Rock Fall Revisited
Copyright© 2021 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 2: Rock Fall Minus Thirty
When I woke up the next morning, I listened to the news while I ate my breakfast. The scientists had firmed up the predictions, down to the hour, minute, and second of the impact, which was going to be south of Easter Island in the Pacific, about forty degrees south latitude. Beyond that was a litany of “Don’t panic! It’s not going to be that bad.”
All I could do was shake my head. Clearly, the government had decided to downplay the risks. I wished the president luck — the Bush Administration had tried that with Katrina — look how that had worked out! His replacement had his Katrina — the Gulf Oil Spill — and had gone on vacation. That hadn’t worked out too well for him either. The fallout from that had made him desperate to do something — anything — to stop the bleeding in the Middle East — and his solution had killed about a half million people so far, and the press was sure that was just the warm-up. But hey, they weren’t Americans, for the most part.
I called the general manager at my store and told him I’d be in the next day, and he just laughed. “Don’t rush it — you know the company policy on coming to work sick.”
“I just spent the last fourteen hours asleep. Let me put a little food down my gullet, rest a bit more, and I’ll be good to go.”
Instead, I went to the Internet, found a coal dealer in Portland, and arranged for a couple of tons. I went out to the truck, put in the stake inserts that made it a giant box, and drove to Port of Portland in time for my eleven a.m. appointment.
The office manager was pleasant and waved my invoice. “You think it’s going to be a cold winter?”
I looked him in the eye. “A long, cold winter, a wet spring and summer, and probably an early winter next fall. A year and a half from now, things should be looking better.”
He grimaced. “Yeah, I was thinking that myself. Except I don’t have a furnace that will burn coal.”
“I have one designed in the last half of the nineteenth century — if it burns, it’s designed for it.”
“I should get one.”
I met his eyes. “You should.”
When I pulled the truck up next to the loading chute, I was expecting a foot or so of coal in the bed of the truck. Coal was 1100 kilograms per cubic meter, and the truck held eight cubic yards. Imagine my surprise when the coal cascaded into the bed in a black torrent that nearly filled the truck.
He came out. “Oops! Sorry about that! My bad! You can carry that much?”
“Yes,” I said, not particularly caring about how many bumps along the way would bottom out the springs. Sixteen tons of coal, and what do you get? Another year warmer and more yet.
I took it slow and easy ... the real problem I was facing was that I had no place to put that much coal. Then I had a brainstorm, and when I got home, I used my own forklift to move hay bales around in the barn and made a coal bin of hay bales. Then I stood in the back of the truck and shoveled the rest of the day and half of the night. Twenty pounds per shovel load; a hundred shovels per ton, 1600 full shovels to empty the truck.
I have no idea what the general manager of the store thought the next day when I came in. I’d cleaned up as best as I could, but it was going to take a few more washings before all of the coal dust was gone!
It was a good thing I was there because the company had come down with emergency directives. Even the first day after the announcement, we’d had to put limits on how much people could buy of most items — mostly it was limited to a single case or sack.
Still, things were flying off the shelves faster than we could stock them, faster than we could get deliveries, and we were starting to see shortages. Ed Kramer, the store’s General Manager, was blunt. “The president can talk until he’s blue in the face about there not being any reason to panic, but people want to be ready anyway. Of course, it doesn’t help that the president wants people to be self-sufficient for two weeks or more.
“What we’ve been doing up to now is not caring how many times someone goes through the line — people have been circumventing the hoarding rules that way. I have signage being prepared that will state that all purchases will be tracked, and anything that goes over the limit will be pulled from their carts and restocked.
“We are going to get a lot of flak about that, but it’s not fair to people who have been slow off the mark. Floor supervisors should be sure to try to defuse situations, but at the first sign of any real trouble, call security. We’ve significantly beefed up security, including nearly twenty armed guards, because we have simply unbelievable amounts of cash on hand.
“If there’s a robbery, tell your people not under any circumstances to resist. That’s what the guards are for. We can’t afford gun battles in the store. We can’t have them, for that matter, in the parking lot, either. Use common sense — tell the people at the registers to be extra polite, and make sure everyone knows the hoarding limits.”
He looked around the table at his managers. “We aren’t experiencing anything that any other food retailer isn’t experiencing. One of the problems we face is that the pipeline normally holds only two weeks of goods, for the most part, and that’s being emptied out very fast by the accelerated demand. So far, we haven’t had significant shortages, but that’s going to start happening at any time.
