Terrorists bomb dozens of sites in the US, taking down oil refineries, power plants, etc. If you step back and think, about it, most of the disruptions after an attack like that will be temporary and local to regional in scope. Nevertheless, in this book, the country goes mad max on the very first day. Our heroine and a friend leave their college to pick up some prepper type supplies our heroine’s father has left for her, and then head to her parents’ home.
In the course of a few days, there are about four attempts on her life. The book also tracks one of her would-be killers, who also has about three people or groups of people try to kill him or his friends
The background characters are very stereotyped. There are many people that preppers call zombies – murders and thieves, Then there are the preppers, who are very loyal to fellow preppers. These preppers have apparently devoted most of their lives preparing for a catastrophe. In real life there are extreme preppers, like those in the story, but also milder preppers, who might have a few weeks or months worth of food and drinking water stashed their houses.
Maybe I’m nitpicking, but there is just a huge mismatch between the crisis and the reactions of the populace. The crisis faced in this book is milder than Hurricane Katrina. In that hurricane, the murder rate did not spike appreciably. If real life was like this book, 10 to 20% of the affected population would have been murdered within the a couple of weeks.
The characters are also one dimensional – they don’t really have much of a personality or backstory apart from the crisis they are facing.