Know where to run
A propos of the comment thread below: From what I understand the exurbs are hit or miss. My in-laws live in one in Colorado about halfway between Denver and Boulder, all brand-new development homes. Theirs is okay, but they know of ones that have gone dead. People just flee into the prairies and hills since there's so much open road, and whoever's left is dead or revved. So the empty areas around them are probably hit or miss as well. If shantytowns or camps are being set up you might be better off steering clear, I'd guess. The official news is almost 100% bullshit at this point--when was the last time you saw a reporter you recognize from before the outbreak?--but an occasional nugget of truth filters through if they can use it to justify something or other, and even they're talking about hijacking.
Things here are not nearly as bad, but I'm thinking of going with a crew. Maybe. We do our part.
I would like to add: I remember the days when I used to read Disinformation.com and Robert Anton Wilson's "nonfiction" books. I considered myself a Discordian. I suppose I still do. I remember posting pages from the Principia Discordia on the doors of the Skull & Bones tomb--this was BEFORE both major-party Presidential candidates were Bonesmen, by the way. Then I grew out of my conspiracy phase because I realized I don't really believe in much of anything. Skepticism makes better sense. And yet I stand by what I said above: the news is now bullshit. The thing to note, though, is that there is no puppetmaster pulling the strings that I can figure. Now it's just a collective drive on the part of the infrastructure to cover its ass. Meanwhile people still die every day. Something like 237,000 people died in this country last year I think. Figure half of those? Even being conservative and saying a third? Plus the bite victims?
How are my in-laws you ask? They're fine. But I get the sense they're keeping something from us. Blunt and prosaic but the true story of our life today.
Things here are not nearly as bad, but I'm thinking of going with a crew. Maybe. We do our part.
I would like to add: I remember the days when I used to read Disinformation.com and Robert Anton Wilson's "nonfiction" books. I considered myself a Discordian. I suppose I still do. I remember posting pages from the Principia Discordia on the doors of the Skull & Bones tomb--this was BEFORE both major-party Presidential candidates were Bonesmen, by the way. Then I grew out of my conspiracy phase because I realized I don't really believe in much of anything. Skepticism makes better sense. And yet I stand by what I said above: the news is now bullshit. The thing to note, though, is that there is no puppetmaster pulling the strings that I can figure. Now it's just a collective drive on the part of the infrastructure to cover its ass. Meanwhile people still die every day. Something like 237,000 people died in this country last year I think. Figure half of those? Even being conservative and saying a third? Plus the bite victims?
How are my in-laws you ask? They're fine. But I get the sense they're keeping something from us. Blunt and prosaic but the true story of our life today.
posted by Sean T. Collins at 12:12 AM
4 Comments:
I managed to navigate the sailboat my family is on through the Cape Cod cannal down to Cuttyhunk.
Quite an adventure. I took on the cannal during the early morning hours. Pretty quite. I had to do some tricky sailing as a barge was blocking half the width of the cannal in Scussett. When I got to the Bourne and Sagamore bridge however, I found half of the Bourne Bourne bridge was in shambles, as if the military bombed half the bridge to cut the Cape off from the rest of Massachusetts. Sagamore was a different story with the bridge blocked off with cars, trucks, buses you name it. One have the bridge, the Cape side was clear. Then you had the blockade, then you had about 5-6 hundred dead all milling about on the bridge. They saw our boat and just starred at my wife, baby and I was we sailed under the bridge. A few dropped off the bridge as we passed under, but they missed the mark entirely.
We arrived in Cuttyhunk about 4:30pm. We were greated by a few of the locals, who were skittish about our showing up, but once they saw we were unaffected quickly warmed up. They've been unfazed by the events that have struck the rest of the country, but aren't doing so well on medicine and certain food stuffs. I've offered to ferry a scrounge crew over to Woodshole to see if we can dig up some medicine and supplies. My wife and child are staying with a nice couple on Cuttyhunk while I prepare Sutter II (our appropriated boat) for the journey.
I appologize for the typos in the previous comment.
Busy day yesterday. Took a lot out of me.
The last thing I'm worried about is typos. Stay safe, Mr. Mind.
Y'know what worries me a lot more than typos? Fires. Even though in most cities, the firemen are protected by the Army--or in some cases replaced by the Army--it's still far, far more dangerous work than it was before The Outbreak. We hardly thought about it when things were normal, but a fire that gets out of control inside a major metropolitan area could be devastating to a city already on the brink. I've heard speculation that there might have been a big fire in the capital city just before we lost all contact with North Korea.
Did you guys see the movie "28 Days Later"? Remember the scene where they discover that the entire city of Manchester is on fire? Well, that always bugged me a little bit that Manchester was the only city that seemed to have major fire problems. If there are no people left, there are no firemen, and that means any lightning strike, or gas-pipeline leak, or whatever, is going to just burn everything in its path, including all those wooden houses we humans build so conveniently close to each other. That's one of the major reasons I'm thinking of getting the hell out of the city if it starts looking like the living are losing the war.
And what happens when there's another big natural disaster? The tsunami back in December was bad enough, but we didn't have the added problem that all those waterlogged bodies would get up and start looking for food. And the worst earthquakes on record killed something like 900,000 people in China. If that happens now, I think the world governments would have only one choice: nuke the city where the quake hit before anything has the chance to leave.
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