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A review by jhscolloquium
Worst Case Scenario by T.J. Newman
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Author T.J. Newman had the idea for Worst Case Scenario while researching her first novel, Falling, by querying pilots not just about all aspects of their job, but also their fears. They often told her they worried about planes getting caught in power lines, making erroneous decisions, freezing and not being able to make decisions and, of course, not returning home to their families. But Newman says one pilot’s answer “stopped me in my tracks.” She wasn’t sure if he was serious and initially scoffed when he told her, “My greatest fear is a commercial airliner crashing into a nuclear power plant.” Newman believed it an impossibility due to structural standards and security measures in place “in a post-9/11 world.” She naively thought “all nuclear power plants were safe from attack.” But the pilot disavowed her of that idea, saying, “That’s exactly what they want you to think.”
Newman circled back to the idea for her third nove, Worst Case Scenario. At the outset, she knew virtually nothing about nuclear power plants but, luckily, discovered that because of industry transparency, the needed information is readily available. Newman describes her books as “plot focused” and once she completed her research, the genesis of Worst Case Scenario was a complete outline totaling around sixty pages laying out the action.
Worst Case Scenario is a departure for Newan in that the focus of the book is not on how her protagonists will rescue the airliner’s passengers and crew. But the story does open with a crisis on board. As the plane is flying over Minnesota, the pilot suffers a fatal widowmaker heart attack and the 757 goes into free fall. At United Grace Church in the little town of Waketa, fifty-five miles south of Minneapolis, widower Steve Tostig, the Clover Hill nuclear energy plant's on-site Fire Chief, is attending the mid-day Good Friday service. The walls and floor begin to rattle just as something flies over the church, and a loud boom shakes the entire structure. Steve immediately springs into action as Dr. Joss Vance notices the lights in her kitchen flickering and instantly knows what is about to happen. The power goes out. As she grabs her work go-bag containing a satellite phone, full-body hazmat suit, masks, gloves, rubber boots, and a bottle of pills, she washes down the radioprotective potassium iodide with the coffee she had been drinking at her kitchen table and races out the door, en route to Clover Hill. The alert on her phone confirms what she already knows. There has been an incident at the plant. Potentially, a Level 7 incident. “When you work in nuclear power, you never fully forget what it is you do. How dangerous it is, how horrific the potential could be. You always, always respect the potential.” So Joss has “always known a day like this was not a matter of if but when.” In fact, it was that knowledge that brought her home to Waketa and her job as the regional representative of the Nuclear Emergency Support Team. After earning a PhD in nuclear engineering at MIT, Joss worked on policy at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington, D.C. where she grew tired of “being dismissed as an alarmist.”
The large plane breaks apart, strewing debris across a vast area. Just as a van is crossing the bridge over the Mississippi River, carrying a family to an Easter celebration, one of the wings -- ten times larger than the van and carrying hundreds of thousands of gallons of jet fuel -- lands directly in the van’s path. The rear of the van is left dangling thirty feet above the icy water as a massive fire erupts. Five-year-old Connor, who was riding in the van his father was driving, is conscious and still strapped into his car seat.
Once again, Newmans employs her straight-forward, unembellished storytelling style to describe the confusion and chaos that ensues after the crash. In the control room, Plant Manager Ethan Rosen and his staff don’t immediately know what has happened – explosion, earthquake, terrorist attack, equipment failure? – because they work in a windowless room in the building that houses one of three reactors. Clover Hill is in the process of being decommissioned, but it takes years. So only one reactor is offline. The other two were online and generating power when the plane crashed. With alarms sounding, staff frantically begin assessing the status of the plant and soon learn that pieces of the aircraft are scattered across the Clover Hill campus. Gradually, they realize what they are dealing with . . . and must figure out how to address the damage the plant has sustained, a situation no one has ever faced before. They discover that the power line to the plant has been severed so the plant is running on backup diesel generators, and there is extensive structural damage throughout, including to the pool where spent fuel rods are warehoused. It is leaking. If the water level becomes low enough and the rods are exposed, the building in which they are stored will explode. The plant began operating in 1973, so the amount of nuclear waste stored there would feed a fire of a “magnitude mankind has yet to conceive of a way to put out. It would burn forever.” In the other words, it could be the world’s first Level 8, “extinction-level event.”
Newman notes that “it’s very easy to get your characters into trouble. It’s a lot harder to get them out of trouble.” And the trouble her characters face in Worst Case Scenario could be exponentially more far-reaching than the crises depicted in her first two books. She “reverse engineers” her stories. So once she decided that the plane would crash into the plant, she had to figure out the challenges her characters would face and how they would handle them. She set the tale in the fictional small town, rather than a larger metropolitan area, to illustrate “a real nightmare worst case scenario for the country.” Other regions, like California (where only the Diablo Canyon plant remains operational, and three others have been fully decommissioned), have more resources and safeguards available. And by placing Clover Hill at the top of the Mississippi River, the catastrophe could destroy “the heart of the country,” rendering uninhabitable a large swath of land bisecting the United States.
