One Second After

One Second After

3.92 of 5 stars 3.92  ·  rating details  ·  9,207 ratings  ·  1,993 reviews
New York Times best selling author William R. Forstchen now brings us a story which can be all too terrifyingly real...a story in which one man struggles to save his family and his small North Carolina town after America loses a war, in one second, a warthat will send America back to theDark Ages...A war based upon a weapon, an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP). A weapon tha
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Hardcover, 352 pages
Published March 17th 2009 by Forge Books
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Athens
Mixed results.
Numerous grammatical errors. I blame both author and editor a bit in this area. They are not disasters, but certainly should have been caught: "'He wished he would of...", "the apples were growing too slow.". These are not colloquialisms; they are errors.
Multiple typos can be found in in Kindle edition. For some reason on a few words you will find space characters inside the words, as if there had been some software-generated hyphens on syllable breaks which were later replaced by...more
Timmy
5 things I hated about "One Second After" -

1. Every important adult male character is either military or ex-military. Seriously. As a bonus, several minor characters that are merely alluded to are also ex-military. (For example, at one point we learn that a pharmacist's husband is an ex-ranger and insists that she keep a gun at the pharmacy. Good times.)

2. As others have pointed out, the author doesn't know the difference between of and have.

3. Much, perhaps most, of the action happens "off scr...more
Sandi
I decided that I'm going to send One Second After back to the library after having read only about 1/3 of it. It's not a supremely awful book, it just feels like I've read it before. It doesn't seem to have any new ideas in it and it definitely doesn't present the post-nuclear attack scenario in any way that it hasn't been done before. In the case of this book, the nuclear attack is one that is focused high enough to do no damage to people or land. There won't be any nuclear fallout. The attack...more
Sharon
The premise of the story is that an EMP (electronmagnetic pulse) is created by the detonation of 3 nuclear bombs above the earth's atmosphere, which renders all electronic, digital, computerized elements in the infrastructure of the U.S. inoperable, which leads to a complete and total breakdown of life as we know it. OK. Now we know. Author's mission accomplished.

From a literary point of view, this scenario could have been rendered as a gripping human interest story in microcosm, but instead the...more
Wayne
Listened to as an audiobook
An end of times as we know it book. Forstchen analyzes America's specific vulnerability to an EMP attack. I don't know enough of the technical details to judge his scenario, but they sound pretty close to what I would have thought. I instinctively react to his doomsday scenario as a bit far fetched, not the EMP, but the results. He has people panicing and rioting within days of the event, and starving within two months. I tend to think he is underrating most people, bu...more
Alex
I understand the well-done and well-meaning low reviews my fellow bookworms gave this novel. Many points I agree with. To be honest, I almost clicked three stars myself. However, reading "One Second After" was not about entertainment for me. I wanted to learn.

Oddly, the premise of this book - an EMP (electro magnetic pulse) shutting down the world's grid - came to my reality when all the high power solar flares were coming towards earth in early March 2012. Solar flares can cause the same reacti...more
Kerry
A bit tedious. The point of the book: To provide a fictitious story that would inform the reader about the dangers of an EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) attack on the US. An EMP would overload all electronic circuitry in cars, phones, etc....

It should have been a hint the story would be in great parts exposition when we learn the main character is a college professor. Pages upon pages feature the professor talking about the post-EMP problem in town meetings, at the office, at home, at the Quicky Ma...more
Lelia Taylor
One Second After
William R. Forstchen
Blackstone Audiobooks, March 2009
ISBN 1433256991
Unabridged Audio Book
Read by Joe Barrett

