The journey home begins the adventure
What looks like just another regional power outage, turns out to be a global power-grid failure. Martin Simmons is at work in downtown Boston. When his carpool, busses, and trains fail as a means to travel the fifty miles to his home to New Hampshire, Martin decides to go with his Plan B: walk home
He was not as prepared as he wanted to be. His Get-Home-Bag was not really ready. He figured he could muddle through a two or three-day walk. How bad could it be? What he did not plan for, was Susan: a city girl through and through. His Plan B had to be revised.
Author’s Notes on Book 1
There are many grid-down stories out there. Usually, the cause is an EMP or a nuclear attack. As such, the characters all know that the S has hit the fan and they go into prepper-mode right away.
What if the grid went down and no one seems to know why? To the man in the street, how much did the ‘why‘ really matter? He couldn’t work at his job any longer. He could not get home easily. Life became very inconvenient.
Power failures happen. The vast majority of people do not go totally Mad Max during the first hours of blackouts. They muddle through and wait. What if, when a global SHTF event occurs, everyone thinks things will be fixed “soon?” There would be a period of ‘normalcy bias’ before the darker side of humanity would eventually show itself.
Another common feature of post-apocalyptic fiction has the hero blessed with ten thousand gallon of gasoline, or he had inherited a small fortune or an ideal remote cabin or farm which enabled him to prepare. Or, the hero just happens to keep finding exactly what he needed for the problems encountered. How handy!
Then too, the hero is usually single and hunky and rescues a beautiful woman who also happens to be single. Romance develops. What if, instead, the hero rescues the fair damsel, but he’s faithfully married? What then?