One Second After by William R. Forstchen (2.5 stars)

One Second After has already been cited on the floor of Congress as a book all Americans should read, a book already being discussed in the corridors of the Pentagon

My initial reaction was....OK I'll bite.

After reading it I think there is definitely a real threat from an EMP attack but my trust level in the "science" behind this book is extremely low. I can see why Newt Gingrich endorsed this: it's very light on the actual science behind EMP, heavy on the need for guns, and with some climate change denial thrown in for good measure:

“Global warming, sure, spend hundreds of billions on what might have been a threat, though a lot say it wasn’t.

I guess writing a fictional book is the best way to get things done these days in congress. Presumably this will win over the same people that don't want Mars research funded because they believe Mark Watney already went there and look how that turned out.

If you're a me-and-mine-first gun-owning prepper climate change denier, and wish all those hippies would stop helping the homeless and go buy some AR-15s, this is the book for you:

“Once they run out of food, then the reality will set in, but by that point, anyone with a gun will tell them to kiss off if they come begging. And those poor kids, if they have food, the ones with guns will take it. They’re used to free clinics, homeless shelters when they need ’em, former hippie types smiling and giving them a few bucks. That’s all finished. They’ll die like flies...

If you're a congressperson looking for ways to send more money to the defense industrial base, this is also the book for you:

We were so damn vulnerable, so damn vulnerable, and no one did the right things to prepare, or prevent it. 

If, like me, you just like post-apocalyptic fiction, there's some entertainment and an interesting thought experiment here, but as a novel it is very weak. The Road or The Stand this is not.

It's hard to know whether to give Forstchen credit for creating a main character that is incredibly flawed: he essentially robs a pharmacy for insulin for his daughter but then holds others to a much higher moral standard and even executes some thieves, or if that was deliberately endorsed as sensible "looking out for your own".

The progression from "everything is normal" to "extrajudicial killings in the streets for stealing" was three days without electronics.  I'd say that's completely ridiculous, but a sad part of me thinks it may not be. Plenty of people will read this as an instruction manual where the only solution to a crisis is selfishness and violence.

2.5 stars.