Post Grid: An Arizona EMP Adventure (25 page)

“That looks like real military stuff,” Jess said.

“It's British Army surplus,” Rich said. “They call it a Clansman PRC-320. It's a high-frequency radio for long-distance communication. You can carry it on your back or hook it up to a vehicle. I have two.”

“We had HF radios in Civil Air Patrol, but we didn't use them often,” Lynn said.

Rich unpacked a microphone, speaker, Morse code key, and a green box with a hand crank and other parts. In a few minutes, the pieces were connected.

“This is the hand-cranked power supply to charge the batteries,” Rich said, looking directly at Jess and then Lynn. “I'll need help outside repairing the antenna before we can fire her up.”

He removed a coaxial cable from a burlap bag. The group moved outside to the green telescoping pole set vertically on the side of the house. Two wires hung from the top of the mast, which formed the true antenna. Rich removed a pin from the pole, causing an upper section to slide into the lower section. This process was repeated until the entire mast was collapsed and they could easily reach the top. Finally he removed the ruined coax and replaced it with the new one. He climbed up a ladder and passed the new coax connector into a conduit under the eaves of the house. Rich and Dennis worked together to lift the pole section by section until the antenna was back in its full upright position.

“That should do it, let's go in,” Rich said, brushing the dust from his jeans.

Everyone followed him inside and watched as Rich made the final connection to the back of the Clansman. Running his finger down a frequency list on the pushpin board, he scribbled a note, then sat down at his radio, turning dials to set the frequency, and then adjusted the antenna tuner.

“Okay, let's see what happens. Jess, will you do the honors?” Rich pointed to the hand-cranked generator. “There should be some residual battery power.” Jess cranked for a few minutes and then Rich threw the power switch. A quiet hiss emanated from the speaker. “The background noise is very low.”

“What does that mean?” Dennis asked.

“Normally, it means you didn't put the antenna on the radio.” Rich chuckled. “Today, it may mean the receiver isn't working or that background emissions are low. Things like power lines, street lights, car alternators and most anything electric put out a radio signal. Those signals mix with cosmic radiation, and the radio itself generates electrical static, making the background noise. When this happens, hissing, crackling and popping come from the speakers. With the power grid down and no electronics working, its pretty quiet.” He adjusted the knobs again and listened closely. “I've tuned into the frequency of the Arizona Emergency Net.”

“Is that a government net?” Jose asked.

“No, it's an amateur radio net for passing messages. It doesn't seem active. During a disaster, the frequency should be jam-packed with stations handling messages.”

“So does that mean the receiver is broken?” Jared asked.

“I'm not sure. I'll tune around and see if I can hear anything else,” Rich said. “The Arizona Emergency Net is in a band that's good for local communication during the day and long distances at night. Let's see if there are any shortwave broadcast stations on the bands for long-distance daytime communication.”

“What if we don't hear anything?” Jess asked, visibly shaken.

“Just because a long-distance station is transmitting doesn't mean that we can hear it,” Rich said calmly. “The radio waves go up and bounce or skip off of the ionosphere and come back down. For us to hear those signals, we have to be where the waves come down.” He opened a book lying nearby and scanned its pages before making further adjustments to the radio dials. “Voice of America, nothing.” He readjusted the radio. “BBC, still nothing.” Rich continued tuning.

“So we don't know if the radio is broken, if the stations are not transmitting, or if they are transmitting and we just can't hear them,” Jared said.

Suddenly a new sound came from the speaker. It sounded almost human. Rich turned a dial very slowly, making minute adjustments until they could make out a scratchy voice, broken and barely audible. The group could only understand a small part of the words being spoken by the broadcaster.

“It's Radio Australia, the Australians are beaming radio signals toward Asia and the Pacific like they always do,” Rich said. The clan was glued to the speaker.

“Prime Minister... Governor General... Australian Defense Force...  Europe... United States... supplies... Iran... Israel... Japan... China...”

