3.19.2004/V1,I3
Here we gnaw on Universe and discuss the taste.
En le Rongeant - Terrible Trio - Climate, Comets, Energy - how it might unfold.
Part 1 of 4
We start with the wildly Fantastic (part 1),then to the merely improbable (part 2), then the completely likely (part 3, the worst). In part 4 the denouement, those elements we have in place this year.
One Hell of a day! One Hell of a ride!
Doug Youngman had put dishwasher detergent into the machine early on the morning of March 22, 2004. Rising from the dishwasher, he glanced out the kitchen window of the rented house on top of Morris Hill in Portland, Oregon that he shared with his girlfriend/housemate of 4 years. Something was odd, but it did not immediately register on the mostly-still-asleep, 26 year old, Doug brain as he fumbled the dishwasher to on, and started preparing his morning coffee and making Isabels' lunch. A former software engineer, he had lost his job designing logic gates for FPGA (field programmable gate arrays) in late 2003 as part of the mass layoffs which provided the boost needed to get the GDP up to 8 per cent for the quarter.
Doug leans lightly against the fridge, pouring soymilk into his coffee when suddenly he jumps, as though some small animal with sharp teeth had just decided to sample a Doug butt-cheek for breakfast. Soymilk splashed on the floor as he hurriedly shoved the carton closed and back into the door of the fridge. He gulps a large, hot mouthful and pulls the curtain back from the kitchen window. Staring, he finishes his mug of coffee in two quick swallows without even being aware that he was drinking.
"Sombitc....." Doug was muttering, when Isabel came in from the bathroom, enveloped in a cloak of steam, herbal scents, and morning cheeriness to interrupt.
"Hey, watch it, you! The jar!" Isabel points to the 'curse' jar on the counter, half filled with change. She had become concerned lately that Doug's depression from lack of work was getting to him, so she started the curse jar as a therapy to improve his daily working vocabulary, and hopefully, his general outlook.
"Fluck the jar! Look at that!" Doug yanks back the curtain and shoves his coffee mug skyward, sloshing the last little bit onto the window. Initially distracted by the coffee on the glass, Isabel gasped when what her eyes registered actually penetrated her annoyance at the dirty glass.
"Damn!" She said, using both hands to grab Doug's bicep for support as her knees buckled under the weight of the vision flooding her brain. It was as large as the most dominate local landmark, Mount Hood. Only it was surrounded by a sphere of flame seeming to spew out fingerlets of orange flaming-heat as it twisted and turned and tumbled high over their heads in the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Unlike the three comets that the news had been showing pictures of for weeks, this was NOT in the far reaches of the southern hemisphere where it could only be viewed by a few thousand scientists in Antarctica and a couple of news cams. This was RIGHT there, up there, seemingly only 30 thousand feet, ripping along north, moving way too slow for something that size.
"But at least it's heading out of town." Isabel thought, just before catching sight of what was drawing a gasping gargling sound out of Doug as he stared in shock down the hill.
As the sight of the 50 foot wall of water rushing out of the Columbia and UP! over the edge of the bank on the Washington side was registering, and Isabel was turning to exclaim to Doug, the noise of a part of earth's atmosphere being ripped away hit the back of the house.
It was actually the shock wave propagating through the atmosphere as the gravity wake of the passing rock pawed through the atmosphere and earth like fingers through sand. Discovered the night before, the rock had barely had time to get named before its complex spinning orbit was altered in passing through the tail of a comet. Known briefly as C2004 JL1, and ultimately as Destroyer, the rock was actually very close in size to Mount Hood, only extremely dense. Its density was owed to its accretion of very dense uranium nucleotides expelled from the sun during its approach. As its core attracted the dense particles from the solar mass expelled under cometary influence, its already complex orbit was 'enhanced' by several years of tumbling accretions and pummeling by high energy particles.
The scientists in Antarctica had actually noticed JL1 only 18 hours before it was due to pass uncomfortably close to earth, a mere 27,000 miles, more or less. Had they known about it, the general public might have been concerned about the 'more or less' part of the calculation. The orbit was so complex, that the plotting of it had to assume certain 'average' positions, and relative mass. The margin of error was smallish, only about 30,000 miles.
The rock was not to hit earth, and was not 30,000 feet in the atmosphere, but rather was 3000 miles out, not that it mattered to any witnesses. Still scared the wits out of all who saw it. JL1 would have been further out if each of two of the three comets in the inner solar system had not altered its orbit by several percentage points with its passage. Each gave a slight push in earth's direction and the result was a large mass of very dense rock about the size of Mount Hood that took 9 hours to pass close enough to earth for its gravity wake to steal air and churn water globally.
