When the Power Is Gone: A Powerless World - Book 1 Read Online Free Page A

was carrying on the conversation with himself, because, well, in his mind, the world revolved around him and his needs. I looked at Russ, who was losing his fight with himself to not slam the door in Brian’s face, no explanation, just done. We had things we needed to be doing, and dealing with Brian was not on the list. Russ looked at me, gave me a slight nod, and turned back to Brian. The nod said, “I’m giving him the condensed version, then getting rid of him.” Yep, we were that close – I knew what he was thinking.
    “Look Brian, I’m going to try to explain to you what I think is going on, so be quiet and listen. I believe we have been hit with an EMP, which—“ was as far as he got before Brian interrupted him.
    “What the hell is an EMP?”
    Russ bit his tongue, and started again. “As I said, I will try to explain, but you need to shut up and LISTEN.” He looked at Brian, waiting to see if he would comply; when he didn’t say anything, Russ continued. “An EMP is an electromagnetic pulse. It can be created by detonating a bomb in the atmosphere, or even by a sun spot exploding. When that happens, anything with a computer chip in it, or anything electronic plugged in to an electrical outlet, would probably be rendered unusable. Since most appliances and all devices like cell phones and laptops have computer chips in them, they are all toast now. New cars have tons of computer chips in them, so those are garbage now as well. The reason your car doesn’t run is it is full of chips. The reason my truck does run, is it was built before cars had computer chips in them. Life as you know it is pretty much over.” Russ stopped to see how Brian was dealing with all this information. Brian had the deer in the headlights look big time. He didn’t speak, so Russ continued.
    “No, I can’t take you to your office. I guarantee you that meeting is cancelled. No one will be going to work again for a while, at least not a regular job in an office. You have a new job now, called surviving. It will take everything you have, everything you are, to live now. I can help you with that, just a little. I can give you some advice and hope you take heed to what I tell you.” Russ stopped again, making sure Brian was still listening. He shouldn’t have worried – he had the full attention of not just Brian, but all of us. This was the discussion we would have had with the kids had we not been interrupted by Brian. Not that they didn’t already know it, but it deserved a refresher course.
    “The first thing you need to do is fill every sink and tub in your house with water, while it is still running. It won’t be for long – when the system is emptied, it will be gone. Anne? Speaking of water…” Russ looked at me, and I knew what he was talking about. “I’m on it. Janet, can you help me? I want the boys to hear what Russ is saying.” Janet and I went to work filling waterBOBs in the tubs.
    A waterBOB is a large bladder that will hold 100 gallons of water. You put it in the tub, fill it from the faucet, and it would keep water for up to three months. It comes with a hand pump to get the water out of the bladder. Once ours were full, we’d head to her house and fill theirs as well. Russ was right, computer chips kept the water moving. Those were fried with all the others. Welcome to the new world. It was going to suck. Did I already say that?
    “After that, you need to go to the store on the corner. I hope you have some cash on you, because your credit cards are worthless pieces of plastic now. Buy all the food you can carry. Don’t buy stupid things like frozen dinners. You have no way to keep them frozen and no way to cook them, either. You can buy bread, but not a lot, not more than you could eat in a week. It will go bad after that. Buy peanut butter and crackers. Buy canned food you can eat cold if you have to. Buy tuna and ramen noodles. If you don’t have a way to cook other than your electric stove,