Brenda gave Kyle a sympathetic look. “I know how you feel. I worry all the time about my folks, and Frank’s, too. But you have to let people do what they want. My dad loved to golf, and he could do that year round down there. That’s why they stayed in Arizona.”
“Don’t feel bad, Bren. You know we did our best to convince them to come up here.” Frank looked back at Kyle. “One drawback to doing all this prepping is everyone thinks you’re nuts, even your relatives. Bet they don’t anymore. Built this place to get us through anything – famine, war, EMP, solar flare, pandemic. You name it, we can last it out here, except for maybe a direct hit from a nuclear bomb or an asteroid, you know, global destruction type things. Other than that, we’re covered.”
Their discussion rambled on for another couple of hours as they enjoyed both the social aspect of the conversation and the verbal repartee. They veered from one subject to another, going from prepping to life in Deer Creek, crime, loneliness, first aid, and a raft of other topics. They segued into Frank’s HAM radio conversations with the outside world and spent the next thirty minutes filling Kyle in on the latest developments.
Kyle learned that a lot had happened in the five months he’d been out of the loop. Less than twenty-four hours after America had been hit by the EMP, Israel, along with limited elements of American armed forces, had launched a series of pre-emptive strikes, taking down the Iranian, Syrian, and Egyptian governments and militaries in devastating attacks. Cutting off the heads of those repressive regimes had thrown their countries into such severe chaos, that what little was left of their armies had been overwhelmed with the task of regaining some semblance of civil order, a task at which they were so far failing in their efforts.
In addition to the Israeli attacks, the U.S. was being blamed for a series of targeted cyber attacks against Russian and Chinese regions that headquartered political and military forces. Unable to retaliate in kind since the U.S. had already been crippled, what was still functioning of the Russian and Chinese governments had threatened military strikes as recourse for the attacks. In return, the American President, sensing little value in diplomacy, had dropped a small nuclear bomb over an unpopulated area of Siberia and promised hundreds more if either country made any aggressive moves.
With the three major powers in the world crippled and trying to regain their footing, multiple regional conflicts had erupted. India and Pakistan had come to blows with a limited nuclear exchange killing tens of millions and leaving untold thousands sure to die from their injuries. With the global economy cratered and U.S. dollars no longer flowing towards the Middle East to prop up their various allies, a schism within the different Muslim sects had also boiled over, leading to a regional war based on religious alliances. Several of the governments, including Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Iraq had fallen, plunging those countries into deeper anarchy and mayhem.
Israel had been able to avoid the whirlpool of disorder to this point, parking all of its tanks on Israeli borders, mobilizing its reserves, and shooting any and all who approached. The strategy wasn’t popular, but it was effective, and was thus far holding back the growing tide of destruction that surrounded it.
Europe had not been able to escape unscathed. While Israel hunkered down, many of the highly populated Muslim communities in Europe had risen up in response to the Jewish actions, pushing several countries to the brink of civil war. Eventually martial law had been declared throughout the European Union, and while a few pockets of resistance were still fighting back, it seemed Europe would eventually come out of the conflict comparatively intact.
The problem was, as Frank pointed out, that with Europe under martial law and dealing with internal threats, they were not in any shape to be of assistance to the United States, so we couldn’t count on them to provide resources that would help us get back on our feet. Germany and Korea had been the source for the majority of the world’s electrical generating equipment, and with Germany now offline, it would take Korea decades to provide even a fraction of what America needed to rebuild.
To this point, the Southern Hemisphere had been least impacted by the state of world affairs, though with much of the world’s purchasing power in North America and Europe shut down, the ensuing depression had caused massive unemployment, unrest, and misery even there. Due to a combination of factors such as isolation, cultural stability, and national pride, Australia and Japan were the two least affected countries, even though many of their industries outside of agriculture were on the verge of collapse.
On the American front, conditions were as bad as, if not worse than, much of the world, with the most devastating destruction occurring in the Northeast, stretching from Washington, D.C., to Concorde, N.H. The mortality rate in those areas was nearing 50%, a result of lack of medical care, violence, starvation, and diseases stemming from failed sanitation systems. Combine that with fires that burned through entire neighborhoods, and it seemed that whole portions of the country were turning into massive refugee camps. A few pockets of stability were emerging in the Northeast, but it would likely be the end of summer before any sort of sustainable communities could be re-established. What had once been the economic hub of the world had been reduced, in the course of a few weeks, to a third world region where stealing a potato from a neighbor’s garden could get you shot.
Other parts of the country were faring better than the Northeast, but most big cities were not too far behind in sinking to third world status. Northern cities, like Chicago, were struggling the most, as harsh weather was added to all their other problems. Southern cities, where a person could more easily survive the winter, uncomfortable as it may be, were fortunate to have less densely populated regions, allowing people room to grow food. The cities in the South also had sizeable agricultural regions that produced crops year round, in many instances, providing enough food to subsist on, even if it made for a one-dimensional diet.
To the West, the worst locations to be in were Phoenix and Las Vegas, primarily due to water shortages. To this point, the climate in those areas had been beneficial, but the absence of rain and the dependence on water treatment and pumping facilities that no longer worked resulted in the worst misery. Southern California was also a bad place to be, but mostly because of the human factor. Sanitation and violence were causing the greatest number of deaths, with many areas in the cities now armed camps, at war with neighboring gangs over control of limited resources.
From a national perspective, the Pacific Northwest was the only region in the country that could be described in any sense as having survived well the affects of the attack. The weather, though harsh at times, was survivable. Population density, outside of the Portland and Seattle areas, was tolerable. And, the region was naturally rich with agriculture, abundant wildlife, water, ranching, fishing, and a host of other resources that made survival more likely than not.
Throughout the country there were areas that ran counter to the trends, but as a whole, that was the disposition of the nation and the world in general, according to Frank and based on information gleaned from his HAM radio conversations.
Kyle came away from the discussion mildly depressed at the state of the country, and while he wasn’t too surprised, hearing about it from someone who wasn’t just speculating or repeating rumors was discouraging. Cut off from the rest of the world and focused on your own survival, it was easy not to think about what others were going through, then hard to hear that it was so bad. The only bright spot from his discussion with Frank was finding out that they were faring well in comparison to the rest of the country, which hopefully meant that he and his parents would have a better than average chance of surviving once he made it to them.