Whitley Strieber's Blog, page 2

As many of you know, my wife Anne has had difficult health issues since 2004, when she had a brain hemorrhage. Last summer, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Now, these are terrible things, but, as in all adversity, there is also joy, and there are also miracles. We have written a book together about our journey as a couple through the darkness of this experience, and into the joy that comes with acceptance and a determination to find what is beautiful in it.

And there is much that is beautiful. We have been happily married for 43 years, and that happiness has only deepened since Anne's latest diagnosis.

The book is getting lots of wonderful reviews on Amazon, largely because it is about the power of the spirit in difficult times, not about giving in or giving up.

Miraculous Journey is available as an ebook on Kindle, Nook and Kobo, and as an iBook. It's $4.99. Miraculous Journey

I've just published the first book in my new thriller series, Alien Hunter. Next week, the paperback of my nonfiction book Solving the Communion Enigma, will come out.

I had a close encounter of the third kind that led to the writing of my book Communion and refocused both my fiction and nonfiction careers on the possibility of alien contact.

But at the same time, I seriously questioned what was happening. Was it alien contact? Some other kind of contact? Or was it a human experience of some kind that we did not fully understand?

There were two reasons for this stance. The first was that there just was no credible scientific evidence that travel between the stars was possible.

I've just published the first book in my new thriller series, Alien Hunter. Next week, the paperback of my nonfiction book Solving the Communion Enigma, will come out.

I had a close encounter of the third kind that led to the writing of my book Communion and refocused both my fiction and nonfiction careers on the possibility of alien contact.

But at the same time, I seriously questioned what was happening. Was it alien contact? Some other kind of contact? Or was it a human experience of some kind that we did not fully understand?

There were two reasons for this stance. The first was that there just was no credible scientific evidence that travel between the stars was possible. The second was that very little that happened, when I looked back on it, had the quality of normal memory.

It wasn't dream-like, not at all, but it wasn't like remembering a trip to the store, either. So one of the things I like to do is to explore these matters in fiction. It’s a field full of stories that can’t be documented, and fiction is where I go to explore them.

Thus the Alien Hunter series. Flynn Carroll is a police officer with a very unusual mission indeed. He’s assigned to a very secret unit that works liaison with police specialists from another planet. They are fighting criminals from their own world who are exploiting our less-advanced and therefore more helpless species in all sorts of ways.

The first volume of the series is called Alien Hunter: the Body Thief. The second volume is due out next summer. So, enjoy!

You can get a free illustrated Alien Hunter in PDF form by clicking here: http://bit.ly/1eMoqBL

Something has crept up on us over the past few years that is quite dangerous. It is solar storms. It's not that the sun has changed. It hasn't. What has happened is that we have changed.

Specifically, our electrical and electronic systems are becoming ever more sensitive to various solar energies that accompany solar flares and solar storms.

There has been significant concern about this problem in congress, but so far the Senate has blocked a bill that passed the House last year from becoming law.

As a result, the US power grid remains dangerously vulnerable to solar storms.
The power companies don't want to harden their systems against solar energy without a federal mandate. They need standards and requirements. If they make changes outside of a mandate, they are exposed to legal liability, so a federal mandate is essential.

The changes needed are not expensive or difficult to make, and other developed countries that depend absolutely on power grids for their survival are making these changes. For example, the UK and the EU are largely protected. Canada is largely protected.

In fact, among large developed countries, only the United States and China lag behind in effective grounding protection of their power grids.

I have written an ebook for Tarcher Penguin that goes into all of the details of this problem, including an explanation of why it has become a problem, how to solve it, and the remarkable history of Earth's relationship with the sun.

It also contains a letter that you can send to your senators and representatives, to indicate your concern about this problem.

The ebook is on Kindle, Nook, iBooks, Kobo and all other readers. It's $3.99.

Whether you get it or not, please do write your representatives, saying that you are concerned about the safety of the power grid, and that it must be protected from solar storms.

If the grid were to be brought down by a solar storm, it could take ten years to repair it. Studies have shown that, in just the first few weeks, we would see over a hundred nuclear reactors melt down, and by the end of the ten years, over seventy percent of the US population would have died.

In other words, our country would be killed.

It is urgent that congress act, and that means US. So take action today.Solar Flares: What You Need to Know: A Special from Tarcher/Penguin

It is an odd and chilling feeling to see Hurricane Sandy called a superstorm. It's going to go down in history as Superstorm Sandy.

I didn't coin the word 'superstorm' but the book I wrote with Art Bell, the Coming Global Superstorm, certainly brought it into the language. And the movie based on it, the Day After Tomorrow, fixed the idea of such storms in the public imagination.

