PROLOGUE – Part I
At 2.15am on Thursday 11th August 2020 NASA issued a press release about a small comet or meteorite possibly passing through the solar system in the next 6 or 7 days. The release time suggested this was a trivial event. Releasing it casually over the wire services rather than a press conference gave the same impression. Moreover, it limited the number of hacks who would be interested.
The release was deliberately vague about the details of comet C16X11, overestimating its arrival and overlooking its size, speed, origin, and course. It was still unable to be picked up by anything but the major telescopes, and NASA controlled most of them.
In any event it was overlooked due to the growing unrest in the Middle East between Turkey, Iran and the Kurdish rebels. War had just been declared. The news agencies had bigger fish to fry than some rock passing by.
*****
It was Saturday morning before the President had all the facts in front of him. He had flown back in Airforce One from a summit meeting in Europe. Intelligence reports from New Mexico said that there was a 60% probability that the comet was going to strike the earth. The high margin for error was due to the possibility that it might break up, veer off or possibly even strike the moon. The path it was taking was erratic.
“We spend billions of dollars on a space program, radars, satellites and computers and the best they can give me is 60%?”
“Yes sir, at this point in time sir that’s all we can estimate.” The director of NASA was nervous in the presence of the President when he was in this mood.
“And what about the size of this thing? You estimate it’s a 2 miles by3 miles. How close is that? That seems pretty small to me in terms of damage it can do.
“Well sir, it’s very difficult from astronomical observations to measure the size of the nucleus with any precision. The work we do on impact scenarios will be based on that estimate.”
“I don’t want estimates Godammit. I want an answer. You get those eggheads out there to get on it. I want an answer. We’ve got about 4 days before you think this thing may hit. I want to know if it will, when and where. You got that?”
“Yes sir.” The director took his cue and left.
The President turned to the Director of the CIA. “Who else knows about this?”
******
“Again?! We’ve done this three times now. Me and your guys. This thing is coming. This thing is going to hit next Wednesday evening sometime. We have to do something.” Zac was frustrated. This was ridiculous. It was now Saturday night and they have been here for four days already.
“Well we’re going to do it again and give them the best figures we can, got it?”
Zac threw the major a cynical salute and turned back to his computer console. He had no idea what was going on outside these four walls. Did other people know? Were others preparing while they were stuck in here?
Zac had given in two days earlier when faced with the grim ultimatum from the Major. Cooperate or be locked in the cramped storeroom for the duration. Not much choice. Campcots, supplies and more technicians and security had been brought in. Armed soldiers roamed the perimeter in case anyone got wind of what was going on.
They had managed to keep a lid on it pretty well. When the sheriff had called in to say that he was going to be up at the installation for a few days his deputy had taken over with alacrity. Fortunately his wife was away in Florida visiting her parents and he was not missed. Zac and Julie’s friends were mostly the people that they worked with and they had been given leave while NASA conducted ‘tests’ on the equipment.
So they were stuck in here with this idiot Major and his boys running tests on the computer and limited simulations on the possible impact site. Make that probable. Zac was sure it was going to hit. He had done the figures and he knew. He had a feeling that they did too, otherwise why would they all still be here?
******
Late that Sunday evening the President again met with the Directors of the CIA and NASA. No one else knew what was going on in either New Mexico or near space.
“So, next Wednesday evening somewhere in Alaska. 70% chance of impact. Likely to cause a crater the size of Maine, tidal waves and fires. Is that it?”
“Well sir, we’ve been unable to do any detailed modeling on the effects of impact because their computers aren’t designed for that. They would need reprogramming. Unless the data is sent elsewhere for analysing.
“No way”, chimed in the director of the CIA. “We have this thing on a need to know basis and that’s fine. So far we’ve kept this thing under wraps. Christ even the media haven’t got wind of what’s going on in New Mexico. We keep it that way as long as possible. There’s no point exciting the populace if nothing’s going to happen.”
“Well I’m a betting man Jim and the odds are getting worse by the minute. But I agree we keep this thing tight. You need more equipment or men or whatever we transport them out there. Nothing and no-one leaves that installation after they’ve been there, got it?”
“Yes Mr. President. I’ll get you a list of what I need”. The director of NASA gathered his notes and left.
