by John O'Brien
Each of those present had their initial reactions. Was this a terrorist attack? Was the market shut down on purpose? Are the lights coming back on?
Underlying their individual thoughts, tension built within each as they remembered transactions that hadn’t been completed. That was soon replaced by thoughts of worst-case scenarios—they were under some kind of attack. The deep gloom of the room, without even the emergency lighting, fueled their fears. Time passed and each second seemed like an hour. In reality, it took only a minute for panic to emerge.
At first, it was a single voiced thought, then more scattered throughout the dim room. A momentary hush was interrupted by a sudden outpouring of confused questions.
“Are the lights coming back on?” “What’s going on here?” “Are we under attack?”
Those few voices soon grew to become shouted queries, rising in volume until the floor became a chaos of noise, not unlike when trading was open. Fear took hold and there was a sudden exodus for the radiating light of the doors, those in back having to search for the openings among a packed huddle of bodies. Some fell and were trampled by those behind. Those in front were crushed by the mass of bodies suddenly seeking the daylight of the outdoors, many suffocating from the intense pressure.
On the streets outside in the heavily populated areas, cars, buses, trams, and all other motorized vehicles came to a stop. Traffic lights went dark and gridlocks became fixed in place. Vehicles motoring along in gear came to clunky halts, never to move again.
The electromagnetic backlash was so severe that it destroyed all electrical components. Injuries occurred on interstates when vehicles traveling at speed failed, the cars and trucks suddenly lurching to hard stops, bucking wildly. Others on the freeways, inching along stretches where traffic was congested, climbed out of their stalled vehicles and stared at the green lights streaking across the daytime sky. Trucks ground to a halt, their cargo lying in trailers that would never be delivered. In a single moment, all services came to a silent halt.
Curses and moans erupted from gamers as they stared at their darkened consoles and TVs. Times Square and the neon signs dominating the Ginza district of Tokyo went dark. Telephone calls were dropped mid-word, computer monitors went blank, the hums associated with buildings and homes were silenced. Factories stopped working, the assembly lines halting in mid-action. Power plants ceased functioning. It had taken humankind years and years to build its current infrastructure, and only a few seconds to bring it tumbling down.
On the world’s oceans and waterways, the shafts turning the screws of motorized craft stopped their revolutions. The usual churning of the water behind boats of all sizes flattened. On larger vessels, it took miles before their forward momentum was reduced to the point that they fell to the mercy of the currents. Cruise ships floated, their crews having to overcome their own fears to deal with the panic of their passengers. Tankers with their precious cargo drifted like the other oceangoing vessels, floating hulks on the oceans waiting to collide with land, environmental disasters waiting to occur.
Naval fleets from various nations floundered in place, unable to communicate, steer, or in any way guide themselves across the rolling swells. Each was slowly turned by the force of the waves until they were broadside to the swells. The smaller vessels caught in rough weather eventually overturned and were lost, their crews going overboard where they succumbed to the cold waters. Few in those vessels were able to get into lifeboats. Those who did were at the mercy of the seas, floating aimlessly and hoping that the currents carried them to some shore. Aircraft on patrol around the fleets, their engines and instruments failing, fell from the sky. With all electrical systems down, the pilots were unable to eject from their stricken craft. Many managed to manually eject the canopies and undo their harnesses.
Leaping from their out-of-control craft, they tumbled violently as they entered the high-speed slipstream. Some parachutes became fouled as pilots pulled the releases, some of their limbs becoming entangled in the rapidly deployed chute lines. However, most who managed to escape their aircraft soon found themselves slowly floating to the waters below. The same scenario was played out in fighter aircraft flying overland, except those pilots didn’t have to worry about surviving in open waters upon their descent.
