I suddenly noticed the rest of the room had fallen silent, listening to our debate. My cheeks flamed afresh. Dad and I often got into debates over issues because we enjoyed it, but I’d taken on Mr. Wasserman and I felt embarrassed.
My mom spoke up. “Honey,” she said, speaking directly to me. "I just want to say,” and she looked around at everyone, “that there is probably NO way for any of us to understand the magnitude of how much any sin dishonors and insults an absolutely holy and glorious God. So whether this catastrophe to our nation is because of any sin in particular is less important than knowing that EVERY sin can be forgiven—and we, who are in Christ, are already forgiven.”
I couldn’t disagree with my mother on a theological basis, but I felt like she’d just made it harder to focus on the issue at hand—what had caused the EMP.
“What do you think caused the power outage, Blake?” I asked. I knew he’d have a theory; and I knew he wouldn’t misunderstand me or think I wanted his theological perspective. Blake was, first and foremost, a young scientist. I always pictured him in the future wearing a lab coat somewhere and doing top secret work for the government. Blake knew more about most things than most people knew about anything. Dad affectionately called him “an encyclopedia of useless information,” but most of what he knows isn’t useless. At least I don’t think so.
I was right about him having a theory. He didn’t even have to think about it.
“There was definitely an EMP so the only question is whether it was solar or a terrorist attack. If it was a solar event,” he went on, “it was likely due to a buildup of magnetic energy in the sun’s atmosphere. This energy builds up, see, and then suddenly gets released all at once. It literally flares out, arcing into space—and towards earth—at a million miles an hour. A solar flare is probably the most powerful explosion in the solar system that we know of,” he continued. “It’s like a billion nukes going off at once.”
Sometimes Blake would launch into explanations that were much more detailed than I needed, but that was Blake. If you asked him a question, he fully expected you to be interested in the entire answer, no matter how long or technical or convoluted it might be. His answer right now was no different, only this time I wasn’t bored. I wanted to hear every last detail. I wanted to know what had changed our lives so irreversibly and catastrophically. I do believe that God is fully Sovereign, even over space events, but I was still intrigued by how it had happened. I guess I wasn’t the only one who felt that way because we all sat engrossed, willing to hear Blake out, feeling awed and yet horrified by what he was saying.
“If it was terrorists,” he went on, “they would have had to set off an explosion really high in the atmosphere, like a mile or two up.” He looked around at us as he spoke, coming alive with energy. It made him seem extra good-looking, when he got all enthusiastic and onto what, for him, was a hot topic. I wasn’t so engrossed that I couldn’t stop to admire his intelligent eyes that were alive with feeling, or his brown wavy hair and the beginnings of a beard, while he spoke.
“You mean a nuclear bomb?” Mom asked, lowering her voice. The twins and the Wasserman children had been absently playing with toys on the floor but suddenly they ceased playing, all except the youngest Wasserman who was only three. They looked up, possibly because of the word “bomb,” but I suspected it had more to do with my mother’s lowered tone of voice. A lowered tone of voice in an adult is like a siren call to a kid to pay attention. They know they’re not supposed to hear whatever’s being said, and so of course they want to. Mom noticed their sudden interest.
“Lanie and Laura, could you take your friends and show them the toys from the safe room?” she asked.
“We’re playing with those toys right now, Mom,” said Laura, holding up an easy-sew card in the shape of an elephant. A thick yellow thread of yarn dangled out of it. Lainie nodded emphatically. “Yeah.”
“Okay, but go and check on Justin. Let me know if he’s sleeping soundly.” Justin was in for the night so I knew it was just an excuse to get them from the room. They seemed to know it too, and shook their heads as one (twins have an annoying way of doing that).
Dad said, “You heard your mother.” They frowned, but rose to obey. Three-year old Emma Wasserman, seeing the others leaving, got up on her adorably chunky little legs to hurry after, dragging a big baby doll. When they were gone, Blake continued.
“It would have to be nuclear to cause the EMP. So the detonation would set off this instantaneous flux of gamma rays, see? Followed by an enormous electromagnetic energy field disturbance. The rays have photons which produce high energy free electrons, and these electrons get caught in the earth’s atmosphere; and then they in turn cause this high voltage electromagnetic wave, called a pulse, an EMP.”
“Why does it take everything out?” Mom asked.
“Because it’s a horizon event; in other words, it affects everything within the line of sight of the explosion, all the way to the horizon, including our satellites; but then, see, our own infrastructure would keep it going, so it fries more systems, traveling along wires and conductors, spreading its catastrophic effects as it goes. The magnitude of the energy is too much for almost all circuitry it encounters.”
“How far an area might be affected, son?” My dad was probably wondering if the reports he’d heard on his radio were accurate, and wanted to confirm their likelihood of being true.
“They figure one blast could reach about 1,000 miles,” Blake said. “If there was more than one—who knows?”
My mom looked at my dad. “So this is a nuclear attack? Shouldn’t we all be concerned about fallout, then?” She sounded upset.
Blake saw her reaction and seemed surprised. “No, we’re not sure,” he added, quickly.
