36 Hours: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Fiction Series (2 page)

NASA assembled its team and, in coordination with the ISS crew, deftly executed a collision-avoidance maneuver to avoid a large piece of the orbital debris caused by the space pileup. Fortunately, the Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center, or MCC, in Houston was fully operational at the time. Tracking data on the space debris was readily available, and predictions were performed, which led to a fairly accurate probability for a mid-space collision.

The 2009 near-miss was not the only time NASA orchestrated collision-avoidance maneuvers with the ISS. On one occasion, the threat of a crash in orbit was so great that NASA ordered six members of the ISS crew to enter Russian Soyuz transport ships for a possible evacuation.

As a result of these events, protocols and procedures were established. Space debris was monitored and warnings were shared, all in cooperation with the major space agencies around the world—except one.

China had lost control of its Tiangong-1 space station. Their Manned Space Engineering Office had not made an announcement of the mission failure for fear the Beijing government’s alternate purpose—carrying a nuclear payload, would be discovered. The Chinese military developed an EMP warhead capable of being launched from space. It was the first of its kind and was known within the People’s Liberation Army as
The Great Equalizer
. Now, the crowning achievement in Chinese military history was hurtling out of control in low Earth orbit.

Weighing nearly twenty thousand pounds and soaring around Earth at a speed of seventeen thousand miles per hour, the Tiangong-1 became an immediate danger to every spacecraft in its path. The intense geomagnetic storm engulfing Earth impacted orbiting satellites and the modular space stations first. NASA’s ability to track unresponsive space debris was hampered. They had to rely upon sight visuals and data transmitted from the ISS.

ISS: “We copy, Houston. We are feeling the effects of the solar wind at this point. I have to say the aurora is stunning. The dancing lights must be putting on quite a spectacular show down there. I can tell you I’ve never seen anything like it.”

MCC: “Roger that, Commander. I don’t want to lead you astray, but data analysis and monitoring on our end is fragmentary at best. This G5 storm is unprecedented. We’re not your eyes and ears on the ground that you’re accustomed to.”

ISS: “Copy, Houston. Our Navigation and Controls Systems appear to be fully operational. All near-object warning systems appear to be functioning and quiet at this time. The systems engineer is monitoring the Data Display System. The remainder of the crew is disbursed to provide visuals.”

MCC: “Roger, Commander. As conditions change, will advise. Still no official word from the Chinese.”

ISS: “Copy, Houston. My Russian counterpart had a few choice words for his neighbor to the south that I couldn’t repeat if I tried. Suffice it to say they sounded
harsh
.”

MCC: “Roger. Those sentiments have been expressed throughout the MCC. Stand by, Commander.”

11:00 p.m., September 8

INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

254 Miles Above Earth

If you think of the Sun as a giant bubble of boiling water, then the solar wind would be the wisps of steam that float away from the surface. The Sun is always simmering, sending off clouds, or tendrils, of high-energy puffs of particles called coronal mass ejections. Before these high-energy winds strike Earth at roughly nine hundred miles per hour, they smash into Earth-orbiting satellites first.

Although satellites have built-in protections against normal levels of solar wind, intense bursts like the ones being experienced on this night can overwhelm these protections and destroy onboard electronic systems.

These solar wind particles increased the aurora phenomena in Earth’s atmosphere. The crew of the ISS was busy monitoring the data available to them, but they couldn’t resist the opportunity to snap a few pictures to be posted later.

As the solar wind hit Earth’s magnetic field, it dissipated and transferred its energy to the ions in the atmosphere. This resulted in the magnificent view enjoyed by the ISS team. It also resulted in the ions being rerouted into the upper layers of the ionosphere—disrupting the operations of the Global Positioning System.

While the crew of the four-hundred-and-fifty-ton ISS was distracted by the beauty of the aurora, their onboard navigation system adjusted their orbit based upon false readings from the GPS. The new altitude was consistent with another space station no longer within the control of man nor computer—the Tiandong-1.

