Here is a bit of new fiction. I posted this on WhenSHTF and received a great response. I'm very interested in seeing how you guys like it. Thanks for reading.
Just spent the entire evening reading this story. I must admit, I skipped through a lot of the ranting about Christianity. I guess the sad thing is, to me, your complete lack of knowledge about what it means to be a Christian. I don't think that anything I have to say will change your mind.
Diddo on the christianity. I'd suggest finding a book in that library that explains how a transformer works. "intricate parts gummed up by ash". lol Remove any data your not sure about. Statements like the transformer one, make me question what else you said as fact. Cut at least half of the rants out. I got about 60% through it and had all i wanted.
After Yellowstone I am 1/3 of the way through and I am enjoying the read, so far. As a fiction book, this works for me--fiction doesn't have to be 100% accurate to be enjoyable. The guy who is commenting on technical issues has probably never read Harry Potter! One thing I would suggest as a Graphic Designer is that you close up the leading between lines a little--too much white space makes it harder to read in a PDF. Also, I would set "flash-backs" in italics to better differentiate between memories and current story line. I look forward to reading the remainder!
Great piece of fiction! I like your sentence and writing structure. This was a much faster and easier read than either One Second After or Lights out. Both are great stories but I felt the writing was more cumbersome than yours. I just read the Deep Winter trilogy found in another thread here and I am thoroughly enjoying the disaster theme in the Northwest. I've got no argument with how you portrayed anybody, event, or concept in the story. I don't tell my dentist how to fix my teeth either... Having said all that, let me stick my foot in my mouth and say this; it's too short! Give me more. No more needs to be added, of course. The story is great as is but I can see this as an 800 page novel on the shelf at the corner bookstore. Maybe a trilogy? Anyway, thanks for posting this. If you have any more stories I'd be interested in reading them. Byte
Just for the record, below is a selected bibliography of sources I used in researching this novel. It is not, nor is it meant to be a complete list. There were quite a few more, including a half-dozen documentaries on the yeallowstone supervolcano and its possible aftereffects. I do not include this as an argument against those who have disagreed or who have posted negative comments. Truth is, I want people to disagree with me, so that I can make this the best book possible. I have included this bibliography as a resource so that you, the readers, can if you wish, find out for yourselves. Thanks again for reading. Selected BibliographyAmbrose, Stephen E., Citizen Soldiers; Simon & Schuster, 1997 Aronson, Elliot; The Social Animal; (7<SUP>th</SUP> ed.)W. H. Freeman & Co., 1995 Bradley, Omar; A Soldier’s Story; Modern Library, 1999 Breining, David; Super Volcano; The Ticking Time Bomb Beneath Yellowstone National Park; Voyageur Press, 2007 Burnett, John; What Happened on New Orleans’ Danziger Bridge?; npr.org, Sep 13, 2006 Carrol, Rory; Looters Roam Port-au-Prince as Earthquake Death Toll Estimate Climes; guardianco.uk, Jan 16, 2010 Crossan, John, Dominic; The Essential Jesus; What Jesus Really Taught; Harper Collins, 1995 Davis, Kenneth C.; Don’t Know Much About History; Avon Books, Inc., 1995 Davis, Kenneth C.; Don’t Know Much About the Bible; Avon Books, Inc., 1998 Descartes, Rene; Selected Philosophical Writings; Cottingham trans., Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995 Ellerbe, Helen; The Dark Side of Christian History; Morningstar Books, 1995 Flaherty, Jordan; Crime and Corruption in New Orleans; alternet.org, Nov 17, 2005 Foote, Shelby; The Civil War; A Narrative - Fort Sumter to Perryville; Vintage Books, 1986 Foote, Shelby; The Civil War; A Narrative - Fredericksburg to Meridian; Vintage Books, 1986 Foote, Shelby; The Civil War; A Narrative - Red River to Appomattox; Vintage Books, 1986 Fox, Emmet; The Sermon on the Mount; the Key to Success in Life; Harper Collins, 1989 Gross, Martin L.; The End of Sanity; Social and Cultural Madness in America; Avon Books, Inc., 1997 Grun, Bernard; The Timetables of History; (3<SUP>rd</SUP> revised