Something fun

Author's note: I had the idea while reading Romantically Apocalyptic over a year ago when I started this story. Yes, there will be life-alopes in the post-apocalyptic world, and while this post is canon. it is temporally displaced, and might vanish, who knows.

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Canis-Cornus-Americana in the wild

Saw this today poking around my camp, for those still hiding or trapped in the bunkers, on the surface we've taken calling them lifealopes, yeah I know not very creative, but it's a start. So obviously it was a wolf at some point but then it changed. Something we've noticed about them is that wherever they go plant life flourishes, rapidly growing or in cases where the earth was barren regrows rapidly, and in some cases cleansing previously irradiated and dangerous areas to safe levels. Eivan told me of creature like them living in the zone of alienation cleansing the Chernobyl disaster area, but at the time, sitting in the missile base I thought it was just stories he was making up to give us some kind of hope as we waited for either the gradual tic of our Geiger counters to inform us of our impending demise, or a cooling off of the area around us so we might escape to an uncertain fate..... sorry, dark thoughts again.

They're usually benign and calm and approachable, though lifealopes that were predators in the past become extremely territorial if you act aggressively to any new growth caused by their presence. You could say they're sort of like a Dryad, only they're not tied to any one tree or grove. We have found that "herbivore" lifealopes will attack and gore people that damage their "works" only to immediately heal the wounds as if to teach them a lesson. 

As for the one I saw today, it was skittish when I approached it, though the reason was rather clear. It has a partially healed gunshot wound to it's leg, apparently their healing and regeneration doesn't extend to themselves, or something about the wound is different. I didn't get a chance to examine and dress it's wound unfortunately because it wouldn't let me close enough. Hopefully I'll be able to convince it to trust me enough to see if there's anything I can do to ease the discomfort at the least. It's probably wary of me because of my rifle. I'll figure something out. I've also never seen on this far east into the ashlands.

Well... since no one elected to send questions I'll keep my secrets for now.

Launching a new story. Don't worry. Blog with the blastwave will be continuing. Just not now.

Also, I forgot to mention this, but all my readers are welcome to fire off e-mails to Blastwave with questions regarding the world of Blog with the Blastwave, in the next couple of weeks I'll collect all the questions, and answer them (if I can without spoiling anything for the future of the story) and post my response in the blog. Till then, please stand by.

Oh, right. Here's a link to the new story. Check out Interviews with the κρυπτός
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A letter from the writer.

Blog with the blastwave is going to be going onto a Hiatus for the time being. when I initially started this writing project I had always intended for questions to remain unanswered and the how and why of the world to be unexplained. Yes the earth depicted in this was similar but not the same to the one we live in.  I had also decided early on in the process to have the computer system Deadhand  activate on July 4th, in my imagination if it had ever been completed, and kept in operation some tech on that project would have set July 4th as the launch date because it's the defacto birthdate of the U.S. and if that were the case, had some foreign power utterly decimated the country, or at the very least managed to take out a lot of the top brass in such a way that no one had clearance to know what deadhand was or how to deactivate it it would make sense that the final act of nuclear hellfire from our country would occur on the "birth date" so to speak.

But I digress, going on a hiatus for Blog with the blastwave, in a few weeks however I should have a new project started, and a connected blog. I'll post regarding that once I get that going. Also I have work starting this week or next week, and so I will be getting back into that routine.

When I do bring you back to this world of post-apocolyptia things will be much different. till then, you can't stop the signal.

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Happy Independence Day

IF YOU ARE SEEING THIS GET BELOW NOW STOP READING AND FIND A BUNKER! JUST NOW SAW A MISSILE BASE EASTERN WYOMING LAUNCH ALL IT'S ORDINANCE! DO NOT PASS GO DO NOT COLLECT 200$ GET TO A SAFE PLACE NOW AND PRAY!

So, We're stopped over near some campground in eastern Wyoming because we needed a re-supply of equipment and this was the best place to get an air drop, figured I'd do a fourth of July Post while we wait on  "santa".

I'm trying to think of what to say here, I mean.. yeah things have been crazy, I hope for the best, it sound like the Chinese occupation's fought us to a standstill right on the edges of the pacific from the reports we've heard from the west. To be honest I hope it's over soon and we can get back to actually rebuilding. War..fighting. I haven't seen a lot of it but it's pretty shitty. Hope everyone else seeing this is having a pretty good

Raid Siren's just come on to the east of us. Our map shows that as a communica

Mom, dad, if you ever see this thankyou and I love you. Going to try and hide in that "communication" station to our east. Good luck.

Yep, we're the distraction team.

So.. going into that base was a bad idea... well kinda. It proved my theory that we're the distraction team, though getting slammed to the ground and a grenade launcher being held to my head wasn't exactly fun.... nor was the kick in the ribs for being a smart-ass.

