it happen?” I asked. He didn’t answer me right away. He had a complete look of disbelief on his face and surprise in his eyes. It took him several minutes to answer me. He just kept staring at the smoke.
“About twenty minutes ago,” he finally said. He looked at me with a mixture of hurt and confusion. “All those people are dead. They just fell from the sky. Buddy, do you know what happened here?” He hoped for some explanation.
“No, I don’t. But I think everything is going to be okay,” I said as I put a hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t you go back inside? It’s starting to get a little warm out here.” I looked him in the eye, trying to convey my best imitation of strength and control. I believed he was in the first stages of shock and needed a rest. I guessed that seeing two planes full of people crash in front of his eyes might have been more than he could take. I thought to myself that if this was what I thought it was, this guy wasn’t going to make it past the first few weeks.
I continued to walk around and take in as much information as I could. Nobody seemed to have power. There were cars stalled out all over the streets, and two planes had just fallen from the sky. My thoughts immediately went to an EMP but not the solar kind. This was an NEMP (nuclear electromagnetic pulse). An NEMP was caused by somebody setting off a nuclear bomb two hundred to three hundred miles above the earth. I am no nuclear physicist, but basically, when the bomb explodes, the explosion fries all electronics. I decided that I had seen enough. I turned back toward my apartment, and went back home.
I had watched several programs on Discovery over the years that dealt with apocalyptic events. After about a week, the everyday citizen starts to run out of food. All power is gone, so freezers can only keep things cool for so long; frozen food starts to go bad, and canned food gets used up. There is no power to pump water, and the normal person does not stock water, so they run out of liquids to drink. After week one, citizens begin to panic and raid the local grocery stores. What can be bought will be if the stores set up a cash only policy. What can’t be bought will be stolen. After week three, citizens begin to resort back to primitive behavior. They begin to form gangs and start to rob their neighbors for food and water. Eventually, they will resort to killing each other if that’s what it takes to keep themselves and their families alive.
As I walked back inside my apartment, I noticed that the temperature was starting to go up. It wasn’t uncomfortable yet, but I could tell that it was warmer inside than when I left. I unholstered my 1911 and set it on the table beside my chair. Freddy immediately jumped up on the arm of my chair to greet me. I had been gone maybe an hour, but she acted like I had been gone a week. As I sat there petting Freddy, I thought about what I was going to do.
2
I decided that my best option for now was to bunker in. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure an NEMP had caused a power outage, or maybe I was just in denial. I had to figure out what I needed to bunker in successfully. First was food and water. I wouldn’t consider myself a prepper or survivalist. We had a couple of pretty heavy storms in Maryland recently, and the power had gone out for several days. A few years ago, Hurricane Sandy hit, and the power was out all along the eastern seaboard. In some places, it had been out for weeks. Because of this, I decided to get myself prepared for the next big storm.
I had about twenty-five gallons of water stored in cases in the closet. I also had about four weeks of Mountain House camp food. I also had a camp stove with several canisters of propane fuel. So I was set for food and water, at least for a little while anyway. I also had two ten-pound bags of cat food for Freddy.
The next thing that I needed to consider was shelter and heat. Well, I was bunkering in so that was a no brainer. I was in my apartment so I had the shelter. The heat—well, it was the start of the spring into summer season. Heat wasn’t going to be an issue either. The only problem with my apartment was that it wasn’t very defendable. It was a one-bedroom apartment that had two windows and one door. They all opened onto one patio. So at some point, if somebody tried to come in through any of those entry points, I was screwed for a retreat. I would need to fight my way out. If the power didn’t come back on within the next couple of weeks, I was going to need to rethink the bunkering in idea. As I said earlier, at some point, I expected neighbors to start turning on each other.
The last thing that I was worried about was security. I had my 1911 and about a thousand rounds of ammunition for it. I also had a Rock River .223 that I had decked out with Magpul furniture, an Eotech dot sight, a flashlight, and a laser setup. Rock River .223s had been chosen by the ATF as their go to rifle several years ago. The Rock River rifles were the only rifles to pass all the tests that the ATF threw at them. The barrel and trigger were both Wilson Combat competition parts, and this rifle was spot on at three hundred yards. I also had about three thousand rounds of ammunition for it. Lastly, I had an assortment of knives, to include a custom-made Bowie survival knife that I had made by a knife smith in Texas.
I went back to my closet and pulled out my rifle bag. I got out the .223 and a bag of batteries. I put batteries in all the attachments. My concern was that the Eotech was an electrical piece. A check confirmed that it was shot. It came off; iron sights it was. I then checked the laser. It too was a no go, so off it came. One good thing was that there was less weight on the rifle. The old adage was, ounces equal pounds, pounds equal pain. When I checked the flashlight, for some reason, it worked. I’m not sure why, but it did. That was a plus.
I had an Eberlestock G-4 Operator Ruck-sack. It was loaded with your normal survival gear: 3,500 calorie food bars, Mountain House meals, fire starting supplies, water containers, first aid kit, ammo, etc. It also had a flashlight, headlamp, and a light for my 1911. I checked all of those, and they worked. I’m not sure why the flashlights still worked, but I wasn’t going to complain.
I loaded all my 1911 magazines, six in all. I also loaded all my .223 mags. Those totaled nine. I was set for now. All I could do now was to wait to see what happened.
Over the next few days, things didn’t really change too much. I went out on small recon walks to see how the rest of the neighborhood was handling things. Of course nobody was really prepared, but the reality of what was going on hadn’t really had the time to settle in on them yet.
One of my neighbors whom I spoke to occasionally was an avid camper and backpacker. I suspected that he was handling things a lot better than most. Prior to the event, I had seen him walking around preparing for a trip. He had a lot of the expected gear. Things like Maxpedition bags, hiking boots, and general clothing I only really saw in camping and survival magazines. So I expected that he would fare better than most. I saw him using his grill to cook what food he was eating, as were most of my neighbors. Grills were going pretty much around the clock.
As the first week passed, I could sense things starting to heat up. I could hear and see neighbors starting to get into arguments.
“Come on, man, can’t you spare some water?”
“Come on, brother, just some canned veggies?”
“What am I supposed to do about my kids?”
“Man, fuck you!”
These types of conversations were starting to happen more and more frequently. I tried to avoid contact with anybody because I didn’t want to be caught up in an argument. I may have had the food and water to spare, but how could I be sure? I didn’t know how long this thing was going to last. I needed to make sure I had enough for me to get through as far as I could.
At about the end of week two, I decided to recon the grocery store down the road from me. I moved down the road until I could see a crowd of people who had gathered in the vicinity of the store’s parking lot. I moved off into the field around the store. It was lined
