The day began as most others. The alarm went off at 6:15am. Clinton rolled out of bed and hit the shower. At 6:20am the coffee maker started to brew what had been setup the night before. Thirty minutes later the professor was shaved, dressed, munching on a bagel, and filling his travel mug for the 20 minute commute to the University where he had been employed for nearly two decades. Pulling out of his driveway he took note of the clear, blue skies and bright sunshine. “Nice” he thought as he began the short journey, maybe this afternoon he could slip into the park to play with his newest acquisition, an Elecraft KH1. It was a unique hand held portable HF radio.

Clinton had been a licensed radio amateur for thirty years.

Today he avoided the car radio again, wanting to ignore the news and opting instead to listen to an audio book. The last few months had been highly contentious with a presidential election that was still undecided months after the voting had ended. Anger was rising across America as the highly divided nation was livid that this thing seemed an unending soap opera with no resolution in sight. What was worse, the instability in Washington was creating pockets of instability around the globe with skirmishes breaking on the borders of several nations while threats of terrorist activities flooded the news outlets.

Even more, Clinton had noticed a significant uptick in activity around the military base just ten miles to the west. Jets were scrambled several times a day and there was no way for him to know if these were training missions, or if they were dealing with potential threats.

It was all very disturbing and like most people, he decided to just tune it out and let it resolve itself. Things would return to normal eventually, they always did. Still, his mind was wandering, considering these present troubles as he drove toward the University to begin another day.

Then suddenly, his 2021 Ford pick-up truck came to a screeching halt. He tried to restart the engine without luck. He couldn’t understand what was happening. There was no rough idle or anything, the truck simply died. And worse, the information panel didn’t tell him a thing. It was dead too. Dead like an electrical failure. The battery was fairly new, but clearly there had been some problem with the truck and now he would have to deal with that too. Reaching into his pocket he fished out his cell phone only to see it was dead too.

He stood outside his truck, glancing around the small neighborhood that was on his daily commute and everything looked completely normal. At least it did until some of those who lived there walked out their doors looking bewildered as it dawned on them that there had been a power outage. This wasn’t rare, storms took out the power here frequently, though it was unusual now given the nice weather. A car must have hit a power pole. Sure. That was it. It would be inconvenient, but the power company would have it fixed in no time.

Clinton didn’t count, but there must have been a dozen people including himself standing in the street without anyone saying a word. The silence was deafening. Why were there no sirens, no sounds of emergency vehicles headed in their direction? Why was it so beautiful yet so quiet. Silence covered them like a thick blanket. Until suddenly the silence was shattered. A woman in a housecoat was standing in her driveway, not far from him, pointing at an odd looking thing in the sky that elicited her scream.

They all looked up, in the direction the woman was pointing, to see an odd looking cloud-like formation that was large, but it appeared so far off it could have been on the edge of space. The people standing on University Boulevard moved closer together and began to murmur about what it might be. The professor was standing with them now as a strange foreboding fell over the observers. Clinton had an idea, though he kept it to himself. Given the current political problems in the homeland and unrest around the world, and given the power problem that killed his vehicle and phone, he wondered if this could be the result of an Electromagnetic Pulse triggered high in the atmosphere. Surely not. That’s science fiction and X-files stuff. Isn’t it?

While the others continued to stand and watch, Clinton grabbed the backpack with his portable HF gear from his truck, and began walking toward the university. He worried about leaving his pick-up truck in the middle of the busy road although that was needless worry. His truck would be heavily vandalized though it wouldn’t move again for six years until the New Northern Federal Army of the Sixth Region (NNFA6) finally began clearing the roadways around Asheville.



When Clinton walked onto the campus he hoped everything would be normal here and the power outage just an isolated event. But he noticed the large water fountain in front of the administration building wasn’t running as he walked past it. A bad sign. There were cars in the parking lot, but those could have been there from before the event. He saw none of them move. All of the glass doors were locked except for one that was propped open with a chair. He entered the building via that door and was immediately confronted by a lone security guard.

“The badge readers are all down this morning, I’ll need to see your ID”.

