Continued work on my "End of Civilization by Coronal Mass Ejection" book today.
Outlining and research in narrative form of cast of major characters and events.
Still working on a title, but the above will suffice for now.
(Note: Copyright laws apply, all rights to materials on this blog are retained
by Mary E. Hennessy unless attributed to other sources.)
Nicole White and Collin Callahan met through mutual
friends at a barbecue in 2015. They immediately were drawn to each other by
common interests in music and science. Both were imbued with a strong work ethic,
so more often than not, courtship involved texting and phone calls. None
the less, the relationship grew and they were married within two years.
Nicole's mother died when she was 16 in a car accident followed by her father's
death just months after the wedding from pneumonia. Her parents and
grandparents had no siblings. This left Nicole with no blood relatives except
for some distant cousins through her great-grandparents, none of whom she had ever met
or communicated.
Collin Callahan was born as the youngest of 2
brothers and in between 2 sisters. Collin's father became convinced after the 9/11
terrorist attacks that he needed to protect his family from catastrophes and
became a doomsday prepper. The family moved to the Blue Ridge in Virginia and
started building a survivalist compound.
As each sibling finished school they
began building two other compounds in mountainous areas, one outside of Asheville,
North Carolina and one in the Rockies. They figured with each of them in
different areas there was a bigger chance of some of them surviving what they
were sure would come to pass, if not in their lifetimes, then in their children’s.
Collin’s sister, Daimhin (pronounced Dahveen), went to medical school and
started a practice in Asheville, so that she and Collin could build the compound
together. Oldest brother, Adair, and youngest sister, Brigit, settled in
Colorado. Adair was a dentist at the Air Force Academy and Brigit a surgical
nurse at Children’s Hospital in Colorado Springs. They began building on a
large property just west of Manitou Springs, Colorado.
After learning of the Solar Superstorm that only
missed Earth by a week in July 2012, the Callahans stepped up their dedication
to ensuring disasters, both natural and human-caused, were survivable for themselves
and select friends. Collin was a building contractor and spent all his free
time working on their compound. Married in 2017, Nicole Callahan, took the job
as administrative assistant for Daimhin’s medical practice. She also spent time
looking for people to bring into their circle that would be assets in a crisis.
Thinking long term and operating on the premise that civilization would be
knocked back centuries, she looked for those skilled in husbandry and farming,
hunting and fishing, weaving and sewing, metalsmithing and mining, whatever
skills and occupations they were sure to need to survive.
Daimhin kept her eye
out for likely medical people including researchers. Collin looked for likely
people in all facets of construction and engineering. People with multiple
skills were of particular interest to the family. Those with military or police
service or trained in survival skills including combat were towards the top of
the list. Unrelated people with children were also towards the top. By the time
Collin married Nicole the compound was ready to support 50 people.
Within 5
years they were able to shelter up to 400.
In 2023 each of the 4 compounds had staffed and was housing ethnically
and educationally diverse populations in the hundreds. Hundreds more were on
the outside working hard to help support the survivalist mission. The groups
were in communication with other survivalist groups around the world with many
working in areas for prevention of some of the effects of power grid failure,
such as nuclear reactor meltdown at power plants. Most of the US East Coast was
in the danger zones of fallout from nuclear radiation if meltdown were to
occur.
By 2022 money, lobbying and research following the 2011 Fukushima
nuclear disaster in Japan had retrofitted plants with passive cooling systems or
shutdown most of the world’s nuclear reactors. As the world began to embrace
safer, renewable sources of energy the chances of radiation from
reactor meltdown was nearly eradicated. The survivalist community was greatly
relieved. Never-the-less those with survivalist goals were placed as employees in the at-risk plants to ensure safe shut down of reactors in the event a
disaster would occur.
January 5, 2024, at 14:18 military time NASA and NOAA issue a warning
that a solar storm from a huge coronal mass ejection on our sun would reach Earth in as little as 12 hours. People were warned to get as far underground as possible and to stay in place for up to 36 hours. Estimates were that the event would be at peak for anywhere between 24 and 36 hours. In the U.S., the people
associated with the Callahan compounds and many other survivalist groups were in protected shelter within 6 hours. The U.S. government had evacuated top
level employees and their families to facilities in Colorado, Nevada and
West Virginia. It was speculated that no more than 5000 were completely safe
from the the solar storm. Those unprepared faced a survival rate the government estimated
to be only 5 to 10 percent of the population in the first year following the
solar storm. No one knew what the effects would actually be on the human body
but there were more knowns than unknowns.
The Government experts were wrong. Ninety-five percent were dead in the first month. People in cities died more quickly with no electricity to run
heating systems and provide sources of water and food. Many people froze to
death in the first days following the destruction of the power grid. Within a
week many more were dead from mob violence and looters. Fires burned unchecked
and food became scarce. Two weeks after the event, people who had kept safe to
that point were starting to die of starvation and had begun to resort to cannibalism. Those with medical needs died
from lack of proper care or necessary medications. Cities became wastelands of the
dead and decaying.
The fall of civilization did not discriminate between the
rich or the poor, the young or the old. City-dwelling doomsday preppers survived longer than
those who had not prepared at all. It was just a matter of time for those who
stayed in the city with no other place to go. The ability to travel was limited to walking and in the cold of winter through snow, kept most people in place to survive as best they could. Those in warmer climates lasted
longer, but not by much, as violence and starvation brought much death. Rotting corpses brought disease. It also became apparent that many people’s minds had been
damaged by the extraordinarily high electro-magnetic pulse that hit Earth.
Behavior of the unlucky affected was very like that of Alzheimer’s patients. Many people lost their
memories and became incapable of caring for themselves while some became violent.
Those with damaged minds did not last long.
Small towns and rural areas fared better where people were
more self-reliant to begin with. If they survived the winter and into the next
growing season they were likely to make it through the chaos of the
first months and years. People who heated with wood and had a sufficient supply source
did not freeze to death. Those with canned goods, stocked root cellars and farm
animals, particularly chickens and dairy cows for eggs and milk did not starve.
Wells deep enough not to freeze and with manual pumps to back up electric pumps
ensured those people did not suffer from lack of water.
Unfortunately, with the lack of power, dams and locks began
to fail and cause flooding with resultant loss of life near lakes and rivers. Of
the 340 million in the U.S. alive on January 12, 2024, as winter turned faded
to April only 1 million 700 thousand had survived those first 4 months. With 12
billion world-wide in the days before what became known at The Event, the best
estimates were that only 84 million survived those first few months. Projections were
that it would take 10 to 20 years to re-build power grids with the condition
that those left could solidify into cooperative societies.
To be continued and expanded as the mood to write hits me.........
Please let me know if you think I have flaws in my science!
