Nuclear Winter

by Td Barnes

  EMP - Nuclear Winter

  Book One of the EMP Series

  By: TD Barnes

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2018 Thornton D. “TD” Barnes

  All Rights Reserved

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  Table of Contents

  Preface

  Chapter 1 - The Clouds of War

  Chapter 2 - First Strike

  Chapter 3 - Jackass Flats

  Chapter 4 - Armageddon

  Chapter 5 - Siege of the Mountain

  Chapter 6 - A New Beginning

  About the Author

  Other Books by the Author

  ****

  Dedication

  I dedicate this book to my partner, my lovely wife, who has supported and shared my foxholes and challenges of life since high school. There is no one that I would rather have at my side should I ever experience the circumstances depicted in this book.

  ****

  Preface

  EMP is a work of fiction only because to date the world has not experienced an EMP, electromagnetic pulse attack or a nuclear winter. However, it is just a matter of time before a group or a nation of radicals will use such a dreadful device in a terrorist attack with the same effect described in this book.

  The scenario for this EMP story model after what is happening now, creating a world where such an attack could occur at any time. Selecting the State of Nevada as the venue makes the story more realistic by affiliating the characters with actual technological activities happening at the Nevada National Security Site and the Area 51 specialized laboratories.

  EMP - Nuclear Winter takes the reader through the attack and realistically addresses logistics, security, survivor selection, social, cultural, education, and other issues required to prepare a society capable of rebuilding a nation devoid of the technology on which they once depended.

  The EMP attack scenario described in this book depicts the real effects of an EMP attack. Both the United States and the USSR conducted EMP tests in 1962 that provided ample results for the world to realize the terrible consequences of the release of such a weapon on humanity.

  An Atomic Energy Commission W49 thermonuclear warhead test at Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean affected the electric grid in Hawaii 900 miles away.

  A USSR detonation that year produced a gamma ray EMP induced a current of 2,500 amps along with a 570-km stretch of overhead telephone line that blew the protective fuses and penetrated 90 cm into the ground. It overloaded a shallow buried lead and steel tape-protected 1,000-km long power cable between Aqmola and Almaty where it fired circuit breakers and set the Karaganda power plant on fire.

  The fictional scenario in EMP describes a world situation where conjured defense appropriations in the wilderness of mirrors that is the federal budget process have crippled the military capabilities of the United States.

  Years of partisan bickering have weakened the United States government and emboldened China and much of the world to challenge its former superpower status.

  A previous administration set the stage for what is happening today by it agreeing to allow Iran to proceed with its nuclear processing that Iran claimed to be for peaceful purposes. Israel knows Iran is close to having a nuclear weapon and faces going it alone on a preemptive strike to protect itself from annihilation by Iran.

  When the Syrian government launches an all-out offensive against the rebellion growing within its borders, it does so with considerable help from Iran.

  Nearly four years later, Iran’s involvement in the Syrian civil war has only deepened. Though the group has not escaped the vicious conflict unscathed, it has emerged a more capable and deadly force — a fact that has not gone unnoticed by its longtime enemy, Israel.

  China is dependent upon Iran and the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf for 60 percent of its oil and fears Israel no choice other than to destroy the oil producing capability of its enemy. China protects its source of petroleum by trading missiles tipped with thermonuclear warheads to Iran, knowing that Iran intends to use these missiles and warheads to destroy Israel in a preemptive strike.

  The United States Defense Intelligence Agency knows that China is shipping nuclear-tipped missiles to the Middle East and covertly passes missile defense technology to Israel along with the means of applying it. Israel uses this technique for defense against Iranian-launched rockets by redirecting them back to Iran.

  China fears the United States will intervene when Iran makes its move. It attempts to intimidate the United States by launching an intercontinental ballistic, ICBM, tipped with a thermonuclear warhead off the coast of Taiwan. It is programmed to detonate at China’s nuclear test site. China does not know that the United States has a new automated missile defense that redirects and incoming Chinese missiles back to Beijing. The American missile defense system does what it is supposed to do. It turns the missile around and sends it to the coordinates of China’s central command in Beijing.

  The destruction of Beijing triggers a doomsday reaction that activates orbiting satellites to release a powerful EMP, electromagnetic pulses over the United States and other countries of interest or of a threat to China.

  The EMP destroys electronic devices and the electric power grids over much of the world, denying sources of suitable water and food that within the year results in the death of 90% of the people on earth.

  A frenzy of nuclear bomb exchanges occurs a few days after the EMP attack, releasing atomic fallout that creates a nuclear winter environment that worsens the hopes of survival for humans and animals alike.

  This provides the scenario in this book, EmP. The remainder of the book is about what occurs at Jackass Flats, Nevada to a select group sheltered by the government in the abandoned Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository.

  When the reader finishes reading EmP - Nuclear Winter, he or she will wonder why our advanced technological world of social networking is not talking about what will occur when the terrorist organization Al Qaeda, a radical religious group, or a rogue nation like North Korea or Iran launches an EMP attack. Even more frightening is no one is preparing the citizens of the world for the day when a radical terrorist cell delivers and detonates an EMP device on a freighter arriving in a major city. The feasibility of this occurring is not a matter of if; it is a matter of when.

