When The Fault Breaks: Life Will Never Be The Same Read online

  When

  The Fault Breaks

  By Xavier Bruehler

  Copyright © 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or

  other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. This includes all versions that have been released to Facebook for review and feedback. For permission requests, write to the author, at the address below.

  Facebook book page: https://www.facebook.com/WhenTheFaultBreaks/

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgement/Dedication

  Introduction

  Prologue

  The Great Quake

  Chapter 1 - The Beginning

  Chapter 2 - The Influx!

  Chapter 3 - Circling The Wagons

  Chapter 4 - The Militia Has Arrived

  Chapter 5 - Our First Vote

  Chapter 6 - Life in Camp

  Chapter 7 - The Search for a New Home

  Chapter 8 - The Migration

  Chapter 9 - The Storm of the Millennium

  Chapter 10 - The Cave

  Chapter 11 - The Fort

  Chapter 12 - The X Bar Ranch

  Chapter 13 - The First Winter

  Chapter 14 - The Ice House

  Chapter 15 - The Council

  Chapter 16 - Spring Has Sprung

  Chapter 17 - The First Arrivals

  Chapter 18 - The Grand Tour

  Chapter 19 - The Mill

  Chapter 20 - Change of Command

  Chapter 21 - The Second to Arrive

  Chapter 22 – The Pacific Northwest

  Chapter 23 - Las Vegas

  Chapter 24 - The Great Flood

  Chapter 25 - The New Navajo Nation

  Chapter 26 - The Bay Area

  Chapter 27 - The Mormon Wars

  Chapter 28 - The Trip Upstream

  Chapter 29 - The Mine

  Chapter 30 - The Climb Continues

  Chapter 31 - The Fall of New York City

  Chapter 32 - Going Up

  Chapter 33 - The Others

  Chapter 34 - Washington D.C.

  Chapter 35 -The Valley Below

  Chapter 36 - The Flight

  Chapter 37 - The Fall of Chicago

  Chapter 38 - The Escape

  Chapter 39 - The FEMA Camp

  Chapter 40 - Hail Canada

  Chapter 41 - A Necessary Evil?

  Chapter 42 -The Damsels' in Distress

  Chapter 43 - The Mile High City

  Chapter 44 - The Transmission

  Chapter 45 - The Swap Meet

  Chapter 46 - A New Map

  Chapter 47 - The Destruction of LA

  Chapter 48 - Getting Ready for Harvest

  Chapter 49 - Murder in Little Haven

  Chapter 50 - The Community

  Chapter 51 – New Orleans

  Chapter 52 – The World

  Chapter 53 – What's Next

  Acknowledgment

  This book would not have been possible if it had not been for the encouragement I received by everyone important to me. The first one I want to thank is my sister Virginia; she has endured reading it from its inception and did several edits before I had even finished the skeleton of the book. The second person I want to thank is Susan Whitehorse for her insight on Native Americans language and customs. Her work gave Black Cloud the voice I could not have done.

  I would also like to thank the many people from Facebook that gave me the needed feedback to find and fix errors they found, your help was invaluable. I would also like to specifically thank Col from South Africa for his insight and advice on several areas in getting this done. I would also like to recognize another Facebook follower Regina Carol for the inspiration on adding a chapter that I had been trying to figure out where. Your input gave me the location for it.

  I would further like to thank Kale Franklin for his support and promotion of When The Fault Breaks by not only spreading the word about it, but posting it on his website a couple times. Additionally, I would like to thank Worth Schottlannder for the promotion he did as well. I would be amiss if I forgot to add a long-time friend Rob Sellers for not only his support but help in editing in its final stages but even more for the increasable work he did in enhancing the cover photo. To my many other Facebook friends out there that gave me the feedback I needed and encouraged me I say thanks.

  Lastly I need mention a very influential person in my life Professor Maynard Miller, he gave me additional encouragement to finish this book. He was the Leader of an expedition across the Juneau Icefield in 2006 with the Juneau Icefield Research Project, JIRP studying the effects of climate change. That is where the cover picture was taken from overlooking the Gilkey Trench. The year I participated was his fifty-eighth year in charge and the last time I saw him. I am happy to see his family has continued his legacy.

  Dedication

  Lastly and most importantly I want to dedicate the book to my loving wife Lee. Not only did she put up with my distraction from our time, she provided me encouragement and inspiration. Her unwavering support kept me from giving up when I had doubts and helped me realize I could complete the book even when I questioned my ability to do so.

  Introduction

  This pseudo-science fiction story is a blend of known geologic processes, and predictable behavior by a population in the aftermath of a massive unpredicted catastrophic mega-geologic occurrence. It is based on known societal behavior from past epoch incidents in modern times, and how humanity reacted to those events. The geologic phenomenon depicted have been kept as accurate as possible though some minor writer's liberty has been taken.

