One Second After

“Something was wrong. And at this moment, for the first time in a long while, his ‘city survival senses’ were kicking in [...] The interstate, at that instant, had become the wrong neighborhood.”

This quote ominously foreshadows the barbarism about to be unleashed. John originally comes from New Jersey, so he has considerable street smarts. Living in rural North Carolina, he never expects to draw upon those instincts.

“‘The enemy will never attack you where you are strongest. … He will attack where you are weakest. If you do not know your weakest point, be certain, your enemy will,’ Charlie said.”

Charlie quotes Sun Tzu’s treatise on warfare while the town council debates the source of the EMP strike. This quote, which applies to the United States as a whole, is equally applicable to Black Mountain because it will need to shore up its weakest defenses against local enemies. 

“Lying across the back of the jeep was an elderly woman whom John could see was already dead. ‘We don’t realize just how dependent we are,’ Makala sighed, watching as the jeep weaved around some stalled cars to head into town.”

Makala’s comment echoes several statements made by other characters over the course of the story. An absolute reliance on technology has made Americans vulnerable, and this fragility refers to more than an EMP attack. People have lost the ability to survive in nature.  

“There seems to be some sort of instinct, or call it a Mayberry fantasy, that up in the hills things are secure, safe, neighborly. People will help each other. When you think about it, before all this happened, that’s exactly how we were.”

In the first chapter, John describes how neighborly Black Mountain is. By this point in the novel, fear and panic have destroyed the town’s Mayberry quality. However, outsiders still believe in the fantasy and flock to Black Mountain for refuge.  

“‘They don’t know how to survive without a society that supports them even as they curse it or rebel against it.’”

A cop in Asheville makes this observation about a group of aging hippies who rejoice in the arrival of anarchy. His statement implies that these demonstrators fail to understand their dilemma. Their naive attitude renders them even more vulnerable than the rest of their city when chaos breaks out. 

“Air Force One went down? Horrible as the realization was, John felt at that moment it didn’t matter to him. It was survival, survival here, at this moment, his family that counted.”

The events of the outside world diminish in comparison to the starvations and disease that afflict Black Mountain. Once upon a time, when the world was stable, the president’s death might have mattered. However, the EMP strike has radically reshuffled everyone’s priorities. 

“Scale of social order, he thought. The larger the group, the more likely it was that it would fragment under stress, with a few in power looking out for themselves first.”

John is thinking about how the EMP attack might have affected New York and other major cities. Even though Black Mountain’s situation is dire, it is likely still better than what places with higher population density would endure. In a small rural community, people who know one another are less likely to commit violence against their neighbors—though not completely incapable of it, as events prove. 

“The world we knew, maybe it’s finished, finished forever. Maybe not, but I doubt that. All that holds us together now are the things we believed in, the traditions of who we were, who we still want to be.”

At many points, John insists on the necessity of remembering the American legacy. He greatly fears that, in addition to knocking out technology, the EMP strike destroyed all possibility of civilized behavior. Unless the Black Mountain residents’ moral fiber can keep them from devolving into barbarism, life as John knew it will officially cease to exist. 

“John wondered now just how legal, how close to law in the tradition of Western civilization, his act and his words truly were, but he felt they were right, right for here, this moment, if the people of Black Mountain were to survive as a community.”

John makes this observation before executing one of the bandits who robbed the nursing home. In enforcing martial law, he treads very close to enabling military dictatorship. To avoid this, he explains the council’s reasons for the execution to the town’s assembled citizens. This ultimately sets up his future role as the Black Mountain public safety director.

“‘America is like an exotic hothouse plant. It can only live now in the artificial environment of vaccinations, sterilization, and antibiotics we started creating a hundred or more years ago.’”

Doc Kellor explains one of the unexpected consequences of technology dependency. Pharmaceuticals are the result of advanced chemical research, and Americans are just as dependent on drugs as they are on computers. Without a steady supply, society is in danger of an epidemic as conditions worsen. 

“Uniforms, and the white hazmat suits were like uniforms, had throughout history always been one of the ways to control crowds, including those being herded into death camps.”

During a town council meeting, John agrees with Charlie’s suggestion that the border guards who inspect the refugees wear hazmat suits. He knows the matching suits will project a sense of authority and keep the massive crowds under control. However, as this quote shows, John feels tremendously guilty because this tactic was popular with the dictators of earlier generations.

“We were spoiled unlike any generation in history, and we forgot completely just how dependent we were on the juice flowing through the wires, the buttons doing something when we pushed them.”

