Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

COUNTDOWN TO ZERO HOUR 16 HOURS AND 18 MINUTES

PRESIDENT MICHAEL WADE DAWSON , the youngest person ever to hold that office, sworn in just eighty-eight days ago at the age of thirty-nine, was wholly unprepared for the disaster about to confront him.

Unmarried. No kids. Only the second bachelor president in U.S. history, only the seventh not to have any children. Even if that all changed someday, in a moment like this, those statistics became more relevant.

A throng of White House reporters and photographers surrounded the base of the Truman Balcony, jockeying for position, each eager to get the shot of the historic moment. The president stared out at the members of the press awaiting his arrival and thought: There are images that define an administration’s legacy. This will be one of mine.

Times like this were hard enough. But they were even harder without a partner to hold your hand or a child to experience it with. All Dawson could do was get through it.

“All right,” he said quietly under his breath to the man in the bunny costume beside him. “Let’s get this over with.”

Putting on that sly half grin that had helped him win Pennsylvania, Florida, and Iowa, the president strode forward to greet the children and parents gathered on the South Lawn.

“Good morning,” he said cheerfully as the applause died down, his bright blue eyes and thick blond hair shining in the late-morning sun. “It’s a beautiful day and it’s an honor to officially welcome you all to the White House Easter Egg Roll!”

The crowd cheered and clapped, a fitting pairing to the cloudless, crisp spring morning where the last of the cherry blossoms were drifting by on the breeze. His message was brief and he spoke not of policy or politics but of hope and renewal. His speechwriters had given it to him, he’d punched it up with a few jokes of his own, and he was about halfway through the embarrassing affair when Dawson came to a stark realization.

He was enjoying himself.

Maybe it was all the bright colors and wide smiles, a scene as un-Washington as it got. Maybe it was because his fading native California tan was finally getting a much-needed dose of sunlight after the long winter. Or maybe it was that, for a handful of minutes, he could set the job down. He could stop worrying and stressing and wondering what fresh hell the next moment might bring. For the first time since being sworn in, he was nothing more than a man having a laugh on a beautiful day.

After his speech, the cameras clicked as he challenged the Easter Bunny to an arm-wrestling contest. A battle he happily lost.

“Aw, c’mon,” President Dawson said to the bunny, feigning protest. “Tony always lets me win.”

The press pool laughed, but White House Chief of Staff Tony Yoshida didn’t hear. He was huddled in quiet conversation with an aide.

The band started to play an upbeat Sousa march as the president jogged down the steps for a photo op with the Easter Bunny and some children dressed in their Sunday finest. Dawson crouched beside them as they showed him their eggs, describing how they’d decorated them, explaining why they’d chosen this or that color. He listened in earnest, smiling, enjoying their stories.

“Tony, did you know purple is Eliza here’s favorite color?” Dawson asked his chief of staff, who had appeared by his side.

“I did not. Sir, we—”

“And did you know that this guy is stronger than you?” the president said, bringing over the man in the bunny costume.

“Sir, we need to get you inside.”

“It’s true. This bunny beat me easily in a test of strength.” Dawson held out his hand. “What do you say we go best out of three?”

The bunny nodded and the two were beginning to set up for a rematch when Tony turned his back to the press and leaned into the president’s side.

“Mr. President, a plane has crashed into a nuclear power facility.”

Dawson froze.

The cameras clicked.

When previous presidents met their defining moment, most had had time to absorb it, process it, internalize what it meant and what it would mean. They had privacy and discretion while they took the blow and figured out how to respond. Not him. Dawson’s defining moment was playing out in real time next to a giant bunny while everyone watched and the cameras rolled.

With a barely discernible nod to Tony, Dawson shook the Easter Bunny’s hand. “You win. Excuse me,” he said, and turned toward the White House. He walked briskly, realizing his usual number of Secret Service agents had nearly doubled without him noticing. He wasn’t fully through the door before the agents practically lifted him off his feet and rushed him through the hallways.

“What do we know?” he called out to Tony over his shoulder.

“Coastal Airways, a Boeing seven fifty-seven, Minneapolis to Seattle,” Tony said, jogging to keep up. Curious White House staffers stood up from their desks or jumped back out of the way.

“Jesus, that’s a big plane. Is any terror group claiming it?”

