Hard Favored Rage

by Don Shift

  Villareal noticed that the tech liked the word ‘fry.’ “So how is it that portable radios and your golf cart still work?”

  “Yeah, I thought in all the movies it would fry anything electronic. My phone still works,” the supervisor asked.

  “Wrong, your phone is still on, but it doesn’t phone. I doubt it’ll even make a call again. There isn’t enough antenna in the phone for the charge to induce on the phone, especially if you were inside. The cell towers and our radio repeaters, shot. The individual electronics? Nah. In most cases, these things are built to be super robust. There are so many connectors and circuits so close together handling so much power that modern radios have to be very durable and handle high voltages. Plus, they have short antennas. Given that the car radios are isolated from the ground by four tires, they should be fine.”

  “You seem so certain that this was an EMP. How can you be so sure and not just an ordinary blackout?”

  “You know how you can walk up on some dude and just know he’s a crook and hiding something?”

  “Yes.”

  “Trust me, Chief, I know. There are too many factors to make this anything else, anyhow, we’ll know in a bit either way, if it is or isn’t.”

  Villareal thought about that for a moment. “Well, wouldn’t our surge protectors save things from this pulse? I mean, why do we have UPS boxes plugged into every computer and surge bars?”

  “That’s just good practice for regular power line issues. This was more like a bolt of lightning, but worse. The pulse is of a very short duration, like fractions of a second. This makes it too short to for surge arresters to kick in, unless you buy a super-special EMP rated one. A normal electrical surge is like a wave you can see coming. EMP is an invisible tsunami. Surge arresters are made for, like, someone screwing up at the power plant. Not for a nuke in space,” the tech explained.

  “We got nuked?!” A dispatcher yelled.

  “Clearly, she wasn’t paying attention,” the tech mumbled. “No, at least not yet. The EMP was the whole attack.”

  “How can we really know that?” Villareal asked.

  The tech laughed. “Well, we’ll know shortly if the navy bases explode. We’d see mushroom clouds from the Air Force at Vandenberg and LA too.”

  “Seriously,” Villareal ordered.

  “Sorry. Seriously, there could be a nuclear attack right now. I’m not an expert on nuclear war by any means, but it’s pretty basic strategy to blind and deafen your enemies’ defenses before you attack. Grated I was only a technician in the Air Force, not a strategist, but this is all stuff you can find in a technothriller at Barnes and Noble.”

  “What do you mean ‘blind and deafen?’” a dispatcher asked.

  “No radar, no satellites. Nothing to send an alert that missiles are coming over the Pole. No communications, no targeting, no electricity to coordinate an attack.”

  “No satellites? Does that mean GPS is gone too?”

  “Definitely. We just stepped back to the 1930s at the latest. Of the planes that are able to land, no one is going to be able to coordinate getting them in the airspace without transponders and GPS.”

  “What do you mean? Some planes can’t land without GPS?” Villareal asked.

  “No, I meant that planes will be crashing all over the place. We will start getting radio traffic about it once the airwaves clear. Kinda surprised nothing has come down nearby.”

  “Most of the planes fly over East County going into LAX,” the watch commander said.

  “That’s where most of them will come down then. Modern aircraft use fly-by-wire or fiber optic systems to work the control surfaces, not mechanical connections. Without all the computers, those things are toast. My ultralight will fly without electronics, but the radio and GPS will be dead. Pretty much every commercial aircraft flying today is going to crash or have to land in a hurry. Take the Boeing 737 Max scandal; the plane needs electronics just to fly, right?

  “Imagine just one of them gets fried. Passenger and private planes aren’t hardened and shielded like Air Force One. A bad short circuit can take down the whole plane. Those black boxes full of microchips are way too sensitive, especially the ones at altitude closer to the explosion.”

  The room grew silent as everyone tried to picture hundreds of thousands of people plunging to their deaths and the chaos that would result on the ground.

  “What else do we need to know?” The chief asked.

