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GORDON wrote:I hesitate to even discuss that with an PhD in Electrical Engineering watching.

That's right, beeches!

Written by William R. Forstchen.

I swear we had a thread here about this book, but I can't find it. I searched for "second", "after", and "second after" and it found nothing. I remember Thib commenting on it...

(I can't believe in all the years of this site nobody has typed the words second or after in any threads. Something has to be wrong with the search for those words.

Anyway, I have a lot more listening time as I dumped a ton of podcasts post football season, so I grabbed this audio book. Read by Joe Barrett who does an amazing job.

The story follows a retired Navy colonel, now college professor in the aftermath of an EMP attack on the United States. Exceptional book that really showcases how dependent our society is upon electronics, and how vulnerable we are to such an attack. I believe everyone who visits this site would enjoy this book.

Has anyone read the two follow ups? I was going to grab them in audiobook, but Bronson Pinchot is the narrator of those, and the reviews are scathing. I guess the books are good, but his performance is terrible and offensive. I guess all his characters sound the same and he does southern accents in the most offensive stereotypical way possible. Anyway, if the books are worth it, I'll just go buy hard copies.

I thought we talked about this, but outside of a thread, after I read it a couple of years ago.

It's a pretty solid book, but I have not read the follow-ups.

There's a thread. I'll find it later when I get home.

My understanding was that Forstchen was approached by a congressman friend to write this. They had the reports on EMPs and what they could do, but the congressman didn't think anyone would read a technical report on what that could mean to us. So he gave the report to Forstchen and asked if he could do anything with it to kind of get the word out.

Vince wrote: My understanding was that Forstchen was approached by a congressman friend to write this. They had the reports on EMPs and what they could do, but the congressman didn't think anyone would read a technical report on what that could mean to us. So he gave the report to Forstchen and asked if he could do anything with it to kind of get the word out.

I couldn't find any reference to that, but Congressmen have talked about it on the house floor, and Gingrich also talked about it a lot after publication.

This wasn't my original source, but he talks about it.

WF: I was in Washington D.C. on the day the 2004 report on EMP was released and saw the complete non-reaction of the mainstream media and the rest of government. I later spoke with the chairman of that committee, Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, who lamented that the problem was that the issue of EMP lacked a constituency of voters who took the topic seriously. He then urged me to write a popular novel to try to get the word out. That was the original motivation, then fueled by the research the work required and the realization on my part of how vulnerable we are to this threat.

Cool.

Gingrich gives the foreword on the book.

FOund the original thread.

Had to search "gingrich."

I read the other two books in the series. Meh. The 2nd in particular was pretty worthless. The overwrought prose is easy to skip, making it a quick read.

Was China still in charge west of the Rockys?

GORDON wrote: Was China still in charge west of the Rockys?

Yeah, only moreso.