Acknowledgments

Special thanks to John C. Ronnow, Eagle Scout and U.S. Army combat veteran, 5th Special Forces Group (Green Beret), Vietnam, for suggestions in story development and giving rise to the characters Chris Tanner and Miles Ackerman.

Also, thanks to Bob Kaelin and Robyn Ronnow Kaelin for proofreading and encouragement. Robyn was standing on a beach in Honolulu the night of July 8, 1962, but never knew what the flash in the sky was until I asked her to read the manuscript.

Principal Characters

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

Edmund Wheeler: President of the United States

Jan Hutchens: Vice President of the United States

William Denton: National Security Advisor

Elaine Richardson: Secretary of State

Patrick Wilkinson: Secretary of Defense

Margaret Beck: Secretary of Homeland Security

Douglas Chambers: Secretary of the Interior

Roger Townsend: Secretary of Energy

Bob Larson: White House Chief of Staff

Spencer Cochran: Speaker of the House of Representatives

General Thomas Macfarland: Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff

Admiral Fletcher Powell: Director of National Intelligence

Admiral Carroll O’Sullivan: Director, Defense Intelligence Agency

Matthew Donovan: Director, National Security Agency

Michael Attwood: Director, DEFSMAC branch,National Security Agency

Naomi Hendricks: Senior intelligence analyst, DEFSMAC branch, National Security Agency

Scott Winter: Intelligence analyst, DEFSMAC branch, National Security Agency

Paul Lundgren: Intelligence analyst, DEFSMAC branch, National Security Agency

General Wilson Tuckett: Commander, North American Aerospace Defense Command

Lieutenant-General James McNaughton: Deputy commander, North American Aerospace Defense Command

OTHER CHARACTERS

Neil and Nancy Hayes: Residents of northwest Arizona

Christopher McAvoy: Captain, Delta Airlines flight 322

Nathan Hayes: First Officer, Delta Airlines flight 322

Chris Tanner: Resident of Big Spring, Texas; former Green Beret, 5th Special Forces Group, Vietnam

Miles Ackerman: Resident of Big Spring, Texas; former Green Beret, 5th Special Forces Group, Vietnam

Henry and Arvella Gardner: Residents of Clay City, Iowa

Audrey and Evie Lane: Residents of Springfield, Missouri

Avery Stokes: Resident of Ash Grove, Missouri

Hal Decker: Deputy sheriff, Greene County, Missouri

Kyle and Julie Ward: Residents of Lewiston, Idaho

Everett King: Investment banker, San Francisco, California

Jordan Stanley: Investment banker, San Francisco, California

Burke Abbott: Investment banker, San Francisco, California

Silas and Muriel Davenport: Residents of Winslow, Arizona

Harlan Hicks: Resident of Winslow, Arizona

Jack Davis: Senior engineer, Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station

Carl Ferguson: Resident of northwest Arizona

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Principal Characters

Introduction

Prologue

Part I

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

Part II

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

Part III

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

Epilogue

Introduction

July 8, 1962

10:40 p.m. Hawaii-Aleutian Daylight Time

Johnston Island, North Pacific Ocean

At the north end of Johnston Island—a barren patch of land two miles long and a half-mile wide—a PGM-17 Thor intermediate-range ballistic missile stands on Launch Emplacement One, gleaming white in the floodlights. Weighing fifty-four tons, standing sixty-five feet in height, and capable of lifting 2,200 pounds, the United States Air Force rocket is America’s primary launch vehicle for nuclear weapons.

Here on Johnston Island, part of an atoll 890 miles from the nearest populated land mass, the PGM-17 is used to launch nuclear warheads in various high-altitude tests. It is the height of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, and nuclear weapons development is the focus of national defense.

Tonight’s launch, named Starfish Prime, will gather data on the effects of a nuclear explosion in the vacuum of space. Sitting atop the rocket is a 1.44 megaton hydrogen bomb that will be detonated at an altitude of 250 miles.

At 10:41 the launch pad is cleared. Personnel are moved to the blockhouse, a cramped concrete bunker packed with equipment and observers, less than a half-mile away. Instruments are checked, recorders are started, lights flicker and gauges spring to life.