As he fumbled with his wallet to retrieve his identification card Clinton asked, “many people here today?” The answer was “not many” but there were more people inside the building than he expected. Quickly walking past the main offices, he headed directly to the ham radio club room in the basement. The elevators were down of course, but the emergency lighting in the stairwell provided some comfort as it was the first powered devices he had seen work since leaving his pick-up truck.

When he entered the large area used by the college radio club he noticed dim lighting and could hear at least one of the generators running. As he entered the primary operating area he quickly counted five other faces and none of them were smiling. One of his closest friends, Lewis Dinsmore, was first to greet him, “glad you could make it”. Without wasting words he asked, “what’s going on?”

“We don’t know just yet, but it’s big. Something happened in the atmosphere over North Carolina a little more than an hour ago. In addition to a lot of dead electronics the power is down over a wide area. Internet and phones too. None of the normal info channels, radio, TV, or CATV are broadcasting. The HF bands were impacted, but these seem to be snapping back now. We’re copying some radio signals and trying to piece it together. So far as we can tell VHF and higher frequencies are working as usual, there’s just nothing being transmitted.”

“The public weather station at Fort Liberty isn’t transmitting. Eddie is preparing to launch a radiosonde so we can take a few readings. That should be in the air in the next 30 minutes. We are seeing scattered LoRa activity that are probably autonomous data gathering and mesh relay stations powered by solar. A lot of these had been deployed by hams and non-hams alike over the last couple of years.”

Clinton was getting a decent SITREP from his friend, but what he really wanted to know was what these fellows couldn’t tell him. What the hell was going on? Was the United States at war and if so, was it nuclear?

“We haven’t been able to make contact with any authorities yet. A couple of the guys hopped on mopeds and headed for the State Police outpost out on the Interstate, but we haven’t heard back from them yet. Maybe in a couple hours we can all sit down to discuss what we do next, but I’m at a loss. We never trained for anything like this…”

Clinton thought that might be the greatest understatement of all time. There wasn’t a training manual for amateur radio operators in the event of global thermonuclear war, if that’s what this was. While waiting for more information to trickle into the datacenter he sat down in front of one of the many available transceivers and switched it on, nothing happened.

“Forgot to mention that some of the gear is working, some of it isn’t. We don’t know why the selective outages, but try this one, it still works” Lewis said, pointing to a vintage Drake transceiver. Sure enough, it fired right up and he slapped on a headset and went to work. Tuning around on 40 meters was fruitless. He heard nothing. Not even the religious shortwave broadcast stations were sharing any good news on this day. Switching to 20 meters he heard some activity, but it was very light. He thought if power was out across a wide region, hams would probably be running lower power to conserve whatever energy was available.

He quickly scribbled down the call signs he heard, but these meant almost nothing as the FCC no longer required ham radio calls to be associated with call areas and with the computers and Internet being down, he couldn’t look these up to find the location of the stations he heard. He noticed something else, there was practically no band noise. This was often noted during widespread power outages when all the “noisy” electric devices of modern life powered down. It provided a rare moment of quiet radio signal clarity that wasn’t appreciated this time.

It took considerable effort to fight off the panic attacks that were coming in waves as he allowed himself to consider what was going on around him. He knew this was a horrible situation, but he felt a little better being in the company of friends. They would soon have to make some critical decisions, and at least they would make these together. This was definitely not the time to be alone.

Being alone would come soon enough.



Twenty-four hours after the event some information was beginning to be received. The event over Carolina had indeed been some sort of magnetic pulse as assumed, though its origin and method of delivery remained a mystery. Washington, DC was hit. Hard. Probably nuclear, but that was only speculation and not yet confirmed. That would be especially bad news given that political events in recent weeks had nearly every Congressman and Senator staying in town. If there was a major hit on DC the US government was now probably headless with federal administrative duties falling to regional military commanders.

The four nuclear power plants in North Carolina were still online, but idling for a couple of reasons. First, there had been some electronic damage to switchgear and primary substations from the pulse and these would require repair. The more ominous consideration was whether or not sufficient power plant employees would come to work to safely bring these back online. That wasn’t guaranteed as nearly the entire state workforce was staying home waiting to find out what was going on. This was exacerbated by the fact that there was no internet, telephone service, no television, radio or newspapers being delivered.