  “That’s basically it. No long-range communications, except by high frequency radio. It will take time for the atmospheric effect to subside though. No electricity, except what you can generate yourself, and even then, the circuits and equipment are fried. Look, I’m a radio jockey, not a prepper or anything like that, but in the ham circle, you do rub shoulders with folks like that. This is going to be bad.”

  “Well, what can we do about the radios?”

  “Find power and check them. The station radios with the large antennas are fried from the charge shooting in through the cabling. The actual cables and antennas should be alright for new radios. We can rig something up, but we’ll need the generators online first. In the short term, see if you can use car radios and the portables. We have hundreds of the old MTS-2000 handy-talkies boxed up and still sitting around that should do just fine. Unlikely the detached antennas would conduct the pulse. But if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get with the guys and see what we can come up with.”

  Chief Villareal sat down with the watch commander in his little bubble of an office after dismissing the rest.

  “So Tino, what’s the plan?” Tejada asked.

  “I’m having trouble wrapping my head around all of this.”

  “Me too. Freakin’ unbelievable.”

  “Well, my thought is get someone up high, like on top of the PTDF,” the Main Jail was several stories tall, “with a portable radio, maybe see if the radio guys can rig up an extra-long antenna, like the rigs the Army and Marine radio operators have. Then we can talk to the headquarters area units and even catch an Ojai unit. Try and get a relay system setup to Camarillo to East County.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “As far as planning and manpower, I think we should just execute the standard earthquake plans and adapt from there.”

  “I agree. We barely understand what we’re looking at. Part of me doesn’t want to believe that guy about an EMP attack.”

  Villareal shrugged. “I’m going to head back over and hook up with Wayne in OES. Once we get the generator up, I’m going to activate the EOC.” He was not looking forward to the walk. The Office of Emergency Services was on the third floor and the Emergency Operations Center was in the basement. It couldn’t be more ironic if it had been planned that way. “I’ll pull who I can into a meeting and we’ll come up with a quick and dirty plan to get us through the night and weekend. Hopefully, the boss will be back soon and take my place.”

  They both chuckled slightly. Sheriff Tennant would just make vague pronouncements of approval and rubber stamp everyone’s plans until it was time to go on TV or the radio. That was, of course, unless he got the rare brilliant idea of his own. Whether he said anything or not, Tennant was guaranteed to throw a fit over the massive overtime bills that were sure to come. They would save on the utilities though.

  Man is it ever quiet, Villareal remarked to himself as he crossed the parking lot. He stopped to wipe his forehead and listen. No sirens, oddly enough, though who would be able to call 911 in an emergency? The freeway was silent. No cars honked their horns, no one was listening to music in the parking lot. No planes or helicopters were flying. Just an occasional shout or something from the crowd of jurors, defendants, attorneys and whoever else was herded out of the court rooms and now milling around the courtyard with nothing to do.

  Inside the headquarters lobby—which was split between the Main Jail, Administration, Records, and headquarters patrol—a sergeant from the court detail approached Villareal. “Hey Chief, do you know what happened?
Judge Rexford sent me over to ask. Our generator is out.”

  “Ours too. It was EMP, everything is fried.”

  “EMP?” the sergeant asked. Villareal briefly explained. The sergeant thought for a minute. “I need to get home to my kids…after the judges cut us loose,” he added.

  Villareal simply nodded and walked off. His own kids were grown and too far away for him to do anything for. His son was serving on an aircraft carrier somewhere in the Pacific and his daughter a lieutenant in a personnel office in San Diego. With the Navy they’d be safe and fed. His wife Esmeralda would be sitting calmly out back, wondering if she should cook up the meat in the refrigerator. Even so, part of him wanted strongly to jump in his car, hit the siren, and race home.