“Jim, you better get me the transatlantic hook up. Let’s see how the Brits and the Russkis are doing with this. And call the Chinese too.”
********
Monday morning saw the arrival of a new batch of computer scientists and technicians at the New Mexico installation. There were 3 this time, with a whole range of hardware and software. By lunch the equipment was set up and the new people and been brought up to speed on the situation.
“Our little band is growing isn’t it Jules.”
Julie and Zac were sitting on their campcots in one of the storage areas being used for sleeping quarters. Outside the new technicians who were still fresh, were going to work through the modeling exercise for the impact site and effects. Julie was exhausted. She had been working hard with the other techs since Tuesday and had not been sleeping well.
“They fit any more in here and we’re going to burst at the seams. When do you suppose they’ll let us go?” she asked, as she lay down on the pillow. It felt so comforting.
“I Don’t know baby, I don’t know.”
*******
“How accurate is this scenario?” the President asked. It was Monday night and he had missed dinner with the Speaker of the house to be here. He was irritable. He had performed well in his first term. Now he was going to be judged on a decision he made about something that was completely out of his control.
“Sir we estimate that these figures are between 80 and 90% accurate. Impact in Alaska is going to cause earthquakes, fires and tidal waves. We estimate that the population of Alaska will be decimated by 95 % and tidal waves will sweep through the remote regions of both Canada and northern Russia. The affect on continental USA will be minimal.”
“And the other idea?”
“Sir, we cannot launch a shuttle equipped with the right armaments in time. If we had the capability to launch missiles from outside the earth’s atmosphere the chances of averting impact are less than 50%”.
“Why?”
“Because sir, even if we could hit it, the comet is now so close that it would break up and shower us with more smaller fragments.”
“Damn”. The President rubbed his hand across his face.
Minimal impact on continental USA. That wasn’t so bad. That was the majority of the electorate safe anyway. On the other hand he would be condemned for being so callous. “I need some time alone gentlemen”, he dismissed his two advisers and leaned back in his chair, staring out the large bulletproof window in the wall.
He had a decision to make. Release the information and cause widespread panic and condemnation for not doing anything sooner. Of course he would be saving lives in the north, but the panic in the cities would be contagious. Doomsdayers would be having a field day, as would the looters and every other criminal element in the cities.
Or he could say nothing. Wait until it became visible and ride the wave of panic and outrage. By that time of course it would be too late anyway. Damned if you do damned if you don’t.
******
“Gentlemen I’ve made a decision. I’ve spoken to the British PM and the Russian and Chinese Presidents. We’re agreed that the best way to go is not to release. The impact on the population would be greater than the impact of the comet. Organise the evacuation of all personnel at research stations inside this area.” He showed them the map of the possible impact sight with a red ring drawn around it for 500 miles. “Tell em we’re doing nuclear tests. Anything. Just get em out of there as quiet as possible.”
“The Brits agree with our forecasts, based on the limited studies they have been able to make with the data we gave them. This will not be a big event, even if it does hit. We release to the media for the Monday late night news. Not before. Meet back here tomorrow and we can draft it. That will be all.”
*******
It was Saturday night and they were still here. What the hell where these guys on? Were they going to blindly follow orders and sit here while Alaska went up in smoke?
Zac went looking for the Major.
“Hey Denson, hey, what’s going on?”
“What is it?”
“What’s going on. We sent them the model this morning. This comet is going to hit Alaska in 3 days. What are they doing about it? And why are we still here? We’ve done our bit. Let us out of here?’
“We will all be staying here until I get contrary orders. I haven’t the faintest idea what is being done with our data. Any more questions? Because I’m really getting tired of the sound of your whining voice. You’ve done nothing but bitch since we got here. Give it a break. NASA has this under control.
*******
On Monday night the technicians were allowed to leave the New Mexico complex. The majority were flown back east to their homes or bases, having been sworn to secrecy.
Zac and Julie headed for town to the nearest bar. There they stayed up late drinking, playing pool, and plotting their case for false imprisonment against the US government. Early in the morning Julie showed signs of inebriation and a desire to go back to Zac’s place. Zac thought all his Christmas’s had come at once.