So anyway, where to start. Everything was going fine, we walked in the base was just straight up deserted, like everyone had walked off in the middle of going about their usual duties. No power, or anything like that. We were poking around at the main offices, I was the first one to poke my head inside the Commander's office when the other team captured all four of us at once. I got a rifle butt to the head, dunno about everyone else, I heard the takedowns though, Eivan was screaming something in Russian throughout most of it, which really didn't help our case. Probably obscenities.

So the person that got me was their captain, black hair green eyes, had the grenade launcher on her M-4 pressed up against my head, once I could understand what she was yelling about I could actually answer.

In short, she was asking who we were, and why we were here. I chose to be a smartass and say the grenade launcher wasn't as intimidating because she'd get her legs blown off or worse if she shot me with it... that's what earned me the kick to the ribs, I think they're cracked.

We were dragged to the brig, disarmed and interrogated for two days before someone bothered to actually send a message out to the proper people to defuse the situation.... Long story short we're now attached to their group and I can't say where we went from there, or where we're at now.

In eastern Montana. the area around us is rocky and craggy, lots of draws and box canyons. I'd love to be out here if it weren't snowing so much. Saw an airbase not far from here when we were on one of the mountain roads. It isn't showing up on any maps, going to check it out since it looks like it was hit with conventional shells and bombs. Runway's all torn up and one of the hangars got blown open. It's kinda in the middle of nowhere all things considered, however it is in the realm of our orders to investigate it, as there could be airmen in need of assistance. We even sent the geographic area back in a message and they said no record of a base there and to check it out.

Ok, not Mel brooks, even though the antics in the film Spies like Us were apt to be a Mel Brooks film. I was wrong the internet was overwhelmingly right, (you'd think they'd be more concerned with living than to go and correct me..)

Anyway, last left off with us being in Salt Lake City. We headed north to check in on one of the airbases. Nothing damaged, all personnel accounted for, transmitter was busted for a couple days because a plane clipped the tower on accident. Headed further east and northeast into Wyoming. This has been the case for the two other places. Something silly caused the transmitters to break (crows in the case of Francis AFB), so in short it feels like we've been sent on a fools errand to keep us out of trouble.

Of all the things. Grammar nazis post apocolyptia....

Anyway have a sneaking suspicion what's going on as to why we've been sent east to these bases. Wonder if anyone's up on their Mel Brooks film history.

Anyway Salt Lake city is nice. People here are nice. I'm seeing a lot of older classic cars on the road and running, it's awesome actually, sadly we have to leave. And people are complaining about a lack of detail.. so here's a longer post.

There's a lot of snow, the further east we've gone the more snow there's been on the ground. It's covered up the roads partly, and the countryside, like a big white blanket. Nevada was dry and your stereotypical gravel and sand desert, but as we got more towards utah snow was visible on the ground, and the temperature was dropping. Not a lot of damage to the infrastructure like the high tension power lines. salt lake city wasn't even hit directly. Some of the people we talked to say the missile looked like it was coming right for them, and then spiraled out of control into the lake where it detonated and sent in a small tidal wave.

This place is eerie.. I wish I'd had a camera to show.

So the sandstorm was pretty fierce for about two miles, no idea how the lights from the relay are getting through.  Terrible visibility in the storm itself, barely stayed on the access road, and then it's just like a hurricane with an eye.. only it's a dome of windblown dirt, dust and maybe clouds over the mountain.

We've got the relay operational again, someone, or something just turned the transmitters off. We also found out Eivan is afraid of heights, or maybe it's just towers.

Anyway, out of the storm and at the border to Utah now. Not sure why they're sending us and not anyone closer, but, well I'm not complaining as long as I keep getting paid.

Vegas was nice. We nearly got robbed, but it was nice. I say nearly because the guy realized that two of us had M4 rifles, one had a shotgun and Eivan (I apparently misspelled his name and he wouldn't talk to me for four days)..well Eivan has more handguns and grenades on him than really is practical. Anyway the guy had pulled the knife before noticing how loaded down with weapons we were, granted we weren't combat ready.

We blew some of our pay (apparently I am getting paid for this.) I got a haircut and an expensive shave at the hotel because, well why not. Closest shave I've ever had.

Drove to Nellis AFB first to get any intel we could. They weren't even hit with an airburst because of Trump's Air defense network, and have been living the "easy" life ever since hostilities with the chinese broke out. Whoever's in charge is holding them in reserve here, and the only harassment has been the occasional Chinese scouting plane, but the trump guns automatically draw a bead on it and start firing after it fails FoF identification, which the chinese then book it out before they can be shot down.

