FahrtAutoRC

Ok so part of the reason i have not been as active on these forums is I have been taking some time here and there to begin research for my book. I have been kicking the idea around for a couple of years now about writing a post-apocalyptic novel. Kind of like Stephen King's The Stand meets The Road meets Fallout 3 meets Resident Evil/I Am Legend (but without zombies).

I have two questions, things that I really cannot find info on for one and the other is YOUR opinion:

1) Where can I find info about what an EMP would do to certain things? Would it affect all vehicles or just complex ones (meaning, would older simple vehicles with points andf magnetos still work or no)? Would it matter whether a device was on or off when the EMP hit? What info in general can be given about such and event/weapon?

2) The EMP is just one idea of many. How do YOU think civilization could collapse in present times/very near future?

The_Shark

EMP disrups and can destroy electronics and chips, however mechanical distributors will most likely not be destroyed by them as its all just coils and mechanical/magnetic triggers.
same goes for tube run devices, i highly doubt anything will happen.

im not certain, but everything i know ive come up with NO.

good luck finding futher research, check how it works.com

FahrtAutoRC

Ive found a couple ideas from http://www.exitmundi.nl/exitmundi.htmas well. Im still obviously in the research stage, but once this starts going Im sure its speed will snowball! Thanks!

splcrazy

all you have to do is go on youtube type in EMP and you will get all your answers

Nik.

oh yeah, drive by wire:



Come and get me!

FahrtAutoRC

Never thought of YouTube, thanks!


I am basically wanting to write the opener to a series that (witha little luck) could rival Stephen King's Dark Tower series. It would follow a few small groups from different regions of the U.S. in the aftermath of a near-human-extinction scenario. Something on the scale of near-complete nuclear annihilation but without the fallout and climate changes that would likely occur from a world wide event like that. Cities that are mostly deserted or in total upheaval, nomadic groups and sects spread out across the map, and complete global disarray. The group will make a trek to select points in the U.S in search of a kind of "safe haven" and once finding a proper settlement the last book or so will go on to chronicle the beginning of a great rebuilding, all the while defending what they have. I have a lot of ideas and plans, a (very) rough outline/timeline, and intend for suspense, horror, action, some romance, basically all the aspects that make for a good read.

Thanks for those that have given ideas and help, and anyone else that might pitch in!!!

FahrtAutoRC

Wow! Tamiya's really getting intricate with their scale detail lol

proanti1

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Dont go the nuclear route, go the biological route... it would give you an excuse for a massive population drop. Nuclear bombs only kill people who are directly under them... a lot of people live. If you were looking for the fallout 3 kinda world, you would need a really low population to give that "lone" kind of feeling to the reader.

tommygun32

I agree with not going nuclear or warfare based. I'd go the biological route. Something completely random like somehow ALL the flies in the world become 'super bug' carriers that wipes out 90% of the world's population. Or go the natural disaster route like a meteor hitting the Earth. Doesn't even need to be a big one to change life on Earth. 50' across would cause serious effects on a global level.

Dibs on signed first run hardback copies....

proanti1

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Oh yeah, you need to involve the Russians somehow... its a requirement. They also need to be communists too.

FahrtAutoRC

Haha No worries Tommy, anyone that helps me in any aspect of this is entitled to a copy Just gotta be ok with waiting a year or two for it to be finished, I'm kind ofa perfectionist lol

As far as natural disasters, I was thinking best bet may be the situation of the world getting grazed by a gamma ray burst, an earthquake opening up a rift to some prehistoric microbe and infecting us, a coronal mass ejection doing just enough damage to cause a massive drop and climate changes, things kind of like that. I am still doing research because I want to have some level of plausibility to it, and my college composition professor has already spoken for the initial editing. Things are well on their way, i just need to think out my starting point to best set the story into motion.

tommygun32

Well bro, I'm a patient man....gamma rays work for me. No one on this tiny little speck of dust can control what happens with the sun....

pete236

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How about an earthquake so large, perhaps 30 on the Richter scale!

Something so great, it would tuck Hawaii under California.

A quake so large that the earth would literally rotate 90 degrees and the poles would become the equator.

The polar caps would melt, and a tidal wave that wouldn’t end. And when it did, the landscape would freeze.

If you use this material, send me and advance copy.

proanti1

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Richter scale tops at 10...

pete236

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It's make belive.

Richter magnitudes	Description	Earthquake effects	Frequency of occurrence
Less than 2.0	Micro	Micro earthquakes, not felt.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-5">[6]</sup>	About 8,000 per day
2.0–2.9	Minor	Generally not felt, but recorded.	About 1,000 per day
3.0–3.9		Often felt, but rarely causes damage.	49,000 per year (est.)
4.0–4.9	Light	Noticeable shaking of indoor items, rattling noises. Significant damage unlikely.	6,200 per year (est.)
5.0–5.9	Moderate	Can cause major damage to poorly constructed buildings over small regions. At most slight damage to well-designed buildings.	800 per year
6.0–6.9	Strong	Can be destructive in areas up to about 160 kilometres (100mi) across in populated areas.	120 per year
7.0–7.9	Major	Can cause serious damage over larger areas.	18 per year
8.0–8.9	Great	Can cause serious damage in areas several hundred kilometres across.	1 per year
9.0–9.9		Devastating in areas several thousand kilometres across.	1 per 20 years
10.0+	Massive	Never recorded, possibly planetwide devastation; see below for equivalent seismic energy yield.	Extremely rare (Unknown

dbacque

My Feedback: (3)

Never recorded doesn't mean it's make believe. The impact off the Yucatán Peninsula that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs is estimated to have been 12.3 on the richter scale. I'd say that megatsunamis thousands of feet high and elimination of most life forms on Earth qualifies as planetwide devastation.

