Pandemic: Level 6: A Post Apocalyptic Medical Thriller Fiction Series (The Pandemic Series Book 3) by Bobby Akart

Author:Bobby Akart
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2017-07-13T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

Day Fifty-Nine

Cheyenne Mountain

Rolling blackouts had begun in major cities across the country over the last week to ten days. The primary cause of the outages was lack of personnel at all levels of the nation’s power grid. While it was true the nation’s power was largely computerized, people were still required to monitor the functionality of the system and make corrections or repairs when necessary.

As Americans died from the plague pandemic, the employees of the major power companies were included in those numbers. As the President cautioned Americans against social interaction, employees refused to come to work. In effect, the nation’s critical infrastructure was on autopilot. It wasn’t damaged. It just wasn’t supervised.

Within Cheyenne Mountain, a continuous supply of power wasn’t an issue, yet. There were fifteen buildings within the complex, all of which were freestanding and connected by hallways. Each building was designed to withstand an earthquake or nuclear blast because they floated on thirteen hundred giant springs. In the event of a quake or a nuclear attack, the buildings would bounce on the springs and never touch the solid granite walls that protected them.

Likewise, all the water, sewage, and electrical lines running between the buildings were made of flexible material, allowing them to move as the buildings move. Cheyenne Mountain was an engineering marvel designed to protect our government from the worst natural and man-made disasters envisioned by man.

The complex was designed to receive its power from the City of Colorado Springs. Because Cheyenne Mountain arose out of the government’s fear of a nuclear-generated electromagnetic pulse, the design engineers also assumed the power grid servicing Colorado Springs might fail. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the foresight to harden the grid outside of the complex, nor did they envision that the failure of the interconnected grid could be long-lasting.

With short-term power outages in mind, the engineers created five underground lakes inside the mountain. Four were large water reservoirs that were used for drinking, industrial, and cooling uses. The fifth man-made lake, which was sealed behind a closed wall, was filled with diesel fuel.

If the complex had to be sealed off due to a nuclear attack, or during a power failure, the diesel was available to operate six underground, locomotive-size generators capable of powering a small city. Every system—water, power, and HVAC—was triple-redundant and built to achieve the five nines measure of reliability, which is 99.999%. These generators, supported by massive battery banks, could power the facility indefinitely in an emergency, as that term was defined in 1966 when Cheyenne Mountain opened.

It had been eleven days since the President and the government had been evacuated into Cheyenne Mountain, but it had only been two days since the power failed in Colorado Springs. When the President demanded the military do whatever it takes to bring the grid back up, he was surprised to learn the interdependency of the entire system prevented one electric utility company from operating separately from the others.

As the power grids began to fail across the country, a

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