The Volcano That Changed The World

T
he Volcano

T
hat Changed The World

A Novel

By James W. Mercer

About the Author

James W. Mercer works in the area of hydrogeology and has published numerous technical articles. In 1985, he was awarded the Wesley W. Horner Award of the American Society of Civil Engineers for work performed at Love Canal. In 1994, he received the American Institute of Hydrology’s
Theis Award for contributions to groundwater hydrology.
The Volcano
is his second novel. He currently lives in the Washington, D.C., area.

James W. Mercer
’s debut novel,
The Scrolls The Missing Eighteen Years
, was published in 2011 and is available at Lulu.com, Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, and Amazon.co.uk.

Acknowledgments

The idea for a book on Santorini was suggested by a high school friend, Dr. Owen Brian Toon, who is Chair, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado. Having previously traveled to Santorini, the idea appealed to me, and I thank Brian for the suggestion.

I also thank my wife,
Misia, my primary reviewer and critic. She helped transform my technical writing into a more palatable prose. Without her help, understanding, and patience, none of this would be possible. Thanks also go to Ania Wieckowski, who painstakingly edited my book, taking my passive voice and making it active, correcting my dangling participles, and much more. Other reviewers who helped shape the manuscript include Doreen Larson and Joanna Wieckowski. A special thanks goes to Christian Paugh for preparing the map of Santorini and the surrounding region.

Thanks also go to the researchers,
filmmakers, and others who have studied the Thera volcano and its impacts on the world. I have attempted to weave together their findings and ideas into an interesting tapestry of fiction and facts.

Dedication

I would like to dedicate this book to the best teacher I ever had, Mr. William Tucker Weeks, who taught me Western Civilization. For me, Mr. Weeks, who died during my senior year in high school, brought Greek history to life, making it interesting and relevant.

             
I also would like to dedicate this book to the men and women geologists in the Greek Institute of Geology and Mineral Exploration (IGME); I have relied upon their fine work. Unfortunately, in 2011, the IGME was closed as part of the ongoing austerity program, a result of the poor Greek economy. Similar budgetary cuts, although not as severe, occurred in the state of Florida starting in 2009 when geology departments throughout the state were greatly reduced. The geology program at Florida State University was cut in half and combined with other groups to form a Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science.

Copyright © 2013, James W. Mercer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN 978-1-300-73770-4

Prologue

The past is the key to the present and an ice core is a door to that past.

—
Mark Malloy

The Eruption of the Thera Volcano, 1600 BCE

What appeared to be white clouds partially blocking the bright sun, slowly drifted a brief distance from the island and vanished into the surrounding dark blue sky. Not an unusual occurrence, except that the source of the white clouds was the island itself. Not an unusual occurrence, except that the water vapors forming the clouds were actually hot steam. This Mediterranean island’s angry volcano was about to let the entire world know of its growing discontent. It had the misfortune of being located in one of the earth’s geological conflict zones where different pieces of surface crust were vying for the same space. As with diverse peoples laying claim to the same real estate, violence was near.

For months,
hundreds of small to medium earthquakes had shaken the island, forcing most of the inhabitants to sail away, afraid for their lives and anxious that they had offended the gods. Many believed, and rightfully so, that they would never see their homes again. Unbeknownst to the fleeing Bronze Age populace, beneath their feet and the water under their boats was a subterranean magma chamber expanding and spreading upward as deeper molten rock thrust its way out of the bowels of the earth. And although the people could not see the mountain slowly swelling like a proud soon-to-be parent, they must have suspected a sinister event was unfolding as the mountain cracked open in several long gashes, allowing steam to gush out like a pregnant woman’s water breaking, a harbinger of the painful birth soon to occur. The volcano’s progeny would be one of the largest eruptions ever witnessed by humans.

Now t
he east side of the mountain expanded, forming a bulge that to the trained eye resembled a pregnant woman’s belly. One particularly energetic earthquake shook loose the vast protrusion, creating an enormous landslide that began to tumble into the Mediterranean Sea.

