Post Grid: An Arizona EMP Adventure (5 page)

“Oh really? So in college you'll do ROTC and learn engineering in your spare time?” Dennis asked. “Most of the engineers I know worked very hard to graduate.”

“It's all about flying fighters with that kid,” Jose said. “Dennis, you seem to know your way around science and math. The cadets really love your model rocketry program. I also notice that you know a lot about the Air Force. Is that a big part of rabbinical training?”

Dennis chuckled. “That Air Force knowledge was gained first hand. I joined as soon as I could after high school to avoid going to rabbinical school.
Oy vey
, my father the rabbi,” Dennis said in an exaggerated Yiddish accent.

“
Oy vey ist mir
, my father the religion prof,” Lynn mocked.

“What did you do in the Air Force?” Jess asked.

“I was a metrological tech. I enjoyed doing science. So when I got out, I majored in physics. By the time I received my bachelor's, I wanted to know what made people tick. That led to a master's in psychology. The next thing I knew, I'd graduated from rabbinical seminary and held a PhD in religious studies as well. Now, I'm my father the rabbi.
Oy
!”

“Lynn, when are you going to rabbi school?” Jess teased.

Lynn shot him an exaggerated stare. “I don't really know what I want to do,” she said. “Dad has me on the math and music wunderkind track. So I spend half my school day at community college doing differential equations and playing violin. The rest of the day I'm in high school with the rest of my junior class. I'm not sure that I want to be a professional musician or do math or science. Felicia Day has a dual math and violin performance bachelor's. Maybe I will be an actress and have my own web series like her. Shall I start packing for Hollywood, Dad?” Lynn lifted her eyebrows and flashed an exaggerated smile.

Dennis reached over and patted Lynn's hand. “All I want is for my little princess to be happy,” he said in mock seriousness. “Don't worry; your path will open to you.” He broke into song, “La, la, la, winding road.”

Wanting to change the subject, Jess turned to Jose and said, “Dad, I promised Mom that I would send a picture of us from camp this weekend.”

“So she can show it to your cousins in Iowa, Mijo,” said Jose. “My wife is back east visiting with her family for a week,” he explained to Dennis and Lynn. “Her sisters all wanted to get together for some
girl time
.”

“Why don't we all stand next to the truck over here? That way, the mountains will be in the background.” Jess said.

After some cajoling, jostling for position and Jess setting the delay timer so everyone could be in the picture, the smart phone beeped three times and everyone smiled.

Jess typed on the phone for a few moments and then said, “I sent it.”

“I'll start the ELT transmitting now,” Dennis said, walking over to the small metal box with an antenna attached. Looking at the switches, he confirmed that it was set to the right frequency. The red transmit LED illuminated as he pushed the toggle switch to the on position.

“Now we sit back and wait to be found.” He bent over to place the ELT on the ground.

A loud, very short screech burst from inside the SUV. Dennis straightened up, still holding the ELT, as Jose stood up and moved toward the open driver's window.

“What was
that
?” Jose asked. Poking his head into the window, Jose heard a very quiet hissing from the CAP radio. He opened the door and examined the radio. He saw that all the indicator lights and the display were off. Pushing the off/on switch made no change. Jose inserted the ignition key and moved the ignition to the battery position: no change. The idiot lights on the dashboard remained off and the door open chime was silent. Glancing upward, he noticed that the overhead light was off.

“Odd; if the battery were dead, then the radio wouldn't hiss,” Jose said half to himself and half to the others gathering around the truck. “Jess, go see if the headlights come on.” Jose moved the switch to the on position.

“On,” Jess called back.

The SUV sat quietly as Jose tried to start it.

“It looks like an electronics or computer problem. I don't know what is happening and I don't know what else to do,” Jose said. “I think we better call the SAREX evaluation team and let them know we are stuck here.”

