One Second After

FOREWORD by Speaker Newt Gingrich

Though this book is a work of fiction, it is also a work of fact, perhaps a “future history,” that should be thought provoking and, yes, even terrifying for all of us. I know this from personal study, across decades, of the very real threat to American security that is posed by this particular weapon that Bill Forstchen writes about in One Second After.

There has been much attention given, since 9/11, to a wide variety of threats to our nation… additional attacks by the hijacking of commercial airliners, biological and chemical attacks, even the potential of a so-called “dirty bomb,” or even an actual nuclear detonation in the center of one of our major cities.

But few have talked about, let alone heard about, the terrible, in fact overwhelming, threat of EMP, which is short hand for “electromagnetic pulse weapon.”

My friend, Captain William Sanders, USN, one of our nation’s leading experts on this particular weapon, will provide the afterword for this book, explaining in greater detail, using unclassified documents, as to how such a weapon works. In short form here, when an atomic bomb is detonated above the earth’s atmosphere, it can generate a “pulse wave,” which travels at the speed of light, and will short-circuit every electronic device that the “wave” touches on the earth’s surface. It is like a super lightning bolt striking next to your house and taking out your computer, except infinitely worse, for it will strike our entire nation, most likely without warning, and could destroy our entire complex electrical grid and everything attached into that grid. It is a real threat, a very real threat and one that has deeply worried myself and many others for years.

My friend, Bill Forstchen, has coauthored six historical novels with me across the years. I have gotten to know him closely. He holds a Ph.D. in history from Purdue, he has specialized in the history of military technology, and this is no wild flight of fantasy on his part. In fact, the start of this book was a conversation that Bill and I shared several years back, concluding with his announcing that he felt he should write a novel about the threat, to raise public awareness.

As I said before, I see this book as a terrifying “future history” that might come true. Such books have a significant tradition in their own right. H. G. Wells wrote frightfully accurate prophecies of what history now calls World Wars I and II. Two of the great classics of the Cold War, Alas, Babylon and the movie Testament, gave us a profoundly moving glimpse of what would happen to ordinary citizens if war between us and the Soviets was ever unleashed. In fact Bill will openly admit that those two classics were indeed models for this book. I also compare it to perhaps the most famous of the “future history” books of modern times, George Orwell’s 1984. If the evil of totalitarian regimes had been allowed to flourish in the rubble of Europe after World War II, that future history might have come to pass. Orwell, by his book, raised an awareness that just might have saved us from Big Brother and the Thought Police.

I’d like to think that Bill’s novel may do the same. Few in our government and in the public sector have openly confronted the threat offered by the use of but one nuclear weapon, in the hands of a determined enemy, who calibrates it to trigger a massive EMP burst. Such an event would destroy our complex, delicate high tech society in an instant and throw all of our lives back to an existence equal to that of the Middle Ages. Millions would die in the first week alone, perhaps even you who are reading this if you require certain medications, let alone the most basic needs of our lives such as food and clean water.

The place Bill writes about is real; he has set this story in his hometown and the college that he works at. I remember when he was writing the book and we’d talk. More than once he was deeply disturbed by what he had researched, discovered, and was now trying to express as a story for all to read. What hit him the most, he told me, is that he kept picturing his teenage daughter in this nightmare reality, and I think as you read the book you will see that point of identification. It struck me deeply as well, for I have two grandchildren. As he wishes to protect his daughter from this fate, so do I wish to protect my grandchildren, to be able to pass on to them an America that is safe from such threats.

The threat is real, and we as Americans must face that threat, prepare, and know what to do to prevent it. For if we do not, “one second after,” the America we know, cherish and love, will be gone forever.