Where the limit of 10 comes in is that our instruments can't deal with measuring 10 or higher.

Al Stein

Electromechanical control Great idea to avoid DIRECT EMP effects... but how do we avoid INDIRECT effects like things that would happen on the roads all around us... Oh, well!

mike31

My Feedback: (67)

Why worry about the Russian commyies? We have all the commies we need to kill off this country in DC now!

rrragmanliam

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Dude, your book has already been written. It's called "One Second After" by WILLIAM R. FORSTCHEN . Google it .


rrragman

Dirty_Vinylpusher

I've always liked the apocalyptic themes where something minor goes wrong and has major consequences, rather than a huge tidalwave/earthquake/meteor strike etc where lots of people die instantly.

Something along the lines of a computer virus that spreads via the internet and [somehow] shuts down the electricity and communications network all across the globe.
Once there is no power or phone service, we're pretty much stuffed.

You only have to look at actual events where there's a blackout for 24 hours.
We're more or less paralyzed as we rely so much on technology and the internet these days.




Alternatively, some sort of bioligical event - perhaps a small temperature change due to global warming*, making a dorment gene in some insect, say a grasshopper, start to develop, mutate and take over.
Cue mass infestation of flesh eating insects....


My girlfriend read a book a while back about where some creatures started eating everything that was made of plastic and how that affected the world.
I thought that was an interesting concept as well.






* It's always nice to point the finger at us humans in these scenarios....

dsales

Re the earthquake opening up a rift to some prehistoric microbe... That could actually happen. In London there's a place called Greenwich where the time zones are counted from. Back when the great plague hit (1666) they used the area as a mass burial ground. There's easily thousands of bodies in there and it does look odd when you first go there since you see like 3 massive fields with nothing in them. It's not like an ordinary park, there's no trees, maybe just a few who've grown by themselves, no flowers, no buildings for refreshments. Just an empty bit of land in a busy bit of London.
Reason it's like that is that their not allowed to build on it due to the risk of digging up the microbe which will wipe out half of London again. But that wouldn't kill the human population. Didn't last time round.

FahrtAutoRC

Unless it was a highly contagious contaminant that lay dormant in our systems for months (similar to some STD's, up to 6 month in your system before symptoms occur). It could have the "incurability" of cancer and given the whole 6 degrees of seperation bit, if contagious enough, 6 months before symptoms would be enough to silently infect a large amount of the populous of the planet. Also the inherent tiny differences in genes would allow for a small number to survive through some form of natural immunity, or any other number of variables. And the plagued bodies in Europe are not the only possibility. The Earth itself is loaded with microbial life, of which only a small percentage has been discovered. It would only take the right circumstances in the right area for a massive biological nightmare to unravel.

As for the richter scale, it only goes to 10, which has not been WITNESSED by mankind in recorded history, or at least not since the inception of such a measuring system. Anything above 10 (12.3 for example) is considered theoretic.

And for the guy who mentioned "my book has already been written". Nonsense. My book is my own creation and will not be exactly like anything else. I have found a infinitly marketable and very "sellable" niche to fill. There are droves of zombie movies, space movies, horror movies, action movies and such and they still sell like hotcakes, no matter how many have been released. Besides, thats not to say anything about the story itself. I refuse to judge myself and my lack of faith in the honesty of my peers means for all I know, I could write the most unintelligible flop on the planet or succeed on the level of the best fictional writers out there. I will take my chances

masterhacker1989

IT NEEDS ZOMBIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!

J.D.T

Polar Shift, if I remember the numbers right you can count on 30% extinction with a 100 foot global wave, 60% at 1000 feet and 90% at 1000 Meters. Some scientists think the last major pole shift made waves in excess of a two kilometers, more than 6000 feet high, global killer pretty much.

Jerico the TV show was just to scary for most people but IMO it would not be nearly as nice as this when the crap hits the fan.

research youtube for SHTF and WROL, stuff hits the fan...without rule of law.
IMO some are just paranoid, some are resonable and want to be prepaired in case anything bad happens but others make me feel like they want stuff to pop off so they can use the 50,000 rounds of ammo they have spent there whole adult life hoarding. You will get some racial overtones from some and some religious overtones from others but most have at least one decent thing to say.

You'll hear lots of terms like sheep, sheepdog, grey man and wolf
the sheep is the common man-unaware, unprepaired and in need of help
the sheepdog is the "protector" the guy that wants to help everyone and usually has large amounts of supplies
the grey man appears to be a sheep and blends in but has special skills, equipment and knowhow which are of benefit to him, lots of people like to call this the lion in sheeps clothing.
The wolf is obviously the bad guy, he ain't worried about preparation as he knows there are plenty of sheep in the flock to rape/mame/kill in order to gain their resources in the event that he needs them.

FahrtAutoRC

I could use something along the lines of a pole shift but that brings me to the same problem as the GRB, meteor impact, supervolcano and the like, which is: I would rather a large part of our infrastructure remain intact, buildings, signs of humanity, etc. i am really leaning toward the infection mentioned earlier, and although that could change in the future, it would leave most structures and items intact, with destruction further from the quakes epicenter left more for the vandalism, fighting and panic of mankind realizing that almost all of their lives are reaching the end.