by Ron Foster
“Put it this way, Sloan called meeting at the church and asked” How long can you tread water” and half the congregation said long enough are are mindlessly digging latrines and wanting to stay camping looking for edible plants waiting on the great savior or the government to save their ass. By the way, I don’t think they got you in mind as the great savior by the way! “George related with a grin.
“Hopefully nobody’s been thinking of putting my life vests on the goats!” Zack quipped back and sat down next to his old friend to hear about the organization meeting he had missed.
“Well Sloan I think got the right idea and has some folks building rafts but the rest of everybody I would say is waiting on what’s next and would throw you off one to the fishes even though they didn’t help build one. They are organizing their food stores and planning on sticking it out here and cussing you for stealing their money and not coming back. Did you manage to find any supplies?” George asked like he figured Zack had gone out on a futile mission but he was remaining positive just the same.
“Who the hell says I wasn’t coming back? Oh, yea we got lots of other people on this island besides our group. I need to get me a list of the ones that chipped in for food since that’s the case. Man, we scored big time at the grocery stores. I danged near cleaned one out and only spent half the money I had on me! But what’s up with Sloan building rafts out of old wood?” Zack asked.
“I don’t know, he is your old war buddy, but he has been to Indonesia and Philippines etc. and he said something about the unpredictable effects of tsunami waves etc. He thinks there is a possible danger and I just went along with him because I respect him. However, I got to thinking about it. Don’t you got to have an ocean for that sort of thing to occur don’t you?” George asked regarding fresh water.
“Who knows what is going on with that river the way it looks like the dams are releasing waters. Talked to Bobby over there and we going to evacuate in a half hour to be on the safe side. Do you remember the time about 10 years ago we waded knee deep a hundred foot over this same river playing pool in a bar once? How the hell do I know what this river might do. I think Sloan is smart though and I wouldn’t call that over cautious. Why aren’t you helping him?” Zack asked.
“Well I forgot about the time we done that bit of pool playing. Sloan has plenty of people to help anyway, I just wanted to get away from folks for a bit and I know you said you would be back around now and here you are! Now then, what the hell are you and me doing? Are we going home or staying? Some folks don’t need saving on this island I guarantee you!” George said a bit put off that a lot of people didn’t want to listen to him or anyone else to save their own asses and instead seemed fixated on doing whatever they wanted to do out of spite or something.
“I don’t know what kind of ornery cusses you been talking to today but I will allow them folks on the hill and other places march to their own drum. Thing is, I couldn’t live with myself to just let them spin in the wind and drown even if I got to pull a gun on them maybe to get them to cooperate.” Zack said.
“Hell, get Nick and Neil to do that for you, they got in Army Ranger mode earlier today and I bet half the doubters to get off the island would go swimming before arguing with them two.” George said grinning and relating a piece of the day to him.
“Well, I guess it don’t matter much what wind fills their sails. Ezra and I scored big food wise and they will follow their stomachs to the other shore willingly before I got to get the Knobby crew to put some knots on their heads,” Zack said disgustedly about the lack of cooperation some people were showing in these trying times.
“Oh, you ain’t got to worry much about that, Sloan got the majority of your military vet buddies organized and even a few of your readers to toe the line. Those other folks even if I am a religious man can just sit here and eat goat shit and howl at the moon for all I care. Hey did you know we got us a few vegans out here? They were talking about your big catfishing tournament and how bad it was you wanted to torture some fish, maybe they were the ones that convinced the others not to do it was reason nobody used your boats, fish rods and bait earlier that you were concerned with.” George advised.
“Son of a bitch, I wouldn’t of thought about that angle in a month of Sundays. I worked my ass off for that and donated my own money I didn’t have much of to try to show everyone a good time. Really?... frickin..frackin what the hell I ain’t got time to think on that. Well the weed eaters can die in place as far as I am concerned also. No special diets observed and meat is about the easiest thing for us to come up with to eat at the moment. I got us some beautiful choice steaks by the way that I am going to have a problem with sharing, but they will be ruined as soon as the ice I stole melts on them. Come on my friend, talk and walk, deaths hour glass got turned over a few hours ago.” Zack said pissed off and confused why he hadn’t headed home sixty miles or so away when he had a chance. Well the worm would take a turn shortly and he couldn’t be everything for everybody. The idea of surviving was to insure you and your loved ones did, not sacrifice everything and be left flopping like a dying fish on the shoreline. Stay in the water, stay in the groove, you can’t please everyone or try to rescue everybody, it starts with yourself and your own survival he mused
Sloan was taking a break from supervising and working as George and Zack came through the movie sets fake enchanted tree tunnel to find him and his wife and Ann chatting next to his makeshift life raft.
