//------------------------------// // Second Sun // Story: M.A.N.E. // by BRBrony9 //------------------------------// To those residents of Ponyville who were still in the streets, the strike on the missile fields forty miles to the south lit up the sky like a fireworks display. Despite the distance, the flash of each detonation was bright enough to blind anypony who looked at it. The sirens continued to wail and were joined by the screams of terrified ponies as the southern horizon erupted with fiery orange mushroom clouds. The detonations were silent- the sound would take a little over three minutes to travel the distance. Those who were in shelters had no idea that anything had happened, as yet blissfully unaware of the violence and fury developing to the south. The first rumbling began to shake Ice Wind's seat. The chair was mounted on shock absorbers, as was the entire launch control centre, to cushion the blows from detonating warheads. A warning light began to flash brightly on the console. This is it... An alarm began to sound, an insistent beeping, alerting him to what he already knew. This is the end... A sudden jolt shook his chair, and he found himself reflexively gripping the armrests. He knew the launch control centre was built to withstand shock and overpressure from anything less than a very near miss. Theoretically it could even take a direct hit if the warhead was small enough. The warheads that were targeting the silo complex would be detonating in groundburst- striking on contact with, or just a few feet above, the earth, the best way to try and crack a heavily fortified or buried target like a missile silo. Ice Wind couldn't help but think of the futility of such an exercise-. Their missiles were already in the air and racing towards the USR; pounding the silos into dust would not achieve anything except to raise huge plumes of radioactive fallout as the explosions sucked up dirt from the ground. Maybe that's the whole point... Another jolt, more intense than the first, rocked the submerged metal cylinder. The lights fused and they were plunged into temporary darkness, before the blood red emergency lighting kicked in. The launch centre shook again. Thoughts of his family flashed through his mind. Just like in all the stories...how cliched. 'Celestia preserve us, have mercy on your loyal subjects...' Fireblade was mumbling prayers in a terrified voice. Another violent jolt rattled the cylinder. Ice Wind could hear disturbing pinging and creaking sounds from somewhere. It sounded like they were in a submarine approaching its crush depth The deep, bass rumbling was all around them now, as though they were at the epicentre of an earthquake. He gripped the armrests for dear life, shutting his eyes tight. The most powerful jolt yet almost shook him free of his seat, despite the lap restraint that he had fastened. The sound of rending metal filled his ears, and sparks burst from a short-circuiting socket somewhere behind his left shoulder. 'Oh, sweet Celestia!' Fireblade moaned as the launch centre creaked and shuddered. Ice Wind was sure this would it, that the blast would punch through the hatch cover and the fireball would roast them where they sat. The blood ran from his hooves as he gripped the armrests, the rattling soundtrack filling his ears, the smell of burning plastic in his nostrils, the face of death in his eyes. Slowly, the shaking began to fade, punctuated by several more sudden jolts. But they felt weaker, more distant. The launch centre rocked gently on its shock absorbers, steadily returning to equilibrium. He opened his eyes. 'I-is...is that it?' he asked nervously. 'I...guess so...' Fireblade replied, still breathing heavily. Apart from the failed lights and some smoke curling up from the short-circuited socket, the capsule seemed to have survived the attack, and, more importantly, so had they. The horizon was awash with fire. Brown-white mushroom clouds lined the southern end of the valley, like the forest floor after a spring rain. Officer Surehoof of the Ponyville Police Department counted at least fifteen of them, towering into the sky like ponymade mountains. He stood on a slight rise half a mile northwest of town beside his police cruiser, its driver's door open and the radio grasped in his hoof. The airwaves were alive with panicked radio traffic from other officers. 'The No. 4 shelter is full but ponies are still trying to get in. Should we close it up?' 'I see them! South, must be the missile silos...sweet Celestia, there's a dozen or more!' Surehoof had been running a traffic stop on the main road into the hills west of town when the radio had suddenly come alive with the sound of the emergency system. A digitised voice had announced Air Attack Warning Red, alerting the emergency services of an attack in progress. A few seconds later he had heard the wail of the sirens in town. He had driven as quickly as he could back towards Ponyville, until with half a mile to go he had been temporarily blinded by the first of the flashes to the south and had to pull over. In doing so he had managed to smash the front of his cruiser into a boulder, and now he couldn't get it started again. The radio crackled with static, interference from the ionising radiation put out by the nuclear blasts. The sirens continued to