“I thought we had missiles which could destroy satellites. Why can’t they be used to strike the asteroid?”
General Matthews replied, “Sir, the missile you’re thinking of is the Navy’s Standard Missile (SM)3, it doesn’t have a warhead per se. It strikes its target with a small ballistic device which is designed to hit its target. If every SM-3 we have struck the asteroid they would do nothing. Nothing at all.”
“Nothing?”
“Mr. President, the SM-3s don’t have a warhead. The asteroid would laugh them off and continue on its way.”
“So, what are our options? Are you suggesting we roll over and die?”
Milton replied, “Sir, if I may?”
“Go ahead.”
“Mr. President, we can attempt to explode nuclear weapons at the edge of the asteroid to see if we can gently shift its course or if that fails, I suggest we do this anyway, we prepare for it striking the planet. It doesn’t have to be an extinction level event if we plan for the worst. The key will be determining the level of damage and how far south the glaciers will travel, and at what speed they’ll move. The slower they move the more time we have to move our people, the quicker…”
“Yes, yes, I understand, the quicker they move the less time we’re going to have, and the more people will die. We can assume Canada will cease being a livable nation so we should plan to absorb their people and their government…”
The Secretary of Defense, a very hard right-wing hawk shook his head, “Mr. President, Americans have to come first. We must spend our limited resources and land for our own people before we assist anyone else, and that includes the illegal immigrants which are here. We should quickly round them up and ship them home!”
A loud debate broke out in the Situation Room. The President allowed Imus and the professor to remain in case one of his staff had any questions. The President allowed the debate to continue for ten minutes before he pounded on the conference table to get everyone’s attention. “The last estimate I saw said we have over 30 million illegals in this country and we have to add the almost 10 million Canadians who will be without homes. Before I respond, we need to know how much usable land we have in a safe area and we need to know this very quickly. As has been stated many times, time isn’t a resource we have a lot of. We have to build cities for millions and find a way to feed them for years…
Milton quietly responded, “Sir, we may have to feed and house them for generations, many generations.”
“Damn it, where’s global warming when we’re going to need it?”
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The Coats slowly entered Bangor. Most of the lights were off and the streets were deserted. Jon slowly drove down a few streets and was surprised that not only didn’t he see any people, he didn’t see any footprints in the snow. Most of the windows in the buildings were broken. There were abandoned cars and trucks on the streets with most were buried under feet of snow. Erin pointed out signs saying, “Evacuation path.” With large bright red arrows pointing in the direction they were traveling. Jon said, “It looks like everyone moved away some time ago, I knew we should have left as soon as the Prime Minister said the States welcomed us. Look at this place, it’s like something out of a movie set.”
Erin nodded, “Could they have moved the entire city?”
“The Prime Minister said they were moving entire states, millions of people were being moved south. I don’t know where they’re going to put them and all of us.”
“The border agents said something about enclaves where most of the Canadians were moved to so we could be together. I’m not sure we want to be together with the rest of us. I think I’d like to live among the Americans.”
“I’m sure that can be arranged. I wonder if we’re going to run into other crazies like those who set up the roadblock.”
Erin shook her head, “Look at it out there, it’s a wasteland. No one’s left here. As long as the roads are clear I don’t think we’re going to have any problems.”
“Except for sleeping in the SUV, there aren’t any hotels open. I was told the only fuel we would find is from military check points and then the amount of fuel would be extremely limited. How are we doing on gas?”
“Better than we expected. According to the map they gave us at the border the next military checkpoint is about sixty kilometers ahead. I plan to stop so we can stretch our legs. We’ve got to keep going to find our way to State Route 2 which will take us to