Sadly, my work also added fuel to the false debate about global warming that was being generated by powerful moneyed interests such as the Koch Brothers, big coal and big oil, and put before the public by Rupert Murdoch's propaganda machine and Rush Limbaugh.

They weren't interested in winning the debate. The debate itself was the delaying tactic that they sought, and in that sense, they won the battle.

We have indeed delayed doing anything serious about global warming until this late hour.

While I can and do blame the responsible parties for creating this fake debate, what concerns me more is that the most serious effects of the delay that it caused have yet to be felt. To be specific, there are billions of gigatons of 'frozen' methane on the sea floor of the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean. Changes in the Atlantic currents caused by a warming of the water have drawn the Gulf Stream northward. At some point, these waters are going to get too warm for the methane hydrates to remain frozen, and they are going to release, with dire climactic consequences.

They melt back into methane gas at 47 degrees Fahrenheit. It is only a matter of time before the temperature of the water in contact with them exceeds that level.

When it happens, massive amounts of methane will enter the atmosphere. This gas is a far more efficient heat trapper than carbon dioxide, and it will cause dramatic temperature spikes and a climactic upheaval that is likely to be extremely damaging.

Compared to what will happen then, Superstorm Sandy was just a baby. Because we allowed the false debate to go on too long, even if we dropped our carbon dioxide release to zero, it is now too late.

There is more, and worse, to come. And the false debate will not end. Even as the upheaval overtakes us, it will continue. Unlike the methane, we will remain frozen.

It is an odd and chilling feeling to see Hurricane Sandy called a superstorm. It's going to go down in history as Superstorm Sandy.

I didn't coin the word 'superstorm' but the book I wrote with Art Bell, the Coming Global Superstorm, certainly brought it into the language. And the movie based on it, the Day After Tomorrow, fixed the idea of such storms in the public imagination.

Sadly, my work also added fuel to the false debate about global warming that was being generated by powerful moneyed interests such as the Koch Brothers, big coal and big oil, and put before the public by Rupert Murdoch's propaganda machine and Rush Limbaugh.

They weren't interested in winning the debate. The debate itself was the delaying tactic that they sought, and in that sense, they won the battle.
We have indeed delayed doing anything serious about global warming until this late hour.

While I can and do blame the responsible parties for creating this fake debate, what concerns me more is that the most serious effects of the delay that it caused have yet to be felt. To be specific, there are billions of gigatons of 'frozen' methane on the sea floor of the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean. Changes in the Atlantic currents caused by a warming of the water have drawn the Gulf Stream northward. At some point, these waters are going to get too warm for the methane hydrates to remain frozen, and they are going to release, with dire climactic consequences.

They melt back into methane gas at 47 degrees Fahrenheit. It is only a matter of time before the temperature of the water in contact with them exceeds that level.

When it happens, massive amounts of methane will enter the atmosphere. This gas is a far more efficient heat trapper than carbon dioxide, and it will cause dramatic temperature spikes and a climactic upheaval that is likely to be extremely dramatic.

Compared to what will happen then, Superstorm Sandy was just a baby. Because we allowed the false debate to go on too long, even if we dropped our carbon dioxide release to zero, it is now too late.

There is more, and worse, to come. And the false debate will not end. Even as the upheaval overtakes us, it will continue. Unlike the methane, we will remain frozen.

I've just published an ebook for summer reading called the Secret of Orenda. I worked on it off and on for about three years.

It's about the discovery of a very ancient Indian tribe that has never had contact with the outside world, and what happens when modern life invades their ancient and very magical space.

In it, I explore the way the wisdom of the past differs from the knowledge of present times. The people of Orenda still live by ways that have long ago been forgotten, as we have moved away from a pure and innocent connection with the world around us to a position of dominance over it.

It's not a tragedy, though. I'm very interested in balance, and finding the points of fruitful contact between people. The people of Orenda, of course, understand such things very well.

I hope you have a look at it. Its message is very precious to me, and so far early reviewers on my website (Unknowncountry.com) have responded to it in deeply thoughtful ways.

You can find out more about it by going to http://www.Orendabook.com

Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall was the best piece of historical fiction I have read in easily ten years. Certainly among the top three I have ever read. In fact, it went beyond historical fiction. It was modern literature of the highest order set in the world of Henry VIII. Not since Gore Vidal's Julian the Apostate has anybody done that, and Wolf Hall succeeds even more brilliantly, if that is possible.

Now comes the sequel, 'Bring Up the Bodies,' and I have to say that I am very excited, especially after Janet Maslin's review in the Times today. She says of Wolf Hall that "it wound up providing an experience of sheer bliss. It was a hard act to follow." And then this lovely kicker: "The follow-up is equally sublime."

I've had my delicious hardcover copy on order for a couple of months. Talk about excitement! It should be here in a few days.

