“Not the time, Bill,” Richard said.
“Sorry.”
“He’s not necessarily wrong, though,” Erin said. “Think Japan, 2011 only more so. I’m hoping the distance will temper it a bit.”
“Okay, everyone up,” Richard said, once again taking charge. “Assume this building is coming down. If you have anything you need to save, grab it now. Matt, here are the van keys. Move the van to the middle of the parking lot. Everyone else, run to the middle of the parking lot.”
Everyone got moving. As soon as they were all out of the warehouse, Richard secured the delivery door, then ran to catch up with the rest.
Erin had her phone to her ear. She talked into it as she walked. “Mom and Dad, it’s Erin. Yellowstone has erupted. If you’re screening your calls, there’s going to be an earthquake within a minute or two. Be ready. Otherwise, when you get this message, pack necessities and get in the truck and get out. You have to be at least a thousand miles away from Yellowstone. If your passports are still good, go north across the border to Winnipeg then head west to Vancouver. That’s outside of the path of the ash. If you can’t do that, head east. Try for something on the shore of one of the Great Lakes. But do it fast. Bye. I love you.”
The van was parked near the center of the parking area, away from any light poles. The group gathered near it. “Let’s move away from the van, okay?” Richard said. “Things start bouncing around, you don’t want it on top of you.” Looking shocked, they milled around for a few seconds, then somehow formed a group decision and moved about a hundred feet from the van.
“Time?” Erin asked.
“2:35,” Matt answered.
“Okay then,” Erin said. “We’re now in the envelope.”
They stood, looking at each other. Then without warning, the ground heaved! Everyone went down with exclamations of fear and surprise. The earthquake continued for perhaps a minute, with the ground moving back and forth and a loud grinding and thudding sound assaulting their ears. Car and building alarms went off all around. Something exploded in the distance. Cracks appeared in the pavement. From the corner of his eye, Richard could see the van bouncing around on its suspension.
After what seemed like forever, the shaking stopped. A few alarms were still going off. In the distance, sirens began to wail. The group slowly picked themselves off the ground. They looked at each other. Everyone’s eyes were showing a lot of white.
“Everyone okay?” Richard asked. There were nods, a few grunts. Even Bill was silent except for a muttered comment about ACME earthquake pills.
“Well that wasn’t so bad…” Erin said. The looks from the others suggested she had lost her marbles. “No, seriously. Those were Raleigh waves, and they are slower than the P and S waves, so that’s about as bad as it’s going to get. I’d bet there’s a lot less damage overall than there could have been.”
The mention of damage brought things back into focus. “I need to check the equipment,” Richard said.
“I’ll check the warehouse,” Bill added.
Matt went with Richard to the van. The rest took off to the warehouse.
Richard unlocked the van and pushed up the rolling door, not sure what to expect. For a wonder, everything appeared to be still in place.
“Well, bless Bill and his engineering ‘anything-worth-doing-is-worth-overdoing’ heart,” Matt said. “We always kidded him about packing for Armageddon.”
“Who knew?” Richard replied with a wry smile.
***
Meanwhile, Bill reached the warehouse with Kevin, Erin, and Monica right behind him. Upon inspection, the building did not appear to have any obvious structural damage. There were cracks, a couple of awnings had fallen down, and the outside lights were off, but the structure itself was intact.
Bill unlocked and attempted to open the delivery door. “Oomph,” he said as the door refused to budge. Erin moved to give him a hand, followed by Kevin and Monica. They managed to get their fingers under the skirt of the door far enough to get a grip. Bill said, “1, 2, 3, lift.” The door resisted for a fraction of a second, then rose with a squeal of rubbing metal.
They entered the now-dark warehouse. Emergency lights were on, but were only good for finding the way to an exit, not for getting anything done. Kevin went to the kitchen and retrieved the emergency flashlights from the electrical outlets where they had been charging. He handed one to Monica and turned his on.
They examined the interior of the warehouse. Again, it looked like they had been lucky. The pallets of equipment and supplies were in disarray, with many items having spilled to the floor. However, since nothing had been stacked very high in the first place, there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for things to actually fall.
At that moment, the van pulled up to the warehouse door. The engine died, and Richard and Matt got out.
“Can’t believe that thing is still working,” Bill said, shaking his head.
Coming in to the warehouse, Richard said, “We need to have a discussion about what to do now. Erin, you’re the expert in this situation. What can we expect next?”
“First, do we have any communications or anything?” Erin asked.
Matt checked his phone, shook his head. “No signal.”
Kevin went and checked the TV. “Erm, the TV didn’t survive. Not that we have power…”
“Okay, then,” Erin said. “Assumptions: We’ve just had a supervolcano eruption. That’s a pretty safe bet. We can quibble about details like how big some other time. Now for the bad news.” She tried to smile but gave up after a moment. “The last couple of times Yellowstone erupted, this area was in or at the edge of the heaviest ash deposition. The jet stream goes east from Yellowstone, right over us. The eruption will put a minimum of a thousand cubic kilometers of crud into the air, and most of that will fall within a thousand miles downwind. That’s us. We could be buried up to ten feet deep.”
