One Second After

I love how this book takes the man of the hour through the wringer and reveals the diamond inside. John Matherson is presented with a choice that causes him to voluntarily give up a lifelong career to handle a difficult family illness. I can’t help but think that the selflessness involved in a choice like that is uncommon and makes for a great hero.

There is suffering, and then the world practically ends. That double-whammy punch and the way John contends with the world around him is what makes this story so riveting. This story is really about one man… show more.

Another book that I both read and listened to, this one with 28,000 reviews. I liked the upfront personal point of view of what the common man would do in extreme circumstances. He spent time on the physical failings of technology and that the average person in today’s America isn’t ready to survive. Some will. Most won’t.

In One Second After, everything about our comfortable, familiar world is turned upside-down in the blink of an eye. In his novel, Forstchen examines how reliant we are on our infrastructure and how quickly we degenerate once that network is broken. The book, while not a great feat of literature, is fast-paced and enjoyable. Despite a few one-dimensional characters, gender stereotypes, and occasional flat dialogue, I loved the invaluable information about EMPs (a topic I never knew I wanted to know more about) and appreciated the novel’s harsh, unflinching vision of how fragile our society is. The idea that… show more.

One Second After is aptly titled and it really drove home to me how quickly our society can fall apart without electricity and our high-tech conveniences. Rather than the slow burn of an impending disaster moving towards you from over the horizon, the book hits hard and fast. People die quickly and life as we know it comes to a screeching halt. 

The book also illustrates, in great detail, the challenges of trying to recreate a society—albeit even a small one, from scratch. The everyday facets of our life that we take for granted must be re-considered, evaluated, and then… show more.

What if an EMP attack brought the world back to primitive times? How will people survive and interact? The story starts fast, and then it takes its time to reel you in—and it does. How people change and the circumstances to keep loved ones alive are depicted gracefully and horrifically by author William R. Forstchen. Such a good read. And the book will make you think about what it would be like if the world went dark.

In this New York Times bestseller, an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the United States destroys the power grid and every electronic device. John Matherson, a widowed history professor in a small college town in North Carolina, his family, and his community must learn to survive as people did in the 19th century, but without having the necessary things in place to do so. I love this book because the scenarios that play out are so similar to my own series of books, as an EMP has virtually the same effect as the coronal mass ejection (CME) described in… show more.

“What if” someone attacked the United States with nuclear electromagnetic pulse weapons? Such weapons don’t cause a lot of destruction or radiation but the pulse fries electronic devices, especially small and delicate ones. What would happen? Hint, modern cars would stop working. This story leaves you pondering how greatly our society and ourselves depend on delicate electronics….