I attended the LA Times Book Fair on Saturday, where I signed at Mysterious Galaxy and participated with my wife Anne in the "Teen Books" panel. It was our first experience of this gigantic festival of books, and it was quite an amazing experience. I was just delighted to see the massive, thronging crowds, all there because of books and reading. Plus, a lot of my fans showed up and that was lovely, too. I always think that I have terrific fans. There is just something wonderful about readers. They are so often so bright and so very active in their lives just in general. Questing, engaged human beings.

I'm home now waiting to hear from editors about the book Anne and I just completed about the spiritual, physical and emotional journey of her stroke, and starting work on a new novel.

Do I ever slow down? Do you? Of course not!

A few years ago, I published a novel called Critical Mass about nuclear terrorism. This blog, published yesterday on my website, Unknowncountry.com, emerged out of my concerns about the present situation in Iran and the research I did about nuclear proliferation for Critical Mass:

Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington and former Mossad Chief Meier Dagan appeared on 60 Minutes to warn that war with Iran would be a mistake. Meanwhile, it has been pointed out by numerous commentators that no country which has acquired nuclear weapons since World War II has used them, and that nuclear arsenals are instruments of peace rather than war, because the prospect of mutually assured destruction enforces stalemate. The prime examples cited are the US and the USSR, which never actually fought a nuclear conflict, and Pakistan and India, which fought three wars prior to acquiring nuclear weapons, and have not fought since.

At present, the great powers have been at peace with one another for over sixty-five years, a record in modern times. War seems as absurd now as it did in 1913. But the danger now is at least as great as it was then.

There are six nuclear powers who could become involved: the US, the UK, France, Russia, China and Israel. If it turns out that Iran actually does have the bomb, which is an outside possibility, that would be a seventh. But why would all these powers potentially be involved? How could such a fantastic conflict, seemingly completely impossible, break out.

Let's do a little analysis. First, why did Netanyahu come to Washington? What does he want? Israel has gone to war before without asking for American approval, and surely he cannot expect to receive that from the least pro-Israel president in modern times. However, Israel cannot succeed against the Iranian nuclear sites, not on its own. This is because it does not possess massive ordinance penetrating bombs, or bunker busters. Last September, the United States took delivery of twenty such weapons. Their precise capabilities are not known, but there is evidence that they have void-sensing fuses, which are designed to detonate the weapon after it has penetrated an unknown density of stone and senses a void.

Israel possesses neither such weapons nor the means to deliver them. The only delivery platforms that can do the job are the B-52 Bomber and possibly the B-2.

Now, why would Israel be so desperate for the US to use these bombs, and make no mistake, it's not a collegial debate. Netanyahu would not have come here unless he wanted a US attack on Iran, and Dagan would not have spoken out unless he knew for certain that this request had been made.

The fact that the request was made can only be for one reason: either Iran already has a prototype, or is about to have one. But why is this so dangerous to Israel? Wouldn't an Iranian bomb have the same regional stabilizing effect that the Soviet, Pakistani and Indian bombs had? That was Dagan's argument, but it is not the belief of the Israeli military, nor of Mossad at this time.

Looking across the reaches of Iranian history, the Israelis see a culture with a three thousand year long tradition of belief that death in war leads to life in heaven. Ever since Darius the Great sent his legions against the army of Athens at Marathon in 490 BC, this belief has been more or less present in Iranian culture. (At the time of Darius, it was believed that a warrior fighting on behalf of truth would be drawn into heaven by Ahura Mazda if killed. The infamous promise of eternal bliss for suicide bombers, which emerges through the long Islamic tradition that we know today originated that far back, and is thus is even more deeply engrained in Iranian culture than it is in that of the rest of the Muslim world.)

They also see another and very dire reality: Israel is a small country. In fact, a tiny country. Iran already has missiles that can reach any part of Israel, albeit without particularly accurate guidance. The problem is that even a single nuclear weapon, detonated essentially anywhere over Israeli territory, is going to do vast damage, much of which will be irreparable for years to come. If by chance there was a direct hit on Tel Aviv, a bomb the size of the ones that struck Hiroshima and Nagasaki would ruin the country.

The worry is that the fact that this would lead to the destruction of every major city in Iran might not be a deterrent. The theocratic extremists within the Iranian government might even see it as a religious triumph, a holy sacrifice. In any case, the Iranian regime draws its power mostly from its rural constituency and sees its urban populations as dangerous hotbeds of anti-regime sentiment.

Obviously, this is a terribly dangerous situation, and it has probably been made more dangerous by a paucity of good intelligence coming out of Iran. After the 2007 'outing' of CIA non-official cover Valerie Plame, there was a profound loss of an important source of direct intelligence from Iran. This is because she was associated with a sham company called Brewster-Jennings, which had deployed agents on the ground in Iran who were able to determine by testing air from exhaust vents near underground facilities which were emitting radiation consistent with the production of fissionable material and which were not. Once her actual role was made public, the Brewster-Jennings operation in Iran was destroyed, and for an unknown period of time it was impossible for US intelligence to keep track of activities at these facilities.