Large numbers of witnesses dropped dead at the sight of JL1. Mostly they were infirm and due for heart attacks at some point in the future, but there were many who were just hyper-sensitive and the sight of Destroyer whipping along at a seemingly impossibly close distance, and at seemingly impossibly slow speed, drove them mad or to their deaths through distraction. It doesn't pay to be distracted when the earth and sky are heaving and spewing around you.
Destroyer had come from the south and dominated the daylight sky for eight hours as it passed over the earth in a spiraling line that ran from Southern Africa, across the Atlantic diagonally along the coast of Brazil, up over the Caribbean, crossing over Texas and diagonally across the USofA to head out over the Pacific off the coast of Oregon, and then diverging from earth's orbit and distancing itself the further west it traveled.
Destroyer had come relatively suddenly. Those calculating its orbital path played catch up as first one comet, then the next altered its very complex orbit slightly until it was perturbed by earth and came up from the south. As the warnings were trying to be sent out, the communications infrastructure was being overwhelmed. Satellites were drawn in on the gravity bow-wave that ran before the rock, were thrown out of orbit, some spiraling down into the atmosphere, others hurled randomly out into space. Radio waves did not stand a chance. Long before JL1 passed nearby, the gravity wave disturbed the local atmosphere rendering radio and television communications impossible, even if there were electricity, as the power system was also vulnerable. Large arcs fried generating systems and destroyed distribution subsystems globally. The only systems spared were those on the far side of the earth as they were shielded by the planet, those within line of sight and just over the horizon from JL1's passage were toasted. Wires melted, generators overheated, and exploded. The gravity wave was so powerful that telephone system wires became fantastically energized, frequently causing spectacular explosions usually at phone line hook ups to pumping stations for automated monitoring. Not that the monitors could possibly work as their circuitry melted into its plastic housing.
The world of modern communications went black, that is, where it was not actively flaming and arcing.
It would not have mattered much to Doug and Isabel as their television was in the upstairs bedroom and when the winds took off the roof they emptied all the rooms on the second floor, dumping their contents several hundred miles off shore in the Pacific Ocean. As the winds hit, the gravity wave being drug by JL1 also rolled through the house, pushing Doug and Isabel flat to the floor under its influence. Isabel had seizures while Doug passed out. Probably for the best, all things considered.
Doug and Isabel survived the next 7 hours, more or less comatose, or insensate. Just as well. The first 2 hours were occupied by 120 mile per hour winds roaring across the SouthWest in a more or less north westerly direction seemingly intent on rolling up much of Texas into the Rockies. What was not firmly fixed did roll hundreds of miles propelled by the winds. These piled up with the waters brought north by the gravity wave, and fish mixed with steer mixed with trucks and truckers and houses and homeowners all mushed together in large piles tangled over hundreds of miles. It took days for the Caribbean to start to drain out of the muck.
The winds topped the Rockies, scrubbing down some peaks of stone like sandblasters, pulling all the debris into whirlwinds scrubbing down the Westerly slope of the Rockies and across the west.
By the time they hit Portland, the winds had shed most of Utah and Nevada that they carried onto the Cascade range, but still, they were heavy, wet, powerful, and black with soil/debris.
Doug and Isabels' house sat just below the summit of Morris Hill in Portland. It was the summit which saved them from the winds, that, and the rather sudden rise of the West Coast of the USofA several thousand feet into the air. This rise resulted from the subduction of the Pacific plate under the continental plate, resulting in a rushing, pushing, cracking thrust toward the sky and the slowly retreating fireball that was JL1. Portland rose nearly 11 thousand feet in the first 6 hours of passage. California sloped upward from the far south toward the north. Several hundred miles of new coast line appeared as what had been sheer, ocean facing cliffs became the ridgeline for a range of mountains rivaling the Andes. The shock wave to the Pacific Ocean would have drown most of the populace of China had not Destroyer's gravity wave drug the bulk of the ocean north, and over the pole into the Atlantic.
In any event, the earthquakes in China and Asia killed millions.
When consciousness returned to Doug, it was 2pm, local time, pre-passage. As far as Doug was concerned, it was late twilight, with the light coming in where the windows used to be, an odd, shimmery kind of light such as he had never before seen. He immediately noticed that his lungs hurt, that the air was thin, and that sounds outside had a strange, echoing metallic sound, while those in his body, his pounding blood, grumbling stomach and sloshing bladder were distinctly loud in his ears.
He sat up, and saw Isabel, lying in a corner on the floor, crumpled up under the sink, next to the dishwasher. She was unconscious, moaning slightly, and breathing with a little difficulty, but breathing. For a minute Doug thought he was going to cry, but then the pain in his stomach made all thoughts turn to food.