The dramatic birth began
. The falling rock created an opening; the volcano’s magma chamber depressurized, immediately triggering powerful explosions that ripped through the breach. Lava, rock, ash, volcanic gas, and steam blasted forcefully eastward and upward, sending shock waves in all directions, reverberating through the air. Upon exiting the breach, the red-hot material accelerated to over three hundred miles per hour, slowed only by gravity as rocks and larger pieces of rubble tumbled down to the sea below. Thus, the contents of Hades were expelled; perhaps the gods were offended, unleashing hell on earth.

As the eruption continued, d
isgorged smaller debris climbed skyward. Within less than fifteen minutes, a massive cloud of ash and gas rose more than twenty miles into the atmosphere. The island that just moments before had been bathed in partial sunlight was now covered in a dreadful darkness illuminated only by spectacular flashes of brightness that filled the sky as lightning strike after lightning strike splintered their way through the dark, thick cloud of ash. The deafening thunder could be heard above the exploding earth below. The scene, had anyone nearby survived to witness it, would have been terrifying.

Just as
the ash and lava birth appeared nearly over, a twin, an additional surge of magma, was rising and nearing the breach. The ash cloud from the first delivery neared its peak high in the stratosphere, while a second, even larger eruption burst forth, expelling more molten rock miles into the air, creating a large crater, or caldera, where much of the island had previously been moments earlier. The infant caldera spewed hot ash, pumice, and gas continuously as blazing debris rained down, destroying all it touched. Countless fires sparked. Everything burned. All remaining island life, plant and animal, ended.

The delivery
of the volcano’s offsprings, the two eruptions, was now complete, but the destruction continued. The caldera had moved hundreds of millions of gallons of water during its formation. The sudden displacement of the sea initiated great waves of energy that sped through the water away from the island in all directions. The resulting tsunami traveled over six hundred miles per hour. Its impact of annihilation soon would be felt throughout the Mediterranean.

Overhead,
the ash cloud spread more slowly with some ash settling, covering both land and sea. In only ten days, volcanic ash enshrouded the entire planet, turning day into night and darkening the skies for years to come, as smaller volcanic particles remained suspended in the atmosphere blocking the sun’s rays. No corner of the earth was spared from this violent geologic birth.

Chapter One

We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.

—
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Geology Department, Florida State University (FSU), April 1998

Professor Sam Bolton slammed his beefy fist down on Dean Jim Miller’s desk so hard that photographs almost toppled over onto the smooth oak surface. Behind his back, students called Bolton “the volcano” because of his hot temper. They joked that there was a very short distance between his brain and mouth. This time the reason for his uncensored tirade was Dr. Mark Malloy.

“Malloy doesn’
t deserve tenure! He doesn’t even practice ‘real’ geology, but some holistic crap he passes off as geology.” Spittle shot from Bolton’s mouth as he bellowed, slurring his heavy southern drawl.

H
is large frame shuttering, Bolton quickly added, “As one who actually appreciates the science of geology, you cannot allow this man to become an honored and permanent member of this department!”

             
Miller adjusted the photographs on his desk. His eyes lingered on the picture of his only child, a daughter whom he adored, and after the passing of his wife many years earlier, his affection had only intensified.

Although he was
dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Miller was first and foremost a geology professor, and his spacious office was in the aging Carraway Building that housed the FSU Geology Department where he had taught for nearly thirty years. There he had watched Mark’s career blossom over the last six years. After completing his Ph.D. at the early age of twenty-four, Mark returned to Tallahassee and joined the department. Miller held Mark’s approach to forensic geology in high regard; it integrated information from other sciences, like archeology, and even used historical information from sources as unusual to research scientists as the Bible.

Miller
supported Mark, but it was becoming clear that Bolton and his negative campaign were going to be a problem, and could possibly derail Mark’s promotion to associate professor, a tenured position at the university. Miller, ever the tactful politician, defended Mark while at the same time tried not to further upset Bolton, a fellow tenured geology professor who had worked in the department for the past twenty years. In addition to being a hothead, Bolton held ideas on geology that were somewhat outdated. Bolton’s career was slowly fading while Mark’s star was rising, and Bolton’s jealousy was blatantly obvious.

Miller
selected his words carefully. “Listen, Sam, while I respect your point of view, I believe you’re being a little too hard on Mark. He has secured several National Science Foundation research grants over the past several years, bringing quite a bit of money into the department, and his publication record is well above that of his peers.”

