by Ron Foster
The Great Unraveling
Ron Foster
Alabama, USA
© 2012 by Ron Foster and Elemental Marketing
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13:
978-1481828949
ISBN-10:
1481828940
Printed in the United States of America.
Acknowledgements
Cheryl Chamlies
Heliatos Solar
SUNRNR
Taylor Brand Knives
Preppers Everywhere
1
A WORLD GONE TOPSY TURVY
Dennis casually peered out between blinds at his neighborhoods empty streets as he was spent his time just idly watching and waiting for the hundredth time today.
Waiting for what and watching for whom, he couldn’t really say or explain his actions to anyone. It was more of an uncontrolled and somewhat compulsive gesture on his part that was born out of his curiosity about what had happened to the electricity and also his deep abiding general boredom that ensued by being totally In the realm of the technologically disconnected.
The power had been out for over three long days now and he had not settled into any other more proactive daily routine than the harmful constant wait, watch and think rut he found himself in.
Stand and stare while aimlessly passing the time but also he watched warily from a corner of the window at the unusually quite neighborhood for some kind of a sign or portent maybe hoping that a new emergency planner’s idea would miraculously come to him out of the blue and some how help him solve this mess that he and the rest of his beloved America’s humanity now found themselves facing.
He had spent most of his waking hours pondering about all the various possibilities of what he could, or would be doing today personally in preparing his household in order to be better prepared and ready to face the grim unknown of tomorrow.
“What the hell exactly will tomorrow bring?” That was the ever present and looming quandary he was in. This not so simplified self-questioning that kept rolling over and over ponderously in his mind. I got to be working on some kind of solution but I don’t have a crystal ball to forecast with he had already decided.
It was really starting to frazzle his psyche to be continually dwelling on this subject. The old guns guts and glory slogan from his soldier days wasn’t going to solve this problem and neither would any known emergency management plan he had ever had the privilege to work on. What to do? What to do echoed in his thoughts.
“Maybe I can read between the lines and get some kind of clue what’s going on in the world from the upcoming emergency broadcast radio announcement.” Dennis murmured to himself as he turned to check the wall clock to see how much time was left until the scheduled transmission...
“Damn I got another 15 more minutes to wait until air time,” Dennis fumed to himself. It was the not knowing that was driving him crazy. What had actually caused the electrical grid to go down?
Not that he expected the emergency broadcast would say anything other than a scripted emergency warning message and maybe some kind of reassurance from one of those talking head commentators. The radio played 24 hours a day and exactly on the hour you would hear the emergency broadcast system go off with that loud beeping noise and then the warnings and commentator would cut in.
“You would think by now they could dispense with that loud blaring attention noise and just get on with the news or preparedness directives. We all know were in an emergency and you got our attention FEMA so just start talking and quit telling us that this as a emergency broadcast message and how to listen to it.
We got it ok Mr. Announcer! We mucho comprende already much more than we ever wanted too or ever thought we would have too listen to so much multi lingual transmissions of the same message.
After 3 full days of every hour on the hour of listening to that same message drone on and on, it became somewhat aggravating.” Dennis mused as he resisted the dumb urge to make sure the radio was going to function properly. Of course it would, he had put fresh batteries in it and checked it an hour ago.
The first time he had heard one of those “this is not a test messages” was still all too vivid in his mind.
“This is not a test; this is a service of the emergency broad cast system. Tune in to this station for emergency broadcast messages and directions. I repeat this is not a test. The broadcasters of your area in voluntary cooperation with the FCC and other "federal, state and local authorities") have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. A federal emergency has been declared. I repeat a Federal Emergency has been declared. Stand by calmly and attentively for further official directions and news
.
“A explosive electromagnetic pulse of unknown foreign country origin has disabled our electrical grid system. Expect longterm power and communication outages as well as severe gas shortages for the duration of this event. Do not travel unless absoulutley necessary. Stay in your homes and collect clean water in appropraite containers. The president will declare a dusk until dawn curfew over the next few days as the nation prepares to respond to this disaster.Check on your family, your loved ones and help the disabled. Make personal preparations to take care of your family for a indertiminate amount of time until the electrical grid can be stabilized and the resume power. That is all.”
“Damn right that is all. That is about all they ever said and about all that he knew had happened other than personally he thought North Korea, Iran or both of them were probably the culprits and had used some kind of Mega EMP weapon on the US. Question was who had done it and what were we as a country going to do about it. If it was a nuke of some kind (and it probably was) that had been exploded about 50k above the U.S., then Dennis was really more worried about the level of retaliation at the culprits by America escalating it to a full blown nuke war of some kind than he was about the devastation and consequences caused by our own electrical grid collapse.