“Permission to come aboard!” Zack said jokingly snapping a salute at Sloan like he was an admiral or boat captain or something.
“Permission granted! Come aboard!” Sloan said with a smile returning his salute.
“Oh, Zack you had me worried half to death! Don’t you ever go off and leave me again!” Ann said rushing to hug him and looking him over for damage.
“I wont baby but I also didn’t want you out on that river risking it with me before I knew it was safe! I got lot to tell you all but I see I got some catching up with what has been going on here.” Zack responded dropping his arm around her waist and escorting her back to Sloan who he shook hands with.
“How was the trip Zack?” Sloan immediately asked inquiring about the availability of supplies.
“We got a deal of food and we got two more boats to get off this island with, one of which is a party barge!” Zack said giving everybody a high five!
“Now that’s amazing!” Sloan’s wife said.
“He can come up with some shit!” George said beaming his approval of his resourceful friend.
“Yea he can!” Ann said proudly of her man.
“You must have got Bobby to help you?” Those his boats you’re talking about? Sloan said.
“Yes, him and his workers are going to try to start picking everyone up starting in a half hour on the right side of the island. We need to get everybody down to the right side of the island with just their basics of tents and sleeping bags. We can’t over load the boats or take too long about doing it either.” Zack said then noticing Nick and Knobby hurriedly walking up in full field gear.
“You just getting back over here Zack?” Nick said extending his hand.
“Just this minute walked up here. You all having problems over here on this side?” Zack asked eying the black rifles.
“No, no problems we are just keeping up with our gear by keeping it on. Hey we will get into how you made out on your trip in a minute but I got some news to tell you now. I lent Earl an emergency radio and he was playing with the short wave on it and heard two river barge captains talking together. They must be around here close by somewhere because we ain’t picking up nothing from anywhere else. Any way all river gates on the dams are open and the Coast guard gave out a navigation warning sometime last night that a geomagnetic storm had managed to shutdown GPS but they were saying their old school compasses on their boats are spinning!” That’s all he heard and he was going to go get those HAM operator gurus to try to switch their sets on and see if the
y could pick up anything.” Neil advised.
“They are still trying to get that communications trailer unstuck axle deep in the mud, seems where they parked it is a natural or manmade drain on this island. They took the radios out in case they got too abandon it but they ain’t gave up on it quite yet.” Knobby said.
“Do me a favor George and go tell them they got t leave it and get up here and get ready to evacuate. I didn’t have a chance to tell you yet Neil that Bobby his two boats and that Sea Eagle dingy is going to be shuttling everyone to the other side in about 20 minutes.” Zack said as his friend walked off to round up Rod and his friends.
“Even with three boats its going to take awhile to get everyone off of here. Did you all here some news we need to know about concerning this flooding?” Knobby said inquiringly.
“No, we just doing it to be on the safe side but now that you mentioned the compasses spinning, I bet the north pole has shifted at an alarming rate and to me that can be any number of things. Hey anybody happen to have a compass on them?” Zack said looking at Nick and Knobby who seemed the best outfitted at the moment.
“Ah crap! Not on me but I got one with our backpacks and bicycles.” Nick said.
“All ballistic plate and no compass huh?” Sloan said with a wry grin.
“Don’t rub it in Sloan! What’s in your pockets I bet you ain’t got one neither!” Nick said with a well-placed rebuke.
“I got one!” Earl said walking up on their conversation.
” Check it out the needle acts like it wants to swing both ways sometimes and way past north other times.” Earl said displaying a compass.
“Well Ill be damned!” Zack said looking at it astonished.
” Pole Shift or do you think we could get a geomagnetically induced Kessler event?” Rod asked as he joined the conversation with George who had walked back here with him.
Author Note from Wikipedia
Kessler syndrome (also called the Kessler effect, collisional cascading or ablation cascade), proposed by the NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978, is a scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) is high enough that collisions between objects could cause a cascade where each collision generates space debris that increases the likelihood of further collisions One implication is that the distribution of debris in orbit could render space activities and the use of satellites in specific orbital ranges impractical for many generations. Every satellite, space probe, and manned mission has the potential to produce space debris. A cascading Kessler syndrome becomes more likely as satellites in orbit increase in number. As of 2014, there were about 2,000 commercial and government satellites orbiting the earth.[4] It is estimated that there are 600,000 pieces of space junk ranging from 1 cm to 10 cm, and on average one satellite is destroyed each year.
“Now ain’t you just a happy gleaming ray of sunshine! Its bad enough I got to worry about this damn island going under water but now you saying it might rain space junk on our heads also?” Zack said looking up at the sky just because Rod had got him to thinking about the possibility.