Once again, Newman has created a cast of empathetic characters navigating a crisis that demands they be their best selves. Ethan and Steve, in leadership roles, gather input and make hard decisions, while Joss serves as the liaison to America’s youngest-ever President, who is safely ensconced five stories down in the White House’s Deep Underground Command Center with his advisors. Newman alternates the action between the plant and, to a lesser degree, the people of Wateka banding together, relying on information broadcast by a retired plant engineer from an underground bunker on the plant’s campus. His forty-seven-year career included a role in the plant’s construction and his insight proves invaluable.
A second major storyline focuses on a group of heroic first responders who refuse to abandon little Conner, even though they have no idea how to safely extract him from the van. Newman includes a gut-wrenching exploration of the allocation of scarce resources and the options available in such circumstances, noting that they are “undermanned, under-resourced, out of ideas, and out of time trying to save one individual person.” Must the needs of many be prioritized over the peril faced by one? “It’s about saving the fate of humanity. But what is that, if not the life of one individual?” she observes.
Throughout Worst Case Scenario, Newman deftly illustrates her characters’ palpable terror and the responsibility they feel to each other, as well as the countless Americans who will be impacted in myriad ways if their survival mission fails. The characters are fully developed and believable – not surprisingly, most rise to the occasion, but some take longer than others. Most importantly, Newman compels readers to care about her characters and their futures. The story would not succeed sans that emotional connection and she is gratified when readers identify with and cheer for her characters because she cares deeply about their welfare as she brings them to life, going through “boxes and boxes of Kleenex” while she writes. Her compassion is evident on every page, alongside her readily understandable and terrifying explanations of precisely what is at stake. Newman says that “the absolute heart and essence of my stories, is everyday people in an extraordinary circumstance rising to meet the moment. I deeply believe in the everyday hero in all of us, and that ordinary people only need the opportunity to be the heroes that they actually are.”
To dismiss Newman’s latest tautly crafted story as far-fetched or implausible would be a mistake. She says Worst Case Scenario was more difficult to write than her first two books. Once she began researching the subject matter, she “realized that the premise of the book is completely plausible, and . . . this research scared the hell out of me.” Still, she does not consider the tale an indictment of the nuclear energy industry. “If I have an agenda with my books, it is to entertain. Full stop.”
Newman has penned another horrifyingly realistic and deeply unsettling thriller. It is fast-paced, tense, and riveting. It is also moving, replete with heartbreaking losses and disappointment, as well as valor, personal sacrifice, and triumph. She explores familial and community relationships, challenging readers to contemplate how they would react in a similar situation. It is certain to be yet another bestseller . . . and leaves readers pondering just what she will come up with next.
Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book.
Newman circled back to the idea for her third nove, Worst Case Scenario. At the outset, she knew virtually nothing about nuclear power plants but, luckily, discovered that because of industry transparency, the needed information is readily available. Newman describes her books as “plot focused” and once she completed her research, the genesis of Worst Case Scenario was a complete outline totaling around sixty pages laying out the action.
Worst Case Scenario is a departure for Newan in that the focus of the book is not on how her protagonists will rescue the airliner’s passengers and crew. But the story does open with a crisis on board. As the plane is flying over Minnesota, the pilot suffers a fatal widowmaker heart attack and the 757 goes into free fall. At United Grace Church in the little town of Waketa, fifty-five miles south of Minneapolis, widower Steve Tostig, the Clover Hill nuclear energy plant's on-site Fire Chief, is attending the mid-day Good Friday service. The walls and floor begin to rattle just as something flies over the church, and a loud boom shakes the entire structure. Steve immediately springs into action as Dr. Joss Vance notices the lights in her kitchen flickering and instantly knows what is about to happen. The power goes out. As she grabs her work go-bag containing a satellite phone, full-body hazmat suit, masks, gloves, rubber boots, and a bottle of pills, she washes down the radioprotective potassium iodide with the coffee she had been drinking at her kitchen table and races out the door, en route to Clover Hill. The alert on her phone confirms what she already knows. There has been an incident at the plant. Potentially, a Level 7 incident. “When you work in nuclear power, you never fully forget what it is you do. How dangerous it is, how horrific the potential could be. You always, always respect the potential.” So Joss has “always known a day like this was not a matter of if but when.” In fact, it was that knowledge that brought her home to Waketa and her job as the regional representative of the Nuclear Emergency Support Team. After earning a PhD in nuclear engineering at MIT, Joss worked on policy at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington, D.C. where she grew tired of “being dismissed as an alarmist.”
