouts because most nights there was dew coming off the roof and down the downspouts because they were on the ocean. Also, some nights fog would cover the trees and plants and roofs with moisture and some of that could be collected too. George and Bob and George's wife and daughter read books a lot more than they used to to keep sane and to keep going. So, each of them started reading books until George's wife said, "Why don't we read a book to each other so it is something we can all share? So, they began reading a book together in the afternoons. They also found that it was best to go to bed with the sun and to get up with the sun. So, everything they did started to be based more on when the sun came up and went down than before when there was electricity. Besides, Candles burn down and flashlights need batteries and eventually they were both only used for emergencies. Since there were deer in the area that lived there in profusion one day Bob said, "We should shoot and dress a buck. If we only shoot bucks the local herds of deer can replenish themselves because they only need one strong and wily buck to impregnate all the females. Since George and his wife were having some gum problems because of not enough live foods they agreed. Also, George remembered about a lady from London that was a friend of his in the 1980s that had lived through the blitz there in London by eating lawn clippings in her meals as salad. She said that people who didn't do this and didn't have live food often died during those times. So, George told this to Bob who spread the idea around the neighborhood about how to stay alive during these times without fresh live food. So, George got out his M1 and gave it to Bob who was a marksman and a hunter and he brought down a buck nearby the next morning and George walked his new contraption which was two bicycles tied together with a piece of plywood for hauling heavy things and pulled the buck home on that and dressed it on the telephone pole outside and allowed it to bleed out. So, for the next few weeks they had venison and his wife found a jerky recipe and so she made jerky with the rest before it went bad. George said, "There is a way of making buckskin where you cure it with deer brains to make it soft. I studied with a Native American Medicine man who told me about this. Bob sort of looked at George Wide eyed and said, "Yes. We probably could do that but we also need to maintain decorum for when the Red Cross and help arrives in this area.
Two weeks after the END of Electricity the Red Cross arrived with bottled water and a vehicle provided by the U.S. military. On board was one of the "doctors without borders" who looked at everyone in the area and wrote down all the names of the living so it could be entered into a database of who was alive and still kicking in this area of California. The doctor also checked all the graves of bodies and checked the names that were known to have died in the area and added that to the database as well. They left 5 cases of bottled water for every house with 2 or more people in residence. They left MRE's for about 1 month for each home for each person and told them only to eat canned goods as a last resort. Then they left with the firm intention of coming back within one month to leave another months worth of water and food.
The next day a United Nations Relief helicopter landed in front of Colonel Bob and George's house and asked them both if they had had problems with looters. Bob and George said that except for the dead looter who killed their neighbor that they had buried that they had been able to scare most looters off with a couple of shots over their heads with a pistol or rifle. The officer said, "Did you hear the shots that killed the neighbor and looter?" Colonel Bob said, "There are shots that we hear in this area and surrounding areas every night so we never know which is just a warning shot and which is a wounding or lethal shot. There is shooting every night. The UN officer said, "How many shots a night approximately?" George spoke up and said, "Oh, I would say we hear an average of about 100 shots a night but the sound likely carries about 10 miles around us and we are only responsible for about 1 mile in all directions. The Fire Station has about 10 sets of Volunteer Deputy Sherriffs like us now that keep the peace 24 hours a day. But we have to be called somehow to be able to protect people. There are no phones and we have only hand crank two way radios."
The UN Officer said, "We are ordering solar panels so you can charge your walkie talkies so you will have the battery power to leave them on all the time. In the meantime here are about 20 walkie talkies for your area and some already charged rechargable batteries. Both Bob and George really smiled at this idea. There hopefully would be no more neighbors dying at the hands of looters.
George said, "The only problem with that is that we get a lot of fog here and it isn't sunny all the time like it tends to be inland."
The UN Officer said, "Well. I have something I could give you if you have a bicycle. It's a recharger run by a bicycle on a stand. Would that be helpful?" George nodded and said, "But the solar panel recharger we could use too." The officer said, "Okay. We will get you one of those too." George wasn't entirely convinced that they would get the solar Charger too.
Colonel Bob said after they left the UN Officer, "You know, George what he told me in confidence? " George said "What?" Colonel Bob said, "They think the terrorist that did this to the U.S. had ties to both Iran and North Korea." George said, "What does that mean?" Colonel Bob said, "Well. What it means is that this terrorist died trying to launch this thing in Russia and then when people got one of his fingers they were able to trace where he was from and what his path towards all this actually was. George said, "Does that mean that Iran and North Korea (either or both) were directly involved?" Colonel Bob thought carefully about this question. He said, "No. It just means that he has been both places for several months in each place." George said, "Well. Then if there is no way the governments can be implicated it doesn't mean anything at all." Colonel Bob said, "Tell that to people who lost relatives in this." George said, "Yes. We definitely live in a whole new world don't we?" Colonel Bob said, "I hope it doesn't get any crazier than it has already." George said, "Me too."
Then they noticed things were starting to get more organized. There started to be daily patrols by car or truck by UN troops and soon the fire station was given a Windmill to set up to generate electricity. All the able bodied men and some women helped assemble the large windmill that stood over 100 feet high with the huge blades there next to the fire station. At that altitude at the ocean there was almost always a breeze on shore or off shore or even north or south or some other variation. So then, a line was run from the fire station to as many of the neighbors and George and Bob's house that were within a certain distance from the Fire Station. Also, a large bank of storage batteries was installed that was connected (potentially to both wind and solar) so when one wasn't charging the large battery system if it was daylight out the solar cells kicked in or vice-versa. Solar Cells from China were delivered to the Fire Station as well for when the winds weren't blowing. So when there was enough power the fire station would turn it on to all the neighbors of their area including George and Bob's house.
So, now it was two months after "The End" or "The End of Life as we Knew it to be" and they now had electricity sometimes once again. Later that week the fire station brought a ZAP re-chargeable Electric Pickup truck for George and Colonel Bob to drive to the nearest Supermarket that was now an MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) storage area to pick up food for their neighborhood and various other duties to their neighborhoods. The nine other sets of Volunteer County Sheriffs Deputies surrounding their Fire Station also were given the use of the United Nations ZAP rechargeable Electric Pickup truck as well to do the same thing and to patrol their area to keep all their neighborhoods safe as well. So, all ten sets of Sheriffs Volunteer deputies rotated through the use of this Zap pick-up rechargeable truck.
The United Nations had obviously given a lot of thought to this. Since the old infrastructure had all been destroyed in the EMP it was infinitely more useful to set up a new infrastucture than to replace and repair the old one. There would be no land lines for phones anymore (at least at first and maybe ever). It would all now be first Walkie Talkies with a few miles range and then stronger ones and short wave and then back to microwave towers for Cell phones all charged by wind or solar or gas or diesel generators. The next day a diesel portable United Nations Generator arrived for when wind or solar failed in their area. The next day 100 gallon water tanks arrived from NATO to haul in the Zap electric Trucks to everyone so they could once again have sponge baths, and more easily wash their dishes. 10 miles away a NATO desalinating portable system was desalinating Seawater until all the cars blocking roads could be towed off major roads by fire trucks or pushed by Army trucks off all highways not open yet. Once this was done large Military convoys of water trucks would suck up water from nearby water sources (mainly rivers and dams) and haul drinking and wash water to people in their area until replacement pumps for previous water systems could be obtained from overseas or Canada or Mexico.
Outhouses and Latrines were still going to be used throughout the area for some time though because there still wasn't enough available water to flush toilets or to take anything but the shortest of showers. The United Nations had also brought things that looked a lot like big hot water bottles that you left out in the sun during the day and then while it was still warm from the sun tied to the edge of your shower or shower head in your shower to take a very short shower which immediately made everyone in the area a whole lot less grouchy by being able to be completely clean and less itchy.
Once a month a United Nations truck came by with "Doctors Without Borders" and medicines for everyone in their area. (Many people had already died from their prescriptions running out in the Fire Station ten neighborhood districts even before the Doctors had arrived the first time) and others had gotten very confused or ill without their medicines as well since George and Bob lived in a fairly well to do area in which a lot of people were either retired or semi-retired. And most of the people who lived here had college degrees and had been Military officers, CEO's of businesses, teachers, doctors etc. So, there was a wealth of experiential knowledge in this area. One one level since no banks were open yet because there was no electricity network existing yet it didn't really matter a whole lot who these people were because money didn't really exist again yet because most banks before this existed on a primarily electronic basis. So, if you didn't have money or food or things in your home already likely you might not have made it alive through the first month anyway. So, one reason a good group of these people in this area had survived is that those that survived all had to be more than 6 to 12 feet from any metal in order to have survived. And since these pieces of property were large it was more possible to be more than 6 to 12 feet away from any metal than in other areas. So, for example, people who survived were walking their dogs, jogging or possibly gardening when they had to throw anything metal away from their person before the "closeness to Metal" killed them. George saw a person whose Smart phone had melted. He thought it was an Iphone by the shape that melted into the man's leg. The man said it had burned his fingers as he threw it against a tree to make it stop burning him. George was secretly incredibly grateful to have forgotten his IPhone in his car where it melted there all by itself from the EMP now one month ago. He wondered how many people had had their cell phones and smart phones injure or maim them when the EMP hit all the lower 48 states and parts of Canada and Mexico.