John often refers to the pampered nature of contemporary America. After the EMP blackout, people are frightened because they relinquished a large number of survival skills for the sake of convenience. The reason they descend so quickly into barbarism is because they have no Plan B. 

“‘Same thing on nine-eleven. I think it’s the silence that is driving people crazy now. No one knows what is going on, what is being done, or if we are indeed at war, and if so, who we are fighting and whether we are winning or losing.’”

More than one parallel is drawn to the terrorist events of 9/11. During that crisis, Americans did not know who the enemy was. The difference with the EMP strike is not simply a lack of reliable information. There is no information at all, not even media speculation, to shape a reaction to the event. 

“‘I think all the cars getting turned off is what scared us the most. The damn things were not just about transportation, they defined social status, wealth, age, class.’”

This is another of John’s observations about the technology being taken for granted. This time, he focuses on the psychological value that vehicles afford their owners. To be upset about a loss of status seems ludicrous given the dire nature of the disaster everyone is now facing. 

“‘Suppose the old America, so wonderful, the country we so loved, suppose at four fifty p.m. eighteen days ago, it died. It died from complacency, from blindness, from not being willing to face the harsh realities of the world. Died from smug self-centeredness. Suppose America died that day.’”

Montreat College President Dan makes this observation, though several other characters voice the same concern about America’s future. They all attribute the current disaster to the same cause: complacency. 

“‘It happens to all nations, all empires in history [...] They can’t comprehend how their own greatness can be humbled by another whom they view as being so beneath them. How people so meaningless and backwards could be a threat.’”

Though John is the historian, Dan is the one pointing out the lessons of history in this quote. He suggests that the greatest danger to America is the same one all great civilizations faced: a tendency to underestimate a weaker enemy. 

“‘John, we dream of America. We want America to come to us. But I think it never will. The America we knew died when those warheads burst. If so, then it is up to us to not wait, but instead to rebuild America as we want it to be.’”

Dan once again articulates that passivity is the core problem that allowed the EMP strike to occur. The US government did nothing to harden technology against an EMP attack, and now the residents of Black Mountain are mirroring that passivity by waiting for rescue. Dan knows they must learn to rescue themselves if they want to survive.

“The web of our society, John thought, was like the beautiful spiderwebs he’d find as a boy […] And at the single touch of a match the web just collapsed and all that was left for the spider to do, if it survived that day, was to rebuild the web entirely from scratch.”

This is another quote that underscores the tenuous nature of American society and the technology that supports it. It is as fragile as the spiderwebs John destroyed in his youth. In both cases, a quick act of destruction requires painstaking effort to repair. 

“‘Look, you get people scared, then you knock out every prop that we’ve taken for granted. After these last sixty days I bet there’s a dozen prophets running around this country saying, “Follow me”’”

This quote shines a light on another unforeseen consequence of the EMP strike: religious mania. John points out that the physical stressors confronting people have led them to seek spiritual solutions. Unfortunately, they mistake delusional mystics for authentic counselors. 

“It was so damn strange, John thought, how sometimes the most unlikely people, an ugly little man like this one, could hold such power. He had a tremendous command presence, his voice sweet, rich, carrying power. So strange how some had that, and could spout utter insanity that others would follow blindly.”

John is baffled by the Posse leader’s combination of eloquence and madness. Even more perplexing is the devoted following such a leader can draw in times of crisis. 

“It was the face of war, of all wars, and now it was here and it was us against ourselves, John thought. We fought for the last scrap of bread and now even for the bodies of the dead.”

John is revolted by his own behavior and that of the townsfolk when they execute the last members of the Posse. He implies that the bikers and the townsfolk should see themselves as kindred because they are all Americans. John sees this level of killing as another step toward barbarism. 

“‘I’m stopping it because I started to love it. I hate them. I hated that bastard hanging there more than I’ve ever hated anyone in my life. … But I will not become him. … I will not let us become them.’”

Throughout the novel, John’s self-imposed mission is to keep his town from turning savage. At this moment, he finds himself in danger of crossing that line. If civilization is to be maintained, he suggests, Black Mountain people need to remember who they were before fear takes hold.

“‘We were so damn vulnerable, so damn vulnerable, and no one did the right things to prepare, or prevent it.’”

General Wright’s words in the aftermath of the attack paraphrase what so many other characters have said about America’s passivity and fragility. This confirms the novel’s main message is one of warning: America must do something to prevent such a tragedy while time remains.