New Madrid Earthquake

by Bobby Akart

  “I can imagine it,” said Beth sadly.

  “Anyway, the stores near the exit and along Germantown Road were being looted on Saturday. My guess is they were cleaned out by today.”

  Tony turned to look toward the west. “We saw something similar in the city at a Walgreens. I’m sure as desperation sets in, that will only get worse.”

  “Where’s FEMA?” asked Jack.

  “They were staging on Mississippi Boulevard at that large church,” replied Jill. “We saw thousands of people descending on that place Saturday morning. Again, after two days …” Her voice trailed off.

  Jack sighed. “If FEMA is getting set up, I’m sure they’ll expand their operation to temporary housing and meal handouts.”

  “How long do you think it will take them to fix the power and water supply?” asked Jill before adding, “I don’t wanna be overdramatic, but in a few days, we’re gonna be in a world of hurt.”

  “It sure seems like our world suddenly got a whole lot smaller,” added Tony.

  “No doubt,” said Jill.

  Jack set his empty glass on the rail and walked as he spoke. “Let’s consider the government’s response first. Listen, so much of this is speculation. Tony and I kinda talked about it in between jumping off bridges and dodging barges.”

  Jill laughed. “You wish, Mr. Mission Impossible.”

  Jack and Tony glanced at one another. Perhaps that conversation would need to be postponed a couple of years.

  Jack continued. “Anyway, we have to ask a logical question. What if they can’t? What if it’s so bad that the city and its infrastructure can’t be rebuilt. Or, as Beth can attest, the Mississippi may have changed course. I don’t know if these two quakes were worse than what happened two hundred years ago. It doesn’t matter because our world is a lot different.”

  Beth moved closer to Tony for warmth and comfort. He tried to temper the conversation.

  “I can see where you’re coming from, but I think we need to avoid speculation and consider our immediate needs. We need to get from point A to point B or it won’t matter.”

  “Well, I agree,” said Jill. “I actually discussed it with Tate on Saturday. We really need more information, and the radio stations aren’t broadcasting. In the meantime, we have some resources available to us.”

  “Like what?” asked Beth.

  “Tate and I don’t like it, but we may have to break into our neighbors’ homes in search of supplies. We’ve already lost our window of opportunity to empty their refrigerators. If we get lucky and come across a deep freeze, then we could salvage something there if we cook it right away.”

  “Their pantries may be full,” added Jack.

  “Fuller than ours, anyway,” said Jill. She turned toward the grill and pointed. “Tate has gathered up several propane tanks to boil water and cook with. They will eventually run out. He’s been taking firewood from the neighbors, but if this is going to be prolonged through the winter, and if we have to stay, we’ll need to cut down our own.”

  Beth began to cry as her hormonal imbalance continued to affect her. “This is all too much.”

  “I’m sorry, Bethie,” Jill apologized. “We’ll figure all of this out tomorrow.”

  “I agree,” said Jack. “We’re all exhausted. Tomorrow is Christmas. Let’s get some sleep.”

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Tuesday, Christmas Day

  Atwood Residence

  Cordova, Tennessee

  There were no alarm clocks. No roosters crowing. No sounds of early morning traffic scurrying off to a loved one’s home or sunrise services at church. The tired group of survivors were happily sleeping in until the sun rose high enough to begin shining through the front windows. Then, Beth and Tony’s baby, who clearly had excellent lung development, demanded her breakfast, again. Anthony and Emily stirred awake next. And within ten minutes of the sun making its presence known, Christmas morning had arrived.

  It certainly wasn’t the Christmas celebration Jill had envisioned. She’d been planning for weeks. Making lists. Buying recipe ingredients on sale. Juggling schedules to accommodate everyone. It was all going smoothly until just after four thirty last Friday afternoon. Then the earth began to shake.

  They made the most of it, happy to be alive and together. Jack did his best to play one-armed Santa. He distributed wrapped presents to the children, Tate included. After the gifts were opened by them, a few more presents were presented to Beth that were mostly for the baby. She loved them all and thanked Jill for her thoughtfulness.

  Before turning in for the night, Jack and Jill, out of respect for the others, exchanged their gifts. Jill knew Beth had lost their presents when she had to abandon her car. Tony, who was now referred to privately as the old Tony, had planned on scrambling around over the weekend to gather up gifts for his family. Because they got waylaid by the earthquake, the Atwoods elected to save them any embarrassment by not having a gift exchange among the adults.

  Tate and Jack traded shifts through the night to keep the fire going. Memphis was not known for harsh winters, but as misfortune would have it, a cold front had crossed over about the time the second earthquake finished destroying everything around it.

  “Everybody,” said Jill as she stood in the center of the room. “I had big plans for our meals. I have managed to save some Christmas treats we can eat for breakfast. I hope you don’t mind cookies and—”

  “Let them eat cake!” exclaimed Emily in her best Euro-accent, interrupting her mother. She had no idea the callous, rude remark made by Marie-Antoinette had a negative connotation. For the young girl, it was a way of saying cookies sounded just fine to her. Apparently, the suggestion was unanimous.