  Instead, he dug his keys out of his pocket and unlocked the door to the stairwell. You could always go down, but no one expected anyone to walk up the stairs, so no card reader had ever been installed, for whatever good it would do now. The chief was surprised he even still had the master key to the building as low-tech keys had become obsolete. By the time he reached the emergency operations office on the third floor, he was tired and panting. Thirty years ago, when he graduated from the academy, he called himself a “Filipino god” and flexed his muscles at any woman who walked by at a party. His wife found it charming. Unfortunately, a combination of age and the relatively sedentary jobs of captain, commander, and chief deputy had all robbed him of his youthful physique.

  Once he had caught his breath, Villareal found Wayne Garza, who was standing by the window calling hopelessly on a portable radio.

  “Hey Chief. Guess it’s time for Emergency Services to shine, huh?”

  “I appreciate the optimism.”

  “You need to meet Brad. He’s got some interesting ideas about what happened and what we need to do. Brad! Get over here!”

  Brad Vaughn stuck his head around the corner. “Afternoon sir. Guess Wayne wants you to know our EMP theory.”

  “We already figured that out. One of the radio techs told us in Dispatch.” A few senior brass from the leadership team walked in just then and everyone introduced themselves. “So EMP,” Villareal continued. “I’ve heard of it, but just how bad is it supposed to be?”

  Brad took a deep breath. Here he was, thirty years old with nothing more than a master’s degree in Public Administration, a handful of FEMA certificates, and suddenly an expert. Ventura County was unusual for a medium-sized suburban/rural county in that it had a contingency plan for a nuclear attack, prepared by Dr. Robert Levin, the then head of county Public Health. It made national news several years ago. EMP was too fringe to devote such resources to and luckily for the county, Brad made his private EMP plan the basis for his master’s thesis.

  “Long story short, this is the end of the world as we know it. Our lifestyle and current social structure exist and are possible because of electricity. Right now, we have no idea how badly damaged electronic devices and components are. We have small electronics and some cars. What we certainly won’t have is long-distance electrical transmission and modern telecommunications. Without these two things, society will breakdown and urban life will be unpleasant or impossible.”

  Chief Travis Ostrander, who ran the jails, and Captain Tejeda walked in.

  “For example, modern policing is possible only because of cars, radios, and phones. A citizen can, excuse me, could, pick up the phone, call 911, and have a deputy on scene in minutes. The amount of police could be reduced, and thus the quality improved, as one or two guys in a car could cover more ground than a single guy on foot or horseback who had to constantly check in for calls. Cell phones allowed the public to become additional eyes and ears. Crime prevention isn’t one guy on a foot beat anymore; it’s a patrol car that can show up to a suspicious subject call and pop the burglars before they hit the house, not pick them up weeks later at a pawn shop fencing stolen goods.

  “Think about it, you can go days without actually seeing a cop, even though your neighborhood officer is still there and just a phone call away. Years ago, cops walked their beats or were someplace close where they could be found. Today, a citizen isn’t going to walk from six miles across town to summon a cop.

  “So suddenly, we’re overwhelmed, or will be shortly, with police work. We’ve lost our force multipliers, phones and radios, though I suspect we’ll regain radios. I expect an increase in riots, fights, burglaries, looting—all sorts of emergencies. Before, we could manage this because we could get the calls and prioritize. Now, a deputy will have to drive around to find the trouble instead of being directed to it. Here’s where it ties in with stuff like electricity. We could manage a huge explosion in crime if we know about it. If we don’t know about it until after it happens, we can’t prevent it or start chasing bad guys until long after the crime is over. This will encourage criminals and force us into a reactive, investigatory force. Modern policing and all the crime suppression benefit it has—the fact ten cops can show up in ten minutes and have a helicopter too—is gone.

  “Everything modern policing brought us is gone. With me so far?” Villareal nodded. “So, we see a ripple effect. This isn’t make do until the phones and power comes back on like after an earthquake. People will soon know this is permanent. The old systems we depended on are gone. If you can imagine a criminal’s joy when he knows no one will know for hours he broke into a jewelry store, imagine an average person’s terror when they realize that they can’t flush the toilet.

