At the beginning of the book when Priest is after the seismic vibrator, he starts working with a company and offers to take the vibrator to Clovis. Clovis is a city in Fresno County, California.
One of the important elements in the book is the seismic vibrator Priest uses to cause an earthquake. A seismic vibrator is a truck-mounted or buggy-mounted device that is capable of injecting low-frequency vibrations into the earth. It is one of a number of seismic sources used in reflection seismology. Today, seismic vibrators are used to perform about half of all seismic surveys on land.
Judy works for the FBI. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, the FBI is also a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community and reports to both the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. A leading U.S. counter-terrorism, counterintelligence, and criminal investigative organization, the FBI has jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crimes.
The car that Priest drives is a Plymouth Cuda. The Plymouth Barracuda is a two-door automobile manufactured by Plymouth from 1964 to 1974.
The terrorists cause the earthquakes in the area where the San Andreas Fault is found. The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly 1,200 kilometres through California. It forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is right-lateral strike-slip.
The commune where Priest and Star created decades ago is in Sierra County. Sierra County is a county in the U.S. state of California. The county is in the Sierra Nevada, northeast of Sacramento on the border with Nevada.
The first earthquake is caused in Owens Valley. Owens Valley is the now-arid valley of the Owens River in eastern California in the United States, to the east of the Sierra Nevada and west of the White Mountains and Inyo Mountains on the west edge of the Great Basin.
At some point the characters refer to Patty Hearst and her life story. Patricia Campbell Hearst (born February 20, 1954) is an American author and actress. A granddaughter of the American publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, she became internationally known for events following her 1974 kidnapping by a left-wing terrorist group, the Symbionese Liberation Army. Hearst was found 19 months after being abducted, by which time she was a fugitive wanted for serious crimes committed with members of the group. She was held in custody, and there was speculation before trial that her family’s resources would enable her to avoid time in jail. At her trial, the prosecution suggested that Hearst had joined the Symbionese Liberation Army of her own volition. However, Hearst testified that she had been raped and threatened with death while held captive. In 1976, she was convicted for the crime of bank robbery and sentenced to 35 years in prison, later reduced to 7 years. Her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter, and she was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton.
Michael, the seismologist, former husband of Melanie, lives in Berkeley. Berkeley is a city on the east shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emeryville to the south and the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington to the north.
San Francisco is where Priest planned for the next earthquake to happen. San Francisco, officially City and County of San Francisco and colloquially known as SF, San Fran, or “The City”, is the cultural, commercial, and financial centre of Northern California.
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