One Second After

I just finished reading One Second After by William R. Forstchen.

EMP - ElectroMagnetic Pulse is a very serious issue.

EMP is a low probability national extinction event.

Here's the problem - People read Low Probability and stop thinking - the rest of the sentence disappears. They miss the part about extinction - END OF the U.S.A  poof - gone.   There's a damn fine chance as we're dying, that we will never know who killed us.

Let's put it into perspective - It's LOW probability - how low?  No one knows (at least no one is telling). Hmmm, that's not very satisfying.   What are some other low probability events that we could relate to.  Well, if your a home owner - you probably have Home Owners Insurance.   Now what insurance companies use to sell Home Owners Insurance is the fear that you'll loose it all to a fire.   Great - We've seen house fires, we probably know people who've lost there house to a fire.    So what's the odds that you'll ever need to put a major claim in on your HOI?   Depending on who's numbers you use - it's between .004%  and .00008%   by most standards that's pretty low odds - and yet you shell out money every year just in case.

What if you were told there's a .000005% chance that 90% of everyone you'd ever known or seen in this country was going to DIE, but you could buy insurance that would be better than home owners, it would keep it from happing, not try to fix it after - would you pay?   Apparently our Congress won't - we have made 0 - ZERO, zip nada, effort to mitigate the effects of and EMP.  We have the most expensive home on the planet - and NO goddamn insurance.

If you want to know what will happen in the event of an EMP - you can find it on the web,  if you want to FEEL what and EMP event will be like - read the book - and then keep in mind - They had it good.