Colonel Bob because he was a "Called UP" retired Army officer came over to Bob's house and George Noticed he was kind of pale. As George said to him, "What's the matter?" Colonel Bob sort of motioned George to speak to him outside where the women couldn't hear them. George said, "What's wrong now, Bob?" And Bob said, "I've got some really bad news, George. Most of the States directly under the Hydrogen Bomb are all dead. In fact everything has died pretty much including all animals and plants in the Central States. And there are areas as far west as Arizona and as far East as Louisiana where everything is dead: humans, birds, animals--- Everything!" George was kind of in shock so he just blurted it out: "Well, I once lived in Mt. Shasta when in " July 15, 1991 – Dunsmuir, California: A 20,000-gallon tank railroad car containing the herbicide metam sodium derailed from a northbound Southern Pacific freight train, tumbling off of the bridge over the Sacramento river at the Cantara Loop and rupturing on the rocks below. The car's entire load spilled into the river. Virtually every aquatic organism on a 40-mile stretch of river was killed.[6] end quote from
1991 list of train accidents from "Wikipedia"
George said, "When this happened every organism died for 40 miles that had been living there from time immemorial. But within a few months nearby River creatures from upstream replaced their now dead and extinct cousins." Colonel Bob was noticeably shaken but started to recover a little bit. He said, "So there might be hope for the future for those areas?" George said, "I think most of what we were hit by was the EMP. I think the radiation mostly stayed on the very upper end of the atmosphere of earth. Likely all that radiation will trickle down through winds and rains universally for thousands and millions of years to come down upon earth. I don't really know what that will mean for life on earth. But the initial EMP I think did its damage to everything within a millisecond or so about as fast as a digital picture being taken or something like that." Colonel Bob laughed a very dark laugh in gallows humor and said, "If you were trying to reassure me that didn't do it. I was fine until I realized that all or most of the radiation from that hydrogen bomb blast 100 miles up will harm all life on earth for thousands and millions of years to come. That's pretty Sick, George." George said, "I didn't have anything to do with it, Bob. I'm just very good at logic. I used to be a computer programmer, you know." Colonel Bob said, "You are as intelligent as I am disciplined as an officer. You are my research man from now on, George." They both laughed.
George said, "The other thing I was thinking about is that probably at least 1/2 of all satellites were permanently fried, destroyed or whatever depending upon their proximity to the 100+ megaton load of the Hydrogen bomb. So, either the concussion of the explosion would send them banging into each other since there are literally thousands of them out there, most inactive and old, so probably GPS devices don't work very well worldwide for planes and ships and hikers now or at all because they wouldn't be able to give accurate triangulations between satellites because you need three acccurately stationary positioned GPS satellites to get you within 3 feet of your present location on earth using lattitude and Longitude co-ordinates. So, that's likely been gone for most of earth between about Hawaii and Alaska and Europe at the very least. Maybe it would be okay from about Columbia south to the tip of South America or something like that. Bob sort of looked at George and said, "I don't think the U.S. could afford to replace those satellites now. George said, "Well. Maybe Europe and Canada and Australia and Japan or a consortium of nations will get together to replace the GPS and weather satellites that have been damaged." Bob said, "Well, This explains all the shooting stars we all saw for the first month after the EMP at night."
The next few weeks were fairly uneventful. They went to bed still mostly with the sundown and got up with the dawn because of the long habit of doing this to save resources. However, every now and again when the wind was blowing good and they knew there was plenty of electricity in their batteries they stayed up late and neighbors got together to play music or listen to music or short wave or other programs from around the globe that one could now obtain on radios given to them by the military or the fire station. So, the neighborhood became more like a settlement or even a family of families. And one night during one of these get togethers there was something on the news about trying to open up individual banks and allowing people once again to visit the banks and to be able to get out money and to buy things once again. Though George wondered what it was that people would buy outside of garage sales, still it was something new to do as things got back to "normal?". Of course, the old normal was gone forever. And the new "normal" was sort of a work in progress every day now. He had heard some news that since water pumps had been started again on nearby farmland some of the farmers were going to try to grow crops once again. The hardest part hadn't been the water, it had actually been trying to find an engine for a tractor for planting and harvesting of crops. Someone had donated one from a part of Canada that hadn't been hit with the EMP and everyone was very happy to have at least one local farm in the county back in the business of growing food at least for the local county area. No one had any imagination that there would be any way to ship the food outside of the county. So, because of this it was thought that taking about 100 acres and dividing it between useful crops for the county to consume would be the most useful thing to do. So, for this first farm in the county to go back into production this is what they did. They also heard that they were one of the first farms in the state to start growing food once again. Since everything living was dead in most of the Central States this wasn't going to happen there anytime soon. All plant and animal and bird life that was above ground or water when the EMP hit was now dead in those states.
When George got his Kawasaki 650 dualsport running again he was pretty happy. He had found the instructions not completely useful for his bike but had finally adapted them to use on his. However, the motor bike that Colonel Bob was running had already drained about 1/2 the gas from one of Colonel Bob's vehicles and almost 1/2 of the gas George had in one of his vehicles. So, he wondered about firing up his motorcycle because it burned more gas than the motorbike even though it could obviously carry more weight. So George started to experiment with using the rear wheel section of one of his bicycles with a piece of plywood between the motorcycle and the bicycle wheel so he could carry more weight. He wasn't happy with the results yet because it seemed kind of precarious and dangerous unless he had higher voltages and an arc welder which he didn't have now. So, sometimes he would use this contraption just to go to gather firewood in the forest and just carry sort of light loads for now. That was only driving it about a mile or 2 with no traffic on the roads except for walkers and bicyclists for the most part. When people saw he had his motorcycle running they often stopped him and asked about how he got it running and he told them that if they had a stick shift car or motorbike or motorcycle that he might be able to help them get it running from what he now knew through rewiring his motorcycle with household wiring. For now, he was push starting his motorcycle because he couldn't replace the battery which had exploded along with every battery in every car, motorcycle, or vehicle in the U.S. parts of Canada and parts of Mexico. So, he had figured out (with the Army schematic's help) a workaround so his motorcycle worked a lot like others did during World War II when they didn't have batteries at all. He basically only needed enough electricity to get a spark on time to his spark plug on his Thumper(single cylinder) dualsport . He wasn't sure he could run his motorcycle at night though because the headlights might take too much electricity to get a good spark and to keep it going. The thought reminded him of when his generator had gone out in the 1970s and he had had to drive in the middle of the night from Long Beach to San Diego in his VW bug on Battery alone. Whenever his headlights were on the cars spark got less and the car started to go slower. So, if he didn't see any other cars he turned off his headlights because it was between 2 and 4 am in the morning traveling down Interstate 5 towards San Diego and home. Somehow, as a college age kid he made it all the way home that way, just turning the lights on and off enough to see and to get home in one piece alive and well. He wished he was back there now. It made him sick every day to contemplate 100 million to 200 million American lives snuffed out these last few months now.
It was now November, the Electromagnetic Pulse from the 100 Plus Megaton Hydrogen Bomb had gone off about 2 weeks after the 4th of July. Bob was getting more and more depressed from losing his wife but was spending more time with one of the widows in the area that had lost her husband within a month of the EMP, and she wasn't a person that would do well without someone to take care of her. So, even though externally Bob was okay, he needed someone there as a companion to help emotionally take care of him too. So, as friends (at first) they decided that she would cook for him and take care of him and that he would protect and defend her as well. This was a workable friendship and survival grouping. Also, her husband had been retired military as well. So, she knew the drill.
Though there had been a lot of hope in setting up workable microwave towers for cellphones, in the end that had just proved to be a bridge too far for almost everywhere in the U.S. So, they had gone back to using satellites between fire stations beyond the range of radios to do most of the survival communication regarding residents of various areas. In the end people were getting worried because winter was coming on, and in this area of the coast the lowest temperatures (in the mid to low 30s Fahrenheit) would be coming now in November and after. George hoped they didn't get any 100 mph winds off the ocean like they did every few years because keeping the roads open (except for bicycles) was going to be a problem because of all the trees that fall in those high winds and because of the lack of enough gasoline everywhere in the U.S. at present and not enough chain saws that had been reconfigured and still worked or could be made to work (since all petroleum refineries in the U.S. were still down and not likely to be operational for another 5 years or so. Petroleum refineries were dependent upon large power stations working but they were not a priority in the U.S. right now. There were much bigger problems to be solved like moving people to warmer climates so they all didn't die in the northern winters of cold and snow without enough wood to burn to stay warm for that many people. In the end there just wasn't enough dead and dying wood to burn for everyone to stay in place. People just had to migrate south to survive. A few could stay but very few were prepared enough in this day and after the EMP. And cutting down any more live trees would just make more of the U.S. a desert.
And, though MRE's (Meals Ready to Eat) kept a body alive, that body if it was over about 30 or 35 years of age wasn't going to be very happy if it had to eat (only MRE's) through the winter. So, everyone kind of knew that the only way many of the older people (older than 30) were actually going to survive cold northern winters was if they migrated further south. Since many had never lived anywhere else it was believed that they would see an incredible number of people dying this winter in the Northernmost parts of the U.S. without electricity for heating, fuel oil for heating, natural gas for heating and good, live and healthy food for eating. Because when the buses came to move the people south they really were not allowed to take much with them. So, they all knew that their houses would be vandalized while they were gone even if they returned in the spring on another military bus to their northland homes.
One night Emma (the widow) who had moved in with Colonel Bob and Colonel Bob came over next door to George and his wife and daughter's house and Bob and George got to talking while all the ladies gathered in the other room talking out their issues with survival now in the U.S.
