Now that we had prepared our defence against any potential human enemies we had to prepare for our future within our new world. The first things we had to do were plough our fields, plant our crops and maintain our animals such that we could provide for our future food and material requirements. To achieve some of these objectives we set about creating several herds of animals, in different locations, to provide greater security for their survival. We were now in a position, with our additional manpower and improving weather, to maintain and protect several small herds of horses, sheep, goats, and cows outside of our shelters. From these we hoped, in time, to produce herds large enough to provide, within our then medium term, sufficient wool, meat, milk etc for our hopefully expanding community.
We had first to convert several of our damaged houses into suitable accommodation in order to protect our animals during the expected near term hard winter. This was not an onerous task as the damage, though visually fairly severe, required only the restoration of the roofs and windows with slight structural repairs in order to provide sufficient protection for our animals. In those days these repairs could normally be performed by cannibalizing materials from nearby more severely damaged homes. Sometimes, however, the wonder of the carpenter and his team were required to recover materials from the remains of trees that were not showing signs of recovery.
Similarly we required protection for our stored crops and other foods after harvesting. We had kept all our empty storage buckets and other devices from our used stores but these would be insufficient for our future storage requirements. Our original store had been for one hundred persons for ten years but now we were over five hundred with a potentially large increase in animals. Additionally our farming areas were diverse and somewhat large. We were in the quandary of potential plenty into which we could have relaxed. It was fortunate for us, however, that we did not. Instead we worked at producing a state of plenty in case we should achieve a further significant increase in personnel.
We planted our crops having ploughed much more than would be necessary for our existing population. We had decided on excess as we hoped for more personnel to increase our expertise range though simple labour was just as necessary. By this means our objective was to improve our long term survival potential.
Our crops were growing well in all our farming areas. We had potatoes, carrots and acres of cereals. We were planting out hundreds of fruit trees and we had found another twenty survivors to join us. We had opened a tunnel between our quarantine cellar and our original shelter and dug wells at each of our empires habitation zones. We hoped to make each village self sufficient for all basic materials so that not all our proverbial eggs would be in that single proverbial basket.
The positioning of the digs or drilling (we used both techniques) of these wells were discovered using an old fashioned dowsing technique. For this task we made our tools by simply bending two copper rods. This technique was suggested by one of our new guests as he had, apparently, often used it to good effect for finding water pipes and duct lines across fields.
Most of us were, to say the least, a little suspicious of the idea and some even mocked the proposal. After some experience, however, we were rapidly converted to the technique as it proved to be of value when locating water while walking over the ground. One of the wells found was drilled through the sump floor of our shelter and the fifteen centimetre pipe produced such a pressure of the required fluid that we had to install a means of flow control to our water container one floor above. We also produced three external wells within one hundred meters of our shelter one being our original well source, the others drilled. The two new external wells produced plenty of clean, drinkable water.
The politico’s shelter complex already had one very good well inside the shelter. We now drilled two more outside the shelter. Originally these two wells were created for the animals though there was a river within a kilometre of the shelter. The water from both these external wells had to be pumped to the surface. Latterly all the villages and shelters earned, sometimes at great effort, a well as we unanimously agreed that we had to provide this primary facility for all parts of our empire.
I believe it was in late August of the seventh year since the impact that our then idyllic second life came to a rather abrupt change. One of our new personnel, named Caesar, had been a professional meteorologist. To this gentleman, as one of his tasks, we had given the task of trying to forecast the weather using the basic tools he had maintained, with some difficulty, through his adventures. These tools consisted of several thermometers, including a maximum minimum, two simple barometers and a microbarograph (with limited paper so this material had to be reused), two rain gages etc.
He was able to provide a reasonably two day weather forecast, from a single position which allowed us to better protect our crops hence he became a valuable asset and was well respected. One day he came to us and presented the vague observation, to those prepared to listen, that something strange was happening. He explained that for the last few days he had noticed a slight, but increasing, reduction in sunlight level. We had all recently experienced the incredible sunrises and sunsets that he explained was a further aberration worthy of noting as a potential risk. He was unable to assess the risk from his original observations but was obviously sincere and worried
He requested, and was allowed, to test the air for his ´particulates´ by pumping the air through a prepared cloth filter for a period of eight hours. Permission was required as this necessitated a small allocation of electrical energy. On completion of this task he advised that we might have a serious problem. He was concerned about some particles that he found in the filter which, though not visible, he considered a further aberration. He had examined the particles under a microscope and though he was not a volcanologist he had some experience in the field at his old university. He presented the rather worrying hypothesis that, from his initial studies of the particulates, a volcano might have erupted and we were receiving a wave front of particulates.