They have no idea why the sandstorm is just sitting on black mountain.. but we're headed there to find out and turn the array back on. Which brings us to today. We're within a mile of the access road. Storm is blocking out the sun and shrouded the mountain, and rotating like those awesome youtube videos of the thunderstorms in Kansas. We'll see how far we can make it in the humvee before we have to ditch and walk the rest of the way.

New orders, back in safe territory. Las Vegas actually. We got airdropped courtesy of the U.S. Navy into the Maccaran International  (apparently the pilot couldn't be arsed to land). Have my jeep a Humvee and a few weeks of supplies. Orders are to check on a relay station from the ground, and then head further east into Utah and Wyoming to check out some sites that went dark just recently.

The Nevada because for the last month there's been a massive, stationary sandstorm obscuring observation by air and the black mountain array went offline, they think it might be connected, and apparently there was nothing better to do than drop four people out of an airplane into Nevada.... We're rolling out of Vegas tomorrow. It's nice to be in a place that acts like absolutely nothing happened though. Caesars Palace is lovely all things considered. Always wanted to come here. Vegas I mean.

Still alive. Still doing things. Had to kill someone, Chinese solider I think...hope, feel sick thinking about it.

I'm not sure I want to talk about it. But I need to put this down so I can look back and remember and not lose sight of things.

It makes me feel like a terrible person, he got dragged halfway around the world to some town in the U.S. to keep watch and kill our soldiers and people, but when it all comes down to we were both two scared... basically kids and Life ended up lighting everything on fire and screamed for a cage match. One of us was lucky enough to live, and I was lucky enough to be faster with the sidearm than he was with the knife. My hands are shaking just thinking about it. I doubt... no I hope I never fully get over it and think lightly of taking another person's life. I'm not cut out for front lines.. but this is still stuff that has to be done so someone else doesn't have to.

It's still snowing by the way. I'm going to go out for a walk and calm down again.

Coming to you live and loud from the Chinese occupied California coast. Reports of our demise were exaggerated, though scarily close to what almost happened on thursday. (no, despite what the location my connection is saying I am not in Belgium, that's just a way of keeping people from finding us again.)

Also, an official apology to the town of Morrow Bay... we were kinda camping on top of your rock and the Chinese blew it into chunks with artillery, A gross over-reaction considering we only released maybe a thousand detained U.S. citizens and sent them running inland in aboard a few impounded commercial planes.

Well correction, we just spotted for the professionals who came in and let people loose, and then we got the hell off the rock, and then the Chinese figured things out (a little too late) and pounded the remains of our camp into basalt (I think, not really interested in going back to identify it for sure) rubble. Either way we're gone, and some folks in the blogosphere reported on the shelling and announcement by occupying forces that the "un-american sympathizers" had been killed after they had reportedly released other "sympathizers" from detainment.

....Well Ivan got a scratch from a rock on the way down... Anyway gone from there headed elsewhere to help direct chaos, Have fun.

Bay area, doing recon. My favorite rock is our place of residence. Cold storm front rolling in headed east.

Chinese north and east of us, we've managed to stay out of sight and mind (to them anyway) though.

Sub sighted, contact initiated. Cannot go into details but we have more equipment and new orders now. (looks like I'm more or less drafted, don't mind too much because I got a multi-spectrum scope for the M-4 out of it.)

Headed north. Probably going to have to go dark for the time being. I'll post something when I can, and give details if I can.

Camped out at an NG depot in the LA area overlooking the port.

Snow is now a foot deep, the locals are going nuts making snowmen.

Picked out some chains from the motorpool here that'll fit the humvee we have.

Haven't seen the sub, did see a whale, tempted to poke around the marina and see if we can find a boat we can use. Our orders are undefined beyond checking the places we have, so probably some weather reporting in advance of storm fronts would be useful for our guys.

From the descriptions of the sub we're fairly certain it's a Russian submarine, but we won't know unless we finally get in contact with them.

Snow... in Los Angeles...

One of those things you kinda hope for all your life to see, and then when it happens it's kinda bittersweet.  Kinda interesting to see the local populace's reaction to it.

There were people talking about a submarine that's been popping up at the marina. We're going to be watching for it to see whose it is.....at range of course.

Barstow got hit hard.

That's about all you can say. in the LA area now poking around finding troops and sending them north. Kind of organized chaos down here.

Went back to China Lake and grabbed some portable gear to set up a temporary sms network to relay information back north.

Anyway saw a small search plane headed out towards the area we designated this morning. Anyway headed south again. Next stop Barstow.

At fort Irwin, place got cleaned out, at least they left a note on a wall in spraypaint... though how we're going to find them is another matter. We've got  encoded SMS systems working in some areas, but this far south reception is a crapshoot. We've got a working radio, but well.. I don't want to broadcast the information of what area the soldiers of Irwin went into in an unsecure way.