“I'll call,” Dennis said. Finding his hands full with the ELT, he glanced at it then looked for a place to set it down. Something was not right with the ELT. Looking at it again, he saw that the transmit light was off. Flipping the on/off switch back and forth changed nothing. “The ELT is broken too,” he said.

Jose moved to Dennis's side and watched Dennis flip the switch on and off. “It was on just before the CAP radio squawked, said Dennis. He handed the ELT to Jose and retrieved his phone from his pocket. He swiped his finger across the display. It remained dark. He tried to get the phone to come on. “No phone either.”

Simultaneously, everyone else reached into their pockets and retrieved their phones. This is just too weird, Jess thought. “What's going on?”

“Looks like something has knocked out our micro circuitry,” Dennis said. “The headlights work, but anything with a computer chip between it and its power source seems to be dead.”

“Any idea what is going on?” Dennis asked Jose. “Could it be some kind of transient discharge from the truck?”

“I don't think so,” Jose said. “All of our cell phones and the ELT were affected too. I didn't feel any current through the ground. There was no sparking.”

“There aren't any power lines in the area,” Dennis said. “There is a mercury mine over that ridge as well as other large mineral deposits scattered around here, but I doubt it was a static discharge or a release of ionizing radiation from the ground.”

“Not the truck, not the ground... that leaves the sky”...Jose's voice trailed off. “Could it be a solar event? You know, a solar flare or a coronal mass ejection?”

“That's possible,” Dennis said. “There have been several big radio disturbances from solar storms that lasted for hours, and some for a few days. That could definitely affect all of our electronics.”

“Yes it could, if it were big enough,” Jose said. “There was a major solar event in the mid 1800s. It went on for days and affected the telegraph lines, which were really the only electronics they had at that time.”

“We're due for our Ops Normal report in about ten minutes,” Lynn said. “Mission Base will try to reach us on the radio, then cell phone. After they decide that we're not just temporarily in a bad radio area, they will start looking for us.”

“Let's assume for right now,” Dennis said, “that just
our
equipment has been affected. We should get our signal mirrors out of the twenty-four-hour daypacks in case a plane overflies us. Use the cord to keep them around your neck so you don't have to fumble with them at the last minute. Jess, Lynn—after you have your mirrors, get some of the road flares out of the back. Make three piles of them about six feet apart in a triangle on the road. Keep a flare nearby to ignite the piles, but be careful the fires won't ignite nearby brush.”

The team moved to the rear of the truck and quickly obtained their mirrors. Without discussion, each person looked through the sunburst sight in the middle of their mirror and practiced aiming the sun's reflection at trees and bushes. This spot of light would be aimed at a pilot flying above them. The teens took road flares from an olive-drab ammo box in the back of the SUV and began setting up the flare signals as directed. Jess knew when directions were orders and when his father had gone into command mode. It was evident that Lynn did too.

Lynn and Jess joined the two men.

“Okay, we are in a survival situation,” Dennis said, looking at the teens. “What is the procedure?”

“Survival situation? We just have a broken truck,” Jess said.

“And broken radios and broken phones,” Dennis pointed out. “I think we're fine, but when things start going wrong you must take control of the situation before it takes control of you. Survival procedures, please.”

“STOP—Stop, Think, Observe and Plan,” Lynn said, looking pleased with herself. This was the mantra CAP cadets were taught to use in an emergency.

“Good job,” Dennis said. “Captain Herrero and I are not sure what has affected our electronics. It might be a solar flare. If it is, it may last for hours or days.”

“Hours or days?” Lynn whined. “Will we have to wait for the search planes to find us?”

“If our electronics are down, theirs may be as well. There may not be any planes up to search for us.”

“What, we walk home?” Lynn's voice was more shrill.

“Well, I don't think we know enough yet to make those kinds of decisions,” Dennis said, “but we should be thinking about all of the possibilities. Our first priority should be to take inventory of all our belongings and determine what does, and does not, work.”

“I'm not walking home,” Lynn said throwing herself into a chair. “Do you know how long that would take?”

