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| The War Monsters - Part One; "Disaster In The Gulf Of Alaska" | |
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| Topic Started: Mar 9 2007, 10:30 PM (418 Views) | |
| packmule | Mar 9 2007, 10:30 PM Post #1 |
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Coming in June, 2007: The War Monsters. Preview: In 1964 a powerful earthquake occurred off the coast of Alaska, deep under the Pacific Ocean, causing catastrophic damage to Anchorage, Alaska, and other coastal communities nearby. This earthquake, measuring 9.2 on the Richter scale, generated large tsunamis, or "tidal waves", which annihilated large areas of the rugged Alaskan coastline and parts of the coastline along the upper western continental United States. One tsunami, reaching an observed height of 200 feet, blasted across several islands in the Aleutian island archipelago, washing them, literally, off the face of the Earth. Effects of this event were felt as far away as Hawaii and Japan, where waves in excess of twenty feet flooded numerous coastal areas. The official cause of the earthquake, reported by the media, and confirmed by U.S. government scientists, was due to a large rupture in the Aleutian Trench fault, a long subsea fracture off the coast of Alaska, and extending southward into the Cascadia subduction zone off the uppermost western coast of the United States. What was never revealed to the public were the pair of enormous, football field-sized chunks of rock that slammed into the Pacific Ocean, one hundred and thirty miles off the coast of Alaska, at over six hundred miles per hour, their impacts seconds apart, their combined impact energies triggering the Great Alaskan Earthquake of 1964. Also unknown to the public was the secret government operation to retrieve these two colossal, fallen celestial objects from the ocean depths, in order to discover what was inside them... |
 Packmule's Pen Humongous(1982) Grizzly(1976) | |
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| packmule | Mar 19 2007, 05:47 AM Post #2 |
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This is a work of fiction-any character(s) in this story related to actual persons is purely coincidental. -Lee Merritt ... The War Monsters Preview: In 1964 a powerful earthquake occurred off the coast of Alaska, deep under the Pacific Ocean, causing catastrophic damage to Anchorage, Alaska, and other coastal communities nearby. This earthquake, measuring 9.2 on the Richter scale, generated large tsunamis, or "tidal waves", which annihilated large areas of the rugged Alaskan coastline and parts of the coastline along the upper western continental United States. One tsunami, reaching an observed height of 200 feet, blasted across many islands in the Aleutian island archipelago, washing several of them, literally, off the face of the Earth. Effects of this event were felt as far away as Hawaii and Japan, where waves in excess of twenty feet flooded numerous coastal areas. The official cause of the earthquake, reported by the media, and confirmed by U.S. government scientists, was due to a large rupture in the Aleutian Trench fault, a long subsea fracture off the coast of Alaska, and extending southward into the Cascadia subduction zone off the uppermost western coast of the United States. What was never revealed to the public were the pair of enormous, football field-sized chunks of rock that slammed into the Pacific Ocean, one hundred and thirty miles off the coast of Alaska, at over six hundred miles per hour, their impacts seconds apart, their combined impact energies triggering the Great Alaskan Earthquake of 1964. Former U.S. Navy diver and destroyer captain, thirty -eight year old Commander James M. Powers, awaiting his discharge papers after twenty one years on active duty, is about to be recalled to service, for what will be his most unusual, and dangerous assignment yet. Unknown to him, and the rest of the world, a secret U.S. government operation is about to begin to retrieve these two colossal, fallen celestial objects from the ocean depths-it seems, according to scientists, that there's something inside these enormous fallen space rocks, and the U.S. Government wants to know what it is. __________________________________________________________________________________________ Part One-Disaster In The Gulf Of Alaska Talkeetna, Alaska, 115 miles north of Anchorage-January 17, 1964 Thirty eight year old Jim Powers trudged through the foot deep snow, his dark eyes squinting as he tried to see ahead through the wind driven snowfall. Though his cabin was less than a quarter of a mile away, Powers could still not see it through the heavy snowfall, and the line of trees ahead. Bundled in a heavy, hooded parka, wool pants, gloves and boots, Powers struggled to keep the basket full of salmon from sliding off his back. His cabin coming into view, the former U.S. Navy diver and destroyer captain stopped, withdrawing the flask from his coat pocket. He ran a hand over his unshaven, heavily stubbled face, sweeping off the snow that had begun to crust on his cheeks and chin. Powers tilted his head back and took a full swig of whiskey, swallowing, and capping the flask. Powers shoved the flask back down into his coat pocket and began walking again, his boots crunching loudly through the foot deep snow. Reaching his log cabin twenty minutes later, Powers ascended the trio of wooden steps and pushed open the wood door, stamping his boots on the porch and then entering the cabin. Powers closed the door and shed his parka, scarf and toboggan cap, hanging them on the wall behind