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15 - The Great Nebraska Sea · Space Odyssey Sci-Fi Anthology

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: The Great Nebraska Sea by Allan Danzig. This is a
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Recording by Alex Clark The Great Nebraska Sea by Alan Danzig.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: It has happened a hundred times in the long history
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: of Earth, and sooner or later will happen again. Every one,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: all the geologists, at any rate, had known about the
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Kiowa Fault for years. That was before there was anything
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: very interesting to know about it. The first survey of
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Colorado traced its course north and south in the narrow
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: valley of Kiowa Creek, about twenty miles east of Denver.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: It extended south to the Arkansas River, and that was
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: about all even the professionals were interested in knowing. There
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: was never so much as a landslide to bring the
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: fault to the attention of the general public. It was
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: still a matter of academic interests when, in the late
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: forties geologists speculated on the relationship between the Kioa fault
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: and the Concuss fault farther south in New Mexico and
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: which followed the Picos as far south As Texas. Nor
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: was there much in the papers a few years later
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: when it was suggested that the Neobrara fault, just inside
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: a roughly parallel to the eastern border of Wyoming, was
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: a northerly extension of the Kiowa. By the mid sixties,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: it was definitely established that the three faults were in
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: fact a single line of fissure in the essential rock,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: stretching almost from the Canadian border, well south of the
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: New Mexico Texas line. It is not really surprising that
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: it took so long to figure out the connection. The
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: population of the states affected was in places as low
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: as five people per square mile. The land was so
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: dry it seemed impossible that it could ever be used
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: except for sheep farming. It strikes us to day as
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: ironic that from the late fifties there was grave concern
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: about the level of water table throughout the entire area.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: The even more ironic solution to the problem began in
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: the summer of nineteen seventy three. It had been a
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: particularly hot and dry August, and the Forestry Service was
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: keeping an anxious eye out for the fires it knew
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: it could expect. Dense smoke was reported rising above a
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: virtually uninhabited area along Black Squirrel Creek, and a plane
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: was sent out for a report. The report was no
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: fire at all. The rising cloud was not smoke but dust,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: thousands of cubic feet of dry earth rising lazily on
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: the summer air rock slides. They guessed, certainly no fire.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: The Forestry Service had other worries at the moment and
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: filed the report. But after a week had gone by,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: the town of Edison, a good twenty miles away from
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: the slides, was still complaining of the dust. Springs were
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: going dry too, apparently from underground disturbances. Not even in
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: the Rockies could anyone remember a series of rock slides
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: as bad as this. Newspapers in the Mountain States gave
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: it a few inches on the front page, anything as news.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: In late August, and the geologists became interested. Seismologists were
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: reporting unusual activity in the area, tremors too severe to
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: be rock slides. Volcanic activity, specifically a dust volcano, unusual,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: they knew, but right on the Kiowa fault could be.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Labour Day crowds read the scientific conjectures with late summer lasitude.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Sunday supplements ran four color artists conceptions of the possible volcano.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Only active volcano in US demanded the headlines, and some
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: papers even left off the question mark. It may seem
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: odd that the simplest explanation was practically not mentioned. Only
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Joseph Schwarzberg, head geographer of the Department of the Interior,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: wondered if the disturbance might not be a settling of
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: the Kiowa fault. His suggestion was mentioned on page nine
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: or ten of the Monday Newspapers, page twenty seven of
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: the New York Times. The idea was not nearly so
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: exciting as a volcano, even a lava less one, and
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: you couldn't draw a very dramatic picture of it. To
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: excuse the other geologists, it must be said that the
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Kiowa Fault had never acted up before. It never sidestepped,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: never jiggled, never produced the regular shows of its little
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: sister out in California, which almost daily bounced San Francisco
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: or Los Angeles or someplace in between. The dust volcano was,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: on the face of it, a more plausible theory. Still,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: it was only a theory. It had to be proved.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: As the tremors grew bigger along with the affected area,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: as several towns, including Edison, were shaken to pieces by
