Murphy made his inevitable appearance and even the worst case scenario plan failed to provide for all contingencies.The government, traditionally, doesn’t believe in “go to hell plans” as every contingency can be overcome if you throw enough money at it. Take for instance, uhm, the uh…well, I’m sure there’s a good example out there somewhere. The CME of 2012, unfortunately, was not one of them; and as of 5:30pm EDT on Day One, the President and his staff were in the air trying to decide where, or even whether to land. When Day Two broke, the President was still in the air and his staff were still trying to decide where to land.That they must land eventually was never really in question--the plane couldn’t stay in the air indefinitely; but after refueling midair twice, they’d gotten a nasty surprise. Getting refueling planes in the air with full refueling tanks was rapidly becoming a problem. Couple that with the need to minimize the distance the refueling planes had to fly and coordinate the logistics surrounding keeping the plane airborne and suddenly they were in a sufficiently predictable flight pattern that they might as well land. From the limited reports they were receiving now, the entire northern hemisphere had gone dark. Assuming those reports were correct, and there was no reason to believe that any other country had been more prepared than the U.S.