  Prologue

  Ten years ago the world shook as never before recorded by man. Ten years ago an earthquake altered our existence in ways I would never have imagined. This is a chronicle of how life has changed for the survivors of The Great Quake. It is an account of those that lived through the catastrophe and rebuilt their lives anew and a story of a new simpler world while keeping some choice twenty-first century innovations. Today is the tenth anniversary of that historic day. As I relax in a swing overlooking our little village below, I ponder the changes and sometimes wonder if it was for the better.

  The Great Quake

  Geologists tell us it started deep in the earth's crust off the coast of British Columbia, Canada. It was there that the Cascadia fault began to rupture. The rupture started just north of Vancouver as a low rumble that very quickly became a loud roar as the seismic waves raced across the crust.

  The rupture traveled south at an incredible velocity violently shaking everything along its entire length. City after city felt the unimaginable power of the greatest mega quake felt in modern times. From its beginning in Canada, to its end north of San Francisco the fault had completely ruptured. The seven hundred miles of the North American continent was uplifted as much as fifty feet as the quake roared along the fault.

  Vancouver, BC was the first major city to be hit by the seismic waves. Given its close proximity to the fault and its location in a basin it did not fair very well. Over fifty thousand people in downtown Vancouver died in the first nine minutes of the quake.

  The landmark Alex Fraser Bridge tossed back and forth then rolled for at least five minutes before breaking up and falling into the Fraser River below. While north of the city the Capalano suspension bridge crashed to the ground killing tourists who had moments before been en
joying the amazing views.

  There was panic in the Granville Island Market, as people ran for their lives, screaming as they watched the roadway above them crash to the ground. When the shaking finally stopped little remained that had not been completely destroyed and left in ruins. Most of Vancouver's skyscrapers lay in giant piles of rubble having toppled burying the streets and the people in them.

  As the seismic waves continued south they hit Seattle, the buildings began to sway violently, the brick facades on many of the old buildings crumbled falling on the streets and people below. Pikes Place Market, which was built into the hillside like stair steps, could not withstand the shaking and collapsed; the whole thing crumbled and slid down the steep slope with most of the shoppers still inside.

  The Space Needle swayed heavily for several minutes, it was designed to take the force of a large quake so it held up a long time. But The Great Quake was too much, it could no longer hold up; all of a sudden the Needle snapped off just above the top of the legs crashing to the ground. It rolled onto the adjacent Pacific Science Center, nearly cutting the Science Center in two, trapping and killing scores of people inside. On the other side of town, the Columbia Center, Seattle's tallest building was in trouble.

  The Columbia Center had been swaying very heavily for several minutes; it too was designed to withstand a large quake but not this big a quake or for this long. Few had been able to get out of the tower because they could not walk, as the floor was moving so badly. Near the top of the tower people were screaming as the building was swaying side to side by several feet each way.

  Then with one big sway the tower began to topple over; it fell onto the building next to it, which had already been swaying as well and knocked it over too. The buildings looked like dominoes as one fell against the next causing each in turn to fall. Once the Columbia Center fell there was no hope for any of the remaining buildings along the direction of the fall.

  The waterfront was a very different picture, built on garbage and fill from the hills above long ago, the area was doomed to liquefaction. One building after another was swallowed up like they were in quick sand. Visitors of the Seattle Aquarium were being tossed around, then the glass on one of the large tanks shattered and tens of thousands of gallons of water washed their inhabitants and the people through the Aquarium into the Puget Sound.

  Cars lay strewn everywhere and the buildings were not recognizable; there was nothing left of the waterfront. The ground had not even stopped shaking when suddenly it dropped out from under everything. Not just one small area but everywhere, the entire Puget Sound region subsided and the water rushed in and flooded all of it.

  The release of stress caused the North American Plate where the Puget Sound lies to sink by around fifty feet. Every mile of the former waterfront in the Puget Sound now sits fifty feet below sea level.

  The entire shore line and in some areas many miles inland were almost instantly submerged. When the water had finally settled, everything and everyone on the 2,500 miles of waterfront was gone, engulfed by the water. 4.3 million people lived in close proximity of the shoreline, there was no time to run and nowhere to hide but the destruction continued.

  The rupture generated a series of Tsunamis that slammed into the northeast coast of the Puget Sound; everything in its path was obliterated as the first wave washed miles inland. Tsunami waves don't recede so the next wave washed in even further, this one… was far worse. It was over seventy-five feet tall and moving at almost one hundred miles an hour, no one and nothing in the lower elevations could survive, our home, Bellingham Washington, was gone.