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: incredible earthquakes. Whole bus and planeloads of geologists set out
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: for Colorado without even waiting for their university and government
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: department to approve budgets. They found, of course, that Schwarzburg
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: had been perfectly correct. They found themselves on the scene
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: of what was fast becoming the most violent and widespread
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: earthquake North America, probably the world has ever seen in
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: historic times. To describe it in the simplest terms, land
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: east of the fault was settling at a precipitous rate.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Rock scraped rock with a whining roar, shuddery as a
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: squeaky piece of chalk raked across a blackboard. The noise
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: was deafening. The surfaces of the land east and west
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: of the fault seemed no longer to have any relation
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  Speaker 1: to each other. To the west, tortured rock reared into
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: cliffs east, where sharp reports and muffled wheezes told of
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: continued buckling and dropping. The earth trembled downward atop the
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: new cliffs, which seemed to grow by such inches from
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: heaving rubble. Dry earth fissured and trembled, sliding acres at
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: a time to fall smoking into the bucking, heaving bottom
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: of the depression. There the devastation was even more thorough,
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: if less spectacular. Dry earth churned like mud, and rock
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: shards weighing tons bumped and rolled about like pebbles as
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: they shivered and cracked into pebbles themselves. It looks like
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: sand dancing in the child's sieve, said the normally impassive
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Schwarzburg in a nationwide broadcast from the scene of the disaster.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: No one here has ever seen anything like it, and
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: the landslip was growing north and south along the fault.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Get out while you can, Schwarzburg urged the population of
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: the affected area. When it's over, you can come back
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: and pick up the pieces. But the band of scientists
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: who had rallied to his leadership privately wondered if there
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: would be any pieces. The Arkansas at Avondale and North
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Avondale was sluggishly backing north into the deepening trough. At
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: the rate things were going, there might be a new
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: lake the entire length of El Paso and Pueblo Counties,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: and warned Schwarzburg, this might only be the beginning By
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: sixteen September, the landslip had crept down the Huerfano River
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: past cedar Wood, Avondale, North Avondale, and Boone had totally disappeared.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: The land west of the fault was holding firm, though
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Denver had recorded several small tremors everywhere east of the
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: fault to almost twenty miles away. The now familiar lurch
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: and steady fall had already sent several thousand Coloradens scurrying
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: for safety. All mountain climbing was prohibited on the eastern
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: slope because of the danger of rock slides from minor quakes.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: The geologists went home to wait. There wasn't much to
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: wait for. The news got worse and worse. The Platte
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  Speaker 1: River now was creating a vast mud puddle where the
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: town of Orchard had just been just below Masters, Colorado.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: The river leaped seventy foot cliffs to add to the
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: heaving chaos below, and the cliffs were higher every day
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: as the land beneath them groaned downward in mile square gulps.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: As the fault moved north and south, new areas quivered
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: into unwelcome life fields, and whole mountain sides moved with
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: deceptive sloth. Down down, they danced like sand in a sieve. Dry,
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  Speaker 1: they boiled into rubble. Telephone lines, railroad tracks, roads snapped
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: and simply disappeared. Virtually All East West land communication was suspended,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: and the President declared a national emergency. By twenty three September,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: the fault was active well into Wyoming on the north
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: and rapidly approaching the border of New Mexico to the south.
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  Speaker 1: Chinchera and Branson were totally evacuated, but even so the
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: overall death toll had risen above a thousand. Away to
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: the east, the situation was quiet, but even more ominous.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Tremendous fissures opened up perpendicular to the fault, and a
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: general subsidence of the land was noticeable well into Kansas
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: and Nebraska. The western borders of these states, and soon
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: of the Dakotas and Oklahoma as well, were slowly sinking.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: On the actual scene of the disaster, or scenes, it
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: is impossible to speak of anything the size in the singular.
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  Speaker 1: There was a horrifying confusion. Prairie and hill cracked open
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  Speaker 1: under intolerable strains as the land shuddered downward in gasps
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: and leaps, springs burst to the surface in hot geysers
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  Speaker 1: and explosions of steam. The downtown section of North Platte, Nebraska,
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  Speaker 1: dropped eight feet just like that on the afternoon of
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  Speaker 1: four October. We must remain calm, declared the governor of Nebraska.
