Hey everyone! Check out Blood Red Glow, it's a post-apocalyptic look at a 'lights out' scenario brought about by a massive solar flare.
The book is available in Feb but chapter reveals will be going on through this month.
Prologue
The end of modern life is more certain than salvation, more certain than our reason for existence and more certain than our understanding of how it all began. The proof is right in front of us, all we have to do is believe.
Belief is a matter of convenience So many are desperate to believe in stories of divinity and how they will continue to exist after death. Which was good for them in the end, they died with a sense of hope. Most people are more prepared to die than they are to live.
The following is the story of a man who wasn’t. He believed in the end of society based on the evidence found in nature. Believed in it so passionately that after he realized it wasn’t just possible but impeding he lived for it. Like a born again Christian without the Christ bit.
The things that made sense to him were based in certainty. Even events that have a small chance of happening have a degree of certainty. Most just ignored the signs in the news and the evidence in history; choosing not to believe it would happen again.
More certain of all the Jesus you can cram into a bottle, is that the sun, facilitator of life, is going to be the facilitator of the end of life as we know it. Many had heard of the dangers associated with solar flares. Like the gospel, those that heard the news had the choice on whether or not to believe. Those that did believe chose just how much to believe. Was it an inevitability or a possibility? The difference in mindset between the two as wide as the ocean is blue.
Believing in the inevitability meant believing in the implications.
Our protagonist, silent in his suffering, believed in the inevitability, so much so that he was convinced of what was to be, years before it happened. As a result of his belief, his life as a normal American, ended. That was the sacrifice he made. Life before, for life later. Survival, after all, comes down to a single irrefutable concept. Preparation.
Not just in supplies or food, water and weaponry. Preparation of the highest order doesn’t lay in the storage of material goods. Rather in the preparation of the mind. Many were simply not capable of believing in the reality that was to come. When presented with the possibility they refused to believe it as inevitable. The path of least resistance was to hope it didn’t happen rather than prepare for it to happen.
Maybe the unbelievers are unable to see that any possibility, even the most distant, is inevitable on a long enough timeline. The truth becomes unpalatable when it isn’t convenient and the end of society is an inconvenience for most.
For some, notably the man in whom a large part of the following story is dedicated, the end of society was far more convenient than living in society had been. Or perhaps stated more accurately, the preparation for the end of society, physically and mentally, made life in society an inconvenience. His heartbreak and loss began long before the critical event. That was the sacrifice that made his life after the end possible.
Preparation for survival was the jagged pill that staved off death after ‘The Surge’. But taking the medication before the disease doesn’t negate the side effects of the drug; Alex paid the cost before he had to.
Only a crazy person would store years upon years worth of food. Only the insane would prepare weaponry and store thousands of rounds of ammunition. Spending every cent they had on things they may never need.
The woman Alex loved left, friends stopped calling. They moved into conventional lives and left him behind.
Being one of the few to see the writing on the wall doesn’t make for good company. They ignored his desperate warnings and distanced themselves in retribution.
In the end, when it came, they couldn’t say they didn’t know. He told them to put on their seatbelts before impact.
Just as you now know. When it happens, you have no excuse. You are hearing the gospel of the apocalypse.
The Evidence
Not in my lifetime. That’s often the truth when one talks about events that happen every two thousand years, or even every five hundred years. The latter means that there is less than a one in six chance that the event would happen in a lifetime. Pretty good odds.
These odds didn’t matter to peoples eight generations ago. The reason being that there was nothing in the pot, nothing to lose. So what if a massive solar flare hit earth? It created pretty lights for the world to see, some behavioral disturbances, but largely went unnoticed.
In the last hundred years, from the lost generation of 1914, the greatest generation of 1923, the silent generation of 1935, the baby boomers of 1955 and through generations X,Y,Z up until the present day we’ve put more and more chips on the table. Now, we are all in.
The modern electrical power grid, satellites, vehicles, computers, personal electronics and advanced weaponry are all on the board. With their failure we lose more than just equipment, we lose services. According to a report put out by the American Government’s National Research Council.
“A longer-term outage would likely include, for example, disruption of the transportation, communication, banking, and finance systems, and government services; the breakdown of the distribution of potable water owing to pump failure; and the loss of perishable foods and medications because of lack of refrigeration.”
Who needs food, water, medicine, government protection, and the monetary system?
Mind you, the only thing we gain by winning this bet is the continuance of life as we know it. The game is rigged, we will lose. Eventually the house always wins.
So we know what’s at stake. Now we just have to look at the odds of this wager we have unwittingly made.
One in five? One in ten? One in twenty? What’s the generational frequency of these massive solar flares?
That is the missing piece of the puzzle and the comfortable blanket of denial that hordes of people around the world wrap themselves in.
See, it isn’t that these types of events are uncommon. Rather, as previously stated, they just didn’t matter until recently. Nothing changed in the event of a massive solar flare before the 1850’s. Sticks were still sticks, stones were still stones. It wasn’t until a hundred and fifty years ago that humankind began using electronic equipment that told us, by sheer dumb luck, about the presence of solar flares. It may be worth noting, however, that a mere decade after the telegraph saw widespread commercial use the first large scale interruption of human life due to a solar flare occurred.
