The Yellowstone Conundrum (44 page)

 
Irradiation poisoning was mankind’s ultimate torture chamber, not God’s. God doesn’t have anything to do with this. By 3:00 the farms of Eastern Washington were littered with dying farmers. The city of Spokane was right in line with the jet stream.

 
The lights were already out in Spokane, gone at sunrise from the earthquake’s ravaging of the electrical system.  By night-time the city was covered in a light red dust of irradiated Hanford death crap, long-time sponsored by the United States government. By morning the city would be a waste treatment center with the majority of its 208,000 inhabitants ready for the morgue that afternoon or by tomorrow. Nature was just a delivery vehicle. Two days later the city would have no living creature inside the city’s boundaries; no humans, no dogs, no cats, no squirrels, no chipmunks, no butterflies, no rats. Every living thing would have already bled out or would be on their last legs of life.

 
Hello Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho; hello southern British Columbia and Alberta; hello Libby, Montana; hello Whitefish and Kalispell;

 
How long it would take before Certain Death turned to Perhaps Death was unknown. The longer was the explosion in Hanford, the wider the swath of death across America and the contamination of the rest of the world would be.

 
There was nothing the President of the United States, the elected representatives of the House of Representative, the Senate, the Supreme Court or Sparky the Wonder Dog could have done to make it any different than the way it played out. Doing 60 years of “what-if” does no good. Like most foreigners say, “America, why are you continuing to whine about 9-11?  We’ve all had the same problems.”

  “Ah,” Commander Vilyusk, started. There was no misinterpreting his pause, even with the propagation delay.  “Mr. President,” he wasn’t sure how to phrase it.  “I think there has been a nuclear-type reaction. Not exactly a hydrogen bomb, but a very large explosion.”

 
The President knew where the explosion came from, as did his assembled staff. He sat back in his chair, which rocked a bit.

  “Thank you, commander.
This is a sad day for all of us.”

 
The President turned to his COS.

 
“I’m going to need to talk to some people—quickly; Putin, Hu, Green, Ghandi; LeSeour,” the President paused, then turned to Hugo Di Niro, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  “Hugo, I want a plan.
I can deal with a rough plan to use the military forces of the United States to protect the citizens of the United States. This government is so big and the problems are so terrible, that I can’t wait for staff memos to bubble up with ideas.

 
“I need DOD and National Security Council to convene either here or at the Pentagon or Langley in an hour. I need big ideas and I need them fast. I have calls to make.  Gentlemen, give me something quick, down-and-dirty, high-off-the-wall, impressive and do-able; and I need it in an hour.

 
You mean that wormhole retard escapee from a mental ward in North Korea could launch his pathetic ICBMs toward Alaska, Hawaii, Tokyo, Taipei, maybe even the West Coast of the USA and actually—actually HIT something—and not be cremated in the next instant?. That Russia could attack—not the US—but Iran, Iraq, the Persian Gulf states; that Iran could attack Israel and vice versa, that India would pre-empt against Afghanistan and Pakistan, that China would attack Taiwan.

 
In a flash the President was taken back to his days as a student at Columbia University, later to Harvard where the big game wasn’t poker or bridge or chess, but the game of Risk; a global domination game that relied on a roll of the dice (luck) and the skill of the player, his intuition, his ability to make alliances with other players. 
I won’t attack you if you don’t attack me, we’ll divide the countries we take; yes, I know we’ll be enemies in the end, but the means justifies the end
. The roll of the dice was no different from a storm front crossing in front of an aircraft carrier or a dust storm popping out of the desert in front of a helicopter assault, or a piece of critical equipment failing, a hundred other individual things that could screw up a mission.

 
The objective of Risk was Global Domination; shortened to a game by time limitations and overwhelming force; not quite reality.

 
The real world wasn’t much different from the game; except there was a lot more bullshit.

  “Prime Minister Greene is on line 1,” Charles Leonard, Chief of Staff leaned to the President’s left ear. The President pushed the button. Six other buttons were aglow, stretching across the world.

  “Alan…” the President started.
“Do you remember our discussion about God twenty years ago back at Harvard?”

 
There was heavy static on a normally clear line. “I do,” the Prime Minister replied simply.

  “Well, I think He’s pissed.”
Then the call to Putin.

  “What do you mean, Mr. President?” Putin replied.

 
What the fuck do you think I mean you little SOB.

 
“Is something being lost in translation, Vladimir?” The President asked, getting a bit cross at his pedantic counterpart in Moscow.

 
“I’m not sure,” was the non-descript reply.

 
“The weather people here say that the jet stream will begin to carry volcanic ash around the world in a wintertime pattern than includes Moscow, then dips down on the eastern side of the Urals, crosses into and over China, before returning over Japan and the Pacific, and back to America again.”

 
And again. And again. And again. 

  “And again.
Yes, I understand, Mr. President.”

 
“There is no way to stop it, Vladimir. This isn’t something we can send to the UN or hold a panel discussion on; this is an uncontrollable explosion from the center of the earth.”

 
“But, Mr. President; why exactly has this been hidden from the rest of the world?” replied the Soviet President.