The large plane breaks apart, strewing debris across a vast area. Just as a van is crossing the bridge over the Mississippi River, carrying a family to an Easter celebration, one of the wings -- ten times larger than the van and carrying hundreds of thousands of gallons of jet fuel -- lands directly in the van’s path. The rear of the van is left dangling thirty feet above the icy water as a massive fire erupts. Five-year-old Connor, who was riding in the van his father was driving, is conscious and still strapped into his car seat.
Once again, Newmans employs her straight-forward, unembellished storytelling style to describe the confusion and chaos that ensues after the crash. In the control room, Plant Manager Ethan Rosen and his staff don’t immediately know what has happened – explosion, earthquake, terrorist attack, equipment failure? – because they work in a windowless room in the building that houses one of three reactors. Clover Hill is in the process of being decommissioned, but it takes years. So only one reactor is offline. The other two were online and generating power when the plane crashed. With alarms sounding, staff frantically begin assessing the status of the plant and soon learn that pieces of the aircraft are scattered across the Clover Hill campus. Gradually, they realize what they are dealing with . . . and must figure out how to address the damage the plant has sustained, a situation no one has ever faced before. They discover that the power line to the plant has been severed so the plant is running on backup diesel generators, and there is extensive structural damage throughout, including to the pool where spent fuel rods are warehoused. It is leaking. If the water level becomes low enough and the rods are exposed, the building in which they are stored will explode. The plant began operating in 1973, so the amount of nuclear waste stored there would feed a fire of a “magnitude mankind has yet to conceive of a way to put out. It would burn forever.” In the other words, it could be the world’s first Level 8, “extinction-level event.”
Newman notes that “it’s very easy to get your characters into trouble. It’s a lot harder to get them out of trouble.” And the trouble her characters face in Worst Case Scenario could be exponentially more far-reaching than the crises depicted in her first two books. She “reverse engineers” her stories. So once she decided that the plane would crash into the plant, she had to figure out the challenges her characters would face and how they would handle them. She set the tale in the fictional small town, rather than a larger metropolitan area, to illustrate “a real nightmare worst case scenario for the country.” Other regions, like California (where only the Diablo Canyon plant remains operational, and three others have been fully decommissioned), have more resources and safeguards available. And by placing Clover Hill at the top of the Mississippi River, the catastrophe could destroy “the heart of the country,” rendering uninhabitable a large swath of land bisecting the United States.
Once again, Newman has created a cast of empathetic characters navigating a crisis that demands they be their best selves. Ethan and Steve, in leadership roles, gather input and make hard decisions, while Joss serves as the liaison to America’s youngest-ever President, who is safely ensconced five stories down in the White House’s Deep Underground Command Center with his advisors. Newman alternates the action between the plant and, to a lesser degree, the people of Wateka banding together, relying on information broadcast by a retired plant engineer from an underground bunker on the plant’s campus. His forty-seven-year career included a role in the plant’s construction and his insight proves invaluable.
A second major storyline focuses on a group of heroic first responders who refuse to abandon little Conner, even though they have no idea how to safely extract him from the van. Newman includes a gut-wrenching exploration of the allocation of scarce resources and the options available in such circumstances, noting that they are “undermanned, under-resourced, out of ideas, and out of time trying to save one individual person.” Must the needs of many be prioritized over the peril faced by one? “It’s about saving the fate of humanity. But what is that, if not the life of one individual?” she observes.
Throughout Worst Case Scenario, Newman deftly illustrates her characters’ palpable terror and the responsibility they feel to each other, as well as the countless Americans who will be impacted in myriad ways if their survival mission fails. The characters are fully developed and believable – not surprisingly, most rise to the occasion, but some take longer than others. Most importantly, Newman compels readers to care about her characters and their futures. The story would not succeed sans that emotional connection and she is gratified when readers identify with and cheer for her characters because she cares deeply about their welfare as she brings them to life, going through “boxes and boxes of Kleenex” while she writes. Her compassion is evident on every page, alongside her readily understandable and terrifying explanations of precisely what is at stake. Newman says that “the absolute heart and essence of my stories, is everyday people in an extraordinary circumstance rising to meet the moment. I deeply believe in the everyday hero in all of us, and that ordinary people only need the opportunity to be the heroes that they actually are.”
To dismiss Newman’s latest tautly crafted story as far-fetched or implausible would be a mistake. She says Worst Case Scenario was more difficult to write than her first two books. Once she began researching the subject matter, she “realized that the premise of the book is completely plausible, and . . . this research scared the hell out of me.” Still, she does not consider the tale an indictment of the nuclear energy industry. “If I have an agenda with my books, it is to entertain. Full stop.”
Newman has penned another horrifyingly realistic and deeply unsettling thriller. It is fast-paced, tense, and riveting. It is also moving, replete with heartbreaking losses and disappointment, as well as valor, personal sacrifice, and triumph. She explores familial and community relationships, challenging readers to contemplate how they would react in a similar situation. It is certain to be yet another bestseller . . . and leaves readers pondering just what she will come up with next.
Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book.