by Bobby Akart
Taylor took another sip of coffee and let out a slight cough. “What about the DHS secretary’s suggestion?”
White grimaced. “Honestly, he’s got a point. I know the people at FERC. They’ll try to maintain some semblance of control over the regionals, but they don’t have any enforcement power. Same applies to the regional council heads. The fact is that the individual utilities are gonna do what they’re gonna do, provided, however, they have the black start capability. You simply can’t start electricity without electricity.”
Their conversation was interrupted by a NASA team member. “Ms. Taylor, I’m sorry to interrupt. We need to show you something.”
Taylor nodded. “Sandra, will you join me?”
“Sure. I like space stuff. Besides, there’s nothing for me to do, but being here beats going back to Atlanta.”
“What do you have for me?” Taylor asked the young scientist.
He pointed toward a large easel pushed against the outside wall of the West Wing. It held a fifty-inch television monitor. “I can mirror our findings here.”
Taylor and White stood in front of the monitor, which came to life with a slowly moving satellite view of Asia.
The young man stayed at his computer station but was able to relay his observations to the two observers from there. “Ms. Taylor, you are looking at East Asia, Siberia in particular. You’ll notice the atmospheric pressure lines overlaid above the continent.”
“Aren’t those unusually high numbers?”
“Yes, ma’am. They are. Now, let me change the point of view to another satellite. Please notice the cloud formation. Do you see how low it is?”
“My god, I see it,” said Taylor with a gasp. “The theory is true.”
The young scientist was excited that his boss immediately recognized his findings. “Ms. Taylor, let me add one more thing, if you don’t mind.” He tapped on his keyboard and brought up another live video feed.
“Where is this streaming from?” she asked.
“It’s coming from a National Security Agency drone that is held out to the Russians as a weather forecaster. Only, for our purposes, it’s not spying. It’s revealing the weather.”
“It’s monsoonal. Where is this?” Taylor asked.
“The Loess Plateau in China, just south of the Gobi Desert.”
“Wait,” interrupted White. “It’s raining like that in the desert?”
Taylor turned away from the monitor and held her hand up, indicating to the aide to stop his presentation for a moment. She tucked her long hair behind her ears and explained, “There is a hypothesis that galactic cosmic rays are able to induce sudden low cloud formation, which has a profound influence on the Earth’s climate patterns. The hypothesis is known as the Svensmark Effect, or more commonly, the umbrella effect.”
“The clouds create an umbrella, I take it,” interjected White.
“Yes, but it is more complicated than that. Experimentation to recreate the umbrella effect was never possible on meteorological observation data only because the Earth only experiences minute changes in the amounts of cosmic rays fighting their way through our atmosphere.
“But, as the Svensmark Effect states, during the last geomagnetic reversal transition 780,000 years ago, the low-cloud cover created by the infiltration of cosmic rays led to unusual high-pressure domes in geographic regions unaccustomed to them. This, in turn, led to extraordinary rainfall being produced.”
“Like the monsoon in a desert?” muttered White.
“Yes, exactly. According to researchers, during the last major reversal, there was a large increase in cloud cover in several parts of the world that produced so much rainfall, permanent lakes were created for tens of thousands of years.”
“And, if I may, much stronger winds,” added the NASA scientist. “The dust particles from the Earth’s deserts grew coarser and were lifted into the atmosphere. This dust, coupled with winds approaching three times anything we experience today, resulted in a blanket of wind-blown haze encircling the Earth that lowered temperatures by five degrees or more.”
White turned back to the monitor to watch the monsoon cause massive flooding in the hard-packed soil of the desert. “As the magnetic field shifts and weakens, even without a geostorm, the planet’s surface will be facing an increase in the cosmic rays. This umbrella effect can cause massive flooding and lower temperatures.”
“Yes,” added Taylor. “That is true in some areas. However, where this weather phenomenon is not coupled with a high-pressure dome, you could have the opposite effect. As the galactic cosmic rays increase, so do the low clouds, and when cosmic rays decrease in areas where the atmosphere is holding steady, the clouds will decrease also. As a result, you could have an area accustomed to excessive rainfall, like the tropical rain forests, for example, suddenly find itself deprived of moisture by this opposite-umbrella effect.”
White gasped and covered her mouth. Her eyes grew wide as she looked from Taylor to the other staffers who had gathered around to listen to the exchange.
“Nola, the damage to these ecosystems would be unfathomable. I don’t have to say what the destruction of the rain forests would do to the global environment.”
Taylor grimaced. “I’ll say it. Soil erosion. Desertification. Flooding. Increased greenhouse gases. Global weather patterns would be changed forever.”
White shook her head and nodded toward the Oval Office. “And they’re worried about their precious electricity.”
Chapter 20
Town Hall
New Amsterdam, Indiana
Population: 24.
Families: 8.
God-fearing, red-blooded Americans: 100%
When the census taker came around in 2010, there was a debate as to whether the residents wanted to be counted at all. She’d been sent down from Corydon and stood in the middle of Main Street alone, other than a Heinz 57 shepherd-retriever mix, or as they say in Australia—a bitsa, meaning the dog had bits o’ this and bits o’ that.
