Grid Down

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I left everything where it was and got in my truck. The fact that my truck started pretty much eliminated an EMP event as the cause of the black-out. Any electronic device would be affected by EMP, and the computer controls in cars and trucks would be among the first to go unless they weren't older than a couple years. My truck was five years old.

My first stop was my apartment. I put all my clothes in plastic garbage bags, filled a plastic storage box with all my pots and pans and kitchen stuff that didn't need electricity, and filled another plastic storage box with my books and magazines about survival and engineering. After I hauled all that out the door and dumped it in the bed of my truck, I took a last look around for anything I'd missed that I might need. All I picked up was a picture of me, Mom, and Dad in front of the old farmhouse on the farm taken when I graduated from high school. I didn't need it, but I wanted it.

My second stop was the assisted living home where my mother was staying. I wasn't about to leave her there with no guarantee that she'd be safe. I tried the local radio stations, both AM and FM on the way. They were broadcasting with generator power and confirmed the blackout was across at least the entire state, but had no explanation for what happened.

As I drove into the drive of Fairlawn Retirement Community, the newsperson said they had unverified information that the entire US electrical grid was down. Cell phone towers would continue to work until their battery backups failed, so law enforcement was still monitoring the 911 system and responding as quickly as they could.

It might take weeks to find out what really happened if we ever could. With no electricity, it would be impossible to check any servers for any unauthorized entry of any computer control system for manipulation of the control parameters. Since nobody seemed to know the cause, I was putting my money on a cyber attack on the US electrical grid, and probably the attack had been aimed at damaging as much equipment as possible.

With no electricity, Fairlawn's intercom system didn't work so I had to pound on the door for a while before one of the nurses came to the door. Thankfully, she recognized me and let me in. When I found Mom's room, I didn't give her a chance to tell me no. I just grabbed all the clothes in her closet and told her we were leaving. All she said was she needed some underwear and shoes too, so I waited until she stuffed them in a suitcase. I wouldn't have let the nurses stop me from taking Mom out if they'd tried, but they were too busy trying to make sure everybody was in their rooms.

From there, I drove to my bunker and parked my pickup beside the hatch, then helped Mom down the stairs and inside. After a couple trips back to my truck to get her clothes and my other stuff, I parked the truck behind some trees, went to the bunker, and locked the door behind me.

Mom was pretty shaken up.

"Teddy, what happened and why did you drag me out of Fairlawn? The electricity has gone out before. It always comes back on in a day or two at most. At least at Fairlawn I'd have been warm. It's like a refrigerator in here."

As I built a fire in the stove, I tried to explain what I thought had happened and why I wanted her here with me.

"Mom, you heard the radio. It's not just this area or even just South Dakota. It's the whole US. My best guess is somebody hacked into the US electrical grid and shut it down. The grid and other businesses have been hacked before, just not on this large a scale. There was even a nuclear power plant in Kansas that was hacked in 2017. It's also happened in South Korea, India, and Germany. In the Kansas plant, the FBI said it looked like the hackers were mapping the computer systems in preparation for another attack. I think this was that attack.

"If the whole grid is down like they're saying, the US will basically come to a screeching halt, because nothing will work. Factories won't be able to make anything, including food. Trucking companies won't be able to dispatch trucks or re-fuel them. Warehouses won't know what inventory they have or where it is. You won't even be able to pay for something a store has and you need because the cash registers won't work.

"What that means is people who need food will be breaking into anyplace that has food. Other people will be waiting to take that food from them. People who are cold will be trying to find someplace with heat that still works and they'll break in if they have to."

I put my hand on her shoulder so she'd know I was serious.

"Mom, I really, really hope I'm overreacting, but what I'm talking about is riots in the streets and nobody there will be safe. Here, I have enough food to keep us going for at least a couple years, I can keep you warm, and nobody can break in here. That's why I dragged you out of Fairlawn. Please don't be mad at me."

Mom looked up and smiled.

"I'm not mad at you Ted. Your dad would have done the same thing in this situation. He'd be proud that you did.