moan, a mournful, final sound that chilled him to the bone. He turned away from the plumes of dust on the southern horizon and looked north. He could see Cloudsdale clearly. A string of small black dots were moving rapidly away from the floating city to the northwest- fighters from the interceptor base there, no doubt. He turned his gaze upward, to the sky above. He doubted he would see anything, but his parents had always taught him to face his fears head on. The sky was a rich blue, scattered, puffy clouds dotted here and there. High above he could see half a dozen contrails criss-crossing the sky; probably Equestrian strategic bombers heading north on their final missions. Most of them would not be coming back; those that did would find nothing to return to and, most likely, no intact runways long enough for them to land on. As he watched, the sound from the strikes to the south finally arrived, a deep, distant rumble, like a summer storm. A sudden, double-pulsed actinic flash blazed into life below his vision. Something much further down, near the horizon...he blinked several times and looked to the north. Another distant fireball was rising into the sky. He knew immediately where the explosion had occured. He raised the car radio to his mouth. 'Dispatch, car 23. They just hit Canterlot.' His call was lost among the jumble of other messages. He turned back to return the radio to its cradle. As he did so, a flash backlit him. He whipped round, bumping his head on the car roof as he did so, yet another flash filling his vision. Two more fireballs, in the same location. These explosions were airbursts, the warheads detonating several thousand feet above the target to maximise the effectiveness of the blast wave against a large target like a city- the explosions to the south, by contrast, had been groundbursts. Even as he watched with shielded eyes another explosion lit the skies over Canterlot. He could see great plumes of dirt and snow tumbling down the sides of the mountains in the northern valley, avalanches dislodged by the violent groundshake and the blast waves. Canterlot is on the side of a mountain...the whole damn city will probably come away...whatever's left of it. Out of nowhere, his vision flashed to white. He stumbled back against the side of his car, the veins in his eyelids made clearly visible by the intense burst of light. He felt a sudden wash of heat, like stepping inside out of a cold winter's night. 'Son of a bitch!' he swore. His skin felt like it was burning. He swatted at himself with his hooves, trying to put out imaginary flames. He could hear the radio squealing and crackling with static. He blinked his eyes again and again, trying to regain his vision. Slowly the world faded back in, and he could see the source of the latest flash. Cloudsdale was shattered and ablaze, tumbling slowly to earth like a deflating balloon. A roiling sphere of fire and smoke hung above the falling city like some kind of malignant growth. The clouds in the sky for a considerable distance around the fireball had evaporated in the heat. Unlike those clouds, however, the clouds that the city was constructed from were considerably more resilient, imbued with Pegasi magics, and most of the structure was intact, with the exception of a sizable chunk nearest to the blast that had been vapourised. He could see something moving rapidly towards him, like a brown wave. The right side of his body and his right foreleg were red, as if he had been sunbathing at the beach all day. He turned back to his car and grabbed the radio to alert dispatch, but it had gone dead. Though the emergency radio net was hardened against EMP, his car was not. He could see fires burning in Ponyville, black smoke rising above the rooftops. Fifty seconds after the flash, the blast wave reached him. He threw up a hoof to protect his face as a blizzard of dust and stones peppered him, the blast forcing him to the ground. Though the detonation had occurred ten miles away, it felt as though he were standing out in a gale. He heard the sharp sound of breaking glass over the howling of the blast wave as the windows on his car shattered. The wind pelted him for a few seconds, then seemed to reverse direction, then gradually faded away, leaving him stunned and shaking on the ground. His ears were ringing, and his reddened skin throbbed. He rose unsteadily to his hooves, using the side of the car to pull himself up. The side windows were broken and the windscreen was cracked and covered in dust. He looked around at Ponyville. Fires seemed to still be burning in and around the town, flammable materials ignited by the thermal pulse from the warhead that destroyed Cloudsdale. He looked up at the sky. Not expecting to see anything, he was surprised to spot something moving, something small and distant. A thin, fiery orange trail marked the passage of whatever it was. Another warhead? He watched it fall. It seemed to be heading straight for him, and he knew this was the end. It plummeted from the sky, He realised after a few seconds that it was not heading for the town. Instead it was falling to the west of him- the dam...? The Hoofer Dam was visible from his current position a couple of miles away, nestled in the rocky hills. It was bound to be targeted by the USR, since it supplied