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Impact Winter
The Earth, as much as we would like to believe, and as much as it appears, does not exist within a total vacuum. The solar system is a place of violence, with countless numbers of celestial bodies—the detritus left behind from the birth of the sun and planets—hurtling through the black at speeds of tens of thousands of miles per hour. Sometimes, two objects meet, resulting in destruction on a biblical scale. And sometimes, one of those objects is the Earth.
An impact winter is defined as a prolonged period of worldwide arctic temperatures and darkness, caused by the collision of the earth with another large astral body. Such a winter can last for years.
Impact Winter takes place in the near future, a little more than a year after a meteorite impact has encased the planet in a shroud of dust. The impact sent a shockwave around the planet that felled forests and cities alike the world over. The cloud of dust and debris raised by the meteorite is substantial enough to block out the light of the sun. Global temperatures have dropped to below freezing, even at the equator. The loss of sunlight has halted photosynthesis, fatally disrupting the food chain upon which all animal life, including humans, depends.
The great question of these times is not how to feed 7 billion human beings, a hopeless task, but how to preserve enough of humanity that when the shroud finally lifts and the sun shines again, civilization can begin to rebuild.
Impact Winter follows Cameron Nyland, a team leader in a paramilitary unit that is tasked with protecting Site Alpha, a massive underground bunker in the mountains of Pennsylvania. There, the government of the United States rules in absentia, hidden away and safe from the cold, the darkness, and the blowing dust storms of the surface.
Cameron begins to question the wisdom and lack of courage of hiding this way, of abandoning over 300 million people to be consumed in this new world. His doubts come to the fore when he meets a young, emaciated survivor found squatting in the abandoned surface buildings of Site Alpha, by the name of Dina. She has managed to survive despite suffering privations and personal horrors of which he and the other members of his team can scarcely imagine.
An impact winter is defined as a prolonged period of worldwide arctic temperatures and darkness, caused by the collision of the earth with another large astral body. Such a winter can last for years.
Impact Winter takes place in the near future, a little more than a year after a meteorite impact has encased the planet in a shroud of dust. The impact sent a shockwave around the planet that felled forests and cities alike the world over. The cloud of dust and debris raised by the meteorite is substantial enough to block out the light of the sun. Global temperatures have dropped to below freezing, even at the equator. The loss of sunlight has halted photosynthesis, fatally disrupting the food chain upon which all animal life, including humans, depends.
The great question of these times is not how to feed 7 billion human beings, a hopeless task, but how to preserve enough of humanity that when the shroud finally lifts and the sun shines again, civilization can begin to rebuild.
Impact Winter follows Cameron Nyland, a team leader in a paramilitary unit that is tasked with protecting Site Alpha, a massive underground bunker in the mountains of Pennsylvania. There, the government of the United States rules in absentia, hidden away and safe from the cold, the darkness, and the blowing dust storms of the surface.
Cameron begins to question the wisdom and lack of courage of hiding this way, of abandoning over 300 million people to be consumed in this new world. His doubts come to the fore when he meets a young, emaciated survivor found squatting in the abandoned surface buildings of Site Alpha, by the name of Dina. She has managed to survive despite suffering privations and personal horrors of which he and the other members of his team can scarcely imagine.
238 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 9, 2014
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February 15, 2016
Whether the world ends in a bang or a whimper, most disaster narratives lead up to the event and then follow its immediate aftermath. IMPACT WINTER by Bryan Larrick is more concerned with life after the fall, in this case a catastrophic collision with a meteor. Most of the action takes place a couple years after the devastation in a bunker built under a mountain in rural Pennsylvania, where the chosen few thousand are sequestered with the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the government. Larrick is skilled at orchestrating various storylines that start by capturing our interest with his speculative but realistic depiction of life after a global cataclysm and then tighten into an action-driven drama once the plot breaks into the “blasted lands” outside the protective enclave. The novel closes with an open ending that is both satisfying and left me wanting more, which is a good thing, as it’s only the first in a series. I'm curious to see what life is like after the apocalypse.
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