"So, what do you do down here for entertainment? I guess I won't be playing Hearts with the girls for at least a while."

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I gave Mom the bedroom and I slept on the fold-out couch. After I cooked a couple of meals, Mom laughed and said she hadn't done a very good job in teaching me. I had to admit her meals were a lot better than mine. At night, we'd read or just talk. We hadn't just talked for a long time.

I guess that's what happens when your parents are close enough you see them a lot. You tend to talk about the small stuff instead of what's really important. I found out more about Mom and Dad and their relationship than I'd ever even suspected.

I'd always thought Mom was a prim and proper housewife who lived for her husband and me. Well, she was that, but apparently not before I was born. She was waiting tables in a bar when Dad and a couple of his friends walked in and sat down at one of her tables. Dad took one look at her and said, "Honey, what time do you get off?"

Mom laughed then and said he only looked at her because she was only half dressed at the time.

"I knew guys liked to see boobs and long legs and I had both so I dressed to show them off. They got me a lot of tips. They also got me your Dad, though I didn't know it at the time. He said he had a little ranch and he'd teach me to ride a horse if I'd come out. Well, I did, and he did teach me. I moved in with him two months later, just to try things out. After another three months, we decided we fit together pretty good, so we got married."

Apparently, their first years had been a struggle. Cattle prices were down so Dad went to work at a sawmill so they'd have enough money to eat. Mom told me some of the ways she stretched the food budget, ways I hadn't thought of but proved to be useful as time went on.

Every day for the first week, I'd crank up my radio and go outside to see if anything had changed. The only thing that had changed was the radio stations had evidently used up their generator fuel supply because none of them were broadcasting. I did tune in a couple of ham radio operators every day. They didn't know anything more than I did, but they confirmed the entire US was affected as well as at least some of the European Union. They were able to transmit only because they had solar panel arrays and battery packs.

I also watched the sky in the direction of the base. In addition to housing the 28th Bomb Wing, Ellsworth AFB was a training center for B1B bomber crews. All training flights had been cancelled for the holidays, but now that it was January, there should have been at least one or two flights a day. I didn't see anything in the sky except two turkey vultures and one bald eagle. If the training flights weren't taking place, the base wasn't up and running, and that probably meant nothing else was either.

At night, I noticed another thing. My bunker was about twenty miles from Rapid City, but on the nights I'd stayed there, I could see the lights of the city reflected by any clouds in the sky. I hadn't seen that since the power went out, so Rapid City and Ellsworth were still in the dark. I decided I needed to find out for sure.

It was a Tuesday morning, if I remember right, when I told Mom what I was going to do.

"I'm going to drive over to the base and see what's going on. Don't worry. I'm not going to take any chances. I'm just going to drive close enough to the main gate to see if anybody's going in or out. If things look OK, I'll take you back to Fairlawn. If not, well, at least we'll know.

"Now, I showed you how to lock the deadbolts on the door. Lock them all when I leave. When I come back, I'll tap on the door three times, wait for two seconds, and then tap two more times. If you don't hear that, don't open the door."

I strapped the.357 Mag on my belt and left. When I was outside, I waited until I heard each bolt go home. Ten minutes later I was on the county road and headed toward Ellsworth.

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I got within a block of the main gate at Ellsworth and it was worse than I thought it might be. Before, the main gate was always open and guarded by two guards with M-4 rifles from the 28th Security Squadron. If you had a sticker on your windshield, they'd salute you as you drove through. If you didn't they'd stop you and ask why you wanted on base. If your name was on the access list for the day, they let you through. If it wasn't they'd ask for the name of the person you were going to contact. They'd phone that person and ask if you had a legitimate appointment. If you did, they'd apologize for the inconvenience and let you through. If not, they'd respectfully tell you they couldn't let you on base and show you where you could turn around.

That day, I counted ten guards with M-4's, three standing in front of the closed gate and the rest behind sandbags on each side of the entrance drive. When I looked closer, there was a machine gun with crew on each side as well.

