Worst Case Scenario

“So when the unthinkable does occur, when something does go wrong, the fear returns, swift and unrelenting—as Joss assumed everyone inside the plant was just finding out. But her hand was steady, her heart rate low. Because Joss had always known a day like this was not a matter of if but when. […] For her, controlling the fear was easy. Because it never left. Joss was always scared.”

This characterization of Joss—that she is motivated by her ever-present fear—is another facet of the novel’s focus on Heroism and Leadership in Times of Crisis. Joss is fully immersed in her detailed understanding of the nuclear field, and, ironically, this very expertise is what fuels her constant fear. That fear stands as her central motivator, compelling her to take decisive action to prevent the crises that she is so adept at spotting.

“The ‘tests’ that the government had run in the wake of September 11 that allegedly proved that American nuclear reactors were impervious to attacks on nuclear-power-containment structures were at best incomplete and at worst suspect. […] The point of the tests wasn’t to learn the truth. It was to calm a worried public.”

Ethan’s immediate thoughts are that the plane crash is part of a terrorist attack. He knows what the majority of the public does not: that the government “allegedly proved” that such attacks could not happen, while, in reality, these tests were faulty and incomplete. This scene therefore reveals a deeper message of the novel as a whole: that the government is more focused on maintaining the appearance of safety than on taking actions to help small communities like Waketa when disaster strikes.

“Steve flashed back to his first week of training at the plant. Their instructor had passed around pictures of the firefighters from Chernobyl. They were the first responders after the reactor blew, clueless as to what they were dealing with and what it would do to them. Steve had never been able to get those images out of his head.”

Steve’s reference to the images of radiation poisoning foreshadows what will eventually happen to him when he also becomes exposed and suffers similar sores and burns. Additionally, the fact that these images haunt Steve years later help explain his motivation for sacrificing his life; while he is dedicated to saving his community, he also wishes to avoid the prolonged suffering that those at Chernobyl experienced.

“Steve forced himself to stop thinking about Matt. There was nothing he could do for his son right now. Steve had to do his job. His duty was to the people at the plant; his obligation was to try to limit the damage.”

While these thoughts from Steve indicate his dedication and levelheadedness, they also show his habit of pushing his son aside and neglecting his failing relationship with Matt. Additionally, he notes that his “duty” and “obligation” are to his job, but this assertion ignores the fact that he also has a parental obligation to care for his own child.

“Or maybe it was that, for a handful of minutes, [Dawson] could set the job down. He could stop worrying and stressing and wondering what fresh hell the next moment might bring. For the first time since being sworn in, he was nothing more than a man having a laugh on a beautiful day.”

As President Dawson enjoys his Easter festivities at the White House, he does not realize that his day is about to be interrupted by the crisis in Waketa. This is an example of dramatic irony, in which the reader knows something that the characters do not. The author has already revealed what is happening in Waketa, and it is clear that Dawson’s contentment is about to be utterly shattered.

“Considered too small to truly matter, too unimportant to get the attention it needed and deserved. The priority and resources freely given to things considered too big to fail, this town, this plant, had never received.”

These thoughts come from President Dawson as he learns about the crisis, and the passage once again conveys the idea that small communities are unfairly ignored by the government and left to fend for themselves. However, the president’s contemplations also emphasize the importance of Community Strength and Resilience; without the support of the “priority and resources” of the government, residents of communities like Waketa are forced to care for each other, thereby strengthening their bonds.

“They were a pack. A pack of wolves, running toward the chaos as one. They never knew exactly what they would face. No two calls were the same. But they always knew the wolves out in front and by their sides had their backs.”

This metaphor—comparing the firefighters to a wolf pack—emphasizes the motif of redefining “family.” The firefighters act with the same goal, and they care for each other and safeguard each other instinctively, just like a pack of wolves.

“[Joss and Ethan] bumped into each other and both immediately stepped back, avoiding eye contact. Ethan felt his face flush. It was the closest they’d been in fifteen years.”

The awkwardness surrounding Joss and Ethan during their first few interactions is not immediately explained, but the nature of their discomfiture implies that they once shared a level of intimacy that has long since vanished.

“They weren’t just neighbors, they weren’t just friends, they weren’t just colleagues, and they weren’t just teacher and student—they were as good a family as any of them had.”

