Hello to all of you, sorry for my bad english, i hope you will forgive me for that, as i hope someone of you could help me out. I almost ended my new novel, but i'm at a dead point now. So, the MC is on a cargo ship, escaping from a city in which is going to detonate a nuclear bomb. She's on the ship, with some other survivors and they're reaching for another city. They are on the ship, then the bomb detonates. This is the point where i got stuck. I need them to reach the new city safe but something has to hapen before they get there, i was thinking about a sort of Tsunami caused by the explosion, but i don't know how describe the scenes, the events in this situation. What would happen? What can i make them do, before they reach the new city, without being it boring? It has not to be long, but it has to fill the gap before they reach safety. Anybody can help me out? Thanks in advance and sorry again for my english.
Caught in the fallout which blows their way. Radiation dose too high (from inhaled dust); advised by dying doctor that they need to reroute (critical mission) and get hold of some potassium iodide to mitigate the effect.
From a fish eye or something? How many drops? As we saluted our goodbye to London a tremendous mushroom cloud billowed at our backs. 'My God that's Buckingham Palace, a direct hit, ' I said and wept for all the royal babies in the world. Then an incredible wave of brown water scooped our vessel over the scrapers of Canary Wharf. With great skill I mastered the controls like a racing driver, and our ship graced down the face of the wave, in fact I veered left and the SS PyongChjang Olympics II pig-dogged the most magnificent barrel in history. The water became elliptical and at no extra charge the passengers emerged from the tube at Le Havre in France and freedom. At the docks President Trump shook my hand...
They could be shipwrecked on an inhospitable island. Or, if you don't want to lose the ship, they heave-to, while the storm passes. They could be attacked by pirates. Maybe they've run out of provisions and have to send out a landing party. Or they pick up a mayday signal from a small craft in trouble and have to change course to rescue it. I prefer the last one, because it gives your hero a chance to show courage or compassion or whatever trait you want to emphasize; it's an opportunity to introduce new characters and possibly a love interest, or a tragedy, or a fresh conflict.
Actually I have had this problem with voyages. Months at sea at no story to fill. Maybe a book within a book might resolve the problem? I got my emigres as far as the Canary Islands, then cheated an ending by having the skipper confuse Cape Town and inhabitants with aborigines.
First comes the bright light, then comes the shock wave. Everyone would be inside of the boat and try to escape the black rain. Damages that would usually be repaired are left while arguing about when it's safe and who to send to the top. Some hero or poor sucker (depending on the outcome) believing that it's safe would be the first to walk out and prove the others right or wrong. You can take inspiration from prison stories and have anarchy on the boat, because some of them believe that the world is going to hell. The boat ride is just as important as the events before the explosion and doesn't have to be filler content. If you start to treat the journey as filler, what prevents their destination from just being more filler after that? Focus on the character arcs and use the ride as a way to bond people into new friendships and vendettas.
The problem with tsunamis- in this specific context, obviously- is that they are basically unnoticeable in open water. It wouldn't become dangerous until it reaches the opposite coast. The blastwave in the air would be more dangerous if the ship were still relatively close to shore; smashing windows, tearing off antennae and radar domes and blowing away anyone standing on deck like dandelion seeds in a Force 12. On top of that, the EMP would kill the radios, the fancy navigational equipment (on that note, never get in a boat or aeroplane with anyone whose attitude to navigation is 'it's okay, I have a GPS'), engine management systems and pretty much any moving parts that aren't designed to be worked by hand. They might be able to rig up a way to get the engines working without computers if the ship is old enough and the engineers are good, but it would be a long way from easy. They'd probably have lost direct control over the rudder and manoeuvring thrusters when the computers got BBQ'd, so they'd have to use the emergency steering gear under manual control. Even then, it's partly electrical, but if it wasn't on at the time it should be okay. You might end up with a chain of people shouting commands from the bridge down to the engine room and emergency steering gear because the VHF sets are now a bunch slightly burned-smelling paperweights. Depending on how many of the ship's actual crew were killed or incapacitated by the blast, you'd best hope that somebody else knows how to navigate by DR...assuming the impact didn't wreck the compass, of course. If only one city in their country has been destroyed, they can probably just handrail along the coast to the next port.