“No,” echoed Mrs. Buchanan. “We don’t think it was.”
“We were just being careful, staying in the safe room,” added Mr. Buchanan. “In reality, if it was a nuclear attack and ground zero was close by? Our safe room wouldn’t be safe enough. It’s not shielded enough, but if it was a high-atmosphere blast, it was good enough.”
Blake clarified. “We think it was a solar flare.”
There was a moment of silence. Blake seemed like he had more to say, but hesitated.
“Is there more?” I asked, to encourage him.
He looked at me with what I thought was gratitude. I happen to know it’s important to Blake to get out all that he thinks is important to a subject.
“If it was a nuke, there would have been significant fallout near the blast, but again, it was so high in the atmosphere that there wouldn’t be huge gamma particles—instead, the worst offenders were probably dissipated over a large area, instead of causing a so-called hot spot on the ground.” He gave me a significant look, because we all remembered how Dad and I and the school kids and Roy had been outdoors for hours after the pulse. If the blast had been close by, we would have suffered radiation sickness or even death.
“I mean, we still can’t be one hundred percent sure,” he added, spreading out his hands in a helpless gesture. “Most fallout happens immediately, and we really only know about the type of fallout from bombs that detonate on the ground. A ground detonation causes thousands of tons of earth to pulverize into trillions of particles that are contaminated by the blast; these are what gets carried up into that mushroom cloud and then carried by wind. They also start falling immediately, which is the usual type of fallout.”
“So, the closer you are to the detonation site, the worse the fallout, but it follows a plume, so it depends on the wind and where it takes it; the largest particles fall right away, but the smallest particles can travel tens of thousands of miles before falling to the ground, and by the time they do hit the ground, they’re already less dangerous due to decay. See, the good news is that the worst radioactive offenders begin to decay immediately; but even the smallest particles, those that are invisible and could be inhaled, also decay. I guess I’m saying that even if it was a n
uke from an enemy, there may still be some residual fallout, but it shouldn’t be significant.”
I remembered what I’d read in the encyclopedia, and nodded. Most people believe you can’t survive a nuclear fallout, but the facts say otherwise.
When everyone was silent, he continued. He probably had pages more information in that encyclopedic head of his.
“Unfortunately, radioactive elements are absorbed by everything—earth, air, water, clothing—” he paused. “And snow.” He glanced at me. It was snowing the day it happened. He added hurriedly, “But actually no one knows for sure how much fallout would reach the surface of the earth from an atmospheric blast high enough to cause an EMP, since a nuclear blast so high in the atmosphere has never been tested. One thing’s for sure, though—if there was a lot of fallout in our area, it would settle like dust. We didn’t see any evidence of unusual dust after the pulse.”
“Of course, we stayed in the safe room for seventy-two hours,” put in Mr. Buchanan, “so if there was any dust and debris from a blast we should’ve missed the worst of it. But you two would be sick by now, or even dead, if there was significant radiation.”
“So there could still be fallout,” said my mom, trying to clarify what we’d learned.
“Yeah, secondhand fallout, so to speak, in the soil and water and even the air, but again, the longer the time elapses between the radioactivity occurring and subsequent exposure, the less radioactivity there will be. Even if you were, say, close to a ground blast, after two weeks in a shelter you could probably start venturing outdoors. Every day would get safer than the day before.”
“I thought radioactive elements lasted forever,” I said.
He frowned. “Radioactive decay happens rapidly at first; it does slow down over time, but levels drop quickly. The first forty-eight hours after a blast are the deadliest. And the longer radioactive particles are airborne, the less dangerous they are.” I could see he was about to go off on a technical scientific discussion, so I asked quickly, “But if a solar pulse caused this, there wouldn’t be that danger of radiation, right?”
He looked at me. I swear I could see the wheels in his head shifting gears.
“Not immediately. Very unlikely.”
“So a bomb would mean radiation, but a solar pulse wouldn’t,” Mom said.
“Well, here’s where it gets complicated about radiation,” he said, sitting forward in his chair. I felt proud of how knowledgeable he was, and felt myself smiling a little in his direction, despite the grim subject of the discussion.
“Whether or not it was solar or a nuclear weapon,” he said, his eyes sweeping the room at us, “whatever was big enough to cause the pulse is big enough to take down operations at most nuclear plants. The problem then is failure of safety systems, such as what happened at Fukushima after the Tsunami. So again, just as the infrastructure carries the pulse further than the initial blast could, the same infrastructure takes it into nuclear power plants and causes them to fail. As far as I know, the government hasn’t put protections into place to safeguard our nuclear plants against a pulse of such magnitude.”
There was a momentary silence while we all digested these facts. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. He continued, “But there are back up systems in nuclear power plants that should work, maybe for a week or two. IDEALLY, they’ll hang in there long enough to power down the plants so that we don’t get Fukushimas happening all over the country.”
Mrs. Buchanan said, “Tell them how some things might still work.”
“Mom, nearly all solid-state semi-conductors would be destroyed,” he said.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Blake shook his head. “It means TV’s, radios, transistors, pacemakers, life-support systems, computers, automobile ignition systems—everything you’ve already noticed—anything with integrated electronic circuits are wiped out.”
