(Escape from the City)

What better way to tell you about our new fictional story than by exercising your imagination and playing a little game of “Let’s Pretend”; after all isn’t that what fiction is all about? To help you get into the right frame of mind, to really understand and feel what the story is all about, suppose we make believe that all the power that we all take for granted and we use to provide our food, communications, entertainment, transportation and so much more is no longer available. Just what would you do? If your friends and family were scattered all over how would you ever see or hear from them again?

“Hmm”, you might say to yourself, when you first realize that “the power must have gone off” but I’m betting your language would be a bit harsher when the full scope of the problem because more and more apparent. You might glance out the window and see that’s it’s a bright and sunny day and you might even think that its “Strange”, because you can’t remember when the power ever went off without a storm of some kind going on. Logic and experience would tell you to check the fuse box or the circuit breakers. But first how about we call the the neighbors and see if their power is on.” Lifting the telephone receiver you discover the only sound you hear is your own breathing. Forgetting the fuse box for the moment you head outside.

Where your surprised to see a number of people milling around, most gathered around cars which appear to have stalled in the middle of the street. Some had their hoods up and a number of guys were focusing their attention on pulling on things under the hoods, while others seemed to have accepted that their vehicles would no longer run and were pushing them over to the side of the road.

Then you notice that most also had cell phones out and were punching the buttons, raising the phone to their ear, looking at the screen, shutting them off and turning them back on and continuing to repeat the whole procedure, until in frustration they came to the conclusion that like everyone else’s around them, their phone wasn’t working either.

Just then you hear a loud roaring noise overhead, almost like a freight train passing above, jerking your head back your just in time to see one of the largest airplanes you’ve ever seen in your life passing rapidly out of your view. “Wow” you say out loud, as you turn to try to see where it is going. “Looks as if it’s trying to land you think” but that’s ridiculous the airport is miles from here. Seconds later you hear an enormous gigantic scraping sounds and then a series of explosions and you see plumes of black smoke shooting up into the sky above the tree line, followed by the tips of raging flames and more billowing smoke.

Suddenly you realize that this is not your ordinary power outage. Not only is the electricity not working, but it looks as if petroleum powered vehicles aren’t working either. If that’s so, the ramifications of this are going to be enormous.

“Oh my God, you find yourself whispering” as the thought comes to mind, “Those poor people, without vehicles there’s no police, fire, no ambulances or emergency medical service available. Hell, there’s not even a way to call them even if they could respond.

Holy crap, I never thought about this before but if this keeps up in a couple of days there’ll be no food, what than? Hopefully someone will figure this out and turn the power back on. But if they don’t, what are we going to do, how is my family going to get home, how are we going to protect ourselves, how are we going to survive?

Aren’t you glad that it’s only pretend? But it is in fact the basis of our story, what it would be like and who and how some, the relatively few will survive.

Now you might think that this scenario is impossible and within the realm of science fiction but alas it isn’t, it might be highly improbably or it might be quite probable, nobody really knows. We do know that the magnetic properties of the Earth and our solar system which is in fact the basis of most if not all of our modern power systems are constantly changing in its intensity.

Scientists have discovered that the Earth’s magnetic field fluctuates and at times decreases substantially in strength and sometimes even flips it’s polarity. In other words the North Pole becomes the South Pole and visa versa. Studies have shown that this event known as “magnetic reversal” has occurred on the average of about 4 to 5 times per million years; with the last one occurring about 800,000 years ago. So mathematics tells us we are way over due for this phenomena to happen again. I supposed you could say it’s like an earthquake you know that it will happen you just don’t know when or how devastating it will be.

The interesting point, which is currently (no pun intended) unknown, is just how long this reversal process takes. Studies show that the magnetic field was twice as strong in Roman times as it is now. Could it be that there will be a period of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years in which mankind will be without this energy we have come to know and love.

We are all so heavily dependent upon the various electro-mechanical in which magnetism is the basic of their operation it is hard to think that someday it may not be there. But that’s what happens in our story, in effect it’s a return to the horse and buggy days with very few of those to go around.

With the above as a backdrop and survival as their goal, in our story we follow how a few self-reliant and exceedingly inventive people who even without the luxury of having a horse and buggy are able to escape from the unbelievable horror which New York City has become and find relative safety in rural upstate New York. Against all odds, they are able to adapt to their new somewhat new primitive conditions and sustain themselves for the time being at least, till somebody turns the power back on.

We think you will not only enjoy the adventure but learn something in the process; which we hope none of us will ever have to use.