Clive Cussler Mix Trivia Quiz

Answer: "Raise the Titanic!"

Clive Cussler wrote a novel back in 1976 called, "Raise the Titanic!". In the novel, the president has come up with a group of scientists called Metasection which devises plans to come up with near impossible tasks. The task of Metasection this time to create an invisible wall using sound waves to destroy any inbound missile attack coming from Russia.

However, in order to make this defense plan (called the "Cecilian Defense") work, they need a rare mineral called Byzanium. After many interviews and research, they find that the only source of the Byzanium now lies in the cargo hold of the Titanic. Since the Titanic is too far down for divers to get to, they agree to use NUMA to help raise the ship so it can easily be obtained.

Answer: "Polar Shift"

In the novel, "Polar Shift", a state of the art cargo ship called the Southern Bell was sunk by a rogue wave which was thought to be over 110 ft. tall. Kurt Austin was the head of the Special Projects team of NUMA and set out to find out the cause of these rogue waves and monstrous, ship-eating whirlpools.

He found that a group of anarchists were trying to prove some point by using equations by German scientist Laslo Kovach to cause a polar shift. Austin managed to stop the polar shift and destroyed the anarchists leaders, Tristan Margraves and Jordon Gant for good.

Answer: "Navigator"

In this 2007 novel, an Italian woman by the name of Carina Macarti was searching for stolen artifacts which belonged the Iraqi museum. In her travels, she ended up finding another artifact which was not on her list to obtain. It was a statue called the Navigator.

The villain in this book was Victor Bolthazar. Bolthazar claimed he is from the bloodline of King Solomon and wants the statue which supposedly belonged to his people. In the process, he kidnapped Macarti and claimed she was a decendent of Queen of Sheba. Bolthazar made it a point to try and dispose of Macarti by sacrificing her to the god Beo. Kurt Austin foiled his plans of the sacrifice and the taking of the statue.

In Austin's travels, he found that the Navigator had a twin which was buried in the sea by a rock slide in Turkey.

It was found that both the Navigator and a ciphered map from Thomas Jefferson pointed to a possible gold mine at O Fear which was thought to be the third of King Solomon's mines.

Answer: "White Death"

The villain here was Dr. Barker. Barker wanted to control the fish population by using genetics to make bigger fish. However, his experiments were getting out of control and he ended up making fish that acted stranger than normal and were also monstrous in their size. Barker planned on releasing these fish into the Atlantic Ocean and was going to destroy the species of fish that were in the world's oceans. Once again, Kurt Austin and his NUMA Special Projects division foiled Barker's plans and destroyed Barker by "feeding him to the fish" literally.

Answer: "Atlantis Found!"

This novel was a Dirk Pit adventure. Pitt rescued a woman and a professor (who was found later to be one of the villains) in a cave which was deliberately destroyed to prevent them from uncovering certain details about a family history. The family was called the Wolf's with the main leader named Carl.

The Wolf's had a plan to break part of the polar ice cap off in order to cause the Earth to go into a polar shift. However, they plan to save themselves by creating three super-sized liners. One liner would be to house the Wolf family and their workers, another would carry their belongings, and the other would have elements for survival such as oil, gas, water, and animals. Pitt stopped Carl Wolf from his plan by wrecking his complex. In Pitt's travels, he ran into a very famous person who lent him transportation across the frozen tundra of the Antarctic.

Answer: Thomas Jefferson

In "Navigator", Thomas Jefferson was featured as part of the novel. He was ending his presidential term in 1809 and prepared to go back to Montecello. Before he left, he packed up several important documents which were vandalized and destroyed on their way to Montecello.

It was found out that he was a fan of ciphers and he had ciphered a letter to Merriwether Lewis who was part of the Lewis & Clark expedition. Lewis was killed, but had found the other part of a treasure map which led to King Solomon's mines at Au Fear.

Answer: Cussler

This was actually neat how this was done. Pitt needed transportation to take him to the Wolf complex across the ice cap. One of the locals said that a man, who called himself "Dad", had what was known as the Snow Machine. Pitt asked "Dad" if he could borrow it and stated that it was in the best interest of the world.

The man reluctantly let Pitt borrow the vehicle. On the way to chase down the Wolf's, Pitt asked Albert Giordino if he caught what the man's actual name was. Giordino replied that he wasn't sure, but that an envelope that stuck out of his pocket had the name of "Clive Cussler" written in the corner of it. Cussler wrote himself in a couple of novels.

His name was also mentioned in "Navigator" when Austin suggested to Joe Zavala about lending his "sub-Vette" to the Cussler car museum.

Answer: gravel

After Pitt and his NUMA crew raised the Titanic, weathered Hurricane Amanda, and captured Andre Prevlov and his two Russian spies, they towed the ship into New York. When they opened the vault in the cargo hold, they realized that it was not Byzanium, but rather gravel.

The kind you would see under a road bed. However, Pitt was not discouraged. Tracing back the clues, he went to a small town of Southby, England and looked for Vernon Hall's grave. Sid Koplin found traces of Byzanium in the fill above the grave. No one would've thought to look for it in the soil.

The "Cecilian Project" was a success.

Answer: wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff

In "Polar Shift", the historical event was about the wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff. The Gustloff went down in the Baltic Sea on January 30, 1945 after being torpedoed three times by a Russian U-boat. In this event, an Austrian by the name of Carl Schrader was helping a young scientist out of Germany to protect him from the Russians who want him to use his theories of a polar shift to destroy the world.

The scientist's name was Laslo Kovach. He eventually had a granddaughter by the name of Carla Yanos. Kovach insisted that her parents call her Carla after the person who helped save his life. Schrader and Kovach were both onboard the Gustloff when it was struck and sank; killing over 8000 people.

Answer: NUMA

Kurt Austin and Dirk Pitt were both directors of the Special Projects team through the National Underwater & Marine Agency (NUMA). Austin became the director of this team after Pitt was promoted to being the director of NUMA. Pitt, who was the Special Projects manager in "Raise the Titanic!", became director after the former director, Admiral James Sandecker, became Vice-President of the United States.

When Pitt was the Special Projects manager, his assistant was Albert Giordino with whom he was great friends with in California.

After Kurt Austin took over the duties as Special Projects manager, he picked his assistant to be a Mexican-born native by the name of Joe Zavala. Zavala was instrumental in engineering new submersibles and making them work.

His creation in "Navigator" was a car-like vehicle dubbed the "sub-Vette".