“They could clear it with snowplow equipment,” Kevin ventured.
“Sure,” Erin replied. “That’ll work, assuming they can figure out where to put it, right up until the fine dust in the air destroys the vehicle engines. My bet is they’ll run out of pistons before they run out of gas.”
She continued, “And that’s not to mention what the gas and dust will do to lungs. Mortality rates—animal and human—are going to be close to 100% for anyone or anything still in the zone with no protection.”
“Seriously? From dust?” Bill exclaimed.
“You should look up Marie’s Disease on the web, if we ever get the internet back, that is. It is one of the worst, most painful ways to die there is. It takes days to die, slowly asphyxiating in your own bodily fluids while racked with pain and almost completely unable to move. I’d rather be burned at the stake.”
This was a shock. Like most non-professionals, the others had thought of danger from volcanoes in terms of staying out of the way of the lava—and perhaps avoiding pyroclastic flows, thanks to recent Discovery Channel shows.
“One hundred percent?” Matt repeated in disbelief.
“Let me put it this way: everyone in town right now is dead. Period. Think Pompeii. Unless they have a working vehicle, and the freeways are still navigable, they’re all dead. Or they stay in their homes for weeks and don’t go out at all. The smart ones will be getting into their cars right now. There are no other options. Everyone’s got to breathe.”
“How long until the ash gets here?” Matt asked.
“One to two hundred miles per hour jet stream,” Erin said. “Seven hundred and fifty miles to Yellowstone. Average it out, it’ll be starting to come down by the time it gets dark. By morning you won’t be able to move out in the open.”
“Holy,” Bill said.
“Shit,” Richard finished.
Eruption
Yellowstone plateau bursts at the seams with explosions of magma more powerful than the largest nuclear weapon ever built. Thousands of cubic kilometers of rock, magma, ash and dust are blown into t
he air. The entire Yellowstone plateau (the part of it that hasn’t just been vaporized) falls into the empty magma chamber. The billowing clouds of smoke, ash, water vapor and poisonous gases rise more than 30 kilometers into the air, lit by lightning storms, burning rock, and the reflection of the bright red hell below. Pyroclastic flows at temperatures of 1000 degrees Centigrade and more race outward at 700 kilometers per hour, reaching as much as 150 kilometers away. Jackson, Cody, Powell, Rexburg, Idaho Falls, Livingston are wiped out.
Radio and phone communications are disrupted as electrically charged ash creates a maelstrom of interference. Ash clogs air filters and abrades metal parts. Turbines, cooling equipment, and engines—unless specially protected—fail within hours of exposure to the toxic, abrasive brew.
What Now?
Someone was banging on Suzie’s door and calling her name. She got up and opened her door to find Maddie and Joy standing there with fearful expressions. “What?” she asked, more abruptly than she had intended.
“It’s erupted. Yellowstone!” Maddie said, breathless. The two pushed their way into her room without waiting for an invitation. Suzie closed the door and turned to them.
“We were watching CNN in the common room. They had a chopper covering it, and suddenly it all disappeared. I mean, there was a flash, and the signal was cut off.”
Suzie thought for a second. “Have they said anything else? Do they know how big? Will we feel anything here?”
“Don’t know,” Joy answered. “The CNN anchors don’t seem to know anything more than us. Come on, Suzie. Let’s get back to the TV!”
Suzie pulled on some jeans and runners, and the three girls took off for the common area.
A crowd had already gathered by the time they got there. Normally Suzie wouldn’t expect to see this many people in the residence during summer, but everyone on the floor was there at the moment. People called out questions and made comments, and the noise level climbed as people tried to talk over each other.
Without warning, the floor heaved, and the building started to sway. There were screams, and several people hit the ground hard. The rest followed as the shaking and swaying got more pronounced. It sounded like several people were sobbing in fear. At some point during the shaking, the power went out, and the lights and TV blinked off.
After about a minute, the earthquake died down. They could hear alarms and sirens in the distance, and at least one explosion. People picked themselves up off the floor and looked around. No one appeared to be badly injured, although people were rubbing various parts of their bodies and looking unhappy.
“We should go outside,” Suzie said.
“Why?” someone asked.
“In case there’s another one,” Someone else answered.
“I’m fine here,” said the first person.
Suzie turned to her friends. “I’m going to get cleaned up then get my backpack and go up to the Union. Unless the power comes on soon, the light’s better there. Maybe someone will even have some answers.”
Joy nodded tightly. “Meet back here in a bit.”
***
They met back in the common area, each with a backpack over her shoulder. Joy said, “I guess we should take the stairs.” There were wan smiles at this glib understatement, and they all made for the staircase.
They got to the ground floor of Harper Hall without incident, thanks to emergency lighting, and made their way out of the building. They had to take a moment to orient themselves, as they weren’t used to leaving by this door, then they headed toward the Union Building.