In all reality, this was the day the earth stood still.

As this new information was being discussed, the two guys who had visited the State Police station earlier had plenty more to add. The governor and his entire staff were attempting to get organized in Raleigh, but they expected it to be three full days before they would get a couple of broadcast radio stations transmitting again. Until then, Martial Law had been declared though with almost no impact given there was no way to announce that news and local law enforcement around the state was hit and miss. The city of Asheville had just purchased a new fleet of police cars the previous year and none of these were working. Best guess was that the pulse event disabled the ignition module or computer in most newer automobiles. This was just an educated guess supported only by the fact that older vehicles were now being seen on the roads.

Immediate problems were medicine, food, and communication. People could survive days without food. But there were no medical facilities open and no way to call for an ambulance if emergency service was required. These items were being read from the government’s Emergency Response Manual, three copies of which returned from the State Police station visit. It was a rather long treatise with 80 chapters that offered no discernible reason for hope. According to the manual, the first to perish would be those requiring daily medical attention, like kidney dialysis patients. Diabetics requiring injectable insulin would likely be next to go as it has a shortened shelf life at room temperature.

In addition to the lack of medical services, medicine would also be in short-supply. With trains, trucks, and automobiles unable to transport and deliver goods, the availability of medicines will quickly create an urgent need. Soon after, access to food would become problematic. The manual went on to detail all manner of bad news and grim scenarios that could only be averted if the crisis ended quickly, an unlikely outcome given what was known to have transpired.

It was the next section in the manual that made everyone in the radio room go silent. The chapter was on the social breakdown of law and order. Three days was the expected amount of time that most would wait before things started to turn ugly. After that, looting and general mayhem should be expected. No place would be completely safe, especially not public buildings that would be difficult or impossible to protect. Like this university building.

Now the conversation in the radio room turned to going home. These hams were used to meeting here in the face of every emergency they had faced. Until now. Suddenly no one thought it a good idea to stick around the club station for long. Better they retreat to their homes and use their own ham radio equipment to help organize the… the what? What could they do to help? This wasn’t like calling for help from the Red Cross in Charlotte after a tornado.

Besides, there was no point in remaining at this station while the power was out. They had generators and 200 gallons of fuel on hand, but that would be exhausted in a few days without guarantee of resupply. Then there was the matter of obtaining food and protecting their own families. They all agreed it would be best to hunker down for the duration in their own homes. They agreed on certain frequencies and times to meet on the air so they could remain in constant contact. But even that sparked a fairly useless conversation about how they would know what time it was without some sort of electronic tools…

It was settled. They would all leave the facility.

Clinton had been giving his own survival a lot of thought too. He had been born and raised in Boone, North Carolina about 90 miles away. His parents had both taught at Appalachian State University, though both had died several years ago. When he settled their estate he purchased a hundred acres in that mountainous region and constructed a small hunting cabin that he visited often. It was well-hidden and off-grid. He had solar and wind power available there and he desperately wanted to believe if he could get there he might survive this ordeal. The problem was the 90 miles. He was a strong hiker, but that would still be a three day hike in good weather and along paved roadways. It could take a week to hike there over less populated, rougher terrain. He figured if he had any chance of making that long journey unmolested, he needed to leave right away.

One day of that “three day” window of peaceful opportunity had already passed and the last thing he wanted was to be caught out on some lonesome byway in the dark of night with desperate, lawless marauders and black bears his only company.



After stopping by his house to pack a few things, Clinton set out for the long hike up to Boone. It was late enough in the day he decided to follow highway 19 which would be a little tougher hike, but it was off the beaten path and a bit more secluded. There was little traffic on the highway so he took advantage of the desolation for the first hour or so. He had seen a few vehicles zip by and took note these were indeed older automobiles. The driver of one pick-up truck, a vintage 1955 Ford, had obviously seen him and pulled onto the berm of the highway and came to a stop. The driver was an older fellow, and looked friendly and harmless enough so he approached the vehicle. The old fellow asked, “you need a ride somewhere?”