I have always regarded the revelation of this NOC as an act of high treason, and felt, as I have said before, that it was so profoundly destabilizing that it is difficult to believe that the parties responsible were not hoping to set the stage for an eventual nuclear war in the middle east. Of course, such a war is consistent with the beliefs of Christian extremists such as John Hagee, who imagines that such a war might bring on Armageddon and the Rapture. It is because of this belief that Hagee Ministries in Texas have been so accommodating to Benjamin Netanyahu, who has spoken at their church there. At the time that the NOC was exposed, of course, the US president was a Texan with avowed fundamentalist beliefs.

So, in the deeper background on both sides there are people who believe that such a war will open the gates of heaven to them, which is probably at least as dangerous a part of the problem as the Israeli's more realistic fears.

But surely such a conflict would be contained. Israel and Iran might both be destroyed, but there it would end. Surely.

Or perhaps not. In July of 1914 there was not a single great power that had any idea that events in the Balkans were going to lead to a catastrophic conflict in the very heart of western civilization. Even when the Austrians and the Germans began mobilizing, it did not immediately occur to other governments of the peril that presently existed. Not until the French military informed the government that, in view of the German mobilization, it could not guarantee the safety of the country unless it, also, mobilized at once was the peril realized. But by then it was too late.

If the US and Israel attack Iran now, it will be hoped that this will be a pre-emptive strike that will set back the Iranian nuclear program not for three years as is being publicly stated, but for ten or twenty or fifty years, or permanently. If this is not wishful thinking, then the strike could succeed, but it will nevertheless be an extremely dangerous gamble, for precisely the same reason that the Austrian move into the Balkans was far more dangerous than it appeared.

Russia and China both have an enormous but also tenuous stake in the middle east. Their primary allies are Syria and Iran. Obviously, it's not a very comfortable position for them. For China, Iran is an important oil resource. In February, China and Iran agreed that Iran would export half a million barrels of oil a day to China. This is an appreciable percentage of China's 10 million barrel per day consumption, and there is evidence that it is enabling China to expand its all-important strategic reserve.

So China, and to a lesser extent Russia, have a stake in Iran remaining at peace. At the same time, they cannot deny their ally what appears to be a reasonable desire to insure its own safety by creating a nuclear deterrent, and both countries have been supportive of Iranian ambitions, but only up to a point.

However, if there is an attack in Iran, it is possible that there could be a surprising response from an unknown party, possibly Russia, more likely China, even, remotely, Iran itself.

In November of 2010, the vapor trail of a submarine launched missile appeared off the US west coast. At the time, it was dismissed as the contrail of an incoming airliner, but this was not the case. The most likely power to have launched it was China, but as no accurate accounting has ever appeared, there is no way to be certain whose it was.

In any case, if a nuclear weapon was detonated in near space above the US west coast, it could potentially destroy all exposed electronics in the western third of the country, causing the collapse of everything from communications to vehicle mobility to water and power systems, and the destruction of financial records and the functionality of banks and all forms of electronic transaction. During the years it would take to restore systems, there would be fantastic human suffering and vast economic disruption. Without directly affecting a single individual, or even being detectable except by its effects, it would be the single most destructive military action in the history of the world, and, in terms of cost, the cheapest.

It might or might not bring retaliation from the United States. The country, already reeling from such a surprise attack, might be unwilling to risk a further nuclear exchange.

Now, I cannot even begin to predict what might or might not happen in the event of a conflict with Iran. What I am saying is that such a conflict is going to be highly unstable, and subject to unexpected escalation. There could be extraordinarily dangerous consequences that will probably be so asymmetrical that they will be a complete surprise, and one that is very difficult to deal with. Quite frankly, the United States could suffer a defeat of world-historical proportions during such a conflict.

If it happens, it is to be hoped that the worst that occurs is a rain of non-nuclear rockets falling on Israel, and China and Russian staying neutral, and, above all, that western assessments of Iran's military capabilities are accurate.

In 2004, my wife had a serious stroke and embarked on a perilous journey. Luckily, I recognized the symptoms of a brain bleed, and she was in an emergency room within twenty minutes of her collapse.

She was in the hospital for six weeks, during which she experienced every complication of such a stroke that there is. She was all but given up for dead.

This was for her a terrible but profoundly enlightening experience, and for me an ordeal on behalf of a love that runs very, very deep.

We are just about to finish the book that tells the story of our journey through the labyrinth. It is probably the most intense and emotional writing experience I have ever had.