At 10:46:28 the ground shakes as the rocket fuel ignites, and the missile rises slowly off the concrete pad with an ear-splitting roar, then accelerates into the night sky. Sixty seconds later, observers emerge from the blockhouse to watch the rocket, now a distant spot of light in the darkness, disappear altogether.

At 10:57:30 the rocket reaches an altitude of 660 miles. The reentry vehicle containing the warhead separates from the missile and begins its descent back toward the surface.

At 11:00:09 the warhead explodes 248 miles above the North Pacific Ocean.

Eight hundred ninety miles away on the island of Oahu, the mood is festive as a number of hotels in Honolulu are playing host to ‘rainbow bomb’ parties, named for the vibrant colors that fill the sky after detonation of the nuclear bomb at high-altitude. Roof tops and verandas are crowded with guests hoping to catch a glimpse of the phenomenon.

At nine seconds past eleven local time, a brilliant flash lights up the night sky. A split-second later, streetlights are blown out and residential burglar alarms are set off across the city. Electrical power is out in some areas and a telephone microwave link between Kauai and the other Hawaiian Islands is dead.

In a matter of seconds, the sky is filled by a deep red glow, broken by bright, white, finger-like filaments that slowly align with the earth’s magnetic field lines. Over the next seven minutes the red glow turns purple, then phosphorescent green, and is visible from the Midway Islands to New Zealand.

On Johnston Island, personnel in the block house watch as needles are pegged on instruments used to measure electrical phenomena resulting from the detonation. Electrons scattered by the explosion and traveling near the speed of light have created a powerful electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, that impacts electrical equipment and radio frequency waves. Apart from the disturbances in the Hawaiian Island chain, military aircraft 500 miles away lose radio communications.

Within days of the test, satellites begin to fail from radiation collecting in a belt around the earth. The first to fall victim is TRAAC, a U.S. Navy satellite launched to measure radiation from atmospheric nuclear tests. Then NAVSAT, a satellite used by the Navy to provide accurate location data to Polaris ballistic missile submarines.

In the weeks following, nine more satellites fall victim to the radiation, and within six months nearly half of all satellites in Earth orbit at the time of the Starfish Prime test have failed. Among these is Telstar I, America’s first telecommunications satellite.

Meanwhile, the Soviets also are testing the effects of high-altitude nuclear explosions. On October 22, 1962, a 300-kiloton warhead is detonated at an altitude of 180 miles over Kazakhstan. The EMP fuses 350 miles of overhead telephone lines and sends a surge of electrical current through 650 miles of underground cable, starting a fire that destroys the Karaganda power plant.

It was obvious at the moment of the nuclear blast in the Starfish Prime test when instrument needles jumped off the scales on the equipment in the Johnston Island blockhouse, that the effects of EMP were much stronger than scientists anticipated. But it wasn’t until much later, long after data was evaluated and reports were filed, that scientists and engineers began to look at EMP in a completely different light—not as a consequence of a nuclear detonation, but as a primary effect to be exploited.

In the early 1960s the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union was running full tilt. Both sides were stockpiling thousands of warheads in preparation for a possible nuclear conflict, and there appeared to be no end in sight. By the 1970s it was understood that a country could have a nuclear arsenal of thousands of weapons, and if it came to war, use those weapons to destroy the adversary by launching hundreds of weapons via missiles, bombers and submarines. With the understanding of EMP, though, it became clear that by using just a few nuclear weapons optimized to create the strongest EMP field possible, a country could destroy the enemy’s electrical infrastructure, eliminating the adversary’s ability to wage war. This became significant as the use of electronics grew.

By the turn of the century, sophisticated computer systems were running practically every aspect of modern society—banking and finance, delivery of food and fuel, municipal power and water, communication, medical services and police and fire protection, as well as national defense networks and military operations. Worldwide communication through computers and cell phones had become commonplace, and servers across the globe became storage points for personal and corporate records, as well as hundreds of trillions of dollars of investments—the wealth of the planet.