George started out and said, "Y'know Bob, this time we now live in reminds me in some ways of the 1880s to about the 1920s. We don't have electricity or plumbing everywhere. We don't have lines of electricity running everywhere. But in addition to this we don't have operational farms except where someone donated a tractor or they have gone back to using draft horses to plow and to haul wood and such once again. And even there how do you feed a horse unless you have a pasture? And how can a horse work hard with only pasture land to graze on. That means that only when the pasture's green could the horse have enough to eat to feel good enough to work and get anything done at all? Bob said, "Yeah. It's sort of like we live in this nether world where we have some of the things we had before but it is different than anything before in history. Nothing like what happened here ever happened on this scale before where 100 million people die on a continent and then another 100 million people die from bad food, accidents, looters and mayhem, starvation, and no medicines or hospitals working outside of basic fire stations and police stations most places. Sure, there are military hospitals still working some places but they are only the remote exception and not the rule. Most places there is nothing. So, even if someone cuts their hand sawing wood or steps on a nail they can die from it because there are no shots available or antibiotics within a month or two. So, we are seeing things that would have only been an afternoon in a hospital turn into a death within a week or a month. It's pretty sick to watch. From the records I have been keeping George we lost 75% of the residents that were here when it hit in July. Since then we have lost 15% more people. So, that means that of 100% of the people left alive here on that July day we only have 10% alive today. How many are we going to lose this winter from freezing to death alone or by accidents? Theoretically we could lose this winter most of the people over 65 just because they might not have enough wood to burn to stay warm even though the temperatures don't even go below 30 degrees Fahrenheit here almost ever!" George felt kind of stunned by this revelation. He hadn't been thinking that much in this direction. He had sort of avoided it to keep his and his wife's and daughters spirits up. So, this all sort of hit him like a ton of bricks and he began to cry. Not out loud but he began to tear up and realized he just couldn't deal with this ongoing stress anymore. Bob saw this was all too much for George to deal with anymore. So, he quickly changed the subject to something less defeatist to talk about.
George struggled for equilibrium. He realized it was partly the bottle of good wine they opened to enjoy the evening and told Bob as much. George began to talk about a different but related subject. He said, "Well. Since they set up a Satellite internet computer for the public to use part of the day, I have been going over there to find out about my friends and relatives nationwide and worldwide on the life and death database that has been set up. Did you know that there are messages from friends and relatives all over the world connected to almost every name living and dead there? Bob nodded and said, "They only found 2 of my 3 grandkids alive. I never told you that." George said, "I'm really sorry to hear that, Bob." Bob said, "Yeah. It really sucks. But the good news is that none of my children or their children or any more of there spouses has died." George said, "I'm glad to hear that, Bob." George once again tried to move the subject somewhere else. He said, "Should we allow relatives of people who died here to come claim their homes?" Bob said, "This is kind of a can of worms, George." There is no way we can actually verify very well who anybody really is anymore. There aren't electronic identities as such through DMV's nationwide (Departments of Motor Vehicles in each State which use driver's licenses as identity cards used within the U.S.) anymore. So, how could we be sure it isn't someone just trying to come here who is nuts to kill people or steal food or something else nuts?" George said, "That's pretty paranoid, Bob." Bob said, "You have never been in a war time situation before, George, have you? People can get extremely crazy and desperate in war time situations just like this one. Everyone isn't a stable survivor like you and I. Some people just go feral completely." George said, "I guess you are right. I never served in the military." Bob said, "Even though I have, a lot of it was pretty traumatic in wartime situations so this taught me more than I want to know about this sort of thing." George said, "Well then, it's good we have you to protect us with the truth so we aren't naive." Bob looked at George and said, "I guess so."
Note: As to the technological correctness of all this, so far the only concern I might have is in regarding metal in one's mouth in teeth fillings or metal plates in the head from previous injuries or metal in various places throughout the body from injuries and repairs over the years. ANY metal in one's body could prove fatal when one couldn't separate from the metal immediately during the EMP burst. Or for example, the gold in one's teeth during a large EMP of this sort might melt the gold out of one's mouth though this might be less likely with silver or another metal. And if gold melted it would likely fall through the chin area unless you spit it out which might damage your tongue. So, metal of any kind in one's body could be fatal or permanently or temporarily maiming during an EMP of this size. Also, proximity to the source (how close you are to the source of the EMP) would also give varying amounts of strength of the EMP. I'm theorizing that an EMP is sort of like a radio or TV transmission. It would be the strongest near the source and taper out like when you are listening to a radio station when you start to travel out of range in a car or other vehicle. So what would actually happen would depend upon the strength and duration of the EMP and your location in relation to it when it happened and also whether you were inside or outside or underground or in the air when the EMP occurred. Also, a tooth implant that has been lodged in the upper jaw might be fatal if static voltage and current from the EMP transferred upward and through the top of the skull on top of the head. Since many more people are having joint replacements and teeth implants when root canals fail this all would become more of a problem for society if and when an actual EMP of this size and duration occurred.
I wrote DEATH METAL as if it happened to the U.S. However, it could happen anywhere on earth equally from a probability point of view. And if it ever happens anywhere it could eventually happen everywhere because of the nature of people and revenge and things getting out of control and because of precedent. So, it is in everyone's best interest that this doesn't happen anywhere because once the precedent is established there then is the possibility of this happening other places and eventually everywhere. And at that point civilization likely would end because technology likely could not be maintained properly at that point. Unless you call civilization what we had before Christ was born, likely you and I would not want to see that happen.
Also: If you are an intuitive or precognitive psychic like me or if you have deja vu visions of the future (I have had these also in my life) sometimes it is possible to write about what you don't want to see happen and thereby uncreate it. This may or may not be possible with earth changes like Earthquakes because there is so much more energy involved. However, whenever you are dealing with people, if you show people a future, or even potential future, some will pray and change it to something better, while others will do things to make sure a really bad future doesn't ever happen. So, even though to many of you, writing about something you don't want to happen might not make sense, it actually works in a very real scientific way to prevent futures that no one wants. So, for example, books like:
Alas, Babylon
Buy new: $14.99 $9.16
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Or movies like:
On the Beach (1959) is a post-apocalyptic drama film based on Nevil Shute's 1957 novel of the same name. The film features Gregory Peck (USS Sawfish captain Dwight Lionel Towers), Ava Gardner (Moira Davidson), Fred Astaire (scientist Julian—John in the novel—Osborne) and Anthony Perkins (Royal Australian Navy lieutenant Peter Holmes). It was directed by Stanley Kramer, who won the 1960 BAFTA for best director. Ernest Gold won the 1960 Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Score. It was remade as an Australian television film by Southern Star Productions in 2000. end quote from Wikipedia.
All books and movies like this actually help to prevent nuclear holocausts in real time by scaring the hell out of everyone including governments.
Later: ON a different note when I wrote 5 Billion Less People on Earth?
I began to see that when oil ends (if it ended suddenly without warning) it could be a lot like what I wrote here. There would be no fuels at any price available (except possibly corn and cane ethanols and fuel cells and water as a fuel (hydrogen and oxygen H2O). So, I went back and looked at what happened to George and Colonel Bob and George's family and neighbors and saw a similar scenario without any oil products at all. Food could not be transported or grown easily. There would be no gas or diesel for driving food or transporting food, people or anything. So people would have to go to bicycles, windmills and solar arrays for electricity, and horses for growing food(at least in the short run worldwide) which would start to greatly reduce world populations. Places in Desert areas like Phoenix, Las Vegas, Albuquerque etc. would have to greatly reduce in size and people would have to migrate towards aquifers that could be brought to the surface by windmills or to move near rivers once again. People who lived in climates that got really cold couldn't really be there in the winters unless they had enough wood for their wood stoves to make it through the winter as well as enough food in their cold cellars or canned to make it through until the spring when they could grow or buy some more food. So, even though 100 million people wouldn't die in an EMP, what might come if oil suddenly stops within 15 to 25 years in some ways also resembles what happens to some degree in "Death Metal". However, if civilizations on earth have enough time to adapt to the loss of oil it will be less catastrophic. Here is the article I was working on called "5 Billion Less People on Earth?
I read about a new Russian Missile that is a 100 ton missile that they call Satan today. I then started reading about the author Pat Frank and his book, Alas, Babylon 1959
that I read in the early 1960s about a nuclear holocaust in the U.S. Only I thought it might be interesting instead to write a short piece about a 100 megaton Hydrogen Bomb missile Blast at 100 miles up above the U.S. and what the EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) would do to EVERY civilian electrical device or Electrical generating station in the U.S.
note: 100 miles up is 528,000 feet in altitude. Likely if a hydrogen bomb of any size went off at that altitude there might not be any sound because it is just so high. But there might be a concussion or change in air pressure or some other kind of experience in the air. Also, it would be so far away that even if you happened by accident to be looking directly at it you might not go blind as you would if you were within 10 miles of it here on earth. My motivation is as an intuitive wishing this not to happen. By making more people aware of what could happen it creates people to stop it from happening. By just pretending like children that this won't happen doesn't stop it. What stops this from happening is enough people aware of it to stop it. So, because of North Korea and Iran and all the problems now in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria etc. I write this to make us all realize just how high the stakes really are with all the changes and unrest now on earth.
quote from wikipedia on nuclear bombs subsection "Hydrogen bombs": The other basic type of nuclear weapon produces a large amount of its energy through nuclear fusion reactions. Such fusion weapons are generally referred to as thermonuclear weapons or more colloquially as hydrogen bombs (abbreviated as H-bombs), as they rely on fusion reactions between isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium). However, all such weapons derive a significant portion, and sometimes a majority, of their energy from fission. This is because a fission weapon is required as a "trigger" for the fusion reactions, and the fusion reactions can themselves trigger additional fission reactions.[10] Only six countries—United States, Russia, United Kingdom, People's Republic of China, France and India—have conducted thermonuclear weapon tests. (Whether India has detonated a "true", multi-staged thermonuclear weapon is controversial.)[11] All thermonuclear weapons are considered to be much more difficult to successfully design. end quote.