hydroelectric power to the entire valley, including Canterlot. The warhead streaked towards earth and disappeared behind the hilltops. His world erupted in an incandescent blaze that lasted a mere fraction of a second as the flash seared his retina and blinded him. After that, everything was black. He could feel himself burning, the door to a colossal nuclear furnace opening and swallowing him whole. His coat smouldered, his skin blackening, the buttons of his uniformed shirt melting into his skin. He stumbled aimlessly, in agony, bumping into the side of his car. Fifteen seconds after the flash, the blast wave reached him, and the world went silent as his eardrums burst under the overpressure. He was lifted bodily from his hooves, slamming into something, probably his car, and tumbling, end over end, rolling along the uneven ground. He felt the blast wave whip over him, projectiles being carried by the wind ripping into him and gouging deep cuts in his flesh. He felt like he was being torn apart, and he prayed for it to all be over. A few seconds later his head smashed into something, and his wish was granted. The Hoofer Dam was solidly built, its concrete many feet thick. The warhead landed about 500 feet off target, striking a hillside above the southern edge of the dam's reservoir. The heat from the blast vitrified the sandy dirt around the point of impact and vaporised a large quantity of the water in the reservoir, flashing it to steam in a heartbeat. The surface of the dam's concrete structure melted, and the vegetation on the hills around it burst into flame. The explosion shook the ground like an earthquake, and, combined with the blast wave and the sudden hydrodynamic stress caused by the evaporation of so much water, the dam began to crack and shudder, the intakes and sluice gates buckling and bending under the pressure. The cars in the staff parking lot were hurled through the air like foal's toys, their owners buried, crushed and burned as the powerhouse and support buildings at the base of the dam collapsed, cutting the power to the valley below. High-voltage transmission lines tumbled like tinsel falling from a Hearth Warming tree, their pylons twisting and disintegrating. The thick concrete of the dam did not give way, though water began to pour through several cracks, and the top few feet of the structure were smashed to pieces. Within a second or two after the blast wave passed, the vacuum caused by the explosion began to suck air back towards the fireball, needing oxygen to fuel the burn. The afterwinds swept back towards the point of detonation, causing further destruction to whatever remained. The explosion raised a vast plume of radioactive dust that quickly formed the characteristic mushroom shape, towering above the hills and rising rapidly into the sky. Though the dam was charred, blackened and cracked, its staff dead and its generating equipment pulverised, the venerable structure itself remained standing, a wall of water held back by a wall of concrete. The blast wave from the dam rolled over Ponyville, following close on the heels of the blast front from the warhead that destroyed Cloudsdale. Since the town was much closer to the dam than to the Pegasi city, the blast was correspondingly more powerful, although some of its strength had been attenuated by the hills that surrounded the dam. It swept across the town, ripping tiles from rooftops and branches from trees. The siren network had gone silent, knocked out by the EMP from the Cloudsdale explosion, and most of the sirens were ripped from their mountings by the blast. The few ponies still in the streets were caught by the wind and thrown to the ground. Windows shattered, and the fires that had been started by the heat of the flash were snuffed out like candles. Thousands of roof tiles were ripped from their homes and thrown across the town like confetti at a wedding. The blast, weakened by the hills around the point of detonation, was not strong enough to cause any major damage to the town, but to the residents in their shelters, it sounded like the strongest hurricane on record. In the public shelter beneath the park, ponies huddled together in fear. Fluttershy gripped Rarity's hoof tightly as the blast shook the bunker and the wind howled above them. The shelter was overcapacity; the police officers at the entrance had been loathe to turn anypony away, and had only done so when the skies lit up over Cloudsdale, slamming the heavy steel doorway closed and ushering everypony as far back into the shelter as they could get. Ponies of all kinds filled the shelter, sitting on the floor or standing near the walls, exchanging nervous glances. Somepony sobbed loudly. 'W-was that it?' asked Lyra, who, along with Bon Bon, had managed to make it safely inside the overcrowded shelter. 'Is it over?' Nopony knew, though they all hoped fervently that it was. Trickles of dust ran from the ceiling as the vibrations began to subside. Rarity looked at Fluttershy; she had never seen the yellow mare look so frightened. She was sure her own face reflected similar emotions. 'It's alright, darling...' she stammered quietly. 'Whatever happens out there...we're safe in here.' 