"Leaving Fort Irwin, taking gear with us, off into mountains to the east. Electronics are fried. Map on commander's desk is bugout location. Nov. 20 2012"

We did find a few grave-sites in the parade grounds. The base is mostly intact, and most of the desert is sand and dirt around here, it looks like most of the bombs hit to the west of here. Staying the night, then on move to where we have reception to get a secure message out for a search of the area for the fort Irwin soldiers. Hope they're ok.

Ok, regarding the questions as to why I showed my mother a drawing of the symbols on the drone. During college she worked in the foreign languages section of a library, and had a lot of downtime.

Anyway, on move to the Mojave again with the group I was with recovering the Chinese spy plane bits.

We're going on weapons cache identification out in the desert, and checking in on some other things like the status of Barstow, Fort Irwin, and then the LA area, as no one's been really in contact with anyone in the LA area since those marines arrived at the beginning of April.

So as I was saying. Lots of tanks.

Apparently the local solar array that was built a couple years ago was a cover for tank storage, because it was basically a big underground parking lot full of tanks, apcs, mobile artillery and troop transport trucks.

And ammunition.

And fuel.

All hidden and protected from harm by a few feet of dirt, armor plating and reinforced concrete.


And we just moved everything out.

Oh and a silly amount of spare parts, spare armor plating, spare everything. It's kinda amazing that it was just sitting there hidden like that. Kind of cool actually. Anyway on move.  Armor is headed north to join the fight, as well as some mobile artillery.

Let me preface this by saying I've been all over the valley of my hometown, explored every interesting location, and would never have expected there to be such a treasure-trove of military vehicles hidden here.

So apparently a silly amount of tanks, munitions and fuel were hidden in my hometown.

Not allowed to say where, at least not until we get them all moved out, which might take a while.

It seems the gate guards upgraded weapons while I was gone.

On arrival we were greeted by two toyota "technical"s with type 67's set up on them. They almost opened fire, we almost opened fire, and it was almost a clusterfuck.

After about an hour of discussion we finally were allowed passage in. We're staying at the hotel right at the creek edge for now, one of the lieutenants that came along is off at a council meeting finding out what happened exactly and trying to get permission to actually go through town proper to look for the armor cache we think is here.

I can guess what happened based off how armed the town is though.

The Chinese rolled in, probably looking for those unicorns that we're chasing, and then they were ambushed and either killed or captured. And all the arms that the Chinese soldiers had got split up among the local militia.

On a related note my mom and dad are alright, and they heard from two of my brothers, which leaves one still off somewhere, though before all this started he was in Britain on business. Should probably try e-mailing him I guess.

Showed my mom sketches of the drone symbols, and she has no idea what it means only that she's seen the language maybe once before. She didn't say much beyond that.

On my way home to check up on things off that way. I've also been asked to take some of the soldiers with tank training with me because someone in the upper command thinks there's a cache of armor back that way.

I guess. I've kinda been all over that way since I was a kid and there really isn't a lot of places that can hide tanks and things like that, but it's not my time wasted.

Found ourselves a blacklight, and it just makes the mystery even bigger.

At a distance the pattern actually looks like a QR code, only blown up to a large scale, unfortunately we don't have a cell phone that's that smart that works otherwise we'd try and "read" the code.

Even back at Leemoore there's no clue as to what it is.

Anyway Russians dismantled the chinese plane and took the blackbox somewhere. While we were off in the desert the Chinese got their asses handed to themselves in Fresno and the lines are further north. Every few minutes we can hear the crack from the Mariposa artillery shelling the chinese. It's a strangely comforting sound. Albeit loud. I'm going to see if I can get a day to go check on home.

Spent the last couple of days messing with the "drone" or whatever the hell it is trying to make sense of it. None of the components are anything like we've seen before.

The circuit "boards" are paper thin, there's no obvious data ports and there's no writing that we can recognize it and we don't have a blacklight with us, the metal its made up of is resistant to cutting with both a hand saw and a cutting torch, but a diamond blade on a hand grinder went through it like a hot knife and butter, though the cutting blade burned up pretty quickly.

It also takes an edge pretty nicely and so we all made knives from the hull. Light material, strong and doesn't break easily. Can't ask for much more than that, it might be worth trying to mill out a rifle receiver from it if we can find a shop with a cnc machine, but that's for a whole other day.

beyond that, not much to talk about. On our way out of the desert.

Spy plane secured, looks like it and the thing we found on Saturday collided and came down not far from each other.

Can't exactly say where we're going to take the plane much beyond the Russians are interested in it.

So the other object is delta shaped, forty feet wide and fifteen feet long. The control setup is nothing like we've seen before, and none of the symbols make sense. They're not English, Chinese, Russian or any other language any of us recognize. The seat looks more like it'd fit someone when the canopy hatch was open rather than closed.

