Catastrophy of the highest order..part two...

It's the next day and it seems like nothing has changed. Still no word on what has happened to the power or the trucks. A few drivers have gathered around a make-shift campfire made from old pallets. The discussion was on what the plan for the day was gonna be. It was obvious that no word was gonna come through from anyone's company or broker on what to do with the loads they were carrying. Drivers were talking about home and how far away it was and how to get there. You thought about your's and was wondering how you could at least get to a large city and see about things. The owners of the truck stop had come by to assess the damage the lack of power was doing to the food inside the restaurant. The mechanic from the shop had taken apart a gas pump and hooked up his generator to it and had lined up a bunch of gas cans to fill up once he got it working. He had by-passed all the electronic equipment and had it straight wired to the pumps motor. He had every one's attention as the pump came to life and he was able to fill up the gas cans. Now the plan was to use the generator to power up the coolers inside the restaurant to keep the rest of the food from spoiling and it worked. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief as they saw that there were at lease some provisions for the next few days or so. The reefer drivers agreed to put the rest of their food inside the coolers to keep it stocked up in case they were gonna be stuck there for a while.
Now that they had some power the owner of the truck stop fired up a coffee pot and passed it on to everyone who wanted some. Most drivers were puzzled about how a generator could run but not their motors on their trucks and what about that old chevy running down the road yesterday?
This brought a remark from a driver who stated that he had heard about a situation like this before. He had read a few years ago about a solar flare that would cause a Electro- magnetic pulse. It would attach itself to the power lines and take the power grid down. Also in the process it would burn up and fry every electronic micro-chip it came into contact with, thus taking out all cell phones, laptops and any other power source that was controlled by electronics.
This brought about a discussion on how to by-pass the ecm's in the trucks so the drivers could get going again. The mechanic said that it could be done but that it would take a little experimenting on his part to figure it out.
This revelation brought a great relief to everyone there. The mechanic said he had an old mack that still ran so he was gonna go try to manipulate the ecm on it and to see how to get the other trucks running.
A few drivers followed the mechanic to offer assistance and to maybe learn how to get their truck going again. The rest of them and you stayed to discuss the ramifications of what might have happened.
The discussion turned to the reports of how that would take out the navigation systems for airplanes and how they would just fall to the ground. The power and back up generators for all the hospitals and rest homes and how the grid would take years to come back on-line. This was a very sobering talk and made everyone wonder what kind of world they would be facing when they finally got going again...
It was 68 miles or so to Petersburg, VA going up 85 and around 190 or so down to Charlotte, NC. After a little bit, everyone else went outside and turned their attention to the mechanic and his efforts. It was about 12:00 on a wednesday....