the door. As was his routine every Saturday morning he got a fire going in the coal stove at the rear of the cabin, then made coffee at the small stove, which he had rigged with a portable propane gas cannister. The cabin interior was neat, clean, and small, even smaller than the one bedroom apartment Powers still leased in Juneau, his hometown. The cabin was sparsely furnished, with only the necessities: a stove, a single bed, a small couch, a pair of lamps, two wooden chairs, a small cabinet suspended over the stove by nails, and a medium-sized table replete with a ham radio, portable gas-powered generator, kerosene lantern and a walkie-talkie. A hunting rifle and Colt 45 pistol hung on the wall over the table, a box of ammunition and his old Navy clothes locker beside his small bed. Powers had constructed a makeshift shower stall behind the cabin, which was connected to a nearby well about twenty feet behind his cabin abode. Power's “bathroom” was a small outhouse built by the cabin's previous owner, located some sixty feet behind the cabin near the treeline. Powers sipped coffee, listening to the crackle of the ham radio, which he had tuned to a police band out of Anchorage, some 115 miles south. The reception on the radio was not good, which he attributed to the winter storm. He walked over to the large window, the only one in the cabin, and looked out at the snowfall, and the white colored trees, their profile broken only by the tarp covered 1962 Ford pickup truck parked some thirty feet from the cabin, at the end of the narrow, snow-covered dirt road. Powers poured himself another cup of hot, black coffee from the kettle and stopped, the wood floor under his boots vibrating. The vibration grew stronger. A look of dread came over Power's face. “Damn,” he muttered aloud. One hundred thirty miles off the coast of southern Alaska In the span of less than twenty seconds two enormous chunks of rock, both over three hundred feet long and over a hundred and twenty feet wide, each weighing 400,000 tons, had descended through Earth's atmosphere and, reaching a velocity of six hundred and forty miles per hour, slammed into the northern Pacific Ocean, about a hundred feet apart. The downward shock waves from these impacts drove into the sea bed 1200 feet below, causing a slight rupture in the Great Aleutian Trench. The trench, already weakened from previous tectonic activity, gave way and the sea floor displaced for over a hundred and fifty miles by nearly eighteen feet. Much like a large stone dropped in a pond, ripples, in this case huge eighty foot tall swells from the pair of impacts, raced outwards, at nearly three hundred miles per hour, in all directions. Reaching the rugged, and mostly uninhabited coastlines of southern Alaska, tsunamis(tidal waves) over one hundred feet tall swept up the rugged Alaskan coastline, washing away nearly a half-mile of forestland along much of the coast. The northernmost swell reached the Aleutian island archipelago quickly, blasting across the island chain-one tsunami reached a run up height of two hundred twenty feet, this monstrous wave, taller than a twenty story building, submerging three smaller Aleutian island masses under twenty feet of water. Within hours, large, thirty foot swells would reach Hawaii, and later, Japan. Tidal swells in excess of twenty feet also swamped many coastal areas along the Washington state and Oregon coastlines. The fault slippage reached up into the Alaskan interior as well, and with devastating consequences. Anchorage, the largest and most populated area affected by this event, had been badly damaged, with over four thousand dead and twice that many wounded, property damage in excess of a billion dollars. As news of this event began to spread it was becoming clear that this earthquake was the strongest of it's kind in the U.S... U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane "Sea Crest Four", out of U.S. Naval Air Station-Juneau, in flight over the southern Alaskan coastline "Sea Crest Four to base, Sea Crest Four to base," U.S. Navy co-pilot, Lieutenant Darrent "Darry" Kilgorn, rasped into the control mike. "Go ahead Sea Crest Four," the radio operator's voice crackled back. Lieutenant Kilgorn blinked his eyes and glanced over at the pilot, Lieutenant Commander Paul Rennert. "Tell them what you see Darry. Tell them dammit!" Rennert snapped. Kilgorn's face scrunched, as his gray eyes squinted through his goggles, peering left and right, and downwards. "Entire areas of wooded coastline are gone...the trees are just gone. We can see hundreds, thousands of goddamn trees floating in the sea below us. Just floating...and some boats, look like commercial shrimpers and lobster boats. The waves appear to have gone inland about two miles, less in some places, more in others. Shit...it looks like the end of the goddamn world down there," Kilgorn said, his voice wavering, as his eyes blinked again. "Take it easy Darry. It's over. What happened...is over," Rennert said calmly, though inwardly he was as aghast at the blasted coastline below them as his younger co-pilot. "Sea Crest Four to base, we are getting low on fuel. We've got a full reel of film on the way back. Notify duty officer. Over," Rennert droned into his mike, his hand beginning to tremble. "Roger that Sea Crest Four. Return to base and report to the Intelligence Office for debriefing. This is NAS Juneau out." "Let's go home Darry," LCDR Rennert said clearly. "Aye, boss. Turning to course 185, ETA to base about fifty minutes," LT Kilgorn said, his voice still raspy. Both Navy officers cast lingering glances down through their respective lap level side