Zero Hour: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Fiction Series (The Blackout Series Book 2)

by Bobby Akart

  Colton used a six-inch PVC pipe retrieved from the house being remodeled and stuffed the fishing gear inside. He sealed the ends with beach towels, Saran Wrap, and duct tape. He took one of their comforters and wrapped their shovels, hoes, rakes, and axes they’d found during their scavenging expeditions. These were wrapped with duct tape and bungeed to the roof rack of the Wagoneer.

  Madison secured all of their important legal documents like birth certificates, passports, licenses, deeds and financial documents in waterproof, one-gallon Ziploc bags. She also gathered up all of their photographs and special mementos. Just because they were leaving Harding Place didn’t mean they were leaving their lives and memories behind.

  Weapons would be kept handy in the front, where the three of them would occupy the bench seat. The remainder of the interior was packed to the ceiling with everything imaginable to help them reestablish their lives elsewhere until they could return.

  Alex agreed to stand watch all night since she got so much sleep earlier in the day. As an exhausted Colton and Madison struggled to climb the stairs, he was optimistic their last night in their home would be a peaceful one.

  Chapter 41

  DAY FIFTEEN

  6:00 a.m., September 23

  Ryman Residence

  Belle Meade, Tennessee

  The last night was uneventful, and Alex woke up her parents from a deep sleep. She used the last of the propane fuel to make a pot of coffee and warm up some blueberry Pop-Tarts. The family was mostly silent as the reality of leaving set in. After they finished off the coffee and used the bathroom, Colton packed up the grill and announced they were ready.

  The three of them made one final walk-through as they said goodbye to the home where Alex had lived most of her life. She knew leaving home was a part of growing up and that her time to venture out into the world was coming, but not under these circumstances.

  Madison shed several tears as she closed the kitchen door behind them. Colton opened the garage door, revealing the trophy received for the most cleverly negotiated deal in his career—the Jeep Wagoneer. This old truck was their lifeline now. It was their means to a new life far away from the post-apocalyptic madness of the big city.

  Colton eased the truck out of the garage and worked his way down the driveway until he had to veer through the front yard to avoid the Suburban. As he wheeled his way around the landscaping, all three of them looked toward the west where fire danced above the tall oak trees. Reminiscent of a scene from Gone with the Wind, the magnificent antebellum homes of Belle Meade were in flames.

  Madison began to sob now. “Will we ever be able to return?”

  “What about our things?” asked Alex.

  “Having somewhere to live is home. Having someone to love is family. All we need is right here in this front seat—our family.” With that, Colton drove onto the road and led the Ryman family on a new adventure and to a new home.

  They’d reached their turning point—a point of no return.

  Thanks for reading Zero Hour, the second book in The Blackout Series! Continue reading for BONUS CONTENT including a 700 item Prepper’s Checklist.

  The saga will continue in …

  TURNING POINT

  Book three of The Blackout Series

  PURCHASE FOR $2.99

  SIGN UP to Bobby Akart’s mailing list to receive free advance reading copies, special offers, and bonus content. You’ll also be one of the first to receive news about new releases in The Blackout Series, The Boston Brahmin Series and the Prepping for Tomorrow series—which includes seven Amazon #1 Bestsellers in 35 different fiction and non-fiction genres.

  Visit Bobby Akart’s website for informative blog entries on preparedness, writing and his latest contribution to the American Preppers Network.

  www.BobbyAkart.com

  Stop by the Boston Brahmin website to dig deeper into the history, characters, and real-life events that inspired the series in which political suspense collides with post-apocalyptic thriller fiction.

  www.TheBostonBrahmin.com

  Visit the Freedom Preppers website to learn about all aspects of preparedness and the threats we face.

  www.FreedomPreppers.com

  Copyright Information

  © 2016 Bobby Akart Inc. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Bobby Akart Inc.

