Dee Brief

So, I can't go into too many details about the 'reserve training' two weeks I just completed as part of my RoMERO duties. Suffice to say, it was held near Pittsburgh (one of the worst places for frequent zombie outbreaks in this country) and it looks like we got a little budget relief and didn't have to mount broomsticks on pickup trucks to simulate armored personnel carriers.

There is a lot of 'hurry up and wait' that goes on with these things, so I was able to get a few books in in the downtimes.

Patriots
One Second After
The Dead And The Gone

Talk about a depressing set!

I got a little bit in through Patriots and it struck me. This guy sounds just like the the Survival Blog guy. Then I read the back flap. The author is the Survival Blog guy. A decently entertaining read and he sneaks in a lot instruction on the stuff he's about into the narrative, which was pretty cool.

One Second After is a book detailing what would happen if a rogue enemy of the US popped off a nuke 100 miles over the continental United States, frying the continent with EMP, knocking out most every item that runs on solid state electronics permanently. And most everything we touch seems to have solid state electronics in it. A hit like that would knock us back 150 years. The story centers around the doings in a small college town in west North Carolina. From there the characters witness a 90% nationwide die-off and have to deal with roving psychotic cannibals with colanders on their head. It is also scary. If one tenth of the effort devoted to glowball warmening, a much less likely or severe disaster, was spent on EMP issues we'd all be better off. The flaw in this book? I think if I was the character that loved his dogs, and didn't want to see them starve, and you had to kill a predator that broke into your house... Well, Fido might be eating well, after, if that were me. Especially since the dog was so very valuable in alerting to murderers breaking in.

The third books is more of a young adult novel, but still entertaining as a book. It is the second book that deals with asteroid striking the moon and altering its orbit. With the moon closer there is worse tides, and the the gravity issues spark earthquakes and massive volcanic events. The first book, Life As We Knew It, dealt with a small town in Ohio, this one, The Dead And The Gone, with a high school kid on the upper west side of Manhattan. And this book is much darker. There is a lot of flaws in this book. Very few human predators victimizing people for their food ration as they leave the bread lines. The main character eventual controls an entire 16 story apartment building, but only breaks into the few rooms he has a key to. Even when he is starving. Once I knew no one was coming back to the block, and I had to survive and keep my sisters alive, I'd be taking a sledge to the doors to get canned goods and black market items.

Do not read any of these books if you have a pacemaker or are a Type 1 Diabetic or have a relative in a nursing home. Too depressing. Just like fathers with a 10 year old son should not read The Road.