A Distant Eden Page 0,1

you know where to get me just about all the time. It sure is good to see you—what’s it been this time, two years?”

Adrian said, “Yes, sir. Last time I was at Fort Dix. So, what are we going to do after the game? Got any plans?”

“Hell with it,” Roman replied. “I’m not waiting on the game; those Cowboys are stinkin-up my living room again. I’m heading out to do some fishing. Got plenty of tackle here. Wanta go?”

“You bet! Where’s the stuff?”

Roman hollered out, “Fishing trip! Who’s coming?” and was greeted with a chorus of eager voices.

It took a while to get everyone outfitted, especially the kids, but soon enough they were all sitting on the riverbank with bait in the water. Roman’s son Jerry poked Adrian in the ribs and asked, “Dad, you still putting food back for the big one?”

Roman nodded. “I was reading an article just this week. Seems that the North and South Pole have a habit of changing places periodically. Actually, it has happened a lot during earth’s history, and it’s not rhythmic, either. It might change five times in a hundred thousand years, then stay stable for a million. No one can predict when it’ll happen again. No one knows why it flips. They know the last one was about eight hundred thousand years ago, but that’s all anyone seems willing to say for certain. No one can guess what will happen to us when it flips again, assuming we’re still here. It might cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, or it might not. It will screw up electronics, I would think.”

Roman’s daughter Shirley joined the ribbing. “Have you ever added up all the various ways that an apocalypse can happen? From listening to you all my life it seems there must be thousands!”

“Thousands? Might seem like that, but I think there are only about a dozen or so likely ways. But there isn’t really any way to count them because there are possibilities that we can’t predict. Things we just don’t know, and can’t know. How do you count those? Suppose that the red tides that you read about mutate and start rapidly reproducing and creating a poisonous gas. That’s more or less how the earth got oxygen, so it isn’t all that farfetched of an idea. But how do you count things you don’t know?

“We know for sure that history tells us there have been numerous mass extinctions on this planet, and to believe that we are safe from more of the same kind of global catastrophe is the type of conceit that made people believe the earth was the center of the universe. I may be off center, no pun intended. Maybe I think about it too much—but it is plain foolish not to give it due consideration.”

Shirley laughed and said, “Calm down, Dad, no one’s calling you a crank. Even if you are one. I was just curious about how many ways humans can be wiped out.”

“I don’t know,” Roman replied seriously. “I hope it never happens. But there are enough obvious ways, and it has happened enough times, that a betting man wouldn’t bet against it. So I read about it, and about survival techniques, and I put away a few supplies; but I keep my fingers crossed that I am wasting my time and my money.

“You kids keeping up with the supplies I gave you? Got them in a cool place? Remember to keep those radios covered up with foil?”

In unison, there was an assenting good-natured groan as his children once again answered in the affirmative, while rolling their eyes.

Roman, completely aware of how they felt grinned happily at them.

~ * * * ~

November 22 to December 21

The sun, a super hot ball of plasma, generates immense magnetic fields that writhe and tangle in constant heaving motion. Some of these magnetic loops occasionally become so entangled that they snap, releasing tremendous bursts of energy. The sun constantly radiates energy and particles in all directions; but the bursts from these localized coronal mass ejections are phenomenal in size and energy.

The earth also has a magnetic field. This field acts as a shield against most of the sun’s emissions. The earth’s magnetic shield causes the sun’s emissions to flow around it, protecting the earth’s atmosphere and surface from being constantly bombarded by x-rays, gamma rays, ions and protons. This magnetic shield is in large part responsible for creating and maintaining conditions favorable for life to exist.

There are giant storms that