  No one talks about the consequences of such an attack because of it being so horrific. No one is preparing defenses for this occurrence, yet the costs of such a defense pale when compared to the long-lasting devastation to humanity because of such an attack. They should be.

  Warning - you will find in this book that the aftermaths of an EMP attack extremely brutal.

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  Chapter 1 - The Clouds of War

  T minus 21 days

  The Defense Intelligence Agency’s Missile and Space Intelligence Center - Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama.

  The latest weather front announced its arrival with a bright flash of lightning followed by a loud clap of thunder that seemed to release a torrent downpour of rain.

  The weather went unnoticed inside the heavily guarded main building of the remotely located MSIC complex where a spontaneous burst of laughter exploded from the fourth-floor conference room and into the hallway. The loud gaiety of the laughter suggested it came from the telling of something funny or naughty.

  Inside the room, six DIA analysts from the Middle East division, three are military, one of them a Marine Corps sergeant, a Navy commander, and an Army, SP5 female, and three civilians seated at a conference table started another humorous story about their boss.

  “So, there he stood in the officers club listening to two drunken Air Force captains just out of survival school talking about how tough they are. One of them orders two
raw eggs and two shot glasses from the bartender. They break the eggs into the shot glasses and on the count of three down the eggs. They each start gagging; one upchucks his egg back up into his shot glass, and then the other one does. Of course, the bartender is pissed, but the boss - I believe he was a captain also — an Army captain of course — is amused. He was Special Forces or just out of Ranger school — I am not sure which. Well, anyway, he reaches over and pours both shot glasses, the eggs, and their vomit, into his beer glass and chug-a-lugs the entire glass, sets it down and casually walks off without saying a word. Now, that is what I would call gravitas.”

  “Yuk! That’s gross,” the female said. The group laughed, some of them probably agree with her.

  “The story that I heard occurred right after he graduated from OCS at Fort Benning, a Mustang, a military intelligence officer commissioned from the enlisted ranks. Instead of Air Force, it was two Marine Corps captains,” another said. “I’ve heard that he is really a bad ass in combat.”

  “Now, that I can believe. Merely seeing the colonel’s scars makes one wonder how he can still be alive. They made him one of the youngest colonels in the Army,” the first one said. “I understand he took up electronics before getting his commission and got back into it after being shot up by a sniper.”

  The soldier did not exaggerate about the boss’s scars. Hot shrapnel falling into his foxhole in Iraq left a deep three-inch scar on the calf of his left leg.

  A small scar on the front and the back of his right shoulder came from an AK-47 bullet in Afghanistan during his first tour.

  The hot lead from a sniper rifle taken during his second tour left a large white scar on the left side of his jaw, extending to his throat, leaving him with a raspy whisper and a quirky grin that he would take to his grave.

  Glass fragments from when the sniper bullet passed through a window left a jagged scar starting above his left eyebrow and extending to his cheekbone.

  “Wait - I have another story. I heard about one time in Iraq, he and his Special Forces squad ran into a Seal Team out of . . . . .”

  “Here he comes,” one of them hissed.

  They stopped talking and looked busy when the subject of their war stories, US Army Colonel Thomas J. Bradley briskly walked into the room.

  “As you were,” he said while flipping a sign on the door to indicate a classified conference session. “Good morning, troops,” he cheerfully said.

  “Good morning, sir,” those at the conference table responded respectfully. Some people considered Bradley military, but others saw him as some electronics engineer who happened to be wearing a uniform while performing R&D on a means of screwing with the enemy.

  Most of his engineering accomplishments remained classified and not always attributed to him, so his combat scars; his Army ring from OCS, a Special Ops Rolex watch and beret earned in Afghanistan became the source of Bradley stories, most apocryphal with the passage of time. In either case, everyone in his command would take a bullet for their colonel.

  Physically well-conditioned, 5-foot-10 inch, 175-pound build, dark tan that one could attribute to his outdoor equestrian activities highlighted his Cherokee Indian heritage that genealogy on his father’s side traced back to the Trail of Tears.

  His posture and mannerism spoke of total confidence and fearlessness, his piercing eyes, a 1000-yard stare, and battle wound scarring told of the hell seen and experienced during his military career.

  “Okay, everyone - Let's get started. We expect rain the entire day, so you can scrub your tee time and plan to get some work done for Uncle Sam. You know the rules — no pencils and no paper,” he said to those seated at the conference table, bare except for bottled water, two carafes of coffee, coffee cups, and three bowls of cashew nuts.

  His no pencil or paper policy for staff meetings prevented the headaches afterward of having to classify Top Secret anything written; even smiley faces doodled on a notepad. In his opinion, an unmarked classified document could lay in a public place, and no one would read it — however, stamp it Secret or Top Secret and people will do anything to get their hands on it to see what is in it.

