Operation Doomsday Diary

In 2025, 14 years ago, a solar flare caused an electromagnetic pulse that resulted in the death of my parents. They were driving when the event occurred. A person driving an electric vehicle lost control and hit them. Many people died that year. Some died of starvation, some died from lack of heat. Most industries shut down. It became the responsibility of smaller communities to harvest food and take care of livestock. It became illegal for any portion of a person’s property to just be grass. Any available space in the suburbs was turned into miniature farms. Times were strange back then. The internet stopped working in most locations. Cellphones and landlines weren’t back up for years. The postal service was in high demand. Gas was impossible to find. Most people just settled where they were. Hospitals did what they could, but the only group fully prepared for an event like this was the military, having been warned of an event like this after a man-made version occurred decades ago. In the 60s, a high altitude nuclear explosion took out Hawaii’s power grid 900 miles away from the test site. After that, the military poured billions of dollars into protecting their bases from an EMP event. As a result, anyone with a military ID automatically had access to the best of everything after the event happened. However, most people received their electricity from private corporations. These private corporations refused to spend the money to protect against EMPs beforehand, so when the event occurred, anyone outside of a military base was instantaneously sent back to the 1800s.

My grandpa took me in when my parents passed away. I was 16. Since then, it’s just been the two of us. I’m 30 now. It’s my turn to take care of him. There have been vast improvements since the event. In these past 14 years, many ways of life have changed forever, but some electrical devices are back in use again. Pacemakers are one recent example. Grandpa’s pacemaker surgery was last week and it took every ounce of energy I had to keep him in bed to rest and recover.

Grandpa wasn’t the same after his daughter, my mother, passed away. He became obsessed with studying EMPs. Grandpa was a lieutenant colonel during the Gulf War. After the event, he was given special privileges to use what remained of the internet on a military base about 30 miles from home. He never talked to me much about what he learned, but he developed several theories about the next possible event. He made the mistake of talking to people on the base about his theories, who then became very concerned for his well-being. His privileges were revoked. I tried my best to support him during that time. It was hard on him, but he eventually seemed to move on.

Now as my 30 year old self, I’ve developed certain habits to wind down at the end of a long day. Every night before bed, I look forward to putting a kettle on the stove, warming up some water for chamomile tea and heading out to the front porch to look up at the stars. Light pollution at night was one of the things that didn’t return after more than a decade of recovery. The ground was covered in snow. The radio played soft music quietly in the background. It’s peaceful here. These quiet moments bring memories flooding back, like spending time with my mom at her work when I was little. She had been employed by the Department of Energy back in 2017, but she told me many people were laid off back then. Prior to losing her job, she used to take me to the same military base where my grandpa was getting access to the internet. She would always tell me to stay close by her side and to be quiet because people were doing very important things and needed to concentrate. I was always a good kid. People used to say as much to my mom as she’d walk me through the facility. Thinking about days long gone, I started to doze off. Then something weird started happening in the sky.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said out loud.

“What doesn’t make any sense,” Grandpa grumbled off in the distance.

“I think I see the aurora borealis, but we are too far south for that to be normal and it’s getting larger by the second.”

He slowly stood up from the couch and walked over to the front door where I stood. He looked me right in the eye and appeared a bit panicked.

“It’s another massive solar flare. Hurry. Get inside. Close the door. I don’t have much time. This solar flare is in the process of hurling trillions of tons of highly-charged solar plasma directly at us. My pacemaker is going to fail. I need you to listen very carefully to what I’m about to say. There’s a journal under my bed. I need you to grab that. You will find two walkie talkies there as well. They are in a metal cage. Keep them in the cage for now. Also grab your mother’s old military ID and uniform. Luckily you look just like her. I need you to drive to the military base we took you to as a kid. You remember how to get there right?”

I nodded my head.

“Good. The military base is going to be chaotic. So maybe you won’t have any trouble getting past the men at the gate.”

As he was giving me directions, he started speaking with some difficulty, “Have you heard of a Faraday ca…ARGHHH.”

I rushed back into the room with the journal, ID, uniform, and caged walkie talkies. “What!? What’s wrong!?”

“Chest pains….I think my pacemaker has stopped working.”

“Grandpa, no!”

“It’s going to be okay, but I need you to hurry. Once you get past the guards, look for a woman named Mary. She’s been working the night shift at the facility for as long as I can remember. Hopefully she’s there.” He pulled out an old photo from his wallet of him and her sitting together at a bar. “Show her this photo and tell her you’re my granddaughter. Then show her the journal and reach out to me on the walkie talkie. I’ll talk you both through the next steps then.”

