THE CHRONICLES OF KAIMAKLA - AFTER THE CATACLYSM – THE AGE OF FIREBALLS FROM THE OCEANS

by Natalie key | 11 April 2025

The climate apocalypse predicted by today’s scientists had finally come to pass. The Eurasian landmass had become one vast desert scorched by ferocious heat; rivers had dried up; water in the oceans had become too hot for fish to live in; the ocean levels had risen due to melting ice caps and swallowed up major coastal cities; storms of unimaginable ferocity criss-cross the earth; methane hydrate explosions from the ocean bed erupt with unimaginable destructive power. Most of humanity has been obliterated by the ferocity of heat and storms, thirst and hunger and in the wars that followed the apocalypse.

Ravi Tennekoon

All knowledge of science and technology and of our civilisation has been lost and the survivors of the climate apocalypse do not even know that planes, cars and phones ever existed. A complete obliteration of civilisation memory has occurred.

The descendants of those who survived this cataclysm live in underground cities.

Amanaar and Mayzaar are two such men who are descendants of climate refugees from Saharan Africa and they live in one such underground city, Kaimakla, located in what is today’s Turkey.

The story commences with Amanaar and the city elders of Kaimakla discovering that the oasis on which their city and others depend is drying up and that they will all die soon from thirst and starvation. As a desperate measure, Amanaar organises a journey to cross the vast desert lying north of Kaimakla (which is coextensive with today’s Eurasian landmass) by camel caravan in search of a safe haven for his people. They have heard legends and vague stories from travellers that there is a land beyond the great desert (called the “mushroom peninsula” - today’s Scandinavian peninsula) where humans can survive.

On their journey they face exploding methane hydrate fireballs from the oceans of immense destructive power, storms of unimaginable ferocity but they also stumble upon objects from today’s world which are incomprehensible to them. These make them wonder whether a vastly advanced civilisation existed before the climate apocalypse. They reach what is today’s Scandinavia and meet Stinna.

Stinna is the highly intelligent and beautiful wife of the son of the ruler of Lan-jow, a city in today’s Scandinavia; she is a woman of extremely strong character and a very forceful personality, who is in search of proof of her belief in a lost civilisation of her distant ancestors - the “Eoropi”. Stinna passionately believes in the truth of the legends of great cities and a vanished and vastly advanced technological civilisation. She is the dominant character in much of the book who begins a dalliance with Mayzaar but then falls passionately in love with him. The passionate love affair between the young Mayzaar and Stinna unfolds in a world of terrifying natural phenomena.

Stinna persuades the two men to join her in the search for the truth and for an explanation of what happened.

This is their story.