  “As always, today’s briefing is SDI, so boys and girls; let’s keep it need-to-know.”

  He sat down at the head of the conference table and leaned back in his chair to start the first of a series of Monday morning briefing and planning sessions that were part of his weekly routine.

  “What do we have hot off the press on our favorite terrorist state this morning?” He asked. “How about you, Sergeant Higgins? Give us the good news first.” From his frisky attitude, his people knew his being in his engineering mode and the sergeant responded accordingly.

  “Well, sir. The latest from Qom, Iran is that spring is in the air. The ancient Qom River is flowing gently towards the Iranian city bearing its name with fishermen lining the river banks; the freeways flowing with vehicles taking citizens about their business in a nation at peace.”

  Bradley prided his personnel possessing abundant ideas, a ferocious capacity for hard work, and a streak of stubbornness when it came to going with the flow. When he stepped into his engineering mode, he accepted ex parte opinions and dismissed military rank protocol that prohibited the fulfilling of scientific curiosity and engineering talents. Consequently, he enjoyed a productive exchange of ideas with subordinates who quickly learned to recognize the invisible line distinguishing a challenging debate from military insubordination. His staff enjoyed the reputation of being mavericks in his likeness when it came to working on the ragged edge of knowledge, technology, and experience.

  Bradley chuckled. “Smart ass. You have apparently been watching Al Jazzera TV again. Now tell me what Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is up to today.”

  “Well, you asked for the good news first,” the sergeant mischievously replied. His manner became professional and serious. “That’s the only good news that I can come up with. It is evident that the increased comprehensive sanctions on the financial institutions of the Islamic Republic have crushed the value of the rial by 40 percent against the US dollar. As anticipated, shop owners in Qom, Tehran's Grand Bazaar, and across the nation are raising hell, blaming their leaders for bringing the sanctions. With any luck, we will see them closing their stores to go on strike.”

  “Is anyone saying anything on the Hill, or are we still getting the spin-job?”

  “Oh, the boys along the Potomac are talking all right — they are talking big time about how the sanctions are working. I am not entirely joking about the spring of the year activities. The media is playing up the peaceful appearance of the countryside and ignoring it being an artificial effort to hide what is going on 600 feet underground. Of course, these activities triggered the sanctions in the first place. Our source reports that Ahmadinejad did show up to commemorate them successfully increasing their processing speed with the new Chinese-built centrifuges.”

  “What is our source saying about this?”

  “He says these are the second-generation gaseous diffusion models that Iran needs for large-scale operations. The count now is sixteen cascades containing approximately 3,000 steel centrifuges in pairs and standing over six feet tall. Ahmadinejad gave the white coats the old standard pep talk with enthusiastic praise of Iran’s accomplishments and expressed plans to increase the uranium enrichment process into a nuclear resonance process. Like usual, he veered from his talking points of this being for the enrichment of uranium for peaceful purposes and slipped into his real intention of producing multiple nuclear bomb devices and of world domination. He ended with his usual rhetoric — spewing threats against the Jews.”

  “Of course, he did. That little beetle strives on hatred. Well, this does advance Iran’s uranium enrichment program and proves its feasibility for installment at the central processing facility at Natanz. What do we have on the missile launch?”

  “More bad news, sir. The Iranians successfully launched a missile at the Iranian Central Desert Missil
e Range. We confirmed it was an upgraded version of Iran’s short-range ballistic missile,” another of the analysts said.

  “It will also provide a delivery vehicle for Iran’s first nuclear warhead,” Bradley confirmed. He did not mention anything about the subject of his next meeting, which mooted the information presented by this team. They did not have the need-to-know.

  Bradley ran his operations on a compartmentalized and need-to-know basis. Twenty minutes later, the meeting concluded with a new group of analysts from Bradley’s Pacific Rim division to follow. Bradley repeated the no pen or paper policy warning while a young intern from the secretarial pool replenished the coffee and removed any used coffee cups and water bottles. Bradley first called on SFC Janet Harrison from his systems encryption department for her report.

  "Sir,” she started in the tone of a briefing. “At 2310 hours, last night, one of our satellites in high orbit over the Chinese island of Haina noted the energization of the electronics of the CSS-NX-5 that we have under surveillance on the Jin. The satellite reported successful insertion of the code script into the missile’s EEPROM circuit.”

  Harrison was referring to a Chinese type 094 Jin-class nuclear missile submarine armed with a missile carrying the CSS-NX-5, China’s proudest advancement in PRC warhead miniaturization technology. The United States knew of the Chinese developing this new intercontinental-range ballistic missile, knowing little about it until recently when intelligence identified it was the JL2 submarine-launched, three-stage solid propellant missile when the Chinese moved it to the port at Haina Island and loaded it onto one of China's four SSBN submarines.

  “Sir,” she continued. "The satellite most likely detected the missile as it energized to test its target coordinates in preparation for submarine departure. I believe we agree that this could be the beginning of a most highly-classified state mission.”