Worst Case Scenario (spoilers) | T.J. Newman
This review contains spoiler for T. J. Newman’s Worst Case Scenario. You can find a spoiler-free review over on the main page.
Let’s get these spoilers out quick and easy because this book was frankly too emotional for me to dwell on! I think that can be a sign of a great book, though. The ending is powerful, I will say that much. In case you need a refresher, Worst Case Scenario opens with a pilot on a commercial aircraft having a heart attack mid-flight. The co-pilot is stuck in the lavatory, and despite efforts from the flight attendant to take over the controls, the aircraft crashes into a small, rural town in Minnesota which happens to be home to a whole group of lovely humans and a nuclear power plant. Yikes!
The largest piece of the plane pierced a wall in a building that contains a pool that cools fuel rods. If they overheat, radiation leaking into the Mississippi River will cause catastrophic impact. This is designated a Level 8 nuclear event. Chernobyl and Fukushima were Level 7, so this is very much not good. The first half of the book is a jumble of pieces to the story. We learn about what will happen if the Mississippi River is contaminated, and let’s just say it’s much more than drinking water that will be destroyed. Toxic, cancer-causing particles would be in the water, air, and everything they touch for the rest of their lives (which would sadly be quite short, I imagine). So let’s sum up that the global implications are enormous.
What happens after the plane crash?
In a little church in Waketa, the fire chief is attending Good Friday services, when the walls begin to shake. Joss Vance is part of the Nuclear Emergency Support Team and a nuclear engineer working in Waketa. When she sees the power flickering and grabs her work bag which contains, among other things, a full body hazmat suit and radio protective potassium iodide. Steve Tostig is a firefighter who goes immediately into action mode. Joss has always known that a nuclear event like this could happen–you don’t work in nuclear engineering and not realize that. It’s why she left her position in Washington D.C. to come to this small town.
A van crossing the Mississippi River is hit by a wing and thousands of gallons of jet fuel, leaving the van dangling off of the bridge over the icy river. A five-year-old child is strapped into his carseat. In the control room, the manager of the nuclear plant Ethan Rosen is trying to workout what happened from inside of their windowless room. Two reactors were online and generating power when the plane crashed. Alarms sound, and even though everyone knew this could happen, no one has experience with handling a situation of this magnitude. Tense! Stressful!
There’s a lot of tension as the clock counts down to global catastrophe. It’s complicated all of the parts, but a big piece of the story surrounds a leak in the pool where the fuel rods are housed. If the water gets too low and the rods are exposed, the building will explode and it would cause an extinction-level nuclear event. It’s all hands on deck, as the President of the United States is briefed on the situation in horror.
How does it end?
The child in the van is saved by a heroic first responder named Dani but the van fell into the water right after. They survive by using an air pocket until rescuers come to get them. They both survive. Meanwhile over at the plant, efforts focus on stopping the leak from the reactor pool, which can only be repaired from inside the pool. There’s no welder around, so Steve volunteers to be the one to go patch the pool. He’s successful, but the radioactive water eats away at his suit and he accidentally electrocutes himself. They are able to pull him out with a crane, but he learns that he has only one year to live from the exposure, potentially as short as one month (ugh!). He has a son named Matt, so it’s extra sad. I hate it here!
Meanwhile Joss finds water leaking into the building where the big piece of plane landed, risking the power that controls the cooling of the plant. This is bad. Another worst case scenario on top of the series of worst case scenarios. They get a visual of what is happening inside the building and see all of the controls are under radioactive water, so whoever goes in to override the controls will be exposed and die. Since Steve was already fatally exposed, he agrees to be the one. Joss goes with him because unbeknownst to everyone but her, it requires two people and she’s going to be the second one. Both Joss and Steve die after sacrificing themselves to save the planet. In the epilogue, they are awarded medals of valor posthumously. You should be sobbing by now!
What did I think?
This is a good book, but too sad for me! I almost think having two characters sacrificed was worse somehow in terms of reading it. Obvious credit to the heroes, Steve and Joss, but did I need to bawl my eyes out on a random Thursday afternoon? No, I indeed did not. At the same time, isn’t that what gets to us in a really good book? I can’t imagine anyone could read this book and feel nothing, so a credit to the author who has yet again put her readers through the ringer with a true disaster of epic proportions!
The big events are what kept the tension high and the stress palpable, but there were these smaller threads about the people of the town that wiggled their way through the heart-pounding action. The first responders who stay to help instead of trying to get out while they can. The people congregating at the church to provide food, shelter, and anything they can to try and help the people of the town until they can evacuate. Everyone played a role. There is no small part, as they say, and that is very true in this book.
Tense and gripping, with an emotional conclusion. Not for the wimps (like me) who don’t do sad books. I don’t regret reading it though, this one got me!
