39 pages • 1 hour read
William ForstchenOne Second After
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Fragile Bonds of Civilization
One Second After explores the nature of civilization: What is it? How is it sustained? How would human beings act without traditional rules to govern behavior? The EMP blast acts as the catalyst to test the limits of civilized behavior.
The novel’s initial chapters depict a peaceful small town that could exist anywhere in America. Black Mountain might be mistaken for Andy Griffith’s Mayberry because everyone is neighborly and looks out for each other. However, as hunger and disease make people desperate, they become capable of horrible offenses against one another. All the local stores, as well as private homes, are looted for food and supplies. The residents of a nursing home are robbed by bandits who want to use their opiate medications as recreational drugs. Livestock theft devolves into human cannibalism.
John devotes much of his time and energy to simply keeping people from behaving like barbarians. Although the catastrophe that visits Black Mountain is extreme, the novel suggests how little it takes to turn honorable people into a pack of wild animals: “‘Damn our enemies who did this to us, they knew us well,’ John sighed. ‘They knew human nature too well, and just how fragile civilization is, and how tough it is to defend it. Something we forgot’” (275).
Dependence on Technology
The wreckage the EMP blast leaves in its wake in America emphasizes the degree to which modern society has become dependent on computers. The blast, responsible for so much devastation in Black Mountain, has no direct physical impact on living things, considering EMP waves can only negatively affect technology. However, the loss of technology renders the townspeople of Black Mountain helpless and scared.
One Second After defines technology as a two-edged sword. While it is responsible for innumerable creature comforts, it also renders its users dependent to such an extent that life as they know it could no longer function. It is as if human beings have become a living component of technology; when the server crashes, so do the people who depend upon it. As John says later, in a conversation with Makala, “‘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’” (190).
In the novel, the first inkling that something has gone wrong is the mundane problem of Jennifer’s malfunctioning CD player. John is then irritated when his cell phone dies, and he cannot recharge the battery. These petty problems are magnified exponentially when every car on the highway stops in its tracks.
Like filaments of fiber optic cable, the intertwined lives of people malfunction because of a short somewhere in the system: “‘Damn near everything has a computer in it now,’ John continued. ‘Cash registers, phones, toys, cars, trucks, but, most vulnerable of all, the complex web of our electrical distribution system. All of it was waiting to get hit’” (68).
By showcasing how quickly society falls apart when things like computers and transportation are ripped away, author Forstchen points to the dangers of technology dependency. He argues that only by learning to depend on themselves and their abilities can people truly be free and able to withstand any dangers.
The Lessons of History
One Second After is principally concerned with warning its audience of the consequences of being unprepared for an EMP attack. Because John is a history professor, he draws heavily on the lessons of history to make a point about passivity in the face of potential disaster. He frequently mentions invasions that could have been prevented if people had reacted differently.
‘The Teutonic Knights, when they first saw the Mongols at the Battle of Liegnitz, supposedly laughed hysterically at the sight of their opponents on horses so small they were the size of ponies […] The Mongols decimated them with their compound bows […] The French knights at Crécy mocking the English longbowmen. The British mocking us at Monmouth and Cowpens. The Germans disdainful of the Russians in 1941’ (212).
In every example, one side is arrogant enough to believe it holds a superior advantage; in each case, that assessment is wrong. One Second After uses the voices of several EMP survivors to criticize the notion that America is invulnerable to attack from countries with inferior firepower. Dan reminds John of this fact:
‘It happens to all nations, all empires in history. Hell, you’re the historian, you know that. And at the moment it does occur, no one believes it actually is happening. They can’t comprehend how their own greatness can be humbled by another whom they view as being so beneath them’ (211-12).
Forstchen uses the fictional crisis at Black Mountain to criticize American leaders’ failure to acknowledge the real threat of EMP attacks. It clearly endorses the theory attributed to philosopher George Santayana that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
