Three days to Christmas.
           Choke out, starter engaged, blades cough, catch, and spin. The small plane taxies into
position, propellers thwacking. Cleared for take off, the engine roars, wings wobble. Flat-green
plane shrinks in the bullet-grey sky, droning south.
           Colonel Dime watched his pilot and the gauges, watched the military base fall away, a
small river twisting, the Yakima. He peered at his map, followed ridgelines and cliffs and then a
brown band of big river, the Columbia....    continue reading

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011 was the largest nuclear incident since the Chernobyl disaster in April 1986. It occurred when the magnitude 9.0 Great East Japan earthquake on March 11, 2011, triggered a tsunami that hit the plant, resulting in a meltdown of three of the plant's six nuclear reactors and severe damage to a fourth. Evacuation due to radiation concerns forced at least 380,000 people.... continue reading