by Bobby Akart
He pointed to a young man in the front row. “First question. Go ahead, please.”
“Dr. Younger, some have said—” the reporter began before being interrupted.
“Thank you for the elevation to the doctorate level of study, but I never pursued my PhD. I guess my formal title is scientist-in-charge, or something like that. But I really prefer to be informal. Please call me Rick.”
The young reporter smiled and continued. “Rick, Dr. Peake has repeatedly warned that Project Hydro is risky, even at the much slower pace of drilling originally anticipated. You have managed to increase the drill rate by nearly ninety percent. Was Dr. Peake wrong?”
“Now, young man, that was a loaded question and wholly inappropriate for this setting. Dr. Peake has provided a tremendous amount of knowledge and expertise to the USGS over the years. I, on the other hand, have devoted my life to the petroleum industry, where the concept of fracking was first used to extract energy from our planet. Fracking has become a successful, safe way of producing oil and natural gas for use in our everyday lives. The geothermal energy produced here at Yellowstone will be no different.”
Younger looked around the room and chose another questioner. “Do you have a question?”
“Yes. You’ve described Project Hydro as groundbreaking. There are others beside Dr. Peake who’ve mocked your use of that term and applied it to the potential to trigger an eruption at Yellowstone, followed by an environmental catastrophe akin to a nuclear winter.”
Younger bristled and didn’t wait for the reporter to actually ask a question. “These are all arguments that have been addressed in very public forums such as the halls of Congress. We provided all the information at our disposal, both for and against Project Hydro, in the interest of full transparency. The funding and the approvals sailed through Congress. So, without hesitation, I can say I’m proud of what I have accomplished in bringing this to fruition. Thank you all for joining us today.”
Without another word, Younger marched off the elevated platform and through a side exit to avoid taking any further questions. The expletives mumbled under his breath resembled those muttered by the angry caldera beneath his feet.
Chapter 8
Jake Wheeler’s Cabin
Yellowstone
Jake exited his National Park Service Ford Expedition and walked to the hood of the vehicle. Strapped to the bumper guard and the hood was a big buck mule deer he’d shot on a hunting preserve south of the park. Hunting within the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park was illegal, so to pursue one of his favorite pastimes, he’d often travel to western Wyoming and eastern Idaho to hunt.
He admired the twelve-point rack on his kill. Mule deer bucks were very crafty and a challenging hunt. Because Jake was a regular at this particular hunting preserve, he wasn’t required by this outfitter to join a pack train made up of tourists. Jake knew his way around Greater Yellowstone like no park ranger or other member of the law enforcement rangers currently employed there.
Plus, he needed the quiet time to reflect on what had happened during the fire, and what he’d seen. He patted the carcass on the side and made his way to the back of the Expedition. He quickly unloaded his hiking gear and rifles before making his way across the front lawn of his cabin.
Jake, who’d been with the rangers for thirteen years, was one of the few occupants of an original National Park Service soldier station at Yellowstone. Several of the log cabin structures had been built in the late eighteen hundreds, and his home had been constructed in 1908. The building was used as a ranger station until 1959 when the seven-point-two magnitude Hebgen Lake earthquake shook Yellowstone and sent waves of panic around the country. The massive quake—which was felt throughout Wyoming, southwestern Montana, and Idaho—was perceived to be a precursor to an eruption of the supervolcano.
Nearly thirty people died, many from the landslides that were triggered, but the feared eruption never came to pass. Following the quake, the cabin was converted from a soldier station to a residence. It was one of the perks afforded Jake, with the only downside being he had to remain on call twenty-four seven unless he was on vacation.
He knocked the dirt off his boots as he climbed a few steps onto the massive wraparound deck, which encompassed the log and mortar structure. He opened the front door and slid his gear onto the well-worn wood floor.
“Hi, honey, I’m home,” he announced sarcastically. Jake had never married, and except for one serious relationship with a high-spirited girl from Southern California, which had ultimately led him to Wyoming, he’d never seriously dated. He was married to his job, but he was in love with his mistress—the great outdoors.
Jake removed his flannel shirt, revealing a tee shirt with the USGS logo embroidered on the left pocket. Still in his late thirties, he was fortunate to have maintained his chiseled body through the years by engaging in a variety of outdoor activities, including hiking, caving, hunting, and fishing. There wasn’t an outdoor sport that he didn’t like except for maybe skydiving. He just couldn’t grasp the concept of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.
But then again, skydivers couldn’t imagine why he liked to climb up the side of a mountain with no ropes, harnesses, or protective equipment. Known as free climbing, or soloing, Jake used physical ability and climbing knowledge to flawlessly go up and down rocky faces, as well as explore caves and crevices in granite outcroppings.
After he field dressed the mule deer and butchered it, he was exhausted. A long hot shower brought him back to life, and a cold beer put him in a reflective mood. He walked outside to the back porch and flopped into an Adirondack chair. The view of the valley below him, and Firehole River, which ran through it, caused him to close his eyes for the hundredth time since he’d laid eyes on the boiling earth.
