(For those not familiar with NaNoWriMo, it’s the National Novel Writing Month – in brief, slap 50,000+ words onto the screen as a “zeroth” draft of a novel. It’s not pretty, it’s not even a first draft, it’s simply an exercise in “Just – Keep – Putting – Words – TOGETHER!” and seeing what comes out the other side. I’ve done it five times and “succeeded” twice. I’ve decided to be incredibly self centered and foolish open about my process so I’ve put my work up here on this site for the last three attempts. Just do a search to see some of the crap I’ve inflicted on my loyal readers in the past. Actually, that might not be totally true – while being “zeroth” drafts, at least three of them had stories and characters that I actually thought were pretty good if I ever managed to get past the NaNoWriMo stage, finish them, and then start editing.)
There’s a saying about old airplanes with radial engines. They’re always leaking oil – if they’re not leaking oil it’s THEN that you need to worry, because that means they don’t have any oil left to leak!
I bring this up because The Long-Suffering Wife graciously pointed out that she had found a couple of typos… 
That’s good news! The only time these stories won’t have typos if if I didn’t do any writing that day.
It’s also fun to listen to her guesses about where the story’s going. Since I have pretty much zero clue myself where it’s headed, I simply smile and nod a lot.
As everyone might have guessed (I’m a little bit transparent at this stage), last evening I had on some video and information on the new potential volcanic eruption in Iceland. I was fascinated by the one in 2021 and the follow up, smaller eruption earlier this year nearby. One thing led to another.
By the way, the current semi-official name is “Any Bad Situation Can Be Made Worse.” That’s from a quote from Cmdr. Chris Hadfield (more or less, I was going from memory) where he was talking about crisis management and decision making in an emergency as a test pilot and astronaut. In particular I think it involves an EVA on the ISS where he had a problem with his spacesuit and things were getting dicey fast. Important lessons there, I suggest everyone check it out.
All comments will be welcome.
ANY BAD SITUATION CAN BE MADE WORSE
CHAPTER THREE (continued)
“Where is all of our equipment?” Sara asked.
“We have seismometer stations in a ring all around this region. You can see their locations here…”
The Civil Emergency Alarm system activated. Both of their phones and watches started wailing, and they both checked their wrists to see a bright red display with neon yellow text scrolling by. This was going to be a big one. (NOTE FOR EDITING – Earlier in this chapter add a quick scene where an alert comes in for a small earthquake with a green or yellow alert, to set up this scene.)
Both Sara and Carl ran around to the still open doors of the Jeep and jumped inside. Before Carl could start the engine and get moving the swaying of the ground started. Slowly at first, but then much more quickly and violently the vehicle began to rock on its shocks, pushing them around the interior.
As experienced volcanologists, earthquakes were not an uncommon occurrence. Most of them were small, magnitude 3 or 4, simply because M3 and M4 (or smaller) earthquakes were by orders of magnitude more common than “the Big One.” But it went with the job description that when “the Big One” hit, there would probably be seismologists in danger on the front lines. Ask those who were monitoring Mount St. Helens in 1980.
They had parked at the base of a small hill. As the landscape shook, gravel-sized rocks came bouncing down the hillside and striking the jeep. Slowly some of the larger rocks started to follow. On basketball-sized piece slammed into the back tailgate and the rear window exploded with the impact, spraying glass into the back.
“It’s not local!” Carl screamed over the din. “The p-waves are too damped out! Rolling, not sharp”
“Right!” Sara screamed back. “I noticed that. Good that we’re not gonna die quite yet. But where is it coming from? I thought we were the most active site around!”
Carl glanced at his watch, which was still flashing red. “Two minutes so far!” Despite the swaying and jolting, he tried to reach into the back seat to pull his tablet out of his backpack. As it powered up, it joined the cacophony of alerts telling them that there was an earthquake in progress and they should find a safe place.
They finally found the control to cancel the audio alarms. Carl tried to connect to their server in the Grindavik trailer, but it was apparently offline. Not too surprising.
“Three minutes!” Sara yelled. “There shouldn’t be anything this big or this long going on, even here!”
“Right!” Carl was trying to enter the correct instructions into his pad to connect via their satellite link back to their university in Arizona, but it was like trying to type while riding a bucking bronco in a dogfighting F-35.
The good news was that the violence of the shaking they were experiencing hadn’t gotten worse. There had been a couple of moments when the intensity had slacked off for a bit, but it had always gone back up again. The power in the shaking wasn’t their main concern by this point. The length of it was.
As the shaking neared four minutes it finally began to fade out. Slowly the jeep settled, the last few stones pinging it as they rolled downhill. The air was thick with dust, restricting their view to less than a mile in a grey-brown fog. With the back window shattered the dust started filling the jeep. Carl reached into an equipment box underneath his seat and pulled out two dust masks, which they both put on.
Now that the shaking was over, Carl was able to get connected through their satellite link. The site’s landing page of course was streaming information on the event they had just survived.
“Are you okay?” Sara asked. “Did you get through?”
“Yes, I’m okay. How about you?”
“I want to dust off some of this broken glass before we do too much more, but other than that I’m good.” She looked outside the jeep at the debris surrounding it. “We’ve picked up a foot or more of rocks surrounding us, but I would hope that this thing could still get us out.”
“It should, but even if it doesn’t, there are camp shovels in the back, we can dig our way out. I’m checking us in as ‘safe’ and letting everyone know where we are.”
“Good, any work on what the fuck it was that just happened? Where did that come from? The only site anywhere within five thousand miles that could have produced something that big is right under us, and if it had gone off we would be crushed, smashed, steam fried and we would be lucky to have any bodies worth being found.”
“Preliminary report is a M8.9 with an epicenter about 100 miles due east of here. That puts it just on the other side of Eyjafjallajokull.”
Sara pursed her lips. “What are the Icelandic words for ‘impossible’ and ‘ridiculous?’ I studied Eyjafjallajokull’s 2010 eruption at some length for my Master’s thesis and there’s no way it’s capable of anything bigger than an M6. It’s a volcanic region, not a fault zone. Some lava, tons of ash to mess up the air traffic, but no big earthquakes.”
“I’m just reading what the site says. And, by the way, Carolyn congratulates us on not being dead, says they’re getting ready to evacuate with everyone else in Grindavik in case of a tsunami, and they need a status check on all of the seismographs out here. We’re elected since we’re already here, have a functioning vehicle, and of course, the aforementioned ‘no dead’ thing.”
Carl tried to push open his door, but there was enough debris piled up to block it closed. He started to roll down the window so he could climb out.
“Let’s get out, get mobile again, and start checking that equipment. We don’t have a lot of spares or hardware to fix anything that’s smashed, but we can at least give them an idea of where to send someone who does. Let’s go, we’re wasting daylight!”
“That’s a stupid phrase up here at this time of year,” Sara muttered, rolling down her window.
“I know. That’s why I use it!”