So went the broadcast. It was just enough to hold all of the group's attention and provided no real answers.

“Hey, can someone else peddle this thing?” Jess asked, sweat glistening on his brow.

“Oh, sorry, forgot about you,” Rich said. “That's a pretty good workout.”

Lynn touched his hand and Jess recoiled from the sudden tension. Their eyes met for the briefest of seconds, but it was enough. “I'll take a turn,” she said. No one seemed to notice their brief exchange.

“I think I would like to set up my other radio,” Rich said. “It's a Yeasu and it will let us see if the Clansman is receiving correctly. We can also listen for VHF, very high frequencies, and UHF, ultra high frequencies, on that one.

“Why don't we try calling someone with the Clansman radio?” Lynn asked.

“Just because someone has a radio doesn't mean they are friendly,” Rich said. “No need to attract unwanted attention. Now is the time for listening. First, we'll check for local activity on VHF.”

Rich returned to the basement, this time returning with the Yeasu FT-817, a small, portable HF/VHF/UHF radio, a VHF/UHF antenna and two solar battery chargers. He set it up near its bigger green cousin and using a small antenna on the Yeasu, checked to see that both radios were sending and receiving correctly. When he tried listening to the Australian station with the smaller radio, the signal was no better. Next, two solar panels were placed outside the cabin and connected to trickle charge the two radios' batteries. The mast outside was lowered and the eight-foot VHF/UHF antenna was attached on top.

Obviously committed to getting a signal, Rich began to scan VHF frequencies, listening to static until finally, the group heard a voice.

“Phoenix North, this is Ord Relay. Go ahead.” Once again the radio went silent. Everyone looked around excitedly at each other. Jared, who was standing behind Kelly, wrapped his good arm around her waist and drew her in close to him. The group could not hear the other station's reply, but the first voice replied, “Lehi Staging, this is Ord Relay with traffic. Lehi Staging, Phoenix North reports they are two hours from your location and request a camp assignment. Phoenix North, you will be north of the old Beeline dragway and south of the Central Arizona Project canal. Mesa Kimball East will be east of you.”

“Somebody's organized,” Emma said. “They aren't military; no acronyms. They can't communicate without them.” Dennis, Kelly and Emma chuckled simultaneously.

“It's not the Sheriff's office,” Jared said.

“Nope, it's the Mormons,” Rich chuckled. “This is the LDS Cannery frequency. Sounds like they are bugging out en masse.”

“Why are they going to Lehi?” Jose said.

“They said Lehi Staging,” Jared answered. “In the Police and Fire Department's Incident Command System, staging is a temporary holding area for staff, cars, equipment, anything that needs to go into a scene. Sounds like the Mormons are getting together and waiting, camping next to the canals and along the Salt River. Ord Relay is referring to a radio operator on top of Mount Ord.” He glanced at the map on the wall, checking the elevation. “That's almost 11,000 feet. Someone stationed up there could communicate with most of Arizona.”

“If they're headed north, they're taking the same way I did,” Kelly said, pointing at the Arizona map on Rich's wall. “That means they'll be coming up the Beeline Highway through Sunflower.” She traced the route with her finger, letting it rest on their little canyon.

“They'll head northeast to Snowflake, Taylor, Pinetop and the other little Mormon towns up north,” Rich said, making a grand sweeping motion across the entire northeast corner of the map. “There are only a few places they could move so many people to in Arizona. They'll need a reliable water source and land to farm.”

“How many people do you think are on the move?” Jose asked.

Rich shrugged. “This sounds big. Mesa Kimball East and Phoenix North are names of Mormon stakes. A stake is made up of several congregations. Who knows how many stakes are heading to Lehi? The number of people could be in the thousands—even the tens of thousands.”

“Will they be here tonight?” Emma asked.

