I was this week walking to the dining room at 15 Craigside, when one of the residents walked up to me and said something to the effect: Crichton and Patterson stole your idea about an eruption on the Big Island. So the next day I went to my computer and found that Eruption, by Crichton and Patterson, was #1 on the New York Times fiction book list.How did their book come together?
- Michael Crichton was a Harvard-trained doctor who went straight into writing, creating Jurassic Park and other adventures.
His first book under his name was The Andromeda Strain.- All told, his books sold over 200 million copies, with a dozen adapted into films.
- He is the only writer to have a number one book, movie and TV show in the same year.
- Born in 1942 and passed away in 2008 at the age of 66.
- His wife Sherri found parts of an unfinished novel centered around a huge volcanic eruption in Hawaii, and thought this should be completed.
- What about James Patterson?
- Patterson has already sold 400 million books, and has collaborated with people like Bill Clinton and Dolly Parton.
- Asked to consider finishing the draft by Sherri of a mega-eruption that could crack open a stockpile of toxic waste so potent that this could destroy all life on Earth, convinced him in 2022 to take on that challenge.
- Thus came Eruption.
And yes, I've had a draft about some volcano-related uber-disaster on the Big Island that has been changing titles for 17 years now, and currently back to, Five Hours to Los Angeles. Aside from both books linked to this same island and volcanoes, the science and stories are unrelated. In fact, my story has no eruption. This notion was called Six Hours to Seattle in Chapter 6 of my SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth. As a quick aside, here is a review of this book by Peter Hoffman, who in 2008 was editor of The Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Letter.
I kept putting off this writing project until 2018 when I got serious, and thought I'd do some research by traveling to the two what I then thought were the most probable mega-tsunami sites: Anchorage and Seattle. From my posting of June 13 that year:
Tomorrow, I begin some serious development of SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE, my upcoming docu-novel of Hilo falling into the sea, creating a mega-tsunami heading for Seattle. I'll be on Alaska Air 876, departing Kona at 10:55 AM on Saturday, June 16, with an intended destination of Seattle. I could well see the potential calamity happening, for I'll be in seat 1A. As you must know by now, the speed of a tsunami is just about exactly that of a commercial jetliner. We arrive to see, from the air, Seattle being inundated. Such is the storyboard of this book.
So about this book, the landslide sends a mega tsunami towards Seattle. In Six Hours to Seattle I will be combining my geothermal reservoir engineering experience with the reality of the fact that for 36 years now I have been living on Nuuanu Avenue. The slide this time, however, would not be on Oahu, but instead, a giant chunk of the Big Island (the red area), more specifically, to include Hilo, where my wife and a couple of hundred relatives live, and that troubles me. However, the odds of anything like this happening got be nanoscopic, if there is such a word. Yet, the current Lower Puna Eruptions and geophysical/bathymetry conditions surrounding Hilo are intriguing. As I earlier said, I very well know where the fault lines are, and appreciate the deadly potential.
Back to the book research effort, here is my summary from that trip to Anchorage and Seattle.
So what did I learn from this journey from Hawaii to Seattle and Anchorage, the two most likely targets of my novel entitled Six Hours to ?:
- Both Seattle and Anchorage are mostly surrounded by protective lands, plus both cities are at elevations from 60 to more than 100 feet.
- I'll need to look for another city.
- Tokyo is eight hours by tsunami, but not in the right direction of a likely major landslide from Hawaii.
- Santiago, Chile is 13 hours by tsunami, but there is no direct flight from here to there.
- San Francisco, too, is somewhat protected.
- Five Hours to Los Angeles was my original title, and looks like I might just return there. Painting by Paul Jackson.
- However, my Seattle and Anchorage flights provided some characters I met, for, once the mega-tsunami is initiated, there will be scientific uncertainty as to what will really happen. The anxiety will be at peak during the plane ride, and what comes next.
The most likely mega landslide will be the Hilina Slump, 5000 cubic kilometers of earth into the Pacific Ocean. Interesting that the Nuuanu Landslide was also 5000 cubic kilometers, from Waking the Giant, by Bill McGuire, who I interviewed when I wrote my chapter on Six Hours to Seattle.
- The Hawaiian Islands have been around long enough that mega landslides have occurred 15 times (or maybe even 70, depending on what you consider as major).
- These landslides tend to occur when the environment is moist, such as during times of sea level rise.I
- Is there any historical precedent for a mega tsunami?
- Watch this clip of the Nuuanu Landslide, which probably generated a tsunami exceeding 300 feet over California. This occurred about 1.5 million years ago
- Or this one, which wipes out Honolulu.
- Yet another, collapse of the Kilauea Volcano, generating a 100 foot tsunami over California.
These landslides as above happened more than a million years ago. However, mega-landslides in Hawaii supposedly occur around every 350,000 years, so in a way we are long overdue for another one.
I have not read that Crichton/Patterson book yet, but from what I know, the storyline about my potential book is totally different from Eruption. For one, the characters would be on a flight that leaves the Big Island for, now, Los Angeles. While in the air, the western part of the Big Island falls into the sea, triggering a mega-tsunami, which so conveniently moves toward the West Coast at the SAME SPEED as the commercial airliner. Their publication is limited to one island.
One reason why I have not completed Five Hours to Los Angeles is that this would be a mega-disaster for which I have no solution to offer. Similarly, I have backed-off from The Venus Syndrome, about the ultimate global warming cataclysm, because if that end of the world calamity begins to unfold, Humanity will be doomed. I tend to be an optimistic person who seeks solutions, as my books and this blog site indicates.
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