“Not yet. FBI, NSA, and CIA are monitoring. There was no chatter on any channel, foreign or domestic, leading up. FAA, TSA, NTSB, DHS are all up and live. This just happened, Mr. President. We are very limited in what we know. We want to be careful with assumptions and actions.”

“Ground them all.”

Tony hesitated. “Sir?”

“I want every commercial aircraft on the ground in the next half hour.”

“It’s a holiday weekend.”

“Busy travel time. Sounds perfect for a terrorist.”

“We’d be displacing millions of travelers.”

“Give them hotel vouchers.”

“But Mr. President, we don’t know anything—”

The president spun, wrenching his arm out of a Secret Service agent’s grip. “It’s a plane and a nuclear power plant, Tony. You tell me the odds. I’m not losing another plane. This country will not do this again. Until we know this wasn’t a terror attack, we treat it like it is. Ground the planes, now.”

Tony Yoshida—his closest adviser, his former campaign manager, favorite college professor, beloved mentor, the father figure he’d never had growing up but always needed, the person he trusted more than anyone in the world besides his own mother—looked at Dawson like they’d never met. Which, they were both discovering, was somewhat true. As president, Dawson hadn’t been truly tested yet and he had always wondered how he’d handle it, what kind of president he’d be. Both men were finding out.

“Yes, sir,” Tony said.

The group continued, turning and going down one flight of stairs. “International borders closed,” said Dawson as they turned and went down another flight. “I want security at all power plants beefed up. Priority nuclear. Tell the governors to use the National Guard if they have to. Dams, bridges, tunnels, rail. Soft targets: arenas, public transport, national monuments. Anything we even think is at risk needs to be put on alert.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“What is the condition of the plant?”

“Clover Hill nuclear power plant, located fifty-five miles northwest of Minneapolis in the town of Waketa, population approximately nine hundred. Built in 1973—”

“These are facts,” Dawson interrupted. “I want the plant’s condition.”

“Yes, sir. We’re getting that now. The plant is partially decommissioned—”

“It’s no longer in service?”

“We’re not that lucky. It’s in the process of being decommissioned, which takes years. The plant has three reactors on-site; only one has completed the decommissioning process and is offline. The other two are fully operational and generating power.”

“What is their status?”

“That’s what we’re getting now.”

The group came to a stop at a door where an agent entered a lengthy code into a numerical panel on the wall. As they waited, catching their breath in the sudden lack of movement, the president’s voice softened: “The plane,” he said. “Is there any chance of survivors?”

“At that speed, at that altitude,” Tony said. “No, Mr. President.”

Dawson showed no physical reaction.

The panel beeped and the wall slid open, revealing an elevator. The president, the chief of staff, and six agents piled inside. Dawson placed his right hand flat against a screen on the wall and stared into a lens at eye level. A green laser slowly moved up and down his palm and fingers while a thin red laser scanned his retinas. A moment later, another beep, and the elevator started to descend.

The occupants of the cramped elevator were silent. Their ears popped. President Dawson took a deep breath, held it, and slowly exhaled. He knew this was the last moment of stillness before they entered a world where the words nuclear and radioactive and all the horrors they represented became commonplace—but he had one last question before they did.

“How many were aboard the plane?” Dawson asked.

“Passengers and crew combined, two hundred and ninety-five people, sir.”

There was a ding and the elevator doors slid open to a spare, windowless, subterranean bunker located five stories beneath the western side of the North Lawn: the DUCC—Deep Underground Command Center. Ten-foot-thick concrete walls fortified a structure intended to serve as a makeshift housing and command center for the president and staff during an attack, invasion, or nuclear incident. It had its own food and self-contained air supply, so the whole country could be run from these few rooms for months.

The president burst through the first door on the right, and the handful of personnel in the room, mostly military, turned to face the commander in chief. Wall-mounted banks of screens and monitors displaying every aspect of the crisis surrounded a long conference table in the center of the room. Real-time radar screens tracked air traffic, both commercial and military. On one screen was a diagram of the type of nuclear reactor used at Clover Hill. On the next screen were specs, details, and logistics of the plant. There were demographics of the town of Waketa and various maps of the region. Other screens showed stock market charts and indexes, live interstate cams, traffic-flow monitors, CNN, Fox, MSNBC.