He knew from many articles on the web he had been reading that the North Koreans had had some Russian help in developing a super EMP bomb that was designed specifically to shut a countries lights out versus cause death and destruction by the blast effects of the bomb or missile.
The US would most likely retaliate soon, if they had not done so already. America might choose to EMP bomb North Korea and Iran just as the most likely aggressors especially if they were having any problems pin pointing exactly who was at fault. I doubt they would be able to pin point that any one country in particular was responsible at first. That is unless we managed to track a missile being fired from a specific launch pad. Most likely what hit us was a missile fired from a freighter just off our coast and the boat scuttled soon after. Plausible deniability and very hard to evidence exactly who was to blame for the alleged attack. This was especially true if some terrorist organization was scapegoated into taking credit for it.
If the US for some reason started blaming the Chinese or Russians for helping them build the damn thing, well then things really would get far out of hand. No telling what everyone might start shooting back and forth at each other then. Iran and North Korea were pretty much agriculture based third world nations so shutting down their electrical grid systems was not near as devastating on their populace as it was on the United States.
The foreign countries had millions of folks who still lived off the land and were not dependant on technology the same as their forefathers of a not a hundred or so years ago. Time sort of stood still in those areas as 21st century technology expanded across the world elsewhere. The big thing was the Iranians wouldn’t give a shit if their
power was shutoff, especially if they believed by attacking the U.S. it would hasten the return of their beloved prophet “The Mahdi.”.
al-Mahdi is "the rightly-guided one" who, according to Islamic Hadiths (traditions), will come before the end of time to make the entire world Muslim.
North Korea really didn’t have that much to lose themselves by attacking its old enemy the United States. The Korean countries people were already starving under militaristic rule and communist oppression. They might be capable of doing something foolish or it might have been an accident. The US suspected they might have 4 EMP bombs on a satellite they just recently launched and it was said the thing was wobbling in orbit like they were having problems controlling it.
The US could bomb all the players in this little scheme of foreign plotters to take down the so called “Great Satan” as they referred to the United States and she could very well nuke them until they glowed, but the threat of further aggression and mutually assured destruction amongst the bigger powers would make that a unfeasible and suicidal attack. You can’t have our nuclear radiation blowing across other uninvolved countries borders no matter what the provocation was from their neighbors.
“You know Dennis thought to himself, we are probably not the only ones that got attacked. No, I bet Israel must surely have been targeted also and think about it for a second, Russia and China has numerous Islamic enemies themselves so it may well be possible that World War III had just been started in earnest on many different fronts and for various reasons.
The world being what it is today, there is no telling who was allied with whom or against whom or for what for that matter. Well I can’t do anything myself to prevent that, but I can do something for myself about what we are facing right now.” Dennis concluded after shaking off a far more bloody apocalyptic vision than just living in America with out power for a long time to come.
Dennis had been thinking about just what to do about the calamity that he and his family were in for a long time now. Much, much more than he had ever wanted too consider.
But he still had a lot more questions than he had answers when he was faced with a new crisis occurring everyday. Just getting to his moms house had been an ordeal and he was very lucky to have been able to arrive home as quickly as he had to support her.
Dennis had found himself sitting his old ass in the Atlanta airport terminal waiting on a connecting flight from Georgia to Alabama when the power went out.
Knowing that this couldn’t be anything less than a major event occurring, he had made his way as quickly as possible out of the airport and hailed the first cab he saw. He wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination going to wait at a shutdown airport any longer than he had to. Airports don’t just lose power very often. The best idea was to boogie out onward quickly,
“Thank goodness and the good Lords blessings he hadn’t been in one of those underground passenger trains that take you around that huge airport like a subway system.” He repeatedly congratulated himself and his luck once again for about the millionth time today.
At first he had gave directions to the cabbie to take him straight to the Greyhound or Trailways bus station .He figured even if the power was off for only ten minutes at the airport, all flights would be delayed for hours and he would probably be in his home town of Montgomery before the scheduled plane even took off. As he and the cab driver were headed to the bus station he had remembered that there was airport shuttle service drop offs and pickups at a couple of the hotels nearby and told the cabbie to swing by these service areas first.