'Wow! The wind is really getting up! And that thunder, too! Sounds like a real bad storm coming! I love storms, the lightning always looks so cool!' Pinkie said, her face still spread in a broad smile. Rainbow rubbed her own face angrily with a hoof. 'Pinkie! It's not a storm, it's a war! Weren't you listening to me?' she said, exasperation in her voice. 'Yeah, of course I was listening!' Pinkie replied. 'Somepony was going to attack the bakery, so we had to come down here and play with this fort!' 'Celestia...no! Damn it, Pinkie, can't you take anything seriously? What the hell could be more serious than a nuclear war?' Rainbow shouted. 'We might all be dead in five minutes!' This made Pinkie's ears twitch, and her smile faded slightly. 'Oh Dashie...you worry too much!' she said, a hint of apprehension creeping into her voice. 'Besides, we're safe in this fort, right? That's why you told me to build it!' 'Yeah...we're safe...probably...' High above Ponyville, about a hundred miles north, a sleek metal cylinder reached the peak of its trajectory. As it did so, it split in two, the rear half tumbling away through the vacuum. The front half began to rotate, reaction jets firing small puffs of gas to orient the object. It was a missile, one of the second wave fired by the USR. Unlike the first wave, these were targeting cities; similar missiles had already struck Manehattan, Canterlot and Cloudsdale, among other targets. This missile had its target pre-programmed into its navigation software. After hurling itself from its silo it had turned rapidly away to the east, climbing high and fast through the atmosphere. The final stage of its journey was about to start. With a spray of propellent, the final stage of the missile rotated, aiming its pointed nose at the planet below. The nosecone peeled away like the petals of a flower, revealing the deadly payload beneath. A mere hoofful of the USR's missile fleet had been fitted with multiple re-entry vehicles, and they had been assigned to larger targets. Ponyville was not important enough to warrant multiple strikes, and not spread out enough to require multiple warheads, and so this missile mounted but a single, relatively high-yield thermonuclear warhead, and more than enough to destroy a town the size of Ponyville by itself. With a silent shudder, the warhead detached itself from the missile's second stage and began to fall to earth. Though Equestria possessed no anti-ballistic missile weaponry, a spray of metallic chaff erupted from the tip of the second stage, its purpose to obscure the incoming warhead from enemy radar and spread confusion. As it fell into the atmosphere, it began to heat up, the friction of re-entry casting a fierce orange glow around it and leaving a fiery trail in the sky. It plunged down at terminal velocity, towards the green fields and forests far below. Though it had travelled three thousand miles, the warhead was but three thousand feet off its target; the factories north of the Coltorado river. It streaked down, half a mile north of the edge of town. Barometric sensors in the warhead registered its pressure altitude; at 7,000ft, they sent an electrical impulse to the detonators, a signal for them to do their work. A fraction of a second later, they fired, igniting the high-explosive lenses that surrounded the primary stage of the warhead like the shell of an egg. The detonation of the small explosive charges compressed the primary stage, which was made of fissionable material with a boosted fusion core. In turn, the primary released neutrons and x-rays as it was crushed and compressed. The x-rays traveled through the warhead's insides until they reached the second stage- a column of fusion fuel with a hollow fissile plug inside it. A similar situation then developed to the initial reaction; the radiation pressure from the x-rays compressed the second stage, sparking off fusion. The fissile material inside, undergoing compression, began to give off neutrons of its own, which acted to increase the yield of the device. The temperature in the second stage reached immense levels, and as the pressure wave reached the outer shell of the warhead and burst forth, at 11:52AM, a second sun blazed into existence above Ponyville. The flash from the detonation drowned out the sky. For a second, it was if Celestia's sun ceased to exist, the flash so incredibly intense it made the valley appear to be in darkness with a single immense floodlight illuminating Ponyville. The shock front roared through the air, rapidly joined by a second, faster-moving wave that reflected off the ground beneath the detonation. The two waves merged, forming a single, powerful wall of pressure racing across the ground at near-supersonic speeds. The ground beneath the fireball liquified for a few seconds under the intense shockwave, the soil melting and fusing together, vitrifying into glass in the impossible heat. The fireball expanded rapidly, its temperature reaching several tens of millions of degrees. The thermal radiation it gave off ignited anything flammable it came into contact with; dry grass, trees, wooden fences, and the clothing and hair of those few ponies unlucky enough to still be in the streets or standing inside near windows. Paint on the walls of houses blackened and charred; inside buildings ten miles from ground zero, curtains, books, and bedding burst into sudden flame. The metal roofs and walls of the