One Second After

“America is like an exotic hothouse plant. It can only live now in the artificial environment of vaccinations, sterilization, and antibiotics we started creating a hundred or more years ago.”

“The enemy will never attack you where you are strongest. . . . He will attack where you are weakest. If you do not know your weakest point, be certain, your enemy will.”

“John, you look like crap warmed over."He nodded, walking into the conference room for what had now become their daily meeting.Thanks, Tom. I needed that.”

“She'd always talk about how great Gandhi was. I'd tell her the only reason Gandhi survived after his first protest was that he was dealing with the Brits. If Stalin had been running India, he'd of been dead in a second, his name forgotten.”

“We were spoiled unlike any generation in history, and we forgot completely just how dependent we were on the juice flowing through the wires, the buttons doing something when we pushed them.”

“We finally figured out that when you set off a nuke in space, that’s when the EMP effect really kicks in, as the energy burst hits the upper atmosphere. It becomes like a pebble triggering an avalanche, the electrical disturbances magnifying. It’s in the report. It’s called the ‘Compton Effect.”

“As was said by Thomas Jefferson, “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

“To put it coldly, my friends, all the ones who should have died years ago, would have died years ago without beta-blockers, stents, angioplasties, pacemakers, exotic medications, well, now they’re dying all at once.” John”

“The two “idiots” Ginger and Zach, both golden retrievers, both beautiful-looking dogs—and both thicker than bricks when it came to brains—had been out sunning on the bedroom deck. They stood up and barked madly, as if he were an invader. Though if he were a real invader they’d have cowered in terror and stained the carpet as they fled into Jennifer’s room to hide.”

“The threat is real, and we as Americans must face that threat, prepare, and know what to do to prevent it. For if we do not, “one second after,” the America we know, cherish, and love will be gone forever.”

“This is the way the world will end, not with a bang, but a whimper.”

“I’d of shot him in town if he lived that long.”

“It was so damn strange, John thought, how sometimes the most unlikely, an ugly little man like this one, could hold such power. He had a tremendous command presence, his voice sweet, rich, carrying power. So strange how some had that, could spout utter insanity and others would follow blindly.”

“Back in the 1940s, when we started firing off atomic bombs to test them, this pulse wave was first noticed. Not much back then with those primitive weapons, but it was there. And here’s the key thing: there were no solid-state electronics back in the 1940s, everything was still vacuum tubes, so it was rare for the small pulses set off by those first bombs to damage anything.”

“Folks began to sit down along the curb, leaning against the odd assortment of old vehicles folks had retrofitted to function again after the EMP burst had blown out the electronics.”

“Anyone with even the remotest understanding of EMP and the threat to the nation should have been going insane before it hit.”

“He pulled the foil bag down, the paper filter, made the coffee extra strong, filled the pot up, poured it in, and flicked the switch. He stood there like an idiot for a good minute before the realization hit. “Ah, shit.”

“For every person who died in the westward migration prior to the Civil War from Native Americans attacking, the stuff of American legends, thousands, maybe tens of thousands died from water holes polluted by cholera and typhoid . . . but that doesn’t make for a good movie.”

“and three suicides, though one minister had tried to protest that decision that they be buried in what was now consecrated ground. That protest was greeted with icy rejection from Charlie, who was now a former member of that congregation.”

“The moment of a fall from greatness often comes just when a people and a nation feel most secure. The cry "the barbarians are at the gates" too often comes as a terrifying bolt out of the blue, which is often the last cry ever heard.”