When William R. Forstchen wrote One Second After in 2009, the novel warned us of the dangers of man- or nature-caused EMP events. These can induce a domino collapse to civilization as we know it. Now in the recent sequel, One Year After, he writes in the preface that not much has changed:
…frustratingly, much is still the same. I had hoped that by now there would have been government action at the national level to better secure our power grid, create plans both for defense and for public preparedness, and a more robust foreign policy that makes clear that the acquisition by rogue nations a weapons that could generate an EMP will NEVER be tolerated. None of this has happened.
Rather than spending the money to secure the vulnerable and ancient power grid, and investing in defense measures, the government spends billions buying votes, pay off contributors and whatever else allows them to hold on to power. This isn’t a partisan issue, yet we (the citizens) have let them (the professional politicians) ignore an avoidable catastrophe that defies anything we have seen. Forstchen continues:
The books are fiction, but the scenario could be real…Our parents and grandparents of the “Greatest Generation” allowed their leaders to close their eyes to the growing threats around the world…and a terrible price was paid. History has a hundred such examples…I pray that thirty years hence, these books are forgotten as dark tales of warning that never came true…I pray that I never one day hear, “Bill, you were right.”
And on 
Darrick Dean 