  Go Back to Contents

  APPENDIX A

  Please learn from, and enjoy, a sneak peek of Bobby Akart’s best-selling analysis on the threats we face from an EMP: Electromagnetic Pulse, a part of The Prepping for Tomorrow Series

  by Bobby Akart.

  CYBER WARFARE EMP ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

  Go Back to Contents

  AN EXCERPT FROM EMP: ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE

  PART TWO

  HISTORY OF THE ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE

  Chapter Four

  Significant Events in the History of EMP

  1945: Project Y, Los Alamos, New Mexico

  The fact that an electromagnetic pulse is produced by a nuclear explosion was known in the earliest days of nuclear weapons testing. At 5:30 a.m. on July 16, 1945, Los Alamos scientists detonated a plutonium bomb at a test site located on the U.S. Air Force base at Alamogordo, New Mexico, approximately 120 miles south of Albuquerque. Project Y was led by famed physicist, Robert Oppenheimer. He chose the name Trinity for the test site, inspired by the poetry of John Donne.

  When the first atomic bomb finally detonated atop a steel tower, an intense light flash and a sudden wave of heat were followed by a great burst of sound that echoed across the valley. A ball of fire rose into the sky and then was surrounded by a giant mushroom-shaped cloud that stretched approximately thirty-eight thousand feet wide. With the power equivalent to around twenty-one thousand tons of TNT, the bomb completely obliterated the steel tower on which it rested. The nuclear age had begun.

  Before the Trinity test, Enrico Fermi, known as the architect of the nuclear age, was persuaded by Dr. Oppenheimer to join Project Y at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Part of his responsibilities were to calculate the possible electromagnetic fields produced by the explosion. His calculations led to further testing in the next decade.

  1950s: Operation Buffalo, British Testing in Australia

  The first in a series of atomic explosions took place at Maralinga, South Australia by a team of British scientists. Operation Buffalo commenced on September 27, 1956. Operation Buffalo consisted of the testing of four nuclear devices, codenamed One Tree, Marcoo, Kite, and Breakaway, respectively. One Tree (12.9 kilotons of TNT) and Breakaway (10.8 kilotons of TNT) were exploded from steel towers. Marcoo (1.4 kilotons of TNT) was exploded at ground level. The last test, Kite (2.9 kilotons of TNT), was released by a Royal Air Force Vickers Valiant bomber from a height of thirty-five thousand feet. The Kite test was the first reported launching of a nuclear weapon from a British aircraft.

  The Operation Buffalo atomic tests were the fourth in a series conducted in Australia. Throughout the 1950s, the British had fired atomic bombs on the deserted Monte Bello Islands, off the coast of Western Australia.

  Before Operation Buffalo, instrumentation failures were observed during nuclear weapons testing between 1951 and 1953. Early testing by the UK, revealed a click heard on radio receivers when an atomic bomb was detonated. This click was often followed by a failure in the equipment. Later, in declassified military literature, the electronic breakdowns were attributed to radiated radioflash. Radioflash became the term used in early reports on the phenomena, now more widely known as a nuclear electromagnetic pulse. It was later discovered that the phenomena was only one part of the more wide-ranging set of effects resulting from EMPs, after the detonation of nuclear weapons.

  1958: Operation Hardtack, Pacific Proving Grounds, United States

  Operation Hardtack
was a series of thirty-five nuclear tests conducted by the United States in 1958 at the Pacific Proving Grounds, located in the Marshall Islands. Under growing political pressure from the international community to limit nuclear testing, the United States conducted a series of high altitude, multi-megaton tests, to study their usefulness for anti-ballistic missile warheads. In the process, the high-altitude electromagnetic pulse was discovered. After the U.S. had completed six of the high-altitude nuclear tests, the unexpected results that were associated with the EMP effect raised many new questions. The U.S. Government Project Officer's Interim Report on the Starfish Prime project read, in part:

  "Previous high-altitude nuclear tests: YUCCA, TEAK, and ORANGE, plus the three ARGUS shots were poorly instrumented and hastily executed. Despite thorough studies of the meager data, present models of these bursts are sketchy and tentative. These models are too uncertain to permit extrapolation to other altitudes and yields with any confidence. Thus, there is a strong need, not only for better instrumentation but for further tests covering a range of altitudes and yields."