He told him he was on his way to Boone, North Carolina, and the old-timer said he was going only so far as Blowing Rock, but he was welcome to come along. Clinton thanked him and told him he would be grateful for the ride in that direction and in less than a minute the unlikely pair were on their way. Blowing Rock was just a stone’s throw from his property and he was amazed at his fortune. The two spoke very little as they rode up the mountain. The power was out at home for both of them, and this was the only vehicle the older fellow could get started. He had a son in Blowing Rock and just wanted to be closer to family until this ordeal ended.

Roughly 90 minutes after he got into the truck, Clinton was climbing out with his backpack and thanking the fellow for his kindness. It wasn’t until the tail lights were disappearing from view he realized he didn’t get the fellows name.

He never saw another human that evening and once it was completely dark, he took a long and circuitous route up to his cabin, hopefully unnoticed. The place looked exactly as he had last left it. He closed the blinds tightly and turned on a single DC lamp. He was exhausted, but too agitated for sleep and decided on a cup of tea. One of the many reasons he wanted to be at the cabin was access to fresh, cold, mountain spring water easily drawn with a hand pump. He had boiling water in two minutes using his Jetboil with a propane heat source and the tea worked as intended. The night air was crisp and cool and he would liked to have had a fire, but didn’t want to draw any unwanted attention so he pulled on an extra blanket, and despite all that had transpired, fell into a deep sleep.

Breakfast was dried fruit and trail-mix that he carried from home. He had some provisions stored at the cabin, all of it MRE’s, no fresh food. That wasn’t a problem, he was a skilled hunter and fisherman and there would be fresh meat soon enough. The first order of business was getting on the air and establishing contact with the hams back in Asheville. The short distance is problematic. It’s too close for HF on most bands as radio signals often skip over local areas. So the immediate task was building and installing an NVIS antenna for 75/80 meters. The Near Vertical Incident Skywave antenna is designed to squirt RF energy straight up so that the reflected component is mostly concentrated over a 100 km to 200 km area. He had brought along printed instructions for such an antenna.

He also wanted to tune around on the higher frequencies to see what news he could glean about the situation. There was a little more amateur radio activity this afternoon, though all he heard was speculation. Actual news was difficult to find as the amateur traffic had nothing definitive. It wasn’t lost on him that just two days ago he was doing everything he could do to avoid main stream news, while right this minute he’d trade a paycheck for it. Life was weird.

After sunset, at the appointed time and frequency, he established contact with others in Asheville. The NVIS antenna seemed to be working well and he relaxed a little knowing that he was safe, fed, and once again in contact with other resourceful radio enthusiasts. He knew this was only the beginning. He needed to keep all this working and feed himself for at least 90 days until the government could get a handle on the situation and things would return to normal. His bank of batteries had just been replaced as were the solar panels. The wind generator was fairly new too. Barring major problems, he should have enough renewable 12 volt power to last at least a year, probably more if he was careful.

But humans rarely get what they want, they more often get what they deserve. The political meltdown that precipitated this ordeal wasn’t an accident, it was purposeful and now would play out to a horrible conclusion. Americans will finally get a much deserved break from the constant bickering and deception of politicians. The next time Americans will go to the polls will be decades from now…



Ninety days had passed since the world changed forever. Life for Clinton had fallen into a routine, though not a normal one. He spent time every few days hunting or fishing, but mostly fishing now that the weather had turned warmer. He was also spending considerable time foraging for growing things to eat. He was certain his caloric input was lower than before, though not by much. He had no way to check his weight, but he had probably shed a few pounds. Overall though, he remained healthy and happy enough with this oddly secluded life.

He had a hunting rifle and a shotgun along with with a supply of ammo, but most of his hunting was done with a bow. Clinton wanted to conserve his ammo for as long as possible. He brought a handgun with a box of bullets for it from his home in Asheville, but he considered this only for personal protection. He really enjoyed fishing and even the time spent hunting for night crawlers to use for bait. His property included a spring-fed pond about a thirty-minute hike from the cabin where he had been taking crappie and catfish without much effort.

To help occupy his time he spent hours taking meticulous inventory of every resource available to him. For instance, he knew exactly how much ammunition was available for each weapon, and he knew he had 53 commercial arrows on hand. While a few had been lost, most were recovered and re-used. The only thing actually in short-supply was paper. He started with a decent supply of notepads and pencils, but keeping a detailed written inventory, radio logbook, and personal journal was burning through his supply faster than he wanted and he wasn’t sure what he might substitute for paper.

