CHAPTER TEN
Doug Snyder stared intently at the monitor, gripping his coffee cup in a tense right hand but not drinking. He had long forgotten it was there. The contents had grown cold, and he couldn’t peel his eyes from the sensor data. He mouthed each number as he read it silently. The day he had long feared had finally come. Most of California experienced total devastation.
The quake that leveled San Francisco had been shallow, a worst-case scenario that every seismologist feared. The resulting ripples along San Andreas had been just as catastrophic, but deeper in the crust layer. He finally abandoned his cup and changed the view on his monitor. The satellite image confirmed the earlier data. The sudden release of weight sheared a new fault deeper out to sea and caused the coastline to slide into the gap. At least forty million lives had been lost in a single event lasting less than an hour. The Big One had finally come.
As he stood to leave, something new caught his eye. Several major quakes rocked Michigan. Bending over the keyboard, he pulled up sensors in an area one thousand miles away. While the California faults were common knowledge, these sites were not. The public only worried about them when the occasional moderate jolt rumbled through the tier states or Midwest. Usually this could be tied to fracking and the slippage caused by sea water pumped into the oil wells near the faults.
Just as he feared, activity between the Great Lakes had also intensified. There were five faults between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron with a larger and potentially deadlier fault lying directly beneath Lake Superior. If his instruments were correct, the area was about to echo what had occurred in what was, until this very hour, California.
He turned one final glance toward the television screen. As expected, the news had remained largely silent. The major broadcasts were unsure how to report the incident, and stunned reporters seemingly forgot how to deliver news without a hovering helicopter or twitter traffic. How can they simply report facts when all they know to do is spout opinions? Doug missed the days of Walter Cronkite and how the man had soothed the world while informing the masses Oswald murdered Kennedy—allegedly, of course.
He switched his screen to his own monitors and punched in several new sites, polling data closer to home. These, too, foretold impending doom, but of a different variety. All at once several sensors blinked off, sending error messages instead of readings. He quickly detached his government issued laptop from its charger and ran. His white Department of Interior vehicle waited outside with USGS written in green letters. He tossed his things into the seat beside him and drove.
The distance was far, about eighty-five miles to the first sensor. He needed the data immediately, and a system reset must be done on station. With one hand on the wheel he texted Beau and let him know his destination and reason for leaving in a rush.
The response came immediately. “Return to station. Too dangerous near the crater.” Irritated, Doug turned off his screen and tossed the device beside the laptop. He stepped harder on the gas and accelerated.
He listened to the radio as he drove, two men spouting off scientific data as if they were knowledgeable. Everything they said was conjecture. He pushed the truck even faster, heedless of consequences if pulled over. One of the men mentioned Yellowstone. Doug turned up the volume.
“It makes you wonder,” the man said, “if an event like this could trigger that sucker.”
“Of course it can,” muttered Snyder.
The other voice weighed in, “What would it take for that?”
“Depends on the pressure,” replied Doug. He switched the channel and listened to classic rock the rest of the way.
After a while he began to relax. Holding that much adrenaline could tire the body, and he focused his breathing in an attempt to conserve energy. At one point he even sang along with the radio. Hotel California always got his vocals going. “You can check out any time you like,” he belted out, “but you can never …”
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The blast lit the sky ahead and colored it red and orange. Even at high altitude he could see the mushroom cloud form. “No,” he pleaded, “not this!” He accelerated to dangerous speeds, determined to check his instruments. The shockwave rippled through the clouds above, disturbing the sky as if it were water disturbed by a speeding boat. At almost the same moment it passed overhead, his radio ceased to work.
Usually when a radio loses signal, the listener is met by crackling static that ebbs and sputters along with the distortion of the radio waves. This time it did not. It simply died. At precisely the same moment his headlights and the instruments from his dashboard fell dark. He picked up his phone, the screen had also turned black. As a scientist, Doug Snyder knew what had caused the interruption. He sped across the asphalt, knowing also he couldn’t shut off the engine. If he did, it would never again start.