On the one hand it was the most efficient method of delivering product and services imaginable. On the other, it was modern society’s Achilles’ heel. Every segment of infrastructure relied on another. If one failed, they all would fail ultimately. And the entire system depended on one thing alone—an uninterrupted supply of electricity. And destroying the ability to move electricity was exactly what EMP did. That, and rendering electronic equipment useless.

A nuclear electromagnetic pulse consists of three components: E1, E2 and E3. E1 is an extremely fast and very intense electromagnetic field that induces high voltage in electrical conductors. Lasting less than one-millionth of a second after the explosion, E1 destroys computers, servers, cell phones and other electronic devices.

E2 is similar to lightning. It is an intermediate pulse lasting from one microsecond to one second after the explosion. In theory, electrical systems could be protected against E2 by the use of surge protectors. But because the E1 field has already destroyed electronics, including circuits used by surge protectors, E2 is unimpeded in further damaging electrical equipment.

E3 is a comparatively slow pulse, beginning several seconds after the burst and lasting hundreds of seconds, caused by the rapid expansion of the nuclear blast pushing the earth’s magnetic field out of its way. Similar in effect to a geomagnetic storm caused by a solar flare or a coronal mass ejection from the sun, the E3 component induces current into long electrical conductors such as high-power transmission lines and destroys electrical transformers, stopping the flow of electricity.

The area of damage depends on the strength of the nuclear device and its altitude at the time of detonation. Positioned 200 miles above the central United States, a nuclear bomb has a line of sight to both east and west coasts, as well as north into Canada and south into Central America. When detonated, that bomb will destroy electronic equipment and electrical transmission capability in most of North America.

From 1960 until the late ’70s, the nature of EMP and its destructive capabilities was relatively unknown outside the realm of nuclear weapons technology. But it was simply a matter of time until rogue nation-states with nuclear ambitions would have the knowledge and technology to develop an EMP weapon.

In the mid-1990s North Korea began work on a nuclear weapon. On October 9, 2006 the first bomb was tested. Based on data obtained, it was declared a failure by nuclear experts. A subsequent test on May 25, 2009 reinforced the belief that North Korea was unable to produce a working nuclear weapon.

It was several years before experts began looking at the tests from a different perspective. What if the North Koreans were not interested in pure explosive power as with conventional nuclear weapons? What if they were developing a bomb strictly for use as an EMP weapon? With the resources available to North Korea they would never be able to build a stockpile of weaponry that would upset the balance of nuclear power in the world. With a single nuclear EMP weapon, though, they could destroy a nation’s infrastructure, leading to that country’s collapse. All they would need is a missile that could boost the weapon into low-Earth orbit—a capability demonstrated in 2012 when North Korea launched a satellite into space.

By the early 2000s, novelists and movie makers were immersed in the concept of EMP. Books were written describing the collapse of civilization. Movies and television series were created around similar plot lines, and while much of it was sensationalized, there was an element of truth to it. And that truth was terrifying to contemplate. Experts understood this and began working to educate those in a position to protect our national infrastructure. By 2001, Congress had established the EMP Commission under the National Defense Authorization Act and appointed a panel of independent experts to explore the effects of a high-altitude EMP on the United States.

In 2004 the commission reported their findings to Congress, describing in House testimony the catastrophic effects of a high-altitude nuclear explosion over the central United States. Banking and finance, delivery of water, food and fuel, communications, police and fire response, as well as internet connectivity, would collapse immediately. Services that continued would do so only as long as fuel for emergency generators was available.

Even more dreadful to contemplate, the commission estimated that two-thirds of the population that had not died in the chaos and lawlessness following the initial grid collapse would be dead by the end of the first winter due to starvation.

Congress presented these findings to the Department of Homeland Security, prepared to budget expenditures necessary to secure vital aspects of national security. But there was no budget request. In fact, there was no response from DHS other than to say that as a nation we were totally unprepared for an EMP attack. Another panel of experts was commissioned. More findings were presented to Congress. And still there was no plan to deal with the growing threat of EMP.

