Atmosphæra Incognita

by Neal Stephenson

it was one of those relationships where we went for a quarter of a century without having any contact at all and then picked up right where we’d left off at twelve.

Quonset hut

Free electrons get accelerated upward and get kicked up into a hyperenergetic state, massively relativistic, and at some point they bang into atoms in the tops of the storm towers with such energy that they produce gamma rays which in turn produce positrons—antimatter. The positrons have opposite charges, so they get accelerated downward. The cycle repeats, up and down, and at some point you get a burst of gamma rays that is seriously dangerous—you could get a lifetime’s worth of hard radiation exposure in a flash.”

But uneasy memories were stirring of briefings, years ago, about top-down failure cascades. The classic example being the Twin Towers, which had collapsed in toto despite the fact that all the initial damage had been confined to their upper floors. Debris from a high-level event could damage structural elements far below, with incalculable results. The thin, almost nonexistent atmosphere up here would allow debris to fall at supersonic velocity. Energy, and damage, would increase as the velocity squared…