It was always cheaper to take a flight out of Atlanta versus starting out in Montgomery, so many people would op to pay 50 dollars for a ticket on a shuttle van which made the trip every few hours between the two cities. He was in luck and a van was in the service area and would be returning to Montgomery shortly, so he paid the cabbie off and bought himself a shuttle bus ticket for a quicker more comfortable ride home.
This ride home wasn’t going to stop at every little town along the way like the Greyhound bus does and it appeared it would be just him and the driver for this return trip.
While Dennis was waiting he and the driver speculated on what could have possibly happened to the power. It wasn’t until the driver tried to call back to talk to his home base that Dennis got a sinking but knowing feeling in the pit of his stomach that said something more than a local blackout was going on. Either a coronal mass ejection had gone off or a nuclear EMP had been exploded somewhere.
“The damn sirens would be going off it was nuke, there were hardened warning communication systems and underground wiring for that. But were the damned sirens themselves dependant on the electric grid? Dennis didn’t know the answer to that and began to get panicky and check the sky for a mushroom cloud or something.”
The driver looked at him suspiciously as he began to frantically look all around seeking some kind of answer to what was going on.
“You are looking up there in the sky for something in particular?” Bert asked trying to keep one eye on Dennis and have a look at the sky himself.
“You think those planes are going to have a lot of trouble landing if the airport doesn’t have any power?” Bert asked concerned and starting to scan the skies with Dennis for whatever mysterious thing he was looking for.
“Those planes that are still in the air probably will have to fly around in a wide circle for awhile or get diverted to another airport while they switch to emergency generator power. How many passengers are you expecting to ride back with us to Montgomery?” Dennis asked not wanting to stir up any unwarranted fears before he knew exactly what was going on.
“I got just one lady on the pickup list and she is 20 minutes late already. That’s why I wanted to call dispatch and see if she had called in before I took off back to Montgomery.” Bert replied watching the traffic start to snarl up on Peachtree Street because all of the street traffic signals had stopped working.
“If we don’t hurry up and leave soon you are never going to get out of here.” Dennis said watching the cars play a game of dodge each other at the intersections when somebody got impatient to cross and took the first gap between cars they saw.
“Yeah let’s go ahead and get going down the road. If she ever shows up and God bless her, she can take the next shuttle home in 3 hours. I am out of here as of right now.” Bert declared and for the next hour and a half they fought horrendous traffic to get to an alternate route home Dennis knew about.
After they finally got back on the highway and were about halfway home was when Dennis had heard the first Emergency of many warnings about the evidence of a nuclear EMP strike come in on Bert’s radio. The cabs radio up to this point had just said that it was a national emergency involving the power grid and to remain calm and try to stay at home. Dennis had been babbling away at Bert telling him what he knew about solar vs nuclear EMP up to this point and convinced him to stop at any store along the way to stock up on things they might not be able to get when they got back home.
He had explained to Bert that distance from a nuke EMP depended a lot on how your cars engine and computer system was affected, but a localized EMP event like what happened to Quebec from a solar storm could also be the reason their vehicle was still moving and planes still flying. If a solar storm had just overloaded some big transformers then you would only have localized damage that could be fixed. Now that Dennis knew the cause of the disaster he could do a little planning.
He only had about $75 in his pockets, his mom astutely kept cash at home so if they were lucky and could find any store open in town he could add to their preps.
“Hell! “ Dennis thought. That is if the panic buying zoo that will be forming up at the grocery stores hasn’t already started up big-time yet.
You would think a city the size of Montgomery that had weathered many a hurricane or tornado would have some plan to keep some stores open or the damn supermarket chains would have installed generators by now, but it had not happe
ned to Dennis’s knowledge unless they did so after the hurricane of last year. It would probably be the same old routine of lock the doors, dump the meat and frozen food aisles and open up 4 or 5 days after the storm to sell some of what was left.
Dennis wasn’t too worried though about having to go to a store for food right away. His mom’s house had at least a month or two of supplies stored in it and he had more than a year worth of food out in the country at his prepper shack which was 30 miles outside of town. He was pretty well set to ride this apocalypse out or as well as he would ever be, because he had been putting his all into prepping for the past 5 yrs or so.
The end of the Mayan calendar and 2012 etc had all come and gone just as he knew it would. But he also knew we were going into solar maximum during this period and had been preparing for a grid down event like this along with a few other disaster scenarios.
He had a small solar light setup by SUNRNR and a solar hot water system by Helios at his cabin as well as propane or wood heat so convincing Mom to bug out to the country with him shouldn’t be a problem. Just common sense, low funds coming in now and rising utility prices had made him try to make his little homestead as self reliant as he could.
