Constant Fear

CHAPTER 11

Every year, on the third weekend in March, Jake brought Andy to the Self-Reliance Be Ready Expo and Convention held in Syracuse, New York. Better known by its acronym, SRBR, it was the trade show for the latest and greatest in survivalist gear, training, and the best prepper paraphernalia.

Jake and Andy left after school on Friday and stayed until Sunday. They attended discussions and seminars during the day at the Expo center. They returned at night to their tent at the local campground, where they stayed with other like-minded individuals. Real preppers doing the SRBR never booked a hotel room.

Jake always looked forward to the annual convention. It was a time to bond with his son. These moments weren’t going to last forever, and soon enough Andy was going to move on with his life, as he should. For now, being here with Andy meant the world to Jake, and he tried his best not to think too far down the road.

As they walked the conference floor, Jake and Andy did what they always did at the SRBR: talked about gear, clocked the latest trends, shopped for deals, and did some networking. Most kids got to do fun things with both their parents, but not Andy. The loss of his mother remained a raw spot etched on Andy’s heart. Jake had done all he could to support his son over the years, even compiling a nice photo album-a memory book, he called it-filled with pictures of Andy’s mother from her high-school days and happier times as a family.

For many years, Jake had been distraught and angry with Laura for leaving him, but he made it a point to craft something positive out of heartbreak for the sake of his son. The pain had an upside, and he and Andy might not have been as close as they were, had his mother stayed.

In his small campus office, Jake had taped a Mark Twain quote to his wall:

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

As time passed, Jake lost a lot of the anger, but not all of the emotion. Even Ellie, strong and loyal, couldn’t completely replace Laura in his heart. On occasion, Jake would sneak into Andy’s bedroom to leaf through the memory book on his own. Every picture of Laura was so clear to him: the day it was taken, where they were, how he was feeling. Some of the shots were so darn beautiful it was difficult to look at them without feeling the ache of missing her.

Perhaps the only way to vanquish Laura was to let Ellie in. But there was the small problem of his lifestyle. Many people had the wrong image of a prepper, but they’d have to come to the SRBR or a similar expo to debunk the myths. Images of a deluded, rootin’-tootin’, gun-obsessed nut job were far from the reality. People who prepped were just average consumers who happened to be deeply concerned about the fragility of the “system,” and growing numbers were fueling an emerging lifestyle trend. If anything, Jake was on the low end of the economic spectrum, as many SRBR attendees were financially more solvent, with deeper pockets to make them better prepared.

Andy paused at a booth Jake would have preferred to ignore. “Check this out.” He pointed to one weapon in particular, enclosed in a locked glass case.

“That’s a grenade launcher, son,” Jake said.

“Yeah, and?”

“And we’re not here for weaponry, especially something like that. This is about having skills and knowing how to do things for yourself when nobody is there to do it for you. We’re not at a gun show.” Jake actually bristled around the gun show crowd. He needed to know how to defend himself, and was highly competent with many weapons, but he wasn’t interested in building up a massive arsenal. “Come on,” Jake said. “There’s a lecture I want to sit in on that’s starting soon.”

Andy groaned and rolled his eyes. He looked back at the grenade launcher as if it were a million times cooler than his dad. “I don’t know if I can take this anymore,” he muttered.

Jake heard him. “What did you say?”

The words hurt, so Jake wanted to make sure he didn’t misunderstand. Andy might as well have said, “I don’t want to fish with you anymore, or go camping, or go hiking, or go skiing,” or any number of other things fathers and sons did together. The SRBR was their thing. It meant a great deal to Jake to share the experience with his son.

“Seriously, do you not want to be here?”

Andy gave Jake a sidelong glance.

He doesn’t want to hurt my feelings, Jake thought.

“I’m fine. Let’s go, Dad. I don’t want you to miss anything.”

Jake slipped his arm around Andy’s shoulder. Andy didn’t seem to mind, which lifted Jake’s spirits in ways Andy would only understand once he was a dad.

“Thanks, buddy,” Jake said. “That means a lot.”

The lecture hall was a large conference room, which had folding chairs set out in rows. Richard Weismann was an internationally recognized authority on self-reliance, and for months Jake had been looking forward to hearing him speak. Seats near the stage were filling up fast. Making a dash to the front, Jake nabbed two empty chairs together in the first row, just to the left of the podium on the stage. He turned to see that Andy had staked out his claim in the very back of the hall. He was already engrossed in his smartphone, eyes glued to the screen.

Jake saved the seats with his coat and walked to the back of the hall. “What’s up, buddy?” he asked. “You don’t seem as into it this year. You’ve always loved coming to the SRBR. We look forward to it all year.”

“No, Dad. You always loved coming here. I just go.”

Ouch!

“Stop slinging arrows, okay? I’m your father, and I love you very much,” Jake said. “And this lecture is important to me, but I want to be with you, too. So come on up front. I’ve got us two seats. So, how about you humor your papa for a bit? Okay, kiddo? It means a lot to me to have you here.” Jake gave Andy a playful punch on the arm.

It was enough to wheedle him from the back up to the front. A few minutes later, Richard Weismann took the stage to a round of rousing applause. Andy didn’t clap once, and kept his face glued to his phone’s display.

“Hey,” Jake whispered, “put that thing away, buddy. Let’s be respectful.”

Weismann was in his early sixties, and looked like anybody you might see at a business convention. He wasn’t too tall, had a bit of a belly, and not much hair left on a splendidly round head. He didn’t look anything like those characters on Duck Dynasty, an image that often came to people’s minds when they thought about preppers.

