An action thriller by Jock Miller
Fossil fuel has an ageless affinity with dinosaurs. To create oil, dinosaurs died.
The perfect energy storm is sweeping over the United States: Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown has paralyzed nuclear expansion globally, BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill has stalled deep water drilling, Arab oil countries are in turmoil causing doubt about access to future oil, the intensity of hurricanes hitting the Gulf’s oil rigs and refineries has intensified due to global warming, and the nation’s Strategic Oil Supply is riding on empty.
As the energy storm intensifies, the nation’s access to Arab oil, once supplying over sixty percent of our fossil fuel, is being threatened causing people to panic for lack of gas at the pumps, stranding cars across the country and inciting riots.
The U.S. Military is forced to cut back air, land, and sea operations sucking up 58% of every barrel of oil to protect the nation; U.S. commercial airlines are forced to limit flights for lack of jet fuel; and businesses are challenged to power up their factories, and offices as the U.S. Department of Energy desperately tries to provide a balance of electric power from the network of aged power plants and transmission lines that power up the nation.
The United States must find new sources of domestic fossil fuel urgently or face an energy crisis that will plunge the nation into a deep depression worse than 1929.The energy storm is very real and happening this very moment. But, at the last moment of desperation, the United States discovers the world’s largest fossil fuel deposit found in a remote inaccessible mountain range within Alaska’s Noatak National Preserve surrounding six and a half million acres.
Preventing access to the oil is a colony of living fossil dinosaurs that will protect its territory to the death.Nobody gets out alive; nobody can identify the predator--until Dr. Kimberly Fulton, Curator of Paleontology at New York’s Museum of Natural History, is flown into the inaccessible area by Scott Chandler, the Marine veteran helicopter pilot who’s the Park’s Manager of Wildlife. All hell breaks loose when Fulton’s teenage son and his girlfriend vanish into the Park.
Will the nation’s military be paralyzed for lack of mobility fuel, and will people across America run out of gas and be stranded, or will the U.S. Military succeed in penetrating this remote mountain range in northwestern Alaska to restore fossil fuel supplies in time to save the nation from the worst energy driven catastrophe in recorded history?
Amazing Transportation Inventions: Gossamer Albatross
Photograph from Corbis
Who needs jet fuel when you have a pair of powerful legs? That's the maxim demonstrated by a long line of engineers and athletic pilots who have pushed the limits of human-powered transportation by land, air, and sea. Pictured here is the Gossamer Albatross, which in 1979 became the first human-powered aircraft to cross the English Channel.
Sponsored by DuPont, inventor Paul MacCready built the lightweight craft from carbon fiber tubing, balsa wood, clear Mylar, and Kevlar, with the addition of some wire and foam. He engineered a series of human- and solar-powered aircraft between 1959 and 1980, and in 1971 he founded AeroVironment-a company today known for its unmanned aircraft systems and charging equipment for electric cars.
The 22.5-mile (36.2 kilometer) Albatross flight lasted just under three hours--about an hour longer than anticipated. And Bryan Allen, the long-distance cyclist who powered the 70-pound Albatross through that grueling journey over water despite leg cramps and dehydration, later told AeroVironment, "There were so many unknowns on that flight that I could not be certain we'd make it, but I was certain I'd use every resource in trying."
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