The Beginning of the End: George was walking on one of his familiar trails that he walked with his two dogs one or more days a week, his older dog was part long Hair german shepherd and part australian shepherd but he was getting old now for a big dog of over 70 pounds now because he was 12 years old. His daughter's Gold and white Pembroke Welsh Corgi came along. She was doing much better than the older dog because she was only 5 or 6 years old now. At one point he saw a flash in the sky out of the corner of his eye, but because he didn't hear anything he thought it might be an illusion until he thought a few seconds later that his pocket was on fire. He reached in his pocket and threw his keys out of his pocket while swearing from being burned. His metal snaps for his jeans and belt buckle started to burn him as well so he stripped his pants off and watched the arcing from his pants and his keys toward a nearby tree. Though George was a little hard of hearing it sounded like a lot of sounds like the snapping buzzing sound of the static electricity from his keys to the tree and the snapping of almost anything metal that he had. He noticed that his glasses plastic case had melted from the arcing from even his glasses. In the distance it sort of sounded almost like electric crickets buzzing in all directions. He watched a transformer explode on a telephone and power line and then watched the lines arc and melt off the poles. He sat on the ground and thought either he was near a lightning cloud and lightning was about to strike or something really strange was going on. He started going through in his mind what could have caused this strange thing. He looked up and there was a very strange sort of cloud that reminded him of pictures he had seen of mushroom clouds on earth. But this one seemed to be higher than jet passenger planes fly by twice or more. Since there was no sound he just thought it was maybe some really strange super high Thunderhead. In the last 10 or more years he had noticed that there was always some crazy kind of weather going on either near where he lived or somewhere else on the TV news or weather channel.
When he looked up into the air towards this strange high thunderhead he started to get a really bad feeling about all this. He thought, "Was that an EMP? one by one all his understanding from the 1950s to the end of the Cold War in the 1980s came true in a truly nightmarish way regarding EMPS (Electromagnetic Pulses) caused by a thermonuclear explosion at 100 miles or more altitude above a nation. He heard a banging on his front door when he returned home and his neighbor Bob was crying. George found out from him that his wife was dead in the kitchen from the EMPEMP proof two way radios. So, his neighbor took off on one of George's bikes and returned after not too much time.
Note: I'm not sure why but pieces of my writing keep disappearing almost every time I proof read it. Since I'm composing online this is becoming sort of problematic for me. However, I think people need to understand that what I'm writing about could happen anywhere on Earth. And though it is theoretical none of it is a fictional concept but rather what scientists have basically told us what would happen if someone set off a nuclear missile at 100 miles or more above a country like the U.S., Europe, Russia, China or anywhere else here on earth.
Colonel Bob said, "I found out at the fire station that it was a terrorist from the middle east who set off the Russian 100 ton missile called "Satan".
George said, "Well, That's a relief! At least it wasn't a country." Bob Said, "Yes. But it does also make our country vulnerable to our enemies." George said, "But don't we have doomsday weapons?" Bob said, "That actually is our biggest problem right now because they are set to go off soon and I don't know if any vehicle is running so that the doomsday weapons can be stopped at this point." George said, 'Where will they go?" Oh. They are programmed to return a devastating blow to whatever nation that missile sprang from. That is why this is so problematic." George was starting to get an even sicker feeling as he thought about this. He said, "What percentage of people in the U.S. has died?" Bob said, "Well. They said at the Fire Station that at least 50 to 70 million people have died from being near pieces of metal like cars toasters, sinks, bathtubs sliding glass doors and the like. But I would say from what I was taught about stuff like this that it is between 1/3 and 1/2 of the U.S. population in the lower 48 states." George felt sick again and said, "I'm sorry about your wife, Bob." Bob said, "I can't think about that right now. You and I have to maintain order here until things start to get better and that could be anywhere from weeks to months." George said, "We could starve by then." Bob said, "No. Our biggest problem likely will eventually be looters who become desperate." Bob said, " I think you and I should gather all the canned goods and bread and things like that from all the houses where everyone died or where they are visiting another area." George said, "What if they return?" Bob said, "Well. Then we will share food with them after we show them their friends and relatives graves that we dug."
George who had been a survivalist in the early 1980s said, "We need to dig a latrine behind each of our houses because we can't waste water on flushing a toilet." Bob agreed but said, We need to keep the bowl filled with water because if it dries up the smell from the sewers might become unsanitary." George agree that at least for now this would be a good idea." He said, "What about showers?" Bob said, "Even though this is onerous for now, I think we might need to bathe in the ocean." George said, "Do you remember what it feels like to have salt on your skin?" Bob looked George in the eye and said, "George. We are in survival mode. We don't know how long we will have to hold out with candles, no refrigeration, no cars, no markets, no nothing here. We may even have to start shooting looters." George didn't like this idea. But after all, Bob was the military man. George said, "Will canned foods be edible? What if the EMP weakened all the cans or blew holes through them." Bob looked stunned but realized George might be right about any metal container. He said, "We need to look at canned foods carefully to see if they look edible or if there is any leakage from inside.
Around this same time a bus drove up and at this point George and Bob felt like they might have re-entered some kind of normal world that they had lived in up to about 6 hours ago when the EMP hit.
It was a military bus wired and designed especially for exactly this kind of problem delivering his wife and daughter. It had been going to schools and malls and police stations and fire stations and city halls to try to return anyone home who wanted to go there if that area was safe to return to. Since they had radioed ahead to George and Bob's Fire Station, they had heard about George and Bob as appointed Volunteer Sheriffs for the duration and knew this area was secured and that the dead in that area had already been buried with the homes marked that there were shallow graves in the back of each home and the names of the dead on the house as per military protocol developed during Hurricane Katrina and before. In this way mortuaries and relatives could gather their dead whenever they were able to. And yet, the neighborhood would be free from disease from rotting corpses out in the open.
As Bob and George came out when they heard the bus, George found a tear coming to his eye at seeing his wife and daughter coming off the bus. He could tell they both had been crying but were now hanging tough as they knew it was necessary. George and his wife and daughter fell into each others arms and Bob could not help but letting a tear run down his face because he and George had buried his wife and many of their neighbors the last few hours. A Sargent Major with a pistol strapped to his hip got off the bus along with a corporal from a local Army base carrying a sub machine gun over his shoulder. The Sargent major handed a two way hand crank radio to Bob since he was known to be a retired Army Colonel and told him how to use it and what frequencies to transmit on for different purposes. It turned out that the local Army base had most of its weapons and transportation EMP ready for just such an occurrence. He told Colonel Bob that NATO had been mobilized and that the U.S. bases around the world were mostly returning home to defend the U.S. from any further problems and to help gather and bury the dead in areas where literally all able bodied men and women had died. There were many children that needed to be gathered up various places that had been playing out in school playing fields when this had occurred who had survived all this and they needed to be found if they weren't with a responsible adult. Orphanages needed to be organized even in their own area. The Sargent major pulled off a motor driven Bicycle for Colonel Bob off the rack on the back of the bus so he could perform his new assignment as a local officer in the re-establishment of order to his area.
George's wife while the Sargent Major and Colonel Bob talked showed him a diagram of a way to make his motorcycle able to operate again by using any household wiring that wasn't damaged in the EMP. Since most motorcycles can be push started without using a starter, work arounds had been created by Military mechanics to make motorcycles and motorbikes usable again. This is much more problematic for most cars, however, unless they are also light enough to push start and have manual transmissions. Because this will not work with automatic transmissions.
As the Sargent Major left again he said the corporal would be guarding this area at night from looters with his assault weapon and would be under Colonel Bob's direct command for the present and that he would stay at the fire station during the day to assist the Firemen keeping locals supplied and alive.
