[1] Schmidt builds a launcher on the Texas-Mexico border to fire sulfur into the air, a form of stratospheric aerosol injection intended to cool the planet by reflecting sunlight into space.

[6] Saskia and Grant become entangled in Schmidt's plan, while Singh travels to the Line of Actual Control on the China-India border, where Chinese and Indian volunteers fight each other using non-lethal martial arts.

In the climax of the book, Singh is sent with a team of drones on a covert mission by India, whose monsoons were delayed by Schmidt's geoengineering campaign, to destroy the Texas launcher.

The book's title refers to the idea that once a solar geoengineering scheme begins, abruptly stopping it would result in rapid warming, called a termination shock.

[7] Omar El Akkad, reviewing Termination Shock for The New York Times, wrote that it was "...at once wildly imaginative and grounded...both a response to a deeply broken reality, and an attempt to alter it.