He was now firmly convinced that it had been lava seeping to the surface, which had never been seen at Yellowstone since the park’s inception. He understood enough about the volcanic system to know that the heated rock was more than four miles below the surface and the actual magma chamber stretched down as much as four hundred miles.
If he was correct, this would have a tremendous impact on the constant scientific studies taking place at Yellowstone and might even cause Project Hydro to be suspended. The only reason Jake chose to go hunting rather than report his findings was because a good man, Dr. Peake, had been run out of his job for speaking out against Project Hydro.
The swiftness of Dr. Peake’s departure was a clear signal to Jake that the people who endorsed the project would not stand for criticism, whether directly or indirectly. His suggestion that lava had found its way to the surface and was the cause of a massive fire would most likely be met with resistance.
Jake couldn’t afford to lose his job, and he didn’t have a trust fund or inheritance to fall back on. In fact, it was just the opposite. He and his family barely spoke.
Yet he was sure of what he’d seen, and he needed to tell somebody. He hadn’t met the new guy, Younger, but a lot of Dr. Peake’s people were still around. Tomorrow, he’d mosey down to the YVO and see if he could find a friendly ear. Tonight, he’d drink beer and enjoy the night under the stars.
Alone.
Chapter 9
Ramo Auditorium
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, California
The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, was founded in the late eighteen hundreds as a small university with over nine hundred PhD-level researchers compared to just three hundred regular faculty members. Over the years, the school became known as one of the world’s leading institutions of scientific research and education.
Eventually, philanthropists and private foundations, led by the Carnegies and Rockefellers, discovered Caltech, and funding for scientific research projects began to roll in. For a period of time, it was an educational institution in name only. During World War II, the newly constituted Jet Propulsion Laboratory, together with eighty million
dollars in federal funding, began to produce new discoveries from rockets to early aerospace technology. Over time, it became the recognized world leader in scientific and technological advancement.
“Do you know where we’re going?” asked Rita as she studied the Google Maps app on her iPhone.
Dusty was driving slowly down South Holliston Avenue, pressing his face against the windshield as he drove in search of street signs. “Of course I do, and I don’t need a map app to get me there. What I need is a place to park.”
Ashby sat quietly in the backseat of the four-door Jeep Wrangler, studying her notes. Today’s symposium at Caltech was the third annual event since she had been appointed to NASA’s Advisory Council on Planetary Defense. The advisory council was commissioned by NASA to bring together scientists from various fields of study to discuss potentially hazardous objects, or PHOs, such as asteroids and comets.
While the initial focus of the council was to assess the threat and provide scientific solutions, with the addition of Ashby and two other scientists three years ago, the advisory council had added three additional potential threats to the conversation—biological, solar, and volcanic.
In her first two appearances at the symposium, the roundtable-style discussion focused on NASA’s five-step plan to prevent a catastrophic asteroid impact—locate, predict, characterize, deflect, and prepare.
In the first year, Ashby barely spoke other than to introduce herself. Last year, with the near miss of a potentially devastating solar flare, the advisory panel’s scientists debated whether the resulting electromagnetic pulse was sufficiently dangerous enough to warrant extensive hardening of the nation’s power grid.
This year, however, with the recent volcanic activity in Hawaii and South America, Ashby was expected to take a more prominent role in the conversation. Naturally, her colleagues in the Planetary Science Division would spend a considerable amount of time discussing near-earth objects. When the focus turned on Ashby, she wanted to address the topic of volcanology in a cogent and compelling way, without appearing uninspiring.
In other words, she had to be interesting without dropping any bombs—a difficult task for a strong-willed woman with a lot to say.
“Boom!” shouted Dusty as he sped forward and then whipped the steering wheel of the Jeep toward the right. His sudden outburst startled Ashby, and the accompanying driving maneuver threw her sideways across the backseat.
She calmly looked at Dusty using the reflection of the rearview mirror. “Dusty, was that necessary?”
“Um, well, I don’t want you to be late,” he replied sheepishly.
Rita snorted and shook her head.
As the trio exited the vehicle, Ashby admonished her young associate. “Arrive alive, remember? That’s rule number one. Rule number two, don’t destroy government property. It took me six months to get this Jeep and get rid of that dinky Nissan Leaf that Rita loved so much.”
“It was electric.” Rita defended her choice.
“It was a death trap that could barely climb a hill,” Ashby replied jokingly as she put her arm around the young volcanologist-in-training. “The places we’ll be going require a vehicle with some grit and stamina.”
Dusty jogged to catch up. “Yellowstone, right, Doc?”
“You betcha. If it were up to me, we’d have the RV loaded up, Jeep in tow, and be on our way already.”
Dusty ran ahead and turned around to walk backwards. Ashby smiled at his boyish approach to life. “Let’s do it! C’mon, you can blow this off. This place is full of eggheads anyway.”
“You dope. We’re eggheads too,” chastised Rita.
“I know, but not like these rocket scientists,” Dusty shot back as he continued to walk backwards. “I mean, think about it. They find microscopic air bubbles ten feet below the Martian surface and the next thing you know, they’re calling a news conference and every cable network declares Breaking News: life on Mars was possible ten quadrillion years ago. Meanwhile, we discover that Yellowstone is about to blow its top and kill every last human on the planet and nobody cares. It’s bull—!”
