Eruption

Rachel calls her ex-boyfriend, Ted Murray, who works for the Army Corps of Engineers, and tells him about the blackened trees. He is stationed at the Military Reserve, which is located on a plateau between the island’s two volcanos: Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. She returns to the grove and sees more of the trees have turned black.

The Hilo Botanical Gardens are evacuated. Military personnel in hazmat suits arrive and run toward the trees with “extinguishers labeled COLD FIRE” (11). Rachel runs after them. As she runs, she hears the sound of another volcano eruption.

The next day, none of the newspapers or media outlets reported on the events at Hilo Botanical Gardens. A few people on Twitter described seeing a small herbicide fire that was quickly extinguished and helicopters landing. The park reopened two days later “as if nothing had ever happened” (13).

On April 24, 2025, John “Mac” MacGregor, the chief geologist of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO), is on the beach outside Hilo, the largest town on Hawai‘i, also known as “the Big Island.” He is teaching a surf lesson to some teenagers when they hear a volcanic tremor. Jenny Kimura, the director of the Observatory lab, calls and tells him they have “degassing.” Mac is concerned.

Jenny tells him the degassing is at the summit. Mac tells the boys he has to go. One of the boys, Lono, asks him if there is going to be an eruption of the Mauna Loa volcano. Mac tells Lono to come to his press conference with him to find out. He doesn’t tell Lono that he knows Mauno Loa is going to have “its most violent eruption in a century” soon (22). He will hold a press conference to alert people.

Meanwhile, the chief of the Civil Defense, Hawaii’s Emergency Management Agency, in Hilo, Henry “Tako” Takayama, is at the Hilo stadium watching the Merrie Monarch hula festival. He is talking to a state senator when he feels a tremor. A week before, Tako met with Mac who told him about the impending eruption of Mauna Loa. They organized the press conference, but Tako is not worried about an eruption on the north side of the volcano, away from the town of Hilo. The master of ceremonies calms the worried crowd, and Tako acts like nothing is wrong.

Back at the Observatory, Jenny helps Mac prepare for the press conference. In the lab, the monitors show gas leaking from the summit of Mauna Loa. Mac knows the eruption is imminent. He walks to the podium to address the reporters.

Mac tells the reporters that Mauna Loa, the largest volcano in the world, will erupt sometime in the next two weeks. He reassures them that the eruption will take place at the summit caldera, or crater, and will likely not affect the town. In response to a reporter’s question, he tells them the eruption will likely be as large or larger than Mauno Loa’s previous eruptions in 1984 and 1950. Jenny thinks Mac is doing a good job at the press conference. He has personal experience with volcano disasters which is why he has acted quickly and decisively. However, Mac does not tell the press what he and Jenny both know: the volcano will erupt in five days.

Mac reassures the reporters that the lava flow will likely head toward Mauna Kea. However, he admits there is no known way to divert lava flows in Hawai‘i. He says attempted tactics like bombing, building dikes, and spraying seawater have failed. The press conference ends. Jenny goes out to tell the TV reporters the rules for how they can safely film the eruption while avoiding casualties.

Mac goes back into the lab where the team is working. Kenny Wong, the lead programmer, asks why Mac didn’t tell the reporters the exact date of the eruption. Mac replies that he doesn’t want to panic people with a possibly incorrect prediction. Suddenly, a helicopter Jake Rogers, an ex-navy pilot, is flying swoops past the window toward the Mauno Loa caldera. His passenger is a CBS cameraman looking for a scoop. Soon after, Rogers flies into a cone surrounding a volcanic lake typically considered too narrow for a helicopter.

On the monitor, Mac sees the helicopter hovering over the lava lake while the cameraman films. Then, the helicopter crashes into the crater wall. It slides toward the lava lake. Jenny confirms by radio the pilot and passenger are still alive. Mac decides he is going to go rescue them.

Mac goes up in a helicopter with pilot, Bill Kamoku, Jenny, and a field tech named Tim Kapaana. The Coast Guard won’t arrive in time, so Mac decides to go in himself. They land the helicopter near the crater rim. Mac gets out and puts on a heat-proof suit and gas mask. Jenny waits in the helicopter, “sick with anxiety” (50). Mac descends into the crater.

Mac walks down to the crashed helicopter, which is on its side. Over the radio, Jenny tells him that the pilot reported the downed craft is leaking fluid. She asks him again if he doesn’t want to wait for the Coast Guard. He says he is sure he wants to attempt the rescue, and Jenny puts him in radio contact with the pilot, Jake Rogers.