“Good afternoon, friends,” Weismann began. His microphone kicked feedback, so he adjusted the height until it was gone. “It’s great to be back here at the SRBR. I always look forward to the chance to speak, and this is one of my favorite expos on the circuit. Today I’m here to talk about self-reliance. When the power goes out and the grid goes down, how will you stay warm? When the supermarket shelves go bare, how will you feed your family?”

Weismann paused for dramatic effect. He was an eloquent speaker. In a few sentences, he had captivated his audience and could have held their attention indefinitely.

“I’m going to tell you a little story to get the conversation started. The folks at NORAD go from a quiet morning, sipping coffee and observing the world from the comfort of their computer monitors, when chaos erupts. A ballistic missile has been launched from a cargo ship off the U.S. coast. The weapon is designed to release EMP, an electromagnetic pulse capable of destroying the U.S. power grid. A single explosion over the Midwest produces electronic waves a million times more powerful than any radio signal on earth. The current and voltage surges that follow will literally cook the semiconductor chips of critical electronic devices. In an instant, communications will fail. Computers will lose power. Car batteries will no longer function, and transportation will come to a complete and grinding halt. Telecommunications are down everywhere. You can’t get a cell phone signal, let alone make a call.

“The power grid will be out, and probably out for months. Every bit of electronics we use-medical devices, gasoline pumps, phones, cars, water pumps-will no longer function. Of course the stock market crashes, since all trading has abruptly ceased. Bank accounts are gone, lost in a black hole of the crippled electrical grid. A single blast, if detonated high enough over the middle of the country, will be enough to plunge us all into total darkness. Food stocks will run out quickly. Everything about our current way of life will end in the sizzle of burnt-out circuitry, and we’ll be plunged back to a preindustrialized society.

“Who could possess such a weapon? China, Russia, North Korea, and even Iran or Hezbollah, that’s who. It’s been estimated that a year after an EMP strike, between seventy-five and ninety percent of the U.S. population will perish from disease, starvation, and overall societal collapse. Imagine it. You wake up one morning and nothing works. No running water. No food in the stores. No money in your bank accounts. No hospitals. No transportation. Nothing works the way it once did. Cities in darkness. How will you live? How will your family live? We are lying to ourselves when we say we are prepared for this attack. We are not prepared as a country. But you can be prepared as individuals.”

“Oh, give me a freakin’ break.”

The dissenting voice, meant to be spoken as an undertone, came out loud and attracted a great deal of attention. The murmurs rippled from front to back and grew in volume until Weismann could no longer be heard.

Jake looked at Andy with what, at first, was a bemused expression. Andy had retreated to the safety of his smartphone screen; he did not take notice of Jake’s now-angry stare.

“Young man, it would appear you disagree with the scenario I’ve outlined here.” Richard Weismann, accustomed to confronting his critics, did not seem the least bit perturbed by the interruption.

Andy looked up and realized Weismann was addressing him directly. Andy turned to his father for guidance.

“Your bed-you made it, you deal with it,” Jake said, a little gruffness evident in his voice.

Andy stood, looked around at the sizable crowd, and pocketed his phone with a confident air.

“Look, I’m not denying the science behind EMP, Mr. Weismann,” Andy began, speaking respectfully and earnestly. “What we’re really talking about is the Compton effect. In 1925, the physicist Arthur Compton asserted that photons of electromagnetic energy would loosen electrons from atoms with low atomic numbers. This would create fluctuating electric currents and induce a powerful magnetic field capable of knocking out electronic circuitry. I get that. It’s real. But do you honestly believe a country like North Korea or Iran, or some terrorist organization like Hezbollah or, say, ISIS, could develop a warhead sophisticated enough to deliver a really damaging EMP blast? Have you honestly studied the technology required to make an EMP-optimized warhead?”

“Determined foes can overcome even the most challenging hurdles,” Weismann said.

“Yeah, well, dedicating my life to a technically implausible scenario makes no sense to me. Oh, wait-a rogue nation could launch a weapon from a freighter off the U.S. coast. You said that. So maybe it’s not so far-fetched. Let’s see, Iran’s Shahab-3 is the only medium-range missile small enough to be launched from one of those boats. But it has a payload capacity of maybe one thousand kilograms, which doesn’t come close to the devastation that you describe. And any terrorist cell that miraculously gets a nuclear-type weapon is going to blow up a city, not risk wasting their crown jewel on a complex EMP strike that’s likely to fail.”

Hushed conversation passed through the crowd. Jake was wide-eyed and astonished. Where did he learn all this?

“You’re forgetting our other enemies, young man,” Weismann said.

“That’s right. But let me ask you, why would Russia do it? Or China? I’ll tell you the answer. They wouldn’t. The trace-back would result in catastrophic nuclear war. We’ve had nuclear weapons for decades, and nobody is using them in wartime for a reason. Besides, our economies are joined at the hip. There’s a major economic deterrent here nobody is talking about.”

Weismann no longer appeared amused. “Since you seem so well versed on the topic, young man, what would you suggest we do?”

Andy turned to Jake. His body language was that of a child having to confess an uncomfortable truth.

“I’d stop living my life in constant fear,” he said. “I’d learn how to do things for myself-things like gardening, mechanical repairs, self-defense, and whatnot-simply because it was interesting to me. I wouldn’t come to these conferences anymore. I wouldn’t prepare for the future at the expense of enjoying my present.”

“So, why are you here?” Weismann asked.

Jake’s eyes held Andy’s in a head-on stare.

“Because I love my dad more than anything,” Andy said. “But I can’t do this anymore.”

Andy walked across the room, heading for the exit. And Jake watched him go.