Unlike the Chinese plane we didn't find a body, and cause the canopy isn't see-through and doesn't have any obvious screens inside we think it might be a drone of some kind. It's half ripped open from impacting something so we been poking around to see if we recognized the components but it's kinda scorched inside.

Found it. What "IT" is will only be revealed once it's secure and we're out of the desert....to be honest we have no idea. We thought it was a Chinese spy plane that'd been shot down. But to be honest. Well I can't say any more than this.

Going to be going quiet for a while. Lot of desert to cover because we only have an idea of where, what we're looking for is.

Nothing really interesting to report anyway.

China Lake mostly intact,  the soldiers there and from Edwards greeted us as we drove up. About half of them are sick from radiation poisoning and they're kinda starved.

Kinda hard to believe they didn't see us a few weeks ago... but I'm not going to judge.

So we gave them directions, helped them get a few jeeps and trucks working by bringing parts in, and then went off on our way. They're headed north for medical treatment and to link up with the other forces.

Out in the Mojave again.

The desert is peaceful compared to everything else.

Wednesday was walking.

Thursday was walking.

Friday we found a road that was intact and walked back to the jeep and got it.

We're now inside the perimeter of China Lake. With all the glass reflecting light it's pretty hot out so we're using the shade of the jeep to take cover during the day and we'll actually go to the  base itself as the sun sets and it cools down.

Found all the bunkers yesterday. No one was there to greet us, living or dead thankfully.

In the command bunker we found a note reading that most of the provisions had gone bad during storage and so they left the base to try and make it to the China Lake bunkers.

The note is signed and dated back in February. So we've diverted from our original plan and are now making our way there. We did make a surprisingly nice find in the armory though.

A set of M4's set up in a DMR configuration as well as heavier ammunition to go with them. That'll make hunting down dinner a bit easier. Hopefully we won't need to use them in combat.

With those and a couple of 1911's checked out from the armory (yes we did sign them out), the six of us have a rifle and sidearm.

Next stop China Lake.

(Writers Note: I am very curious to find out what caused the spike in traffic yesterday and today. Was it the mention of the russian? The fact he was puking his guts up? Or the universal loathing of the vegetable omelet mres? Or just a combination of all three.)

Desert camping is fun until you slide down a glass flecked dune and have to climb back up a steep slope of sand and sharp glass to get back to the road. I still cannot answer the question of why we're out here. Nor why there is a Russian with us.

Yes I do know the answers to these. 

Made a side stop and checked around Edwards AFB. Couldn't find the bunkers there despite having a map that was supposed to lead directly to it.

It looks like the majority of the bombs detonated out in the desert because most of the base was intact and not really irradiated. Didn't see any bodies though so we think everyone made it into the bunkers. We'll keep looking and let them know there's a war on, maybe if we find an air vent and bang on it someone will pop out to see what all the racket is, and hopefully not shoot us. They'll have to come out soon though The bunkers weren't stocked for much longer than 6 months If I remember right from the Civil Defense pamphlets.

Can't say exactly where in the desert I am, however I can say why.

I, of all the people that were doing things at the air base was the only person who had desert camping experience, and knew their way around the Mojave.

Well let me rephrase that. The only one who had that experience and was not involved in combat. Therefore me being a guide in the desert for supply teams looking for caches of ....Widgets. (widgets because I can't say what we're hunting for).

Anyway dinner today was jackrabbit and tuber stew because the only mre's we were given were vegie omelet....and none of us wanted to see the russian with us puke his guts out again.

Still alive, can't really talk much about the recent stuff that's been happening. AV-10 is in production but I'm not involved in it anymore. I am down south in the mojave again though. Can't say what for yet.

Fighting is heavy in Fresno area.

Mariposa Artillery lit up the Fresno airfield last night. I guess it was decided it would be easier to repair after removing the Chinese forces there rather than dealing with reinforcements coming in, and a long ground campaign.

Either way the artillery was amazingly loud and echoed off the mountains for a half hour after the bombardment was done.

Reports coming in Chinese have overrun lines in San Francisco and Seattle.

AV-10 has 16 armor kills confirmed. Been writing down what we did to it so we can get production on them going.

Leemoore has been supplemented by two battalions of marines that had been in the LA area out of contact with anyone till they got a working radio and found out there's a war on. The rest of their regiment was on base when it got hit last year.

Assault on Chinese forces has started cannot talk about it.

AV-10 is currently undergoing trials in and around Leemoore. According to the pilots who were testing it yesterday it's pretty forgiving when it comes to maneuvering and movement., and pretty stable. Because of the way the engines are rigged up it doesn't need to be drawing a ton of fuel to stay aloft. It hasn't seen combat yet. Right now it's a staring match between the Chinese forces and us right now.

