The author gratefully acknowledges the following:
Gutenberg-Richter Publications, for the illustrations previously published in The Earthquake That Never Went Away, by David Stewart and Ray Knox.
The St. Louis University Earthquake Center, website http://www.eas.sluedu/Earthquake-Center for the illustration.
Thomas Borgman, for the illustrations.
A number of seismologists, disaster planners, structural and mining engineers, nuclear weapons experts, and others provided invaluable help in researching this book. I here thank several who took extra pains. I tried to hew to scientific fact as much as possible, and I take full responsibility for reworking facts for the sake of fiction; the good people I acknowledge bear no responsibility for how I used the material they so graciously provided.
My thanks to Robert B. Herrmann, professor of geophysics at St. Louis University; James E. Beavers of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a structural engineer and expert on natural and technological hazards; Bob Neel and Jim Gover of Albuquerque, New Mexico, both alumni of the Nevada Test Site, who explained the art of detonating nuclear bombs underground; Reid L. Kress of the Robotics Systems Division at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and Arch Johnston, director of research at the University of Memphis Center for Earthquake Research and Information.
Thanks also to a great editor, David Highfill of G. P. Putnam’s Sons, and to my agent, Richard Pine of Arthur Pine & Associates. Thanks also to Howie Sanders and Richard Green in Los Angeles.
And special thanks to my wife, Janice.