Back in 1859 they labeled it the Carrington Event. A concentrated wave of solar plasma struck earth causing primitive electrical equipment, namely the telegraph, to go on the fritz. Many operators were electrocuted due to their proximity to the machines. Sparks shot out and printing paper caught fire. While the earth was bombarded the units’ worked better without being plugged in as waves of electrical current coursed and surged through transmission lines.
That was the first proof we had of the existence of solar storms. Or was it? More importantly, was it proof of the most powerful solar storm the sun was capable of producing? Let’s go back over a thousand years.
In 2013 scientist studying the rings of an ancient Japanese tree found a sharp increase of radioactive carbon-14 dated between 774 and 775 a.d. That particular element is created when solar plasma interacts with nitrogen in the earth’s atmosphere. Researchers, taking into account the elements half life, were able to calculate the power of the solar flare responsible for the carbon-14 found in the ancient cedar tree. They discovered that a solar flare twenty times more powerful than the flare of the Carrington event was the likely cause of the elements presence.
Twenty times more powerful.
But that isn’t far enough back. Let’s go further, to a myriad of solar events that truly allow us to comprehend the disastrous power of our sun.
Between 10,000 and 3,000 b.c. multiple ancient petro glyphs carved in different parts of the world depict an eerily similar image. The figure was indecipherable until recently. The geometric shape scrawled in rocks resembled a four pointed star with white dots on the edges. In 2011 scientists utilizing the Los Alamos National Laboratories ‘roadrunner’ supercomputer simulated the influence of an aurora (the by-product of a solar flare interacting with the atmosphere) with massive solar wind. Scientists discovered what the five thousand year old rock carvings meant.
What primitive man was seeing in the sky was what is known in magnetic fusion as a quadrupole. Simply stated, they saw a column of charged solar wind interacting with the magnetosphere of earth. The bright display undoubtedly shocked the humans who observed it reaching down from the heavens towards them. Enough so that they recorded the image by scratching it into rocks.
What they witnessed was a solar storm hundreds of times more powerful than the Carrington Event.
Hundreds of times more powerful.
Since 1859 there have been over 95 small scale solar storms. As they gain in power, we become more susceptible.
The big one is coming. It isn’t a matter of if, but when.
Believe that when it happens you have to be prepared.
Believe that when the lights go out, when the night is lit as brightly as the day in a blood red glow, the words written on the following pages will save the ones you love.
All who have ears, let them hear.
The book is available in Feb but chapter reveals will be going on through this month.
Prologue
The end of modern life is more certain than salvation, more certain than our reason for existence and more certain than our understanding of how it all began. The proof is right in front of us, all we have to do is believe.
Belief is a matter of convenience So many are desperate to believe in stories of divinity and how they will continue to exist after death. Which was good for them in the end, they died with a sense of hope. Most people are more prepared to die than they are to live.
The following is the story of a man who wasn’t. He believed in the end of society based on the evidence found in nature. Believed in it so passionately that after he realized it wasn’t just possible but impeding he lived for it. Like a born again Christian without the Christ bit.
The things that made sense to him were based in certainty. Even events that have a small chance of happening have a degree of certainty. Most just ignored the signs in the news and the evidence in history; choosing not to believe it would happen again.
More certain of all the Jesus you can cram into a bottle, is that the sun, facilitator of life, is going to be the facilitator of the end of life as we know it. Many had heard of the dangers associated with solar flares. Like the gospel, those that heard the news had the choice on whether or not to believe. Those that did believe chose just how much to believe. Was it an inevitability or a possibility? The difference in mindset between the two as wide as the ocean is blue.
Believing in the inevitability meant believing in the implications.
Our protagonist, silent in his suffering, believed in the inevitability, so much so that he was convinced of what was to be, years before it happened. As a result of his belief, his life as a normal American, ended. That was the sacrifice he made. Life before, for life later. Survival, after all, comes down to a single irrefutable concept. Preparation.
Not just in supplies or food, water and weaponry. Preparation of the highest order doesn’t lay in the storage of material goods. Rather in the preparation of the mind. Many were simply not capable of believing in the reality that was to come. When presented with the possibility they refused to believe it as inevitable. The path of least resistance was to hope it didn’t happen rather than prepare for it to happen.
Maybe the unbelievers are unable to see that any possibility, even the most distant, is inevitable on a long enough timeline. The truth becomes unpalatable when it isn’t convenient and the end of society is an inconvenience for most.
For some, notably the man in whom a large part of the following story is dedicated, the end of society was far more convenient than living in society had been. Or perhaps stated more accurately, the preparation for the end of society, physically and mentally, made life in society an inconvenience. His heartbreak and loss began long before the critical event. That was the sacrifice that made his life after the end possible.
Preparation for survival was the jagged pill that staved off death after ‘The Surge’. But taking the medication before the disease doesn’t negate the side effects of the drug; Alex paid the cost before he had to.
