The Pulse: An EMP Prepper Survival Tale

The Pulse:

Chapter One

A World without Power

When the power went out at the North Highlands
Hydroelectric Plant in Columbus, Georgia, the oddest thing for Todd
Broderick was that he instinctively thought to call Georgia Power,
the very power company he worked for. He forgot for a moment, where
he was. If the hydroelectric plant that provided hundreds of
thousands of residents with electricity no longer had any juice, it
was unlikely that power existed anywhere else in the area.
Therefore, the question of whom to contact first became an issue in
itself. The phone lines weren't working anyway. Neither were the
cell phone towers, or cell phones for that matter. Everything was
dead.

Todd stepped outside to examine the vast row
of power lines running to the plant, not expecting that they would
provide any answers to the scenario before him. He went back inside
the plant, where not a single transformer, generator, computer, or
light bulb was functioning. In ten years of working for Georgia
Power, Todd, an electrical engineer, had never witnessed a sudden
and complete shutdown of an entire power facility. At North
Highlands, like most hydroelectric plants, river water is siphoned
through water reservoirs and converted into electricity through
turbine-powered generators and transformers.

The problem, as Todd would later discover,
was that all the transformers had blown out at virtually the same
time. There had to be a protocol in dealing with such a matter, and
even if Todd had been told at some point what to do, his mind now
drew a startling blank. It could have had something to do with his
mental and physical state, for he had been counting on an
uneventful day and a chance to sit back and nurse his hangover,
free of worry or stress. He needed it. The crisis befalling the
plant was the last thing he needed, and the thought of throwing in
the towel, heading home and going back to sleep seemed most
appealing of all.

Monday September 21, 2020 8:05 a.m.
Columbus, Georgia

By the time Todd arrived to work that morning,
the temperature was already nearing the nineties. He wore dark
sunglasses to cover up his tired eyes and heavy bags. He wondered
why he picked a Sunday, of all nights, to drink well into the early
morning. However, he had learned his lesson. Sundays were a
terrible night for poker. It wouldn't happen again. He couldn't
even remember if he had won any money. His poker buddies had kept
the game going well past four in the morning. He passed out on the
host's living room couch around five, and woke up to the sounds of
his friend's displeased wife making breakfast for their kids. After
a moment of awkwardness, he scurried out the door like a lost
puppy.

It was irresponsible of Todd to take it as
far as he had; at least that's what he told himself. He had worked
too long for Georgia Power to show up late dazed and swimming with
alcohol from the night before. It was a risk not worth taking. As
he drove past security and shuffled into the power plant, there was
nothing he wanted more than to curl up at his desk and get some
rest. The Advil kicked in, relieving some of the pain in his head,
but he still felt dehydrated, weak, and tired. “Please let this be
an easy day,” he thought, holding his forehead and squinting. Once
inside and out of the heat, Todd went straight to the employee
break room on the second floor and made himself a cup of coffee:
black. He then went to his office, on the bottom floor, to pull
himself together. He had a team to check on to ensure that the
generator gauges throughout the plant were correctly ascertained
and recorded for daily output and performance during peak usage
hours. Before going on the main floor and meeting with the other
technicians, Todd closed the door of his small, darkened office and
slumped back in the swivel chair behind his desk. He opened the top
drawer, pulled out a pink bottle of Pepto Bismol, and mixed it into
his coffee. For some peculiar reason, he had no doubt that it was
going to be a long day.

An hour later, Todd was getting back into the
swing of things. His team of technicians monitored a series of
generators the size of automobiles that produced up to 1,000
megawatts of electricity each. Personnel on the floor were required
to wear hearing protection, due to the loud noise. Todd had donned
a pair of red headphones, but they couldn’t muffle the hangover
pounding in his head. Suddenly, a crew member holding up a
clipboard shouted to him, looking concerned. As soon as Todd looked
over to him, the entire room went quiet.

Each generator systematically winded down, as
if someone had pulled a switch. Initially, Todd didn’t think
anything was out of the ordinary. His mind was a little slow that
morning. But as the room grew quieter, with little more than the
faint whirring of motors, he focused on what was happening, and
removed his headphones.

"What the hell's going on?" he asked his
co-worker.

"That’s what I was trying to tell you, the
gauges went haywire. We're losing the generators. They've shorted
out. Gone kaput!" the man replied. Stoic concern showed on the
faces of every technician in the room as they witnessed an
unimaginable event: a complete plant shutdown. Todd climbed the
ladder leading to the top of one of the generators. He paced the
circular walkway around the generator to understand what had
happened, then stopped and called out to his team.

"We need to check everything, get some
specialists out here. Let's move, people."

The team dutifully complied as they exited
the room to inspect the rest of the plant. Wherever they looked,
everything was much the same. Not a single transformer or generator
left operating. Todd instinctively went for his cell phone to make
a call, but the display screen was black as if the phone had been
shut off. He tried to turn it on, but nothing happened. This wasn't
too unusual since Todd hadn't charged it the night before. He went
back to his office and picked up his landline phone but heard no
dial tone. He reached for his computer mouse, moved it in circles
on the pad, and was met with a blank monitor screen.

The bizarre lack of power seemed more like a
bad dream that grew worse with each faulty device he encountered.
It was something inconceivable. Whatever was going on had to be
temporary. Any moment now his computer would turn back on, his
phone would work, and most important of all, the generators would
spring back to life again. Workers clustered in small groups,
looking stunned and proposing different theories about what had
caused the outage.

“We gotta tell the mayor or governor or
somebody. This is a serious," one man urged excitedly.

