Blowout Read Online Free

warming was not only reducing snowfall and glaciers from which the rivers to produce the power were fed, but rainfall patterns were changing, and not beneficially. Along with the dozens of other devices and schemes for producing power, coal, and to a much lesser extent natural gas and oil, were the only reliable means. But coal was dirty. It would kill the environment.
    It had always been his goal to fight the nukes replacing them with oil—but just for the short term.
    The fact was he probably had thirty years or so left to live, and he meant to live those years in comfort, making money until the day he died.
    â€œCoal,” D. S. had said again, aware that Kast was looking at him like a biologist looking through a microscope at a bug he wasn’t familiar with. “Are you telling me that they’ve found a way to use coal to make electricity without pumping out carbon dioxide? Something cheaper than sequestration? Something usable? Something practical?”
    â€œI don’t have all the answers,” Kast had admitted. “Just the location of the facility, south of Medora, and the possibility that whatever they’re about to try has something to do with microbiology.”
    â€œHow did you come up with that?”
    â€œThe chief scientist on the project is Dr. Whitney Lipton, who until six years ago was the leading microbiologist at the CDC when she suddenly retired. At age twenty-seven.”
    The idea of injecting a coal-eating bacteria into pulverized coal in a sealed environment, producing methane that could be burned instead of the coal, and with a significant drop in CO 2 , had been bandied about by environmentalists over the past decade or so. But no one could make it work on a practical basis; the decrease in CO 2 , though significant, wasn’t worth the trouble and there was the risk of methane escaping into the atmosphere—which would cause a lot more damage to the ozone layer.
    Not nearly enough information. “What else?” D. S. demanded.
    â€œWe don’t have all of the details, except that the buzz on the Hill is that they’re trying some big experiment in thirteen months. In mid-December next year, just before Christmas. And it’s supposed to be significant. They’re talking about the ‘ gadget. ’”
    D. S. spread his hands.
    â€œThat’s what they called the first atomic bomb,” Kast said.
    And D. S. had come up with his decision practically at the speed of light. His survival was at stake. “We need to stop it. Sabotage the thing. Derail it. Push it back for a year, maybe more.”
    Kast had been adamant. “I won’t fire a gun on U.S. soil, I don’t care how much money you’re offering. And what’ll a year buy you?”
    â€œJust that,” D. S. had said. “It’ll buy me time.”
    They’d gone out to the long veranda along the south side of the main house that looked over a mountain valley, the view in the full moonlight nothing less than spectacular.
    â€œI need help, Bob,” D. S. had said.
    â€œI know.”
    â€œThere could be consequences.”
    Kast had looked at him like he was a madman. “Consequences indeed,” he had said angrily. “Try Leavenworth.”
    â€œI meant from the experiment. We can take the position that if the experiment fails, and if enough methane is produced it could trigger a catastrophic release directly into the atmosphere that could in theory wipe out all life on the planet in less than five years.”
    â€œI did my homework,” Kast had shot back. “Enrico Fermi thought it was possible that if a nuclear device were set off, it could cause a runaway ignition of all the oxygen in the atmosphere—everywhere on the earth. But it didn’t happen.”
    â€œNo,” D. S. had admitted. “But not every long shot is a bust.”
    Kast had finished his wine, and then looked at his expensive crystal glass and