Miller
also knew the citation index for Mark’s papers was high, much higher than that for the few papers Bolton had managed to publish lately. The citation index was a way to track how often published papers were cited by other researchers, providing an indicator of the importance of the referenced paper. If no one cited your papers, it meant that your papers weren’t very significant. Although he routinely cited his own publications, Bolton’s papers were rarely cited by others, a sore point with Bolton that Miller knew to avoid. Although he chose not to mention it and further irritate Bolton, Miller thought Mark’s exceptional citation index should help him secure tenure.

             
Bolton’s plump face was now beet red, the intensity of his anger at the dean’s complacency matched only by his dislike for Mark, a hatred that had grown from his very first encounter with Mark six years ago.

***

During Mark
’s first year at FSU, Bolton had presented a lunchtime colloquium questioning the theory of continental drift. During the question-and-answer period following the lecture, Mark, a firm believer in sea floor spreading and continental drift, offered a counter argument to every one of Bolton’s points. Dr. Know-it-all, as Bolton thought of him, completed his harangue by informing the audience that he had just attended a wedding in Australia, where he visited Tasmania.

While standing,
Mark looked around the room and said, “The Tasmanian rainforest evolved about one hundred eighty million years ago on the supercontinent of Gondwana, which was covered by prehistoric forests of conifers and giant ferns. These ancient plants lived before the existence of birds or insects and reproduced, as they do today, via spores. Flowering plants that rely on birds and insects to spread their pollen and reproduce would not evolve until many millions of years later. About one hundred twenty five million years ago, Gondwana began to break apart. And why?” Mark paused. With arms raised, he dramatically parted the air in front of him, elevating his voice, “Because of continental drift. Moving apart, the newly broken-away landmasses formed the continents of Africa, South America, and Antarctica, leaving the remaining landmass of Australia. Today, the prehistoric conifers and giant ferns are found only in the fossil record on these other continents, providing evidence that these continents were once connected.”

Becoming even more i
mpassioned, Mark spoke with a kind of reverence, “Walking through Tasmania’s rainforests is a geologist’s dream come true. It’s like being transported back in time where you can wander through primitive plants found nowhere else on earth. Today’s man ferns in Tasmania are similar to the ferns the dinosaurs munched on one hundred eighty million years ago and that we now see only as fossils elsewhere. Thus, on my trip, I saw living proof of continental drift.”

             
As Mark sat back down, loud applause erupted in the auditorium. Bolton’s talk, for all practical purposes, was over. He had been embarrassed in front of the entire department by this upstart professor. He would never forget. Later Mark had even tried to apologize, saying he had been caught up in the moment and was simply passionate about the topic of continental drift and how the theory unified many global geological observations. But Bolton wanted nothing to do with the apology. His presentation had been denigrated and he felt personally maligned.

***

             
Instead of accepting the apology, Bolton preferred to get even. Now that Mark was up for tenure, he saw his chance. If he could challenge Mark while he was under such intense scrutiny from the department, maybe everyone could see what he saw—a rude, careless, unscientific thinker, and how Mark’s watered-down research was an insult to real geological study.

But Mark
was clearly one of the dean’s favorites. Bolton should have realized earlier that coming to Miller was a waste of his time.

Bolton
headed for the door, but stopped and turned, displaying the profile of his Buddha belly. With one last parting shot, he quipped, “I was hoping you’d join me, but not to worry. You just watch. I will get another dissenting vote and Malloy will have to leave. You’re wrong about him. He doesn’t deserve to remain in this department.” That said, he exited, slamming the door roughly behind him.

              Miller sat at his desk, staring at the closed door. Unfortunately, Bolton might actually get his way, thought Miller. Mark was entering his seventh year at FSU in the fall. At that time, he would either receive tenure and be promoted to associate professor or he would have a year to find new employment elsewhere, which in turn would be a challenge if he didn’t receive tenure at Florida State.

In the end,
tenured professors in the department would decide Mark’s fate. In the old days, it only took one “no” vote to terminate an assistant professor. The negative vote was called blackballing someone, referring to a time when colored balls or other items were used for voting. Blackballing had its origins in ancient Greece, where people were excluded by a vote cast with a piece of broken black pottery. One black ball was sufficient to eliminate a person.