  Jill laughed and continued. “I do have a little cake, too. They’re Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes, but they’re really good.”

  Beth started to hand the baby to Tony. “Let me help.”

  Their hostess raised her hands and politely declined her offer. “Nah, keep your seat. I’ve got this.”

  Jill made her way to the kitchen and returned with a platter of Christmas Tree Cakes. She set it on the coffee table they’d placed in the center of the living room. Then she carried the tray of cookies around toward Anthony and offered him the first choice.

  “I’m sorry they’re mostly broken. Since Anthony is the youngest, we should give him first dibs.”

  “Hey, she’s the youngest, Mom,” Emily objected, pointing at Beth and the baby. “Wait a minute. What’s her name?”

  Tony and Beth exchanged glances. Throughout all the turmoil, and their focus on being grateful their baby girl had survived it, they hadn’t taken the time to name her.

  “We talked about several girl names a month or so ago but never settled on one.”

  Jill leaned down to present the sugar cookies to Anthony. They’d been created using cookie cutters in a variety of Christmas-themed shapes. Then she’d frosted them and covered them with multicolored sprinkles.

  Anthony reached onto the plate and pulled a cookie from the bottom of the pile. It was probably the only one intact among the broken cookies. Its icing was a bright white with gold and silver sprinkles. He studied it for a moment, raised it into the air, and turned to his mother.

  “Angel,” he said softly. Then he repeated himself, “Angel.”

  Beth looked into Tony’s eyes. As she did, visions of the lovable, lifesaving state trooper, Willie Angel, raced through her mind. They smiled and nodded at one another.

  “Yes. We’ll call her Angel.”

  It would be a Christmas to remember for Jill, Beth and their families. They’d survived the worst catastrophic event in the history of modern mankind. The ramifications were widespread and far-reaching, impacting every corner of the planet in some way.

  Sorrow and hardship surrounded them. The devastating result of the massive back-to-back earthquakes extended all up and down the Mississippi River. The North American continent had been torn in half from the Gulf of Mex
ico through the Great Lakes to Hudson Bay in Ontario, Canada.

  America had become a nation divided. Only time would tell whether it could be reconnected.

  Thank You For Reading New Madrid!

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  READ ON, beginning with my Author’s Note, as I provide insight into why I wrote New Madrid and my thoughts on the extensive research surrounding this potentially catastrophic threat.

  Author’s Note

  December 16, 2020

  The most alarming aspect of telling the story of New Madrid’s fault and its history of earthquakes was how little of it I made up. The history speaks for itself. Applying the scientific findings of the 1811–12 earthquake sequence to present day simply reinforces how vulnerable we are.

  That said, sometimes one can only grasp the magnitude of a catastrophic event like an earthquake along the New Madrid fault line through the eyes of fictional characters. I may have conjured them up for purposes of telling this story, but the underlying scientific premise is very real.

  What Led Me To Write New Madrid

  I don’t get to conduct all my research in person, but there was one trip in particular that gave fruit to many novels. I had the pleasure of appearing on a television episode of George Noory’s Beyond Belief in 2016 to discuss my nonfiction treatise on electromagnetic pulse weapons and EMPs generated by solar flares. The moral of this story? I should travel more often.

  Bear with me as I take you down memory lane for a moment. You’ll see how one thing leads to another and to another. Out of that trip, several novels and book series sprang forth.

  Due in part to the hacking and coughing of my fellow passengers on the Frontier Air Flight to Denver, I made a solemn promise to my social media followers—know this, my next novel will be about a pandemic! I kept that promise, and since then, my medical thrillers—including the Pandemic series (pneumonic plague), the Virus Hunters novels (multiple infectious diseases), and the Odessa trilogy (bioterrorism)—have opened many sets of eyes as to the pandemic threat. And now, here we are in 2020. Enough said.

  While in Boulder where the television studios were located, I took the time to visit the Space Weather Prediction Center. I randomly asked the folks I met what existential threat they feared the most. Their responses were varied and reflected their fields of study. I have written about several of them with more to come. The Blackout series depicts a current-day America in which a catastrophic solar flare strikes us head-on, just as it did in 1859 during the well-known Carrington Event. The Geostorm series was another set of novels that dealt with the shift of the Earth’s magnetic poles, a phenomenon occurring as of this writing.

  As a side note, the professionals at the SWPC introduced me to some brilliant minds at NASA’S Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Through my interviews and correspondence, I discerned the threat concerning them was from near-Earth objects, such as asteroids, that wandered our solar system and remained undetected by even the most advanced technology. These planet killers were the basis for my Asteroid trilogy. The geophysicists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory told me asteroids may be planet killers, but the Yellowstone supervolcano would bury us in ash. I dove into the research and wrote the Yellowstone series, my bestselling to date. Yellowstone Hellfire reached #25 on Amazon Charts list of bestselling novels.