Colonel Bob and George and his wife all sat in George's living room while Colonel Bob told them of some of the changes. He said, "Well. The Sargent Major told me of my responsibilities regarding our community. I need some help gathering kids before it gets any darker to make sure they are all okay from local schools. Also, I need to check houses beyond where you and I went, George. George nodded not wanting his daughter to know about how many people they had already buried that day. Bob understood as well as he had grown kids himself that he also wanted to know if they were alive. Bob said, "I need to radio to Denver where my son lives and to Fort Lauderdale, Florida where my daughter lives and see if anyone had seen them." George and his wife looked kind of worried as Colonel Bob did this. In about ten minutes Colonel Bob was sort of upset and he said, "Well. My son and daughter are okay but my son's children are missing from their school and his wife died in the garage getting into her car. So my grandchildren have to be found. However, I can't do anything about that here on the Pacific Ocean but I can help people here. Corporal Mark here and I are going to travel around and try and find any kids and adults left alive in this area and to do what we can to help for a few hours. After that, I'll drop Corporal Mark off at the Fire station and introduce him to the fire Captain and the firemen left alive there. George, do you have any firearms and bullets?" George didn't like the sound of this but he knew it was coming and said, "I have bullets for a pistol and an old Army M1 with bullets for that as well. But it hasn't been shot in about 20 years." Bob said, "Give it to Corporal Mark so he can test it as he is trained in things like this." Corporal Mark took the rifle and put the base of the rifle on the far side of a tree with his arms around the tree and fired the rifle into the ground and said, "I think it is okay. If it were going to explode the barrel it would have then. I think the gun is usable and safe for now." George after seeing this technique of checking for the safety of a gun did the same as the corporal for 3 more shots before he felt safe using this rifle in an emergency. He knew the pistol was usable because it had been shot in the last 5 years or so. George handed the small caliber pistol to his wife and she strapped a belt through the holster and put it on for safe keeping during the night. He said, "Because there is no electricity I'll build a fire in the fireplace but we are going to have to use candles. We should also put wicks in any bacon grease from any bacon we eat tonight to make bacon grease candles for use outside gathering wood at night, because the Bacon has to be eaten tonight because it won't be safe tomorrow to eat without refrigeration." George's wife said, "Will the canned goods be safe?" George ran out the door to ask the corporal if he knew anything about canned goods. The corporal said, "I have a card here that tells me that you have to smell it before you open the can to see if you can smell anything bad on the can. And you also need to look carefully at the can to look for irregularities. But this soon you could probably get away with eating most things in cans. It's going to be after tomorrow when you really have to be careful." George said, "I wonder how many Americans are going to die of spoiled food in the next few days and weeks?" The Corporal said, "I can't think about that. We all have to keep those still alive alive any way we can think of and that's my assignment tonight for this area.
So, after a dinner of bacon and anything else that looked ultimately perishable and putting everything else in with the remaining ice in the freezer section of the refrigerator, George and his wife started to read about how to convert his motorcycle to use by converting household wiring for use in the ignition system of his motorcycle. George's wife said, "Now that you have filled all the bath tubs with water, how are we going to take showers?" George said, "we can only sponge bathe for a while. We can go into the bathroom with a few cups of water and a rag and basically wipe off for now. The other choice is to go down to the ocean." His wife nodded sadly. She went into the other room where her daughter was reading by candlelight. George heard a few shots in the distance. He hoped they were just warning shots scaring off looters and hoped no one new was dead.
About a half an hour later Colonel Bob came back to his house and came over and talked to George and said, "About 3/4 of the people in this area are dead. We didn't have time to bury them all but we notified the fire station and surviving neighbors from all around are being taught how to dig shallow graves that can easily be dug up by authorities or relatives at sometime in the future. We put a grave marker on the grave with the name and the date of the person if we know who it is. I left Corporal Mark at the Fire Station. He will be assigned as one of the guards of the station and will range out through the area looking for looters. Every neighbor that I could I introduced to him and also told them that I am the Military incident commander and that I'm working alongside the local fire captain at our fire station."
After that, George and Colonel Bob sat in the living room taking turns cranking the radio to see what they could find out locally and nationally regarding all this. It appeared that most of the nation was in a sort of panic and chaos. George and his family and Colonel Bob were lucky to be in a nice surburban community along the Pacific Ocean where at its worst they could boil seawater and distill it to have water to drink in an emergency. Colonel Bob told George of a method where you take seawater with a piece of plastic like they used to hold water in the bath tubs and create a pool of it there near the ocean. Then using black plastic on could create a solar distillery to create at the very least a cup of pure drinking water on a sunny day or even more if you had enough plastic to create a bigger pool and catch basin for pure distilled water to drip down on into a separate small pool of pure distilled water.
By listening to the hand crank radio that had solar cells for collecting enough battery power during sunny days as well, they found out that all the NATO countries had already mobilized their Red Cross groups and military planes and were landing at major airports throughout the U.S. with bottled water and MRE's (meals ready to eat) to keep people alive in the short run. Also, tractors and skip loaders were being shipped to bury the up to 100 million bodies of Americans decomposing throughout the land. Though 2/3 of the population likely was still alive, the priority now was to prevent the deaths of up to 1/3 more during the next month from bad food and water panics and looting and mayhem throughout the U.S. during this first month of basic survival without electricity for the whole lower 48 states and parts of Canada and Mexico. George and Colonel Bob listened very carefully as they heard that a Cargo plane from Canada was arriving tomorrow morning at 6 am at their local passenger jet airport. Colonel Bob said that he wanted to see if he could get some radios to pass out to some of the more distant neighbors in his area. He said, "Some of the older people are starting to lose hope and don't see how they can survive this. Some of the younger people likely are feeling like that as well. But most people over about 25 to about 55 or 60 seem to be taking all this in stride as much as possible. So, I'm going to get up and take a back pack of some sort. Do you have a big backpack like a Kelty or something, George, that I can borrow?" George said, "Yes. I used to be a Sierra Backpacker so I have one big enough to be useful. However, you have to be careful keeping your balance carrying a lot of weight. Remember it's only a motorized bicycle. Also, do you need more gas before you go so you can get all the way there and back on a single tank of gas?" Colonel Bob said, "Thanks for reminding me, there's no gas gauge on this thing, you're right. I think there is a reserve tank but I'm not used to using a reserve spigot." George said, "There's a reserve spigot on my motorcycle too, but I usually use the trip indicator like a gas gauge." Colonel Bob said, "I've got one of those on the motorbike. Maybe if you and I syphon some gas out of my car and put it into the motorbike I can reset the trip indicator and use that like a gas gauge like you do on your motorcycle."
George said, "By the way, what was all the shooting about?" Colonel Bob looked glum and said, "Well. The looters are beginning to show up from poorer communities. We were able to scare them off with warning shots so far but by tomorrow it's possible we might have to shoot some of the more crazy and desperate ones if they come back and start making trouble again. I wish we had a phone line working. That's one reason I want every house to have a two way hand crank radio working as soon as possible. We need a network to protect everyone here in this community now." George nodded.Then on the news came another disturbing fact, all planes that were jets mostly crashed at the time of the EMP or shortly thereafter in the U.S. This likely meant that 6,000 planes crashed that were jets when the EMP happened. If one took an average of 100 people on board all these passenger planes then 600,000 died in those crashes alone. Whereas private planes because they have mostly mechanical (without electrical and hydraulic assist) rudders and flaps might have glided in safely if the occupants didn't immediately get electrocuted and at least one person was left alive on board who could actually land the private plane.
Another thing that Colonel Bob and George spoke about, "Oh George. I almost forgot. the last time I visited the Fire station the Fire Captain there told me that the doomsday weapons hadn't gone off. Somehow someone was able to disarm them." George said, "Well. That's a relief. That could have really been a problem for the world to deal with on top of this." Colonel Bob said, "I'm really beginning to realize that we are sort of in a temporary stone age here in the U.S." And I'm not sure how we are going to be able to pull out of this. We were already trying to survive a Great Recession and now this." George said, "I think that the old ways of thinking have to be rendered obsolete to make any sense of this at all, Bob." Colonel Bob said, "What to you mean, George?" George said, "Well. What if you were in a plane that crashed? Does it really matter what is happening in the rest of the world if you don't survive.?If if you are way out in the sticks trying to survive nothing else matters at that point but whether you survive or not." Colonel Bob said, "So, what you're saying is that our whole country are like survivors of a plane crash in the wilderness with no one to help them?" George said, "Sort of. Yes."
Colonel Bob said, "So, how do you reconcile other countries helping us now?" George said, "As far as you an I are concerned, it is as if there are about 100 to 200 people trying to survive remotely and only one person is hiking in with food. That one person can't save everyone. But they might save 5 or 10 people's lives. You would need 25 people hiking in and helping those 100 people for it really to make a difference." Colonel Bob said, "I think you are right, George. That is probably the best way of thinking about this that I have heard yet."
Colonel Bob said, "So, how would you see the survival strategy for the man in the street of our nation?" George thought a moment and said, "Well. I would say it is sort of Nobles Oblige which is the "obligation of those with the means to help those that don't wherever possible." Colonel Bob said, "And how does that play out in real time?" George said, "Well. That's the million dollar question isn't it?" Colonel Bob smiled and said, "Yes. That is the real test of any nation in how it treats the have nots during a real crisis like this one."
George said, "I'm thinking that if we get enough help from our military in Alaska and Hawaii and overseas deployments that it might greatly reduce casualties here in the U.S. Do you think we will have a problem with cannibalism in the cities?" Colonel Bob said, "Well. When people have various drugs and no food that is always going to be a problem isn't it? Even though most people when they come down might have to commit suicide or self destruct in other ways, that could become a problem for Americans especially who are very spoiled and not used to hardships of any kind. So, this will really be a test for the survival and basic sanity and order of the U.S."
Colonel Bob said, "What do you think about help from the outside world?" George said, "Well. All nations might be vulnerable because the main policeman nation isn't there to protect them during this time. So likely nations like Iran and North Korea and to some degree China might run roughshod over the rest of the world during these times. We'll have to wait and see what the outcome is while everyone is off balance worldwide from this. Remember what happened when the Earthquake and Tsunami hit Japan and none of the big companies had 24 hour electricity anymore. And then on top of that the floods in Thailand stopped all kinds of electronics and other car production there? Many cars couldn't be manufactured easily in every part of the world for a long time after those two events. Having the whole U.S. down will have a similar effect on multiple levels worldwide." Colonel Bob realized George spent a whole lot of time thinking about these sorts of things whereas Bob was more of an in the moment with enough discipline to solve any situation kind of guy. He didn't like to think about all the details until some task was assigned to him. So, George and Bob were a contrast in two styles of dealing with the problems of life as they arose.