They’d been walking for a while when an unimaginably loud roar came out of nowhere, as if every thunderstorm in history had replayed itself at once. All three girls crouched down in defense and held their ears. The sound went on for what felt like hours but couldn’t have been more than a minute.
Finally, the roar died down. The girls looked at each other in shock. “So,” said Maddie, “I think we’ve confirmed an eruption.” She gave a lopsided smile.
As they continued on their way, they noticed a crowd gathering near the University Health Center. Changing direction, they went over to investigate.
When they got there, they were perplexed to see a moving van with some equipment set out on the grass in front of it. Near the equipment, two men were standing, holding shotguns!
Let's Get Moving
Probably within two, three weeks of the time that the ash first fell, everything on the landscape was dead
Mike Voorhies, paleontologist
From Super Volcano: The Ticking Time Bomb Beneath Yellowstone National Park
“Well, there is another option,” Kevin said. “We have the portals. We have a whole world with clean air. And we have a couple of hours to get people across.”
Richard turned in surprise, since Kevin didn’t often volunteer an opinion on anything not math-related.
“So they can get eaten by sabertooth cats?” Matt asked.
“It’s still better than the alternative,” Erin replied.
Richard thought for a few seconds. “How about this? The Uni is close by, and even in summer there’s a significant population. We’ll keep one of the portal generators here, with the truck gate. Some of us will start humping supplies across. We’ll have to stand guard because the goons might still be out there and alive. Although in that case, we hope they’re hanging out at the old location.”
He gestured toward the van. “The rest will take the van and two sets of portal equipment to the university, set up a gate in as public a place as possible, and start getting people through. It’s about a forty-five minute walk here to there in civilization, so maybe a couple of hours on the other side, assuming there aren’t any deep streams or rivers that we don’t know about. You’ll have to set up the second gate on the other side, then come through that, shut down the first one, and bring it through. Then hike over here with however many people you’ve been able to round up.”
“If we get a bunch of people, that’s just a big travelling buffet lunch to anything on the other side,” Matt pointed out. “The Uni group is going to have to take a major inventory of weapons and hand them out to whoever says they can use one.”
“Also,” Monica added, “and not to put too fine a point on it, but do we actually know that we can open the gate from the other side? And if we do, will we get this side or something else?”
There was dead silence as the question sank in. No one wanted to open a gate to Greenhouse Earth. Or worse. They all turned to Kevin.
“First,” Kevin said, “it should work from any Earth. There’s nothing special about this Earth. We aren’t Earth Prime or anything like that.
“Second, there’s only one dimension involved. Right/Left. From Outland, use the same setting as we used here to get Greenhouse Earth and you’ll get us. Left is left and right is right.”
The group hurried to get organized. They loaded about half of their weapons and ammo back into the truck. Bill thought for a few seconds, grabbed several boxes labeled Night Vision Goggles and put them in the van, followed by several packages of batteries. He smiled enigmatically at the raised eyebrows.
They agreed to a plan. Richard, Erin, and Kevin would take the van to the university, while Matt, Monica, and Bill would stay at the warehouse and move supplies through. Monica had volunteered to stay and stand guard, having expressed a desire for an opportunity to give the goons another piece of her mind.
Walkie-talkies were taken out, tested, and set up. Last, Matt handed Erin a relief map of the city and a compass. He started to describe to her how to find her way to the warehouse on the other side, but Erin stopped him. “Hello. Geology student. Field trips. Camping.”
“Right,” Matt said, smiling at her and trying not to look concerned. “Just be careful and make it back, okay?” Erin squeezed his hand and kissed him.
“And listen,” he added, “if you can’t make it to the Uni by road, come back and we’ll try to get over there from the other side.
That’ll be slower, but you work with what you’ve got.”
In The News
In a statement from the White House, officials have assured the public that FEMA, with the full support of the National Guard and other military as required, is prepared to handle the emergency. A spokesperson noted that the primary danger for the public from this point would be breathing the ash and that citizens should stay at home, keep doors and windows closed, turn off forced-air heating and air-conditioning systems to avoid having ash particles sucked into the residence, and above all not to go in or out any more than absolutely necessary.
---
There has been no contact with individuals or organizations closer to the eruption than about 100 miles. One eyewitness that contacted us from Billings, Montana has said, “The column of ash is rising higher than anything I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s smearing to the south-west partway up, then bending to the East at the top.”
A USGS representative, when asked about this, explained, “The prevailing winds and the jet stream aren’t necessarily going in the same direction at any time. This means there will at least two major downwind ash falls”.
---
The governors of Wyoming and all surrounding states have declared a state of emergency and called out the National Guard. All law enforcement and emergency personnel have been called in to active duty.
---
The Governor of Wyoming and several officials from surrounding states have gone on the air to plead for calm. “We’ll get through this. We are the greatest nation on Earth. We have the resources to weather the storm, if people can just be a little patient.”
Rescue Operation
You’d be dead
Michael Rampino, Associate Prof of Earth and Environmental Sciences
From Super Volcano: The Ticking Time Bomb Beneath Yellowstone National Park
Outland (World-Lines Book 1) Page 15