285 miles. 1,504,800 feet. The perfect altitude.
Any higher and the electromagnetic pulse would have been weakened by the distance to the ground. Any lower and the range of exposure wouldn’t have been maximized.
Three fishing vessels were within ten miles of the freighter when the missiles fired into the night sky. Half a dozen eyes watched as the missiles climbed upward, the white fire illuminating the smoky trail that followed. But no one knew what it was, and no one knew what to do.
As the missiles climbed, they also became visible along the east coast, their smoky contrails and burning engines illuminating the night.
Higher. Higher. Almost straight up they flew. Crossing the shoreline, they followed their intended flight path to the east.
Seventy thousand feet below the first missile, a ten-year-old boy stood on the beach. To his right, the ocean lapped, the whitecaps illuminated by the low moon and stars. Above him, he watched the tiny trail of moving flame.
“What is that?” he asked his brother.
“I don’t know,” his brother said.
It was eleven minutes, nineteen seconds from missile launch to the highest arc in the parabola, where the warheads would explode.
The Choun Ohmonee(The Good Mother)
Ninety-Three Miles West of San Francisco
Three hours behind the Eastern Time Zone, the North Korean frigate, the Choun Ohmonee, got the launch codes for its missiles when the sun was barely setting. Still, the crewmen didn’t wait until it was dark to launch. Once they had received the codes, they knew they had only a few minutes to get the missiles in the air.
The modified cargo doors were pulled open, the launchers raised, the missiles readied to go.
The North Korean freighter launched her two Scud missiles a little more than forty seconds after her sister ship in the North Atlantic Ocean had fired hers. The two missiles burned their way upward, piercing the glowing sky. Like their predecessors, the missiles followed each other until passing through fifty-five thousand feet, then separated, the first one taking up a northern heading, the other tracking almost straight east.
North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)
Inside Cheyenne Mountain, East of Peterson Air Force Base
Colorado Springs, Colorado
The Combat Operations Center came instantly to life, the huge screen at the front of the room illuminating the two missiles climbing over the east coast. A low growl filled the air from the warning buzzer overhead.
“Oh no, oh no . . .” the chief controller mumbled as he stared at the screen.
“What is it? What are they!” the commanding general demanded.
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Where did they come from!”
“Launch point was . . . they share the same launch point . . . looks like eighty, maybe ninety miles off the coast . . .”
“Submarine-launched missiles. You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“It could be. They are ballistic . . .”
“What are their targets?”
Five seconds of hesitation. “We don’t know for certain, sir. The missiles are still in their climb phase. Their flight paths are not matching any of our parabolas. They’re going high . . . going high.”
The general thought a second. “Check your systems,” he said, his voice low and cold.
Another long moment of silence. Every eye in the Combat Operations Center watched the senior controller. “Sir,” he finally answered, “self-check complete. We have two confirmed bandits. Both of the missiles are still climbing.”
“That can’t be right,” the general answered. “Not when they were launched so close.”
The controller moved his cursor across his screen. “Final self-check complete,” he announced, finishing the last step in his checklist to confirm the missile launch.
The general’s face was utterly calm, but his mind raced ahead. “Get me Raven Rock,” he said as he turned to his chair.
Another warning chime. The enormous screen of the United States lit up again.
Two more missiles. Off the west coast. Climbing. Always climbing. One turning north, one heading east.
Twenty seconds of silence as the controllers and computers worked.
“The four missiles have taken up headings to hit our four major quadrants,” the lead controller said.
And that was all it took. The general finally understood.
Falling back in his chair, he gripped the armrest, realizing that the world, as they all knew it, was about to end.
Chapter Twenty
The missiles reached their target locations: 285 miles above the Earth and spread out evenly across the United States, the coordinates roughly corresponding to northern Idaho, the Four Corners, Detroit, and Nashville. Once the missiles had reached their preprogrammed coordinates, they exploded at almost exactly the same time.
Each of the missiles carried a fifty-kiloton warhead, the equivalent of fifty thousand tons of TNT, one hundred million pounds of explosive power.
Inconceivable heat and overpressure spread across the lower reaches of space from the growing fireballs. But the heat and radiation were not the purpose of the explosions, for they were not dangerous to human life, not at such a high altitude.
No, this attack wasn’t designed to kill Americans from either heat or an explosion. It was designed to kill Americans by starving them to death.
As the warheads exploded, an atmospheric tsunami swept across North America. From the southern edge of Canada to central Mexico, extending as far south as the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, four crashing waves of electromagnetic power burst across the sky.
* * *
In addition to heat and overpressure, a nuclear explosion also generates a massive burst of electromagnetic energy known as an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP. When such a surge of X rays and gamma rays are unleashed at the edge of the earth’s atmosphere, they interact with the air molecules, creating an enormous burst of highly charged electrons that are magnified by the magnetic field around the earth. The final result is an enormous pulse of energy.
