Worst Case Scenario by T.J. Newman

Published by Little, Brown and Company on August 13, 2024

Worst Case Scenario is the latest offering from disaster novelist T.J. Newman. The disastrous series of events begins with a commercial jet pilot’s heart attack. Unfortunate coincidences (like the co-pilot getting stuck in a bathroom) cause the plane to crash. T.J. Newman once worked as a flight attendant so it isn’t surprising that a flight attendant makes heroic but futile efforts to save the day.

The jet crashes into a nuclear power plant in the small town of Waketa, Minnesota. The reactors are undamaged but the crash leads to a series of problems, including a ruptured dry cask that is storing nuclear waste and a severed distribution line that has left the plant without power. Cracks are causing water to leak from a pool that holds spent fuel rods.  Diesel generators keep cooling pumps in operation, but the generators will soon be underwater. The plant is on its way to becoming Minnesota’s Chernobyl.

The formula for a disaster novel is to pair the large catastrophe with a smaller one. A wing from the jet smashed into a bridge. Apart from messing up traffic on I-35, the wing destroyed a van, killing the parents of a kid named Connor who remains strapped to his car seat as the van teeters on the edge of the bridge. Firefights try to rescue Connor but burning jet fuel hampers their rescue attempts.

Heroism and self-sacrifice are the novel’s themes. On the bridge, a firefighter named Dani Allen defies orders to get her fire truck to the nuclear plant and risks her life to rescue Connor. Back at the plant, Fire Chief Steve Tostig joins with nuclear-incident first responder Jocelyn “Joss” Vance and plant manager Ethan Rosen to fix the cascading problems, some of which will require one or more characters to perform dangerous stunts, including a swim in radioactive water.

While it is always inspiring to read about self-sacrifice, the theme is a bit overdone in Worst Case Scenario. As characters make choices that will lead to their injury or death for the good of others, they think about the things they’ll be missing when they are no longer walking among the living. All fiction is intended to manipulate the reader, but the best fiction does so with subtlety. Some of the weepy scenes in Worst Case Scenario are so obviously intended to manipulate the reader’s emotions that they lose their effectiveness.

On the other hand, the descriptions of the unfolding disasters are undeniably compelling. Newman takes time to walk the reader through the safety procedures at nuclear plants and creates what seems to be a plausible worst case scenario that might make a plant melt down. Her research is impressive. (Understand that while the story seemed plausible to me, I'm not a nuclear physicist. I lack the knowledge to spot possible errors in her description of nuclear plant operations.)

Newman keeps the story moving at a brisk pace. She builds excitement as the characters race against time. The disaster novel formula is predictable but the obvious attempt to manipulate the emotions of readers is reasonably successful. I willingly surrendered to the manipulation for the sake of learning what would happen next.

Character development is adequate, although none of the characters are memorable. Two characters are in conflict about the decision to have children — one wants to change the world, the other wants to have a family. The realization that it’s possible to do both is another predictable aspect of the story. More insightful is a character’s realization that in the grand scheme of things, his life doesn’t matter much. Freeing ourselves from the illusion that we’re important creates the opportunity to enjoy the brief time we have. That lesson is convincing.

Disaster novels often morph into disaster movies. Newman makes it easy to visualize the plane crash and teetering van, scenes that might be even more attention grabbing on a big screen. The ending emphasizes self-sacrifice that might have moviegoers shedding a few tears. Disaster fans who don’t want to wait for the movie will likely enjoy the exciting story if they set aside their reservations about Newman’s attempt to trigger their emotions with weepy scenes of heroism.

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