Free One Second After by William R. Forstchen Page B

your electrical line or phone line during a thunderstorm.” John said between quick sips of his coffee. “Boom, and everything electronic in your house is fried,especially delicate stuff with microcircuitry in it. That bolt is maybe packing thousands of amps the microchip in your computer runs on hundredths of an amp. It just cooks it off.”
    Kate said nothing, giving him a moment to wolf down one of the eggs and a piece of bacon before continuing.
    â€œBack in the 1940s, when we started firing off atomic bombs to test them, this pulse wave was first noticed. Not much back then with those primitive weapons, but it was there. And here’s the key thing: there were no solid-state electronics back in the 1940s, everything was still vacuum tubes, so it was rare for the small pulses set off by those first bombs to damage anything.
    â€œWe finally figured out that when you set off a nuke in space, that’s when the EMP effect really kicks in, as the energy burst hits the upper atmosphere. It becomes like a pebble triggering an avalanche, the electrical disturbances magnifying. It’s in the report. It’s called the “Compton Effect.”
    â€œNow come forward. When we did those articles back in the nineties, we were getting word that the Chinese were doing a helluva lot of research on how to boost the EMP from a nuclear blast, making it a helluva lot more powerful.”
    â€œSo it’s the Chinese who hit us?” Tom asked. “Damn bastards.”
    â€œI don’t know,” John said, a bit exasperated. “No one knows, at least not here, not yet. Maybe even the Pentagon doesn’t know yet.”
    He hesitated after saying that, thinking of Bob Scales up there. Did the Pentagon exist? There was no news. One scenario that his group had kicked around was an initial EMP strike to take down communications, then selected ground bursts of nukes on key sites to finish the job . . . and of course D.C. would be the first hit.
    It was maddening; John just did not know.
    â€œHow can nobody know anything around here?” Kate snapped.
    â€œThat’s the whole idea behind an EMP strike,” John replied. “Whether a full-scale strike from a traditional foe like Russia during the Cold War or a terrorist hit now. You pop off a nuke that sends out this strong electro-magnetic wave, it fries off communications, and a lot of other things, then either sit back or continue. The frightful thing we realized was that some third-rate lunatic, either a terrorist cell member or the ruler of someplace like North Korea or Iran, with only one or two nukes in their possession, could level the playing field against us in spite of our thousands of weapons. That’s what is meant by ‘asymmetrical strike.’ ”
    â€œSo, is the whole country like this right now?” Kate asked. “Or is it just us?”
    He shook his head.
    â€œLook, I’m kinda tired, sat up most of the night keeping watch on the house, so let me try to explain this in order if that’s OK.”
    â€œSure, John, take your time,” Charlie intervened.
    â€œWell, at the same time the potential energy release of EMP grew, and believe me, I don’t understand the technical side of it at all, just that I know that it happens when a nuke goes off and we suspect there’s ways of calibrating a small nuke to give off a high yield of energy. Our electronic equipment was getting more and more sensitive to it.”
    â€œNo one saw an explosion,” Charlie said, “and believe me, I’ve asked around, kind of suspecting the same thing.”
    â€œThat’s just it, it’s in the report,” and John motioned to the article on Kate’s desk.
    She looked at it, thumbed through it.
    â€œMind if we run off some copies? . . .” And she fell silent, blushing slightly at what sounded like a dumb comment.
    â€œWe’re all conditioned,” John said with a