All is well in the small community of Black Mountain, NC, and retired army colonel John Matherson, now a history professor at the local college, is raising his two daughters alone after the death of his wife several years earlier. Living in this town is just what one would expect–peaceful, calm, generally somewhat like Mayberry–and John is content if not completely happy. O...more
Cecilia
Although fiction, this book is a very believable & terrifying account of how life continues and changes after an Electric Magnetic Pulse (EMP) weapon is set off over the USA. According to the forward, this weapon actually does exist and destroys all things run by electricity which makes the story all the more frightening. Think no communication/cell phones/computers, no vehicles produced after the late '70s, no refrigeration/air conditioning, no ability to produce basically everything that w...more
Nick
Alas, Babylon has been updated for the new millennium with this novel. I strongly recommend reading this from a quite realistic 'what if' scenario. It was a 'read in one sitting' novel, well crafted technical thriller around a significantly under-rated national risk. The author clearly put a great deal of personal passion into the novel, which shows through in the writing quality and intensity of characterization.
Mark
Interesting speculation on an instant low-tech future. Very sympathetic characters. Assumes the coalescence of rather large political groups in the immediate wake of disaster in contrast to some kind of organic growth of smaller primary loyalty groups. Assumes the continuity of nation-states... Treatment of the die-off is enlightening; it suggests we don't have a healthcare problem, just a deathcare problem: lots of nonviable people if we are plunged back into the past technology-wise.
David Ponder
This book will force you to consider the horror of what could be. What made this book so scary is the fact that it could really happen. It will force you to think about what would happen if everything you know as normal was to suddenly be ripped away. After reading this book I no longer think that people who have made preperations for "the end of the world as we know it" kind of scenario are crazy. READ THIS BOOK!!!
Blake Wilde
THis book is a great book it takes place in a small town in North Carolina called Black Mountain, and one of the reasons I found this book was that outside of the small town there is another town called Montreat and every summer I go up there for a month. I highly recommend this book to readers that love "military accidents" this is the book for you.
Kenneth
What could happen to America if EMP nuclear weapons hit over the United States and all electronics were lost. Good story about a family in the hills of North Carolina who had to endure the hardships of keeping their community afloat during the aftermath of such an attack. Would defiitely recommend it.
Rusty
I can understand some of the critiques, but I appreciate this book. When I take the time to analyze it critically, it was not well-written, it was too blunt at times, and a bit redundant. But I appreciate a reminder that modern society is not the be-all, end-all, and that any number of things can knock us on our collective ass.

Also, let me just say, HOLY FRICKING @#%$! Thank you Forstchen, for a protagonist who isn't a flag-burning, hemp-smoking, tree-hugging, firearmaphobic hippie. Those are f...more
Mandy
Freaky! Freaky! Freaky! A book that gets you to thinking about how you might prepare yourself and your family differently for possible terro attacks. It is disturbing because as the forward by Nute Gingrich states, it is a very real scenario, and something we should be concerned about. But of course it is also fiction, and a good story too.
Jonny99
Missing subtitle “: And They Wound Up Having to Eat Each Other” Presumably rightwing writer William Forstchen offers up an ideological Rorschach of a book. With no less than the Republican Bill Clinton Newt Gingrich handling preface duties, one expects this super-grim Irwin Allen disaster story to play out a certain way. And indeed, hippies get ridiculed, the military praised and town leaders held out as self-sacrificing noblemen and women (the Big Cheese actually eventually starves to death ra...more
Scott
I grew up as part of a generation of kids who knew that a nuclear war was inevitable. It's hard to believe now, but until the dissolution of the USSR a generation ago the world had lived at the brink of nuclear apocalypse for decades. I remember doing drills in elementary school for what to do in case of a nuclear attack; and as part of my required reading when I got a bit older, there was "Alas, Babylon", a portrait of life for survivors of a nuclear war which concludes that such a war can have...more
Francis Gahren
In this entertaining apocalyptic thriller from Forstchen (We Look Like Men of War), a high-altitude nuclear bomb of uncertain origin explodes, unleashing a deadly electromagnetic pulse that instantly disables almost every electrical device in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. Airplanes, most cars, cellphones, refrigerators-all are fried as the country plunges into literal and metaphoric darkness. History professor John Matherson, who lives with his two daughters in a small North Carolina town...more
Randy
This is a disturbing and important book!

"One Second After" is a depressing horror story, similar in style to something by Stephen King. What's different from a King story is that there is no element of the supernatural in "One Second After". What unfolds, after a very technically possible and not improbable event, is based upon very believable human behaviors and physical realities. "One Second After" is an important commentary on our modern society's naivety, urbanization and technological depe...more
Pegwinn
North Korea is threatening a nuclear strike against the United States for alleged hostile acts taken against them. Intelligence professionals discount those threats as not likely. Government officials believe that Kim Jong Un’s regime is still years away from developing a viable nuclear threat. One Second After by William R Forstchen was printed in 2009 and examines how life in America would change if a twist on nuclear terror came to past.

