Read Curtain Fall: Second Edition, Disaster, Preparedness, Survival, Awakening (The Gatekeeper Book 1) for Free Online Page A

about natural and man-made disasters. He knew all types of disasters could be devastating in their own right, but none had ever resulted in such devastating results as to cripple the entire country.
    As far as John was concerned, the big disaster events like Coronal Mass Ejections and celestial impacts, were ranked up there with Hollywood science fiction films about alien invasions. Therefore, he quit worrying about the details of the potentially violent, earth ending disasters, and began to concentrate on preparing for the more believable disasters, the ones that offered some hope of survival for humanity in a mildly post-apocalyptic environment.
    He realized that a large-scale earthquake could cripple the country, but he found no evidence that such a quake ever occurred. He didn’t rule it out, but he did think it was unlikely, given the large expanse of the country. As long as some part of America remained unaffected, there would always be hope for recovery, and a return to law and order, or so he liked to believe. But that was before he discovered the significance of super volcanoes, and learned that one sat about a thousand miles away.
    As he began jogging up the stairs, John remembered a few facts about the Yellowstone Caldera that never seemed to concern him before. The Caldera erupted, as a super volcano, at least three times during the past two-million years. The most recent eruption was something likesix-hundred-thousand years ago, and it had been a significant geologic event. There have been other significant events relating to the Yellowstone “hot-spot,” as it was called. One such event occurred as recently as thirteen-thousand years ago, but that events wasn’t of the “super” category.
    John let the number, thirteen-thousand, roll around in his mind. Most people would agree that that was a long time ago, but John knew, relative to the earth’s life, that thirteen-thousand years really wasn’t very long. In fact, that amount of time was little more than a blink of an eye for dear Mother Nature.
    He also remembered reading that the Yellowstone Caldera was something like forty-thousand years overdue for its subsequent eruption. John loved how scientists could come up with such troubling information as easily as, “Have a nice day.” But he wondered why all of it bothered him so much. It didn’t bother him yesterday, but it sure was now.
    He considered the reporter’s words about there being an increase in seismic activity, and it was that element of the Caldera that piqued John’s interest in Yellowstone many years ago. What intrigued him most was that a huge magma dome under the Caldera was steadily lifting the surface of the valley floor, inch by inch. Until recently, the increase in elevation was considered normal, but now that the raise was happening at an accelerated rate, about three inches a year, or three times faster than normal, it was changing the surrounding ecosystems.
    John slowed to a walk and considered the implications of a Caldera eruption more carefully. He knew the change in elevation was dramatic, that it was depriving the nearby woodlands of essential ground water, essentially killing the surrounding forest, but that didn’t mean an eruption was eminent. He also remembered that the Caldera was something like thirty to forty miles in size. It would take a tremendous amount of pressure to make that much surface area lift an inch, let alone blow sky-high.
    The Yellowstone Caldera is a super-volcano of super volcanos, and John considered adding it to his list of preparedness considerations, buthe figured he lived far enough away to survive it. But then he read that the last eruption actually covered half the country in ash. From that point forward, John decided to include volcanic eruptions, and surviving volcanic ash, to his prepper considerations.
    He also decided to remain attentive to all news associated with Yellowstone, but as time went by, and life got busy, he forgot all