factories beneath the fireball deformed and melted, dripping and running across the concrete floors like rivers. The workers inside the buildings, those who had not made it to the shelters, were turned to ash as their bodies combusted, exposed to the searing gaze of the fireball. The blast wave swept across Ponyville, pulverising the factories in the north of town, smashing them into fragments and scouring the structures from their concrete bases. Though the factories had shelters constructed beneath them, the overpressure proved far too much for them to handle, and they imploded, crushing and burying the workers huddling inside. Storage tanks in the factory district burst like balloons, their contents igniting and adding to the inferno. Trucks and railcars were blasted into swirling fragments of metal. Tall brick chimneys toppled like wheat under the scythe. The three bridges across the Coltorado river that lay nearest to the town were wiped from existence, chunks of concrete, stone and steel tumbling into the water. The shock front raced across the river, sending the water rippling and sloshing about as if somepony had just climbed out of a bathtub. On the other side of the river sat a line of four and five-storey apartment buildings, recently constructed from brick. The blast wave knocked them down like they were made from cardboard, the overpressure caving in the walls and the following winds ripping off the roofs and spraying debris out over the gardens to the rear of the buildings. The blast rolled across town, smashing buildings to rubble, uprooting trees, ripping streetlights from the ground like matchsticks. At the northernmost public shelter in town, the doors bowed in and gave way under the overpressure, superheated air swirling through the shelter and cooking the lungs of those inside. The blast approached the town centre and the old quarter, three miles from ground zero. The old town hall, a flimsy, six-storey circular wooden monstrosity in the town's central square, simply came apart and collapsed, trapping the mayor and her staff in their emergency command centre buried underneath. Though the blast wave had weakened slightly by the time it reached the old quarter, the buildings there were generally weaker than those in the newer parts of town, which had been completely flattened. Here, the result was much the same. Wooden framed houses simply ceased to exist, erased from their foundations and turned into millions of lethal splinters. Those structures that were built of stone or brick fared little better, simply collapsing in on themselves instead of being ripped to pieces. The ground shock ruptured subsurface water and sewage pipes, cracked open gas lines and shattered tarmac roads like glass. At Ponyville's main rail station, a train, heavy diesel locomotive included, was hurled from the tracks, riding the shock front like a surfer as it smashed through the station building and leveled it. The old hospital building, though sturdily built from thick wooden beams and stone, crumbled like a house of cards. The blast swept onward, passing over the municipal park and splintering all the trees contained within. In the bunker beneath, ponies screamed and sobbed in abject terror as the ground shook and the roof vibrated violently, sounding for all the world as though it was about to collapse and bury them all. The floor bucked as though it were the deck of a ship being tossed by heavy seas. The lights flickered, faded, pulsed back to brightness and then flashed out altogether, drawing a fresh round of screams from the throats of the occupants. Fluttershy shuddered and flattened herself on the ground, tears streaming down her face, sobbing. Rarity lay next to her, her eyes firmly closed, her ears filled with screams and the sounds of destruction. Dust cascaded from the ceiling in rivers, and from somewhere there came a painful grating sound, like hooves on a chalkboard. 'Oh Celestia no, please, buck no...' somepony whimpered as the roof gave an especially violent heave. Rarity squeezed her eyes closed tighter and did the same to her grip on Fluttershy's hoof. An almighty bang rocked the shelter, and Rarity felt a wash of air pass over her. A piercing scream, sounding almost as loud as the explosion, followed almost immediately. The floor shuddered. She flinched, burying her head into the hard concrete floor, waiting for the inevitable. The blast wave rolled on, striking Sugarcube Corner with its unrelenting fury. In the cellar Pinkie had finally stopped smiling, her customary expression replaced with one of fear that Rainbow Dash had never seen her wear before. They lay beneath the boxes, their faces almost touching in the confined space, listening to the thunderous roar as the blast wave swept over the building. Rainbow could hear the distinctive sound of splintering wood, and the equally unmistakable cacophony of the building coming down above them. Rainbow closed her eyes, then felt the unexpected feeling of Pinkie's hoof clutching at her own. She had never been so glad to feel the touch of another pony in her life. Their world erupted into a jumble of confused snapshots as the building collapsed on top of them, shaking the cellar so violently Rainbow could imagine she was inside a washing machine. The cellar was sturdy, and so was its