ed.), Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, 1991 Halliday, David/Resnick, Robert; Physics (Parts 1 & 2); (3<SUP>rd</SUP> ed.), John Wiley and Sons, 1978 Hawking, Stephan; A Brief History of Time; From the Big Bang to Black Holes; Bantam Books, 1990 Hill, Richard L.; Landslide Sleuths; The Oregonian – Science, May 15, 2002 Holy Bible, the (King James Version); Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1977 Holzer, et al; Scenario Liquefaction Hazard Maps of Santa Clara Valley, Northern California; Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 2009 Honderich, Ted; The Oxford Companion to Philosophy; Oxford Univ. Press, 1995 Iggulden, Gonn & Iggulden, Hal; The Dangerous Book for Boys; Harper Collins, 2007 Kierkegaard, Soren; Either/Or (vols. 1 & 2), David F. Swenson, trans.; Anchor Books, 1959 Lao Tze; Tao te Ching, Derek Lin, trans.; Sky-Light Paths, 2006 Loewen, James W; Lies My Teacher Told Me; The New Press, 1995 Lowenstern, Jake; Truth, Fiction and Everything in Between at Yellowstone; Geotimes, June, 2005 Mack, Burton L.; Who Wrote the New Testament?; the Making of Christian Myth; Harper Collins, 1996 McCullough, David; 1776; Simon & Schuster, 2003 Miller, A. V., Trans.; Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit; Oxford Univ. Press, 1952 Miller, Ken; Tea and Not Much Sympathy; Las Vegas Weekly, LLC, Apr 7, 2010 Naranjo, Laura; Denali’s Fault; NASA Earth Science Data Center, Nov 13, 2003 Nietzsche, Friedrich; On the Genealogy of Morals; Walter Kaufmann, trans.; Vintage Books, 1989 O’Rourke, P. J.; Give War a Chance; Vintage Books, 1993 O’Rourke, P. J.; All the Trouble in the World; Atlantic Monthly, 1994 Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 3<SUP>rd</SUP> Ed.; Oxford University Press, 1980 Paine, Thomas; The Rights of Man; Prometheus Books, 1987 Pamaswamy, Anindita; Violence After Earthquake Echoes Haiti’s Past; monstersandcritics.com, 1/18/10 Pankratz, Howard; Unraveling a Puzzle; Idaho State Journal, Feb 18, 2008 Pankratz, Howard; Earthquake Swarm Continues to Rock Yellowstone; The Denver Post, Jan 1, 2009 Pierce, Charles M.; Idiot America; How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free; Doubleday, 2009 Powell, William; The Anarchist Cookbook; Ozark Press, LLC, 2002 Rand, Ayn; Atlas Shrugged; Dutton, 1992 Russell, Bertrand; Why I Am Not a Christian; Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, 1957 Sagan, Carl; Contact; Pocket Books, 1985 Sagan, Carl; The Demon-Haunted World; Science as a Candle in the Dark; Ballantine Books, 1996 Savino, John, PhD; Supervolcano; the Catastrophic Event that Changed the Course of Human History; New Page Books, 2007 Shaara, Michael; The Killer Angels; Ballantine, 1974 Stein, Matthew; When Technology Fails; A Manual for Self-Reliance & Planetary Survival; Chelsea Green Publishing, 2000 Sun Tzu; The Art of War, Lionel Giles, trans.; Public Domain, 1910 Taibbi, Matt; The Great Derangement; A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion; Spiegel & Grau, 2008 Taibbi, Matt; Looting Main Street; Rolling Stone, LLC, Apr 15, 2010 Tindall, George Brown & Shi, David E.; America; A Narrative History (4<SUP>th</SUP> ed., Vol. 1); W. W Norton, 1996 Twain, Mark; Anderson, Frederick (Editor); A Pen Warmed Up in Hell; Mark Twain in Protest; the Mark Twain Company, 1972 Unattributed (Columbia University); Ancient Fault Lines May Have Become Reactivated; Science Daily, May 15, 2003 Unattributed (EarthScope, NSF); Volcano-Like Tremors Detected Deep Within Earth's Crust Near San Andreas; Science Daily, Apr 13, 2006 Unattributed (USGS); California's Hayward Fault Revealed: Most Dangerous Urban Fault In America?; Science Daily, Dec 14, 2007 Unattributed (Seismological Society of America); Earthquakes Along the Cascadia and San Andreas Faults May Be Linked…; Science Daily, Apr 8, 2008 Unattributed (University of Washington); Great Indian Ocean Earthquake of 2004 Set Off Tremors in San Andreas Fault; Science Daily, Dec 24, 2008 Voltaire; A Treatise on Toleration and Other Essays, Joseph McCabe trans.; Prometheus Books, 1994 Watkins, Sam; Company Aytch; Or A Side Show of the Big Show; Plume, 1999 Author’s Addendum In addition to the sources listed here, I made liberal use of the Internet, where I found a surprising (and disturbing) number of things, including the recipe for napalm and how to make a claymore mine. Makes you wonder what your kids are looking at, doesn’t it?