“Worse, the company is having increasing difficulties finding new merchandise — and the prices are going up as goods become scarcer. Still, the economists are sure that we can sell whatever food stocks we have at a reasonable profit. We are in the process of changing our price labeling to include costs to demonstrate that we aren’t price gouging.” He made a grimace. “The cash surplus is a long-term problem, but right now we need to face the short term. We don’t want people to think we’re profiteering.
“Still, the best guess is that within two weeks our shelves will be pretty much empty of food. It is entirely possible that we will have sold a year’s worth of some products in that period. The result is that the company already has a great deal of cash and will be acquiring more. I say this to tell you that we’re here for the long haul and I want you to reassure all of our associates that there are no planned layoffs or cutbacks. We have, in fact, had to add temporary help all through the store.”
There was more pep talk, and then I went to my desk and started through three days of unanswered phone calls and emails. Herb came by a few minutes later. “I wish you’d told me what was going on,” he told me.
“I wish I had, too,” I told him.
“Well, as you may have heard, they are going over the early invoices, trying to identify major hoarders.”
Mentally, I gulped, but Herb kept on. “Somehow when we were entering the dates on your invoices they were entered as October work, not November.”
“Herb...”
“I figure you owe me a really big one,” he told me.
“I do,” I assured him.
“Give me your home address and tell me that my wife and ten-year-old son are welcome if things tank.”
I took out my card and wrote my address on the back, all the while thinking furiously. When I handed it to him, I held on to it for an extra second. “Whatever you do, don’t wait too long. What’s going to happen is certainly going to include a lot of rain.”
“That’s what they say — maybe two or three times normal.”
“Maybe that, maybe more — and who knows, maybe we can have a big barbecue if everything is overblown.
“So remember, if the creeks start to rise, you’d better make tracks, because if you are on the wrong side of the river when the creek goes up, not all the good will in the world will help you across.”
He nodded soberly. “Is there anything we could bring?”
“Everything you can fit in your cars,” I told him. “Food, clothes, bedding, utensils, tools, books, magazines ... you name it, bring it.”
“Do you think it’s going to be worse than they say?”
“Way worse. I said it’s going to rain and you had to stop and think. Why did you have to stop and think? Because no one has mentioned heavy rain, have they?”
“No, they haven’t — not really. They say we’ll get six to nine inches in December instead of the usual two to three inches. We’ve had that much before without problems.”
“Then be sure to bring an umbrella or two. And since it’s the time of year when we occasionally see snow, you might want to wear something warm. And the rain won’t happen until January or February.”
“Surely if they expected something bad, they’d warn us,” he said, sounding desperate.
“Herb, this piece of rock is going to explosively evaporate four or five hundred cubic miles of sea water in the first instant. Over the next few days as the sea returns, expect half that much more again to boil as the ocean cools the crater. Granted, that will cause the ocean depth to fall only a tenth of an inch and that is roughly how much water the sun evaporates every day from the ocean. Except the sun spreads that out over the whole planet and an entire day — not one small spot in an instant.”
He shivered. “I guess I’m the one owing you big time, aren’t I?”
I smiled. “No, you just crystallized something I’ve been thinking about. I have hoarded enough food to feed me about a century. It’s too dangerous to try this alone. You’re a good guy Herb and I’ve met Emma a few times at parties and picnics. She seems nice, too.
“Why don’t you talk to Emma? It’s Saturday, and I can take some time off tomorrow afternoon. The three of you come over, and we can talk.”
He met my eyes. “Thanks, Logan!”
I nodded to him, and he left, his eyes clearly showing that his brain was engaged in high gear.
Well, so was mine. Herb had jogged my brain from panic mode to thinking more clearly. It was clear that I just couldn’t pull myself off into my Fortress of Solitude, ride out the troubles, and then expect things to be like before. What if I was right, and things did fall apart?
There were all sorts of things to think about that I’d never considered. The company didn’t get a lot of our food products from overseas, at least not directly. Still, there were a lot of non-food goods that came by ship. No one in their right mind was going to leave a ship in the Pacific Ocean if they could possibly help it.
No one had said anything, but if I were a ship owner, every ship I had would be steaming as fast as possible to a North Atlantic port. I swallowed. Global oil deliveries were going to go in the tank, no matter what. At least two months of disruption of supply. I was sure the US could handle a two-month disruption, but what about countries like the EU, Japan, China, India, and Taiwan? I stopped.