  Also, while at the Boulder studios with George Noory, I became acquainted with Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, Executive Director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security, who has also served as the Chief of Staff of the Congressional EMP Commission. We discussed my book, EMP, and he revealed his biggest concern as the use of low-Earth orbiting satellites by North Korea as a mechanism to deliver a nuclear-tipped warhead to be detonated over the United States. The resulting EMP would destroy our power grid and deliver us back to the 1800s. As a result, I wrote the Lone Star series and was honored to have Dr. Pry write the foreword.

  Which brings me to this novel, New Madrid. As a result of my phone conversations with the learned scientists and geophysicists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that afternoon, I was encouraged to make a quick trip down Highway 93 to the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado.

  The scenic twenty-minute drive was enjoyable in itself, and it brought back memories of when I visited Golden while in college. Pop and I, along with two of his coworkers, had driven to Colorado during spring break during my first year of law school. We had some time, so we ventured into Golden to tour the Coors Brewery. As an aside, this was before Coors was distributed nationally, so the four cases of beer we smuggled home were a real score. Golden was also where I was introduced to Rocky Mountain oysters (insert green puking emoji here. Just kidding!).

  Golden hadn’t changed that much from what I could remember, but I was glad I ventured onto the campus of the Colorado School of Mines, where the USGS National Earthquake Information Center was located. First, a note about the university. What’s not to love about a small, quaint campus set at the base of the Rocky Mountains. Couple that with a school whose mascot is an ornery-looking mule and whose moniker is orediggers, and I just had a great feeling about the side trip.

  I was glad I went there for many reasons, including the insight I gathered about what was going on under Earth’s surface. To be sure, many of those I spoke with wanted to talk about climate change. I did, in fact, incorporate some of their thoughts and suggestions into the Geostorm series. However, my primary focus was to hear their thoughts on earthquakes that affected the United States. Being a native Tennessean, I was particularly interested in the New Madrid Seismic Zone.

  My takeaway from those conversations was this. There has always been a lot of hype about San Andreas and the other faults running along our nation’s West Coast into Alaska. Stories, movies, and television programs have featured all types of seismic activity based in California. Now, don’t get me wrong, the type of earthquake that could be generated along San Andreas would be devastating.

  However, a seismic event in the center of the country, along the Mississippi River and emanating from the New Madrid Seismic Zone, could not only result in an incredible death toll, but it could sever our nation’s communications, transportation routes, and other related aspects of our critical infrastructure. The recovery and repair effort would last many years.

  Next up, let me give you a brief history lesson, and then I’ll reveal, through the eyes of the scientific community, what would happen if fiction becomes reality.

  A Brief History of the Historic Quakes of 1811–12

  The New Madrid fault line is found throughout Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas, where the potential for greatest intensity is located. However, depending on the strength of the earthquake and the precise location of the epicenter, Mississippi, Indiana, and Iowa could also be impacted.

  New Madrid is made up of two faults. One is a strike-slip segment oriented toward the northeast, running between the small towns of Marked Tree, Arkansas, and Caruthersville, Missouri. A strike-slip fault is a vertical fracture in which the continental boundary plates have moved side to side. The other is a northwest trending reverse fault lying below New Madrid, Missouri. By trending, scientists mean it’s an active ar
ea undergoing compression, or squishing. Faults that move the way you expect gravity to move them are normal faults. A fault that moves counter to the law of gravity is a reverse fault.

  The main area of the New Madrid Seismic Zone, NMSZ, sits underneath large open farms in the boot heel of Missouri as well as under the rolling hills of Arkansas down to Memphis. The faults in the NMSZ are deep because this area has been the site of some very, very large earthquakes for thousands of years.

  Geological studies have revealed that the uplift rates associated with the NMSZ could not have occurred continuously over long periods of time without dramatically altering the topography beyond what it is today. Therefore, scientists agree the seismic activity began approximately sixty-four thousand years ago, making New Madrid one of the youngest seismic zones on the planet.

  Based upon the analysis of sand blows (when liquified sand forces its way through fissures to the earth’s surface) and soil samples, it’s been determined massive earthquakes have occurred there in 2350 BC, AD 30, AD 900, and AD 1450. More recently, in the winter of 1811 through 1812, several earthquakes and aftershocks ranging from a magnitude 6.5 to nearly M8 rolled across the NMSZ.

  December 16–17, 1811

  The first principal earthquake, or mainshock, occurred at about 2:15 a.m. local time in the vicinity of northeast Arkansas at the Cottonwood Grove fault. Estimated to be an M7.5, it caused only slight damage to man-made structures because the epicentral area was sparsely populated at the time.

  Geophysicists believe the future location of Memphis was shaken with an intensity of Level IX on the Modified Mercalli scale. At New Madrid, trees were knocked down and riverbanks collapsed. The first earthquake shook windows and furniture in Washington, DC, and rang church bells in Richmond, Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina. It knocked the plaster off houses in Columbia, South Carolina. Observers from Missouri to Indiana reported the earthquake as lasting ten to twelve minutes.