President Lanoha watched the asteroid’s track intersect with Moscow. One of the tracking officers said, “The rock is going to hit five miles outside of the city, not that it’s going to matter much.” They watched from overhead satellites as the massive rock crashed into the suburbs of Moscow. The rock dug a crater over one hundred miles deep and two hundred miles across. The sky was blackened by the massive amount of debris throw up. The shock waves moved at the speed of sound. They completely destroyed Moscow and they set off earthquakes and rocked two thirds of Russia. The thermal pulse ignited buildings and farm fields hundreds of miles away. The shock wave knocked down buildings in Germany.
President Lanoha didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath until he exhaled. “Was that it? Are we safe now?”
A voice from the ‘pit’ replied, “Mr. President, the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’ is exploding. I’m counting over sixty volcanoes erupting and earthquakes going off on almost every fault line across the Northern Hemisphere. The San Andreas fault just let go with a magnitude 8.9 quake. LA is being destroyed and the shockwaves are going to destroy every city up the California coast including Oakland and San Francisco. The other major problem we’re having is the New Madrid Fault is letting go. Every city along the Mississippi River is going to be flooded and destroyed. In addition, all of the bridges across the river are falling, as are the ones across the Ohio River. Our East and West Coast are now separated.
“The fault lines near our Interstates which we depend on to move our people south are crumbling and falling apart, we’re going to have major problems moving our people south.”
“Does anyone else have any other good news?”
Another voice yelled out to be heard over everyone else speaking, “Mr. President, the atmosphere is filled with debris, we’ve seen the last airplane for a very long time. The Alaska Pipeline has ruptured. It’s good thing we shut it down. We’ve also lost every offshore rig in the Gulf.”
“All of them? How?”
“Sir, yes, every single one of them has been washed away when a splinter landed in the Gulf. If New Orleans hadn’t been washed away from the New Madrid eruption the wave which just washed over it completed the city’s destruction. At least it put the fires out.”
“How many have we just lost?”
The Director of FEMA replied, “Sir, I estimate we just lost or will lose within three days a total of over 150 million, maybe as many as 175 million.”
President Lanoha shook his head, “That many?”
“Mr. President, that’s a low estimate, it’s going to increase when the rioting over food and clean water starts. There will also be those who are going to die from the lack of medications. We haven’t yet counted those who will die from respiratory diseases from all of the crud in the atmosphere.”
“I know, what’s the latest estimate?”
“Over 200 hundred million.”
President Lanoha’s face paled. “I didn’t know we’d lose that many. How can we reduce the number of casualties? There has to be something we can do?”
The President is interrupted by his CoS, “Sir, the Canadian Prime Minister is calling.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Frances, how are things up north?”
“Not very good. Our skies have almost completely darkened, the temperature is rapidly falling. I am afraid our projections may have been way off. I don’t think we have years in order to move everyone south. I would like to send more now before the conditions worsen.”
“Let me call you back within an hour, I need to do a little checking with my people.”
“Thank you.”
President Lanoha asked, “How are the Canadian resettlement camps coming?”
The Director of FEMA responded, “We have converted enough hotels and cabins to hold 100,000 people.”
“I think you’re going to have to speed it up. Frances wants to send most of his people south now.”
“I’ll see what we can do. Our problem now is that the splinters and earthquakes have stretched my people to the breaking point. We don’t have enough staff to put out all of the fires we have burning with our own people let alone the Canadians.”
“Consider them Americans now.”
“Yes, sir.”
President Lanoha returned his focus to the large monitors which showed the planet from space. Red circles marked the areas splinters impacted and a large flashing red circle covered the area where Moscow used to be. “How bad is Russia?”
One of the satellite techs responded, “Sir, we don’t know, we can’t see anything through the debris cloud. We know there is a giant fire storm raging in Eastern Russia, and we know Moscow is gone, completely gone. We also know St. Petersburg has been washed away. The Russian gas line into Europe was split and is burning out of control. The main rock cracked the Earth’s mantle, there must have a large lava pool miles under Moscow because according to our scans the temperature has rapidly risen where the rock stuck. It’s not the fire storm. This temperature is in the thousands of degrees. If I had to guess, I’d say the rock created a new volcano where Moscow used to be. Sir, we’ve also lost communications with President Aristov.”
“What would be the impact of a volcano forming where the rock struck?”
“Sir, that’s a question we can’t answer, we have no idea what the