“Well I ain’t saying that’s going to happen, just speculating on the possibilities. If it is just a geomagnetic fluctuation storm induced by earthquakes it’s one thing but I am thinking a solar flare went off.” Rod said and then greeted Franklin who had abandoned salvaging his communication van.
“Hey Rod! I am kind of thinking along the same lines as Rod guys and I think a Kessler event might be likely due to the science of the theory. You see the most dangerous emissions from solar flares are energetic charged particles (primarily high-energy protons) and electromagnetic radiation (primarily x-rays). The x-rays from flares are stopped by our atmosphere well above the Earth's surface. They do disturb the Earth's ionosphere, however, which in turn disturbs some radio communications. Now then you got to understand along with energetic ultraviolet radiation, they heat the Earth’s outer atmosphere, causing it to expand. This increases the drag on Earth-orbiting satellites, reducing their lifetime in orbit. Thus, my Kessler effect question. Also, both intense radio emission from flares and these changes in the atmosphere can degrade the precision of Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements we heard was reported sometime last night.” Franklin said as everyone tried to wrap their heads around the technical jargon.
“I am not up on your knowledge of how radio frequencies work in the atmosphere but if anything, it could be a CME makes more sense to me. You can have a CME that doesn’t show a flare and that could be why we had no warning. Coronal mass ejections are the culprit more likely to have a significant effect on our activities than solar flares because they carry more material into a larger volume of interplanetary space, thus increasing the likelihood that they will interact with the Earth very negatively. While I will grant you a flare alone produces high-energy particles near the Sun and yes some of which escape into interplanetary space, a CME drives a shock wave which can continuously produce energetic particles as it propagates through interplanetary space. When a CME reaches the Earth, its impact disturbs the Earth's magnetosphere, setting off a geomagnetic storm. What bothers me the most at the moment is a CME typically takes 3 to 5 days to reach the Earth after it leaves the Sun. We don’t actually know how fast one can move and I remember the last time the scientist calculated it they said it was possible one could hit earth in the matter of hours under the right conditions and we would receive little to no warning.” Zack explained not doing much better at explaining the complicated technical aspects of such things.
Just then off in the distance what sounded like the rumble of thunder was heard.
“Oh, like this day ain’t bad enough!” George wailed, thinking now they were going to have to try this evacuation out in the rain with no shelters to get under let alone that space debris degree guys explanation of it looking like meteorites of metal junk might be falling soon.
“It might not just be a rain storm. Do you remember that paper I found and asked you about earthquake lightning?” Ann asked Zack.
Ann was a prolific researcher and loved lapidary work and gemstones. When she was looking at information for this subject, she run across an unusual article that took her by surprise.
The paper is titled, Rocks That Crackle and Sparkle and Glow: Strange Pre-Earthquake Phenomena, by Dr. Friedemann T. Freund, a professor in the Department of Physics, San Jose State University, and a senior researcher at NASA Ames Research Center. Dr. Freund writes:
“Many strange phenomena precede large earthquakes. Some of them have been reported for centuries, even millennia. The list is long and diverse: bulging of the Earth’s surface, changing well water levels, ground-hugging fog, low frequency electromagnetic emission, earthquake lights from ridges and mountain tops, magnetic field anomalies up to 0.5% of the Earth’s dipole field, temperature anomalies by several degrees over wide areas as seen in satellite images, changes in the plasma density of the ionosphere, and strange animal behavior. Because it seems nearly impossible to imagine that such diverse phenomena could have a common physical cause, there is great confusion and even greater controversy.”
“Ah hell I sure hope it don’t start lightning! Neil do you think your RV can drag this front porch down to the entrance without pulling it all apart?” Zack asked.
“Yea I think it be ok if I go slow and steady and stop once in a while maybe, hopefully it should hold together long enough to get it to where it needs to be.” Nick said.
“About all we got left to pull it with is a tow rope.” Knobby said.
“That ought to do it ok. What do you have a 2,000 lb. or better strap?” Zack asked.
“Better than that! I got me a military grade one that is made for pulling a 5-ton truck.” Neil responded with a smile.
Just then the ground had a slight tremor ripple through it and the goats began to move out of the town of Spectre. Lightning flashed covering a ridge off in the distance and Zack started panicking and telling Nick and Knobby to get the RV and start dragging
that thing out of here as fast as they could when a deeper rumble occurred.
“Oh hell, time for us to abandon ship! Come on darlin we got to go catch my dingy before it gets swept away!” Zack said pulling on her arm and getting her to run along with him to where had his inflatable boat moored.
Everyone else that was left was busily climbing on Sloan’s life raft as a wave from the opposite side of the island hit and crested its highest point. Water began to seep into town before slowly receding back.