Carla’s feelings about Dani’s daughter, Bri, and Dani’s father, Marion, emphasize the motif of redefining “family.” Because Dani and Carla’s husband, Levon, are both firefighters, they are with each other constantly and have to trust each other at work. This bond transfers over to their home lives as well, and the families regularly share meals and spend time together. Both family structures challenge the traditional image of the “nuclear family”; Dani is a single mother who lives with her father, and Carla and Levon do not have children. Together, these two groups form a new, expanded version of a family, emphasizing the theme of Community Strength and Resilience.

“But after a few minutes, the guilt in the pit of Carla’s stomach turned to confusion…and then fear.

The truck was headed toward the plant.”

This narrative structure is one that Newman uses throughout the novel. She slowly describes something in one paragraph, explaining the emotions of the characters. Then, in a new, one-line paragraph, she delivers the bad news that the characters are dreading before shifting the perspective to different characters. This deliberately choppy style serves to build suspense and tension, and by paying particular attention to the emotions of the characters, she imbues the novel with a more human touch to counteract the broader gravity of the external crisis.

“No longer a quaint hamlet in the countryside, [Pripyat] was now nothing more than a creepy time capsule of a frozen moment in history: Abandoned apartments with clothes still in the washing machine, food left to rot in the fridge.”

In this passage, Dani contemplates the ghost town of Pripyat—which was constructed to house the workers at Chernobyl. Her thoughts create a parallel between Pripyat and Waketa, as both are small communities that depend on the presence of a nearby power plant to survive. As Dani’s thoughts indicate, Waketa could potentially meet the same fate as Pripyat.

“And while Steve was great at many things, asking for help was not one of them.”

Steve admits this to himself as he tries not to think of Matt during the community’s panic. At the start of the novel, Steve refuses to acknowledge that he is failing to deal with his own grief, and he does not address the fact that he is also falling short in his parental responsibilities to Matt. However, Steve changes by the novel’s end when he realizes the importance of connecting to others and relying on their support.

“Joss was stopped cold. Never, not once in her twenty-year career, had she encountered a politician who wanted to exceed a recommended health and safety guideline.”

When President Dawson tells Joss to extend the evacuation zone, Joss’s shock at his words is designed to emphasize the idea that usually, the government will sacrifice public safety for its own interests and desire for profits. This moment also implies that Dawson is more ethical than most politicians, and as the novel progresses, he repeatedly shows that he cares for the people of Waketa and respects their heroic efforts.

“He wondered what his mom would say if she knew what he was doing […] Oh Matty, I’m so disappointed in you. Shame flashed over to anger. Then she should have stayed.”

Matt’s internal dialogue as he explores the power plant emphasizes the issue of Navigating the Temptation to Ignore Trauma. Due to Steve’s failure to help Matt with his trauma over Claire’s death, the boy now feels “anger” toward his deceased mother and blames her for dying, displaying a level of denial in his momentary belief that she somehow had a choice to “stay” but chose not to. The narrative implies that if Steve had helped Matt appropriately process and deal with his grief, the boy would have avoided the behavior issues that now lead him to make unwise choices.

“The church was packed with people. With supplies. They were a makeshift army of volunteers simply looking to help. Carla wanted to cry. This is what community is. It’s not a place, it’s not a people—it’s the acts of love done in a place by those people.”

Upon witnessing the people gathering at the church, Carla is moved almost to tears by the Community Strength and Resilience on display. The people have come together to bring supplies and food and set up an evacuation plan for everyone in Waketa, and their combined efforts exemplify their support for one another.

“But [Joss had] mostly tuned him out a while back anyway, somewhere around the time he mentioned something about toilet paper. She didn’t give a damn about any of it. Markets in crisis. Misinformation on social media. Traffic accidents, riots, looting as the result of evacuations. None of these were her concerns and she could feel herself growing annoyed with what felt like a lecture from someone who was as safe as could be half the country away in an underground bunker.”

As Joss receives a briefing from President Dawson, she finds herself annoyed at their concern for the less vital ripple effects that the crisis will have on the country. Her thoughts convey that she has a much better sense of priorities, and she clearly acts as an avatar of Heroism and Leadership in Times of Crisis. Her interest is in directly addressing the crisis itself rather than in speculating about hypothetical scenarios that have little to do with the immediate emergency.