“Mr. President, nine minutes ago, at zero-nine-three-four central, Coastal Airways Flight Two-Thirty-Five dropped off radar,” said deputy national security adviser Nancy Reid, passing a stack of papers to Tony. “Shortly after, all power in downtown Minneapolis and the surrounding suburbs momentarily turned off. It has since been restored.”

“Does that mean the plant itself still has power?” asked the president.

“We’re not sure,” someone said.

The president turned to the voice, which came from the wall of video-call screens. The boxes constantly adjusted as participants hopped on the call, the labels in the lower right-hand corners displaying their titles or departments: FBI, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE, SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION, NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION . In a moment like this, names didn’t matter. The person who’d just spoken was the secretary of energy.

“Power grids are interconnected, multilayered webs,” the secretary continued. “If you take out a nuclear power plant, the grid will stay up because the system has redundancies and is set up for contingencies. The plant in question is a relatively minor power provider.”

“With all due respect to the people of Minneapolis,” said Dawson, “I couldn’t care less if their refrigerators are still running. What was the impact damage at the plant? Are we looking at an open reactor spewing radiation into the air or not?”

“Sir, we don’t know. It’s chaos over there,” said the chair of the NRC. “We need to give them time to handle the crisis. Communicating with us isn’t their priority, nor should it be. We are mobilizing our resources, but until we hear from them, which will happen as soon as they are able, we’re piecing together what we can with what we do know.”

“Fine,” Dawson said, running a hand down his face. “When will we know if they have power? And what happens if they don’t?”

“Hard to say, because we’re no longer communicating with its grid.”

The president leaned forward on the table. “I don’t know what that means,” he said through gritted teeth. “So let me be very clear: Speak to me like I’m five. I’m a smart guy, but I’m no nuclear engineer, and neither is the average American, and that’s who I’m going to be addressing here soon. I need to understand what I’m telling them. Got it?”

Heads nodded.

“Mr. President, we’re still trying to figure out what is and isn’t working across the board,” said the secretary of energy. “We think the distribution line from the plant was damaged in the crash, which cut them off of grid power. When we lost the plant, the frequency dropped, which made the whole system unstable. The system was overloading. And when it looked like the overload might make the whole grid fail—the grid for the entire Twin Cities region; we’re talking power for three, four million people—the system essentially went into self-protective mode and just cut it off. The grid cut them free.”

The president blinked at the wall of screens. “To protect itself, the grid severed connection to Clover Hill.”

“Yes. The grid basically said, Don’t bring those problems here. ”

“Which is good for the grid. Bad for Clover Hill.”

“Exactly. It means they’re on their own.”

The president crossed his arms, considering. “Can a nuclear plant actually power itself?”

“It can, but it shouldn’t, and it’s not done for long.”

That voice came from an unlabeled box, a person who had just hopped on the call. On-screen was Ethan, arms of his sweater pushed up, a thin coating of dust covering his dark, wavy hair. In the background, emergency communications staffers worked diligently.

“It’s called islanding or island mode ,” Ethan continued. “It’s an automatic emergency stopgap if the power plant disconnects from the grid. It keeps the cooling systems going while the backup generators kick in. We are out of island mode and are running exclusively on EDG power.”

“You are—” Tony said.

“Ethan Rosen. I run Clover Hill.”

The room stilled in attention.

“You’re at the plant currently?” asked the president.

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Are any of the reactors open?”

“No.”

People in the room and on the screens shifted at that news.

“How certain are you?” the president asked, his expression stoic. “That’s with, what, gauges and readings? Or a visual confirmation?”

“Sir, it’s a war zone. We’re still trying to figure out the extent of the damage. But I can confirm the plane did not directly hit any of the reactors. All three containment vessels held. All three reactors are intact.”

There was an audible sigh of relief in the room and on the screens. Dawson wasn’t convinced.

“You don’t seem relieved, Mr. Rosen,” said the president.

“I’m not. Look, the plane hit with enough force that it registered as an earthquake. That triggered automatic responses throughout the plant. The reactors themselves scrammed.”

“They shut themselves down. That’s good, right?”

“Exactly. And, yes, it’s a standard protective protocol. It’s what should have happened.”