The collision between the two space stations resembled an eighteen-wheel gasoline tanker running over a parked Volkswagen at eighty miles an hour—the VW would get the worst of the impact, but both would suffer serious damage. In this accident, the crash was magnified by the payload of the Tiandong-1.

The nuclear explosion, and the incredible inferno produced by it, fused the two spacecraft into an asteroid-sized hunk of steel. Earth’s weakened atmosphere as a result of the geomagnetic storm opened a portal for the electromagnetic radiation and the remains of the two space stations.

The timing of the conflagration couldn’t have been worse.

11:03 p.m., September 8

The Pacific Ocean

Returning a spacecraft to Earth is tricky business primarily because of the intense heat produced. A miscalculation can have a profound impact on the debris. If the re-entry is uncontrolled, as space debris enters Earth’s atmosphere, it explodes into molten metal. The size and speed depends on the conditions in the atmosphere at the time.

Satellites, and their rocket boosters, do fall from space, re-entering the atmosphere. Earth’s gravity field, atmospheric drag, solar conditions, and even ocean tides caused by the gravitational attraction of the moon all impact the drop from orbit and the resulting descent.

Most times, the satellites break up into thousands of pieces and land harmlessly in one of the planet’s vast oceans. But in times of intense geomagnetic storms, Earth’s magnetosphere is weakened, which in turn allows solar wind and particles to slam into the planet.

Likewise, space debris, after it has become a heavier mass of metal, can travel at a greater velocity towards Earth’s surface. A major impact event releases the energy of several nuclear weapons detonating simultaneously. For example, a three-mile wide asteroid could result in an extinction-level event.

After the collision, the resulting forty-four thousand metric tonnes of molten metal was two hundred feet wide as it screamed through the sky at nearly forty thousand miles per hour. Like most satellite remnants from the past, the remains of the ISS and Tiangong soared toward one of the world’s vast oceans. It would make impact halfway between Hawaii and the coast of Baja, California.

Later, after many, many years, it was estimated that the total kinetic energy at the time of impact was equivalent to two thousand kilotons of TNT, over one hundred times more energy than was released from the atomic bomb detonated at Hiroshima. Ordinarily, the bulk of the object’s energy would be absorbed by the atmosphere.

Not on this day, at this time. It was Zero Hour.

Thirty-Six Hours Earlier
Chapter 1

36 Hours

11:00 a.m., September 7, Wednesday

ALMA

Atacama, Chile

Dr. Andrea Stanford wheeled the vintage Toyota Land Cruiser up the winding dirt road to the summit of the mountain desert. The Atacama Desert is considered one of the driest places on Earth. Surrounded by two mountain ranges of the Andes and just south of the Chile-Bolivia border, it is made up of salt basins and lava flows that are over twenty million years old. Large volcanoes dominate the landscape, including Láscar, the most active in Chile.

Because of its otherworldly appearance and inhospitable climate, the Atacama Desert was useless except to movie producers filming exoplanet-like scenes, and NASA, who duplicated tests used by the Viking I and Viking II Mars landers to detect life. Oddly, during their practice runs, they were unable to detect life in the Atacama Desert soil.

However, Atacama’s uniqueness created the ideal conditions to search for life elsewhere—the universe. Its dryness, high altitude, nearly nonexistent cloud cover, and lack of light pollution or radio interference made the peak of the Atacama Desert one of the best places in the world to conduct astronomical observations.

At an altitude of over sixteen thousand feet, Atacama, Chile, was the home of the largest telescope on the planet—the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, or ALMA.

The gravel spun under her tires as she rounded the final bend to the summit. The rear end of the lightweight vehicle side slipped until Dr. Stanford corrected her course. She could feel the adrenaline pumping through her body and slowed to avoid crashing to the gulch below.

Despite being involved in the design and construction of ALMA during its developmental stage, she continued to be awestruck as the massive observatory complex came into view.