ceiling, but not sturdy enough to prevent the weight of the falling building from smashing through it. A sudden, ear-splitting crack and a deep rumble shook them to their bones. Rainbow felt a sudden change in pressure, and then an even louder bang made her heart nearly stop beating. Something smashed into the crates they were sheltering behind. The air was full of dust all of a sudden- thick, cloying. Rainbow coughed violently, the harsh dust biting into her lungs. She lay there, hardly daring to move and hardly able to breathe, as the crashing and rumbling began to die down. Her mouth was full of dust, her head was ringing, but for the time being, they were alive. The blast smashed the flimsy wooden stalls in the town market into shrapnel and washed over the library. The foliage on the outside and some of the books inside had burst into flames when the warhead detonated, but these fires were snuffed out by the intense winds as the blast reached them. Though branches snapped clean off, bark fragmented and the internal construction of most of the library collapsed, the ancient, massive tree itself stood firm, assisted by whatever protection spells Twilight and the previous librarians had cast on it over the years. In the basement, Twilight hugged her assistant tightly as they cowered under the table. The banging and crashing from above them as internal walls and floors collapsed made them shiver in fearful anticipation. She had no idea exactly what was happening above ground, but the basement seemed to be withstanding the blast, although it shuddered madly and books and lab equipment tumbled from their shelves. 'We're ok, Spike, we're ok...' Twilight repeated every few seconds, as much for her own benefit as Spike's. Fighting magic-wielding ponies and fearsome dragons was one thing, but this was an attack on an entirely different level, and an attack she could do nothing about. Having swept across Ponyville and reduced much of the town to rubble, the blast wave reached Sweet Apple Acres, five miles from the point of detonation. The barn and farmhouse, relatively flimsy constructions of wood, were annihilated, torn from their foundations and shredded. Most of the trees in the orchard were smashed to the ground, but some of the older and larger ones remained in place, stripped of their branches and bark. The Apple family huddled in their bomb shelter, listening to the sharp roar of the blast as it worked its howling path through the orchard like a timberwolf. The shelter had been built well, but it shook like a leaf nonetheless. 'Make it stop!' Applebloom moaned as dust cascaded from the ceiling. The hatch rattled unnervingly. 'It's alright, sugarcube...' Applejack said, making her voice as calm as she could under the circumstances. Big Mac sat opposite her, grim-faced, glancing up at the hatch and then down at his family. 'Ah knew this would happen someday...' Granny Smith muttered. 'Them fools up in Canterlot never did know when ta leave well alone!' 'It's the USR that started all this!' Applejack said angrily. 'They've just been waitin' fer an excuse ta do this fer years!' 'Well why did they have ta invent the damn things in the first place?' Granny Smith ranted. 'What's the point a' nuclear bombs if it ain't fer blowin' up other ponies?' Applebloom whimpered. 'They invented it ta defend Equestria,' Big Mac said in an even tone. Granny Smith laughed, throwing a hoof up and gesturing at the shelter's ceiling. 'Well that worked, didn't it?' she said sarcastically. 'It did,' replied Big Mac, 'until the other side invented the same thing.' The blast wave finally petered out to negligible levels after travelling nearly nine miles outward from ground zero. It took less than a minute to reduce Ponyville to rubble. The roughly spherical orange-red fireball still hung in the sky like a balloon, rising and dispersing slowly. The detonation had been high enough that the dirt sucked up by the afterwinds had not made contact with the fireball and therefore not become irradiated; it was a 'clean' explosion, and there would be no fallout from it. The same could not be said of the blast that targeted the Hoofer Dam, or those that struck at the southern missile silos which, being groundbursts, had sucked up vast quantities of dirt and debris. Ponyville lay in ruins. Fires burned in a thousand places, from small electrical fires to a raging inferno at the tank farm on the northeastern edge of the town. A dozen subterranean oil storage tanks had been ruptured by the groundshock, and their contents were blazing like torches, a filthy black cloud rising over the site. Not a single building remained undamaged. The majority of buildings in the town were built from brick or stone; those in the old quarter were mostly wood. None of them had fared well. The only structures that had stood up to the blast reasonably well were those constructed from concrete- the new hospital, a hoofful of modern office buildings, the college and several others. Many buildings nearer ground zero had simply ceased to exist, ripped from their foundations and scattered to the winds. A pall of dust and smoke hung over the town like a brown fog. On the surface, not a living thing moved. Once the echoes of the blast had faded away, the only sounds in the ruined town were the crackling of the flames.