Then, in 2011, a novel titled One Second After by William Forstchen climbed The New York Times best-seller list. It was the story of one man’s struggle in a post-EMP world. In the Afterward, Forstchen quoted a letter from U.S. Navy Captain Bill Sanders, who called One Second After not so much a novel as a warning.

According to Sanders, Our technologically oriented society and its heavy dependence on advanced electronic systems could be brought to its knees with cascading failures of our critical infrastructure. Our vulnerability increases daily as our use and dependence on electronics continues to accelerate.

At this writing, nothing significant has been done to protect the national power grid. The North American Aerospace Defense Command—NORAD—has begun moving critical communications equipment back into Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs, a Cold War relic abandoned in 2006 when NORAD moved most of its operations to nearby Peterson Air Force base. In an article in The Wall Street Journal, Henry F. Cooper and Peter Pry write, Why the return? Because the enormous bunker in the hollowed-out mountain, built to survive a Cold War-era nuclear attack, can also resist an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP.

The article states that despite the potential threat, there is no effort underway in Washington to protect civilian electronic infrastructure, even though a prolonged nationwide blackout could result in chaos and death on an unimaginable scale.

Excerpts from The Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the U.S. From Electromagnetic Pulse Attack

Committee on Armed Services

House of Representatives

108th Congress, Second Session

July 22, 2004

[Testimony from transcript, pages 69 and 70, Roscoe Bartlett, congressman from Maryland, and Dr. Lowell L. Wood, member of the commission.]

Mr. Bartlett: […] Dr. Wood, your characterization of this is a large continental time machine that would move us back a century in technology, and my question then was, But, Dr. Wood, the technology of a century ago could not support our present population and distribution, and your unemotional response, Yes, I know. The population will shrink until it could be supported by the technology.

When I look at the technology of a century ago and where we are today, Dr. Wood, I would imagine that that shrink might be a good two-thirds of our present population?

Dr. Wood: The population of this continent late in the 19th century, sir, was almost a factor of 10 smaller than it is at the present time. We went from where we had 70 percent of the population on the farms feeding 30 percent of the people in the villages and cities, to where 3 percent of the population on the farms at the present time feeds the other 97 percent of the country.

So just looking at it from an agricultural and food supply standpoint, if we were no longer able to fuel our agricultural machine in this country, the food production of the country would simply stop because we do not have the horses and mules that were used to tow the agricultural gear around in the 1880s and 1890s.

So the situation would be exceedingly adverse if both electricity and the fuel that electricity moves around the country, the diesel fuel and so forth, if that went away and stayed away for a substantial interval of time, we would miss the harvest, and we would starve the following winter. […]

[Portion of the closing statement by Curt Weldon, congressman from Pennsylvania, page 75.]

Mr. Weldon: […] It is just unfortunate it has taken us five years to get to this point when we first started raising this issue with our leadership—this is not a political statement—all the leadership in both the military and non-military, pooh-poohed the idea of this ever happening.

It is real, it is significant, and we are unprotected. […]

[Full transcript at http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/security/has204000.000/has204000_0.HTM]

Between 2008 and 2014, three more hearings were held, all addressing threats to the national grid—two from cyberattacks, one from EMP—all emphasizing the catastrophic outcome of a collapse. As of this writing, Mr. Weldon’s statement before Congress in 2004, more than fourteen years ago, still holds true: The threat is real, it is significant, and we are unprotected.

Prologue

WASHINGTON, January 31, 9:35 a.m. EST (AP) - In a stunning development today, Russian president Dmitry Burkov announced his country is severing economic ties with Europe, the United States and Canada, and is expelling their diplomats and giving foreign businesses—which include auto makers Ford, General Motors and Volkswagen—60 days to shutter their plants and leave the country.

The announcement came at 5:00 p.m. Moscow time, just as the opening bell rang at the New York Stock Exchange. Trading was suspended 12 minutes later as the Dow Jones Industrials plummeted 10 percent, the biggest single-day decline in market history. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 suffered similar losses.

