An action thriller by Jock Miller


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


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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?

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With a Deep Dig Into Its Past, Perugia Built an Energy-Saving Future

The Dig for a New Future


The minimetro, which has helped hilly Perugia, Italy to reduce car traffic, is more than public transport, says the city's mayor. "It's architecture, technology, design."
Photograph by Franco Origlia, Getty Images

It all started, incredibly enough, in the early 1980s, with a few escalators.

City archeologists had unearthed the subterranean streets of a former patrician neighborhood under a park that was built far below Perugia’s urban core. The city developed a lower town to showcase this district that had been covered over since the 16th century. To connect the lower town to Perugia’s center, which stands on a 490-meter (1,600-foot) rock promontory, the city built a series of escalators. At the base, the urban planners added a multilevel parking garage and bus station that looks like a subway station minus the trains. And vehicles other than delivery vans and taxis were banned from the Corso Vannucci.

More escalator-parking lot locations were soon built, followed by a "Zona di traffico limitato" (ZTL), or limited traffic zone. Car travel or parking in downtown requires a permit. Cameras snap license plates, and hefty fines are levied on those who venture into the city by motor vehicle without a permit.

Still, Perugians feared that such measures would turn their beloved city into a museum. Plus, reality intruded. Perugia hosts some popular festivals throughout the year, among them Umbria Jazz in July, and Eurochocolate, a tribute to the Perugina company that makes the city’s famously addictive Baci chocolate, every October. How to bring in thousands of attendees without overloading the streets, parking lots, and escalators?

City planners considered the alternatives. Long ago, a tram ran from the rail station to the center, but that was in a gentler time, with few cars on the road. A subway? The hills are too steep. Besides, the population of 160,000 couldn't support the expense of building or operating a full-sized system. After a decade of debate, the city decided on an innovative system built by the Italian company Leitner AG, a 3-kilometer (1.8-mile) "minimetro."

"This is Perugia," said Mayor Wladimiro Boccali. "In a city like ours, with its wealth of art and history, we had to do something original. The minimetro is more than public transport. It's architecture, technology, design."

It's fun to ride, too. There's a big parking lot on the outskirts for those arriving by car. One station connects with the main train station at the foot of the hill. The stations' avant-garde design is no accident; it’s all the work of French architect Jean Nouvel, winner in 2008 of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize.

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