"Could be a terrorist attack," another man
suggested.

"Is someone going to take charge of this
thing, or are we just going to fumble around all day?" a frustrated
woman asked.

Todd avoided eye contact and questions from
his crew, and continued past them, heading toward the plant
manager's office, hoping to find him in. The woman was right;
someone needed to take charge. Suddenly, another worker pushed
through a set of double doors, frustrated and covered in sweat. His
hair hung disheveled, and his eyes were filled with worry as he
scanned the area looking for a familiar face.

"Hey, can someone give me a jump?" he asked.
"It's hot as hell out there, I’m late, and I can't get my car to
start."

Suddenly two words flashed ominously through
Todd's head: Electromagnetic Pulse—EMP. A sneaking premonition, had
surfaced, and the more he thought about it, the more the idea was
beginning to make sense. What, other than an EMP, could have
simultaneously taken out power, communications, and vehicles?

Straining to focus all his attention on the
idea, he tried to recall everything he had read and learned about
EMPs. There were two types: a man-made electromagnetic pulse, which
had negative effects on electronic equipment. And a weaponized
nuclear EMP that could have detrimental effects on all electronics.
Anything with a circuit, chip, motherboard or voltage within the
radius of such a weapon would no longer function and, in most
cases, would be unrepairable.

A high-altitude nuclear EMP, or HEMP,
deployed at nearly 100,000 feet, could have incredible range.
Depending on size and mass, a HEMP could cover entire
continent-size areas. Nuclear EMPs, he knew, were complex and
multi-pulsed to varying degrees of intensity. The damaging
electrical pulse had the capability of traveling distances of
hundreds of miles in mere nanoseconds, causing electrical
breakdowns and creating havoc.

Conventional EMP weaponry
had existed for decades, going back to the Cold War. But few
believed a credible threat possible in the early twenty-first
century. The frightening scenario involving a disabled electrical
grid that provided electricity for 300 million citizens drew
serious congressional concern in 2001 when the U.S. created an
Official EMP Commission. But priorities, and the
country
,
for that
matter, had changed through the years, and there was no going
back.

Todd had been briefed about
the effects of EMPs a few times during his tenure with Georgia
Power. He had been taught several of the "myths" surrounding the
aftermath of an HEMP detonation, including the fact that all cars
would be dead in the water. Perhaps Johnson—the man who ran in
asking for a jump
—
had just left his headlights on for too long and killed the
battery.

“Think, dammit,” Todd said as if scolding
himself. What the hell else could it be?

He decided to bypass his boss's office and
ran outside into the employee parking lot, which was baking under
the Georgia summer sun. He opened the door to his Suzuki XL7 and
sat at the wheel. Turning the key would settle, once and for all,
whether the various power outages were linked. It would also
confirm or disprove the myth surrounding EMPs and car engines. Todd
stuck his key in the ignition, breathed in, and turned the switch.
The ignition clicked, but the engine failed to start. Nothing
happened. Todd tried again and again, but all he heard was
clicking. He popped the hood and jumped out to examine the engine.
Everything was intact.

"You need a jump too?" a voice asked behind
him. Todd turned and was met by Johnson who had himself returned to
his car, accompanied by a co-worker holding jumper cables and
wearing a yellow hard hat and sunglasses.

"I don't know yet," Todd replied in a
daze.

"Not even lunch time and the day has already
gone to shit," Johnson said.

Todd leaned against the front of his car and
shook his head in frustration. He felt his hangover come back in
full force. "I don't think this is routine," he said. "This means
something. Could be an attack."

"Johnson, you want a jump or not? I don't
have all day," the man with the hard hat said.

Johnson looked at the
co-worker with an annoyed expression. "Sorry, didn't know you
had
so
many places
to be. Let's give it a try." Johnson turned to Todd. "Let me know
if you need any help."

Todd scratched his face and nodded. As the
two men walked away, he slammed his hood down then shielded his
face from the glowing sun blazing in the cloudless sky. A world
without power, he thought. Is it even a possibility?

Chapter Two

The Hunter

Sunday September 20, 8:05 a.m.
Milledgeville, GA (The Day Before)

Deep in the forest near the Oconee River, up a
hill of long and winding dirt roads, sat an obscure old-fashioned
house overlooking the town of Milledgeville. The caretaker of the
house, James, had been up since five in the morning, hunting. He
was a reserved and serious man, with a head of thick, black hair
and a graying beard. It was his Sunday routine since hunting season
began. His preferred weapon for hunting game was a crossbow. But
not just any crossbow; he was quite particular with the type he
used. Size, weight, and range were important components, as was the
reliability of the scope. He had named the crossbow Sydney, an
affectionate tribute to his Uncle Sydney, to whom he had always
been close. Name aside, he liked the crossbow, and it had long been
broken in. Its force and distance were an adequate 350 feet per
second. Generally, with crossbows, anything that fires less than
250 feet per second is ineffective for long-distance hunting.
Because he liked to move around while hunting, he wanted nothing
that weighed more than six to eight pounds. Anything over ten
pounds was not practical for James. He usually hunted upwards of
four to six hours.

Sound was also a big issue. Slow, careful
movements while hunting were something James had understood ever
since he was a child when his uncle would take him. James’s ideal
crossbow had cocking and latching action that was dependable,
quiet, and smooth. It was important to not scare potential game
away. Wearing light camouflage pants and a jacket, James moved
along the Oconee River looking for white-tailed deer. He cradled
the crossbow while scanning the brush ahead as each step from his
hunting boots crackled dry leaves below.