Red Mist

Legends endure for a reason. Sometimes they survive to impel our cultural hubris. Occasionally they endure because they instil a sense of focus on what was and perhaps a vision of what will be. They are always a reminder. When they come back to haunt us, things start to get interesting. A couple in Iceland, very much in love, visit a historic site and suddenly he throws himself into a volcano, burning to a crisp in front of her eyes, and thereafter, it is always raining. The dwindling North Sea Oil supply is suddenly rejuvenated with a new discovery, a huge oil field of light, sweet, crude worth billions. Exploration, drilling and pumping begin to breathe life into a faltering industry and just as things seem to be going well, the oil is polluted with radioactive thorium. US Army Special Forces operators in Iceland on an exercise are drawn into a crisis and as NASA withdraws, they boldly face the challenge. All but one are rendered insane and the memory of Red Mist turns into a quest for answers – that the CIA already has. In Texas, a political fixer is called on to deal with a situation and finds himself completely out of his depth. In England, a psychologist’s life is turned upside down as a skald makes a disturbing prophecy. In China, aggressive experiments into neutrino research create a completely unforeseen disaster and portend a global cataclysm of Biblical proportions. Just when you’re sure that you have all the answers and are confident that the science is settled, it isn’t.