  The EMP effect observations generated considerable interest within the nuclear science community, leading to additional testing into the 1960’s.

  Following the testing by the British and the U.S. in the latter part of the 1950’s, the Soviet Union called for a ban on atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons and unilaterally halted its nuclear program. The U.S. paused testing for a short time. In late 1961, Nikita Khrushchev, Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was forced to break the moratorium, under internal political pressures. The Soviets began testing once again. The nuclear arms race was on.

  1962: Starfish Prime, Operation Fishbowl, United States

  Intelligence received from the 1961 Soviet tests raised alarms within U.S. military agencies. Following an analysis of the results, the U.S. became concerned that a Soviet nuclear bomb detonated in space could possibly damage or destroy our advanced weaponry. Consequently, American scientists ratcheted up their nuclear testing program. Although there was some data from the previous high-altitude nuclear tests, the results were inconclusive, in part, due to the surprising results. The newly formed scientific team was determined to be thorough. The result was the implementation of Operation Fishbowl.

  The Starfish Prime test was one of five high-altitude nuclear detonations, conducted as part of Operation Fishbowl, a series of tests in 1962 that had begun in direct response to the Soviet announcement on August 30, 1961, that the Soviet Union would end a three-year moratorium on testing. The Starfish Prime test was originally planned as the second in the Operation Fishbowl series, but the first launch, known as Bluegill, was lost by the radar-tracking equipment and had to be destroyed in flight.

  On July 8, 1962, Honolulu time, at nine seconds after 11 p.m., the Starfish Prime test was successfully detonated at an altitude of two hundred and fifty miles above the Earth's surface. The actual weapon yield came very close to the design yield, approximately 1.4 megatons—equivalent to 1.4 million tons of TNT. The nuclear warhead detonated 13 minutes and 41 seconds after liftoff of the Thor missile from Johnston Island, in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean.

  Reports described the explosion as spherical in shape. The resulting shock wave expanded in all directions and created an incredible aurora that was seen as far away as Honolulu, about a thousand miles away from the detonation point. The observing scientists noted that the electrons traveled away from the explosion at incredible speeds, following the Earth’s magnetic field, and then dropped into the upper atmosphere. As they collided with the atoms and molecules comprising the Earth’s atmosphere, the electrons were absorbed—generating the man-made aurora.

  However, the scientists were not there for the light show. When the bomb detonated, the electrons underwent an incredible acceleration, creating a brief, but extremely powerful magnetic field. This was what they were looking for—an electromagnetic pulse. Starfish Prime caused an EMP far greater than expected. The shock wave drove much of the instrumentation off the scale, causing great difficulty in compiling accurate measurements. The Starfish Prime electromagnetic pulse also made those effects known to the unaware public, by causing electrical damage in Hawaii. The strength of the EMP affected the flow of electricity for a thousand miles, knocking out about 300 streetlights, setting off numerous burglar alarms, and damaging a telephone company microwave link. The EMP damage to the microwave link shut down telephone service throughout the Hawaiian Islands.

  While the EMP had been predicted by scientists, there was another effect that had not been anticipated. The electrons from the blast didn’t descend into the Earth’s atmosphere, but instead lingered in space for months. They became trapped by the Earth’s magnetic field, creating an artificial radiation belt high above the surface.

  The scientists discovered when a high-speed electron collides with a satellite, it could generate a miniature electromagnetic pulse. The net effect was that these electrons could strike satellites and disrupt their electronics. The pulse of electrons from the Starfish Prime detonation damaged at least six satellites, all of which eventually failed due to the blast.

