1. http://www.amazon.com/One-Second-After-William-Forstchen/dp/...

Personally I'd love to see a "World War Z" style novel about the impact of space weather.

I teach some outdoors skills and other self sufficient skills, and people ask me what the best “survival” book is. I tell them One Second After is the most realistic situation that could happen, and not ending up naked in a jungle with a stranger.

That one is called "One Second After", a good read.

A power hiccup is not a problem. A systemic power failure is a catastrophe!

1. http://www.onesecondafter.com/
2. http://EMPCommission.org/

[0] http://a.co/2DWrTJ5

- The Dog Stars by Peter Heller (I've re-read this a number of times)

- The Postman by David Brin (Again, re-read this many times). Nothing like the movie.

- Sapiens

- The book series by Dalton Fury (RIP). His fiction is great, and if you do a little OSINT on the places in the book, you can see that he's describing these places from first-hand experience. Extremely realistic and you get the sense that many of these events really happened and are fictionalized to bypass censorship. I've re-read his book series at least 7 times. Easy reads.

- One Second After by William R. Forstchen. Although I have some minor issues with things in it, it's a fun post-apoc book.

- Anything by Derek Sivers. His writing is concise.

- The Terminal List by Jack Carr. Pretty good, not quite as good as Dalton Fury, but will read the next in the series.

- Bunches of tech books

I am very picky about the fiction I'll read but am open to unsolicited suggestions. Prefer post-apoc type stuff. Can't really get into fantasy. It needs to be an easy read because I have a house full of kids and no privacy.

Lucifer's Hammer by Niven and Pournelle goes into a bit of the politics and aftermath of a comet striking the Earth. It talks about survival, civil defense, and a few other things that would be spoilers to mention. That said, it has some points that are weirdly racist when viewed decades after publication--if you can look past those, though, it's a solid read.

One Second After by William Forstchen talks about the aftermath of an EMP first-strike on the US. Perhaps the one of the more interesting things is that he does specifically pay attention to both the food and medicine logistics--specifically, what happens when we lack ability to run refrigerators and move around grain. It's a bit cheerful in the end, but a good read.

Warday by Strieber and Kunetka takes place 5 years after a "limited" nuclear exchange with the USSR. The premise of the novel is that a pair of researchers are traveling through the US and interviewing folks, reading documents, and generally piecing together both the initial conflict as well as the efforts to survive and recover. It's a really good bit of speculative fiction, but is pretty depressing.

~

One of the biggest things that makes nuclear war difficult to imagine today is that we have the Internet and cell phones, things which at once are utterly integral to most of the non-rural folks and which are completely vulnerable to any sort of honest nuclear strike. The lack of books, CB radios, and basic practical knowhow and repairable goods brought by the rise of technology and international trade might well yield a situation where a theoretical 2020s United States would have a more difficult time recovering than a 1980s US.

At least as far as the 'net stuff goes, the short story "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" by Doctorow is maybe one of the only ones that treats the tech angle seriously in a modern light.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Second_After

I usually can't read a book after seeing the movie or show, but the BBC version was so good and I read reviews that they left out quite a bit. The book definitely had a lot more detail, and was even more entertaining.

- "Flash for Freedom" by George McDonald Fraser.

A part of series of historical fiction starring Harry Flashman, a cowardly degenerate who always ends up admired and revered by all around as a hero. This one is set amongst the 49ers, the Battle of Little Big Horn, and more.

- "Neverwhere" By Neil Gaiman.

Fantasy novel about a regular guy in London sucked into a magical "London below". I thought it was clever writing, and the audiobook read by the author was surprisingly good.

- "One Second After" by William R. Forstchen.

Post-apocalyptic novel about the effects of an EMP attack on the USA.

- "Alas, Babylon" by Pat Frank.

Another post-apocalyptics novel, about conventional nuclear attack on many sites in the USA.

- "Cibola Burn" by James S. A. Corey.

Part of the Expanse Series that has been made into a show on SyFy. These books aren't page turners for me, but overall they are entertaining enough.

However, I'm more worried about an EMP attack than a devastating Internet attack. A couple of well-placed EMPs could take the US back to the Victorian period very quickly. One Second After is a great read on the subject.

Months before publication, One Second After has already been cited on the floor of Congress as a book all Americans should read, a book already being discussed in the corridors of the Pentagon as a truly realistic look at a weapon and its awesome power to destroy the entire United States, literally within one second. It is a weapon that the Wall Street Journal warns could shatter America. In the tradition of On the Beach, Fail Safe and Testament, this book, set in a typical American town, is a dire warning of what might be our future...and our end.

[1] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4922079-one-second-after (note that the synopsis given is wrong, I think. I recall that the event in the book was from a war, but simply unexplained because the normal folks had no way of knowing what the source of the EMP was.)

Thanks for the real-world info, though. You're saying that modern cars are pretty much unaffected by EMPs, in addition to trucks, locomotives, and other major infrastructure? Does this cover all realistic strengths of EMP effect? Are we talking like the only way the EMP effect could hurt anything is if the bomb is close enough to physically destroy it anyways? So no realistic likelihood of damage from the orbital nuke scenario, no matter the power level of the bomb?

FWIW, I associate "prepper" with wildly impractical and poorly thought out levels of preparation for wildly unlikely disasters. Being prepared for things that are realistic and have actually happened in the recent past is just common sense.

* Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)

* Influx (Daniel Suarex)

* Sputnik Sweetheart (Haruki Murakami)

* Apex (Ramez Naam)

* One Second After (William R. Forstchen)

* Anna Karanina (Leo Tolstoy)

* Neuromancer (William Gibson)

* A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway)

* Crux (Ramez Naam)

* A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway)

* Hardboiled Wonderland and The End of the World (Haruki Murakami)