  When the waves hit the foothills of the Cascade Mountains they reflected back, then ricocheted back and forth all the way down the Puget Sound until they lost all their energy. Wave after wave washed into the Sound with the next couple being even larger than the ones before. The subsidence of the area allowed the waves to wash even further inland.

  The Seattle waterfront, and everything else in the low lands of the Puget Sound, were GONE, destroyed by the shaking and falling buildings, covered by the rising water then washed away by the waves. Few could survive the destruction that fell upon the Pacific Northwest that day.

  But the devastation of the Puget Sound Region wasn't finished, Mount Rainier, a 14,411-foot volcano located southeast of Olympia, Washington was about to come alive. It was the most heavily glaciated peak in the lower forty-eight states, covered with snow and ice year round.

  Its upper four thousand feet was made up of fragile hydro-thermally altered rock. The massive load of the ice and the rock made it susceptible to movement and primed to collapse at any time.

  Many scientists believed, like me, that a strong earthquake would cause the top of the mountain to fall away. It turned out we were correct, after more than nine minutes of shaking it could no longer hold up. The shaking caused the top four thousand feet of the volcano to collapse.

  All that rock, ice, snow, water and other debris came crashing down the mountain forming massive lahars that careened down the mountain. The 450-foot-high flows traveled all the way to the Puget Sound at over seventy miles an hour filling the valleys with a devastating wall of rock, mud and debris.

  When the top of the mountain gave way it released the lithostatic pressure on the magma chamber below. That drop in pressure released the gases within the magma, sort of like taking the cap off a shaken bottle of soda, causing the volcano to explosively erupt. This resulting eruption made Mt. St. Helens look like a geologic burp by comparison.

  A gigantic pyroclastic cloud filled the sky reaching over 50,000 feet high, blacking out the sky for miles around. Ash lightning filled the air as the cloud rose higher and higher before it collapsed under its own weight. The cloud then came crashing to the ground as several massive pyroclastic flows traveling at over 450 miles an hour and reaching temperatures of eighteen hundred degrees obliterated everything in their paths.

  The ash flows were followed by lava exploding from the volcano that followed the same paths that the lahars and pyroclastic flows had already created, filling the valleys and reaching far into the Puget Sound. The eruptions continued for days forming layer after layer before they subsided.

  When the shaking had stopped, the waves had subsided, and the volcano finally stopped erupting, the entire region looked like it had been hit by hundreds of nuclear bombs. It was a wasteland, there were no trees left standing for hundreds of miles; smoke and the smell of sulfur filled the air.

  The sky was dark even at midday and acid rain and ash fell non-stop for several more days. There was no life to be seen anywhere, no birds, no mammals, not a single human left for hundreds of miles. All of ninety cities and towns that line the shores were submerged.

  The entire west coast of the United States, Canada and part of Mexico was devastated. Many scientists had been expecting a major earthquake for years and believed it was only a matter of when, not if it would happen. Everyone knows of the San Andreas fault, but for some reason mostly only Geologists knew the dangers the Cascadia fault posed.

  Many planners on the Oregon coast were aware of it but none expected the fault to rupture along its entire length. Even though Geologists sounded the alarm few listened. But we all knew this event was going to change the world, as we knew it forever in a profound way.

  The changes that followed were far reaching, as none of the damage could ever be repaired. Every major city on the west coast was annihilated. The infrastructure needed to get help to survivors was gone; no one was able to get in to help.

  All the freeways, bridges and tunnels were impassable, the airport runways shattered, and rail lines had become twisted ribbons of steel. Every port on the west coast was unusable so even ships could not be used to bring in help. Even if any of the infrastructure was intact the sheer volume of the devastation was impossible to overcome.

  With no hope of help for any of the West Coast, martial law was declared though no one in those areas even knew it. All the radio and TV sta
tions were knocked off the air; even the ones that had generators were unable to broadcast because their antenna towers were destroyed and satellite links disrupted. The only communication available was in the hands of ham radio operators.

  Nowhere was safe, as news of the total destruction of the west coast spread, chaos and rioting made its way across the country and the world. It was not long before all trading was halted on Wall Street and the economy was sent into failure.

  With the world tied together by the global economy, most of the rest of the world's modern economies collapsed as well; amazingly Canada was able to keep some sort of order. China temporarily lost control of its billion people as their economy crumbled when the United States defaulted on its trillions of dollars in debt, but was able to regain limited control through sheer force.

  Because of our flawed food distribution system, grocery shelves where picked clean in a day. All across the country, people were hording and price gouging was rampant. For a short time, Washington was in control and the President was trying to reassure everyone that we could rebuild.

  Day by day, the news coming out of the disaster zone had gotten worse and it was apparent it wasn't going to get better. Eventually the government came right out and said it was overwhelmed and there was no hope of getting any help to the region. The people would have to fend for themselves for the unforeseeable future.