Book Excerpt: Late For Doomsday 2

The following is an excerpt from my novel Late for Doomsday 2. It is from the scene where Las Vegas gets nuked and the protagonists watch Sin City's destruction in all its gory detail.

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The phone was screeching. In the last minute it finally acquired a signal. The screen read: Presidential Alert: BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT TO ENTIRE UNITED STATES. TAKE SHELTER IMMEDIATELY. THIS IS NOT A TEST. Both young men gasped.
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“No way. It’s happening!” The radio had been turned down low. The voices on the AM news station were barely audible. Both reached for the volume control at the same time. Ben reached it first and turned it up.

They caught the end of the recording stating “This is not a drill.” With the proliferation of cell phones and digital data, the primary warning method for most Americans had shifted away from radio and TV. Still, once the message went out, the planned way for disseminating information was through the old standby, reliable and redundant radio. The computerized voice began to repeat speaking.

“The North American Aerospace Defense Command has detected a ballistic missile threat to the United States. This is not a drill. A missile may impact within minutes. If you are indoors, stay indoors. If you are outdoors, seek immediate shelter inside a building. Remain indoors well away from windows. If you are driving, pull safely to the side of the road and seek shelter in a building or lay on the floor. Take immediate action measures. Get inside. Stay inside. Stay tuned. This is not a drill.”

Noah gassed the engine and the Toyota tore up the side of the mountain. He didn’t want to miss anything, should it happen here. The white dome of the radar got closer. “Shouldn’t we be going downhill? Behind cover or something?” Ben asked.

“Why? It’s not like they’re gonna nuke this place. Maybe in the sixties when the Air Force was still here, but not now. Kill a couple radio towers, the FAA’s radar? Nah. We’re like 20 miles from Nellis and the city. If the Chinese drop 300 kilotons on Vegas, we’re fine. Front row seat to the end of the world.” In the ‘50s, casinos held ‘bomb parties’ to watch this sort of stuff just to the northwest out at the Test Site.

Noah parked the truck on a road that had a clear view to the city. The towering casinos of both downtown and the Strip were visible through a notch in the La Madre Mountain ridge. Las Vegas was in bowl surrounded by mountains and it tended to trap dust in it. Not today. A late spring rainstorm cleared out the air and it was a beautiful blue day. Unfortunately, the forecast for much of the country included temperatures in the millions of degrees.

The radio abruptly went to static and the truck’s engine revved, sputtered, and then recovered all on its own. This had to be caused by EMP; the truck was brand new. “Not too long now,” Noah said. He didn’t feel afraid. Excited was more like it. Waiting in suspense to see if the biggest light show in history would show up to his hometown.

Ben grabbed Noah’s phone and looked at the screen. No bars. The truck’s gurgle and the cell service failure was due to a high altitude nuclear detonation. Somebody had set off a nuke high in the atmosphere above the United States, probably a few hundred miles above the Midwest. The result was a super-high pulse of electrical energy that shot from the sky, shorting out electrical systems and antennas. Ben knew all about EMP, or an electromagnetic pulse. He had been an electrical engineering major before switching to computers and software.

The currents descending from space did no more real damage than a torrential downpour did falling over open ocean. It was the fact that virtually every civilized place on Earth was saturated with complicated electronics and thousands of miles of telephone and electrical wires that was damning. Like a net caught fish, the wiring stretching across the surface of the planet caught electricity. Some of it passed harmlessly into the ground, but most of it followed the convenient pathways of antennas and wiring.

Cell phone towers and radio stations absorbed the energy, which their sensitive receivers and transmitters could not handle. They shorted out and failed. The few that were robust enough to withstand the abuse, mostly military, failed due to a sudden lack of mains power. Satellites in orbit failed. Fragile creatures, they were fried, offering no more resistance than a paper mâché sculpture under a fire hose.

This burst of electromagnetic radiation was akin to invisible lighting—electricity traveling through the air seeking a ground. Lightning is very similar to EMP and shares some effects. The first is E1, most common in nuclear explosions, where a short, but very intense high-energy burst of voltage shoots through space and the atmosphere, racing to ground itself on any antenna or anything antenna-like.

The blast from the bombs caused electrons to be stripped away from their atoms (ionization) in the upper atmosphere. This generated a brief, but intense pulse of electricity that overwhelmed circuits, generally rising in less than a microsecond. The energy generated by the E1 pulse found its way into anything connected to the power grid, or either had an antenna or had enough wire or circuitry to catch the energy like a net. The E1 pulse is what disabled cars, cell phones, radios, and a whole host of other electronics.

The sheer enormity of the storm was beyond conception of the worst fears of the best scientists and engineers. The unyielding waves of current pulsed through the atmosphere, causing cell phone antennas and power cords to conduct electricity. If the space wind were considered to be the terrestrial kind, this was not a gust or gale; it was a EF-5 tornado inside a Category 5 hurricane pounding the entire planet. Anything on the surface took the punishing assault. Shelter from the storm subject to what was essentially luck of shielding.

The other effect was E3, the geomagnetically induced current that was caused by disruption to the Earth’s magnetic field. It was a long, slow burn, cooking everything that could conduct electricity. All of the low voltage circuits were fried. Enough energy passing through the wire and the voltage and resultant heat generated was too much for the capacitors and resistors that make up the circuit.

“Right now, people are still trying to figure out what happened,” Ben mused. “It’s not a normal power outage where they can get a room on The Strip and wait it out. In an hour or so, they will be trying to buy food and water with whatever cash they have. Once the cash runs out and they realize the ATMs and bank computers are out, they’ll start looting.”

Noah looked at his watch. “If they have an hour. Think any of the sportsbooks have lines on whether or not Vegas will get nuked?” Ben didn’t have a chance to answer.
There was one flash and then another about two seconds apart. Both came from behind the peak. It happened in total silence. Both friends instinctively turned towards the direction it came from. In that moment, a third flash happened. This one was so bright it lit up the surrounding mountains, throwing light into canyons that were still shaded in the low sun. The backside of the hill was cast into shadow, despite the sun shining directly on it. Trees were outlined as dark shapes against an incandescent sky.

As the light began to slowly fade, a glowing white orb passed over the top of the peak. Then another. They were moving in silence at tremendous speed. Both seemed to follow US 95 as it came from the northwest into Las Vegas. Noah and Ben both turned, watching the reentry vehicles, or the nuclear warheads, streak down. If they hadn’t known what it was, the two might have thought it was a UFO or something.

As the warheads reached eye level, 8800 feet, and dropped below it, Noah cried out. “Shut your eyes!”

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