While I was away the Russians apparently destroyed all of the artillery the Chinese had brought in, reports are coming in from the north that it's pretty similar along the rest of the west coast that after the first major engagement it settled into a game of wait and see. Heard nothing from Alaska beyond that the bulk of the Chinese forces landed there and that most of the Russian army is helping out there.

The base commander blew a gasket at us.

Myself and the four others who had built the AV-10, thankfully the captain who'd accompanied us calmed him down and talked him into letting us demonstrate it.

....He wants nine more, depending on how well it does in actual combat.

On route back to Leemoore.

The A-10 monstrosity we've built is still slightly unstable, but it works. The captain was satisfied with the demonstration where our pilot/test guinea pig/volunteer popped up over a ridge strafed a practice target we'd put together out of spare parts, flew in and landed on the trailer. (we spent four hours practicing the landing.)

We've dubbing it the AV-10 Cazador. An apt name for a Vtol tank hunter.

The next one we build might even have engine pods that swivel on two planes of movement rather than just one. we hope the base commander will be pleased as well.

The captain came back earlier than we expected. Nearly thought he was going to blow a gasket when he saw what we were doing.

After chewing us out for a solid ten minutes he ended with how we'd put one of the tiltrotor assemblies on upside down, We pulled the engine and housing off and just had the raw assembly on the side of the craft, and we'd have to reverse the linkage.

Things we have done since monday:

• Welded in more aluminum struts at 45* angles for structural integrity on the wings and  tail
• Smoothed off some of the sharper points.
• Mounted three of the A-10 engines onto the tilt assemblies working on re-doing the upside down assembly.
• Created a control scheme for the tilt assemblies with parts taken from a Sikorsky helicopter.
• Powered up the systems and actually checked to make sure the flight computer worked. Thankfully it did, You'd think we'd have done this first.
• Did a hydraulics test, flaps and everything work within specs (found a manual in another A-10) and the tilt systems work.

The captain suggested we get something to act as a counterweight and weld it to the bottom of the fuselage to keep from having stability issues. Probably is a good idea. 

We also have two more days to get this prototype working otherwise we're going back to Leemoore empty handed. 

And that has been this week.

For those playing at home, the answer is Experimentation.


Anyway we have no idea how well this is going to work, so we've welded in more protection into the "bathtub" on the A-10 we're turning into a monster, and have more padding and restraints in case things get wonky.


So the change's we've made:

• Cut the wingspan down from 57 feet to 35 feet
• pulled the engines off the tail
• figured out how to pull the tiltrotor assembly off the V-22's we're cannibalizing
• Figured out how to do that properly without breaking them and then looked for another V-22.
• spent yesterday figuring out how we can attach the assemblies and retain structural integrity.
• Today we're going to do that.

At this point we figured it might be easier attaching the Gau-8 to the V-22....we'll probably do that once we're done with this project though.

Today's post is brought to you by the letter E, I'll let you try and guess what I mean by that. I'll reveal it next time I post.

Duct Tape, a bunch of engines off some A-10 warthogs, the pivot points off a few V-22's and a bunch of aircraft aluminum and some JB weld for good measure ( as well as rivets and welding) is part of the new "project" since we're out here and have a bunch of welding supplies.

I and a few of the engineers are still out here improving our road in and out, as well as getting bored and imaginative with the spare parts that are available. We're going to try and get out into Edwards or China Lake and check the bunkers there, see if anyone is still around. To be honest, we're not expecting anyone, but if we do find someone they'll be more than happy to see us.

Finally got where we were going. I'd only heard of this place in legends, never thought I'd get to check it out. One of the mojave aircraft boneyards.

Some of it got wrecked at the edges closer to Edwards and China Lake, but since we're only here for components for the hornets it's all good, though it's nice having a stock of planes that can be brought into service easily enough.

Well easy compared to getting anything manufactured right now.

Driving a tractor gives my mind nothing but time to think. Too much time. Haven't seen a bird, animal or insect out here. The reflecting sunlight off glass is annoying too. It's probably a mirage but all this glass seems to go on all the way to the mountains.

I've been running the drag along where the road was, which is working out ok, since I'm clearing out the glass and messed up asphalt then getting to the compacted roadbed below but it's slow going, probably two more days of this and we might see our destination if we're lucky.

Lieutenant liked my idea so much he volunteered me to drive the tractor......

Don't mind, I don't think anyone else here knows how to operate a crawler tractor anyway.

Going to be hiking into the mojave from here on out. The roads in are wasted and the glass shredded the tires on the lead humvee, if it's like this all the way to where we're going we'll have wasted all this fuel for nothing.