The novel is centered around Professor John Matherson. H...more
Tony
Excellent book. It is frightening to think how easy a rogue group could disable an entire nation and starve 90% of its inhabitants without destroying any buildings or immediately killing any people, at least those on the ground. The old Chinese proverb says "Attack your enemy at his weakest point." That is exactly what happens in this book.

In the first chapter the author depicts a small town setting in the rural western part of North Carolina. It's like living in heaven, complete with kids and...more
Glen Books
One Second After by William Forschen with a notable Forward by Newt Gingrich.

The story follows John Matherson and his children in North Carolina after a devastating electromagnetic pulse attack on America. The pulse, generated by several high altitude nuclear blasts, destroys the electrical power grid and virtually all non-military electrical and electronic devices in the United States. The blasts thereby cut off electrical power, needed air conditioning, water pumps, and refrigeration. The dest...more
Mark
Electromagnetic pulses can result from natural phenomena and, in much greater strength, from nuclear blasts. The result of an EMPs is the destruction of unprotected electronic circuitry, about 95% of it in the United States. A nuclear bomb set off at a high altitude would cause electronics over a large swathe of the planet to fail and almost nothing has been done to protect the US from this threat. This frightening novel depicts what life might be like in the case of an EMP attack.With no electr...more
Joe
Things get a lot better once things start getting a lot worse.

The first chapter, with the character introductions and setup, is just awful. Especially the dialogue. Here's the worst offender, an inner monologue by the protagonist:

"Strange, John thought. Here I am, a soldier of twenty years. Saw some action, but the only casualties were the Iraqis, never my own men. I was trained to handle things, but when it comes to my daugher's [sic] diabetes, a damn aggressive type 1, I'm always on edge. Tou...more
Sarah
I'll start by saying I don't think I am the target audience for this. The target audience are military, patriots, members of the gov't, and WASP males. This is a piece of propoganda aimed at lobbying people to take precautions against an EMP attack.

---spoilers below:----

This is the story of a man living in a small town in NC with his family when an electromagnetic pulse attack on the country transforms the USA into a postapocalyptic country.

That said, here are my issues with the book:

-While ther...more
Gmonster320
"One Second After" by William Fortschen tells the story of what happens in a small North Carolina town following an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack. It was published in 2009 and was on the New York Times best seller list.

A number of reviewers gave the book bad reviews. I'll agree that there was lots of pontificating by the main character (ex military college professor) and lots of "we're still Americans". However I read the book not as a literary work but as a cautionary tale. Sure many of us...more
Wildjane
I can't say I really hated this book, and I certainly wanted to like it before reading it : I found the whole idea interesting and extremely believable in its premise. But I found myself unable to bond with the main characters, and that killed the impact of the story for me.
I was really interested to know what had happened to stop the world, and to see what the people would do in order to survive and maintain a form of community, but in the end most of their actions didn't make any sense to me,...more
Laura
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Sharlene
"We have been warned that our country is vulnerable and virtually unprotected against an EMP attack that could damage or destroy civilian and military critical electronic infrastructures triggering catastrophic consequences that could cause the permanent collapse of our society. One second after an EMP attack it will be too late to ask two simple questions: What should we have done to prevent the attack? and why didn't we do it."

Definitely a book that will give you something to think about. We...more
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William R. Forstchen (born 1950) is an American author who began publishing in 1983 with the novel Ice Prophet. He is a Professor of History and Faculty Fellow at Montreat College, in Montreat, North Carolina. He received his doctorate from Purdue University with specializations in Military History, the American Civil War and the History of Technology.

Forstchen is the author of more than forty boo...more
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“John, you look like crap warmed over."
He nodded, walking into the conference room for what had now become their daily meeting.
Thanks, Tom. I needed that.”
3 people liked it
“America is like an exotic hothouse plant. It can only live now in the artificial environment of vaccinations, sterilization, and antibiotics we started creating a hundred or more years ago.” 2 people liked it
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