Just about this time both men were sort of made sick by one of George's dogs sauntering by with a human hand in its mouth. George hoped it wasn't Bob's wife's hand from her buried body. They were allowing the dogs more freedom in their neighborhood so they could warn better of incoming looters and strange people. George and Bob now wore Colt .45 pistols given to them by the Army and badges as Volunteer Sheriff's Deputies. However, their duty was limited to their own neighborhood and the area covered by their nearest fire station.
Bob said, "Damn it I hope that isn't my wife's hand!"
George's german shepherd was old but he was also really smart. So when George said, "Where did you find it, Boy?" the german shepherd mix started walking to where he found it. About two blocks away they found what looked to be a looter that had been shot by one of the locals. Unfortunately, the local had died too. Luckily, (or not luckily) the Dog had chosen the looter's hand to take rather than the neighbor that the dog knew. George said, "This is awful! Here Boy! Give me the hand!" And both men set to dig shallow graves in the back yard of that home so the hand was buried with the looter in the back yard. On the front of the house was written the deceased owner's name and the word "Looter" because they had no other explanation for what had occurred and no police to call to investigate. This turned both of their moods more glum and they didn't speak much the rest of the day.
About 5 days after "The End of Electricity" the water to both Colonel Bob's house and George's house stopped running for good. So, they both knew that this was going to make life more difficult. George and Bob put plastic containers at all of their downspouts because most nights there was dew coming off the roof and down the downspouts because they were on the ocean. Also, some nights fog would cover the trees and plants and roofs with moisture and some of that could be collected too. George and Bob and George's wife and daughter read books a lot more than they used to to keep sane and to keep going. So, each of them started reading books until George's wife said, "Why don't we read a book to each other so it is something we can all share? So, they began reading a book together in the afternoons. They also found that it was best to go to bed with the sun and to get up with the sun. So, everything they did started to be based more on when the sun came up and went down than before when there was electricity. Besides, Candles burn down and flashlights need batteries and eventually they were both only used for emergencies. Since there were deer in the area that lived there in profusion one day Bob said, "We should shoot and dress a buck. If we only shoot bucks the local herds of deer can replenish themselves because they only need one strong and wily buck to impregnate all the females. Since George and his wife were having some gum problems because of not enough live foods they agreed. Also, George remembered about a lady from London that was a friend of his in the 1980s that had lived through the blitz there in London by eating lawn clippings in her meals as salad. She said that people who didn't do this and didn't have live food often died during those times. So, George told this to Bob who spread the idea around the neighborhood about how to stay alive during these times without fresh live food. So, George got out his M1 and gave it to Bob who was a marksman and a hunter and he brought down a buck nearby the next morning and George walked his new contraption which was two bicycles tied together with a piece of plywood for hauling heavy things and pulled the buck home on that and dressed it on the telephone pole outside and allowed it to bleed out. So, for the next few weeks they had venison and his wife found a jerky recipe and so she made jerky with the rest before it went bad. George said, "There is a way of making buckskin where you cure it with deer brains to make it soft. I studied with a Native American Medicine man who told me about this. Bob sort of looked at George Wide eyed and said, "Yes. We probably could do that but we also need to maintain decorum for when the Red Cross and help arrives in this area.
Two weeks after the END of Electricity the Red Cross arrived with bottled water and a vehicle provided by the U.S. military. On board was one of the "doctors without borders" who looked at everyone in the area and wrote down all the names of the living so it could be entered into a database of who was alive and still kicking in this area of California. The doctor also checked all the graves of bodies and checked the names that were known to have died in the area and added that to the database as well. They left 5 cases of bottled water for every house with 2 or more people in residence. They left MRE's for about 1 month for each home for each person and told them only to eat canned goods as a last resort. Then they left with the firm intention of coming back within one month to leave another months worth of water and food.
The next day a United Nations Relief helicopter landed in front of Colonel Bob and George's house and asked them both if they had had problems with looters. Bob and George said that except for the dead looter who killed their neighbor that they had buried that they had been able to scare most looters off with a couple of shots over their heads with a pistol or rifle. The officer said, "Did you hear the shots that killed the neighbor and looter?" Colonel Bob said, "There are shots that we hear in this area and surrounding areas every night so we never know which is just a warning shot and which is a wounding or lethal shot. There is shooting every night. The UN officer said, "How many shots a night approximately?" George spoke up and said, "Oh, I would say we hear an average of about 100 shots a night but the sound likely carries about 10 miles around us and we are only responsible for about 1 mile in all directions. The Fire Station has about 10 sets of Volunteer Deputy Sherriffs like us now that keep the peace 24 hours a day. But we have to be called somehow to be able to protect people. There are no phones and we have only hand crank two way radios."
The UN Officer said, "We are ordering solar panels so you can charge your walkie talkies so you will have the battery power to leave them on all the time. In the meantime here are about 20 walkie talkies for your area and some already charged rechargable batteries. Both Bob and George really smiled at this idea. There hopefully would be no more neighbors dying at the hands of looters.
George said, "The only problem with that is that we get a lot of fog here and it isn't sunny all the time like it tends to be inland."
The UN Officer said, "Well. I have something I could give you if you have a bicycle. It's a recharger run by a bicycle on a stand. Would that be helpful?" George nodded and said, "But the solar panel recharger we could use too." The officer said, "Okay. We will get you one of those too." George wasn't entirely convinced that they would get the solar Charger too.
Colonel Bob said after they left the UN Officer, "You know, George what he told me in confidence? " George said "What?" Colonel Bob said, "They think the terrorist that did this to the U.S. had ties to both Iran and North Korea." George said, "What does that mean?" Colonel Bob said, "Well. What it means is that this terrorist died trying to launch this thing in Russia and then when people got one of his fingers they were able to trace where he was from and what his path towards all this actually was. George said, "Does that mean that Iran and North Korea (either or both) were directly involved?" Colonel Bob thought carefully about this question. He said, "No. It just means that he has been both places for several months in each place." George said, "Well. Then if there is no way the governments can be implicated it doesn't mean anything at all." Colonel Bob said, "Tell that to people who lost relatives in this." George said, "Yes. We definitely live in a whole new world don't we?" Colonel Bob said, "I hope it doesn't get any crazier than it has already." George said, "Me too."
Then they noticed things were starting to get more organized. There started to be daily patrols by car or truck by UN troops and soon the fire station was given a Windmill to set up to generate electricity. All the able bodied men and some women helped assemble the large windmill that stood over 100 feet high with the huge blades there next to the fire station. At that altitude at the ocean there was almost always a breeze on shore or off shore or even north or south or some other variation. So then, a line was run from the fire station to as many of the neighbors and George and Bob's house that were within a certain distance from the Fire Station. Also, a large bank of storage batteries was installed that was connected (potentially to both wind and solar) so when one wasn't charging the large battery system if it was daylight out the solar cells kicked in or vice-versa. Solar Cells from China were delivered to the Fire Station as well for when the winds weren't blowing. So when there was enough power the fire station would turn it on to all the neighbors of their area including George and Bob's house.
So, now it was two months after "The End" or "The End of Life as we Knew it to be" and they now had electricity sometimes once again. Later that week the fire station brought a ZAP re-chargeable Electric Pickup truck for George and Colonel Bob to drive to the nearest Supermarket that was now an MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) storage area to pick up food for their neighborhood and various other duties to their neighborhoods. The nine other sets of Volunteer County Sheriffs Deputies surrounding their Fire Station also were given the use of the United Nations ZAP rechargeable Electric Pickup truck as well to do the same thing and to patrol their area to keep all their neighborhoods safe as well. So, all ten sets of Sheriffs Volunteer deputies rotated through the use of this Zap pick-up rechargeable truck.
The United Nations had obviously given a lot of thought to this. Since the old infrastructure had all been destroyed in the EMP it was infinitely more useful to set up a new infrastucture than to replace and repair the old one. There would be no land lines for phones anymore (at least at first and maybe ever). It would all now be first Walkie Talkies with a few miles range and then stronger ones and short wave and then back to microwave towers for Cell phones all charged by wind or solar or gas or diesel generators. The next day a diesel portable United Nations Generator arrived for when wind or solar failed in their area. The next day 100 gallon water tanks arrived from NATO to haul in the Zap electric Trucks to everyone so they could once again have sponge baths, and more easily wash their dishes. 10 miles away a NATO desalinating portable system was desalinating Seawater until all the cars blocking roads could be towed off major roads by fire trucks or pushed by Army trucks off all highways not open yet. Once this was done large Military convoys of water trucks would suck up water from nearby water sources (mainly rivers and dams) and haul drinking and wash water to people in their area until replacement pumps for previous water systems could be obtained from overseas or Canada or Mexico.
Outhouses and Latrines were still going to be used throughout the area for some time though because there still wasn't enough available water to flush toilets or to take anything but the shortest of showers. The United Nations had also brought things that looked a lot like big hot water bottles that you left out in the sun during the day and then while it was still warm from the sun tied to the edge of your shower or shower head in your shower to take a very short shower which immediately made everyone in the area a whole lot less grouchy by being able to be completely clean and less itchy.