The electromagnetic shock wave generated by the four simultaneous nuclear explosions was unimaginably intense, a hundred million times more powerful than any radio signal ever before created by man. This massive wave of energy raced toward the surface of the earth at the speed of light, destroying every unprotected electrical circuit in its path.
A thousandth of a second after the explosions, the destruction was complete.
* * *
Sometime in the spring of 2005, the United States government came to an incredible conclusion. Almost entirely unreported (which didn’t really matter since there was very little anyone could do about it anyway), the findings of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism, technology, and homeland security were synopsized in the Washington Post:
An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the American homeland . . . is one of only a few ways that the United States could be defeated by its enemies—terrorist or otherwise. And it is probably the easiest. A single Scud missile, carrying a single nuclear weapon, detonated at the appropriate altitude, would interact with the Earth’s atmosphere, producing an electromagnetic pulse radiating down to the surface at the speed of light. Depending on the location and size of the blast, the effect would be to knock out already stressed power grids and other electrical systems across much or even all of the continental United States, for months if not years.
. . . The loss of power would have a cascading effect on all aspects of U.S. society. Communication would be largely impossible. Lack of refrigeration would leave food rotting in warehouses, exacerbated by a lack of transportation as those vehicles still working simply ran out of gas (which is pumped with electricity). The inability to sanitize and distribute water would quickly threaten public health, not to mention the safety of anyone in the path of the inevitable fires, which would rage unchecked. And as we have seen in areas of natural and other disaster
s, such circumstances often result in a fairly rapid breakdown of social
order. . . .
Those who survived . . . would find themselves transported back to the United States of the 1880s.
This threat may sound straight out of Hollywood, but it is very real. CIA Director Porter Goss recently testified before Congress about nuclear material missing from storage sites in Russia that may have found its way into terrorist hands. . . . Iran has surprised intelligence analysts by describing the mid-flight detonations of missiles fired from ships on the Caspian Sea as “successful” tests. North Korea exports missile technology around the world; Scuds can easily be purchased on the open market for about $100,000 apiece.
A terrorist organization might have trouble putting a nuclear warhead “on target” with a Scud, but it would be much easier to simply launch and detonate in the atmosphere. No need for the risk and difficulty of trying to smuggle a nuclear weapon over the border or hit a particular city. Just launch a cheap missile from a freighter in international waters—al Qaeda is believed to own about 80 such vessels—and make sure to get it a few miles in the air. . . .
Today few Americans can conceive of the possibility that terrorists could bring our society to its knees by destroying everything we rely on that runs on electricity. But this time we’ve been warned. . . .
(Senator John Kyle, “Unready for This Attack,” Washington Post, April 16, 2005)
Microseconds after the four warheads exploded, all across the United States, electrical conductors and generators were destroyed. Transmission lines were rendered useless. Computers and microchips were instantly burned through. In a fraction of a second, the United States of America was transplanted back to the preindustrial world.
Electronic banking as well as the financial information on 300 million Americans was instantly vaporized, disappearing in a puff of digital smoke. With a flash of unseen light, the United States became a cash-only world.
At the time of the explosions, there were a few more than 3,400 civilian airliners in the sky. (Had the explosions occurred just a few hours earlier, at the height of the afternoon aviation rush, the number of airborne aircraft would have exceeded five thousand.) None of the electrical circuits inside these aircraft were designed to withstand an electromagnetic pulse. As a result, the flight controls, navigation equipment, GPS, radars, cockpit displays, and electronic engine controllers were rendered useless. Most of these aircraft crashed.
Thirty-two hundred aircraft. On average, 150 passengers apiece.
640,000 Americans dead.
But tens of millions of other deaths would follow, for the entire nation was now just a few months away from mass starvation, completely incapable of feeding itself. The ability to plant, harvest, or transport food, the ability to purify and provide clean water, the ability to provide for the most basic needs had been instantly stripped away.
And that was just the beginning.
Medical instruments, hospital power generators, electronic ignitions inside semis and family automobiles, controllers inside the diesel engines on locomotives, cell phones, televisions, refrigeration units, the infrastructure for handling power, fuel, energy, banking and finance, telecommunications, emergency services—all of it was gone.
Four simple warheads—none of them more sophisticated or any larger than those designed during WWII—were all it took to bring the greatest nation on earth to her knees.
Chapter Twenty-One
Interstate 70
One Hundred Ten Miles East of Indianapolis
They headed west. Luke drove, his right hand on the wheel, his fingers nervously tapping it. Sara sat beside him, her hands resting calmly on her lap. Ammon crouched in the backseat of the Honda, leaning against the window, his eyes closed. He hadn’t spoken in a couple of hours, but Sara knew he was awake.
Traffic was heavy, the interstate clogged in both directions, though the heaviest line of cars was heading west. A long, slow, and discouraging day’s drive was behind them. The setting sun was directly ahead, the slanting rays burning through the front window. They didn’t talk as they drove, the Honda tires humming over the smooth interstate. Sara reached up and turned off the radio; every station played nothing but the news, repeating the same information again and again.