The dog refused to be counted, and the townsfolk eventually succumbed to the pressure, and the quaint town along the Ohio River began receiving federal tax dollars. Because, after all, the job of the local government was to get that money. Sure, it went against their principles, but somebody was gonna spend it.
In 2014, the town and their neighbors gathered together for an old-fashioned barn-raising party. Instead of a barn, they’d built a city hall, a simple, white clapboard structure that contained an office for Mayor Jacob Youtsler and his wife, the town’s clerk and secretary.
The mayor was a direct descendent of the early settlers to Southeast Indiana. Like the Boones and the Harrisons, the Youtslers, who were of Holland Dutch descent, were attracted to the fertile soil found along the banks of the Ohio, as well as the traders who made their way up and down the river.
At the start of the Civil War, New Amsterdam was the largest town in Harrison County, and it remained on par with Corydon through the Depression years. That was until, unfortunately, the Great Ohio River flood of 1937 devastated the town.
Water levels on the Ohio began to rise on January 5 as heavy rains fell in Ohio. By the second and third week of the year, record levels of rain fell almost continuously until the river crested on the eighteenth of January. Just five days later, the water level had increased an incredible fifty-four feet, forcing the town of Evansville, Indiana, to evacuate their town and declare martial law.
The river kept rising. By the twenty-sixth, water levels in Cincinnati reached a seventy-three-foot higher level than normal along its banks—by far the highest ever recorded. The local radio stations were broadcasting live twenty-four hours a day. In an attempt to warn its listeners of the rapid rise of the river, some stations outside the flood zone rebroadcast the local stations using telephone lines for as long as they could until the power to much of Cincinnati was lost.
The government’s response was slower than citizens had hoped for. By the time the U.S. Army Corps of Engin
eers sent a fleet of boats and equipment to handle the situation, the waters had risen so rapidly that they were unable to pass under bridges because there wasn’t enough clearance. Some boats circumvented the bridges, traveling over flooded farmlands and dodging powerlines. President Franklin Roosevelt dispatched thousands of workers to the area, who brought tent housing and food.
For three weeks, the torrential rains continued, and it wasn’t until February 5, a full month after the waters first began to rise, that the residents along the banks of the Ohio River began to feel some relief. As the waters receded, damages were assessed. Three hundred eighty-five people lost their lives. Millions were left homeless. The value of damages to property was estimated by President Roosevelt to be five hundred million dollars, roughly equivalent to eighty-five trillion dollars today.
Historically, January 1937 was deemed to be the wettest month on record for Ohio and Southeast Indiana. The waters eventually receded, draining into the Mississippi River and finally into the Gulf of Mexico. Mother Earth managed to fix itself after she cried nonstop for a month that year.
That would not always be the case.
New Amsterdam lost half its population in 1937, the start of a downward trend as the industrialized world and the growth of America’s cities consumed the tiny town’s population. Decade after decade, the census takers found fewer heads to count. But the heads that remained in New Amsterdam and the surrounding farms were passionate about their community, and they’d gathered at the nondescript town hall to voice their concerns.
“We pay taxes just like them folks in Corydon!”
“Yeah, why should our homes be broken into and our neighbors killed because the sheriff doesn’t want to get off his duff and do something?”
“We need our own police force!”
“Yeah!”
Mayor Jake, as he was known around town, tried to calm down the crowd. He’d pulled the meeting together after speaking with Squire and Chapman, thinking it would be a routine gathering for the locals to exchange ideas and conversation about the power outage. Since then, the home invasions and murders had occurred, leaving the locals in an uproar fueled by anger and fear.
He pounded the gavel on the folding table that was set up for his monthly city council sessions. Every two years, he’d strong-armed three of his neighbors to run for council. Only half of the town was eligible to vote, and of those, only half bothered unless there was a presidential or governor’s race on the ballot. Still, he and the members of the city council usually ran unopposed with a unanimous vote of seven or eight.
His council contained their emotions as they allowed the demonstration to continue. Everyone was concerned about the turn of events. Like many Americans, they questioned the president’s decision but understood the reasoning. The science was difficult for them to comprehend, so very few understood that the power outage could be long term.
The arrival of Squire, along with Chapman and Isabella, would serve to educate them and provide a reality check for everyone who attended.
Chapter 21
Town Hall
New Amsterdam, Indiana
The Boones were the last to arrive, not because they were late, but because everyone else had begun to descend upon town hall hours ago. By the time they entered town hall, the citizens of New Amsterdam and the neighboring farms thought they’d solved the world’s problems. That would soon change.
Mayor Jake pounded the gavel and hollered over the fired-up crowd of forty, a standing-room-only bunch, who raised the temperature levels in the building to near ninety degrees.
“Everyone! Everyone! Please, it’s four o’clock. We need to get started.”
A woman in the crowd pled with the mayor. “Jake, can we go outside? It’s hard to breathe in here.”
“Too much hot air!” said a deep voice amongst the group, who drew laughter from several attendees.