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  Speaker 1: We must sit this thing out. Be assured that everything
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: possible is being done. But what could be done with
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: his state dropping straight down at a mean rate of
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: a foot a day. The fault nicked off the southeast
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: corner of Montana. It worked its way north along the
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Little Missouri. South, it past Roswell, New Mexico, and tore
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: down the Pecos towards Texas. All the upper reaches of
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: the Missouri were standing puddles by now, and the Red
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: River west of Paris, Texas had begun to run backward.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Soon the Missouri began slowly slipping away westward over the
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: slowly churning land, Abandoning its bed. The river spread uncertainly
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: across farmland and prairie, becoming a sea of mud beneath
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  Speaker 1: the sharp new cliffs, which rose in rending line ever
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: taller as the land continued to sink. Almost from Canada
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  Speaker 1: to the Mexican border. There were virtually no floods in
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: the usual sense. The water moved too slowly, spread itself
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: with no real direction or force. But the vast sheets
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: of sluggish water and jellylike mud formed death traps for
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  Speaker 1: the countless refugees now streaming east. Perhaps the North Platte
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: disaster had been more than anyone could take. One hundred
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: and ninety three people had died in that one cave in. Certainly,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: by seven October it had to be officially admitted that
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: there was an exodus of epic proportion. Nearly two million
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: people were on the move, and the US was faced
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: with a gigantic wave of refugees. Rails, roads and airlines
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  Speaker 1: were jammed with terrified hordes who had left everything behind
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: to crowd eastward. All through October, hollow eyed motorists flocked
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  Speaker 1: into Tulsa, Topeka, Omaha, Sioux Falls, and Fargo. Saint Louis
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  Speaker 1: was made distributing center for emergency squads, which flew everywhere
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  Speaker 1: with milk for babies and dog food for evacuating pets.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Gasoline trucks boomed west to meet the demand for gas,
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  Speaker 1: but once inside the Zone of Terror, as the newspapers
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: now called it, they found their route blocked by eastbound
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: cars on the wrong side of the road. Shops left
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: by their fleeing owners were looted by refugees from further west.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: An American Airlines plane was wrecked by a mob of
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: would be passengers in Bismarck, North Dakota. Federal and state
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: troops were called out, but moving two million people was
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: not to be done in an orderly way, and still
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: the land slip grew larger. The new cliffs gleamed in
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: the autumn sunshine, growing higher as the land beneath them
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  Speaker 1: continued its inexorable descent. On twenty one October, at Lubbock, Texas,
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  Speaker 1: there was a noise variously described as a hollow roar,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: a shriek, and a deep musical vibration like a church bell.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: It was simply the tortured rock of the substrata giving way.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: The second phase of the national disaster was beginning. The
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: noise traveled due east at better than eighty five miles
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  Speaker 1: an hour. In its wake, the earth to the north
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: just seemed to collapse on itself, like a punctured balloon,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: read one newspaper report. Like a cake that's failed, said
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  Speaker 1: a Texarkana housewife, who fortunately lived the block south of
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  Speaker 1: Thayir Street where the fissure raced through. There was a
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: sigh and a great cloud of dust, and Oklahoma subsided
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: at the astounding rate of about six feet per hour.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: At Biloxi on the Gulf, there had been uneasy shufflings
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: underfoot all day, not tremors exactly, said the captain of
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: a fishing boat, which was somehow to ride out the
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: coming flood. But like as if the land wanted to
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: be somewhere else, everyone in doomed Biloxi would have done
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: well to have been somewhere else. That evening, at approximately
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: eight thirty PM, the town shuddered, seemed to rise a
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: little like the edge of a hall carpet caught in
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  Speaker 1: a draft, and sank. So did the entire Mississippi and
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Alabama coast. At about the same moment, the tidal wave,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: which was to gouge the center from the US, marched
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: on the land from the north shore of Lake Pontchatrain
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: to the Apalachicola River in Florida. The Gulf coast simply disappeared. Gulfport, Biloxi,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Mobile Pensacola, Panama City, two hundred miles of shoreline vanished
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: with over two and a half million people. An hour later,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: a wall of water had swept over every town from Dothan, Alabama,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: to Bogalusa on the Louisiana Mississippi border. We must keep