“All the while, beneath him, the rods lay in wait. A couple of times, Steve glanced down in spite of himself, almost like he was making sure they weren’t coming up after him. He felt like he was swimming with sharks but without a diver’s cage—no real protection, only a flimsy agreement that they wouldn’t bite him.”

Newman uses a simile to explain Steve’s feelings upon entering the spent fuel pool, comparing his situation to that of a diver without a cage. By equating the radioactive rods to sharks, she imbues this unthinking, unfeeling hazard with a sense of malevolent sentience. This simile also serves to convey Steve’s fear as he tries to complete his job.

“Ethan’s face was bright red as he paced back and forth like a caged animal.”

By comparing Ethan to an animal in a cage, Newman conveys the immense pressure that Ethan feels, as well as his conviction that he is trapped by the impossibility of the current circumstances. He knows that he has potentially sacrificed Steve’s life, and at this point, he fears that this decision may have been made in vain. Faced with his own rising guilt, pressure, and stress, he feels responsible for making decisions that could also impact millions.

“Did I start a checklist or did I text my wife? I was in charge. I was at the controls when it happened. This was on my watch. And my instinct was to put myself first. My family. I put them first. Over everything.”

As Ethan and Joss finally discuss their past, Ethan admits that unlike Joss, his first instinct is to prioritize his family’s welfare over that of the community at large. He also knows that Joss is willing to sacrifice anything necessary to act for the greater good. Ethan’s conflicting feelings complicate the theme of Heroism and Leadership in Times of Crisis, as he struggles to live up to the traditional idea of a self-sacrificial hero. However, Joss reassures him that he did what “anyone would” and that it is not “selfish” or “cowardly” to care about people (205), conveying the idea that heroism can exist alongside the urge to protect the ones he loves.

“There was value in enjoying what’s here, what’s beautiful, what’s now. Not overthinking it. Just enough is enough. Sure, you could spend your life tilting at windmills, but to what end?”

Joss’s thoughts show that her perspective has been changed by recent events, and she now recognizes the importance of valuing close connections rather than “tilting at windmills.” This expression is an allusion to Miguel de Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote (1605), in which the titular character uses his lance to attack windmills that he believes are evil giants. In a modern context, this expression refers to engaging in a useless battle against an imagined foe, and the narrative implies that Joss is questioning her past actions regarding her career. She fears that she was fighting against evils that either don’t exist or can’t be beaten instead of focusing on building a meaningful life, as Ethan has.

“How many years would it take before they felt safe? Or would they always be waiting, wondering when the bill would come due, when they would be forced to pay the hero’s price?”

This quote reveals Joss’s thoughts about the workers who responded at the power plant, and her contemplations highlight the invisible fear and anxiety that come with the risks of working with radioactive material. Her description is designed to heighten the tension and fear surrounding the plant, as its workers are all fighting against something they cannot see, control, or fully understand.

“A loud alarm suddenly went off.

A split second later, the lights went out.

The second generator was dead.

You could feel the collective heartbeat rise as they all looked at one another in the ghostly glow of the emergency lighting and blinking red and white lights on the panels while the alarms blared.”

With the distinctive narrative structure of several short, one-line paragraphs, Newman pares down her descriptions to the bare minimum to convey the deep fear that compels the engineers to stop arguing. Their arguments about how to handle the generators are moot, as the generators themselves have failed. Combined with this realization, the longer, more descriptive paragraph uses emotionally laden diction like “collective heartbeat,” “ghostly glow,” and “blared” to show the transition from strife to pure calm and then to panic as they realize that they have run out of time.

“Broken glass cracked under their feet as Joss and Steve crept down the same hallway the drone had traveled not long ago. They would trace its path to the basement and, ultimately, Joss realized with a chill, mirror the machine’s fate. They too would soon be found at the bottom of a pool of toxic water, gone. Damaged beyond repair. Their duty done.”

This metaphor compares Steve and Joss to Matt’s drone as the two doomed heroes take the same path to the basement. Joss morbidly reflects that just like the machine, they, too, will cease to exist. This comparison emphasizes the fear that Joss feels as she walks toward her “duty” and accepts her imminent death. The scene also marks the beginning of her regret over her lifelong tendency to behave as a machine by dedicating herself to her work rather than forging lasting relationships with others and fully living her life.