He advised that we should prepare for the possibility of something rather serious. He was worried that there might have been a major eruption, possibly due to the recent impact, disrupting a major caldera system; he mentioned Yellowstone in America as a possibility and described, rather alarmingly, its potential effects. As the particulates buildup was slow the volcano might be a considerable distance from us and therefore, if we were seeing these results, potentially it was very large and capable of causing long term affects from which we should immediately arrange to protect ourselves.
If this supposition was correct we might have to return to our major shelters and consolidate all our people within them. The caves, with the possible exception of the mine, could not be sealed and prepared properly within any available time-frame and the rich mans shelter was too small to be reasonably supported. He suggested that if it got any worse wet cloth filters should be worn round the nose and mouth while outside. He felt it necessary to propose this protection as what he had seen consisted largely of very fine glass particles which could cause major damage to unprotected lungs and even, in time, to the bones. Of course the potential shelters would have to revert to the original filter system we had previously arranged requiring the allocation of considerably more energy to our ventilation systems.
This gave us an immediate problem. We did not want to panic but if he was correct we would have to immediately consider putting all our capabilities into moving a large proportion of our resources to our two main shelters and split our total population between them. This would mean crowding, within the shelters, at a level we had never considered for an unknown but possibly extended period.
Most of our existing food resources would have to be recovered from our empire and divided according to the numbers in the shelters. We would be able, as we would not be facing a blast or earth movements, to increase the original shelter volume. This we could achieve by digging tunnels to the outbuildings and including them within the physical prot
ected space of the shelters. We would have to try to find more water resources sufficiently close to each of the two main shelters.
Could we complete such work in time? The river would be an unsuitable water resource due to particulates potentially contaminating the water. This would include the potential, if the particles were sufficiently dense, of creating an unusable and physically damaging sludge. In addition we considered that walking to the river and carrying back the water might prove impractical.
We, fortunately as it turned out, immediately made the decision that we would immediately throw all physical resources at the problem. We justified this decision by the fact that if we were wrong no long term harm would accrue except hard work but if we did nothing we could have long term problems resulting in the possible loss of lives.
Having made our decision the first things to do was to move as much external energy resources to the shelters as possible. As a second priority we moved the animals into protected environments in or near the shelters. We had to identify options for increasing shelter space, prepared the harvesting of all recoverable foodstuffs that we had planted or could find, gather as much useful material into or near the shelters and rescue some of our recently planted fruit trees to return them to the shelters for replanting at some later date.
We would also need, during the time available, to extend our communications systems to include the political shelter so that, if inter-shelter physical communication should prove impossible, the shelters could follow developments in either domain. Such a communication system would allow assistance, if such was required, to be provided by either shelter to the other; presuming such assistance was possible at that time.
We needed to hurry as from what our expert Caesar advised, based solely on a scientific guess, we might have only a week, not much more, before major precautions would have to be taken when working outside. It was also possible that our vehicles would cease to function as their filters might have insufficient capacity to protect them from the dust. We decided we would use our vehicles, to achieve our objectives, twenty four hours a day regardless of any possible effect on our energy reserves.
We would, once we were sure of the problem, probably have to kill several of our animals and dry, smoke or otherwise preserve the meat in a form that could survive for, possibly, several years. This time we worked with the possibility of being incarcerated for a further eight years. Although I had almost enjoyed part of our previous incarceration some had found it very trying. I wondered how these people would view this new incarceration in conditions far more trying than our previous internment. Even I, who found our initial incarceration a form of adventure, was a little depressed at the idea of being enclosed for such a potentially long period with such numbers.
The day after advising us of the potential problem Caesar was given permission to make further daily measurements. This time he would not only be looking for an increase in particulates but also for sulphates in the residues of his filters. An increase in sulphates, over previous samples (as he had no other baseline to work from), would indicate a probable volcanic origin of the samples. Having taken his sample for a period similar to his previous test he took the two elements of his filters to the chemist. The chemist tested the samples and advised, though not surprisingly, that there was a considerable increase in sulphates in the second sample. It should be noted that we had no volcanologists within our group but, in spite of that, we had received a valid warning in time for us to take action to protect ourselves from the possibility.
Armed with this information we decided to treat this as a disaster in the making and continue, with even more effort if this was possible, our preparations to meet it. The only immediate limit would be the killing of the animals which would be the final act when/if the sky was sufficiently darkened to make external living and working difficult.
Those animals that were to be protected were taken into their new shelter habitats; this was done immediately to secure their health. We also arranged to trap some rabbits as these animals, though currently rare, would convert their food to meat better than anything we currently had available; afterwards their skins and other body parts could be useful.