There was quite a bit of debris on the floor along with Doug, but he was able to locate some crackers, and a strangely puffed out bottle of water. The water sloshed loosely in the bottom quarter of a large, mostly round, hard plastic balloon that had once been the size of a pop can. He did not care. He broke off the spout, drank some, and then poured some onto Isabel's parched lips. She responded well, her eyes fluttered, and a slight, dry groan escaped her lips.
It took several slow, painful hours to bring her to fully conscious. During that time, Doug was able to eat some remnants of refrigerated food.Then moving slowly due to the strangely thin air taxing his lungs, he gathered up the odd cans and boxes of food and piled them into a small fort around him and Isabel. He was able to locate the camp stove when he determined that the natural gas lines must have broken as both the stove and water heater had no pilot lights nor pressure. He was bitterly disappointed though as it seemed to take nearly an hour to boil the water for his coffee, and then it also seemed to cool before going through the filter. Still, he gratefully drank the cold coffee, his cells sucking up the caffeine and his spirit improving.
He looked at his watch. It said 4pm. It was an old style, jeweled, hand wound, Troika, made in Russia, and obtained from a Russian sailor in exchange for a battery operated Swiss watch. But it worked. Doug doubted it though, he could not believe it was still the same day as had begun so ordinarily. The sun was still up, though the angle seemed odd to him, and the atmosphere did not help.
Doug lifted Isabel, determined that neither of them were seriously hurt, though doubtless they both would be large walking bruises in the morning. 'Ha'. Doug laughed...'morning'. As though any day might exist after this hellacious one. He and Isabel were growing cold, and they set about gathering up the camping gear and looking for clothes. Their closets had been removed along with the second floor of the house, so Isabel went rummaging in the laundry room in the basement. When suitably clothed in layers of whatever was laying around, sleeping bags and MRE's and gas lights located, Doug nailed his courage to his spine, and kicked open what was left of the front door. It barely swung out but a few inches, thereafter lodging in a large pile of debris. Frustrated, and trailed by Isabel swaddled in layers of ski clothes, he searched for a way out. All of the windows on ground floor were packed tight with debris of all kinds. In one horrifying moment, Doug swung open the curtains on the French doors in the back, and was greeted by the smashed face and twisted body of his neighbor, Bob, buried deep in the rubble pressing against the glass.
Finally, Doug and Isabel proceed up the stairs to the floor above. Doug was able to push off enough of the plants, dirt, soggy mostly unidentified muck to get the door open, and they scrambled out.
First thing to strike them was the cold. The second was the fading sunlight setting off in the deep south west. The third was the huge expanse of glittering stars seeming to intrude through the atmosphere like searchlights. Then came the realization that Portland was gone. As they looked around, Doug could not but think that they had been sucked off the planet by the rock. The landscape was foreign, dark, forbidding, but somehow....almost known. It was as though their neighborhood had been snatched off earth and suddenly dumped on a planet in a far distant place.
But, as the light began to really fade, darkness closing in while hi s eyes devoured whatever they could find in the unholy sight around him, Doug realized it was still Morris Hill, but that something serious had happened. As he led Isabel back inside the ruins of their house, he was able to catch a glimpse of a light, seemingly far down the hill, flickering like a campfire.
"At least we are not alone", Doug said, and pointed out the campfire for Isabel.
*
While not the most likely scenario, and likely not the most probable, it is true that evidence exists of the nasty sort of day that struck Doug and Isabel having occurred at least twice before on earth. The city or large inter-urban area that consumes a large portion of the shore of Lake Titicaca high in the Andes (highest fresh water lake until recently) as having once been a thriving sea level, ocean-front town. The many quays for shipping are all out of proportion to any possible bounds of the lake. That is, several hundred quays, each capable of docking many ships of significant size (rivaling major ports today) exist along Lake Titicaca, most high above the current water line and pointing in directions not lake oriented, much as though the town was part of an peninsula. Further, recent investigations reveal that a calamity happened to the town that not only halted the building of even more, large stone quays, but also brought down some seriously large, stone buildings. Though, the evidence does not point to an earthquake event in that there are no rendered areas, nor fault lines, nor settlement ravines, rather what appears to have happened was a very very very large up-thrust event that created the Andes UNDER the city and pushed the whole thing skyward in a very short order. The current thinking at the fringe of the archeological community is that both the Andes and the Rockies may well have been created in mere days, not centuries, and the mere days, might be as little as 3 days with most of the building happening within one, hectic, 8 hour period.