“Nah, it will take time to organize that many people. I don't think they would move them all at once either, but every day they wait puts them one day closer to freezing winter temperatures. They need to get where they're going and set up shelter before the first snow. They're liable to lose quite a few people, but they would lose more if they stayed in a chaotic city without water.”

“Things must be getting bad if they're heading up north,” Kelly said, leaning in closer to Jared.

“Well, the folks in Sunflower ought to know about this,” Emma said. “There isn't anything we can do about it. The best we can hope for is that they only stop to use water from the stream.”

Rich spoke up. “I think we should put together a Sunflower contingent to meet with the church leaders and set up some ground rules about sanitation, maybe discuss our expectations and basic courtesy.”

“They need to know that we don't want them past our fence on the north side,” said Jared. “They outnumber us. If they want to come in and take over our houses, piss in the creek and steal everything we have, they could do it. I'm not saying that is what they will do; I don't believe they will.”

“I truly don't think they are looking to cause problems,” Rich said, “but it helps to know what the expectations are—on both sides.” He stretched and yawned. “But there's nothing we can do about it today. I'll try to find a shortwave broadcast after dark, when the conditions are better for a long-range signal to reach the states. Then we can share whatever news we hear, if we hear any, with Sunflower.” Rich stayed glued to his radio like any good ham. The others listened for a while, but drifted away when nothing new was heard.

****

The next day, Jared scheduled each member of the Wise troop for shooting practice. Making notes of each person's abilities, he worked on a schedule of firearms instruction. Kelly gave Lynn and Jess their first roping lesson when Jared was done with them. After learning some basic roping techniques, the teens were set loose to practice on every young cowpoke's first “roping cow,” a sawhorse with a pair of horns lashed to one end.

Rich didn't come to dinner. After the last dinner plate was washed, the group left Emma's house to walk up to Rich's ham shack. He hungrily wolfed down the plate of food Emma had brought along, while announcing that he hadn't heard anything important.

“I was just about to tune back into that Australian broadcast station we heard earlier,” Rich said. A turn of the dial and the speaker came to life.

“Radio Australia news, Karen Nguyen speaking. More than a week since the devastating attack against the northern hemisphere, the Australian government continues to assess the impact on Europe, North America, China, Japan, and the Middle East 'going dark' after a coordinated electromagnetic pulse attack.” The group gasped. “Iran launched several missiles with small nuclear warheads and exploded them very high over major countries in Europe, Asia and North America. The EMPs, or electromagnetic pulses, have rendered most electronic equipment in those areas useless.”

Kelly and the others sat dumbfounded as the news presenter continued speaking about the collapse of international trade and the need to cooperate with the other “powered” countries of the southern hemisphere. Iran claimed responsibility for the attack, stating they had “silenced the infidels and the Great Satan” to paralyze its more powerful enemies as a prelude to its nuclear attack on Israel. Australian commentators thought that the reasons for the Iranian attack were Iran's unbridled hatred of Israel and an attempt to cause massive chaos that would induce the return of the Twelfth Imam, the Islamic coming. No one would even know for sure because Israel managed to deliver, as a last gasp, a nuclear counter-punch.

“My God,” Dennis finally uttered, breaking the silence that had settled over the whole group. “The announcer named just about everything north of the equator. I don't think we can comprehend total blackout to the Northern Hemisphere. Israel is gone too, if I understood her correctly.”

“What does it mean, Dad?” Lynn asked.

“I don't know.” Lynn helped her father sit down in the nearest chair. He felt like the air had been knocked from him. “I really don't know.”

Lynn began to sob and her father put his arms around her.

“Living without electricity for a week is one thing,” Kelly said. “But we could be like this for a very long time.”

Staring into space, Jose said, “We may never find our loved ones again.” He let the stream of words flow from his mouth unchecked. Jess moved to face his father. Their eyes met. Seeing his son's bewildered face, he said, “I'm sorry, Mijo.” He grabbed his son forcefully and drew him to his chest. Jess laid his head on his father's shoulder and cried. Jose joined him.