Once a month a United Nations truck came by with "Doctors Without Borders" and medicines for everyone in their area. (Many people had already died from their prescriptions running out in the Fire Station ten neighborhood districts even before the Doctors had arrived the first time) and others had gotten very confused or ill without their medicines as well since George and Bob lived in a fairly well to do area in which a lot of people were either retired or semi-retired. And most of the people who lived here had college degrees and had been Military officers, CEO's of businesses, teachers, doctors etc. So, there was a wealth of experiential knowledge in this area. One one level since no banks were open yet because there was no electricity network existing yet it didn't really matter a whole lot who these people were because money didn't really exist again yet because most banks before this existed on a primarily electronic basis. So, if you didn't have money or food or things in your home already likely you might not have made it alive through the first month anyway. So, one reason a good group of these people in this area had survived is that those that survived all had to be more than 6 to 12 feet from any metal in order to have survived. And since these pieces of property were large it was more possible to be more than 6 to 12 feet away from any metal than in other areas. So, for example, people who survived were walking their dogs, jogging or possibly gardening when they had to throw anything metal away from their person before the "closeness to Metal" killed them. George saw a person whose Smart phone had melted. He thought it was an Iphone by the shape that melted into the man's leg. The man said it had burned his fingers as he threw it against a tree to make it stop burning him. George was secretly incredibly grateful to have forgotten his IPhone in his car where it melted there all by itself from the EMP now one month ago. He wondered how many people had had their cell phones and smart phones injure or maim them when the EMP hit all the lower 48 states and parts of Canada and Mexico.
Colonel Bob because he was a "Called UP" retired Army officer came over to Bob's house and George Noticed he was kind of pale. As George said to him, "What's the matter?" Colonel Bob sort of motioned George to speak to him outside where the women couldn't hear them. George said, "What's wrong now, Bob?" And Bob said, "I've got some really bad news, George. Most of the States directly under the Hydrogen Bomb are all dead. In fact everything has died pretty much including all animals and plants in the Central States. And there are areas as far west as Arizona and as far East as Louisiana where everything is dead: humans, birds, animals--- Everything!" George was kind of in shock so he just blurted it out: "Well, I once lived in Mt. Shasta when in " July 15, 1991 – Dunsmuir, California: A 20,000-gallon tank railroad car containing the herbicide metam sodium derailed from a northbound Southern Pacific freight train, tumbling off of the bridge over the Sacramento river at the Cantara Loop and rupturing on the rocks below. The car's entire load spilled into the river. Virtually every aquatic organism on a 40-mile stretch of river was killed.[6] end quote from
1991 list of train accidents from "Wikipedia"
George said, "When this happened every organism died for 40 miles that had been living there from time immemorial. But within a few months nearby River creatures from upstream replaced their now dead and extinct cousins." Colonel Bob was noticeably shaken but started to recover a little bit. He said, "So there might be hope for the future for those areas?" George said, "I think most of what we were hit by was the EMP. I think the radiation mostly stayed on the very upper end of the atmosphere of earth. Likely all that radiation will trickle down through winds and rains universally for thousands and millions of years to come down upon earth. I don't really know what that will mean for life on earth. But the initial EMP I think did its damage to everything within a millisecond or so about as fast as a digital picture being taken or something like that." Colonel Bob laughed a very dark laugh in gallows humor and said, "If you were trying to reassure me that didn't do it. I was fine until I realized that all or most of the radiation from that hydrogen bomb blast 100 miles up will harm all life on earth for thousands and millions of years to come. That's pretty Sick, George." George said, "I didn't have anything to do with it, Bob. I'm just very good at logic. I used to be a computer programmer, you know." Colonel Bob said, "You are as intelligent as I am disciplined as an officer. You are my research man from now on, George." They both laughed.
George said, "The other thing I was thinking about is that probably at least 1/2 of all satellites were permanently fried, destroyed or whatever depending upon their proximity to the 100+ megaton load of the Hydrogen bomb. So, either the concussion of the explosion would send them banging into each other since there are literally thousands of them out there, most inactive and old, so probably GPS devices don't work very well worldwide for planes and ships and hikers now or at all because they wouldn't be able to give accurate triangulations between satellites because you need three acccurately stationary positioned GPS satellites to get you within 3 feet of your present location on earth using lattitude and Longitude co-ordinates. So, that's likely been gone for most of earth between about Hawaii and Alaska and Europe at the very least. Maybe it would be okay from about Columbia south to the tip of South America or something like that. Bob sort of looked at George and said, "I don't think the U.S. could afford to replace those satellites now. George said, "Well. Maybe Europe and Canada and Australia and Japan or a consortium of nations will get together to replace the GPS and weather satellites that have been damaged." Bob said, "Well, This explains all the shooting stars we all saw for the first month after the EMP at night."
The next few weeks were fairly uneventful. They went to bed still mostly with the sundown and got up with the dawn because of the long habit of doing this to save resources. However, every now and again when the wind was blowing good and they knew there was plenty of electricity in their batteries they stayed up late and neighbors got together to play music or listen to music or short wave or other programs from around the globe that one could now obtain on radios given to them by the military or the fire station. So, the neighborhood became more like a settlement or even a family of families. And one night during one of these get togethers there was something on the news about trying to open up individual banks and allowing people once again to visit the banks and to be able to get out money and to buy things once again. Though George wondered what it was that people would buy outside of garage sales, still it was something new to do as things got back to "normal?". Of course, the old normal was gone forever. And the new "normal" was sort of a work in progress every day now. He had heard some news that since water pumps had been started again on nearby farmland some of the farmers were going to try to grow crops once again. The hardest part hadn't been the water, it had actually been trying to find an engine for a tractor for planting and harvesting of crops. Someone had donated one from a part of Canada that hadn't been hit with the EMP and everyone was very happy to have at least one local farm in the county back in the business of growing food at least for the local county area. No one had any imagination that there would be any way to ship the food outside of the county. So, because of this it was thought that taking about 100 acres and dividing it between useful crops for the county to consume would be the most useful thing to do. So, for this first farm in the county to go back into production this is what they did. They also heard that they were one of the first farms in the state to start growing food once again. Since everything living was dead in most of the Central States this wasn't going to happen there anytime soon. All plant and animal and bird life that was above ground or water when the EMP hit was now dead in those states.
When George got his Kawasaki 650 dualsport running again he was pretty happy. He had found the instructions not completely useful for his bike but had finally adapted them to use on his. However, the motor bike that Colonel Bob was running had already drained about 1/2 the gas from one of Colonel Bob's vehicles and almost 1/2 of the gas George had in one of his vehicles. So, he wondered about firing up his motorcycle because it burned more gas than the motorbike even though it could obviously carry more weight. So George started to experiment with using the rear wheel section of one of his bicycles with a piece of plywood between the motorcycle and the bicycle wheel so he could carry more weight. He wasn't happy with the results yet because it seemed kind of precarious and dangerous unless he had higher voltages and an arc welder which he didn't have now. So, sometimes he would use this contraption just to go to gather firewood in the forest and just carry sort of light loads for now. That was only driving it about a mile or 2 with no traffic on the roads except for walkers and bicyclists for the most part. When people saw he had his motorcycle running they often stopped him and asked about how he got it running and he told them that if they had a stick shift car or motorbike or motorcycle that he might be able to help them get it running from what he now knew through rewiring his motorcycle with household wiring. For now, he was push starting his motorcycle because he couldn't replace the battery which had exploded along with every battery in every car, motorcycle, or vehicle in the U.S. parts of Canada and parts of Mexico. So, he had figured out (with the Army schematic's help) a workaround so his motorcycle worked a lot like others did during World War II when they didn't have batteries at all. He basically only needed enough electricity to get a spark on time to his spark plug on his Thumper(single cylinder) dualsport . He wasn't sure he could run his motorcycle at night though because the headlights might take too much electricity to get a good spark and to keep it going. The thought reminded him of when his generator had gone out in the 1970s and he had had to drive in the middle of the night from Long Beach to San Diego in his VW bug on Battery alone. Whenever his headlights were on the cars spark got less and the car started to go slower. So, if he didn't see any other cars he turned off his headlights because it was between 2 and 4 am in the morning traveling down Interstate 5 towards San Diego and home. Somehow, as a college age kid he made it all the way home that way, just turning the lights on and off enough to see and to get home in one piece alive and well. He wished he was back there now. It made him sick every day to contemplate 100 million to 200 million American lives snuffed out these last few months now.
It was now November, the Electromagnetic Pulse from the 100 Plus Megaton Hydrogen Bomb had gone off about 2 weeks after the 4th of July. Bob was getting more and more depressed from losing his wife but was spending more time with one of the widows in the area that had lost her husband within a month of the EMP, and she wasn't a person that would do well without someone to take care of her. So, even though externally Bob was okay, he needed someone there as a companion to help emotionally take care of him too. So, as friends (at first) they decided that she would cook for him and take care of him and that he would protect and defend her as well. This was a workable friendship and survival grouping. Also, her husband had been retired military as well. So, she knew the drill.
Though there had been a lot of hope in setting up workable microwave towers for cellphones, in the end that had just proved to be a bridge too far for almost everywhere in the U.S. So, they had gone back to using satellites between fire stations beyond the range of radios to do most of the survival communication regarding residents of various areas. In the end people were getting worried because winter was coming on, and in this area of the coast the lowest temperatures (in the mid to low 30s Fahrenheit) would be coming now in November and after. George hoped they didn't get any 100 mph winds off the ocean like they did every few years because keeping the roads open (except for bicycles) was going to be a problem because of all the trees that fall in those high winds and because of the lack of enough gasoline everywhere in the U.S. at present and not enough chain saws that had been reconfigured and still worked or could be made to work (since all petroleum refineries in the U.S. were still down and not likely to be operational for another 5 years or so. Petroleum refineries were dependent upon large power stations working but they were not a priority in the U.S. right now. There were much bigger problems to be solved like moving people to warmer climates so they all didn't die in the northern winters of cold and snow without enough wood to burn to stay warm for that many people. In the end there just wasn't enough dead and dying wood to burn for everyone to stay in place. People just had to migrate south to survive. A few could stay but very few were prepared enough in this day and after the EMP. And cutting down any more live trees would just make more of the U.S. a desert.