They made love until the sun came up and then fell asleep exhausted. By the time they woke up late on Tuesday afternoon they had only a few hours left to live.
********
The comet burst into view at tremendous speed. To those with telescopes it was a terrifying sight looming large in their sights. It looked like the doomsday approaching. Not God’s vengeance or the four horsemen of the apocalypse, but an age-old comet bearing down on the planet.
Finally on Monday night when it was too late, NASA released a statement saying that the comet was due to pass close to the earth on Tuesday evening. The likelihood of it striking the planet was minimal. Such impact would be in a remote area that would cause no damage. They did not release the fact that it was actually going to hit.
After a week of world-wide interest in the Kurdish war as it was being called, it was knocked off the front page of the morning newspapers. Astronomers around the world differed in their opinions. They argued on the Internet and the airwaves about its effect. Most were adamant it would hit. Commentators speculated on the outcome. And the doomsdayers did indeed have a field day.
Throughout it all NASA stuck to its line. They were bombarded with irate calls from the public, the media and even other nations. The phone lines were jammed up. The government was going to lie till the end, wait for the impact, and sort out the mess later.
The small group of technicians and NASA scientists had made two mistakes, not necessarily their own fault, but which were to have calamitous effects. The first was that the comet was actually almost double the size they had projected. It was hard to accurately determine its size as the black material on the surface of the nucleus was extensive enough to reduce the vaporisation and ‘tail’ that normally accompanies a comet.
The second error was that working in isolation as they were, the technicians and modeling programmers did not have the chance to interact with other scientists as with any normal project team comprising specialists from different disciplines. Thus they had failed to take into account the proximity of the vast Alaskan oilfields to the probable impact site.
********
The comet struck the earth at 8.19 p.m., Tuesday August 16th 2020 Washington time. It smashed into the Alaskan region near Endicott Island. This remote island was famous for only one thing. Its proximity to a large undersea oilfield. Nearby lay the enormous oil reserves of the National Petroleum Reserve in the Arctic. 1.6 billion hectares of reserves containing untapped oil and gas.
As the comet struck and blew up it created a huge crater. The intense heat caused raging fires which found and ignited the oil. The resultant underground fires and explosions were of catastrophic proportions. The ground shook as the oil beneath it burnt and exploded.
Huge chunks of ice broke free from the polar ice-cap and drifted away. The impact sent tidal waves radiating out before striking the land surrounding it. Millions of tons of ice and dust flew into the air.
With such destruction at the top of the planet the earth wobbled on its axis. The balance had been upset and as the explosions in Alaska ripped the land asunder, the tectonic plates were set in motion much faster than their usual ponderous pace. The polar ice cap shifted its weight. The superheated liquid of the asthenosphere beneath the earth’s crust swished underneath its mantle like a man with a full belly.
As the boiling magma core of the earth found the joins of the shifting tectonic plates they erupted through these weak spots in the earth’s crust that were only 5 miles deep. Fire, flame, lava, steam and arsenic filled gases came pouring forth from the very core of the earth in a hundred places all over the world. This set off more and more seismic reactions and the effects snowballed.
More and more the strength of the earth’s crust was tested. Something was going to give.
Great rifts appeared through the lands as the tectonic plates shifted. Volcanic, boiling magma, thousands of degrees in heat, spewed forth burning the landscape. All over the planet the sea poured into these wounds, causing massive explosions as heat met water and great clouds of steam went rolling out from these rifts in the earths crust.. The earth crumpled and twisted, like a planet giving birth. Or in death throes.
The continents slipped and slid, and as they passed these weak spots in the earth more explosions were set off.
At the San Andreas fault hell had arrived. The earth split asunder pouring forth its flaming core. The sea rushed in and with an almighty bang, the sound of thunder in the heavens, the split widened and burst as sea met flame. An explosion hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb rent the air, as most of California blew up and then sank beneath the waves.
Greenland was swamped. Europe and Russia having been hit by tidal waves, bucked and bounced like a play toy in a bath. The Eurasian plate collided with the edge of the Antarctic plate and the earth crumpled and buckled, subsiding in most areas and rising in others. Great chunks of ice and snow broke off. Massive icebergs as big as small islands drifted away to cause their own havoc.
