THE PRESIDENT SUMMONED THE GROUP TO ORDER. He was in shirtsleeves, collar open wide, his eyes bleary with fatigue. He nodded to Steve Draper.
Stepping into the hallway, his national science adviser returned moments later with Fred Booker. The physicist carried the same blue backpack and wore the same red jumpsuit he’d had on when he parachuted into Memphis. He hadn’t changed clothes. There hadn’t been time. He’d flown to Washington on a military plane.
Introducing him to the group, Draper said, “Some of you have already met Doctor Booker. For those who haven’t, Fred’s a nuclear physicist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He’s got some thoughts about the earthquakes.”
Atkins, Holleran, and the others were startled to see Booker. They hadn’t been told he’d been invited. Atkins glanced at Walt Jacobs, whose face had gone hard the moment Booker had entered the room. Atkins was already worried about his friend’s ability to cope with his tremendous personal grief and his responsibility as the lead seismologist at Memphis. He didn’t like the way he looked, especially now, seeing Booker standing in front of them.
Draper said, “Doctor Booker, why don’t you describe what you’ve got in mind.”
Obviously, Draper had already briefed the president on Booker’s ideas, Atkins realized. This was more than a courtesy call. His presence meant the president and Draper were seriously considering the physicist’s proposal to use a nuclear device to try to head off another big quake.
Booker quickly sketched out his thoughts. He’d lost nothing of his zeal. There’d been no major change since he’d described the procedure to them a few days earlier in Memphis. If anything, he’d become even more insistent.
“I believe a nuclear explosion, properly designed and positioned underground, can reduce the dangerous levels of seismic energy that have built on the fault,” he said.
“Where would you suggest detonating it?” the president asked.
“That depends on what the seismologists say,” Booker said. “From what I’ve heard, a plausible location might be near the point where your new fault, the one that starts around Caruthersville, Missouri, intersects with the previously known fault segment in western Kentucky. I’m told seismic stress generally builds at the ends of a fault. I’d suggest it might make a good target.”
“Mister President, this is insane,” said Paul Weston, who’d almost come out of his chair as soon as he realized what Booker was suggesting. “A nuclear explosion anywhere near that fault could be catastrophic.” Other seismologists in the room also objected. There were angry shouts as several tried to speak at once.
The president silenced them, slamming the flat of his hand on a desktop. “I don’t give a damn if you think it’s insane. I just want to know if it has the slightest chance in hell of working. Because right now, I don’t see any other options. If you have one, any of you, I want to hear it.”
Ross knew he’d almost lost it. That wouldn’t do. Would never do. Not even a momentary lapse. If he was going to make this work, he had to be absolutely in control of his emotions.
Still tense, but in control of his voice, Ross said, “After listening to Doctor Holleran, it’s obvious to me—and it should be to you—that we’re probably going to have at least one major earthquake, maybe more, sometime in the near future. I want to do anything I can to prevent that. So I’ll listen to anybody who puts a serious proposal on the table. And I’ve got to tell you this—I’d consider setting off a hundred nuclear weapons if I thought it would spare the country from going through this nightmare twice.”
“It might work,” said Guy Thompson. He looked genuinely intrigued by Booker’s idea. “It’s conceivable that we could selectively reduce some of the strain energy. And I’d agree with the Caruthersville fault as a target. That’s the critical point, the segment that’s showing the greatest concentration of stress. We can run some projections to see if the data supports that location.”
“The idea is to see if we can get a moderate quake without triggering a big one,” Booker said. “I can guarantee I can produce an earthquake. It’s up to you people to tell me how big you want it.”
“So you can explode a bomb, and that means we should listen to you on something this incredibly complex,” Weston said. He looked furious.
“Doctor Weston, I think you better listen to somebody because we’re way out of options, and we could be out of time,” Booker snapped. He knew belter, but couldn’t help himself. He was starting to get in a fighting mood.
“What about you, John?” Draper asked, choosing to ignore the exchange. “You’ve had some time to think about this.”
Atkins had anticipated the question as soon as he saw Booker enter the room. The president was right. They had to try something. They couldn’t just sit there and take all the horrible consequences of another magnitude 8 earthquake if there was even the slightest chance it could be averted. He also knew that Thompson was entirely correct. Stress would be concentrated at the end, or tip, of the fault and would continue to build there until it loaded up the adjoining fault segments with stress. A kind of seismic fusebox, it was the only logical target.
“We’ll need to run some numbers before we settle on the exact location and depth for an explosion,” Atkins said. “And I’d want to find out as much as I could about the kinds of seismic waves nuclear explosions produce.”
Holleran agreed. The location was critical. So was the size of the nuclear device. If they used one too big, it would be a disaster. “If we make a mistake, we could wind up overloading the fault with stress energy and possibly trigger a chain reaction,” she said. “I’ve never seen a fault system that’s so tightly interlocked.”
“But you think it might work?” the president asked.
Holleran paused, carefully weighing her response. “It might, in theory,” she said.
“But what about here and now?” Ross persisted.