“But…”

“But it’s not just about the reactors. When the plane crashed, we think it hit the primary distribution line first. And it didn’t just damage the line—it snagged and severed it. Which not only cut us off the grid but made the plane twist. Or something. We’re trying to get the security feed up to play it back and see. But whatever happened, it made the plane break apart. There wasn’t just one point of impact. The plane broke apart, and huge chunks of the aircraft went in every direction. They hit dry casks. Auxiliary buildings. External batteries. The damage is extensive and widespread.”

“And that’s what you’re trying to assess right now. The damage.”

“Exactly. What’s working and what’s not. And we’re most worried about—” Ethan paused, then looked directly into the camera. “Mr. President, sir, how much do you know about nuclear power?”

“Let’s say nothing.”

“Right. Okay. So…” The engineer rubbed his hands together, thinking. “Okay, so the whole situation of a nuclear power plant ultimately comes down to one thing: Heat. Controlled heat is what generates power. Out-of-control heat is what causes a meltdown. Daily operations are nothing but maintaining that balance. At a nuclear plant, you control the heat with two things: Power and water. At the moment, the plant is struggling with both.

“Now, the plant has multiple ways to power itself,” Ethan continued, crossing his arms. “The first is through the grid. As we already said, that’s a dead end.”

“We can’t just reconnect the plant to the grid—” Dawson began.

“If the line’s severed completely, it’s not going to happen,” interrupted the secretary of energy. “Even if it were just damaged, it would take weeks to reconnect. But severed—”

“Who knows how long,” said Ethan.

“There’s not another—”

“Another distribution line?” Ethan said, finishing the president’s thought. “That’s called a secondary distribution line. And no. This plant is too small to have a secondary distribution line. So since the grid wasn’t an option, we moved to redundancies—EDG power. Emergency diesel generators. They are what’s running the plant at the moment.”

“They’re big enough to do that?” asked the president.

“Not forever. Not like the grid. They will eventually, obviously, run out of diesel and need refueling. And EDGs themselves can fail. But in theory, yes. They can run the plant. And they are.”

“And if the EDGs fail?”

“Batteries. External battery power. Some may have been damaged, but even if they weren’t, backup batteries can’t feed power for the whole plant, just critical load.”

“Critical load?”

“The equipment most crucial for running the plant safely. Coolant pumps. Other systems that keep the water in the reactors and pools cool. Remember, it’s about controlling the heat.”

Dawson looked to the man on the monitor labeled FEMA . “Gene, where are we at with getting them fuel and more generators and batteries?”

The FEMA director said, “We’ve contacted local utilities to request their emergency stock. Minneapolis is the closest big utility. Semitrucks are en route for load and transport.”

“Can confirm,” Ethan said. “I was on a call with Red Top before I hopped on with you. They’re the nearest plant and their teams are organizing their supply as we speak.”

“Good. Gene, I want regular status updates,” said Dawson.

“Mr. Rosen, I want you updating me regularly.”

“You don’t, actually. You want me focused in the control room. Who you want is Joss. She’s our regional NEST rep.”

“NEST?”

“Nuclear Emergency Support Team,” said Tony, reading from the papers he’d been handed earlier. “The Department of Energy’s nuclear-incident first responders. Rapid-response teams of nuclear engineers and scientists. Jocelyn Vance—Joss, apparently—covers the upper Midwest region. Prior to this post, she was in Washington at the NRC working in policy, and before that she was getting a PhD in nuclear engineering from MIT.”

“And she’s on her way to the plant?” asked the president.

“I’m surprised she’s not already here,” said Ethan. “She lives in Waketa. She’s from Waketa.”

“Tony, get her direct number,” said Dawson. “Mr. Rosen, if the reactors have shut down and are currently not open and not leaking radioactive material, if we shore up the power supply by bringing in more generators and batteries—aren’t we good?”

Ethan paused. “As I said earlier, sir, it’s not just the reactors.”

The president’s gut tightened. There was something in the way he’d said it. Something foreboding, something that almost felt like pity—a scientist who knew what they were up against pitying the clueless bureaucrat in charge.