His small supply of propane had been exhausted in the first week. Clinton hated that because he really enjoyed his propane cooking stove that he used inside the cabin for cooking and heating water. Without it, he had to use his wood stove which often made the cabin too hot, or move his cooking outside to the fire pit. This worked well and wood was plentiful, but a few times he had smelled smoke from wood fires and assumed this indicated the presence of other humans on the mountain and was loathe to give away his location in the same way. But fire was necessary.

Monitoring the power generation was another daily chore. The two solar panels continuously charged a bank of batteries via a charge controller. These all appeared healthy though not wanting to take chances, the panels were wiped clean every few days. Consumption didn’t amount to much, the only real loads being lighting in the cabin, a small exhaust fan used sparingly, his ham radio equipment, and a few display panels that reported the health of these systems. While he had several low-powered HF transceivers available, he used only his Elecraft KX2 at ten watts RF output. The radio consumed very little current on receive, the way he spent most of his time on the air.

The antennas were all constructed from wire and supported by the many tall pine trees surrounding the cabin. Starting with a 1000-foot spool of 18 gage wire, about 800 feet of it remained available. These wires had been knocked down several times. Once during a violent storm and a few more times when some of the elevated radials were broken by what he assumed was deer or other critters. These were repaired by splicing the broken wires as this was another limited, not to be wasted, essential resource.

The lack of weather forecasting caused the most grief. Life would be better planned with some idea of what the atmosphere might deliver over the next 48 hours, a simple convenience taken for granted in better times.

As he considered all this one especially beautiful evening while dining on fresh caught catfish fried with wild leeks, sautéed fiddleheads, and hot sassafras tea, he couldn’t help but feel guilty. The last few months here on the mountain had been more like a getaway vacation than the end of the world. Outside this secluded bubble human suffering must be unbearable and reaching new depths with each passing day. Of course, he had no way to find out just how bad things had become. At least not without descending the mountain and reconnoitering the misery of city life, something he wasn’t yet willing to do.

That would change as news from near and far will soon be received via radio revealing just how bad things had become and dashing any hopes for a quick end to the evil that was tightening its grip on the entire planet.



Some weeks later the radio traffic began to grow and it was now possible to work several different stations along the east coast each day. The buzz was that power had been restored to many areas though there were reports of scheduled, rolling blackouts. In Raleigh, the power would be on for eight hours every other day. This would no doubt be welcome relief for the survivors in areas where it was even temporarily available. Electricity would permit water pumping and lift stations to resume their operation as well as permitting fuels to be drawn from underground storage. This seemed like good news. Things must be improving.

And then a few days later, on what he thought was a Friday, a couple of AM broadcast radio stations resumed operation. He could easily copy the station in Greensboro and another in Knoxville. These were serving up much needed information though it became apparent these weren’t live broadcasts, rather, they were recorded messages played in a long, continuous loop. He settled-in for what would be a nearly two hour listening session that did a good job of filling in the blanks and outlining the situation, though there wasn’t good news.

The United States had suffered military attacks from enemies outside the continent and simultaneous attacks from within, though no enemies were named. Washington, DC had been destroyed by a nuclear missile attack with more than a million people assumed dead there. Travel would not be permitted in that area for the foreseeable future. The federal government had been effectively liquidated and the nation was being divided into multiple regions though not along state lines. The message said this was being done to improve efficiencies in recovery efforts and to permit local areas to make their own decisions based on various situations.

It was believed that Washington, DC was the only area of the country to suffer a direct nuclear attack, though more than a dozen NEMP events had taken place. These “nuclear electromagnetic pulse” weapons were nuclear bombs detonated at high altitude over several regions at almost the same time. The impact of these were damaged or destroyed power lines and power generation equipment as well as the damage or destruction of most exposed solid-state electronics components. The results varied by region and was determined by the altitude of the detonation and the type of ground cover in the impacted areas. Some automobiles parked in underground garages were unaffected, though most autos manufactured after 2000 would have been damaged.

