An action thriller by Jock Miller


Fossil fuel has an ageless affinity with dinosaurs. To create oil, dinosaurs died.


purchase on Amazon.com


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: Hand-Powered Submarine



Illustration from Mary Evans Picture Library/Alamy

Human-powered vehicles these days might bring to mind recreational contraptions for garage tinkerers or the green-minded set. But rewind back to the American Revolutionary War, and you'll find a human-powered vehicle at the heart of a military attack. Well, an attempted attack, anyway.

Meet the American Turtle: the first combat submarine, designed in 1775 by a Yale College student in his 30s named David Bushnell. The oak and iron vessel measured 7.5 feet (2.3 meters) tall and 6 feet (1.8 meters) wide across its midsection. A solo pilot would crank two propellers and maneuver a rudder by hand. To attack, the operator was meant to drill a screw into a ship's hull and light a time fuse, which would be attached to a charge of gunpowder. Then he would crank like mad to get the heck out of Dodge.

As it turned out, the hull of the British warship selected as the Turtle's first target was plated in copper. That mission, and two later attacks, failed.

Bushnell's Turtle did not have much of a career in future military operations, let alone in civilian life. But roadways today are peppered with technology and designs initially developed for military applications. Chris Gerdes, director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford University, pointed to the Jeep as the most prominent example of military vehicles influencing civilian mobility. "This really went from iconic military transport to iconic expression of freedom and mobility," he wrote in an email.

Even the Volkswagen Beetle has its roots in defense projects. "This chassis was used by the German military and production was restarted by the British army after the war to meet their needs," said Gerdes. "Some of these were exported by soldiers to the UK and the Beetle craze began."

Today, the U.S. military is investing in biofuels, solar, energy conservation, and other green technologies. "Today, one Marine has more technology than I had for 40,000 troops in 2000," Major General Anthony Jackson said during an event at Stanford University last month, just weeks before retiring. "When wars end," he added, "all that technology goes into the civilian sector."

 Read More
at
Labels: , ,