I am going to make a suggestion to the lieutenant in charge that we might be able to use a crawler from the shop we raided for goggles before we start hiking in. If we sent it first and pulled a drag behind it, we'd have a good enough road cleared.

Found a "glass" rattlesnake. My best guess is that when the bombs hit the blast compacted sand into the body of the snake, and then the heat from it melted the glass around it before incinerating the flesh leaving it hollow inside.  At least, that's my best guess. I have no idea if that's what happened. for all I know it could have been aliens that made it.

Spent the morning chipping it out of the surrounding melted dirt and sand then wrapped it up. Going to take it home and see about getting it to my mom.


Did I mention it's cold out here? The water cans we had froze up into a slush last night and it's barely above freezing right now. It's also windy.

Currently in what was the mojave. Drove to the nearest farming town to get sets of welding goggles and drove back because everything's kinda glass and reflecting light everywhere. There were none left between myself and the rest of the unit I'm accompanying.

Not much more beyond that.

That and the radiation levels are higher here, though not deadly unless I run around naked or something silly like that. I'd probably die of dehydration first, and not interested in testing it anyway.

Been kinda bored the last few days. Currently not doing much beyond wait and see stuff. It seems the Chinese finally ran out of ammunition for their artillery though, because a bombardment hasn't happened for the last few days.

We've gotten some reports about the bay area. They're holding out but barely.

My next assignment might be taking me down south into the Mojave area. I'll find out more at tomorrow morning's briefing.

My apologies from the lack of updates, something took down my internet supplier. I couldn't figure out a workaround, but I was given an access code for the Leemoore NAS  internet provider, which took me another day of monkeying around with to get my jerryrigged satellite modem to work with.

I was also rather busy lately being a chauffeur for those two E-1's. Rumor has it that next week there will be rifle qualifications using a bunch of training ammunition that was retrieved from a couple of the national guard armories. Which makes sense I guess. Then the casings can be collected and reloaded with actual bullets instead of the plastic tipped stuff for target shooting and kill house practice.

Anyway breakdown of the last eight days:
Driving the Tweedledees around to check on armories and to keep them out of trouble on base (This was the unofficial orders given to me by the major I've been working under)
Driving a few (can't say) north and dropping them off (can't say). I didn't ask what was in the bags and they didn't offer to tell.
Sitting on a hill with (can't say), watching (can't say) with binoculars. Nothing interesting happened though.

And that's about it.

Fuel supplies secured. Not going to say where, when or how. It was simple enough, but still not putting information about where they are or how we got them.

Happy valentines day folks.

Removed the post that was put up and changed my password. The text of the post is below if you want to read it for the hilarity of it.

A few people have noticed that my posts have been quite vague unlike my detailed posts from the beginning of this blog, (October of last year, 5 months blew by so fast). It's because I've been asked to keep stuff like detailed locations, times, number of people involved, etc intentionally vague, because, OPSEC. At least I get to keep posting though.

Anyway, the evidence against the Chinese, brought to us by the Russians, is quite compelling and there has been verification from a couple of sources back east that have not been disclosed to the personnel on base.

I like the rocket artillery, it's made runway repairs easier for some weird reason.


Weather's been terrible the last few days, cold and icy in the morning, and foggy most of the day in a way that ices up everything till around 4 pm. Haven't gotten a chance to do my next babysitting assignment yet because of it.




and now for the security breach.


"THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC WILL CRUSH THE DEVIL DOGS OF THE AMERICAN MILITARY! I HAVE RETHOUGHT MY DECISIONS TO SUPPORT THE AMERICAN DEVIL MACHINE AND WILL PROUDLY SUPPORT THE PEOPLE'S ARMY IN IT'S FIGHT FOR THE CIVILIANS OF THE ANNEXED UNITED STATES!"

That was fun, Bakersfield folks are fine, they've decided to hang out in the bunker there for a while, place is massive. It's basically heavily armored underground done big enough to house the entire city of Bakersfield. No clue who Bunkerland construction is but if the bomb's hadn't dropped this would definitely be on an episode of Modern Wonders on the history channel.

Anyway, got back to Lemoore after checking the Bakersfield munitions depots in time to get to shelter as the base got hit with rocket assisted artillery.

Like that .gif but inbound rather than outbound. In retrospect it was pretty cool, but at the time it was downright terrifying. Other than that not much to say.

Made our way off towards Lost Hills area northwest of Bakersfield looking for a bunker and weapons cache. We found a radiation plume and we decided not to keep going up the road. From a hill a few miles away we could see a big hole blasted into the mountainside. When it started to get dark was glowing blue in that direction, so it seems the bunker we were looking for git hit directly a few times.

Going to go into Bakersfield to check on things there in the morning, see how well the people fared there.

Also, never eat vegetable omelet mres, terrible doesn't begin to describe the taste.

