36 Hours: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Fiction Series by Bobby Akart Read Free Book Online

it?”
    “Mom, this is the far side of the sun, which will be rotating back around and pointed at us soon,” Alex explained. She ran her fingers around the massive void encompassing the top half of the sun. “Do you see this? This is a coronal hole. A coronal hole produces solar flares.”
    “Are they always this big?”
    “I don’t think so, Mom,” replied Alex. Alex reached into her book bag and pulled out a physical science book. She turned to the section on space sciences and found the image she was looking for. She handed the book to her Mom and pointed at the textbook image. “This is a coronal hole capable of producing an X-class solar flare.”
    Madison took the book out of her daughter’s hands and studied it, thumbing the pages back and forth. The caption read that the coronal hole depicted in the textbook version created an X3 solar flare. Madison held the book next to the monitor to look at the similarities of the two images.
    “See, Mom,” started Alex. “There’s no comparison. If the picture of the sun in my book produced an X3-class flare, imagine what this coronal hole, which is twenty times larger, might produce?”
    “What’s the next larger flare after an X?”
    “There isn’t one. X is the last letter and the largest of the classes. An X2 is twice as powerful as an X1. An X5, considered huge, is five times larger than an X1, and so on. The largest on record is an X28 that occurred in 2003.”
    Madison continued to study the two images. “Alex, the current sun image is easily twenty times larger than your textbook image.”
    “Yes, twenty times an X3,” said Alex.
    “What’s twenty times three?” asked Madison, who was beginning to understand the magnitude of this.
    “It’s still sixty, Mom,” replied Alex. “That could make an X60.”
    Madison dropped the book with a loud thud on the hardwood floor.
     

Chapter 10
    26 Hours
    9:00 p.m., September 7
    Space Weather Prediction Center
    Boulder, Colorado
     
    “Our star—the Sun—is a bubbling, boiling ball of fire,” explained the tour guide to a group of middle-school-age kids from Salt Lake City. She was walking along the concourse, pointing to a series of high-definition images on the walls. She stopped and directed the group’s attention to the latest imagery from SOHO—the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. “The Sun constantly belches out great clouds of hot gas. This gas is all charged up with electricity, too. This stuff travels at astounding speeds, some of it right toward Earth!”
    The predominantly pre-teen group of children burst out in giggles after hearing the words belch and gas in the same sentence. Their teacher, who stifled a smile, admonished them to settle down.
    “What happens if it hits Earth?” asked a composed young man from the group.
    “Thank goodness Earth’s magnetic field and our atmosphere protects us from most of the blast,” she replied, pointing at a colorful image of Earth and the invisible magnetic lines of force, which exit near the south pole and re-enter near the north pole. The guide ignored a few more giggles. “Otherwise, the Sun’s weather would become our weather. Yikes, right?”
    The SWPC tour guide had a way of using voice inflection to create a sense of drama. If you didn’t know better, you’d think she was trying to scare the children. This was her last tour of the day, and it was specially arranged for the early evening hour by a congressman’s office. A nighttime tour deserved a little extra drama .
    She continued along the corridor, explaining the impact of solar winds, how the northern lights were created, and what happened when the sun got restless .
    “Watch this animated GIF of the sun during a period of restlessness,” she started. The graphic image of the July 14, 2000, Bastille Day eruption played a constant, looping animation of the full-halo X5.7 flare, which subsequently caused an S3 radiation storm.
    “Wow!” said one of the kids.
    “Here it