The president was dead now, the vice president as well. The Speaker of the House of Representatives and president pro tempore of the Senate were both alive but critically injured, leaving the Secretary of State as the acting president. Occasional riots still flared up in Chicago, New York, and
L.A., but most of the other major cities had calmed down. Millions of people, with no real explanation, were fleeing the east coast. Everyone had a grandparent, a sibling, a distant relation, or a friend who lived away from the major cities, and those people were extraordinarily popular right now.
Behind them, almost four hundred miles to the east, Washington, D.C., one of the greatest cities in the world, lay in a smolder, the smoke hanging over the area in a black, inky cloak. Thousands of volunteer firefighters had converged on the city, but there wasn’t much they could do. Downtown had nothing left to burn. The outskirts of the city still smoldered, but it was impossible to fight the fires with all the radioactive dust and contamination in the air. Most of the firefighters didn’t have anti-radiation suits and so they stood guard, waiting for the all clear to move in. Same for the rescue teams. Little they could do, but they did what they could.
As the sun dropped, the sky before them turned a deep crimson, the upper atmosphere having been choked with thick dust from the nuclear explosions over Gaza, D.C., and Iran. Luke moved both hands to the wheel and stretched his back against the seat. Sara leaned over to check the fuel gauge for the second time in the last five minutes, then sat back and closed her eyes. “We don’t want to go below half a tank,” she said.
Luke only nodded.
Most of the service stations they had passed were closed. SOLD OUT, NO VACANCY, and CLOSED signs seemed to be everywhere. The lines of cars at the few open stations back at Columbus had been blocks long. Four hours, five hours in line were the norm there, though it didn’t seem to be as bad once they got away from the population centers.
American society was as fragile and interconnected as a spider’s web; every hurricane, every snowfall, every hot summer day that pressed the electrical grid had the potential to bring an entire region to its knees. The transportation infrastructure was completely incapable of handling the sudden and massive migration that was taking place. Sara suspected many of the service stations that were closed still had fuel in their underground tanks but were unwilling to sell, hoarding for the next day when the prices would be higher and they could make even more.
She shook her head at the greed.
“Stay at home. There’s no reason to panic. Save your fuel and your resources,” was the official word out of Raven Rock. But the advice from the government spokesman didn’t mean a whole lot. No one trusted what was left of the federal government. It seemed like it was every man for himself now.
As they drove, Sara thought through their situation, considering their location and inventory of supplies. They were two days’ drive out of Washington, D.C., heading west. The protection of the Rocky Mountains was still at least thirty hours of driving away—if they could get gas, and if nothing else went wrong. They had enough food for a couple of weeks, but their water would last only a few more days. The 72-hour emergency kit had been a lifesaver, but they could only stretch it so far. She glanced nervously over her shoulder to the trunk of the car. Ten thousand dollars cash—all that the bank had allowed her to withdraw at one time—was hidden under the spare tire in the trunk. They had wrapped the hundred-dollar bills in an old plastic bag and shoved it in the space where the tire jack had been stored, but she knew if someone were suspicious—or hungry, or angry, or greedy or mean, or desperate, or any of the dozens of emotions they had witnessed over the last two days—they could find the money. The package was just too
big and awkward to hide it inside their little car. She thought of the cashier’s check tucked under her seat, another ten thousand dollars, good as cash in normal times, but who knew what it was worth right now? From what the radio said, it was 1929 all over again. Many financial institutions were refusing to hand out money, and the lines at the banks were almost as frenzied as the lines at the service stations and grocery stores.
The trunk was crammed with what remained of their
72-hour emergency kit, extra food, their last case of bottled water, two ten-gallon red containers of fuel, winter clothes, sleeping bags, a tent, winter boots, rock-climbing equipment (Ammon had insisted on bringing the ropes, although Sara didn’t know why). The backseat held their suitcases, another bag of extra clothes, a set of scriptures . . .
There was a sudden thump, and the car shuddered. Sara jerked and looked quickly to the road, her hands gripping the dash anxiously.
Luke reached out to calm her. “It’s cool, Mom,” he said. “There was a shredded tire in the road. Nothing to worry about.”
Sara looked back, saw the next car roll over the piece of tire, then turned around in her seat.
Leaning over, she rechecked the gas gauge, then let her eyes drift toward her son. A Beretta 90-TWO handgun was hidden under Luke’s seat. 9mm. Ten round clip. Black and gray. A full box of ammunition was stuffed in the glove compartment. She pictured the handgun’s beveled grip and shivered, hating the fact that it was so near.
She rested against the console between the two front seats and considered the gold coins hidden underneath her arm. Using their small toolbox, Ammon and Luke had removed the plastic console and hidden a metal box containing forty gold coins, each weighing one ounce. Two weeks ago the gold would have been valued at something like $25,000. Today it was worth ten or twelve times that, maybe even more.
She didn’t know what made her more nervous, the hidden gold coins or the gun. The gun might keep them safe, she could accept that, but the gold—that could only bring
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