The EMP has disabled the nursing home's generator.

The elderly and frail need refrigerated medicines, and many require constant nursing care. Residents of the nursing home in town, where Matherson's elderly cancer-stricken father-in-law is being cared for, are at risk. No refrigerators or freezers are running, nor are grocery stores receiving supplies. They get into town, making the residents feel threatened by the numbers of people needing help. Hundreds of motorists are stranded when their vehicles stop. Matherson's experience and character help him with the town's residents. The book explores how the whole community responds, as many others face similar crises. Without a constant supply of insulin, which requires refrigeration, she will die. His immediate concern is his twelve-year-old daughter, who has Type 1 diabetes. Matherson later remarks that survivors have had to rely on the technology of the early 16th century. The United States has effectively been returned to the 19th century, with few 21st-century people able to deal with such conditions. Every modern electrical device is disabled, destroyed by what Matherson is beginning to suspect was an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the United States. Within hours it becomes clear that this is no ordinary blackout. (16:50) Eastern Daylight Time on the second Tuesday of May, the first day described in the book's narration, the phone lines in the town suddenly go dead, along with all the electrical appliances. He is now the widowed father of two daughters, Elizabeth and Jennifer.Īt 4:50 p.m. Army colonel and Gulf War veteran, he had moved to Black Mountain with his family when his late wife Mary, a native of the town, was dying from cancer.

John Matherson is a professor of history at the local Montreat Christian College. Black Mountain is strategically located along an interstate highway and provides the water supply for the nearby city of Asheville. Although it has no large businesses, it is becoming a summer destination for people from larger cities. Background īlack Mountain, North Carolina, is a small American town, home to a college with about six hundred students. A trade paperback edition was released in November 2009. Released in March 2009, One Second After and was ranked as number 11 on the New York Times Best Seller list in fiction in May 2009. The novel deals with an unexpected electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States as it affects the people living in and around the small American town of Black Mountain, North Carolina. One Second After is a 2009 novel by American writer William R.

Five years after william forstchen