Only a crazy person would store years upon years worth of food. Only the insane would prepare weaponry and store thousands of rounds of ammunition. Spending every cent they had on things they may never need.
The woman Alex loved left, friends stopped calling. They moved into conventional lives and left him behind.
Being one of the few to see the writing on the wall doesn’t make for good company. They ignored his desperate warnings and distanced themselves in retribution.
In the end, when it came, they couldn’t say they didn’t know. He told them to put on their seatbelts before impact.
Just as you now know. When it happens, you have no excuse. You are hearing the gospel of the apocalypse.
The Evidence
Not in my lifetime. That’s often the truth when one talks about events that happen every two thousand years, or even every five hundred years. The latter means that there is less than a one in six chance that the event would happen in a lifetime. Pretty good odds.
These odds didn’t matter to peoples eight generations ago. The reason being that there was nothing in the pot, nothing to lose. So what if a massive solar flare hit earth? It created pretty lights for the world to see, some behavioral disturbances, but largely went unnoticed.
In the last hundred years, from the lost generation of 1914, the greatest generation of 1923, the silent generation of 1935, the baby boomers of 1955 and through generations X,Y,Z up until the present day we’ve put more and more chips on the table. Now, we are all in.
The modern electrical power grid, satellites, vehicles, computers, personal electronics and advanced weaponry are all on the board. With their failure we lose more than just equipment, we lose services. According to a report put out by the American Government’s National Research Council.
“A longer-term outage would likely include, for example, disruption of the transportation, communication, banking, and finance systems, and government services; the breakdown of the distribution of potable water owing to pump failure; and the loss of perishable foods and medications because of lack of refrigeration.”
Who needs food, water, medicine, government protection, and the monetary system?
Mind you, the only thing we gain by winning this bet is the continuance of life as we know it. The game is rigged, we will lose. Eventually the house always wins.
So we know what’s at stake. Now we just have to look at the odds of this wager we have unwittingly made.
One in five? One in ten? One in twenty? What’s the generational frequency of these massive solar flares?
That is the missing piece of the puzzle and the comfortable blanket of denial that hordes of people around the world wrap themselves in.
See, it isn’t that these types of events are uncommon. Rather, as previously stated, they just didn’t matter until recently. Nothing changed in the event of a massive solar flare before the 1850’s. Sticks were still sticks, stones were still stones. It wasn’t until a hundred and fifty years ago that humankind began using electronic equipment that told us, by sheer dumb luck, about the presence of solar flares. It may be worth noting, however, that a mere decade after the telegraph saw widespread commercial use the first large scale interruption of human life due to a solar flare occurred.
Back in 1859 they labeled it the Carrington Event. A concentrated wave of solar plasma struck earth causing primitive electrical equipment, namely the telegraph, to go on the fritz. Many operators were electrocuted due to their proximity to the machines. Sparks shot out and printing paper caught fire. While the earth was bombarded the units’ worked better without being plugged in as waves of electrical current coursed and surged through transmission lines.
That was the first proof we had of the existence of solar storms. Or was it? More importantly, was it proof of the most powerful solar storm the sun was capable of producing? Let’s go back over a thousand years.
In 2013 scientist studying the rings of an ancient Japanese tree found a sharp increase of radioactive carbon-14 dated between 774 and 775 a.d. That particular element is created when solar plasma interacts with nitrogen in the earth’s atmosphere. Researchers, taking into account the elements half life, were able to calculate the power of the solar flare responsible for the carbon-14 found in the ancient cedar tree. They discovered that a solar flare twenty times more powerful than the flare of the Carrington event was the likely cause of the elements presence.
Twenty times more powerful.
But that isn’t far enough back. Let’s go further, to a myriad of solar events that truly allow us to comprehend the disastrous power of our sun.
Between 10,000 and 3,000 b.c. multiple ancient petro glyphs carved in different parts of the world depict an eerily similar image. The figure was indecipherable until recently. The geometric shape scrawled in rocks resembled a four pointed star with white dots on the edges. In 2011 scientists utilizing the Los Alamos National Laboratories ‘roadrunner’ supercomputer simulated the influence of an aurora (the by-product of a solar flare interacting with the atmosphere) with massive solar wind. Scientists discovered what the five thousand year old rock carvings meant.
What primitive man was seeing in the sky was what is known in magnetic fusion as a quadrupole. Simply stated, they saw a column of charged solar wind interacting with the magnetosphere of earth. The bright display undoubtedly shocked the humans who observed it reaching down from the heavens towards them. Enough so that they recorded the image by scratching it into rocks.
What they witnessed was a solar storm hundreds of times more powerful than the Carrington Event.
Hundreds of times more powerful.
Since 1859 there have been over 95 small scale solar storms. As they gain in power, we become more susceptible.
The big one is coming. It isn’t a matter of if, but when.
Believe that when it happens you have to be prepared.
Believe that when the lights go out, when the night is lit as brightly as the day in a blood red glow, the words written on the following pages will save the ones you love.
All who have ears, let them hear.
