Reclusive researcher Seth Peterson has located a doomsday fault in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet—a mile-thick ice cube as big as Mexico. Millions of people could perish if it slides off the continent and floods coastal cities. This knowledge—and his heroics at a fateful traffic accident—puts Seth under the scrutiny of media, law enforcement, and a band of environmental extremists desperate to fulfill an overdue prophecy. Their cataclysmic objective seems believable to Seth—as does their plan to exterminate him, the only living witness to their scheme.
During the course of his research at The National Ice Center in Washington, D.C., Seth Peterson is shocked to realize that a huge chunk of Antarctica—what Seth dubs the doomsday fault—is poised to break off at any time. If that happens, millions of people earth-wide will perish.
The world must know. In fact, Seth's boss at The Center, Bern Harris, is begging for the information. But Seth can't tell him—or anyone else, for that matter. Clinically shy, running from a past replete with humiliating failures, including deserting his bride-to-be at the altar, he’s too frightened of people to be able to tell the public about his discovery. Especially after a fellow researcher makes the attempt on Seth's behalf, and dies horribly as a result.
Seth's severe social phobia makes him only want to hide in anonymity, but when he saves an accident victim from certain death, he is put under intense scrutiny by media, law enforcement … and a band of environmental terrorists desperate to make Edgar Cayce's overdue prophecy come true. The group breaks into his apartment and steals his research. Their objective—to use his data to plant explosives along the fault line and cleanse Mother Earth of pesky, polluting mankind—seems terrifyingly believable to Seth. What is harder to swallow is that they want to exterminate him, the only living witness to their scheme, before they implement their plan.
In fear for his life, and with nowhere else to go, Seth runs home to the icy shores of a Minnesota lake until he can decide what to do. Unfortunately, the bad guys follow him. There he must confront his fears, his failed love affair, and the murderous wackos in order to prevent more killing—and the potential extinction of mankind.
We all want to know how the world will end. The fact-based, meticulously researched Big Ice paints an all-too-plausible scenario.
Excerpt
"In a polar region there is a continual deposition of ice . . . Earth's rotation . . . produces centrifugal momentum . . . this will displace the polar regions toward the equator." --Albert Einstein, 1953
"There will be upheavals in the Arctic and Antarctic . . . There will be shifting then of the poles . . . What is the coastline now of many a land will be the bed of the ocean . . ." --Edgar Cayce, The Sleeping Prophet, 1934
"A hunk of ice a mile-and-a-half-thick and as big as Mexico could slide off the Antarctic continent and end the world as we know it . . . How do you relocate four billion people? How do you feed them with every port in the world destroyed? Famine, chaos, and war would follow. We’re talking about the Apocalypse here." --Seth Peterson, 2002
Professional Reviews
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"Christopher Bonn Jonnes rocks" --Midwest Book Reviews
Five-star electrifying suspense. Unanticipated twists and high-energy excitement. Totally suspenseful. A splendid work. A Very Highly Recommended Read. --Alan Cambeira, author of AZUCAR!
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