 
Hidden?  What the fuck?

 
“I’m not sure I understand you, Mr. President,” replied The Soviet President. There was laughter in the background.

 
At that moment the President realized the people on the other side of the world were laughing at him; that they not only didn’t believe that the eruption from the Yellowstone Caldera was real, but that it was a planned event.

 
“OK, well, I’m surprised at your reaction, Mr. President,” there was a long pause. 

 
“Mr. President?” asked Vladimir Putin, amused.

 
You people are idiots!
The President wanted to shout.

 
“Your scientists are misinformed. You do your people a great injustice, Mr. President,” The President’s anger was sub-boiling, but barely. “In fact, if our scientists are correct, your country will be hit the hardest with what could be coming in the next weeks and months; and you sit here and humor me like I am a little boy.”

 
Much static and disconnect over the telephone lines.

 
“Mr. President?” the President asked, still fuming.

 
“Yes,” was the simple yet discourteous reply.

 
“In addition to what nature, perhaps what God has given us this day, another misfortune, another obstacle has been put in our path,” the President added.

 
There was confusion on the line, multiple voices, angry, all shouting at once.

 
“Yes, Mr. President,” Putin replied, not quite so flippant.

 
“One of our Nuclear power plants in Washington State was hit by this morning’s series of earthquakes. The facility is referred to as the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.”

 
More noise in the background.

 
“Can you hear me?” asked the President?

 
“Yes,” Putin replied.  “We are familiar with it.”

 
“Your measurement systems must have picked up a horrible explosion, a vibration.”

 
“Yes, they did,” replied Putin.

 
“The nuclear storage tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation have exploded.”

 
“And you call our scientists idiots,” replied Vladimir Putin as haughty as he could.

 
“No, I called you and your staff idiots,” Mr. President, bringing the President’s opinion of his counterpart full swing. There was no reason to pussyfoot, to turn real events into sound bites. “There’s a big difference. I can’t issue a re-call notice, or tell a B-52 to return to base to solve the problem. Radioactive material has been released into the atmosphere; radioactive material will be crossing the border between Finland and Russia by tomorrow afternoon. It will be greatly diluted, but it will be there, nevertheless. Our scientists agree that the nuclear storage tanks at the Hanford facility will continue to burn out of control for the next week, then become a dead zone, a Chernobyl, a place no one is allowed to go; a swath around the world, a place where no reasonable person can expect to live and or die peacefully.

 
“So, do I have your attention, Mr. President? We should work together and not separately.”

 
A pause of twenty seconds before, “Ah, yes, Mr. President but our people have electricity tonight.” The Moscow-Washington line went dead.

 
What a flaming cock-sucker
.

  The President’s experience with China’s Hu was an alternative universe of a different kind. Not only did Hu not give a crap about the environmental aspects of the disaster, he semi-thought it was going to give him a marketing advantage in the upcoming decade for the low-cost pieces of shit his country made that were passed off as legitimate well-made products.

 
As usual with a need-to-talk-to-everyone talk, the President ended up with Tel Aviv; President Isok Blackmon.

 
“Mr. President, what is the thing we need to fear?” asked the 77-year old President.

 
The President paused before answering. “That the Yellowstone explosions aren’t temporary,” President Blackmon swore later that he heard the President sigh heavily. “Our scientists say that a prolonged explosion will have a world-wide effect on weather patterns not just for years, but for generations.

 
“Isok, I will cut to the quick. We will not be able to protect you,” the President answered candidly. “I’m forced in the next few days to bring back all of our military forces abroad back to borders of the United States simply in order to prevent civil unrest. Two-thirds of my country is without electricity. For the first time in 60 years we will not be able to help you if you are attacked.”

 
Isok Blackmon declined to mention that the United States was due for a streak of bad luck; that the United States was one of the few countries in the world that hadn’t been hit hard by events. The voices between friends seemed to simmer on the line. Israel was on its own, the first time since 1948 when the country was established.

 
“I’m sorry, Isok.”

  “I am too, Mr. President.
Please convey our sympathies to your cabinet and Congress. We will defend our national interests, with or without you.”

 
The line went dead. Israel will attack Iran. The President was exhausted and it was only four in the afternoon. As in the game of Risk, you only care for our own piece of the game. There was nothing more he could say.

Joshua
: Shall we play a game?
David Lightman
: Oh!
Jennifer
: [
giggles
] I think it missed him.
David Lightman
: Yeah. Weird isn't it?
Jennifer
: Yeah.
David Lightman
: [
typing
] Love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War?
Joshua
: Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?
[
Jennifer laughs
]
David Lightman
: [
typing
] Later. Let's play Global Thermonuclear War.
Joshua
: Fine.

From the screenplay of
War Games
, 1983.  Joshua is the WOPR computer; David and Jennifer are the high school students

 
The calls were over; the White House Situation Room was crowded with the senior advisors from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines Corp and the National Guard Bureau (the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and their senior staff; as well as the heads and secretaries representing various civilian agencies; Homeland Security, FEMA, & Transportation, DOE.  The President leaned back in his chair.