When fiction blurs with reality...

This evening I read a review of Trackers that said, ”Where will I be when the EMP attack occurs? Nick might be a fiction/sci-fi writer, but this is a story that is quickly looking more and more like it was a Nostradamus style foreshadowing of things to come.”

For the past few months I’ve read multiple reviews such as this one and heard from countless readers reach out to me about the plot and how it mirrors very closely the North Korean EMP threat we’re hearing about in the MSM. Fox News, CNN, the NYT are all reporting the same thing–that an EMP attack might be more likely than an ICBM attack from the isolated NK government. 

Tonight I decided to talk more about why I wrote the Trackers series. The shower answer is in 2016 I wanted to write a realistic thriller instead of a science fiction thriller with monsters, aliens, etc. Little did I know the scenario I used in Trackers 1 would not only become a possibility, but perhaps even reality. Each time I’ve published a new installment I’ve had to update the acknowledgement section to reflect current events and I thought my readers would be interested in how the story came to be. Who knows where we will be by the time I publish book 4 in 2018. 

The purpose of this blog post is to give readers an idea where I came up with this idea. For anyone that hasn’t started the series and would like to dive in,  book 1 is currently free in Prime reading/KU, and book 2 and 3 are discounted on Amazon. The series is also available in paperback and Audio (narrated by Bronson Pinchot). Click here to purchase. 

With that shameless plug out of the way, let’s talk about how about the Trackers series came to be… 

In 2016 I was finishing up book five of the Extinction Cycle, and at that time, I thought Extinction End would be the “end” of the series. I decided to write a new type of story—a story without monsters, zombies, or aliens—about a different type of threat to our national security. 

Rewind ten years. I’m sitting at my desk as a planner with the State of Iowa. It was there that I learned a good deal about a terrifying weapon known as an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). During a meeting with several agencies, I was shocked to learn there wasn’t much being done to harden our utilities and critical facilities to protect against such a threat. 

A few years later, I started working for Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management. I had several duties as a project officer, but my primary focus was on protecting infrastructure and working on the state hazard mitigation plan. During my tenure, I helped multiple communities apply for grants to build safe rooms in their schools or municipal buildings to protect from tornadoes. A few years later, I started working on grants that strengthened and hardened power lines in rural communities. 

After several years of working in the disaster mitigation field, I learned of countless threats from natural disasters to manmade weapons, but the EMP, in my opinion, is the greatest of them all. 

That brings us to today. We’re living in tumultuous times, and our enemies are constantly looking for ways to harm us, both domestically and abroad. We already know that cyber security is a major concern for the United States. North Korea, China, and Russia have all been caught hacking into our systems. We also know other countries are experimenting with technology that can shut down portions of our grid. But imagine a weapon that could shut down our entire grid. The perfectly strategized EMP attack gives our enemies an opportunity to do just that.  

Trackers is more than just a post-apocalyptic thriller about the aftermath of an attack on American soil. It’s meant to be a mystery as much as it is a thriller. There are a lot of EMP stories out there, but I wanted to write one that included new themes and incorporated elements of Cherokee and Sioux folk stories, which I encountered when obtaining a degree in American Indian Studies.

This story, like many works of fiction, will require some suspension of belief, but hopefully not as much as my other science fiction stories. Any errors in this book rest solely with me, as the author is always the gatekeeper of the work.
In an interview several years ago, I was asked why I write. My response was that while my stories are meant to entertain, they are also meant to be a warning. Trackers could be a true story, and I hope our government continues to prepare and protect us from such a threat. 

Much has happened on the North Korean peninsula since Trackers was first published in January 2017. I’ve updated this forward with new information each time I’ve published a new installment in the series. We’re now on book three and tensions continue to escalate. 

To recap, the North Korean People’s Army has fired multiple ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan, conducted several nuclear weapon tests, fired new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and most recently the regime threatened to launch four Hwasong-12 missiles toward Guam. 

These frightening developments have ended the debate over whether or not the North Koreans have nuclear weapons. Some intelligence analysts believe they have up to sixty, and some experts believe they have even miniaturized one that can fit on an ICBM. While the North Korean regime claims they can now hit the continental United States with one of these ICBMs, there are other ways to attack an enemy with nuclear weapons, and I explore one of them as a novelist in the Trackers series.

Recent and continued saber rattling by North Korea and the United States has brought the world to the brink of war—and many intelligence experts fear it will go nuclear. I personally believe North Korea will find a way to attack us where we’re weak, and I believe that our electrical grid is the most likely target. Aside from hardening our critical facilities and grid, I don’t know the best way to approach this threat, but one thing is certain—if something isn’t done soon, the stability of the entire world could be at risk. 

During my visit of Estes Park, Colorado in 2016, Captain Eric Rose of the Estes Park Police Department told me that he wasn’t sure he was ready for a post-apocalyptic Estes Park. I’m not either, but only time will tell if the Trackers saga remains fiction. 

With that said, I hope you enjoy the read, and as always, feel free to reach out to me on social media if you have questions or comments.