  “You know how a week-long camping trip tends to get ugly on the last day because everyone is dirty and starting to get on each other’s nerves? That’s what life is going to be like very quickly. Emotions will be felt more strongly. People are going to be hot, dirty, hungry, and scared. They will be at each other’s throats in no time. Someone will snap over something stupid, like someone taking a crap in the toilet and being unable to flush it away.”

  Everyone chuckled. “Seems funny now, right? But you guys, you’ve seen people killed over the dumbest stuff?” They nodded in agreement with Brad. “Imagine the trouble with frayed tensions, competition just to survive, and rampant criminality. The only way I can put it is that we’re going to be dealing with a massive, unruly heard of jerks without any tools or advantage.”

  “Speaking of unruly jerks, I heard about an outage of the EBT cards a while back. Within hours, all over the country, there were thefts and mini riots in Walmarts by people who couldn’t get their food stamp money,” Wayne said.

  “That was people on full stomachs, pissed that they weren’t getting theirs from Uncle Sugar. Imagine starving people, half-crazed by thirst, with crying, screaming kids. What will they do to feed their families? Very few Americans have more than a couple days food at home, almost none with more than a few weeks’ worth. Many people believe that grocery stores have a warehouse in back.”

  “Nope,” the captain said. “Been in back of plenty. Just a place to break down pallets and deliveries until it can get on the shelves. What you see on the shelves is what you get.”

  Brad nodded in agreement. “Grocery stores don’t go empty because of just-in-time delivery. There is never a surplus of products and rarely a shortage, but if the trucks don’t roll, the food doesn’t get stocked. The supply trucks aren’t coming. The stores will look like the earthquake panics, except it will be cash only, and who carries cash in quantity anymore? We’re looking at looting when people get desperate, which will be soon. Deputies should be camping out at the grocery stores.”

  “So no food, mass starvation. They’re going to assume we’ve got food we can give them, like a giant warehouse of MREs,” Wayne said.

  “How long until FEMA or whoever can get the power back on?” asked the captain.

  “Probably never,” Brad began. “In this county alone, thousands of transformers and electrical switches are blown, along with the computers that control them. The power plants will be dark and damaged. Even if they managed to shut down clean, there are no plans for a cold sta
rt-up. If they did generate power, there is nowhere to send it. The damaged power grid would just start fires and short out.”

  “Thanks for that, but I meant our power. The generators.”

  “Oh. Uh, I’m not sure, Captain.”

  “GSA is working on that,” Villareal said. The General Services Agency (the county version, not federal) had its main offices in the government center complex. “Continue Brad.”

  “Okay, so here’s the problem with electricity. Almost everything depends on it. Sewage, for example, is gravity fed. If we don’t care about dumping raw poop out to sea, not much of an issue, right? Unfortunately, sewers need a constant flow of water to push the solids, your poop and toilet paper, along in the system. An occasional bucket of water down the john isn’t going to provide the necessary pressure. You need sink and shower runoff too, otherwise it just sits, congeals, and gums up the works.”

  “Well, why doesn’t the water flow then? Water runs downhill.”

  “Not that simple. EPA regulations for one. Water flow needs pumps to pressurize the system to feed the taps, showerheads, and fill those toilet tanks. Electric well pumps to draw the water up, even. Not to mention that a lot of water is imported from reservoirs through various systems. So, no electricity, no running water, no sewage. Oh, and the fire department can’t open hydrants and suppress house fires.”

  “Kick us while we’re down, eh?” Tejada said.

  “Sir, we aren’t even there yet. Let’s talk about communications. Kids have no imagination today. When I was a kid and stuck in a doctor’s office, I would pick up a magazine and read it. Not anymore. Kids have a smart phone to watch videos on. They’ve got no patience. We’ve got adults who look at their phones while standing in line rather than talking to each other. Talk to old people sometime, the really old ones. They’ll tell you how neighbors stopped spending time with each other when people bought their first TVs. We’ve become a very distracted, inwardly focused people. We’ve forgotten our social skills.