Worst Case Scenario

On Good Friday in Waketa, Minnesota, Reverand Michaels preaches to his congregation in United Grace Church, telling them about the importance of their community, which he considers to be one big family. In the back of the church, Steve Tostig looks out at the cemetery, where his wife, Claire Jean Tostig, is buried. He has no plans to come to church on Easter Sunday, as he prefers a less crowded event. He generally tries not to socialize, unable to endure questions about whether he and his son, Matt, are coping with Claire’s death.

Reverand Michaels’s sermon is interrupted by a loud rumbling sound, and he sees a commercial airplane flying low overhead. The sight is followed by a loud boom as the entire church shakes. Steve rushes out to his truck while everyone else “cower[s] in the fear and confusion of the moment” (16). A few miles away, Jocelyn “Joss” Vance hears the same sound and jumps up from her table as the lights flicker and the power goes out.

In Waketa, pieces of the plane fall throughout the town—including a piece of the fuselage, which crashes into Main Street, while a beverage cart smashes into the water tower. When shrapnel falls in the forest, deer run onto the highway and cause a massive pileup and a complete blockage of I-35, the primary route out of Waketa.

Steve stops driving when he sees a plume of smoke, wondering if it is coming from Carvey Valley Elementary, where his son is. However, he convinces himself that it is further away and continues to the Clover Hill nuclear power plant, where he works as the fire chief.

At her home, Joss receives an alert that there has been a “possible level 7” incident at Clover Hill (24). She grabs her emergency bag, which is already equipped with a hazmat suit and protective gear, and runs to her car.

The Hays family—Paul; his wife, Valerie; and their two children, Caity and Connor—are driving along the road in their minivan when they hear a distant crash. Up ahead, just as they cross onto a bridge, the massive wing of the plane falls from the sky. Paul tries to stop, but his speed carries them out onto the bridge as the wing comes crashing down. The van meets it head-on, and Valerie, Paul, and Caity are instantly killed. What is left of the van is pushed out over the Mississippi River by the wing, which pins the vehicle to the bridge. Ignited by a spark, the wing explodes, and its fuel reserves begin to burn. In the backseat, five-year-old Connor, the only survivor, is now suspended over the river.

At the power plant, plant manager Ethan Rosen stands in the dark control room, trying to figure out his next move. When the lights come back on, he automatically tells the employees to remain calm and begin checking the system. As his employee Vikram gives him the readouts from Reactor Two, he discreetly texts his wife their code for a nuclear emergency: “Nice day for a drive east” (34).

Ethan contacts Steve, who is driving out onto the plant grounds with his other firemen to assess the damage. Steve reports that there is plane wreckage everywhere and that the power lines are severed. He also sees water leaking from Reactor Two’s reserve of nuclear waste. Ethan feels fear at these words and realizes that the damage “to the spent fuel [i]sn’t just bad—it [i]s potentially catastrophic” (39).

US President Michael Dawson goes out onto the White House lawn for the annual Easter egg roll. As he arm wrestles with a man dressed as a bunny and takes photos with the children, he realizes that he is actually enjoying this brief escape from the stress of the presidency. However, he is interrupted by his chief of staff, Tony Yoshida, who informs him that a plane has crashed into a nuclear plant.

Dawson, Tony, and dozens of secret service agents rush into the White House and head down to the Deep Underground Command Center—a location designed to allow the president to run the country remotely for several months in the event of a disaster. Dozens of screens show news channels, the stock markets, air traffic, and more. Several screens show important members of his cabinet, who come and go remotely.

Tony and the other members of the cabinet brief him on the situation. They know only that a plane has struck the plant, which has lost power. After the power failure, the plant was cut off from the power grid and is now running on diesel reserve engines and battery power.

Ethan joins the call and informs everyone that although the plant is operational, it will eventually run out of fuel, and the batteries will fail. He explains that the three reactors are up and running and should be able to continue. However, the plane hit the power line, and large chunks of debris scattered across the plant, causing severe damage to the waste storage facilities. One form of storage—dry cask—holds the oldest fuel rods. (Once these spent fuel rods are put into the waste area, they continue to gain radioactivity, and the oldest are therefore the most dangerous.) At least one dry cask storage unit has been damaged, and at least one employee has been exposed to radiation. The other form of storage is the “spent fuel pool” (57), which Ethan describes as a giant swimming pool filled with racks of used rods and then filled with water to make the rods inert. The storage pool is currently leaking, and if the water level gets too low, a massive fire will start spewing radiation into the air and will be impossible to control.

Dawson accuses Ethan of being an “alarmist” (58), but Ethan explains that the pool contains all the plant’s accumulated nuclear waste since 1973; if exposed, it would create a fire so large that there would be no conceivable way of putting it out. Additionally, the radioactive particles would make their way into the environment, contaminating everything indefinitely. Ethan informs Dawson that Joss Vance will be in contact with more information. She is the regional representative for the Nuclear Emergency Support Team.

When Ethan finishes, Dawson turns to each of his cabinet members to gauge the implications of this disaster. He learns that tens of millions of people would have no fresh water because of the Mississippi River nearby. Additionally, agriculture would be devastated, as 92% of the country’s agricultural exports come from the land around the Mississippi. Millions of people would be forced out of the region and into the already overpopulated coastal cities, and the country would be looking at complete financial collapse. The head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission explains that this could be a level eight event, which would be considered “extinction-level.”