Forget Taiwan, probably Japan as well, certainly Singapore, and the Philippines. Everyone felt bad about Chile, which was almost certainly going to be destroyed, and even more sympathy for the Kiwis of New Zealand. How badly Australia would be hit would be a factor of how well New Zealand broke up the tidal waves.
The nations of the Pacific Rim were going to be destroyed. I blinked. China was a Pacific Rim country, and a good part of it was river lowlands, facing southeast. China was going to lose a lot of its agricultural heartland. And India, the Southeast Asian countries...
I gulped and swallowed. No one had spoken much beyond about the tragedy of Chile and the plight of the Kiwis. The New Zealanders were even now boarding airliners, hastily departing for Australia mainly, with a few coming to Canada and the US. Chileans were boarding trains for the mountains. Personally, I thought staying that close to the impact site, Andes or not, was a form of Russian Roulette.
Again, while my company wasn’t heavily dependent on foreign food stocks, we did carry about ten percent of our food from places like South America and Europe, and a high percentage, of course, of everything else came from China and Asia in general.
I cursed our president. His exhortations not to panic had gone a long way towards removing the sense of urgency that people had felt for the first day or two. Not panicking was a good thing, of course, but he should have done more than to say, “be prepared for two weeks on your own.” We needed to mobilize a lot of resources in the next few weeks if we were going to meet the coming catastrophe with some ability to weather it.
More than even a few moments before, I realized how going it alone wasn’t going to work.
The phones were no longer overloaded and half the time a phone call actually went through. I picked up the phone and called Mark first, who picked up. “Mark, this is Logan. I don’t suppose I could buy you dinner tonight? I’ll feed Jim too, if he can get free.”
Mark was silent for a second. “Obviously you have to know I’m swamped right now and Jim more so.”
“It would be a working dinner,” I told him.
“My house then, eight o’clock,” he told me. “Do you want me to invite Jim?”
“Please, his office is down the hall from yours. I was lucky and got you in one try. Jim, I haven’t had any luck in reaching him since the first announcement.”
“Sure, no problem. Let me go back to trying to sort out the chaos. See you later.”
I left early and drove home. It was odd. It wasn’t terribly obvious, I thought, but people were both more and less considerate on the road than ever before — you just never knew which sort of person you were going to meet. Some people were very polite, willing to yield the right of way to make life easier for you merging into traffic, more so it seemed, than usual. At the same time, there were people who just seemed to go crazy, honking, giving you the finger, even screaming out their car windows at you, something I’d never heard before.
I got to Mark’s and greeted his wife and his daughters. Sarah was pleasant, but harried. “What do you think is going to happen, Logan?” I looked at the girls and back to her. She swallowed. “Oh.”
“I’ve come bearing gifts, not to worry,” I told her. “Everything will be fine.” I handed her a ham, a bottle of wine, and two of orange juice.
Jim and Mark were in Mark’s office in the back of the house, and Mark waved me to a folding chair. “I’d rather not get too candid at dinner,” he told me.
“I know. Look, I’m not privy to any special information, do you understand? That said, I was a supply officer in the army, and logistics runs in my blood. Right now, every ship in the Pacific Ocean that can is headed for the Atlantic at its best speed.”
Mark nodded. “True, at least those in the southern hemisphere. They’re not predicting much of a tidal wave this far north.”
Jim sighed, and I nodded.
“Yeah, that’s just it. We’re getting the rosiest scenario. No one is making preparations for ‘What if it’s worse?’ At a minimum, global shipping schedules are going to be hosed for a couple of months. That’s going to be a mess if nothing else goes wrong. Oil supplies — we’re no longer dependent on foreign oil these days. Our supplies will probably not be disrupted too much, but countries like China, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and maybe India are going to get hurt by the tidal waves — and they aren’t going to have ports and oil terminals afterwards.
“They are going to need loads of oil to help cope with the destruction — and we’re going to be competing for supplies with countries like China and Japan with deep pockets, while everyone else is. And, it’s going to be winter here. They never, ever forecast post-impact weather, have you noticed? At least beyond, ‘Expect more rain.’”
“That’s what they’ve told us — to expect more rain,” Jim volunteered.
“It’ll be January and probably February and maybe March before the worst of the weather effects reach here. What does that tell you about how much rain to expect?”
Jim sucked in air. “We’d be better off with rain, not snow,” he mused. “Snow ... that’ll be a catastrophe, particularly if fuel supplies are disrupted in any way. We’re in better shape than big cities, as a lot of our people have fireplaces and wood-burning stoves.”