  Nuclear scientists around the world were astonished. The size of the pulse generated was not anticipated by anyone. As a result, future tests by the U.S. were conducted with a much lower yield. In a report issued by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency in 2010, the results of the Starfish Prime test were cited as the primary evidence of the threat that an EMP would pose to satellites and other space assets.

  Go Back to Contents

  APPENDIX B

  Space Weather: A Primer

  Best-Selling Author Bobby Akart

  The Prepping for Tomorrow Series

  Because you never know when the day before —

  is the day before.

  Prepare for tomorrow!

  Author Bobby Akart, the founder of Freedom Preppers, has been a tireless proponent of adopting a preparedness lifestyle. As he learned prepping tips and techniques, he shared them with others via his writing on the American Preppers Network website, and in his bestselling book series—The Boston Brahmin and Prepping for Tomorrow.

  In The Boston Brahmin series, political suspense collides with post-apocalyptic thriller fiction. Bobby’s attention to detail and real-world scenarios immerses the reader in a world of geopolitical machinations and post-apocalyptic drama. Preparedness skills and techniques are interwoven in the plot in way that the reader can be given a real-world scenario to envision.

  The Prepping for Tomorrow series is the culmination of Bobby’s research and real-world experiences provided in a concise guide for new and experienced preppers alike.

  The Blackout Series is intended to provide the reader a glimpse into the lives of ordinary Americans as they face a catastrophic collapse event in the form of a massive coronal mass ejection.

  What is Space Weather?

  Space weather is primarily driven by solar storm phenomena that include coronal mass ejections (CMEs), solar flares, solar particle events, and solar wind. These phenomena can occur in various regions on the sun’s surface, but only Earth-directed solar storms are the potential drivers of space weather events on Earth. An understanding of solar storm phenomena is an important component to developing accurate space-weather forecasts (event onset, location, duration, and magnitude).

  CMEs are explosions of plasma (charged particles) from the sun’s corona. They generally take twenty-four to forty-eight hours to arrive at Earth, but in the most extreme cases they have been observed to arrive in as little as fifteen hours. When CMEs collide with Earth’s magnetic field, they can cause a space weather event called a geomagnetic storm, which often includes enhanced aurora displays. Geomagnetic storms of varying magnitudes can cause significant long- and short-term impacts to the Nation’s critical infrastructure, including the electric power grid, aviation systems, Global Positioning System (GPS) applications, and satellites.

  A solar flare is a brief erupti
on of intense high-energy electromagnetic radiation from the sun’s surface, typically associated with sunspots. Solar flares can affect Earth’s upper atmosphere, potentially causing disruption, degradation, or blackout of satellite communications, radar, and high-frequency radio communications. The electromagnetic radiation from the flare takes approximately eight minutes to reach Earth, and the effects usually last for one to three hours on the daylight side of Earth.

  Solar particle events are bursts of energetic electrons, protons, alpha particles, and other heavier particles into interplanetary space. Following an event on the sun, the fastest moving particles can reach Earth within tens of minutes and temporarily enhance the radiation level in interplanetary and near-Earth space. When energetic protons collide with satellites or humans in space, they can penetrate deep into the object that they collide with and cause damage to electronic circuits or biological DNA. Solar particle events can also pose a risk to passengers and crew in aircraft at high latitudes near the geomagnetic poles and can make radio communications difficult or nearly impossible.

  Solar wind, consisting of plasma, continuously flows from the sun. Different regions of the sun produce winds of different speeds and densities. Solar wind speed and density play an important role in space weather. High-speed winds tend to produce geomagnetic disturbances, and slow-speed winds can bring calm space weather. Space weather effects on Earth are highly dependent on solar wind speed, solar wind density, and direction of the magnetic field embedded in the solar wind. When high-speed solar wind overtakes slow-speed wind or when the magnetic field of solar wind switches polarity, geomagnetic disturbances can result.