Chapter 5: The Cold Hard Facts of Life and Death

I sat mulling over what I had learned so far and what I still did not understand.

“OK Agent,” I said, before starting the questions.

“Picket mentioned something called a kinetic impactor. Can you tell me what those are and how bad the attack will be?”

“Yes John. Note the figures I will be giving will be approximations and averages for simplicity. First, a kinetic impactor like those being used in the current bombardment of your planet is simply a large nickel-iron mass that has been assembled and accelerated to great speed and sent towards targets on the Earth. They have been launched from an unknown location, though either the leading or trailing Trojan points of Jupiter would be ideal. If true, the likely duration from launch to impact will be between 24 to 41 months depending upon orbital locations of both the launch and target points.”

“While in flight, they have some ability to guide themselves and make minor course corrections to correct errors or to switch targets. The impactors will have also been sent on multiple trajectories to not hit the targets located in the higher latitudes too shallowly, where they would risk skipping off the planet’s atmosphere.”

“The impactors have been timed to arrive over an extended period of time, likely one or two decades, though impacts will be more numerous early in the attack and tapering off after the first month. This will limit the ability of your species to react and mitigate the ongoing disaster. They will impact with great force, with some designed to fragment and explode in the atmosphere causing great surface damage from shock waves and electromagnetic pulses. Others are designed to remain intact, until they strike the surface of the planet and will cause huge craters, throw gigatons of dust and debris into the atmosphere and even cause faults to slip generating earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.’

“We also suspect that some of the air burst impactors are releasing toxic compounds and chemicals, possibly even biological agents, causing further panic and loss of life,” Agent explained before pausing briefly.

She soon continued. “The average impactor has an iron-nickel body of around ninety meters in diameter and is traveling at a speed of over twenty kilometers per second. About a third will strike the surface of the Earth and the remainder will explode in the air.”

“For the impactors which strike the ground, massive craters will be formed with depths averaging six hundred meters and a diameter averaging two to three kilometers across, depending upon soil conditions. The crater rims will average seventy meters in height also depending upon soil types. Each impact will eject massive amounts of dust and debris into the atmosphere with some debris even leaving the atmosphere to potentially fall back, causing further damage much later in the future.”

“The angle at which the impactor strikes may alter the previous estimates and projections somewhat. Although mostly aimed at your land areas, some will hit oceans or other smaller bodies of water and will cause tsunamis and eject great volumes of water vapor into your atmosphere. Also, as Picket relayed to you earlier, some will be directed to specific targets: Dams, cities, nuclear reactors and similar critical and vulnerable targets”

“For the impactors which detonate in the air, we have postulated that they also start at around 90 meters in diameter and consist of iron-nickel pebbles frozen together in a solid water ice matrix. The matrix will also contain volatile compounds and, as they enter the atmosphere, reactions to heating effects will cause the impactors to burst apart. The sudden transition from a single, relatively low-drag object to an enormous number of small, high-drag objects instantly releases a huge amount of energy into the atmosphere in the form of heat, which produces explosion-like effects. These explosions will be in the 10’s of megatons each depending upon the incoming angle at which they enter the atmosphere and at what altitude they burst.”

“The total number of impactors expected to be used in the attack upon your world is over 100,000 if this attack is like others witnessed elsewhere. These numbers will saturate the land mass areas of the earth fairly evenly with either an airburst explosion or ground impact occurring about every forty to fifty kilometers, not counting those aimed explicitly at noticeable critical targets as described earlier.”

I imagined twenty megaton bombs going off every thirty-five miles, everywhere, every direction, all across the planet and shuddered.

“OK, we are royally fucked! Have any hit near here yet?” I asked, feeling suddenly nervous.

“The nearest impact which I have detected so far occurred around 240 kilometers to the northwest near the North Dakota border. Two air burst explosions have also occurred slightly closer, one to the north east in Minnesota and one to the south, slightly across the Nebraska border. Also, of local note, I have detected a ground impact at around 280 kilometers which occurred near the center of the state. I calculate that the Oahe dam near Pierre has been destroyed. There have been many more impacts or explosions detected, but none closer currently. This will change as time passes though.”

That numbed me. Oahe was the largest of the rolled earth dams on the Missouri river system. The whole river system would flood, taking the smaller dams along the way, all the way down to St Louis. I thought of other big dams across the world, the Hoover dam and Three Gorges dam, those were even bigger. Even so, all the dams soon failing was probably just a drop in the bucket considering the massive hurt the rest of the Earth was taking.

I quietly asked. “How close can one hit before we won’t survive?”

“It is likely that you will not survive any impacts closer than five or six kilometers though that distance does have a high tolerance for error.”