“But not everyone,” I corrected him.
“No, not everyone,” Mark agreed. “What are you saying?”
“I say, fuck this pablum shit they’re feeding us. You’re supposed to have emergency plans. Do you have one for a maximal disaster?”
Mark nodded. “Ever since the Columbus Day storm, back in the day. We developed a plan and expanded on it. It’s staged for the type of disaster that we would face. The worst case is a 9.0 earthquake off the mouth of the Columbia River, breaking all of the Columbia River bridges, breaking the bridges at Longview and Chehalis, as well. Essentially putting us on our own resources for a month, with lots of damage and injuries.”
“That,” I said. “You need to get it out, meet with the other local leaders, and tell them that it won’t hurt to be prepared for the worst, but it sure would hurt if the worst happened and we weren’t prepared.”
“That makes sense, Mark,” Jim said. “You were talking about taking some extra precautions. Why not go whole hog and do everything we can think of?”
“Because it might panic people,” Mark told us.
“Do you think people will panic if you tell them that we have to get together as a community and make basic preparations for what to do if something unexpected happens? We can have people working on all sorts of things ahead of time. Just having lists of people who have and don’t have wood-burning heating would help. Lists of older people living by themselves who should be checked on in an emergency — basic things. Things that would serve to both take people’s minds off what’s coming, but at the same time, remind them that something bad could be coming down the pike,” I replied.
“It wouldn’t hurt, Mark,” Jim said, agreeing. “We can ask for volunteers next week, to work next weekend. At first, we won’t have to do much. Later, we’ll need to do some training for additional first responders. We need to coordinate with Chief Curtis of the fire department.”
“There is one thing that is high on my own personal list of priorities,” I told them. “I remember a few years ago when the Willamette River nearly came over the sea wall in Portland and we had to dynamite the levees along the Lewis River, or we might have lost the bridge into town. We were lucky because nothing much affected the back route down to Battleground and thence to Vancouver. But if it rains really hard, we could lose that route too.
“In which case we would have exactly zero local medical resources,” I concluded.
Mark smiled slightly. “As you know, we have local-option gambling here in town. That’s a pain, but at the same time the casinos pay a hell of a lot of taxes. Back after 9/11 we talked to the Feds and they agreed to pre-position a kit for a full MASH unit here. We have enough stuff to build a hospital of some hundred beds and supply it for two weeks.”
I whistled. “Cool! But we don’t have any staff.”
Mark pointed at me. “You said the word. Lists! All sorts of lists. We need a full list of every man, woman, and child that lives around here. Sarah is a computer guru. She can whip up a database design, and we can record all that stuff on a computer.”
“And print out hard copies,” I said prosaically.
Jim laughed. “You’re frustrated because you live way out there in the country, and the power keeps going out.”
“Not as often as you imagine. We have all underground utilities and not nearly as many morons digging up the roads out there as you do here in town.”
They laughed easily.
“One last thing, and I want your word on it. We’ve known each other all of our lives, and I’d hate to risk long friendships, but I want to tell you something, and you have to promise not to talk to anyone about it, not even your wives, without asking me first.”
Mark held my eyes steadily. “You secretly deserted from the army?”
“No. Do you promise?”
They both did.
“My father wasn’t a reclusive hermit — he was a paranoid survivalist. He was certain that one day the black helicopters would come, and we’d have to resist the UN from every ridge top.”
“He seemed pleasant enough,” Jim told me. “There’s nothing on him in our files.”
“He was the quiet, unassuming sort of survivalist, not a Randy Weaver in-your-face sort. He was also of the opinion that if there was ever any sort of battle at the house, he’d have already lost. So everything he did was predicated on keeping out of the line of fire.”
“And you’re telling us this, why?” Mark asked levelly.
“If things go seriously south, if things here fall completely apart, you and yours will always be welcome at my place. There’s lots of room.” And other things, but I wasn’t going to say it, so they wouldn’t have to debate whether or not to come and confiscate it.
“Do you think that’s likely?” Jim asked lightly. “If we have to pull out of town, it would mean we were complete failures at our jobs.”
“Sometimes you can be the greatest success of all time at your job, and events are too big anyway. This is just in case, okay? Obviously, if things go in the toilet here, my place is going to be too close. Maybe too close. And then again, when it comes to weather and the like — who can say? What if a secondary strike comes down right smack dab on the high school when you’re here, at the emergency command post?
“Anything can happen.”
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