In the Arabian Sea, a two-carrier fleet patrolled the waterways, on station due to the rising tension in the region. One carrier conducted flight operations while the other tied up and took on supplies from one of the supply ships. Powerless in the wake of the EMP pulse, the carrier and supply ship slowly turned in the swells and drew closer together. With crews unable to keep the two steel behemoths apart, they came together, first with an ear-piercing screech of grinding metal. As the swells surged, spray fountained between the two ships. They then again collided with a jarring crunch and the sound of rending steel.
The other carrier was in the middle of recovering a flight of patrol F-18s. The number three aircraft was on short final and on a good flight path down to the steel deck’s surface. The optical landing system, a system comprising lights to let the pilot know whether they were too high, too low, or on a proper glide path, showed a proper descent to landing. Near the threshold, listening to the guidance provided by the landing signal officer, the pilot readied to advance the throttles upon contact in case the hook didn’t catch the arresting cable.
All of a sudden, the aircraft seemed to lurch in the air. With the gear out and the flaps down and at a slow approach speed, drag took hold and its forward momentum slowed. With the decrease in airspeed, the nose dropped. With a sudden rush of adrenaline, the pilot slammed the throttles forward into afterburner. The now useless engines failed to respond.
“Oh shit,” was the only utterance as the F-18’s nose impacted the edge of the flight deck. With a roar, a fireball rolled across the steel surface, spreading metal and debris forward and outward. The aft end of the aircraft, its momentum depleted, fell into the sea astern of the aircraft carrier.
Farther out to sea, a parachute could be seen drifting slowly down toward the water. Without power, the carrier was unable to launch its usual sea rescue procedures. A nearby destroyer, seeing the pilot drifting down under a canopy of silk, launched a small craft and manually maneuvered the boat over to pick up a very wet, unhappy, and confused pilot.
Prowling the depths below the waters, the few submarines deployed by various nations motored silently along in their patrol areas. Some patrolled shallow waters, but deep enough to prevent any MAD (Magnetic Anomaly Detection) detection. Some were near the surface in order to receive radio communications, while a scant few quietly pushed through deeper waters.
When the wave hit, filled with terawatts of energy never witnessed except through observation instruments looking at galaxies, the oceans were able to act as a ground to a certain degree. However, the pulse penetrated to great depths, enough to affect most of the submerged hunters and man-of-war vessels of the deep.
Within those unfortunate enough to be caught at depths, power surged and then failed entirely. No shrill blast of alarms sounded, no blinking red lights to indicate problems. It just went dark inside each of those hollow tubes. Motors stopped and the coolant pumps feeding the nuclear cores of the vessels so equipped failed. Most of the captains fortunate enough to be in shallower waters, after exhaustive attempts to get their vessels underway again, initiated the underwater egress system and abandoned their boats. Some made it to the surface, only to join the others on the vast ocean surface, drifting aimlessly along the currents. Those who weren’t able to get into rafts succumbed to hypothermia within hours of reaching the surface.
In other places, sensing the loss of electrical power, nuclear power plant systems successfully scrubbed their cores. In an instant, fission processes across the world were shut down. However, in the storage facilities containing spent fuel rods, the pumps supplying a continuous supply of cool water to the ponds failed. Over time, without the fresh supply of water, the rods grew warmer and bega
n evaporating the waters that were meant to keep them cool and under control. The water dipped lower, allowing the rods to heat even more rapidly, evaporating the water at an increased rate. Eventually, many of the facilities erupted from the built-up pressures, releasing continuous waves of radiation into the surrounding areas.
* * * * * *
Near the French-Swiss Border
“Have you ever seen the lights at this latitude?”
At an altitude of 37,000 feet, Captain Stefan Frehner leaned forward and glanced through the windscreen toward where his second officer, Lars Glauser, was pointing. Outside, the starkness of the usual nighttime sky, with the stars twinkling against a dark background, was diminished by waves of green and yellow streaks of light. A glow of light would begin, and then streak across the heavens as if blown by a fierce wind. In other places, it wavered in varying lengths and thicknesses.