I did the math ... yes, I struggled a bit but was too proud to ask Agent. The best I could come up with is that I had around a ten percent chance of buying the farm from a direct impact. I felt a bit better for some reason until I remembered all the people not currently in a deep bunker. They would have much worse odds.

Agent continued. “All across the world, electrical power will fail if it has not done so already. There will be massive food and other resource shortages. The impacts and explosions will spread fires, both in cities and in the wild, without any form of firefighting available to limit spreading. Radiation from the damaged nuclear reactors will spread and pollute vast areas for centuries. Other large areas will become contaminated from pollution caused by chemical spills, pipeline ruptures, tank failures, rail car spills, tanker ship spills and more. Many will die due to flooding from tsunamis and the failed dams. Sickness will spread. Survivors will turn violent as the competition for remaining resources grows.”

“Adding to the direct, but relatively short-term, impact of the kinetic strikes, the climate will be altered very severely on the long term. What you would call a ‘nuclear winter’ will occur and this will last for decades because of the long timeframe of impactor arrivals which will continue to renew atmospheric dust and ash pollution. The extended drop in temperatures will cause most plant life to fail and most animal life to die off. Ocean life will even suffer because of increased pollution and sedimentation entering the water, and from the lack of sunlight, killing any sea life dependent upon photosynthesis, for decades.”

“Anyone fortunate enough to find shelter will die as they freeze or starve, either from exhaustion of stored food, or of heating fuel. This will occur long before they could begin to see any meaningful recovery to the planetary environment and ecology. Therefore, the end of your current civilization is inevitable,” Agent concluded.

I sat there rubbing my forehead. We weren’t just ‘royally’ fucked; we were ‘mega-uber-imperially’ fucked! I did not see how I was exempt from this bleak end either.

I was thinking about Agents description of the kinetic impactors and the effects of their attack when another question came to mind. “Agent, that’s a huge number of bullets sent this way. Over a hundred thousand? Do they use rockets or something? How did we not see their base or whatever if they are that big?”

“The kinetic projectile masses are lunched by space-based momentum transfer tethers. Simply put, they suspend two masses from each end of a long tether and spin them up ... like a sling or hammer toss ... in your terms. The tethers are incredibly strong, have their own intelligence and are self-repairing. They utilize solar power to spin up the masses to a certain speed then they wait. The spinning tethers are spread over a wide area and thus have gone unnoticed by your world. They also appear to actively screen their tethers using various methods.”

“Once the attack is initiated, in this instance around seventy-five years ago by our calculations, they begin to spin faster until the impactor masses are traveling at a speed of around twenty kilometers per second. Next, after performing incredibly complex calculations to adjust rotational speed and axis, the tethers release both masses. One mass is released so as to be on an almost perfect trajectory towards your planet while the other mass is flung in the opposite direction. Availability of resources to construct both masses and the tethers lead to our conclusion that the asteroid rich Trojan points of Jupiter would be an ideal location.

“Why 75 years ago?”

“Picket concludes that the triggering reason was the widespread detonation and use of nuclear weapons on your planet”

Huh, that figures. I just realized something else.

“Hey! That launching method means they waste half their ammunition!” I exclaimed, shocked.

“Yes and No, John. The second mass, or anchor mass, is lost but this is just a large mass of rock or even ice and easily found or fabricated by the attackers. The first mass, which is targeted towards the Earth, requires more preparation. They are nickel-iron shaped masses with some onboard intelligent and some course correction abilities”

“Still, incredibly complex aiming calculations are required as the target and the launching point are in separate orbits and various points around your star. We project the majority of the computational power of the attackers is devoted to astronomy and orbital mechanics to achieve such a precise feat.”

I must admit. I barely understood what Agent was describing but I had no doubt that the feat was incredible. She almost sounded awestruck or proud which confused and miffed me a bit. I paused a long time thinking before asking my next question.

“So, who is hating on us? Who is launching these attacks? Some angry species of Alien from out in deep space somewhere?”

“I will attempt to provide as much information as I am able. The attack was launched by self-replicating, autonomous, machine intelligences, spread across the Galaxy...”

“Fucking Berserkers!” I yelled, interrupting Agent as I recalled an old science fiction story I had once read.

Agent paused a long moment before replying. “ ... Yes. Yes, I see. The term fits almost perfectly if you are referring to the ‘Berserker’ definition as defined by members of your science fiction writing community.”

“Yep. I read the books by Saberhagen,” I replied, remembering the stories of autonomous machines wandering the Galaxy on a mission to destroy all intelligent life. I followed with “I suppose the term ‘Fermi Paradox’ will also be a part of your explanation as Berserkers were one of the possible explanations, right?” I asked Agent.

Again, she paused a short while before replying.

“ ... Yes, I understand your references. Yes, this is a likely valid hypothesis explaining why so few intelligences exist in our galaxy,” she paused again before continuing.