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: panic from our minds, said the Governor of Alabama in
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: a radio message delivered from a hastily arranged all station
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: hook up. We of the gallant Southland have faced and
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: withstood invasion before then, as ominous creakings and groanings of
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: the earth announced the approach of the tidal wave. He
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: flew out of Montgomery half an hour before the town
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: disappeared forever. One head of the wave plunged north, eventually
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: to spend itself in the hills south of Birmingham. The
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: main sweep followed the lowest land, reaching west. It swallowed
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Vicksburg and nicked the corner of Louisiana. The whole of
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: East Carroll Parish was scoured from the map. The Mississippi
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: River now ended at about Eudora, Arkansas, and minute by minute,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: the advancing flood bid away miles of river bed, swelling north.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Sheko Jenny Lake Village, Arkansas City, Snow Lake Elaine, Helena,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: and Memphis felt the tremors. The tormented city shuddered through
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: the night. The earth continued its descent, eventually tipping two
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: and a half degrees down to the west. The Memphis
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: tilt is to day one of the unique and charming
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: characteristics of the gracious old town. But during the night
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: of panic, Memphis residents were sure they were doomed. South
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: and west, the waters carved deeply into Arkansas and Oklahoma.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: By morning, it was plain that all of Arkansas was
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: going under. Waves advanced on Little Rock at almost a
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: hundred miles an hour. New crests forming overtopping the wave's
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: leading edge, as towns, hills, and the thirst of the
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: soil temporarily broke the furious charge. Washington announced the official
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: hope that the Ozarks would stop the wild gallop of
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: the unleashed Gulf. For in northwest Arkansas, the land rose
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: to over two thousand feet, but nothing could save Oklahoma.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: By noon, the water reached clutching fingers around Mount Scott
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: and Elk Mountain, deluging Hobart and almost all of Greer County.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Despite hopeful announcements that the wave was slowing, had virtually
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: stopped after inundating Oklahoma City was being swallowed up in
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: the desert near Amarillo. The wall of water continued its advance,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: for the land was still sinking and the floods were
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: constantly replenished from the gulf. Schwarzburg and his geologists advised
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: the utmost haste in evacuating the entire area between Colorado
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: and Missouri, from Texas to North Dakota. Lubbock, Texas went
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: under on a curling reflex. The tidal wave blotted out
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: sweet water and Big Spring. The Texas Panhandle disappeared in
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: one great swirl. Whirlpools opened, A great welter of smashed
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: wood and human debris was sucked under, vomited up, and
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: pounded to pieces. Gulf water crashed on the cliffs of
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: New Mexico and fell back on itself in foam. Would
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: be rescuers in the cliffs along what had been the
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: west bank of the Peacos River afterwards recalled the hiss
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: and scream like tearing silk as the water broke furiously
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: on the newly exposed rock. It was the most terrible
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: sound they had ever heard. We couldn't hear any shouts,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: of course, not that far away and with all the noise,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: said Dan Weaver, mayor of Carlsbad. But we knew there
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: were people down there. When the water hit the cliffs,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: it was like a collision between two solid bodies. We
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: couldn't see for over an hour because of the spray
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: salt spray. The ocean had come to New Mexico. The
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: cliffs proved to be the only effective barrier against the
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: westward march of the water, which turned north, gouging out
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: lumps of rock and tumbling down blocks of earth onto
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: its own back. In places, scoops of granite came out
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: like ice cream. The present fishing town of Rockport, Colorado,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: is built on a harbour created in such a way.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: The water had found its farthest westering, but still it
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: poured north along the line of the original fault. Irresistible
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: fingers closed on Sterling, Colorado, on Sydney, Nebraska, on Hot Spring,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: South Dakota. The entire tier of states settled from south
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: to north down to its eventual place of stability, one
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: thousand feet below the level of the new Sea. Memphis
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: was by now a seaport. The Ozarks Islands in a
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: mad sea formed precarious havens for half drowned humanity. Waves