Sixty-six dish antennas measuring forty feet across dotted the arid landscape. A unique portable system was designed that consisted of enormous transporters resembling a sixteen-wheel moon rover. Resting on their chassis were the antennas—mobile and ready for orders. Three of the vehicles were in motion as they gently hauled around the massive antennas to form arrays dictated by the ALMA observatory scientists in the control room. The more compact the arrays, the better the scientists could observe large, dimmer objects. The widespread formation allowed the scientists to focus on the finer details of a particular celestial body.

Dr. Stanford exited her truck and was greeted by a gust of cool, dry wind to which she had become accustomed. Born and raised in Las Vegas, a
breezy day
, as described by the local television meteorologist, which typically consisted of sixty-mile-per-hour winds, would be at near-hurricane strength to a resident of Florida, sending them scurrying to the local Home Depot for plywood and batteries. It was a chilly thirty-four degrees as she started a workday that would change her life forever.

“Good morning, Dr. Stanford,” greeted her longtime assistant, Jose Cortez, one of the program managers on the Joint Alma Observatory—JAO—Team.

“Good morning, Jose,” she replied with a smile. “I see the gentle giants are on the move already,” she added, referring to the antenna transporters.

“Yes, ma’am, per your instructions. The systems astronomers have run the calculations, and we are in position as our target region comes into view.”

She handed Jose her briefcase and peeled off her jacket, draping it over his outstretched arm. “Coffee, my friend, and make it so black that Juan Valdez would be proud.” She laughed.

“You’ve got it, boss, and, by the way, NASA’s called already.”

“Of course they have.”

Dr. Stanford was born enjoying the wonders of the universe. As a child, she studied astronomy and invested the money she made babysitting into amateur telescopes. While many of the kids in her astronomy club focused on faraway galaxies, Dr. Stanford became fascinated with the celestial body most familiar to us all—the sun. By the time she turned twenty-one and graduated near the top of her class at UNLV, she had seen it rise and fall nearly seventy-five hundred times.

While studying astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she became convinced there was still a lot that science didn’t know about the star at the center of our solar system. Dr. Stanford believed the study of the sun was the one area of astronomy that had relevance to our daily life. Our sun gave us life, but it was also the most potentially dangerous threat to humanity.

The sun is as unpredictable as it is predictable. It remains in a relatively fixed position while its temperatures stay fairly constant. Yet, occasionally, it erupts with an intense, high-energy blast of radiation released into space. As sunspots form on the surface, stored energy in the magnetic fields above the sunspots is suddenly released. In a matter of moments, they heat up to many millions of degrees and produce a solar flare.

This fascinated Dr. Stanford, and she devoted her career to the study of other stars similar to our sun. Her career enabled her to define our sun’s activities better by learning, indirectly, from examples set by celestial bodies in other solar systems.

“Good morning, all,” she announced as she entered the sophisticated control room of ALMA. She received a variety of responses from the JAO Team, but they were subdued. Everyone was focused on their respective consoles, studying data and waiting for the guest of honor to make its appearance.

“Doc, our target should be rotating into view shortly,” said Deb Daniels, one of the senior astronomers who had remained on deck all night, waiting for this moment. “I’ll bring it up on the big screens.”

Four seventy-inch computer screens mounted on the wall of the control room came to life. Each monitor had a different view of the sun provided by their antennae and the GOES Satellite system monitored by NASA.

GOES was an acronym for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite system. The National Weather Service used the GOES system for its weather monitoring and forecasting operations. Scientific researchers, like the team at ALMA, used the data to study space weather, especially the sun’s activity.

A large monitor revealed a view of Earth that identified major storm systems around the globe, together with temperatures at the various layers of Earth’s atmosphere. Another display revealed data related to the magnetosphere, the region surrounding Earth created by Earth’s north and south poles. The magnetosphere buffers Earth from the devastating effects of solar wind. Without the magnetosphere, the surface of Earth would look like Mars.

The third monitor displayed a series of solar wind dials, measuring data like density, speed, magnitude, and direction. These conditions were critical to space weather prediction.