I didn't try to drive in. I'd seen enough to know that Ellsworth was in a maximum security scenario. Instead, I turned down the street before the gate and then drove to Fairlawn because I knew Mom would want to know if everything was all right there. Along the way I passed several gas stations and stores that were all closed. A couple of the grocery stores had plywood screwed over the windows.

Because of that, I decided not to tell Mom about Fairlawn. I'd just tell her I drove past the building and didn't see anybody going in or coming out, but that the building looked all right. That was my plan until I got there.

I was only doing maybe five miles an hour so I could look around without running into anything or anybody. Just when I passed the open front door to the building, some people ran out and they weren't just jogging. There was a woman in the front of the pack of six or so, and it looked like she was running for her life. Behind her were the rest, also running hard, and each was carrying a club of some type. A couple looked like they had baseball bats. It was hard to tell, but the others looked like they were carrying either steel pipes or maybe broom handles.

The woman took one look at my truck and changed direction to intercept me. She climbed into the bed just as I floored it to get away from the mob. There wasn't much I could do without stopping, and I had no intention of doing so until I'd outrun the guys chasing me. I looked back in the rear view mirror and saw the woman huddled up in the back corner of the bed.

She was wearing what looked like the hospital scrubs the nurses at Fairlawn wore. She had to be freezing because it was about twenty outside and that's all she had on.

I drove all the way out of town and onto the country road that led to my place before I stopped. I looked around and didn't see anybody else or any cars, so I pulled the.357 out of the holster and got out. When I looked at the woman, she was curled up in a ball and shaking from the cold. When I cleared my throat, she looked up at me. It was hard to understand her because her teeth were chattering.

"E-e-either sh-sh-sh-oot me or let me g-g-get inside with you so I don't f-f-f-freeze to d-d-d-death. Right now, I'm so c-c-cold I don't much c-c-c-care which."

I asked her who she was. She tried to smile, but she was still chattering too much.

"I-I-I'm a n-n-n-nurse at F-F-F-Fairlawn. C-c-c-can I g-g-g-get inside n-n-n-now?

I was half-way to my bunker when she thawed out enough she could talk. She was still shivering even though I'd turned the heater up to high, but at least her teeth weren't chattering.

"I must have done something right in life for you to have come by when you did. If you hadn't I'd have kept running until I dropped. It would have been better to freeze to death than staying there. Thank you for not driving off and leaving me to those men."

I had to chuckle.

"The only reason I didn't is you surprised me and my reaction time was slow. What's your name and what happened back there?"

She coughed twice and then cleared her throat.

"I'm Christy Boxer, and up until yesterday, I was a night nurse at Fairlawn. I'd been staying there like all the other nurses because there was no use in going home. At least at Fairlawn there was enough food to last us and the residents for a couple weeks.

"Yesterday morning, these men came to the door and said they were cold and hungry and would I let them in and feed them. Well, our protocol says in any emergency, we lock down hard and nobody goes in or out unless they're family of one of the residents, so I said I couldn't. They left then, but about half an hour later, they came back. This time they broke the glass doors and came inside. When Jimmy, one of the male nurses, tried to stop them, one of the men hit him on the head with a pipe, and then hit him again after he fell down. I think he's probably dead because he was bleeding really bad.

"They told the rest of us that's what would happen to us if we didn't do what they said. The first thing they wanted was the drugs we keep. Julie, the head nurse, has the only key to that cabinet, and she said she wouldn't open it. One of the other men started walking toward her and said if she didn't, they'd just kill her and then take her key.

"Julie gave him her key and the men took everything in the cabinet. After that, they wanted all the food we had. They didn't need a key to get that. I don't think they'd had a meal in a while because they ate everything that wasn't frozen right then and there.

"Today is when the really bad stuff started. They scared the daylights out of all the residents by beating up Mr. Ricky and Mr. Thomas because neither would give them their money, and then told the rest to give them all their money or they'd beat them up too. After that, they started taking one nurse at a time into the break room and...

She broke down and sobbed then.

"They took Julie first. I don't know if she'll be all right or not because she could barely walk when they got done with her. They wouldn't let me look at her. When I said she looked like she needed medical attention, they just laughed and said she'd already got all the attention she could handle for a while.