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: bid off a corner of Missouri, flung themselves on Wichita. Topeka, Lawrence,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: and Belleville were the last Kansas towns to disappear. The
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: governor of Kansas went down with his state. Daniel Byrne
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: of Lincoln, Nebraska, was washed up half drowned in a
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: cove of the Wyoming Cliffs, having been sucked from one
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: end of vanished Nebraska to the other. Similar hair breadth
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: escapes were recounted on radio and television. Virtually the only
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: people saved out of the entire population of Pierre, South Dakota,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: were the six members of the Creath family. Plucky Timothy
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Creath carried and dragged his aged parents to the loft
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: of their barn on the outskirts of town. His brother
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: Jeffrey brought along the younger children and what provisions they
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: could find, mostly a ham and about half a ton
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: of vanilla cookies, he explained to his eventual rescuers. The barn,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: luckily collapsing in the vibrations as the waves bore down
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: on them, became an arc in which they rode out
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: the day disaster we must have played cards for four
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: days straight, recalled genial Missus Creath when she afterwards appeared
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: on a popular television spectacular, her rural good humor undamaged
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: by an ordeal. Few women can ever have been called
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: on to face, she added. We sure wondered why flushes
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: never came out right gimminantly. We left the king of
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: hearts behind in the rush. But such light heartedness and
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: such happy endings were by no means typical. The world
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: could only watch aghast as the water raced north under
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: the shadow of the cliffs, which occasionally crumbled roaring into
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: the roaring waves. Day by day, the relentless rush swallowed
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: what had been dusty farmland, cities and towns. Some people
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: were saved by the helicopters, which flew mercy missions just
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: ahead of the advancing waters. Some found safety in the
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: peaks of western Nebraska and the Dakotas. But when the
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: waters came to rest along what is roughly the present
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: shore line of our inland Sea, it was estimated that
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: over fourteen million people had lost their lives. No one
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: could even estimate the damaged property. Almost the entirety of
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: eight states and portions of twelve others had simply vanished
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: from the heart of the North American continent forever. It
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: was in such a cataclysmic birth that the now peaceful
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Nebraska Sea came to America to day, nearly one hundred
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: years after the unprecedented and happily unrepeated disaster, it is
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: hard to remember the terror and despair of those weeks
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: in October and November nineteen seventy three. It is inconceivable
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: to think of the United States without its beautiful and
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: economically essential curve of interior ocean, two thirds as long
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: as the Mediterranean. It graduates from the warm waters of
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: the Gulf of Mexico through the equally blue waves of
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: the Mississippi Bight, becoming cooler and greener north and west
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: of the pleasant fishing ailes of the Ozark Archipelago, finally
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: shading into the green chop of the Gulf of Dakota.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: What would the United States have become without the five thousand,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: six hundred mile coastline of our inland sea. It's only
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: within the last twenty years that any but the topmost
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: layer of water has cleared sufficiently to permit a really
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: extensive fishing industry. Mud still held in suspension by the
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: restless waves will not fully precipitate even in our lifetimes.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Even so, the commercial fisheries of Missouri and Wyoming contribute
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: no small part to the nation's economy. Who can imagine
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: what the Middle West must have been like before the
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: amelioration of climate brought about the proximity of a warm sea.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: The now temperate state of Minnesota, to say nothing of
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: the submerged Dakotas, must have been Siberian. From contemporary accounts, Missouri,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: our second California, was unbelievably muggy, almost uninhabitable during the
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: summer months. Our climate today, from Ohio and North Carolina
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: to the rich fields of New Mexico and the orchards
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: of Montana, is directly ameliorated by the marine heart of
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: the continent. Who today could imagine the United States without
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: the majestic sea cliffs in stately parade from New Mexico
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: to Montana, the beaches of Wyoming, the American Riviera where
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: fruit trees grow almost to the water's edge, Or incredible Colorado,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: where the morning skier is the afternoon bather thanks to
