Hurt, stranded, and alone, Kyle Tait sets off on a
2,000 mile journey home in post-EMP America.
On
a Friday afternoon before Labor Day, Americans are getting ready for the
holiday weekend, completely unaware of a long-planned terrorist plot about to
be launched against the country. Kyle Tait is settling in for his flight home
to Montana when a single nuclear bomb is detonated 300 miles above the heart of
America. The blast, an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP), destroys every electrical
device in the country, and results in the crippling of the power grid, the
shutting down of modern communications, and bringing to a halt most forms of
transportation.
Kyle
narrowly escapes when his airplane crashes on takeoff, only to find himself
stranded 2,000 miles from home in a country that has been forced, from a
technological standpoint, back to the 19th Century. Confused, hurt, scared, and
alone, Kyle must make his way across a hostile continent to a family he’s not
even sure has survived the effects of the attack. As Kyle forges his way home,
his frightened family faces their own struggles for survival in a community
trying to halt its slow spiral into chaos and anarchy.
77
Days in September follows Kyle and his wife, Jennifer, as they are stretched
past their breaking point, but find in their devotion to each other the
strength to persevere.
Excerpt from 77 Days in September
High above the sun-baked
prairies of Lawrence, Kansas, the missile reached its target. No one on the ground even noticed the
blast. Perhaps had someone been looking
at precisely the right location, at precisely the right time, they might have
noticed a tiny, momentary spark in the bright afternoon sky. Had they seen the flash, it likely would have
been attributed to the glint of sunlight reflecting off a passing
airplane. From every vantage point below
the detonation, there was no sense of the destructive capacity contained in
that tiny speck of light. More than 300
miles above the earth, a nuclear explosion impacts nothing with the force of
its blast. It is merely a large bomb
going off in a vacuum, creating no shock waves, no fireballs, no radiation, not
even any sound.
Despite the lack of
explosive destruction, this was now the most lethal weapon to be unleashed in
the history of the world, but it was a weapon that would have had absolutely no
discernible effect on mankind 200 years ago, other than creating a more
colorful aurora. Upon detonation, the
bomb expelled an intense wave of gamma radiation in every direction. The gamma rays traveling earthward interacted
with the upper levels of the atmosphere and created a chain reaction of
displaced electrons that rushed towards the surface of the earth at the speed
of light. Most of these displaced
electrons passed rapidly through the atmosphere and grounded themselves
harmlessly in the earth.
A small percentage,
however, encountered conductive materials:
metal, antennas, copper wiring, and silicon chips. As these conductors absorbed untold billions
of free electrons, they experienced sudden surges in both voltage and
current. In simple items, like a garden
rake, this surge was manifested as a harmless static electricity-like
spark. But in larger networks and
sensitive objects, the consequences of the electron overload were devastating.
Ray Gorham, the author
Ray Gorham was born in Calgary, Canada in
1966. Prior to graduating college and
settling in the United States in 1991, Ray had the good fortune to live in a
variety of locations around the world.
Years in Australia, England, Lebanon, Japan, Canada, and the United
States all helped to shape his background, worldview, and appreciation for
other people and cultures.
Graduating with a degree in Accounting, he
decided he couldn’t spend a future studying tax law and sitting in front of a
computer all day, so he took a management position with Wal-Mart and spent the
next 10 years in retail management where he had the opportunity to interact
with hundreds of employees and thousands of customers on a weekly basis. Growing tired of large corporations, Ray next
tried opening and running a restaurant, but decided after a year that wasn’t
for him either. From there, he found a
small log home business for sale in Montana in 2006 and settled in for what he
hoped would be a long-term career.
When the construction industry slowed down
in 2008, Ray knew he was going to have a lot of time on his hands, so he
determined to cross off one of the items on his bucket list—writing a
novel. After thousands of hours of
writing and editing he had the final draft of his first novel, a 108,000 word
effort telling the story of a husband struggling to return to his family after
a major terrorist attack. While agents
and publishers have passed on his efforts to this point,
he has found significant success so far in digital format, selling over 10,000
copies of his work.
This sounds like a great book. I especially like the use of the EMP to bring on a sort of "post-apocalyptic" America. Unlike some story lines, this doesn't kill off massive amounts of the population and leave it a wasteland for just a few survivors. It leaves the population to deal with life as if was just over a century ago.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to checking out this book and find more out about Kyle's story.