And, though MRE's (Meals Ready to Eat) kept a body alive, that body if it was over about 30 or 35 years of age wasn't going to be very happy if it had to eat (only MRE's) through the winter. So, everyone kind of knew that the only way many of the older people (older than 30) were actually going to survive cold northern winters was if they migrated further south. Since many had never lived anywhere else it was believed that they would see an incredible number of people dying this winter in the Northernmost parts of the U.S. without electricity for heating, fuel oil for heating, natural gas for heating and good, live and healthy food for eating. Because when the buses came to move the people south they really were not allowed to take much with them. So, they all knew that their houses would be vandalized while they were gone even if they returned in the spring on another military bus to their northland homes.
One night Emma (the widow) who had moved in with Colonel Bob and Colonel Bob came over next door to George and his wife and daughter's house and Bob and George got to talking while all the ladies gathered in the other room talking out their issues with survival now in the U.S.
George started out and said, "Y'know Bob, this time we now live in reminds me in some ways of the 1880s to about the 1920s. We don't have electricity or plumbing everywhere. We don't have lines of electricity running everywhere. But in addition to this we don't have operational farms except where someone donated a tractor or they have gone back to using draft horses to plow and to haul wood and such once again. And even there how do you feed a horse unless you have a pasture? And how can a horse work hard with only pasture land to graze on. That means that only when the pasture's green could the horse have enough to eat to feel good enough to work and get anything done at all? Bob said, "Yeah. It's sort of like we live in this nether world where we have some of the things we had before but it is different than anything before in history. Nothing like what happened here ever happened on this scale before where 100 million people die on a continent and then another 100 million people die from bad food, accidents, looters and mayhem, starvation, and no medicines or hospitals working outside of basic fire stations and police stations most places. Sure, there are military hospitals still working some places but they are only the remote exception and not the rule. Most places there is nothing. So, even if someone cuts their hand sawing wood or steps on a nail they can die from it because there are no shots available or antibiotics within a month or two. So, we are seeing things that would have only been an afternoon in a hospital turn into a death within a week or a month. It's pretty sick to watch. From the records I have been keeping George we lost 75% of the residents that were here when it hit in July. Since then we have lost 15% more people. So, that means that of 100% of the people left alive here on that July day we only have 10% alive today. How many are we going to lose this winter from freezing to death alone or by accidents? Theoretically we could lose this winter most of the people over 65 just because they might not have enough wood to burn to stay warm even though the temperatures don't even go below 30 degrees Fahrenheit here almost ever!" George felt kind of stunned by this revelation. He hadn't been thinking that much in this direction. He had sort of avoided it to keep his and his wife's and daughters spirits up. So, this all sort of hit him like a ton of bricks and he began to cry. Not out loud but he began to tear up and realized he just couldn't deal with this ongoing stress anymore. Bob saw this was all too much for George to deal with anymore. So, he quickly changed the subject to something less defeatist to talk about.
George struggled for equilibrium. He realized it was partly the bottle of good wine they opened to enjoy the evening and told Bob as much. George began to talk about a different but related subject. He said, "Well. Since they set up a Satellite internet computer for the public to use part of the day, I have been going over there to find out about my friends and relatives nationwide and worldwide on the life and death database that has been set up. Did you know that there are messages from friends and relatives all over the world connected to almost every name living and dead there? Bob nodded and said, "They only found 2 of my 3 grandkids alive. I never told you that." George said, "I'm really sorry to hear that, Bob." Bob said, "Yeah. It really sucks. But the good news is that none of my children or their children or any more of there spouses has died." George said, "I'm glad to hear that, Bob." George once again tried to move the subject somewhere else. He said, "Should we allow relatives of people who died here to come claim their homes?" Bob said, "This is kind of a can of worms, George." There is no way we can actually verify very well who anybody really is anymore. There aren't electronic identities as such through DMV's nationwide (Departments of Motor Vehicles in each State which use driver's licenses as identity cards used within the U.S.) anymore. So, how could we be sure it isn't someone just trying to come here who is nuts to kill people or steal food or something else nuts?" George said, "That's pretty paranoid, Bob." Bob said, "You have never been in a war time situation before, George, have you? People can get extremely crazy and desperate in war time situations just like this one. Everyone isn't a stable survivor like you and I. Some people just go feral completely." George said, "I guess you are right. I never served in the military." Bob said, "Even though I have, a lot of it was pretty traumatic in wartime situations so this taught me more than I want to know about this sort of thing." George said, "Well then, it's good we have you to protect us with the truth so we aren't naive." Bob looked at George and said, "I guess so."
Note: As to the technological correctness of all this, so far the only concern I might have is in regarding metal in one's mouth in teeth fillings or metal plates in the head from previous injuries or metal in various places throughout the body from injuries and repairs over the years. ANY metal in one's body could prove fatal when one couldn't separate from the metal immediately during the EMP burst. Or for example, the gold in one's teeth during a large EMP of this sort might melt the gold out of one's mouth though this might be less likely with silver or another metal. And if gold melted it would likely fall through the chin area unless you spit it out which might damage your tongue. So, metal of any kind in one's body could be fatal or permanently or temporarily maiming during an EMP of this size. Also, proximity to the source (how close you are to the source of the EMP) would also give varying amounts of strength of the EMP. I'm theorizing that an EMP is sort of like a radio or TV transmission. It would be the strongest near the source and taper out like when you are listening to a radio station when you start to travel out of range in a car or other vehicle. So what would actually happen would depend upon the strength and duration of the EMP and your location in relation to it when it happened and also whether you were inside or outside or underground or in the air when the EMP occurred. Also, a tooth implant that has been lodged in the upper jaw might be fatal if static voltage and current from the EMP transferred upward and through the top of the skull on top of the head. Since many more people are having joint replacements and teeth implants when root canals fail this all would become more of a problem for society if and when an actual EMP of this size and duration occurred.
I wrote DEATH METAL as if it happened to the U.S. However, it could happen anywhere on earth equally from a probability point of view. And if it ever happens anywhere it could eventually happen everywhere because of the nature of people and revenge and things getting out of control and because of precedent. So, it is in everyone's best interest that this doesn't happen anywhere because once the precedent is established there then is the possibility of this happening other places and eventually everywhere. And at that point civilization likely would end because technology likely could not be maintained properly at that point. Unless you call civilization what we had before Christ was born, likely you and I would not want to see that happen.
Also: If you are an intuitive or precognitive psychic like me or if you have deja vu visions of the future (I have had these also in my life) sometimes it is possible to write about what you don't want to see happen and thereby uncreate it. This may or may not be possible with earth changes like Earthquakes because there is so much more energy involved. However, whenever you are dealing with people, if you show people a future, or even potential future, some will pray and change it to something better, while others will do things to make sure a really bad future doesn't ever happen. So, even though to many of you, writing about something you don't want to happen might not make sense, it actually works in a very real scientific way to prevent futures that no one wants. So, for example, books like:
Alas, BabylonBuy new: $14.99 $9.16
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4.5 out of 5 stars (356)
Or movies like:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| On the Beach | |
|---|---|
 On the Beach film poster | |
| Directed by | Stanley Kramer |
| Produced by | Stanley Kramer |
| Written by | Nevil Shute (novel) John Paxton (screenplay) |
| Starring | Gregory Peck Ava Gardner Fred Astaire Anthony Perkins |
| Music by | Ernest Gold |
| Cinematography | Giuseppe Rotunno |
| Editing by | Frederic Knudtson |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
| Release date(s) | December 17, 1959 (U.S. release) |
| Running time | 134 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
All books and movies like this actually help to prevent nuclear holocausts in real time by scaring the hell out of everyone including governments.
Later: ON a different note when I wrote 5 Billion Less People on Earth?
I began to see that when oil ends (if it ended suddenly without warning) it could be a lot like what I wrote here. There would be no fuels at any price available (except possibly corn and cane ethanols and fuel cells and water as a fuel (hydrogen and oxygen H2O). So, I went back and looked at what happened to George and Colonel Bob and George's family and neighbors and saw a similar scenario without any oil products at all. Food could not be transported or grown easily. There would be no gas or diesel for driving food or transporting food, people or anything. So people would have to go to bicycles, windmills and solar arrays for electricity, and horses for growing food(at least in the short run worldwide) which would start to greatly reduce world populations. Places in Desert areas like Phoenix, Las Vegas, Albuquerque etc. would have to greatly reduce in size and people would have to migrate towards aquifers that could be brought to the surface by windmills or to move near rivers once again. People who lived in climates that got really cold couldn't really be there in the winters unless they had enough wood for their wood stoves to make it through the winter as well as enough food in their cold cellars or canned to make it through until the spring when they could grow or buy some more food. So, even though 100 million people wouldn't die in an EMP, what might come if oil suddenly stops within 15 to 25 years in some ways also resembles what happens to some degree in "Death Metal". However, if civilizations on earth have enough time to adapt to the loss of oil it will be less catastrophic. Here is the article I was working on called "5 Billion Less People on Earth?
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