“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.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“John, you look like crap warmed over."
He nodded, walking into the conference room for what had now become their daily meeting.
Thanks, Tom. I needed that.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“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.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“As was said by Thomas Jefferson, “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“To put it coldly, my friends, all the ones who should have died years ago, would have died years ago without beta-blockers, stents, angioplasties, pacemakers, exotic medications, well, now they’re dying all at once.” John”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“She'd always talk about how great Gandhi was. I'd tell her the only reason Gandhi survived after his first protest was that he was dealing with the Brits. If Stalin had been running India, he'd of been dead in a second, his name forgotten.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“We finally figured out that when you set off a nuke in space, that’s when the EMP effect really kicks in, as the energy burst hits the upper atmosphere. It becomes like a pebble triggering an avalanche, the electrical disturbances magnifying. It’s in the report. It’s called the ‘Compton Effect.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“For every person who died in the westward migration prior to the Civil War from Native Americans attacking, the stuff of American legends, thousands, maybe tens of thousands died from water holes polluted by cholera and typhoid . . . but that doesn’t make for a good movie.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“The two “idiots” Ginger and Zach, both golden retrievers, both beautiful-looking dogs—and both thicker than bricks when it came to brains—had been out sunning on the bedroom deck. They stood up and barked madly, as if he were an invader. Though if he were a real invader they’d have cowered in terror and stained the carpet as they fled into Jennifer’s room to hide.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“Back in the 1940s, when we started firing off atomic bombs to test them, this pulse wave was first noticed. Not much back then with those primitive weapons, but it was there. And here’s the key thing: there were no solid-state electronics back in the 1940s, everything was still vacuum tubes, so it was rare for the small pulses set off by those first bombs to damage anything.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“The moment of a fall from greatness often comes just when a people and a nation feel most secure. The cry "the barbarians are at the gates" too often comes as a terrifying bolt out of the blue, which is often the last cry ever heard.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“I’d of shot him in town if he lived that long.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“Folks began to sit down along the curb, leaning against the odd assortment of old vehicles folks had retrofitted to function again after the EMP burst had blown out the electronics.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“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.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“It was so damn strange, John thought, how sometimes the most unlikely, 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, could spout utter insanity and others would follow blindly.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“He pulled the foil bag down, the paper filter, made the coffee extra strong, filled the pot up, poured it in, and flicked the switch. He stood there like an idiot for a good minute before the realization hit. “Ah, shit.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“Anyone with even the remotest understanding of EMP and the threat to the nation should have been going insane before it hit.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“and three suicides, though one minister had tried to protest that decision that they be buried in what was now consecrated ground. That protest was greeted with icy rejection from Charlie, who was now a former member of that congregation.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“when an atomic bomb is detonated above the earth’s atmosphere, it can generate a “pulse wave,” which travels at the speed of light, and will short-circuit every electronic device that the “wave” touches on the earth’s surface.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“Few in our government and in the public sector have openly confronted the threat offered by the use of but one nuclear weapon, in the hands of a determined enemy, who calibrates it to trigger a massive EMP burst. Such an event would destroy our complex, delicate high-tech society in an instant and throw all of our lives back to an existence equal to that of the Middle Ages. Millions would die in the first week alone, perhaps even you who are reading this if you require certain medications, let alone the most basic needs of our lives such as food and clean water.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“The threat is real, and we as Americans must face that threat, prepare, and know what to do to prevent it. For if we do not, “one second after,” the America we know, cherish, and love will be gone forever.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“That had always been the power of media in the hands of a good leader. To get individuals to feel as if the leader was speaking directly”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“That had always been the power of media in the hands of a good leader. To get individuals to feel as if the leader was speaking directly to them, Churchill in 1940, Jack Kennedy in 1962, and Reagan in the 1980s.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
William R. Forstchen
Born place: in Millburn, New Jersey, The United States
Born date October 11, 1950
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“The man she had loved as a father was a fraud. He kissed the back of her hands and advocated war; he had played with her on the carpet with toy soldiers, and all along he had been planning the extinction of an entire people.
There would be no resettlement in the east. No carefully orchestrated exodus of Jews from Germany, no trains wending through the mountains, carrying Jews to another home in another country. There would be no peaceful expulsion. It was obvious now; Hitler had said it himself tonight. The internal purification of the Jewish spirit is not possible.
She understood. In Hitler's Germany, the Jews would have no place at all.”
― Anne Blankman, quote from Prisoner of Night and Fog
“con levantar el puño, odiar al que tienen por encima y cantar La Internacional van a arreglar poco; a ritmo de himnos no se cambia un país. Razones para rebelarse, desde luego, tienen de sobra, que aquí hay hambre de siglos y mucha injusticia también, pero eso no se arregla mordiendo la mano de quien te da de comer. Para eso, para modernizar este país, necesitaríamos emprendedores valientes y trabajadores cualificados, una educación en condiciones, y gobiernos serios que duraran en su puesto lo suficiente.”
― María Dueñas, quote from The Time in Between
“There are three parts to learning: information, knowledge and wisdom, A mere accumulation of information is not knowledge, and a treasure of knowledge is not in itself, wisdom.”
― Rachel Caine, quote from Ink and Bone
“Nightside, cities glistened in chains, and a spray of tinkertoy habitats girdled the planet. Gossamer starbridges reached from the equator towards orbit.”
― Alastair Reynolds, quote from Revelation Space
“Sometimes I wonder how normal normal people are, and I wonder that most in the grocery store.”
― Elizabeth Moon, quote from The Speed of Dark
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