"They waited an hour and then took Karen to the break room. Just like before, four of them went in and left one to guard us. When Donna, an older nurse, started telling the one guarding us that her husband would hunt him down and cut off his...his you know what...he started slapping and hitting her. That's when I decided I was going to run.

"I'd gotten out the door when the others heard Donna screaming and came out to see what was going on. They started chasing me then. If I hadn't had a head start and you hadn't come along, I'd have ended up just like Julie and Karen. I feel really bad that I left them there, but..."

She sobbed again, so I tried to calm her down a little.

"Christy, all you did was the only thing you could do to survive. Wanting to live isn't something you should be ashamed of. It's just human nature. Any other person would have done the same thing if they were brave enough. Some people just aren't that brave, and they won't survive. Don't beat yourself up for leaving the others. If what's happened is what I think has happened, what you went through is going to be repeated a lot. It will be people like you who survive and keep civilization going."

Christy sniffed and then frowned.

"Some civilization it's gonna be. I mean, a week ago, everything was normal and now the world is turned upside down. How will it ever get back to normal?"

I shrugged.

"I didn't say it would get back to normal. I said civilization would survive. It might survive the way it did back in the seventeen hundreds, but it'll survive. People like you and me and some others I know will make it survive."

Christy's words were pure sarcasm.

"And how are we going to do that? There's no food anywhere, there's no place safe to stay, and from what I've seen so far today, there's no gas stations open so you could get enough gas to go anywhere else."

I had to smile.

"Just wait a few more minutes. You'll see."

When I turned into the pasture and started driving across the grass, Christy asked where I was going. I just said, "Home. You might even like it. Oh, by the way, my mother lives with me, so be nice to her."

When I stopped the truck, Christy said, "This isn't a home. It's just a field out in the middle of nowhere. What do you do, sleep on the ground and eat grass?"

I chuckled.

"Not exactly. Follow me."

Christy's mouth fell open when I opened the hatch to the stairway.

"You live down there...what is it - a cave?"

"Well, it's a very nice cave. You'll see."

I tapped on the door three times, waited two seconds and then tapped three more times. I grinned when I heard the bolts sliding open.

"OK, Christy. This is home if you decide you want to stay. Be sure to be nice to my mother."

When the door swung open, there was Mom holding my pump twelve gauge leveled right at Christy's belly. I quickly walked around Christy with my hands up.

"Mom, it's all right. I brought her here. Put down the shotgun so I can explain."

Mom raised the shotgun so it was pointing at the ceiling and then backed away. I led Christy through the door and closed and locked it behind me, then turned back to Mom.

"Mom, when did you learn to use a shotgun?"

Mom just smiled.

"You don't really think I lived on this farm all those years without knowing something about guns. Your dad taught me to shoot a shotgun before we were married. Now, who is this girl you brought with you? She looks familiar."

"Mom, this is Christy. She said she worked at Fairlawn. Do you recognize her?"

Mom looked at Christy for a few seconds and then smiled.

"You're the little girl who brought me some aspirins that night when I had a splitting headache."

Christy nodded.

"Yes, I was one of the night nurses. I remember you too. The other nurses said you'd left, so I thought I'd probably never see you again. How did you get here?"

Mom chuckled.

"Teddy came and got me and he didn't really give me a choice. He just walked in and said I was going with him. Is that what he did to you?"

I left Mom and Christy to talk and went to charge up my batteries. It would be better to find out if they could get along with each other now instead of later.

When I walked back into the living area, they were still talking, but they were both smiling so I felt pretty good. Mom said they'd decided Christy would sleep with her, and that she'd give her some clothes to wear until we could get back to her house to get her own stuff. I didn't tell them I didn't know if that was going to be possible.

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For the next month, I kept going outside to see if any radio stations were back on the air and to keep watching the sky for any indication Ellsworth was back in action again. All I could get was the same ham operators and I didn't see any B1B's taking off or landing, and there was no reflected light at night.