“A nuclear power plant’s main function is to generate power,” Ethan said. “But it also stores nuclear waste. People focus on the reactors being so dangerous because… well, because they are. A reactor is where the active nuclear material, little pellets of enriched uranium, each about the size of a gummy bear, are all stacked together in big, long rods. Using nuclear energy to generate power is, yes, a very dangerous activity if not done properly.”

Ethan took a breath before continuing. “But once the uranium is fissioned, once it’s burned, the rods are removed from the reactor core and replaced with new rods containing freshly enriched uranium pellets. But the fuel rods become more radioactive as they are burned in the reactor.”

The engineer paused.

“Meaning, Mr. President, when the fuel rods leave the reactor, they are more dangerous than when they were in it.”

“So where do these more dangerous fuel rods go once they’re removed from the reactors?”

“Two places. Both are on-site. One is dry cask storage.”

Tony slid an image across the table to the president, a picture of rows of large, oblong concrete canisters positioned vertically on outdoor concrete pads. Dawson flipped it around to show the engineer.

“Yes, sir,” Ethan said. “Those are dry casks. They’re the long-term storage option. Inside each of those pillars are the oldest rods. The ones that have cooled the most. Once the rods are inserted, each cask is filled with inert gas, placed in a steel cylinder that is welded or bolted shut, then surrounded by concrete. But just because they’re the oldest and coolest doesn’t mean they’re not still dangerous. The half-lives of some back-end nuclear by-products are millions of years.”

The president glanced up from the image. Ethan nodded, understanding his look.

“Yes. You heard me correctly, sir,” he said. “Nuclear waste is toxic for millennia. And I know at least one of our casks has been damaged and ruptured and one plant employee has been exposed.”

“Damn it,” the president muttered. “How do we contain it?”

Ethan hesitated. “Sir, that one cask may be the least of our problems.”

Dawson and Tony shared a look before the chief of staff passed another image to the president.

“The other storage option,” Ethan said, “is the spent fuel pool.” As he went on to describe the picture the president held in his hands, Dawson sat down slowly.

“Immediately after the fuel rods leave the reactor,” Ethan said, “they’re put in the pool. It’s an enormous aboveground swimming pool filled with regular old water inside a big warehouse. The pool is at least forty feet deep. At the bottom are storage racks that hold the fuel assemblies. The pool is a safe storage location for the rods to cool after their immediate removal because of the water. The water is crucial. It acts as a natural shield. Every seven centimeters away from the rods, the radiation is halved. I wouldn’t drink it, but you could swim on the surface, no problem.”

The president glanced up.

“I’m serious. But the water—and this is the crucial part—it keeps the rods from burning. The pool has cooling pumps that continuously circulate the water, keeping the temperature down.”

“And the pumps aren’t working,” said Dawson.

“No, no. The pumps are working fine. The problem is the pool is leaking.”

“Leaking?”

“Yes, sir. Parts of the plane struck the building housing the pool, causing substantial structural damage to the pool itself. Sir, the pool is losing water.”

The president held up the picture of the pool and the building it was in. “You’re saying nuclear waste is stored in a facility like this? This looks like a Walmart.”

“And it’s about that fortified.”

The president tossed the image aside and leaned back in the chair. “What happens if we can’t fix the damage and the pool drains?”

“As the pool drains, the rods will become exposed. When that happens, what water’s left will heat up and boil off, releasing radioactive steam and hydrogen into a building not designed to contain it. An explosion will occur if the fire hasn’t already destroyed the structure.”

“What fire?”

“Well, chances are, before an explosion could happen, the entire thing would go up in a zirconium cladding fire.”

“What does that look like?”

“Like Chernobyl was a campfire.”

“And how would we put it out?”

“We wouldn’t.”

“Look,” the president said, growing frustrated. “Being alarmist to a degree that—”

“Mr. President, I’m not being alarmist. If a fire starts in the pool, it will set off a chain reaction that will melt down every reactor and every pool at the plant. Remember, there are three reactors. Each has its own pool. This plant has been in operation three hundred sixty-five days a year since 1973. Every ounce of nuclear waste created during that time is stored on-site. A fire of this magnitude, mankind has yet to conceive of a way to put out. It would burn forever.”

No one in the room or on the screens moved.

“Mr. Rosen,” the president said in an even, flat tone. “I ask again. What does that look like?”