It was a beautiful sight to behold, and it was nights like this that energized Stefan’s love of flying. The sights he had witnessed during his seventeen years with Swiss Air were unsurpassed, ones he would never have seen if he had kept his feet planted on the ground during his lifespan. The light show above, with its dancing movements, was almost a direct contrast to the steady glow emanating from the cities miles below. Yet, at the same time, the two together provided a certain symmetry to the clear night.
The jumbo Airbus 340, much like the old workhorse 747, sliced through the air like a smaller aircraft, its four huge turbo-fan engines humming with precision. With a quick look inside the cockpit to ensure all was right, Stefan glanced over to Lars. The glow emanating from the instruments of the glass cockpit lit the officer’s face and Stefan grinned at the wonderment written there. He knew he’d had similar looks on his own face many a time. With a smile still plastered on his face, Stefan turned once more to the light show outside.
They had an hour before their scheduled landing, and as wonderful as the light show was, he was more than happy to be able to set down after their long flight across the Atlantic. He hadn’t seen his family in several days; tonight, he would be able to go home to his wife and two kids. They would land a couple of hours before the imposed no-fly times established by the airline, and others across the world, due to the impending arrival of a solar storm. Although there had been a few during his long flying career, only a couple had significantly impacted communications. It was the possibility of interference with the GPS satellites that was grounding air travel. They could fly without GPS, but it would sure be a lot more difficult.
As these thoughts cycled through his head, his smile turned to a frown of concern. If they were seeing the lights in the sky so soon, especially at this altitude, then the solar storm must have arrived early. With a quick glance at the navigation instruments, he noted a small blinking notice at the bottom of the screen: “acquiring satellite.”
As he turned to Lars in order to direct his attention back inside the aircraft to begin diverting to a closer airfield, the interior of the cockpit went dark. Adrenaline coursed through his body, elevating his heart rate. Flying was said to be long hours of boredom, punctuated by moments of stark terror. Seven miles above the earth’s surface, Swiss Air flight 1248 had just entered the latter.
After both pilots donned their emergency oxygen masks, Stefan gripped the control wheel tightly, as it had suddenly become heavy in his hands. The nose lowered as the aircraft attempted to keep its trimmed airspeed, the only way it could do so without the engines operating. The controls didn’t budge, even with Lars grabbing and both pilots pulling back. The triple-redundant electrical and hydraulic systems were rendered inoperable by the terawatts of power that had just passed them by.
“Switch to battery power,” Stefan yelled, the intercom useless.
The move was to no avail, as the lights remained dark and the Airbus continued on a downward glide path. Luckily, the air was smooth and the aircraft trimmed to near perfection—if it started to roll in any direction, they would be hard-pressed to do anything about it. They tried using their mini flashlights in order to see anything, but found they didn’t work either. Without any source of light, they had to run through the emergency checklists by memory. In the darkened cockpit, the light show in the heavens above forgotten, Stefan and Lars fought with what was now a very large and heavy glider.
Using the manual trim, Stefan managed to slow the aircraft’s speed and bring the plane onto a glide path that would provide for the farthest distance traveled for altitude lost—the best glide airspeed. He knew the terrain hidden in the darkness below was rugged, and they were going to be hard-pressed to find a suitable place to land. Even if they were able to, timing it right with the trim to rotate the giant aircraft was going to be tricky. Their best bet was to figure out the problem and get the aircraft running again. Glancing at the altimeter winding down, they didn’t have a lot of time to get that done.
Looking outside to see if he could find a good landing spot, he realized that the light of the cities, once glowing in the distance, was gone. The only thing he could get a solid visual on were snow-capped peaks rising from the darkened landscape, poking skyward as if from a black void. Their whitened tops and sides seeming to glisten with the partial moon and lights generated from the storm.
