He discovered almost immediately, though, that there were almost no salvageable electronics or useful mechanisms within at least several miles of what must have been ground zero. His own stocks had been shielded as carefully as they could against the electromagnetic pulse inherent with nuclear weaponry, but of course nothing in the city had been protected by such almost-paranoid and definitely expensive precautions. Even in sublevels that had not been completely ruined by subsequent fire or flooding, any remaining electronics still were completely fried. Most “merely” mechanical devices had succumbed, too, for all but the very simplest incorporated a host of electronic sensors and regulators as well—the purely mechanical engine carburetor or janitor-monitored boiler room of the 1960s had g