Jake is in pain but conscious. The cameraman, Glenn, has an injured shoulder and is in shock. He is rocking back and forth. Glenn’s sudden movements make the crashed helicopter slip closer to the lava. Mac tells Jake to open the passenger door, but it is jammed.

Mac goes underneath the helicopter to open the hatch that holds the toolbox. He gets out the pry bar. He climbs back to the other side of the helicopter and pries open the passenger door. He lifts out Jake who starts walking out of the crater despite his injury. Jenny warns over the radio that Mac is at risk of “pulmonary restriction” from the volcanic gases. Glenn, the cameraman, is too scared to get out of the helicopter. Mac climbs in.

Watching Mac on the monitors, field tech, Rick Ozaki, and seismologist, Pai, say that his wife, Linda, left him because he is always taking chances like this. Then, programmer, Kenny Wong, gets an alert that aviation fuel is leaking into the lava lake.

Mac finally gets Glenn out of the helicopter. They start walking up the crater. Glenn wants to stop, but Mac hustles him on. At the rim, Tim grabs Glenn and pulls him over the side of the crater. Just then, the helicopter explodes.

Back at the Observatory, Jenny reassures Mac that the pilot and the cameraman are not likely to go to the press about what happened. Then, Mac meets with Rick and Kenny. They suggest that it might be possible to “vent” the volcano using explosive charges in specific places along “preexisting rift zones” (70). Mac is skeptical, but they give him an Army Corps of Engineers DARPA report from the 1970s that suggests it might be possible. Mac tells them to do a feasibility study and have it ready for the next day.

Mac goes home. He thinks about how one day a year ago, his wife left with his twin sons because they drifted apart after he refused to settle down for work. Jenny comes over, with the review of the DARPA report about Project Vulcan (Vent Deflection). Mac wonders why they spent so much money on this research. They read that the project failed, and Jenny leaves. That night, Mac reads about billionaire J.P. Brett who is trying to develop a technology that can quickly build dikes to stop lava flows.

Mac gets a call from a physician at the Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital in Honolulu on behalf of General Arthur Bennett. Bennett “was in charge of all army training installations in the Pacific from 1981 to 2012” (83). Colonel Briggs has arranged for a car to pick Mac up and take him to see General Bennett at the hospital that evening.

An hour later, Mac is at the VA Hospital. General Bennett is an old man who had a stroke. An aide plays the news report about the impending eruption of Mauna Loa. Bennett stirs and writes the message “Icetubb” on a piece of paper. Then he draws a diagram that looks like a three-petal flower labeled alpha, beta, and gamma. Colonel Briggs arrives and introduces himself. Then, he orders everyone who has had contact with General Bennett quarantined in the hospital for two weeks. Briggs tells Mac that he needs to keep what he learned secret.

The next morning, Mac arrives at the Military Reserve on Hawai‘i with Colonel Briggs and other military personnel. He tells Briggs that he expects the Mauna Loa eruption will cause a lava flow in the direction of the Reserve. Mac is given a heavy radiation-proof suit. He notices that the radiation warning label is the image General Bennett drew the night before. Briggs opens a metal door on the side of the mountain.

Briggs leads Mac into “The Ice Tube,” a cave a previous lava eruption caused. Inside is a storage facility full of five-foot-high cylindrical glass canisters with a blue glow. Briggs tells him it’s high-level radioactive waste from an unknown source. It has been stored there since 1978 and abatement attempts have failed for lack of will and funding. Now it cannot be removed because radioactivity has weakened the glass.

Briggs tells Mac that they learned what the material was in 2016 after one of the canisters broke. It released a compound called Agent Black, a defoliant more powerful than Agent Orange. It is a plant killer with a biological component, allowing it to spread very quickly. The developers at Fort Detrick mixed it with radioactive material in the hopes of killing the bacterial component that made it so dangerous and making it easier to trace. In 2016, a worker tracked some of the material on his shoes to the Hilo Botanical Garden, causing an outbreak that was quickly contained.

In a room on the base, a geneticist shows Mac how Agent Black works. When a housefly lands on a plant sprayed with Agent Black, it licks the material off its legs, digests it, and then excretes it. Agent Black has been metabolized into a tobacco mosaic virus that invades the plant and quickly causes the death of the plant. An atmospheric scientist tells Mac that if the container explodes as a result of the lava flow, it will release Agent Black into the atmosphere. It could cause the death of most of the plant life in the biosphere.

Briggs tells Mac they plan to build a dike to redirect the lava flow, but Mac says it will probably not work. Briggs then suggests the DARPA study of venting the volcano. Mac reminds him the study concluded it would not work. Mac says he needs an hour to think of a solution.