Some emergencies, some crisis situations, truly spring upon us with little or no warning. When Mt. St. Helen's exploded back in 1980, not one volcanologist expected the monstrous, nuclear-type blast that flattened the mountainside, the landscape, and the entire ecosystem inside the blast-zone. The scientists were waiting for, even eagerly anticipating, an eruption. They anticipated something powerful and dangerous, but expected a plottable trajectory, a comprehensible movement and growth. When instead the mountain exploded with unimagined force of fire and rush of wind, no one was prepared for the devastation.