pstarr wrote:Any other good doomer novels out there? Recommendation? I am through the first two W.R. Flynn books. Are there others I should know about? Threads here at PO.com on the subject?
pstarr wrote:Lore, I am as liberal/progressive as the next Humboldt dope grower/yoga queen but I refuse to allow my political agenda to get in the way of a good doomer novel. The book is realistic.wiki wrote:The BM25 Musudan is a North Korean designed intermediate-range ballistic missile with range capabilities of up to 1,550 miles (2,490 km), and could carry a nuclear warhead. . . With the development of the Taepodong-2 missile, with an expected range of 5,000–6,000 km, North Korea could hypothetically deliver a warhead to almost all countries in Southeast Asia, as well as the western side of North America.
Any other good doomer novels out there? Recommendation? I am through the first two W.R. Flynn books. Are there others I should know about? Threads here at PO.com on the subject?
Among Gingrich’s Passions, a Doomsday Vision
Newt Gingrich, the Republican presidential hopeful, wants you to know that as commander in chief he is ready to confront one of the most nightmarish of doomsday scenarios: a nuclear blast high above the United States that would instantly throw the nation into a dark age.
In debates and speeches, interviews and a popular book, he is ringing alarm bells over what experts call the electromagnetic pulse, or EMP — a poorly understood phenomenon of the nuclear age.
The idea is that if a nuclear weapon, lofted by a missile, were detonated in outer space high above the American heartland, it would set off a huge and crippling shockwave of electricity. Mr. Gingrich warns that it would fry electrical circuits from coast to coast, knocking out computers, electrical power and cellphones. Everything from cars to hospitals would be knocked out.
“Millions would die in the first week alone,” he wrote in the foreword to a science-fiction thriller published in 2009 that describes an imaginary EMP attack on the United States. A number of scientists say they consider Mr. Gingrich’s alarms far-fetched.
As Mr. Gingrich starts to surge in Republican primary states, voters are likely to get to know some of his many passions. He is an outspoken advocate for zoos. He has suggested overhauling child labor laws so that students can take jobs and learn good work habits. He also has a long interest in the space program, which Mitt Romney all but mocked at the Republican debate in Iowa on Saturday night.
Challenged to say where he and Mr. Gingrich differed, Mr. Romney replied, “We could start with his idea to have a lunar colony that would mine minerals from the moon.”
But it is to the risk of an EMP attack that Mr. Gingrich has repeatedly returned. And while the message may play well to hawkish audiences, who might warm to the candidate’s suggestion that the United States engage in pre-emptive military strikes against Iran and North Korea, many nuclear experts dismiss the threat. America’s current missile defense system would thwart such an attack, these experts say, and the nations in question are at the kindergarten stage of developing nuclear arms.
The Missile Defense Agency, an arm of the Pentagon that maintains an arsenal of ground-based interceptors ready to fly into space and smash enemy warheads, says that defeating such an attack would be as straightforward as any other defense of the continental United States.
“It doesn’t matter if the target is Chicago or 100 miles over Nebraska,” said Richard Lehner, an agency spokesman. “For the interceptor, it’s the same thing.” He called the potential damage from a nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack “pretty theoretical.”
Yousaf M. Butt, a consultant with Federation of American Scientists, who last year did a lengthy analysis of EMP for The Space Review, a weekly online journal, said, “If terrorists want to do something serious, they’ll use a weapon of mass destruction — not mass disruption.” He said, “They don’t want to depend on complicated secondary effects in which the physics is not very clear.”
He also referred to the apocalyptic novel “One Second After,” written by a friend and co-author of his historical novels, William R. Forstchen. The book describes an electromagnetic pulse attack on America, conjuring a world in which cars, airplanes, cellphones and refrigerators all die, and gangs of barbarians spring to life.
In the book’s foreword, Mr. Gingrich calls the grim scenario a potential “future history” that should be “terrifying for all of us.” He says he knows its frightening plausibility from decades of personal study.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/us/po ... ted=1&_r=0
pstarr wrote:Lore, I am as liberal/progressive as the next Humboldt dope grower/yoga queen but I refuse to allow my political agenda to get in the way of a good doomer novel. The book is realistic.wiki wrote:The BM25 Musudan is a North Korean designed intermediate-range ballistic missile with range capabilities of up to 1,550 miles (2,490 km), and could carry a nuclear warhead. . . With the development of the Taepodong-2 missile, with an expected range of 5,000–6,000 km, North Korea could hypothetically deliver a warhead to almost all countries in Southeast Asia, as well as the western side of North America.
Any other good doomer novels out there? Recommendation? I am through the first two W.R. Flynn books. Are there others I should know about? Threads here at PO.com on the subject?
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
pstarr wrote:Lore, I am as liberal/progressive as the next Humboldt dope grower/yoga queen but I refuse to allow my political agenda to get in the way of a good doomer novel. The book is realistic.wiki wrote:The BM25 Musudan is a North Korean designed intermediate-range ballistic missile with range capabilities of up to 1,550 miles (2,490 km), and could carry a nuclear warhead. . . With the development of the Taepodong-2 missile, with an expected range of 5,000–6,000 km, North Korea could hypothetically deliver a warhead to almost all countries in Southeast Asia, as well as the western side of North America.
Any other good doomer novels out there? Recommendation? I am through the first two W.R. Flynn books. Are there others I should know about? Threads here at PO.com on the subject?
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
pstarr wrote:Quinny, I read that the story takes place in a Birmingham suburb and the inner-city hordes didn't eat everybody? Can't be too realistic without a little cannibalism, right? Maybe a foot or something.
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