Rita lifted her arm and pointed as Dusty was railing on NASA, but Ashby pulled it back down. Both of them watched in amusement as Dusty tripped backwards over a short hedgerow, tumbling onto the grassy lawn in front of Ramo Auditorium.
“You’re such a dork,” Rita said half-jokingly.
Dusty hopped up and quickly looked around to see if anyone had seen his clumsy antics before he jumped the hedge and joined them once again.
“You know I’m right,” he declared.
Ashby didn’t respond, but she certainly agreed.
Chapter 10
Ramo Auditorium
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, California
Fifteen minutes later, Rita and Dusty were settled at a table toward the rear of the auditorium near the invited press corps, and Ashby was sitting amongst her peers as one of the theorists from the advisory council spoke.
“Think about it,” the scientist continued. “Life on our planet has been marked by a continuous and steady rate of extinction. There are currently fifty million species of plants and animals on Earth. On the surface, it appears we are remarkably diverse, yet it is nothing compared to what has existed before. Science has revealed approximately fifty billion different species have inhabited our planet since life began here. Only one out of a thousand still remain. That means ninety-nine-point-nine percent of life on Earth has already been extinguished.
“To be sure, there have been the so-called extinction-level events, which resulted in massive die-offs, at least three of which are evidenced by the massive craters around our planet created by asteroid impacts.”
“And volcanic activity,” interjected Ashby, which drew a look from the speaker. “I’ve been honored to be a part of the advisory council for the last couple of years, but it seems our eyes are always looking to the heavens. We must acknowledge how continuously active our planet is. Just in the last seventy-five thousand years, a geologic blink of the eye, intense volcanic activity such as the Toba supervolcanic eruption has reshaped the earth’s surface and resulted in a near-catastrophic interruption in human evolution.”
“The genetic bottleneck theory,” added the scientist, who reluctantly yielded the floor to Ashby.
Ashby immediately broke protocol and stood, choosing to wander the stage with her portable microphone clipped to her linen blouse. Unlike the other members of the advisory council, who wore their Sunday best, Ashby wore her customary khaki slacks, white shirt, and her white North Face hiking shoes.
“The Toba eruption was every bit as catastrophic as the asteroid impacts that we’ve mentioned on this stage before. The eruption was a hundred times greater than the Mount Tambora event in 1815, which caused the Year Without a Summer in the northern hemisphere.
“After Toba erupted, a global volcanic winter lasted nearly ten years followed by a thousand-year-long cooling period, during which time the population of humans on the planet fell to just a few thousand.”
Ashby turned to the audience of roughly four hundred academics, scientists, and media who were in attendance. The symposium was also being filmed for closed-circuit rebroadcast to classrooms around the globe and for the benefit of live news feeds.
“It is not my intent to diminish the importance of a near-object threat. However, I would like to raise awareness of the threat under our feet. We live our daily lives on the edge of catastrophe. Less than a thousand miles from this auditorium, a restless killer lurks underneath the surface of our planet. It is a natural phenomenon perfectly suited for creating an environmental disaster beyond comprehension, not to mention the extinction of our species.”
“The Yellowstone Caldera,” one of the scientists interrupted.
“Exactly,” said Ashby. “In the recent history of our planet, hundreds of thousands of people have died from the noxious gases, mudslides, tsunamis, and pyroclastic flows that were caus
ed by volcanic eruptions. You should also consider this fact against the following backdrop—modern man hasn’t been around for the most devastating supervolcano eruptions that have occurred in Earth’s history. Isn’t the human race incredibly naïve to think that just because we are technologically advanced and blessed with incredible knowledge, our lives aren’t in constant danger of a catastrophic eruption? Every day, we’re at risk of an extinction-level event that has happened many times before and will most certainly happen again.”
The attendees in the room began to speak among themselves and nodded their heads in approval. Ashby wasn’t sure if they were agreeing with her statement or excited about the possibility of verbal sparring between the intellectuals. Either way, after hearing Dusty’s statement earlier, she’d become determined to make her feelings known.
Another scientist interrupted her statements. “Dr. Donovan, I admire your work, but you’re misleading the audience to an extent. We have ample warning of potentially imminent eruptions of Earth’s supervolcanoes. Whether it be Taupo in New Zealand or Yellowstone in our own backyard, we have the ability to monitor the geological signs pointing to a catastrophic eruption far in advance.”
Ashby could tell she was in for a fight. For a brief moment, she wondered why she was even placed on the advisory council if all they wanted to do was talk about space.
“I’m aware of the new study, which, by the way, my team participated in. The model, based upon the Taupo Volcanic Zone, studied the supervolcano and how it related to tectonic stresses. Taupo was an ideal subject because of its relatively uncomplicated setting. Any form of tectonic stress may result in the destabilization of the rock and could trigger eruptions. At Taupo, I took it one step further and studied the amounts of stress, the tectonic plate movement, and the amount of magma supply in its reservoirs. I intend to take this same analytical approach and apply it to the Yellowstone Caldera.”