Don’t Forget to Wash Your Hands

“It looks like it’s shaping up to be a bad flu season, but only time will tell.”

– Dr. Thomas Frieden, National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

In The Hammer of God, the inciting incident of the book is a flu vaccine shortage which is caused by nefarious forces overseas, resulting in half the number of vaccinations necessary to guard the public.

That is step one of a two-step biological attack; take away the first line of defense – which would be the flu vaccine. Then the second part of the attack was to unleash a really nasty airborne bug on the public. So the bad guys weren’t contaminating the flu vaccine to be their vehicle to do harm. They contaminated the supply to take it off the market.

This created a situation, in my book, where during the onset of the attack, people had symptoms that mimicked the flu – and no one suspects anything is awry. The airborne bug’s dormant stage lasts five to six days, taking the world by surprise when the infected take an extreme turn for the worse and people start to die.

It seems like we should be very cognizant of foreign suppliers producing this and other vaccines because their production and distribution lines might be interrupted more easily.

Of course, this being a book about my hero, he thwarts the attack. The mastermind is arrested and becomes a bargaining chip in the escalated terror plot to follow. But the groundwork is there in the story; this is a weak pressure point in the threat matrix aimed at this country.

I am confident in the safeguards that had somebody tried to manipulate or add something nasty to the flu vaccine, it would set off alarm bells and triggers. The far greater insidious plot device is simply to render us unprotected and willing to accept high numbers of infections as the new normal – when in fact it’s anything but. It is the start of an attack.

Remember: wash your hand often.

Blogscript

ABC has decided to cancel my absolute, all-time favorite show: The Last Resort.

When you read The God Particle you’ll see one of my main characters is the USS Nebraska – a trillion dollar missile boat (luckily on our side). That’s why I am so distraught over the cancelling of this series, whose main star is the USS Colorado, the sister ship of the Nebraska.

Besides I looove the dialogue…to the point where I say “Damn, I wish I would have written that!”

Please take a moment and email ABC. Tell them to keep the Last Resort afloat.

Pirates: The Sequel- Send in the Marines!

I’m pregnant.

I’m in the last trimester of the birthing of The God Particle. And even though this is not a biological condition, I still can’t see my toes.

I suppose that’s better addressed by diet…

The principle opening action and much of the theme of one of the plots of the book concerns Somali pirates who have gone high tech. (It’s only fiction… ‘til it happens.) A large part of the storyline is focused on defining and then effectively combating this new piracy.

Pirates were the biggest problem the world faced two hundred years ago. Thomas Jefferson, in his 1801 State of the Union speech, assured America that everything was fine, that we were at peace everywhere in the world — save the Barbary Coast.

He was referring to the fact that the Barbary Coast pirates, who had, up until 1801, been happy to receive a stipend of $25,000 a year to NOT board and plunder American flagged ships, had upped the ante. They had gone high tech, too — better boats, faster boats, and they felt that, because they could flex more of a threat, that the price for protection against that threat should also go up.

Jefferson was having none of it. So, he calmly told the American people in the State of the Union address that the unrealistic demands of the pirates had left him but one answer. He create the Marines, he put them on boats, and said, “Go kill those guys.”

…to the shores of Tripoli

It’s embedded in the Marine Corp hymn, but it’s also testimony to the fact that one of the greatest fighting forces on earth, that played a huge role in defeating the Empire of Japan, and has been a top echelon military fighting force, had its birth in the eradication of pirates.

I could use a few Marines to help me find the a-hole who’s figured out how to pirate my book, and I would imagine, the work of even bigger authors. ‘

Semper Fi!

And the Winner is…

CONGRATULATIONS

Having never won anything in my life, it’s interesting to be on this side. I
am so glad for Rachel Robertson and I hope the luck continues… So Rachel if I
were you I’d go buy a lottery ticket!

Pearl Harbor – Coming to a Backyard Near You

The name of this blog is “It’s Only Fiction ‘Til it Happens.” Elsewhere, in other posts, I’ve explained how that (U.S. Patent Office Registered) line, my tagline, came to be. Today’s another example. The headline reads, “Leon Panetta Warns of Cyber Pearl Harbor – ‘The Capability to Paralyze This Country is There Now’” Well, Mr. Panetta, it was actually there awhile ago, when I wrote The Eighth Day. That’s why a top government official said, “Frighteningly realistic. Homeland security had better read this one!”

I’m patting myself, and other authors who delve into the threat matrix as a plot point, on our collective backs. This headline proclaiming that the Secretary of Defense is finally catching on is actually “news speak” for, “We’re about to get hit, and hit really hard, in a way that will affect all of us.” The headline is misleading, in that Pearl Harbor is not the proper analogy, because Pearl Harbor was essentially a military attack on our navy. What the next cyber attack will do is take out everybody’s internet. Take out everybody’s bankbook. Take out everybody’s electric power. Take out everybody’s ability to function in our newly defined digital world. And that is a million times bigger than Pearl Harbor.