The message warned of additional food shortages as crops had not been planted in time this year to produce any significant yield and the provisional governments across the country would soon meet to discuss mandatory rationing of food.

Clint assumed this meant the distribution of food from either government warehouses or other storage facilities as his on-air conversations with hams around the area confirmed long ago that all the retail establishments had been looted and destroyed. There was no food to be rationed from the Piggly Wiggly and this made him curious about where the government might keep stockpiles of food as it was something he never even wondered about.

You go to the store every week and pick up groceries… Not anymore.

The news about the loss of life was as sobering for what it didn’t say. Losses weren’t being reported in numbers but in percentages. It was estimated that more than thirty-percent of the nation’s population was lost during the first 90 days following the event. That was staggering. If you assume the population was 300 million, then as many as 90 million Americans had died. And the news said fifty-percent loss was expected by the end of the first year. Damn. 150 million dead would make casualties from all US wars combined look like jack squat.

At that news, Clinton switched the radio off. He needed time to process what he had just learned. The destruction was stunning to consider, but he was more overwhelmed thinking about the necessary recovery efforts and suddenly lost all hope that the nation would ever recover from what had transpired. And then he began to think how things wouldn’t get back to any kind of normal in his remaining lifetime, even if he lived to be an old man in this cabin. Surely it would take a century to set things straight. After a long pause and a few tears he switched the radio back on in time to hear the Martial Law announcement.

There was a lot said about no travel zones and hours when citizens were permitted to be in the streets and there were a few new regulations related to dealing with dead bodies. Despite the macabre instructions, the most chilling thing he heard was that ownership of all private land had been rescinded and the entire territory claimed now to be government property. His hundred acre refuge on the side of the mountain, paid for in hard earned cash many years ago, was no longer his. It belonged to the provisional government. While this was the least of his worries, it badly bothered him. If they can do this, what can’t they do he wondered?

Wanting a more local update he was tuning around on 75 meters just after dusk that evening hoping to catch someone from the ham radio club in Asheville and wasn’t disappointed. The chatter was more upbeat than he expected it to be though having power, even on limited days was better than nothing. When the roundtable conversation got to him, he had a few comments about the apparent collapse of industrial farming and then he asked what was happening with the elderly population in nursing homes around the area. After a few seconds of silence his friend Lewis replied, “Uhh, Clinton, there aren’t any ‘old’ people anymore. I don’t know anyone over 60 still alive down here. Sorry, I thought you knew?”



The late afternoon shadows were growing longer and the nights were a little cooler, clear evidence that autumn was just around the corner. Clinton wasn’t looking forward to winter weather again, though it did come with the implied luxury of refrigeration. He hadn’t taken any venison since he moved into the cabin because he wasn’t confident about how to preserve meat. The last thing he needed was food poisoning while alone in the wilderness. In better times he would have tethered his laptop to his phone and let Google show him how to safely dry deer meat for storage. His plan was to hunt deer once the temperature was low enough for the meat to be stored outdoors. Until then, it was small game only, rabbits and squirrels, with that meat being consumed in a day.

He also wished he could can food as the fruit trees were offering a surprising variety of tasty treats that had to be eaten or lost. Clinton was paying closer attention to the variety of foods he was consuming as he could only guess about the balance of his nutrition. Two bottles of daily vitamins were among the cabin supplies when he arrived, but these were beginning to dwindle and he was fairly certain a steady diet of meat, even if it was field fresh and just taken, wasn’t a path to good health. So far as he was concerned, his best chance for long survival was avoiding accidents and injuries, and steering clear of illness.

If only he had a printed copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica at the cabin. These were common in homes just thirty years ago, but given the extent of the collected knowledge on the internet and at his fingertips, why waste the money, not to mention the physical space? The same was true for books. He had a large library of e-books in his Kindle online library in the Cloud, and he had his Kindle with him and kept it charged. But to conserve storage on the device he only downloaded a dozen books to the Kindle and these were all he could access now that he was permanently offline. He swore if he ever got access to the internet again the first thing he would do was fill his Kindle to overflowing.