“Grandpa, I’m not going to leave you here. Maybe they can help you at the base.”

“Girl, I won’t get past the guards. You know that. Get dressed and go.”

In my mom’s old uniform, driving my grandpa’s old beat up truck in the snow in the middle of the night, there was the wildest aurora above me. The few street lights that were put back in use after the first event had stopped working now, but the reflection of the greens and blues of the aurora on the snow lit up the whole area. “This is crazy,” I said out loud to myself.

I grabbed the walkie talkie. “Grandpa. Come in. Are you there?”

“Yes, but stop talking to me. Other people are going to be on the same frequency as us. Contact me when you reach your destination. Don’t talk about any details here. Copy!?”

“Copy.”

I was comfortable driving in the snow, but my heart was racing. Who was this Mary woman? Why had I never heard of her before? How did she know Grandpa? What was going on? Next thing I knew I was at the gate and handing my mom’s ID to the guard.

“Wow ma’am, you look great for your age.”

At a loss for words, I just glared at him.

He handed back the card. “You’re good to go, ma’am.” As I drove off I heard him ask his partner, “Don’t women like to hear that they look young for their age?” I could see the partner rolling his eyes in the rear view mirror. I was in the clear.

I parked next to the main building I used to visit. It looked like it did when I was a kid but smaller somehow. People were rushing around everywhere. No one noticed me. I kept my head down with the journal, photo, and walkie talkie close by my side. Then there she was adding dollar bills to a vending machine.

I approached her and whispered, “Hey,” and showed her the photo.

“What the fuck,” she yelped. Then she took one look at me, “Who the fuck?”

“Shhhh. Grandpa sent me. I mean Lieutenant Colonel Jones sent me. His pacemaker stopped working because of the solar flare. He told me to give you this journal and contact him on this.” I showed her the walkie talkie

“Okay. Okay. Follow me,” she spoke softly. “You must be Jessica’s kid. Great to see you again. I remember when she used to bring you in here when you were little. I was sorry to hear about your parents' passing.”

I just nodded my head.

“You look just like Jessica. Is that how you got in here so easily?”

I gave her a knowing look.

“Your grandpa thinks quickly on his feet. So what is all of this business about a journal? You said your grandpa is on the other end of the walkie-talkie?”

I nodded and handed the walkie-talkie to her.

“Hello old friend. How are you?”

“Hi Mary. I’m glad my granddaughter found you. Did you open the journal?”

“No. Not yet. You never gave me a key.”

“The necklace is the key, Mary. Do you still have it?”

Mary pulled a heart-shaped locket from under her shirt.

“This? But how?”

“Open the locket and push the two heart shaped pieces of the locket against the two heart shaped openings on the journal.” We heard a click and the journal opened.

“Et voilà!” Grandpa spoke with a sigh of relief.

Grandpa continued, “Before I was forced to leave the base, I accidentally stumbled upon Jessica’s old research. She had been tasked with studying EMP events, prevention, and national readiness protocols. I compiled all of her research on EMP events in this journal, but before I left, I gave Mary the key to the journal, the heart-shaped locket. Taking the information off-base was highly illegal, but I felt that the information was safer this way. Since Mary is roughly Jessica’s age, I knew she was far from retirement. In the event of an EMP event she'd likely still have the clearance to reach out directly to all of the right government officials.

Mary’s eyes lit up, “I always wondered why you gave me this locket before you left the base. It was the sweetest gift I’d ever received.”

“You know what to do right, Mary?” Grandpa was having trouble breathing.

“Yes, sir. Red Cross will be on their way to transport you to the nearest hospital and my next call will be directly to the president. Thank you again for your service. With these protocols in place, you will have saved millions of lives.”

Mary brought me into an abandoned room. In all of the chaos, no one noticed us. Mary said, “I technically don’t have direct access to the president, but the person who is usually in this office does.” She picked up a red phone in the room and waited. Initially, all she heard was a dial tone. Then, a voice.

“Hello, how may I direct your call?”

“I’d like to speak with the president regarding the most recent EMP event.”

“One moment please.”

“Hello, yes, this is the president. What information do you have on this most recent EMP event?”

Mary heard shots being fired in the background, someone in the distance saying, “They’ve returned, sir.” The phone line died and Mary just stared at me blankly.