William R. Forstchen
THE FINAL DAY
For Robin
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It has been more than seven years since the publication of One Second After. Much has happened in the time since, as it of course does with all our lives. My daughter has matured into a fine young lady and graduated from college. Two and a half years ago, after giving a talk at a “prepper” conference, I met the true love of my life, my “Twin Flame,” and we were recently married. Many new friends have come into my life because of what I write, and a few have drifted away. New lives have joined my world, and some old friends have slipped away, in particular a beloved veteran of Omaha Beach, Andy Andrews. There have been great surprises, the biggest one being that what started out as a relatively unknown book catapulted to the New York Times bestseller list and some even claim it helped to trigger the Prepper Movement. If so, I only see my work as a small part of a phenomena now embraced by millions.
There have been disappointments as well, and the biggest one is that I wrote One Second After at the behest of close friends in politics who believed that even though it was a novel, it would lay before the American public the existential threat to national survival. I had an optimistic belief that the book would trigger political action to harden our electrical infrastructure and have a far more robust foreign policy to prevent such weapons from getting into the hands of those who would willingly launch an EMP attack. That has proven to be an utter failure and leaves me, and should leave all who read this, asking a most fundamental question: Why have our federal and state governments ignored this threat? In my own attempts to raise awareness and press for a political solution, I have, at times, been met with mocking disdain. It does remind me of the hypocrisy of those who lecture us about guns, and do so while surrounded by professional guards who are indeed well armed, while extolling us to strip ourselves naked. The analogy between those two issues is apt and you can project what I mean from there.
It is why I now believe that the only response left is for “we the people” to be prepared individually, then turn to neighbors, friends, and so forth until we as an entire nation can indeed take care of ourselves. I write this only days after the tragedy in Orlando, Florida. The casualty list is over a hundred. I fear that soon it could be a thousand, ten thousand, and, in the event of an EMP, into the hundreds of millions. Being truly prepared, individually and as a nation, is the only way we can ever ensure our survival against the forces of darkness and hate.
Anyhow, this is supposed to be an acknowledgments, and if you have read this far, it is time to get on with my many well-deserved thank-yous. Without the support, trust, and efforts of my friends at Tor/Forge Books, you would not be reading these words. Thirty years ago, when first entering this business, I met Tom Doherty at a conference and decided even then that someday I hoped to work with him. He and his team are the ideal of a publishing crew that every author should hope for. Thanks must go as well to my agent, Eleanor Wood of Spectrum Literary Agency, and her son and daughter, who are now part of the firm. We’ve been together more than twenty-five years, watched our children grow, and she has always been by my side as a friend and advisor. A special thanks as well to my friends with Ascot Media Group. They are a public-relations firm second to none and have played an instrumental role in getting these stories about EMP out to the public and media.
If I tried to name all the friends who have stood by me, offered advice, and impacted my work, these pages would run on like an Oscar acceptance speech. Those of you reading this bought the book to get to a story! Therefore, as Lincoln used to say, “I shall keep this short and sweet like the widow’s dance.” Thanks must go to my friends, neighbors, and coworkers at Black Mountain and Montreat College. They have accepted and even embraced my setting of a story in our community with grace. Whether a crisis comes one day or not, this truly is the best place on earth to call your home and where I have spent nearly a quarter of a century teaching. Shortly after One Second After came out, I was asked by newfound friends at Carolina Readiness to speak at a prepper conference they were sponsoring. I was expecting fifty guests or so, and I found instead over six hundred packing the room! That was just the start, and across these seven years I have met thousands of preppers… people of common sense, ideals, and faith in their God and their country. I am honored to count all as friends. And finally, the teachers in my life, going back to Ida Singer, then Russ Beaulieu and Betty Kellor, to Gunther Rothenberg, and at my college men like Don King and William Hurt. I hope I have lived up to your expectations.
In closing, I wrote in One Second After that it was my fervent prayer that thirty years hence my books would be forgotten, and if recalled at all, it would be that the darkness I feared never came to pass and my daughter went on to a life that she would live in peace. I still pray for that. I once believed my government would act to ensure our safety when it came to threats such as EMP and attack by radical groups around the world. I now have my doubts, at least short term, that such will be the case. I now place my faith of a peaceful future in your hands, my fellow citizens, it is up to us to act proactively so that this nation of, by, and for the people does not perish from the earth.
PROLOGUE
This is the BBC News. It is 3:00 Greenwich War Time, broadcasting to our friends in the Western Hemisphere on this the 920th day since the start of the war.
Later in this program, we will provide an in-depth report about the tragic aftermath of the full-scale nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, followed by a report about the situation in the Middle East where the conflict continues to rage between Israel and its neighboring states—except for Jordan, which today reaffirmed its alliance with Israel against the Caliphate and its allies.
But first the news from the United States:
Today the self-declared federal government based in Bluemont announced that the former states of Virginia and Maryland have been brought up to what the government defines as “Level One” status, meaning that all forces allegedly in conflict with the “Reconstituted Federal Authority in Bluemont,” as it now describes itself, have been pacified.
The Bluemont government announced earlier in the year that it has abandoned its plans to establish the Army of National Recovery, more commonly referred to as the ANR. Today’s announcement of the completion of establishing stabilized status in those two mid-Atlantic states has been attributed to actions waged by the traditional armed forces of the United States. The Bluemont government declared that the victory was achieved by units withdrawn from confrontation with China’s occupation of states in the West and other units that were in service overseas on the day the war started.
After our reporting of other news of the day, a panel of experts will discuss the apparently changing status of the situation in North America.
But first, this message for our friends in the western provinces of Chinese-occupied Canada: “The chair is against the door.” I repeat, “The chair is against the door.”