“As long as it takes,” Dennis replied. “I don't need the attitude.”

Lynn exaggerated the sullen look on her pretty face. Jess stood with his mouth hanging open slightly and gawked at Jose. Jose shot him a fatherly glare as if to say,
Don't go there with me, son
. Jess set his jaw and stood a little straighter.

“Now get up from there,” Dennis directed. “I didn't do this just to inconvenience you. We'll just have to make the best of it.”

Lynn stood and walked toward the SUV, putting her feet down heavily for emphasis. The others followed her.

Each member removed a small daypack and a larger backpack from the rear hatch of the SUV. The smaller packs, known as twenty-four-hour packs, were designed to be carried in the field while searching. They held items needed to conduct a search and equipment to survive for twenty-four hours. The contents of the twenty-four hour pack, together with the contents of the backpack, formed a seventy-two hour pack. As implied by the name, they were designed to sustain searchers for seventy-two hours in the field. Because of the packs, the team was well equipped with camping and survival gear plus socks, underwear, and a change of clothes.

A gear check showed that the GPS devices and walkie-talkies did not work. Packed in the truck were ten gallons of drinking water, a large ice chest containing “real food”—not the MREs kept in the search packs—a high lift jack, a tool kit, a pull strap and a rope.

The tents remained stored for the time being so they would not have to be packed if help came before nightfall.

The afternoon was passed discussing theories of what caused the radio and general electronic failures. After much discussion, they agreed that theoretically, it had the hallmarks of an electromagnetic pulse—an EMP—but who might have done it, they did not know. Through it all, the group watched the sky and strained to hear any engine noise from airplanes above or from the roads below in the valley. Not a single aircraft or contrail was sighted.

As evening approached, wood was gathered. Tents were unpacked and flat, rockless spots, as rockless as one could find on a mountain in Arizona, were located and cleared. Sleeping pads and bags were rolled out and the camp was prepared for night.

“Lynn and I will close the day with our afternoon and evening prayers,” Dennis said. “Want to join us?”

“Sure,” said Jose. Jess rolled his eyes so that only his father could see him, but joined the rest of the group near the campfire and sat quietly.

Dennis prayed in Hebrew and then repeated the prayers in English, just like he had after lunch.

Jess's family was not a church-going bunch. Jess had been to Mass a few times and to Protestant churches with friends a couple of times. It all seemed so foreign, so mysterious to him.

The team cooked over a fire as the sky burst into a beautiful sunset, then turned twilight. After dinner, the group sat in lawn chairs around the campfire, staring into the flames. The teens fed the small fire, poked at burning branches with sticks and then waved their burnt sticks in the air. The red embers on the sticks' ends traced paths of glowing red through the air. The sky was pitch-black. The customary glow from Phoenix, a town of four million people only sixty miles to the southwest, was absent.

“Looks like town is blacked out too, doesn't it, Dad?” Jess said softly.

“Yes, Mijo, it does.”

“We should all get to bed,” Dennis said. “Let's set a fire watch so the campfire stays lit and have someone watching and listening for planes. Watches will be two hours long. Keep the fire burning low to save wood. Anybody have a preference for their watch?”

“I'll take first watch,” volunteered Jess.

“Second,” Lynn said.

“I'll take the last watch,” Jose said. “I'm an early riser anyway.”

Dennis rose and went to his tent. Following the team leader's example, Jose rose and shuffled to his tent. Lynn and Jess remained.

About four hours later, Dennis checked the luminescent dial of his still-ticking wristwatch. It confirmed that it was his time to stand watch. He grabbed his coat and boots, then unzipped the tent flap and squeezed his five foot ten-inch frame through the opening. Jess sat stirring the campfire with a stick. Dennis noticed his daughter, still wrapped in her sleeping bag, sleeping in a chair across from Jess. Dennis sent them both off to bed and settled into his chair. After what seemed like an eternity, Jose woke and took over the last watch.