The lazy days of summer were being replaced by busier days with fewer leisure hours. Extra time was now being spent collecting and preparing firewood and his radio time had grown to three hours a day. Most of it in receive mode, though he was permitting himself casual conversations almost every day when it could be found as the loneliness was beginning to gnaw at his soul. Rag chewing helped, a lot. He noted in his journal, “next time someone says ham radio was replaced by cell phones ask them when was the last time they found camaraderie and fellowship on the telephone by dialing up random strangers”.

A couple of domestic shortwave stations had popped up on the 41 meter band in the last week. Not surprisingly, both were of the Christian nationalist variety with their odd messages for all the world to ridicule, if they paid attention to it at all. The shortwaves had long ago become desolate bands of religious propaganda as regular broadcasters, like the BBC, had fled the medium in favor of the internet. The thought of the internet displacing radio, broadcasters trading transmitters and antennas for server farms was reason to chuckle given the current situation.

At the end of another long week, while in bed listening to the sound of wood in the stove offering up its dying embers, and with sleep eluding him, Clinton made a decision. It was time to break this isolation and venture into town. He had been imagining this visit for weeks and had become exhausted from thinking about it. Tomorrow morning he would walk down the mountain and into Boone, North Carolina to view the New World with his own eyes as opposed to the aural “view” he had been getting via radio. Best for him to do this now, before any snow fell this season he thought.

With that decision made, sleep came quickly.



The visit to town went better than expected. At least from an execution standpoint. His route from the wilderness to “civilization”, such as it was, included several twists and turns that were probably unnecessary. He was trying to mask the direction he was coming from, but no one seemed to care. Clinton hoped to buy pipe tobacco and coffee and brought along an extra box of shotgun shells for this as he had heard ammunition was the new currency for goods and services. But as it turned out, he could find neither being offered for sale. There was a considerable supply of moonshine available for sale or trade, but he wasn’t interested given he could easily make his own.

Town looked familiar, he remembered most of the buildings from his last visit not all that long ago though now they appeared beat-up, colorless, and just sad. He made note of the fact that not a single unbroken window was found along the entire retail district. He made a couple of passes up and down the main drag, chatted briefly with a couple of fellows hoping to glean something he didn’t already know, and was suddenly gripped by a strong urge to retreat. He slipped away unnoticed with no one following him. Fear and foreboding turned into depression as he hiked back to the cabin.

He suddenly thought the trip to town had been a bad idea.

A few days removed from that excursion and Clinton’s attitude improved considerably. He was too busy preparing for the upcoming season to waste time brooding. Besides, he had received news via wireless that sounded encouraging, even if it wouldn’t have any immediate impact on him.

The limited periods of grid power availability were creating opportunities to restore some network connectivity, at least among those who had internet access via satellite. The Starlink system with its constellation of satellites continued to fly above the fray of earthly problems. Apparently, when its customers were able to power their ground station terminals there had been reported instances of limited data being received and exchanged despite large chunks of the global network being offline. The internet had been designed to survive widespread outages by clever packet routing schemes though its DARPA creators probably never envisioned a global situation quite like this one.

Still, it sounded hopeful.

Oddly enough, amateur radio was the most consistent form of data transfer available and some limited regions were beginning to rely on the information it exchanged. Though it was a throwback to the 1950’s, message handling was being done by ham radio traffic networks the old-fashioned way, via phone and Morse code as these could be maintained without need of computers or internet connectivity. These were limited to populous regions and messages often took days or weeks to be delivered, when they could be delivered at all. Still, this was impressive to Clinton given that most older hams, like himself, who had traffic handling experience, probably didn’t survive the ordeal. He thought it amazing this was now being handled by the whizz kids, without their computers, forced to rely on Morse code and a pencil to carry on the tradition and they seemed to be doing well.

Perhaps amateur radio would have a place in the New World after all?

Winter was another mild one. There was plenty of snow, but there would be a lot of unused wood in the stockpile after this one. Clint took two deer with his bow and had enjoyed the flavorful protein. One morning, he loaded up a heavy portion of venison, along with two bottles of fruit wine he made back in the summer, onto a sled he had fashioned from tree branches. He began walking south from his cabin dragging the sled behind him. He was determined to visit his nearest neighbor, a small family that holed up in their cabin about the same time as he did. This would be the first actual meeting for these neighbors but he knew they were there. He had seen them during his walk to Boone and had found evidence of them long before that. He figured their meeting was long overdue.