There was a collective silence. Of course we already knew these things weren’t working, but had we really stopped to consider what it meant for some people? Those in hospitals on life support, for instance? Those in need of limited supplies of medications?
“Yes, but tell them what you told me,” Mrs. Buchanan insisted. “That some things could have survived.”
“It’s not likely,” he said, “but fine. Okay, if you had a small system somewhere that wasn’t dependent on any long wires; if it was say, underground and protected by enough metal, or concrete, or even dirt, theoretically it could still work.”
“Like our ham radio in the Faraday cage,” put in my Dad.
Blake nodded. “Exactly.”
“You mean, if we had a PC that was protected, there’s still a world wide web out there that we could connect to?” Mrs. Wasserman asked. She was younger than my mom and Mrs. Buchanan, a pretty brunette with her hair in a long braid.
“Only if it wasn’t a global event, and if your connection isn’t dependent on the system that got destroyed.”
“If only we’d protected more than our radio,” her husband said.
“We all feel that way,” put in my mom.
“Don’t feel bad,” Blake said. “Even the military isn’t sure how to protect their systems, or what level of protection would work. It’s kinda hard to test things when you need a nuclear blast to set up the test situation.”
“But why can’t they fix it?” I asked. “Why does everyone assume we’re going to be without power for a year or more? Dad said it could be many years before we see it restored.”
Blake was nodding. “See, we depend upon large transformers to power the grid across the nation. These are extra high-voltage, multi-ton units, and probably the first things that got fried. If it was a coordinated attack by an enemy, they almost certainly took out our transformer manufacturer, too. Even IF we had enough residual power to do the manufacturing necessary to make new ones, we only have the capability—at our best—to make about fifty a year. Then there’s the problem of how to get them where you need them when they weigh 600 tons or more. Plus, most of the biggest transformers in this country are non-domestic. And it costs tens of millions of dollars for a single unit. Under the circumstances, unless the US has already pre-purchased or pre-ordered these units—AND protected them—they won’t be quickly or easily replaced.”
“So you think the whole country is in this mess?” I asked. Secretly, I’d held out hope that maybe it was only the tri-state area or the Midwest that had been affected. I refused to believe Dad’s source from India. Now I felt that hope vaporizing.
Blake nodded. “Probably 85% of it, maybe more.”
Mr. Buchanan slapped his knee and began to rise. “It’s getting late, folks. We have more to pray about than ever, now that Blake’s explained what we’re facing. Why don’t we pray and wrap things up for tonight?”
I am usually not too shy to pray in our small group meetings. I know these people well enough to feel safe with them, and I can concentrate on talking to the Lord. I told the group about the Pattersons and my friend Andrea, but I got teary talking about them and didn’t want to pray aloud after that. I didn’t trust myself to pray without crying and I didn’t want to cry in front of Blake. But everyone else did pray for people they knew who may be suffering, either friends or distant family members. So I found my voice and prayed for the Pattersons after all. I got pretty emotional, as I feared, but I felt like everyone was on the same page with me.
Blake met my eyes afterwards, which I could feel were still teary.
“Hey,” he said, coming over to me. His parents were saying their goodbyes to my folks, so I figured we had a moment.
“I’ll ask my dad again about taking you to your friend’s house. We’ve checked on other people from church, so maybe he’ll change his mind.”
“Thanks,” I said. My voice came out flat. It sounded lame, but I really meant it. Then it hit me, what he’d said.
“You’ve checked on other people? Like, going to their homes?”
He nodded. “Yeah.
The ones who live close by. Your friend’s house is far—that’s the zinger.”
“I guess so.”
He eyed me a moment, thinking. “Try not to worry too much. God has always kept a remnant, a people for himself, no matter how much devastation happened around or to them. So far, we’re part of that remnant. Maybe the Lord will return soon but if not, we are still HERE. We still worship God.”
I smiled. This was the best thing I’d heard all night. “Yeah. My dad has mentioned that, too. Thanks for the reminder.”
Then Blake did something he’d never done before. My heart started hammering silly. I say ‘silly,’ because it was such a small thing and yet it had that effect on me. He took my hand and squeezed it, even lifting it up a bit. For a moment I thought he might kiss it, like a knight of old! But all he did was squeeze it, smile gently, and then turned and left.
“See you next week,” he said.
I nodded and stood there like an idiot, my hand tingling. Blake was not a demonstrative guy, so I took this as a great sign, coming from him. Overall, it had been a sobering evening, a depressing discussion. Prayer had helped, but somehow that parting squeeze to my hand helped even more.
As I tried to sleep I kept thinking about what Blake said. Maybe there were things that still worked. I thought of people out in this cold, people unprepared for winter without power, and how they needed help. I remembered Jesus’s words in Matthew when he was warning his disciples about the destruction of Jerusalem. He said, “Pray that your flight may not be in winter.” And, “Alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days!” I can’t help but feel these words apply to our situation today, even though I know he was talking about what happened to Jerusalem in 70AD.
The Pulse Effex Series: Box Set Page 18