The blasts had been high altitude nuclear bursts—also known as electromagnetic pulses. These would have fried every piece of electronic circuitry in North America and possibly even half the world. Older diesel trucks, like the one Doug was driving, would continue to run and idle until switched off or out of gas, but the circuitry needed to turn the starter and ignite the crank would have to be replaced with fresh components that had been shielded from the pulse.
Heedless of the darkness hiding the road, Doug pressed his foot harder to the floor and sped into the night. Twenty minutes later he arrived at his destination. He threw the door open and raced toward the station. He dropped his key twice as he fumbled with the lock, but finally managed a turn. The door wouldn’t budge. He stepped back and examined the hinges. They had warped along with the frame.
Small cracks had formed in the rocks nearby. He followed these toward his favorite spot, a small lake teeming with life and the reason he’d chosen a life as a scientist—to protect and preserve what we as humans destroy. He wiped tears from his cheeks as he approached. Usually he would find it surrounded by elk or deer. Occasionally he would spot a bear drinking from the springs that fed into the larger body. But tonight there was no life in this bastion of hope for nature. He felt his feet turn to lead as he approached, unable to push them forward. The lakebed was dry.
No, he thought, there hasn’t been this kind of activity! And then he noticed the puddles that remained, clinging to the mud as samples of the life-giving waters that once were. Steam rose into the air as if the lake had boiled. Here and there fish lay lifeless as if discarded or tossed from an aircraft flying over. Suddenly his legs found their purpose and he ran.
The geyser was just over the next ridge. He sprinted as fast as he could, panting from the effort. When he topped the hill, Doug dropped to his knees, eyes wide and reflecting not one but ten newly formed fissures. Each belched steam and discarded heat into the air. He placed both hands on the ground as he tried to stand but paused. Beneath his palms the earth rumbled, slowly at first but then with anger. When the sleeping caldera blew, Doug Snyder was there. A proud volcanologist and lifelong scientist for the USGS, he found the eruption as beautiful and awe-inspiring as he had hoped. He died doing what he loved—witnessing the smallness of mankind.
*****
Beau Raines calculated the timing of the eruption against the text Doug had sent. If the fool had continued, and he figured he had, then Snyder would have arrived mere minutes before the eruption of the largest super volcano in North America. He checked the camera footage from the live feed one more time. Before the blackout, there had been no warning, except for several new geysers that had formed an hour before. He picked up his phone and made the call. This was a national emergency.
His phone and all the lights of his office blinked off simultaneously. Normally during a power loss, the power supplies would beep a cacophony of warnings, chirping like robotic crickets protesting the darkness. But their chilling silence startled the director. Surely not every battery supply was drained, he reasoned. Somewhere in the building an engine started, and the emergency generator powered up. Despite its hum, the backup lighting never came on. After standing and walking to the window, he gazed for a while, taking in the blackened skyline of Denver.
The entire city had lost power, eerily blending into the front range of the Rockies. Off in the distance several flashes exploded beyond the mountain tops, sending undulating waves that lit the sky and majestically crowned each peak with vibrating colors. It reminded him of the Aurora Borealis, only larger. It seemed to grow as he watched, reaching eastward as if swallowing the blackness.
Snow appeared to fall from the sky, heavy flakes drifting down that seemed more gray than white. He leaned forward, straining to watch the phenomenon as it covered the streets below. Suddenly, he realized he watched the fallout of Yellowstone—belched from the earth and blowing cinders across the night sky. As a scientist he knew this ash would cover the continent by the next midday.
A sudden rumbling shook beneath his feet as he gripped the window ledge for balance. He watched with awe as mountain peaks crumbled before his eyes, collapsing into a growing fault that ripped through the city and worked its way southward. The building around him creaked and groaned as steel girders failed, toppling into the waiting chasm and swallowing him whole. His final thought was of his family and how he wished he had followed his own advice by spending less time at work.