Using the rudder trim in small increments in order not to begin a roll, Stefan and Lars steered the jumbo jet toward the largest patch of darkness they could find. They both knew they couldn’t maneuver the aircraft for an optimal point, should they find one, and would have to settle for wherever they arrived. Even though there wasn’t any apparent power to the aircraft, Stefan tried to send out several mayday calls in the blind without receiving a response.
With a faint roar of the wind streaming by the windscreen, Stefan tried to get some power to the aircraft. After pulling non-essential circuit breakers, then turning all systems off, he still wasn’t able to restore power or get any of the engines started. Glancing at the altimeter for perhaps the thousandth time, he felt a small measure of dread settle in his stomach, too busy for anything larger than that to arise.
The terrain below continued to pass underneath the stricken aircraft as it descended toward earth at close to a thousand feet per minute. That time seemed to both pass by in a second and last an eternity for Stefan. He knew the systems inside and out, and was baffled and frustrated by his inability to restore the Airbus to some kind of flying condition. He felt deep inside that there was a way—that he could figure it out, if he only had time, but that was a commodity in short supply.
As the two experienced pilots battled with the controls, the large aircraft continued its slow descent through the cold night air. Several times, the aircraft wanted to roll to the side, but that was countered by timely adjustments to the rudder trim. Stefan was vaguely aware that one of the flight attendants, wearing a portable oxygen bottle and mask, had entered and was standing behind his seat. He could imagine the scene in the passenger compartment, the passengers sitting in the dark, oxygen masks to their faces and eyes wide with fear, but he was too busy to issue any instructions or give an update to their situation. Besides, what could he really say that wasn’t already apparent?
They were still a little ways above the glowing peaks of ice and snow when the first bump of turbulence hit, sending a tremor through the aircraft. Stefan and Lars both paused in their actions. Their faces were lined with concentration and a fair amount of stress. They looked up from the numerous dials and switches plastered all over the cabin’s walls, instrument console, and overhead panels, glancing outside as if they could see the actual air currents.
A second, harder bump jostled the aircraft. Stefan felt his heart solidly jump. With eyes widening in alarm, they simultaneously turned and looked at each other. Glancing back outside, Stefan could vaguely see feathers of ice and snow being blown from the tops of the surrounding peaks, driven by strong winds.
The turbulence increased, shaking the aircraft with a series of sharp bumps. Stefan’s hand went to the ru
dder trim, ready to attempt corrections should the turbulence they were descending into attempt to send the aircraft into a roll.
“I’ll take the trim, you keep working on the systems. We have to get the engines back online,” Stefan yelled to Lars.
Turning to the flight attendant, “Go back and make sure everyone is strapped in, then secure yourself.”
A moment of calm. With one hand on the control wheel, attempting to feel the aircraft’s motion almost before it happened, the fingers of Stefan’s other hand were poised on the manual trim wheels. The corrections would have to be instantaneous, and then the counter-correction so they didn’t start rolling the other way.
A series of shudders went through the aircraft and the air became calm once more. The altimeter continued its slow unwinding. Lars tried different things, which were mostly random attempts, having long ago left the emergency checklist items behind. Stefan yelled suggestions, but his concentration was focused on the motion of the Airbus. Ahead, there was only a darkened landscape between peaks to the side that were about to rise above their altitude.
Beads of sweat trickled down Stefan’s temples and across his jawline. Although he was focused on feeling the aircraft and poised to counter any adverse motion, thoughts raced through his mind. For the thousandth time, he went through the systems and tried to come up with a way to bypass them in order to get the engines lit, or some way to restore partial power.
The calm air ended abruptly as a hard bump sent the nose rising. A quick movement on the stabilizer trim brought the nose down. Stefan quickly returned the control to its previous location. They fully entered the turbulence and, although the large aircraft wasn’t affected as much as smaller craft, it was still tossed and thrown in the sky. The high winds whistling across the mountain peaks created waves and vortices in the unseen air. It was like coming off a calm, smooth stretch of river in a kayak and plummeting into canyon rapids.