He experiences the initial blast while riding a bus, and witnesses the flooding of the subway system by a tsunami in the wake of a nuclear detonation at sea.

Five years later, Strieber and Kunetka decide to document the effects of Warday on the United States;[5] they travel first through devastated southeast and southwest Texas.

In San Francisco, they reunite with an old friend of Strieber's, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, but are then captured, arrested, and sentenced to years of hard labor in prison.

After visiting Chicago, they continue east to Pennsylvania and into what remains of New York City, where Strieber, overcome with emotion, returns to his old apartment in the very dangerous ruins of Manhattan.

The Soviets then detonated a set of six large nuclear warheads in space above the United States, causing a massive electromagnetic pulse that crippled electronics across the country.

In response, the U.S. president, aboard Boeing E-4 NEACP, authorized a counterattack, destroying Moscow, Leningrad, Sevastopol, and the capitals of the Soviet Republics.

Soon there is no longer a single United States; California and Texas form de facto independent nations, with autonomous military forces and currencies.

Having suffered no direct attacks or fallout, California has recovered from the EMP to a prewar standard of living, with heavy Japanese and British investment and influence.

Fearful that millions of refugees from the rest of the U.S. would deluge the state and greatly damage its enviable standard of living, California closed off its borders, suspended habeas corpus, and became overtly authoritarian in both outlook and operation.

The EMP destroyed most bank accounts, 401(k) plans, pension funds, financial records, the stock market, the credit system and other electronically stored assets in the United States and Canada.

The Catholic and Episcopal churches reunite, and assisted suicide in the face of painful terminal illness is accepted and sanctioned by religious leaders including the Holy See.

Foreign companies move into the unaffected regions of the U.S. to sell electronics, machinery, and investments, while exploiting it for natural resources, leading to fears that the United States will be reduced to Third World dependency.

Important technological resources, such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory, have been seized by the Japanese, with scientists being shipped to Japan in a similar manner to Operation Paperclip after World War II.

Canada, despite escaping direct hits from nuclear weapons, was affected by the electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States and its economy was destroyed as a result.

Argentina and most of Latin America, though undamaged, is alleged to have been occupied by Western nations, to stabilize food stocks allocated to Europe and to prevent a fate similar to Mexico's.

The developing world, particularly the Indian subcontinent, Latin America, Asia, and Africa, experienced severe population declines due to famine.