I disagree with your politics and religion but thats ok. I understand people out there have different views. I mean really, If everyone believed like me then thered be no chance of collapse. And wheres the fun in that? Again, Id say, remove any data your not positive about. Theres a reason I havent read harry potter! I want a survival story thats as technicaly accurate as possible. There are a ton of ways you could have killed the power that could actualy happen. But not ash gumming up transformers. Transformer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia They have no moving parts.....
The general consensus is that in the event of an eruption of Yellowstone, power throughout much of the country would go out. I will grant you that transformers do not have moving parts, but they can be and are effected by volcanic ash. Here's a quote from the USGS site: Some Effects of Volcanic Ash When volcanic ash accumulates on buildings, its weight can cause roofs to collapse, killing and injuring people. A dry layer of ash 4 inches thick weighs 120 to 200 pounds per square yard, and wet ash can weigh twice as much. The load of ash that different roofs can withstand before collapsing varies greatly—flat roofs are more likely to collapse than steeply pitched ones. Because wet ash conducts electricity, it can cause short circuits and failure of electronic components, especially high-voltage circuits and transformers. Power outages are common in ash-fall areas, making backup power systems important for critical facilities, such as hospitals. Eruption clouds and ash fall commonly interrupt or prevent telephone and radio communications in several ways, including physical damage to equipment, frequent lightning (electrical discharges), and either scattering or absorption of radio signals by the heated and electrically charged ash particles. Volcanic ash can cause internal-combustion engines to stall by clogging air filters and also damage the moving parts of vehicles and machinery, including bearings and gears. Engines of jet aircraft have suddenly failed after flying through clouds of even thinly dispersed ash. Roads, highways, and airport runways can be made treacherous or impassable because ash is slippery and may reduce visibility to near zero. Cars driving faster than 5 miles per hour on ash-covered roads stir up thick clouds of ash, reducing visibility and causing accidents. Ash also clogs filters used in air-ventilation systems to the point that airflow often stops completely, causing equipment to overheat. Such filters may even collapse from the added weight of ash, allowing ash to invade buildings and damage computers and other equipment cooled by circulating outside air. Agriculture can also be affected by volcanic ash fall. Crop damage can range from negligible to severe, depending on the thickness of ash, type and maturity of plants, and timing of subsequent rainfall. For farm animals, especially grazing livestock, ash fall can lead to health effects, including dehydration, starvation, and poisoning. Like airborne particles from duststorms, forest fires, and air pollution, volcanic ash poses a health risk, especially to children, the elderly, and people with cardiac or respiratory conditions, such as asthma, chronic bronchitis, and emphysema. The best time for communities, businesses, and homeowners to make preparations for a rain of volcanic ash is before an eruption occurs. When an explosive eruption does occur, warning of advancing ash clouds may precede actual ash fall by only minutes or hours. By developing community emergency-response plans that can be activated when a volcano is threatening to erupt, the harmful and disruptive effects of ash can be greatly reduced. So that the public can be warned of impending eruptions and advancing ash clouds, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and cooperating organizations operate instrument networks that monitor more than 40 active volcanoes in the United States. Here's the link. Check it out for yourself. Ash Fall—A "Hard Rain" of Abrasive Particles | USGS Volcano Fact Sheet
The story was well written and interesting, and I found it enjoyable. However, it would have been better without the rants. Keep at it and you well get the hang of this writing thing, eventually!