The South American and African plates ground against each other, folding the earth for hundreds of kilometers inland. New mountain chains were formed in minutes and the vast Amazon basin flooded nearly to the Andes as the sea was pushed inland. Areas of desert in Africa were submerged as the same happened at the other edge of this tectonic collision.
The volcanic Pacific rim known as the ‘Ring of Fire’ erupted in multiple locations.
Eruptions, explosions and earthquakes occurred in New Zealand, New Guinea, the Pacific islands, Indonesia and all the way through Asia. The land buckled and burnt with terrible destructive force.
The Indo-Australian plate separated from the Antarctic plate colliding and bouncing off the Pacific plate with the same result. Pacific Islands and atolls sank with barely a trace save for small pieces of debris. The plate spiraled in an anti clockwise direction.
As the tectonic plate crossed the weak volcanic area of the Pacific rim another chain of explosions was set off. This massive destructive force ripped the plate in two. The largest part of the plate with the main landmass of Australia drifted, as a life-raft in the sea, slowly rotating and sliding in a south westerly direction towards the former Antarctic Circle.
The explosion was so violent that whilst it sheared the plate in two, it propelled the smaller part away from the flame and eruptions sending a tidal wave north into the Indian Ocean. A great cloud of volcanic gases spewed forth from the hole in the crust, enveloping the land. The poisonous cloud of Sulphur dioxide covered the land before drifting back to sea, dispersing and breaking up.
The remaining section of the plate, including the eastern tip of Australia, collided with the Pacific plate and slid under its edge. This caused the far end of the plate, with the small eastern portion of Australia on it to rise out of the water momentarily.
It raised up and came crashing down, sending the sea rushing over the land sweeping it clean. Upended as such, the destruction was terrifying. On the Gold Coast the high rise buildings tilted and crumbled, people lost their footing and fell to the ground, only to be sucked into the sea as it came racing overland. Cars slid on the roads causing horrendous collisions and pile-ups. The same destruction occurred inland as the land rose up out of the water.
The cloud of poisonous gases, predominantly arsenic and Sulphur dioxide, rolled over the land, adding to the chaos. Within minutes the entire population of this small piece of Australia lay dead or dying, either crushed by the debris or poisoned by the volcanic gases.
As the tiny leftover mass subsided and tried to right itself with the rest of the plate, the sea receded, dragging hundreds of tons of debris back into the ocean.
This pattern of destruction was repeated all over the world. Cities toppled and any living thing near rents in the earth were vaporised or poisoned. In the north near the impact site ash and dust hovered in the air for days. In some parts of the world it would be weeks before the sun shone again. But the earth righted itself, the wobble stopped, and as the plates meshed together and covered the holes in the earths crust, new continents were born.
All over the world the population lay dead or dying, save for small pockets, miraculously saved. Armageddon had arrived.
********
As the plates shifted and the land boiled, erupted and sank beneath the waves, other land arose.
Known to modern man in legend only, the ancient land of Alantis rose above the sea for the first time in 12 millennia. Lain hidden since an earlier passing of the comet, the legendary land-mass of Atlantis, once again resurfaced. Lying on the old mid Atlantic ridge between the Eurasian and African plates, it was forced upwards from the ocean floor during the upheaval. The Azores islands, as believed, were revealed to be the tops of the mountains, although the island was nowhere near the size envisaged by Plato.
In the Pacific, caught between the moving Pacific and South American plates, the comparatively tiny Nazca plate was pushed upwards.
This revealed a ‘new’ land-mass. At one end of this new but ancient continent, Easter Island rose from the water to show that it was the peak of a large mountain chain. This sunken land, also in the sunlight for the first time in 12,000 years, was the ancient land of Lemuria or MUU.
********
The planet righted itself and came back to equilibrium. The plates had moved and so had what remained of the continents. New lands had been formed and others had disappeared. The planet had changed dramatically.
In the northern hemisphere fires still raged in the Arctic as the oil fields burnt seemingly inexhaustible reserves. In the south the Pacific Islands had gone. Australia had drifted away to a new position, leaving only a small part behind, devastated and nearly totally denuded of human life. Except for a few isolated survivors.