“I’m not sure,” Holleran said. “There are so many variables, so many unknowns. But even taking that into consideration, I can’t see that we have any choice. If we’re in a multiple quake pattern—and I think we are—there aren’t many alternatives.” At least she couldn’t think of any, and with all her heart, she wished she could. Booker was proposing a huge gamble, rolling the dice with the most powerful natural forces known to man. Still.
“If we do nothing, we’re going to get hit again,” she said. “Possibly harder than any of us can imagine. We have to try something.”
“But what if it doesn’t work?” Weston said, refusing to be cowed. “What if it sets off Armageddon?” There were immediate loud shouts of agreement. Most of the people in the room were shocked by what had been proposed, outraged that it was even being discussed.
Ross said, “I totally agree with your choice of words, Doctor Weston. We could have an Armageddon. And in a matter of weeks, maybe days. The evidence Doctor Holleran found in that fissure in Kentucky reads like a damn road map. Even a nonexpert like me can understand what all those cracks mean.”
“I’m not sure that a nuclear detonation wouldn’t violate the test ban treaty,” said Margaret Greenland.
“This wouldn’t be a test,” Ross snapped. “This will be for real. An attempt to avert a national calamity. I’ll personally call the Russian ambassador. Talk it over with him. Tell him what we’re up against.”
Ross wanted data run on where the shot should be made and its likely energy discharge. He wanted the answers—or best guesses—by tomorrow at the latest.
“That could be a problem,” Thompson said. “My concern is the time it’ll take to run the computations. Our computers are maxed out right now.”
“Tell me what you need,” Ross said.
Thompson didn’t hesitate. “Two Sun Sparc 10s. And enough disk storage space to handle two or three G-bytes. The programming codes we use are real space-eaters. Just to run good P- and S-wave velocities, you’re talking roughly sixteen thousand lines of computer coding.”
The president turned to Draper. “See that he gets whatever he needs. I want that equipment loaded on Air Force One within an hour.”
Booker had been fiddling with a pocket calculator, working on some rough critical mass projections.
“Where would you get the nuclear device you need?” Ross asked.
“The Pantex plant, Mister President.”
Ross was aware of the Department of Energy facility in east Texas. The huge complex where thousands of America’s nuclear weapons were kept in cold storage was just outside Amarillo.
“You’d use one of our stockpiled warheads?”
Booker nodded. “Depending on the requirements, I might customize one.” Fusion or fission. He wasn’t sure. As he worked out the pros and cons of each, he thought they might go either way. Fission had the advantage of being a cleaner bomb, but not as powerful as a thermonuclear fusion device. Depending on the design, however, a fission warhead could generate nearly as many kilotons as a thermo. He’d designed one himself back in the early 1960s, a fission bomb that produced a 500-kiloton yield without using the customary fusion boost of injecting heavy hydrogen into the core.
“I want you to go to Pantex and get what you need,” Ross said. “Meg, make sure he gets the necessary clearances. The highest priority. I’ll make the calls myself if necessary.”
“It might be a help to have a seismologist go with me,” Booker said. “I’ll need some advice.”
Draper looked at Atkins. “‘John, are you up for a trip to Texas?” he asked.
“Sure, I’ve always wanted to see Amarillo,” Atkins said. His smile belied his fear. He knew that he was in this up to his neck. Once they got started, there’d be no turning back. The clock was running. He instinctively realized he needed to commit himself totally. He glanced at Holleran and understood she felt exactly as he did. He could read it in her eyes. He experienced another strong twinge of excitement, a strange mingling of anxiety and elation. They were about to embark on something that had never been tried before. He wanted it to work, knew that it had to work.
Walt Jacobs had been conspicuously silent. Atkins felt his friend’s eyes boring right through him.
Ross asked for his opinion. Jacobs shifted in his seat and glanced at some notes he’d scribbled. He spoke with a force that startled Atkins. “Mister President, I think we’d make a tragic mistake if we detonated a nuclear bomb anywhere near the fault. Right now, we have a chance, a slight one, but a chance that the New Madrid system won’t fire, won’t produce another series of earthquakes. I admit that Doctor Holleran’s data scares me stiff. But if we try to set off a controlled quake on that fault system, we might get something that can’t even be described. The Reelfoot Rift, which contains much of the New Madrid Seismic Zone, is at the middle of the North American plate. It’s a weak spot deep in the earth, a giant scar in the rock at the precise place where 400 million years ago the continent tried to split apart. I worry that we’d be driving a wedge deep into a place of critical weakness.”
“Kind of like using a peg to split a log,” the president said.
Jacobs nodded. “Exactly, Mister President. What if we split the plate? Make it crack wide open. The deep fissures are already there. If a bomb somehow unlocked them, how do we know it wouldn’t restart a geological process that ground to a halt millions of years ago?”
“What could happen?” the president asked.
Jacobs didn’t answer. It was as if he was afraid to say more.
Atkins said, “It would mean you might have the Gulf of Mexico in Memphis.”