Luck
ily for Mark, the system at FSU had been changed to avoid personal vendettas like Bolton’s. Now two black balls were required to prevent tenure. Mark’s future was dependent on Bolton, a master manipulator, who was now lobbying aggressively to find a second negative vote. Miller intended to do everything in his power to prevent Bolton from obtaining that vote.

***

Mark
entered Room 101 of the Carraway Building as nearly three hundred seats began to fill. The auditorium-style classroom with rows rising to the back of the room was the largest in the Geology Department. This was where Mark had commented on Bolton’s colloquium presentation those many years ago.

Soon
no seats would be empty. Many unlucky students, who were unable to get into this class because of its popularity, would miss Dr. Malloy’s course on geology and the environment, or as the students called it, “rocks for jocks.”

M
any members of Florida State’s nationally ranked football team took his course because, as Mark thought, his lectures were interesting and educational. It was, however, a relatively easy class compared to physics or chemistry that could be used to satisfy the university’s science requirement for non-science majors. The course, or perhaps the athletes, also attracted many female students.

Mark
, a trim and handsome man with boyish charm, soon to turn thirty, now stood behind the lectern and waited for the bell to signal the beginning of the period. He watched as Shannon Taylor took a nearby seat. Shannon, a large and muscular black man from Mark’s hometown of Panama City, Florida, was already an All-Atlantic Coast Conference running back in his sophomore year and a key to the success of FSU’s football team. A great athlete, Shannon also was very bright, an impressive combination, thought Mark.

Sitting next to Shannon was
Shadron, his fraternal twin sister, who came to see Mark several times a week for help during his office hours. Shadron was a beautiful young woman who wasn’t quite as gifted as her brother and didn’t do well academically. Whereas Shannon was known as a good guy all around, Shadron was known for her wild streak. Mark wished she’d spend more time studying and less time in his office trying to charm him into a better grade. She needed Shannon’s help just to maintain a C-minus average. The exception to her poor grades was a physical geology class taught by Bolton in which she excelled. This both puzzled and irked Mark, who took pride in his teaching abilities.

The b
ell rang, but before Mark could begin his lecture, a student waved her hand.

Pointing toward her, he asked
, “Yes, what is it?”

“My uncle
believes that man and dinosaurs lived together. Is that true?”

Mark
smiled, finding the suggestion of this coexistence humorous. “As we have discussed, the fossil record does not show that to be the case. Dinosaur fossils are found in much older rocks than the younger sediments where early man’s bones are found. But putting that aside, let me ask you this—if you saw a dinosaur roaming the earth, would you tell someone?”

“Yes, of course,” responded the student
enthusiastically.

“
It would be a pretty dramatic event that you would want to share, right?”

“Absolutely,” she
said, annoyance now in her voice for having to repeat her answer.

Again Mark smiled, this time at the desired response he was trying to evoke. He spoke slowly,
“It would be human nature to want to share such an observation. Well, there are some three hundred fifty caves in France and Spain containing thousands of animal paintings, some dating back at least forty thousand years. These paintings were early man’s way of recording what he saw, his way of telling others. The paintings included horses, bison, bear, deer, antelope, mammoths, lions, wolves, rhinoceros, fox, and even snakes.”

He looked around the room.
“But do you know what’s missing from these paintings?”

“Dinosaurs,”
yelled several students.

“Correct,” said Mark
. “If early man had lived with dinosaurs, he would have painted them. Like you, he would have wanted to tell about seeing such a dramatic animal. Early man didn’t paint them because he didn’t see them. He didn’t see them because dinosaurs became extinct millions of years before man evolved.”

Mark’s
answer generated a low buzz of private discussions among several students.

Now Mark
launched into his planned lecture. “So from our last class, who remembers where the floodwaters of the Mississippi River go?”

His practice was to
emphasize geologic topics and to make them relevant by tying them to actual or current events. Recently, a number of spring floods in the central portion of the country had been widely covered in the news. Several levees designed to hold back floodwaters had given way, inundating large portions of farmland and several small towns.

Silence
drowned out the room noise that had occurred moments earlier. Finally, Shannon filled the void in his easy way, “They discharge to the Gulf of Mexico. All floods run off to the oceans.”