Incidental Superhero
Part 5
Before the evacuation started, I had a morbid curiosity about nuclear weapons. I’ve soaked up all the Wikipedia pages and free online resources about ICBMs – that’s intercontinental ballistic missiles for the uninitiated – and I know a thing or two about them that might not be relevant to the average Joe citizen.
For instance, a nuclear tipped ICBM does not necessarily impact the ground before exploding. In fact, for maximal destructive force, the bomb should explode above its target. This is called an airburst and it sucks.
Modern nuclear weapons come in a variety of forms. The Russian’s have really gone whole hog and they have a bunch of options to chose from. The most nefarious is a bomb intended to blow up in the Atlantic ocean, sending a radioactive tsunami across the eastern seaboard of the US – real Bond villain stuff.
More common are the Russian’s multi-payload nuclear ICBMs. In order to avoid American missile defense systems, these doomsday devices enter low earth orbit, swing around to their target and then break into six to twelve individual hydrogen bombs that are near impossible to intercept.
Thankfully the missile currently approaching New York City like airborne molasses does not appear to be one of those. It has the traditional shape of an ICBM, the kind you see in the movies. That means it’s probably a single payload, thermo-nuclear warhead. When information like this technically counts as good news you know you are in serious trouble.
Sonya and I went into panic mode after we first saw it there, pinned to the perpetually blue sky. We estimated the missile at about 15 miles away, maybe less. At the rate it was traveling that meant the end was less than a minute away in real time
We cross checked the clocks with our rough estimation of how much time had passed – exactly 28 minutes and 23 seconds in real time had elapsed in what felt to us approximately 4 years. That meant each minute of real time equaled approximately 50 days in our bubble.
If the missile was aimed dead center at Manhattan island, and exploded precisely on target, then we had just under two months before impact. But, of course we don’t know where the missile was aimed. Plus, I remember reading somewhere that striking anywhere within a 3 mile range in any direction of a target was well within normal operating parameters for most ICBMs.
Which is to say we had no idea when the damn thing was going to go off.
We spent two days brainstorming some kind of response, throwing around outlandish ideas out of the Matrix or something.
We fly up there with a helicopter and hover in place while one of us attempts to disarm the missile.
Except which of us would learn to fly a helicopter in under a month, let alone successfully disarm a nuclear warhead mid flight?
We fly a hot air balloon into the missile, nudging its trajectory up and out to sea!
We really looked into this one, but in the end had no idea where to find a hot air balloon in time, let alone how to use one with any accuracy.
We fire a surface to air missile into the ICBM and hope for the best.
This last idea was Sonya’s and based on a conversation she’d had with a physics colleague at CERN one day over coffee. The modern hydrogen bomb functions on a carefully arranged chain of internal explosions which sets off a series of reactions resulting in the fusion of hydrogen atoms. If that ballet of detonations is disrupted then, in theory, the fusion reaction should never take place, or at least be substantially reduced.
“After all,” Sonya explained, “isn’t that what a missile defense system does? It blows up armed nuclear missiles, but in the wrong way.”
I was convinced – or at least as convinced as I was going to get. I certainly didn’t have a better idea. There was only one problem, where the hell do you get a surface to air missile in New York City?
Quick answer: you don’t. At least, we couldn’t find one. I’m sure somewhere, deep in some military arms closet on some quiet, old military base in Brooklyn there is a happy little bazooka or SCUD behind lock and key and then more lock and more key, but good luck finding the bastard. Hell, good luck finding a military facility without the internet.
Five days of searching later and we knew we were out of luck. The missile was visibly closer and we had found nary a single explosive.
Our search culminated at NYPD headquarters, downtown, where we broke into the basement armory, hoping beyond hope that the paramilitarization of the NYPD had gone much farther than anyone knew – but to no avail.
There we sat, surrounded by assault weapons, machine guns, hand grenades, body armor and stun guns, gas launchers and rifles. Pistols of every make and model, knives and batons of all shapes and sizes. Every weapon you can imagine, but no goddamned bazooka.
Sitting hopelessly together, surrounded by enough conventional weapons to conquer a small country, we went silent. After four years of evacuation, for the first time, I felt truly spent, drained of all hope, certain the only thing left to do was run for the hills and watch the terrible fireworks.
I tried to tell myself that this was still a victory. Together we had saved tens of thousands of lives. No one could deny our efforts, my effort, the time and energy I’d put into the endeavor. I’d done my best. Hell, I should be proud.
And yet, sitting there in that dank basement, smothered in quiet, I felt nothing but shame. I never set a limit for how long I would work, or how many people I would save. I never had a cut off. It might sound ridiculous – of course it is – but some part of me really thought I could save them all and was willing to work until I dropped dead to do it.
Some part of me wanted to be more than just an incidental hero. I wanted to be the real thing.
I can feel hot tears on my cheeks and I can’t bring myself to look at Sonya. Instead I get up and start to walk out the armored door, awash in searing resignation.
A sound stops me in my tracks, like an audio clip ripped straight from the movies, the clack clack of a bullet being loaded into the chamber of an automatic rifle. I spin around and Sonya is standing behind me, AR-15 held in both hands, barrel facing the floor, a small smirk on her face. For one totally batshit second, I think she’s getting ready to gun me down.
Then she looks around the room and smiles outright. “I think I’ve got an idea.”
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