view glass view panels at the devastated southern Alaskan coastline below, thousands of trees floating in the choppy, gray water of the Gulf Of Alaska, below them. The sixty-eight foot long turboprop plane banked right and began a more easterly course, one which would take the plane back to Naval Air Station Juneau, where a team of analysts, both Navy and civilian, would scour the photos of the devastation caused by the huge tidal waves. Talkeetna, Alaska Jim Powers got to his feet slowly, the rumbling and vibrating that had lasted for over two full minutes finally stopped. He looked around-the cabin creaked and groaned, but had remained, to his relief, intact, throughout the two minute long jolt. The lean, broad shouldered, dark-haired man leaned over the table, and began trying to tune his ham radio, hoping to pick up some sort of public service broadcast, like the emergency broadcast simulations that aired monthly on television. Powers stopped rotating the dial, listening intently. He had managed to pick up an erratic, but partly coherent message. ...I repeat, a major earthquake has struck off the coast of Alaska, it's epicenter somewhere off the southwestern coast. Major damage has been reported along all outlying coastal areas from tidal waves. Reports of major damage in Anchorage have not been confirmed. If you are uninjured then please remain in your home and stay on this channel for further updates. If you have sustained injuries then please report to the nearest hospital. There are currently major power outages in ... and in...please remain calm....doing everything they can to... Powers strained to hear more but the message became more garbled, until he couldn't hear anything but static and hiss. He heard a familiar sound to his left. Powers grabbed his walkie talkie. "Jim, you up there?" a male voice crackled over his talkie speaker. Powers managed a weak grin. "I'm here Mase. What the hell just happened? The ground was shaking up here," Powers spoke clearly into the talkie, extending the antenna. "Jim, we just got word of a huge earthquake, right off the coast, about a hundred miles out. We're getting reports of major damage in Anchorage. Most of the southern coastal areas are washed out. Hundreds of boats and thousands of trees washed out to sea-" Powers cut off his friend, LCDR Clifford Mason. "Where are you Mase?" Powers asked urgently. "I'm near Suskitna right now. About five miles out. I called NAS Juneau about ten minutes ago by landline. I talked with the station duty officer. He said Commodore Baskin told them to get word that they want you at Juneau." Powers frowned. "What's up?" Powers groused. "Don't know Jim. Maybe they need another skipper to take out a boat for search and rescue. Navy's already got two DE's scouring the coastline for survivors of the waves," Mason's voice replied on Power's talkie. "The road's covered in snow. My pickup may not make it," Powers grumbled into the walkie-talkie. "No worries. Look out your cabin window." Powers stood up. The whine of helicopter rotors reached his ears. Jim Powers hustled to his cabin door and whipped it open. A small, Navy AS-4 mini-coptor was hovering about a hundred feet away in the clearing alongside the road, the coptor's rotor's blowing up a whirlwind of snow from the road. "Set it down! Give me ten minutes to get my pack!" Powers shouted into the talkie, the copter's rotors now very loud, and getting louder. Powers set down the walkie-talkie and grabbed his Navy issue clothes bag, quickly unzipping it. Naval Air Station-Juneau Aviator's officer lounge Jim Powers looked at himself in the mirror-he had showered and shaved in the small, aviator officer's lounge, and was now wearing standard issue khakis. “You son of a bitch,” Powers muttered under his breath, shaking his head and scowling. He ran a hand over his thick, short shock of dark brown hair, then buttoned the long sleeves of his khaki shirt and adjusted his black tie and the clip that kept it attached to his shirt. He placed on his uniform jacket, grabbed his bill cap, and stepped out into the corridor. “Might be the last time you wear that uniform again Jim,” LCDR Clifford Mason said, also in uniform. “What's the latest sitrep out of Toguna?” Powers asked, referring to the small naval base located at Toguna Bay along the southwestern coast of Alaska. “It's not good-lots of shock damage to the buildings. Hell, most of the base is under several feet of water. Four seaplanes were destroyed and two minesweepers swept out to sea,” Mason replied, glancing over at his former commanding officer on the U.S. Navy destroyer U.S.S. Vukens. “What about the DE's?” Powers asked, he and his former executive officer on the destroyer walking briskly down the corridor. “They were out at sea, off the coast, doing boiler flex ops. Wait 'til you see some of the images taken by a turboprop sent up to do a parallel fly by of the coast. I've seen a few of them already Jim. It's awful,” LCDR Mason said grimly. “That bad?" Powers said clearly. "That bad," LCDR Mason said, nodding. "What do you think Baskin wants with a twenty year hound dog vet like me, and a temporary Naval Air Station Ops Officer awaiting a destroyer command billet down in San Francisco?” CDR Jim Powers grumbled. LCDR Clifford Mason stopped, as did Powers, at the office door of Commodore William Baskin, the Squadron Eight Commanding Officer, in charge of all northwestern continental U.S. Naval facilities, both aviation, sea surface, and submarine. “Let's find out Jim,” Mason said clearly, knocking briskly on Commodore Baskin's door. |
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8:55 AM Nov 8
