Before the speech started the Beatle’s song, “We all live on a yellow submarine” was played to make the point that everyone lived on the same planet and we didn’t have any other place to go. When the song reached the halfway point, President Aristov began explaining that both Russia and America knew of the rock. In fact, they’d known about it for many months. It had previously been named “Robert’s Rock” after the person who first discovered it, Robert Imus. The young woman who’d claimed discovery was quickly interviewed how she felt about learning she wasn’t the official discoverer. She responded that she understood, and these things happened all the time. She did say that she wondered why the discovery had been kept secret, the answer to her question was going to shock the world.
As soon as Robert Imus’ name was announced the media ran searches for people with his name. Once they found him, his driveway was filled with news vans and reporters jammed against his door. Imus couldn’t leave his home or even open a window without reporters yelling questions at him. He yelled at his girlfriend, “The President promised me he wouldn’t unmask me so this wouldn’t happen! If the rock hits the Earth, I’ll be remembered as the person who caused all of the destruction. Damn it, call the police, maybe they can get all of those reporters off of our yard and driveway.”
The police finally arrived and kept the reporters off their property, however, as soon as Imus left his home, the reporters followed him, they followed him for over a week, they interrupted the classes he taught, they followed him to the supermarket, to the bar, and even tried to follow him into the restroom. Imus finally had had enough and started throwing things at the reporters who laughed and continued to hound him. The newspapers all ran his picture under the headline, “Robert’s Rock is going to kill us all.” Overnight, Imus became famous for the wrong reasons.
The two Presidents announced they’d known about the rock for months and it was true that the rock’s orbit was going to intersect the Earth’s orbit which meant it was going to strike the Earth in the northern hemisphere. The Presidents announced they had a plan to explode massive nuclear weapons in the path of the rock to divert the rock away from the Earth. Aristov showed the images of the Russian super rockets and their new massive nuclear warheads. He explained each carried a weapon of 125 megatons, they were launching six of the monster weapons and if they failed to divert the rock, then 300 Russian and 300 American ICBMs would be launched towards the rock, each rocket was fitted with between 3 and 6 warheads with yields between 350 and 600 kilotons of energy.
They promised the world that the launches would be televised and they agreed to open the command center to four reporters, two from Russia and two from America who would generate a feed to the rest of the reporters. They shocked the world when they said the launches would happen in four days.
The world held their breath as billions watched the six massive rockets lined up at the Russian space complex and they were able to see images of the Russian and American ICBMs being prepared for launch. What went unsaid was the Russians had undertaken a mass program to expand Cold-War bomb shelters while others worked around the clock hollowing out mountains and expanding tunnels which were being turned into shelters.
The Americans turned every empty space in their Southern States and their Southwestern States into massive refugee resettlement camps. President Lanoha also made Cold-War shelters ready to be the new home for the government, he had been told Mount Weather in Virginia would be below the frost line, others had told him it was going to be touch and go. He was told the Cheyenne Mountain complex would survive but other shelters built under midwestern military bases weren’t going to be so lucky. He was also very worried about the Norfolk Naval base, the largest in the world and of course he knew the Trident and Columbia missile submarine base in Washington State wasn’t going to survive so the boats, their missiles and all of the base’s equipment and weapons had to be moved to San Diego.
The world held its breath as the Russian countdown reached zero and the first of the massive rockets slowly began its journey to intercept the rock which was still racing towards Earth at over 50,000 Mph. As soon as the first rocket cleared its launch pad tower the next rocket launched, then the third and the fourth, however when it came time for the fifth rocket to launch, it rose 800 feet above its launch pad, the rocket shook and then exploded in a brilliant flash, a brief moment later the entire launch facility was destroyed when the rocket’s 125 megaton warhead exploded. The fireball was the largest ever seen, it consumed everything in its path. The smoke cleared and the mushroom cloud which had reached 65,000 feet high began to clear, there the world saw there was nothing left of the launch complex and other missile. All had been seared clear off the planet. There were two massive craters, one under the warhead which exploded and one where the sixth rocket had once stood. When asked what happened, A Russian general shook his head, “We’ll