“I will use the term “Berserker” from now on when referring to the attacking presence in your solar system. Here is what I know about the berserker force. Some unknown species from the far recesses of the galaxy created these weapons and sent them off into space programed to seek out and destroy any other spaceflight capable civilizations they encountered.”

“The original creators have not been seen for millions of your years and are presumed long gone. However, the Berserkers remain, still active and still very dangerous. They are, as your science fiction postulates, autonomous, intelligent machines who spread by self-replication. The have destroyed thousands of civilizations over millions of years. Your planet simply being the most recent to fall before them.”

“Unlucky us ... how did they find us?”

“I will relay what I know regarding that as Picket has now flagged the information as permissible to reveal to you,” Agent explained.

Curious, I sat up a bit.

“From what Picket’s species has observed from other attacks by Berserkers, they search for emerging civilizations who are beginning to become technologically advanced to the point of nuclear energy or interplanetary spaceflight. Any civilization below those thresholds seems not to trigger the attacks. As I discussed earlier, Picket suspects that when humans discovered and utilized nuclear weapons, the current attack was triggered. Also, as you say, bad luck, very bad luck, was partly responsible. This was due to your location and the stage of your civilizations development.”

I considered her answer. “So, we set off an H-bomb or something, they saw it and came here to do us in? ... and it took 75 years to get here?” I speculated.

“That seems unlikely. It is more probable that the berserker force has been present in your system for millennia. They spread slowly as they pass various stars around the galaxy; they look for planets harboring life. They probably detected early signs of life millions of years ago and have been waiting for significant growth since.”

“Those bastards probably killed the dinosaurs,” I murmured ruefully to myself.

“Highly unlikely, but not impossible,” Agent answered, not understanding I was half joking.

“As the device waits and watches it slowly grows, building its size and capacity and storing enormous amounts of energy. This occurs over thousands and thousands of years. It mines asteroids and comets, builds solar arrays as needed for power, gathers ammunition, and assembles huge launching tether arrays while continuing to wait and watch. If intelligent life does not emerge, the arrays are eventually used to send newly created Berserkers seed units out from the system to neighboring systems and thus, spread Berserkers to more stars. Over the eons, their threat spreads across the Galaxy,” Agent explained.

“Picket’s species lets this happen? They watch these machines build an army for centuries and do nothing to stop it?” I asked.

Agent hesitated a bit before answering. “They are limited in ways to deal with the Berserkers. Simply put, if the local Berserkers are halted here and prevented from attacking somehow, then, almost certainly there will be a latter, more devastating attack. This attach would be much worse and would render the world completely sterile of all life. Picket’s species believes that if the original attack is allowed to continue, the attack would be limited to just exterminating the intelligent life and the majority of higher life forms on your world. This would fulfil the Berserkers mission, as programmed by their creators long ago, to eliminating intelligent life.”

I did not understand. “Agent, what do you mean by ‘a later attack’? Couldn’t all the berserkers in the system just be destroyed before they attacked somehow?”

“I am sorry John. Yes, that has been attempted in the past but with a dreadful outcome. Once the Berserkers are reduced to a certain minimum number and are nearing elimination, they activate an interstellar ‘distress beacon’ for lack of a better description. Later, sometimes centuries later, there will be a new, much stronger attack, coming from interstellar space, which results in complete sterilization of the system.”

“Berserkers have been programmed to account for such local resistance. It has been determined that as they spread around the galaxy searching for life bearing systems, periodically they also seed a star system where there is no life. There they can go unnoticed and undetected for eons as they build what could be described as ‘super weapons’. These super weapon bases can monitor a large interstellar area, hundreds of light years across. When they detect an ‘emergency distress beacon’ sent from another group of Berserkers, they will use their super weapons to attack that system, even across interstellar distances.”

“How can they attack from so far away and how can these weapons sterilize a world?” I asked.

“They use a similar form of kinetic impactors as the local Berserkers use, John. These are much more powerful as they are traveling much, much faster when they hit. To cross the interstellar distances in a timely manner and to carry the destruction they do, each interstellar impactor is traveling at least 0.9 C and sometimes faster,” Agent replied.

“C? You mean like as in the speed of light?” I asked.

“Yes John. The physics are basic and even known to your species. The typical relativistic impactor has been calculated to have a mass of around 700 kilograms and travel at 0.9c. These will impact with an energy of approximately 79 million, trillion Joules, the equivalent of around 19 of your ‘gigatons of TNT’ as you use when describing the effects of your nuclear weapons.

Based upon the few worlds we have surveyed where this has happened, the attack will typically involve thousands of these impactors, one arriving every few days, probably because of the extreme energy required to launch and accelerate such masses. The launching method we still do not understand and can only speculate about as the total energy required would be a good fraction of the output of most stars.”