The move comes on the heels of Tuesday’s Wall Street mayhem following China’s sale of $1.2 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds, a move that threatens to destroy U.S. debt markets. The wholesale bond dump sent the dollar into free fall and gold skyrocketing.

While tensions between Russia and the west have been rising for more than four years—a result of economic sanctions that have decimated Russia’s economy—the trigger for Moscow’s action this morning is widely believed to be the passage of a bill in Congress authorizing the U.S. Treasury to seize Russian assets in U.S. banks, coupled with the European Central Bank’s declaration that it would no longer recognize transactions with Sberbank—Russia’s largest bank, serving more than half the population of Russia and one million businesses—and with VTB, Russia’s second largest bank.

Amid these alarming economic developments, Russia is moving warships into the Gulf of Oman. Military analysts see this as an immediate threat to Saudi Arabia, who, along with Turkey, is fighting alongside Syrian rebels in their civil war against Syrian president Sayid al-Sharaa. Russia and Iran are providing weapons and troops to Sharaa’s forces.

Western leaders have called for an emergency meeting to discuss Russia’s actions and possible responses.

Part I

The Unraveling

1

Friday, February 7

5:40 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

The White House

Washington, D.C.

President Edmund Wheeler stood behind his desk in the Oval Office, looking out the window at the snow-covered South Lawn of the White House, deep in thought. Three years into his first term, he was desperate to regain a sense of equilibrium as financial markets, central banks and currencies spiraled out of control. His immediate concern was for the economy, now teetering on the brink of collapse following China’s wholesale dump of more than a trillion dollars in U.S. Treasuries. The move—widely regarded as economic suicide—demonstrated to Wheeler a no-holds-barred response to his decision to restrict Chinese investments in the U.S. Now, as the trade war between the U.S. and China threatened to disrupt global supply chains, Chinese warships were converging in the South China Sea, confronting U.S. Navy missile cruisers.

Across the Atlantic, the European Union was on the brink of disintegration, unable to regain its footing after Great Britain’s exit, then slammed by the forced resignation of Germany’s chancellor. Terror attacks in more than a dozen of Europe’s largest cities were occurring with alarming frequency and violence against Muslims had reached epidemic proportions.

In the Middle East, Syria’s civil war, now in its seventh year, had reduced the country’s three largest cities to ruins and displaced more than eight million refugees. With Russia backing Syrian president Sayid al-Sharaa, and the U.S. supplying arms to rebel forces, it was anyone’s guess as to how long it would be before the U.S. and Russia were engaged with each other in direct conflict.

Of deeper concern to Wheeler was the deteriorating state of affairs with North Korea’s leader Lee Yong-hwa. Following a large-scale joint military exercise with U.S. and South Korean troops in April, Lee’s threats of striking the U.S. were punctuated by the test firing of a ballistic missile capable of reaching the west coast of the United States. That test failed, but it sent a clear message that North Korea was further along in missile development than previously thought, and experts recognized it was a simple matter of time before a successful test was accomplished.

Over the next four months, tensions between the U.S. and North Korea escalated rapidly, marked by eight more missile tests—each one demonstrating a rising level of capability—and another nuclear test. In September, the secretary of Defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs outlined a list of military options, including a preemptive strike. Three days later, President Wheeler ordered a third U.S. Navy strike group to the waters off the Korean peninsula.

Then, in a move that would have far-reaching political and economic implications, China announced a landmark trade agreement with Russia and unloaded its holdings in U.S. debt—over a trillion dollars in ten-year Treasury bonds—crushing the U.S. debt market.

Wheeler’s prospects were, in a word, grim. Now, standing in the Oval Office, his mind went back to the Republican national convention three and a half years earlier. News of a scandal involving the party’s leading candidate had broken. Damage control kicked in immediately, but to no avail. Going into the convention, the assessment was that the candidate had no chance of winning the primary. Worse, the consensus held that none of the remaining candidates stood a chance of winning the general election.

With the debacle threatening to upend the party, the Republican National Committee finally came to an agreement—draft the party’s most influential governor, Edmund Wheeler. Trouble was, Wheeler wasn’t interested in being president. He made that clear a year earlier when they asked him to run, and his feelings hadn’t changed.