A couple hours later he was in view of their cabin. He felt bad that his clothing was so badly worn and in need of replacement, but he had done as best he could with only a small sewing repair kit that had been unused at the cabin for years.

When he was a hundred yards away a younger fellow called out to him. He was carrying a shotgun though not pointing it in Clinton’s direction. The two men met and introduced themselves with a wary handshake. Clinton told him who he was and learned the younger man’s name was Isaac. Two girls who looked to be ten or twelve ran out to their Dad. Their Mom did too. The five of them chatted briefly then Clint offered them the sled of provisions. “Ike” told him they had been taking small game and fish from a nearby stream so the deer meat would be a much appreciated change of pace.

Feeling a bit awkward at this impromptu meeting, Clint was thinking of heading back to his cabin when Ike said, “Why don’t you sit and stay with us a bit. We haven’t had any visitors since all this started and I’m certain we would enjoy your company”. Sally, Ike’s wife, said she would prepare a meal with the deer meat and potatoes, and they could open the wine. So that’s what they did.

A few hours later, luxuriating after the first meal Clinton had prepared by someone other than himself in, ages, they gathered around the fire pit sipping the too sweet wine while the girls giggled and performed a well-worn mountain song for their newest audience member. He thought this was nice, really nice. Ike grabbed his guitar and Sally joined in while they all sang familiar tunes and watched the girls dance joyfully around the fire. As Clinton walked back to his cabin that night after promises to visit again soon, he thought this was one of the best soiree’s he had ever attended. Including during the “before” time.

He drifted off to sleep with the notion the New World would be made by hand, and maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing stuck in his head.



Living in isolation on a lonely mountain while the rest of the planet went to hell Clinton thought he had it pretty good. Sure, he longed for life the way it used to be. Dinners with colleagues, late night drinks at a cozy bar with old friends, the aroma of fresh brewed coffee in the morning at the shop right around the corner from his home. Memories of the before time remained strong, but he was as safe as he could hope to be and hadn’t missed too many meals. His ham radio equipment meant he wasn’t completely isolated.

All things considered, “things” were going pretty well, until they weren’t.

The first hint of trouble on the horizon was the voltage level on his bank of batteries. The solar panels seemed to be delivering the proper energy, but Clinton always knew the batteries could only be charged so many times before being replaced. He didn’t keep track of that number because there was nothing he could do about it. The number of charge cycles on these batteries had to be in the hundreds by this point. He still had more than enough energy available to keep things running for now, but the readings were a harbinger of trouble. The problem with losing his stored energy was a radio problem. Though he had outfitted the cabin with adequate LED lighting for reading at night time, he didn’t need the lights to survive.

He needed radio as it was his link to the outside world.

Clinton wanted to hike down the mountain, all the way to the Interstate where there was a rest area. He remembered it from a stop a few years ago and recalled it had solar panels installed on the roof, probably to support emergency lighting, and he assumed there would be batteries with that system. He hoped maybe those hadn’t been looted and if not, he planned to take whatever he needed and could carry. But he wasn’t going to make that hike today. He had been feeling under the weather for two days and this morning, pain in his stomach kept him in bed. He hoped it was food related because even something as ordinary as appendicitis would be a death sentence.

Three days later, still bedridden and now feverish, his health concerns were growing by the hour. He hadn’t eaten in a few days because there was nothing to eat unless he went outside and hunted it. He wondered if the steady diet of wild meat might have deposited parasites or some similar nasties in his system. He had no way of knowing for certain, but hunger was now overruling his symptoms as he headed to the pond to fish for something to eat. Fortunately, the fish were biting and in ninety-minutes he was back in the cabin, still in pain, frying the fish he had just caught and cleaned.

Later that morning he turned on the radio. He felt better having taken some food though the pain in his stomach continued unabated. He worked a couple of stations, one of them in Pennsylvania the other in Illinois. He was pleased to have the fraternity of radio to keep him company though he wasted no time complaining about his health problem on the air, he was just happy for the camaraderie.

Two days later, he died alone in his cabin. Clinton’s troubles had ended. But for those who survived him, it was only the beginning.