“Okay! Okay! I agree. This is probably more people than the fire marshal would approve anyway.”
The group laughed as they forced their way through the single door at the front of the building. New Amsterdam didn’t have a fire marshal. Or a dog catcher. Or a police chief. Just Mayor Jake and the three members of the council, who only showed up on the second Monday of the month for coffee and pastries.
Squire grabbed Chapman’s arm and held him to the side as the residents filed out. He wanted to talk with Mayor Jake alone before the meeting formally started. He and his wife were the last to exit the building, and Squire introduced them to Chapman and Isabella. After some brief small talk, Squire got right to the point.
“Jake, we caught a little bit of their mood when we arrived. They’re pretty fired up, and I get that. But now is not the time for us to let emotions take over.”
“I agree, Squire. I don’t know how I’m gonna calm them down. They’re angrier at Sheriff Clark than they are at the doggone marauders who did this to our neighbors.”
“I don’t blame them. That said, we need to keep this meeting focused on how we’re gonna deal with the overall situation. A vigilante mob stormin’ into Corydon demanding justice or chasin’ after these thugs who attacked the old people doesn’t deal with the big picture.”
Mayor Jake nodded. “Here’s the thing. I’m not sure they understand the big picture, as you call it.”
Chapman wiped the sweat off his brow and made eye contact with Isabella. “Mayor, do you think they’re ready for the truth? You know, to face the realities of what we’re facing?”
The mayor shrugged. “I’m not sure any of us know what that looks like. I mean, I know you’re the closest thing we have to a resident expert.”
“Isabella, too. What I know from the weather side is supplemented by what she knows on the climate and geological side. This is your meeting. All I want to know is, can these people handle the facts as we know them?”
The mayor looked skyward for guidance. “I don’t know. They need to focus on their survival, which involves a whole lot more than chasin’ after the killers who came off the interstate.”
“Jake, fear is a great motivator. Let Chapman and Isabella lay out the facts. I think our friends and neighbors will respond accordingly. I have faith in them,” Squire said.
“I’m glad you do, Squire. Let’s go give it a shot.”
The group stepped around to the east side of the building, where everyone had gathered in the shade and sat on picnic tables, which had been arranged in rows. A large wooden crate had been placed against the side of the building. Symbolically, it was a soap box, or a bully pulpit, depending on one’s point of view.
Mayor Jake carefully stood on the crate so that he could see all the faces in the crowd, which had now swelled to nearly fifty locals. He began by addressing the crime spree occurring overnight and how it related to the sheriff’s office.
“As y’all know, I’ve got some law enforcement training. It isn’t much due to the injury I sustained while on the Indy police force, but it’s enough to help our small community formulate a plan.
“Let me also add this. As a community, we’ve got to come together and pool our resources to both protect one another and also lend a hand when one is needed. The first thing we have to identify is what the boundaries are of our community.
“Harrison County has always been divided by the farms and ranches to the south, and Corydon, where most of the people work in Louisville. For two hundred years, the Ohio River has defined us. You folks, like my family, are the salt of the earth. We get our hands dirty. We teach our kids at home. We believe in God, country, and family.
“I’m not sayin’ this is an us versus them situation. But as our friend Squire Boone said to me yesterday, our world just got a whole lot smaller. We’ve got to rely on one another and just put out of our minds what Corydon, or its sheriff, or any of the Clark cronies who run that town are up to.”
“But what about what happened up by New Middleton?” a woman asked.
“That’s a matter for the state police,”
replied Mayor Jake. “Here’s the way I look at it from my limited law enforcement experience. We have to predict, protect, and respond. Let me explain.
“The first thing we have to recognize is that nobody is coming to help. Sheriff Clark, for whatever reason, is staying close to home.”
“I know why!” shouted one man, whose outburst prompted others to join in.
“Yeah, me too! He’s gonna spend all the county’s resources to protect that dang bank and his family’s properties.”
“Absolutely! The Clarks have their own private security force!”
Mayor Jake looked around for his gavel. Realizing he’d left it inside and that he didn’t have anything to pound it on, he simply shouted them down. “I get it. You guys are angry. So am I. We have to focus on the future. If anything, what happened last night should be a wake-up call to us all.”
One of the city councilmen came to his aid. “I agree, Mayor Jake. Please continue.”
“Okay. Now, here is what I mean by predict, protect, and respond. In a powerless world, our alarm systems don’t work. Neither do our telephones. We all need to look at our own personal situations and try to think like the marauders who descended upon our communities last night.
“Ask yourself some logical questions. Does my property look like an attractive target for crooks? What can I do to dissuade them from breaking into my barn or storage buildings or home? Try to assess how you’re most vulnerable and then predict how they will come at you.
“Once you’ve done that, you can set up an effective plan to defend and protect yourselves and your property. The larger farms and ranches might set up twenty-four seven perimeter patrols and create a warning system. Smaller homes might divide up their responsibilities by sleeping in shifts. No matter what, make sure you have someone focusing on the protection of your property at all times.”
