Into The Darkness Read Free

components are not manufactured in the
United States, and their acquisition ordinarily requires up to a year of
lead-time in routine circumstances. Damage to, or loss of, these components
could leave significant parts of the electrical infrastructure out of service
for periods measured in months to years. There is a point in time at which the
shortage or exhaustion of essential backup systems, including emergency power
supplies, batteries, standby fuel supplies, communications, and manpower
resources, leads to a continuing degradation of critical infrastructures for a
prolonged period of time. Electrical power is necessary to support other critical
infrastructures, including supply and distribution of water, food, fuel,
communications, transport, financial transactions, emergency services, and
government services.
    Should
significant parts of the electrical power infrastructure be lost for any
substantial period of time, the consequences are likely to be catastrophic, and
many people may ultimately die for lack of the basic elements necessary to
sustain life in dense urban and suburban communities. The recovery plans for
the individual infrastructures currently in place assume, at worst, limited
setbacks to the other infrastructures that are important to their operation.
Such plans may be of little or no value in the wake of a massive CME
propagating an unprecedented EMP because of its long duration effects on all
infrastructures that rely on electricity or electronics.
    I
can only conclude the effect of another Carrington Event sized CME on the Earth
would be apocalyptic. Our critical infrastructures that support our
overpopulated urban centers would fail. The majority of the urban population
would die of dehydration, disease, starvation, and violence from the resulting
social chaos. Some people in rural settings that have access to clean water and
a means of food production would have a better chance of survival. On a
continental or global scale, the net result would be the death of billions of
people.
    As
soon as people begin to starve, they will regress into feral creatures and
commence the macabre process of killing each other for water, food, and other
resources we now take for granted. Ask yourself how you will get clean water to
drink when it does not come from your faucet anymore; food when the store
shelves are empty and the delivery trucks no longer operate; medicine when it
cannot be created in its manufacturing facility, and heat for your home during
the winter without electricity. Then ask yourself how you will survive.

Chapter One
    It
was early on a Monday morning and Dylan Smith had just finished a five-mile run
under the big sky of Helena, Montana. It was still dark, just before sunrise,
when he began his jog, and that gave him a chance to admire the beautiful stars
in the clear dawn sky. The sun had just begun to break the horizon, fading the
stars slowly away, as he finished his morning run. He truly enjoyed running
early in Montana, especially the way the air smelled. It was clean, fresh, country
air.
    Cooling
down from his run, he stepped off the sidewalk and onto the far end of his
hotel’s parking lot, slowly walking to the main entrance as he caught his
breath. The hotel was his temporary home for two weeks while he was in town on
business. He stopped, turned his back to the hotel, and with his hands on his
hips, stood quietly and let the cool breeze remove the heat under his
sweat-soaked clothes. It was nearly summer, but the air was crisp on his skin.
    The
rising sun was just breaking the eastern horizon, its halo slowly cresting the
silhouette of the Rocky Mountains. Tilting his head toward the sky, he closed
his eyes and absorbed the peacefulness of the silent morning. Suddenly, with
his eyes still closed, he sensed a flash of colored light rising from the
northern horizon. He opened his eyes to a spectacular assortment of meandering
colored lights, curling free from the silhouette of the Rocky