One Second After

One Second After is a 2009 dystopian alternate history novel by Dr. William Forstchen depicting what might happen to a small American town after an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) strike. The book is the first in a trilogy known as the John Matherson series. The remaining titles are One Year After (2015) and The Final Day (2017), and all three books are New York Times bestsellers.

Forstchen took his inspiration for One Second After from a 2004 congressional study about the potential threat of an EMP attack on the United States. Since the novel’s publication, Forstchen has addressed both Congress and NASA on the topic. 

Plot Summary

One Second After, told in limited third person and set in the real town of Black Mountain, North Carolina, follows college professor John Matherson as he tries to hold his family together and help his town survive in the face of total technological failure. As the book depicts the fallout from this catastrophe, it examines the themes of the fragility of civilization, overdependence on technology, and a societal failure to heed the lessons of history.

The novel begins on a pleasant spring afternoon as John searches for a birthday gift for his 12-year-old diabetic daughter, Jennifer. When he returns home, his mother-in-law Jen is there, and John teases her about the monstrosity she drives, a Ford Edsel. Jennifer returns from school and appears run down, and John advises her to take some insulin. Afterward, she runs out to play with the family’s two golden retrievers, Zach and Ginger. John starts grilling burgers for the party and wonders when his elder daughter, 16-year-old Elizabeth, will come home.

Later that afternoon, Jennifer notices that her CD player is not working, and John’s phone call with a former colleague in Washington, DC, is cut off. Suddenly, the family realizes there is no sound of highway traffic and no planes are flying overhead. When John’s car will not start, the family climbs into Jen’s Edsel to try to find Elizabeth. They are greeted by the sight of hundreds of stalled cars on the highway. Elizabeth and her boyfriend, Ben, walk up to the Edsel and explain that their car died for no reason.

When the power still is not restored by that evening, John has a hunch that the area was the victim of an EMP strike, meaning that any object run by computer power or electricity would fail. Only pre-computer vehicles like Jen’s Edsel are still functional. In conjunction with the town council, John tries to help maintain order in the face of panic, looting, and mass casualties at the local nursing home. As the days without power or transportation stretch into months, the town suffers starvation and even resorts to eating family pets. During this time, John befriends a stranded nurse named Makala, who helps take care of him and his family. They ultimately enter a romantic relationship.

In the face of a massive influx of refugees, the local college students are trained as soldiers to maintain order. Worse than the refugee onslaught is the threat of a cannibalistic biker gang, the Posse, which plans to overrun Black Mountain. In a seven-hour battle, the townsfolk manage to kill the invaders and lynch their leader; among the casualties is Elizabeth’s boyfriend Ben, the father of her unborn son. 

The Black Mountain inhabitants struggle along for several more months until the army arrives with much-needed supplies and medicine. This help comes too late for the Mathersons, since Jennifer died after her insulin supply ran out, and Zach and Ginger were killed for food. 

One Second After concludes one year to the day after the EMP strike, and John, who is now in charge of Black Mountain’s safety, feels the America he knew has disappeared forever.