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: the mono rail connecting the highest peaks with the glistening
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: white beaches. Of course, there have been losses to balance
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: slightly these strong gains. The Mississippi was before nineteen seventy
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: three one of the great rivers of the world. Taken
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: together with its main tributary, the Missouri, it vied favorably
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: with such giant systems as the Amazon and the Ganges. Now,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: ending as it does at Memphis, and drawing its water
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: chiefly from the Appalachian Mountains, it is only a slight
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: remnant of what it was. And though the Nebraska Sea
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: today carries many times the tonnage of ship in its
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: ceaseless traffic, we have lost the old romance of river shipping.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: We may only guess what it was like when we
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: look upon the Ohio and the truncated Mississippi, and transcontinental
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: shipping is somewhat more difficult. With trucks and the freight
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: railroads obliged to take the sea ferries across the Nebraska Sea,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: we shall never know what the United States was like,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: with its numerous coast to coast highways busy with trucks
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: and private cars. Still, the ferry ride is certainly a
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: welcome break after days of driving, and for those who
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: wish a glimpse of what it must have been like.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: There is always the Cross Canada through Way and the
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: magnificent US Highway seventy three, looping north through Minnesota and
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: passing through the giant Port of Alexis, North Dakota, shipping
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: center for the Wheat of Manitoba, and crossroad of a nation.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: The political situation has long been a thorny problem. Only
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: tattered remnants of the eight submerged states remained after the flood.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: One of them wanted to surrender its autonomy. The tiny
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: fringe of Kansas seemed for a time ready to merge
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: with contiguous Missouri, but following the lead of the Arkansas
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Forever faction, the remaining population decided to retain political integrity.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: This has resulted in the continuing anomaly of the seven
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: fringe states represented in Congress by the usual two senators each,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: though the largest of them is barely the size of Connecticut,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: and all are economically indistinguishable from their neighboring states. Fortunately,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: it was decided some years ago that Oklahoma, only one
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: of the eight to have completely disappeared, could not in
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: any sense be considered to have a continuing political existence.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: So though there are still families who proudly call themselves Oklahomas,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: and the Oklahoma Oil Company continues to pump oil from
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: its submerged real estate. The state has in fact disappeared
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: from the American political scene. But this is by now
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: more than a petty annoyance to raise a smile when
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: the talk gets around to the question of states rights.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Not even the tremendous price the country paid for its
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: new sea, fourteen million dead, untold property destroyed, really offsets
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: the asset we enjoy today. The heart of the continent,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: now open to the shipping of the world, was once
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: dry and landlocked, cut off from the bustle of trade
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: and the ferment of world culture. It would indeed seem
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: odd to an American of the fifties or sixties of
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: the last century to imagine sailors from the merchant fleets
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: of every nation walking the streets of Denver fresh Ashore
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: at Newport, only fifteen miles away. Or to imagine Lincoln, Fargo,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: Kansas City, and Dallas as world ports and great manufacturing centers.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: Utterly beyond their ken would be Roswell, New Mexico, Bent
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: and Wyoming, Westport, Missouri, and the other new ports of
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: over a million inhabitants each which have developed on the
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: new harbors of the inland Sea. Unimaginable two would have
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: been the general growth of population in the states surrounding
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: the new Sea, as the water tables rose and manufacturing
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: and trade moved in to take advantage of the just
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: created axis of world communication. A population explosion was touched
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: off of which we are only now seeing the diminution.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: This new westering is to be ranked with the first
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: surge of pioneers, which created the American West. But what
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: a difference. Vacation Paradise's bloom. A new fishing industry thrives.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Her water road is America's main artery of trade and
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: fleets of all the world sail where once the Prairie
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: schooner made its laborious and dusty way west end of
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: the Great Nebraska Sea. By Alan Danzig, recording by Alex Clark, Plattsburgh,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: New York.