The estimate by analysts suggest that the inter-urban amalgam around Lake Titicaca could have easily held a population of over 150,000, yet there is abundant evidence that the lake itself could not have supported the population. Further, burial mounds exist in profusion, and at apparently were built during the same period as though a large segment of the population was hurriedly buried, as might be seen in a natural catastrophe, and rising to 11 thousand feet from sea level in a single day would count.
There is also evidence in the American SW and Pacific NW that a single large event created both the Cascade mountain range, and the Rockies. Though both mountain ranges were not created at the same time necessarily, it looks as though the same short period, violent style of mountain building was the pattern. In the passes of the Pacific NW, there are still visible scars of exposed rock created in horizontal sediment layers on an ocean bottom that now are sheer cliffs of vertical stripes of sediment, fossils still embedded. And these layers are at 6000 foot and higher elevations.
Now, while there is no evidence whatsoever that rocks passing in space are the causal elements for mountain building here on earth, there is evidence that earth changes are indeed influenced significantly by all kinds of things in space including large rocks. And mountain building happens quickly. So something violent, in energetic potential at least, must act as the trigger. Perhaps it is huge gravity waves from the sun, perhaps caused by comets impacting the sun.
We also have direct evidence of weather anomalies occurring within proximate of comets passing. Such evidence as recent weather patterns in the Pacific in 1996/1997 as the result of comet Hyakutake dropping by for a visit. This particular year being the most costly to-its-date for the reinsurance industry due to 'natural' disasters.
Further recent work by NASA, able to be examined at the various Sungrazer Links, shows that the sun is frequently pelted with comets, all to ill effect (as far as humans are concerned). The number of sungrazers has risen steadily since 1998, with 92 being discovered in 2000 alone. The data for sun-impacting comets since 2000 is less than reliable, but EU sources estimate that 245 were known to have impacted the sun in 2003 with projections for that number or more in 2004. The system wide energy impact of sungrazer/impacters will be explored in Part 2 of this series.
The passing of the rock, named by the survivors as Destroyer, and discovered only briefly before it wrecked havoc on earth, did not end its destruction. Doug and Isabel over the course of the next few weeks would have had to endure the effects of massive flooding.
The waters of the northern pacific were drug north of the Arctic circle, more or less over the top of the existing waters, and the whole mass was held there suspended for minutes in the retreating gravity wave of the rock as it left. Of course, all that water had to go somewhere, and these waters chose Canada, and then the Great Lakes and then the long central river valleys of the USofA until they entered the wild scrubbed flatlands that had recently been Texas, there they merged not so gently with the Caribbean ocean.
Europe was mostly spared the flooding, more due to the upheavals of a new mountain range of volcanic origin rising from the Mid Atlantic Ridge. Though nothing like the new sky-scraping mountains that now formed a new backbone joining the West of USofA with the vast new lands risen from the Pacific Ocean, these mountains were still significant, even though mostly they did not break the surface of the Atlantic except in the area of the Azores which was now a large, flat area the size of Spain. However, these mountains were enough to divert the largest impact of the global flooding to the west, such that most of the USofA disappeared under the chaotic waves.
Of course, the volcano's, fumes, regional floods, earthquakes, and various flaming bits of debris hurdling in from the sky over the next while did not make life comfortable for most of the inhabitants of any continent, global flooding notwithstanding.
But, under this scenario, the greatest danger to humans, lying deep under the northern Pacific, released by the sloshing of the waters, and the huge gravity wave that tore through the soft ice, did not kill the species. By chance, those humans living high in the mountains, by happenstance or suddenly as with Doug and Isabel and the tattered remnants of Portland Oregon, did survive the mass gassing that killed most of the mammals and other animal life on the planet.
The uncounted cubic miles of frozen methane resting peacefully in soft blue ice at the bottom of the incredibly deep Pacific ocean boiled off in a matter of hours once the pressure was released by the shifting waters. Though the Pacific ocean was soon replenished as the waves of water boiled around the planet seeking equilibrium, it was too late as far as the atmosphere was concerned. The vast fields of frozen methane boiled off and flooded the atmosphere of earth with a new mix, mostly of carbon-dioxide.
Those mammals, excepting the very smallest, who were still alive following the passing of the Destroyer, were enveloped in a thick globe encircling blanket of carbon-dioxide and methane that was cold and reached under the oxygen, pushing it upward as the smelly cloud moved across the land. Cattle were killed still chewing. Birds, men, horses, dogs, cats, wolves, deer, it did not matter, they all succumbed to the unbreathable mixture displacing the air. Except those above 8000 feet.
It was a bad day for Doug, Isabel, and humans, then the next few days were worse, but different. Then it got really bad, but at least the Poles had not flipped.
Part 2: Dancing Comets. Watch out for the blue ones!
Part 3: Damn Magnets! Poles Flip!