A neat idea for Tom Clancy to write...

[ffutures]

For various reasons I've read the Evening Standard much more often than usual this week, and noticed that they're continuing their steady "London must have a new airport / Enlarged Heathrow or die" campaign, which I suspect may owe more than a little to the company's shareholding in British Airport Authority and/or a wilful disregard for alternatives - such as questioning the assumption that the current rise in aviation traffic will continue indefinitely.

One obvious reason why not is fuel prices, of course, and the possibility that sooner or later the stuff will genuinely run out, but there must be alternatives. The idea that came to mind is as follows:

• Hollywood likes British villains, especially attacking the USA
  
• Tom Clancy likes environmental groups as bad guys
  
• People like disaster novels / movies
  
• There seems to be a widespread disbelief in global warming in certain areas
  
• Aircraft are perceived as being involved in global warming etc.
  
• America owes a very high percentage of the world's aircraft
  
• Fuel shortages might ground aircraft
  
• Volcanoes have done a much better job in recent years.

Therefore the perfect Tom Clancy novel will involve a group of British ecoterrorists triggering American volcanoes (and eventually the Yellowstone supervolcano) so as to put so much dust into the air that virtually all aviation is grounded and most of the USA is destroyed.

It needs a bit of technobabble to explain why the dust, fumes etc. from the volcano are acceptable to the terrorists, of course, but I'm pretty sure Clancy could rise to the occasion.

I await my royalty cheque...

Comments

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Sarcasm up to 11, I assume. Yep, that would work for Clancy all right, it's pretty much the plot of Rainbow 5.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, sarcasm definitely turned up to 11.

(Although there are quite a lot of environmentalists who support this view, or at least, they haven't thought through the consequences of what their beliefs are for most of the population of this planet.)

Is Clancy still writing by the way? He used to be my favourite author, but then, his writing just started going very very wrong.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The last couple of books purely by him were crap, the one after that has a co-writer's name in teeny letters and is even worse. I suspect that he simply doesn't give a shit any more, he's made his pile and that's what he cares about.