Ethan took a moment before he answered, seeming to consider what he could say that would accurately describe the situation they were up against.

“The fire would create an uncontrollable spread of invisible, toxic, cancer-causing radioactive particulates that would be dispersed in the air and carried by the wind. It would get in the soil. The water. Our food. Insects. Livestock. It would be in everything we touched, ate, drank, and breathed for… for forever.”

At that moment, the screen showing CNN went into breaking-news mode.

The rest of the world was about to find out.

President Dawson studied the live radar of current air traffic over a map of the whole country, focusing particularly on Minnesota. The heart of Middle America. In the center, right at the very top. There was nothing attention-grabbing about it. No Hollywood or Times Square. No Rocky Mountains or Grand Canyon. For most, it was just a place that was there. A place you went if you had family.

The president stood and stepped around the table, homing in on the map of Waketa, population nine hundred. Everything he’d heard today about the plant was probably emblematic of the rest of the town too. Considered too small to truly matter, too unimportant to get the attention it needed and deserved. The priority and resources freely given to things considered too big to fail, this town, this plant, had never received. And now, because the rest of the country had decided places like Waketa and Clover Hill were small enough to fail, America might learn that the adage “You’re only as strong as your weakest link” was true.

“Nuclear power plants are purposely built near water, correct?” President Dawson asked.

“They are, sir,” Ethan confirmed. “They need a large water source to draw from. Clover Hill draws from the Mississippi.”

The deputy national security adviser typed on her keyboard. A moment later, maps and details of the Mississippi River system came up on a large monitor.

“If a fire started, would the contaminated water flow to the river?” asked Dawson.

“Without question,” said Ethan.

The Mississippi River spanned 2,300 miles, making it the fourth-largest river system in the world. President Dawson’s eyes traced the river’s path from Minnesota on down—Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana. The river passed through ten states total, and that wasn’t including any of its sizable tributaries. The river started practically in Canada and ended in the Gulf of Mexico, slicing straight down the center of the country like a spine.

“Arne,” said the president.

The head of the EPA said, “Somewhere between twenty to thirty million people rely on the Mississippi and its tributaries for fresh water. Over fifty cities rely on the Mississippi and the Mississippi alone for their entire water supply.”

“Melissa,” said Dawson, turning his attention to the box labeled SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE .

“The majority of land in the Mississippi basin is used for agriculture, crops mainly for export. Ninety-two percent of the nation’s total agricultural exports come from this region alone. Seventy-eight percent of the world’s total imports of soy and feed grain come from crops grown in the Mississippi River basin. I cannot impress upon you enough how catastrophic the ripple effects on food security would be and the massive global implications, particularly in regions of the world already affected by climate-change-induced droughts, famines, and mass migration.”

“Jorge.”

“To that point,” said the secretary of state. “The Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration will have more accurate figures than I can give you right now, but if the entire center of the country becomes unlivable for generations to come, we’re looking at a mass migration to the east and west with displacement figures somewhere in the sixty- to seventy-million range—and that’s just for the Midwest. We’re talking about primarily rural populations moving to large coastal cities where there’s a higher cost of living after they have lost all earning potential and whatever land equity they might have had. And these coastal cities are already facing their own real estate scarcities and affordable-housing crises along with an untenable population of unhoused that they have no idea what to do about.”

“So a refugee crisis of Americans on American soil,” Dawson said. “Diane.”

“We’d lose over a million full-time jobs in agriculture alone,” said the secretary of labor.

“Jerry.”

The Fed chair looked squarely into the camera. “Total financial collapse.”

The president sat in stunned silence. The implications of what this meant, what this could mean, were staggering—and these were just the broad strokes. Finally, he looked to the chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“Dave,” said the president.

The head of the NRC, a man who had been in quiet contemplation this whole time, leaned forward. He was soft-spoken, which only made his words carry more weight.

“The International Nuclear Event Scale has seven levels. Level seven is a major accident, meaning a significant release of radioactive material with long-term, widespread environmental and health ramifications. There have only been two INES level sevens: Fukushima and Chernobyl. The situation we’re faced with today has major global implications. It far exceeds our current scale.” He paused. “Mr. President, this could be our first level eight.”

“What would a level eight mean?”

“It would be an extinction-level event, sir.”