We started transferring everything we thought necessary, even most of our originally repositioned fuel reserves and other items left in other sites. This included our important telephone equipment (the cable links remained), from our villages to our shelter survival centres. We considered that the distant mine would be indefensible against the expected conditions as the work necessary would spread our capabilities too far. We therefore transferred as much essential material as possible to our shelters. As the mine was the most physically distant of our empire much material remained, notably the petrol store, when we temporarily shut it down.
Some inter-transfer between the two main shelters was arranged; amongst those items included medicines, communication equipment (the political shelter had good digital communication equipment but none could be usefully used with our analogue inter-shelter facility) and food. Some food and diesel was left at our other sites as its transfer would be problematical in the timescale and it would assist in any future reconstruction of our empire.
The servants wooden accommodation was only prepared, in case the problem disappeared, for dismantling once the limited useful crude furniture in them had been moved to the political shelter. The wood from these buildings would be invaluable later, for the moderately comfortable survival of the people, allowing the carpenters (we now had three - two for the political shelter and ours would stay with us) to make such things as beds and other furniture for our comfort.
When the problem was proven potentially dangerous the wooden accommodation was dismantled and moved to the political shelter. Such was the quantity of this material that most was stored outside the shelter protected by our invaluable plastic sheeting.
We initiated the transfer of some of our tinned food from our shelters food floor to the animal heated area of the ground floor of a related outhouse. This was to provide more usable accommodation for people within the shelter itself and the house. Some of the animal floors animals were removed from the shelter to outhouses. This was largely performed on the first day, via the large exit in the extension area that was rapidly opened especially for this purpose, but this was now completed with more urgency. With five hundred and eighty six persons much can be done if properly organized but could we accommodate them all satisfactorily for such a potentially long period?
For our original shelter we required a considerable amount of wood to make tunnel support, partitions and beds etc. In addition some waste wood would be useful for burning to provide warmth or for the later production of electricity using our steam generators. We immediately set up an expedition to visit the villages and obtain as much wood and any other useful material that they could find - if only we still had had our little lorry.
These expeditions to the villages obtained much desirable material but at the cost of housing that might have eventually been repaired. Where houses had been repaired such work was not pillaged and we hoped those elements would survive to be re-inhabited at a future date. There was some risk, however, that the weight of the expected dust might be excessive, especially if wet, resulting in the possible collapse of the roofs. We did have some hopes of their survival as the roof slopes were good and they were well supported by a well built structure.
While stripping the wood out of some of the broken houses we found additional material such as tools and clothes which, if in acceptable condition, were brought back to the shelter. Some joker brought back some feather dusters which, far from being useless, allowed us to fertilize much in our garden if we considered that our few bees had not been sufficiently industrious. We obtained a considerable quantity of unseasoned timber from the nearby trees. Every vehicle returning to the shelters from any direction would, if space remained, carry some timber or other useful material and when full would tow some prepared wood.
Where
we had too much timber to be stored in the shelter or outhouses this was protected outside the buildings using, again, bits of our plastic sheeting. All the available wood was considered usable; any scraps or sawdust unusable by the carpenter was prepared for use as fuel.
We had, very fortunately, found a fuel pellet maker, immediately converted to manual operation using a screw system from one of our wine presses. The pellet maker came with the necessary materials and was stored in the house of the original shelter. Whenever we received any scrap wood considered suitable for converting the pellet maker was operated continuously day and night. This work resulted in a considerable quantity of such pellets which had to be stored in a dry environment which we set up in a section of an animal house again using our plastic. We found two houses that had pellet burners and these were removed to the shelter and stored in the outhouses.
The introduction of inter shelter communications fortunately did not take long as we found the remains of an underground medium voltage mains system to the political shelters that crossed our communications link to the Martinez village. This only required some minor disconnections and a connection between the two now telecommunication systems and a test. This test gave acceptable results; careful listening and occasional repeats allowed a form of conversation.
The political shelter’s original power system was far too extravagant to be maintained. For this reason we transferred three of our standard four kilowatt generators, with some related spares, to the political shelter. To save space we removed the original generators from the building. These were covered with more of our plastic sheeting; we had been so lucky to have obtained this material. If we later had no use for the original generators we would recover the metal for our stores and the plastic sheeting would be recycled into, hopefully, greenhouses.
We wired the new generators into a much degraded version of the original electrical distribution system. The completion of this transition would take more time than we had but a basic system was quickly installed that could be, if necessary, improved later by those living in that shelter.
Our asteroid survival: A fictitional history of the ten year survival of a large ELE asteroid impact by a small, pre advised, group Page 38
