The SURVIVAL APOCALYPSE and the EMP

The view from 1859…

My SURVIVAL APOCALYPSE novels are founded on the same thing. EMP. Electromagnetic Pulse. An EMP took down civilization.

Apocalyptic fiction often begins where the world ends…with an EMP. Well, that and disease. But in the realm of EMP post apocalypse fiction one of two things occur. A nuclear detonation high in the atmosphere, or more rarely an electromagnetic pulse from the sun. And there is evidence that it has happened and will happen again.

Post apocalyptic stories are ever so much fun when the world goes pflooey in one fell swoop. This is guaranteed absolutely when the sun misbehaves, sending waves of energy into our upper atmosphere which causes electromagnetic disruption below. It doesn’t take much disruption to cascade us in to an event from which we can’t recover. I briefly but succinctly describe this scenario in my opening page.: https://survival-apocalypse.com/.

The prime evidence comes from early September 1859 when what has been described as a “modest” solar ejection event occurred on our sun some 93 million miles out in space. At the time the premier electrical equipment in wide use was the telegraph. Hooked together by lines crisis-crossing the nation and spanning continents it is said that telegraph keys actually melted down causing fires. High voltage piling up on the long lines backed up in the telegrapher’s offices causing massive shorts. That’s what we’re told anyway.

Below find newspaper articles from the time. They run from whimsical to surprisingly educated. At the least you’ll find no panic.

Since all the wire in the whole world at the time would fit into a few large warehouses, can we extrapolate that today when even kitchen sinks come wired that a massive EMP from the sun would take down civilization?

I remain somewhat ambivalent. Except….except that it only takes a little crisis to fry our massive electronics. Doesn’t take much to cascade us right back to the stone age. 90% of our millions gone ambient temp in less than a year. Only takes a small EMP event to send us into a spiral from which we’ll never recover and it will take only days to become reality. Should it happen. Probably will happen. Pity that my books are mostly in electronic format.

The good news is that folks in southern latitudes, THE CHOCCOLOCCO VALLEY in particular will get to enjoy a helluva a light show. If it’s not cloudy.

From THE FAYETTEVILLE TENNESSEE OBSERVER September 8, 1859

Little notion did the writer of the article below have that another southerner would open a computer calculator to determine that he was busy at his trade 159 years earlier. From his eyes straight to yours…

From the DAILY APPEAL of Memphis on Saturday September 3, 1859

Some of these pages are fuzzy, and for a variety of reasons. Even at maximum resolution they’d still strain your monitor. The chief reason is that newspapers used to put as many words on a single page as there are in a dozen small town issues today. The concept of Twitter length news articles would have astounded those people. They would have scoffed mightily.

Fact is that IF you are interested you’ll do just like I did. Put your nose close to the pixels and cipher it out.

From THE NATIONAL ERA, G. Bailey Editor and Proprieter (Washington DC?) on Thursday September 8, 1859

Beyond the article itself we discern that even back in good old 1859 newspapers were much like our modern and lazy news sources of today. They often regurgitated articles from other newspapers. Namely, The Times of New York.

From THE ALEXANDRIA GAZETTE AND VIRGINIA ADVERTISER September 7th, 1859

By now, if you have been diligent you’ll have noticed that the theories propounded by the news rags of the day, while not correct actually dance all around the truth. Just because the source is ancient by our standards, it does not follow that we’re dealing with dummies. Many people read the yellow journals word for word. Try to get a modern reader (yourself excused) to read anything word for word beyond however many characters Twitter allows these days.

From THE NEW ORLEANS DAILY CRESCENT Monday morning September 5, 1859

This last article is nearly a blur but stick with it. The last piece contains amazing regurgitated information from Professor E. Meriam, “The Sage of Brooklyn Heights” in New York. E. Meriam teaches that the observant student of the aurora can often find pieces of it on the ground.

I have NO idea whether the New Orleans writer presented this as fact or another example of a dumb yankee. You’ll have to make up your own mind about that.

Here’s the takeaway. You can take the learned journals of the last couple of decades word for it that such and such happened in September of 1859…and all of it dire…or you can read for yourself. Skip the middle man, as it were.

My SURVIVAL APOCALYPSE novels are based on historical fact. You will not find a single thing in there of a contemporary redigested nature. Now this is not to say that the men on the ground who wrote the books circa 1549-1830 that form the basis of the settings for my novels didn’t tell whoppers on occasion.

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