My generation lived in a fantasy world. We had all suffered through one day, The DAY, and had worked very hard to see that there would never be another day like it. September 11, 2001. We went on our merry way after the DAY, making war, finding peace, tearing down and rebuilding. All the while secure in the knowledge that there could never, would never be another DAY. There just couldn’t be. It would be too unbearable.

March 4, 2009

The elections were over. We still had troops fighting the War on Terror. The economy was up, or down, or normal depending on who you listened to.

9:42 a.m., CST.

Our world ended with a bang, not a whimper.

From Indianapolis to Little Rock and beyond, the ground began to shake. Then roll, then open and close. The roar was unlike anything ever heard and it went on for what seemed hours but was two minutes and 17 seconds.

Earthquake Details

The shock wave raced out from the epicenter, reacting with each type of rock or soil it found. The Missippi River leapt sideways, to the west north of the epicenter and to the east on the southern side of the shock. All along the river, every community built on the bluffs died. Entire towns built on the sediment layed down by the river over a million years shook, and swayed and sank as if they had been built on quicksand. Tens of thousands died during the shock itself and in the moments after.

The worst was yet to come.

Every bridge crosiing the Mississippi, the Missouri and the Ohio within a four hundred mile radius went down. Every pipline, fiber cable, electric line, everything solid that crossed the rivers whether buried or not snapped. The power grid for the entire United States west of the Rockies other than Texas failed. Buildings were damaged as far away as Boston and Charleston, South Carolina. The quake was felt in Montreal and Houston.