When push finally came to shove, Wheeler told the party bosses he didn’t feel competent to lead the nation in a time of such global upheaval. In his words, This country needs a wartime president, not a governor. Not surprisingly, the committee’s only concern was taking the White House, along with House and Senate seats. Wheeler countered with the idea that what was best for the party may not be best for the country, a notion bordering on heresy as far as the committee was concerned, and they rejected it. With the stipulation that he could pick his running mate, Wheeler finally relented, and on the third ballot he won the Republican nomination. Then, in November, against all odds, he won the general election.

It was a victory Wheeler never expected. As he prepared to occupy the White House, and with concern for his ability looming in his mind, he thought back to a piece of advice his father had given him decades earlier. The senior Wheeler—a successful businessman and respected leader in the oil exploration industry—told his son the best leaders surround themselves with smart people, then listen to them. Leaders make the critical decisions, but those decisions are shaped by experts.

That advice was foremost in his mind when he filled defense-related cabinet and security posts with retired military, and gave his field commanders broad discretionary power in executing military action as they deemed necessary.

The days of basing the defense of our nation on tentative posturing are over, he stated in a press conference. We have the best military leaders in the world, and we are going to let them do their jobs. If they say we should go in, we’re going in. If they say we need to bomb, we’ll bomb. And the first clue the enemy will have concerning our intentions will be when a missile drops through the roof of the building they’re hiding in.

Democrats screamed bloody murder, some suggesting that Wheeler’s cabinet and intelligence picks were the basic ingredients for a military coup. But the thinking among political analysts was that the country should get used to a president who was singularly focused on getting America off its knees and back into the role of leader of the free world, and a superpower to be reckoned with.

By his fourth month in office, the discussion around the tables of the Sunday talk shows was that Edmund Wheeler—a man who never wanted the White House—would be one of the greatest presidents to hold the office, or one who would crash and burn on a scale never before seen. Nobody with an opinion that carried any weight thought otherwise. Now, just over three years into his first term, misgivings and self-doubt were taking a toll on the president.

Wheeler shook his head as his thoughts returned to the present.  He turned away from the window and reached into a desk drawer for a bottle of antacids. He shook four tablets into his hand and popped them in his mouth, chewing slowly, eyes closed. A moment later his phone rang. It was William Denton, the National Security Advisor, calling from the White House Situation Room.

Sir, Denton said, the Israelis have launched a massive air strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Wheeler leaned forward, his brow furrowed. When? he asked.

It’s underway. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs and director of National Intelligence are here. I’ve called the secretary of State. She’ll be arriving shortly. Denton paused. Russian fighter aircraft from Khmeimim—the Russian airbase in northwest Syria for operations against the rebels—are flying southeast through Iraqi airspace.

Do we know what they’re doing?

No. But if they get involved, we’ll want to have the secretary of Defense here as well.

Make the call. I’ll be down in five minutes.

Thank you, sir.

Wheeler hung up the phone, then sat in his chair, attempting to gather his thoughts. A momentary dizziness gave way to nausea, and for a few seconds he thought he might throw up. He closed his eyes until the feeling passed, then drew a deep breath and stood. Let’s find out what the smart people think, he said aloud.

He left the Oval Office and walked down the hall to the elevator, then descended to the White House basement. A minute later he walked into the Situation Room. Seated at the conference table were Denton, Admiral Fletcher Powell, director of National Intelligence, and General Thomas Macfarland, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They stood when he entered.

Mr. President, they spoke in unison.

Gentlemen, Wheeler replied, slipping his jacket off. He draped it over the back of the chair at the end of the table, then walked to the far end of the room where a large flat-panel wall screen displayed a tactical map of the Middle East. Centered on Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf and Iran, the map was crisscrossed with lines indicating flight vectors and icons depicting aircraft in flight. Wheeler studied the map for a moment, then turned to Denton. Fill me in.

IAF fighters have been in Iranian airspace for just under an hour, Denton said.