Ok, did not expect the shitstorm of messages of people wondering how the hell, even after the end of the world, some random civillian on a "contract" was going around checking on ammunition and weapons stockpiles.

So allow me to clarify: I'm not alone, I'm basically acting as a glorified taxi driver and baby sitter to a Petty Officer and a Warrant Officer that got busted down to E-1 after thinking the apocalypse was a reasonable excuse to hit on the base commander's daughter.

My assignment is as follows: "Drive the two officers to the locations indicated on the maps provided at 0400. Keep them on task and don't let them do anything stupid."

Hard to complain since I get to drive a humvee and get hot meals.

Didn't enlist, however I am working for the navy. Officially I'm an independent contractor, thaough they still ran me through basic along with the other actual recruits.

Over the last few days I've ran around the valley checking the stocks at the national guard armories in advance to determine which ones were available for use.

Fresno is unreachable
Hanford is stocked
Lemoore is already being cleared out for gear
Fresno Country Island (out in the middle of nowhere between towns disguised as a farm labor camp) is partially stocked. the logbooks I found show that half the ammunition and rifles had been moved north to Mariposa Artillery.

And that is the sum of everything that happened this week.

Of all the things that could have happpened.. politics.

So, the Russians have declared ware on the Chinese, the Chinese  have effectively invaded the U.S, there was an announcement on all frequencies made by the new president, Glauchester is it it seems, that citizens are to resist against any invaders and Aid is to be met with scpeticism, and the Russians that flew in are offering assistance against the Chinese.

The recon jets that flew over Fresno reported that it looked like the Chinese forces at the air base had pushed into the city proper, but were meeting with resistance and in armed conflict, though at the altitude they were flying it was impossible to tell who the chinese were fighting.

The population of Leemoore  is currently in the middle of a vote to determine whether to accept assistance from the Russians or not, and the navy is accepting all citizens willing to enlist and running them through training as quickly as possible. More or less basic but sped up.

Not sure what I'm going to do. I know the motor pool would welcome me on their team, but I wouldn't have the freedom to run around like I've been doing.

Decisions..

Couple more planes landed today, the Soviets are definitely here, though there hasn't been any word as to why they're here yet.

Most of this week has been.

"Base gets shelled" All clear is announced, and repairs get done.

Some plane landed at the air base. Scuttlebut is that it's an envoy from the Russians.

Lot of stuff's happened in the last two days. Navy ordered all civilians to evacuate the base, and about mid-afternoon the base got shelled. A couple of the city suburbs got caught up in the shelling and so the navy's been split between  repairs on base and rescue efforts in the affected city areas. I've been running a dozer most of today compacting dirt along the damaged potion of the runway. for some reason no one in the motor pool actually knew how to operate it. I spent a couple hours in the morning teaching a couple of the mechanics how to drive one.

Everything feels shook loose from driving the tractor. Don't want to diss on my dad's farm but it was a lot nicer than our D-6. A newer D-9.

All the jets were in the armored storage, and it'd take more than an artillery barrage to get through the plating.

Whoever was working on it got the radar systems working again mid-morning. According to the one of the announcements over the loludspeakers it's a clusterfuck of air traffic to the north of us at Fresno, no IFF's so it's presumed to be chinese.

They're also picking up a lot of traffic near Castle Air base and Mariposa extreme range artillery, though the transponder codes show them to be various U.S. aircraft some miltary and come civillian, the ones at mariposa are civilian helicopters, Korea Era Hueys  converted into spray rigs probably, and then probably commandeered or something.

Other than that not much to talk about.

Well now that the comm's blackout is over I can post about yesterday and today.

Long story short is the Chinese have landed, and are in control of Fresno International, and the adjoining air base.

When the recon team got back with the radar components they let us know that the entire air attack bas was crawling with Chinese, though they'd left the civilian airfield alone for the most part, aside from using it to land heavy freight planes.

It's probably safe to assume this is happening all along the West coast.

Back in Lemoore. Made a trip yesterday to my apartment, nothing else was in the cache that I haven't already mentioned.

A tenth of an acre really isn't too big anyway, it's only a 66 foot diameter circle. I can probably guess that the maps lead to other caches around the state.

More planes in the air.

The navy troops have asked me to write down everything I've seen where I've been, things like that. I'm not sure why they're asking me when they have working vehicles too, but it gives me something to do when not working on cars.

Saw some planes in the sky. It's common knowledge the radar on base is still down. Everyone seems to be waiting to see what's going to come of it.

Got a soldier to look at the maps. He said they're legal land descriptions down to the tenth of an acre and that I'm probably missing something that goes along with them. So tomorrow I'm going to go back to my apartment and check the cache again.

That trip into the motor-pool was surprisingly informative. A lot of the electrical systems are easily bypassed and I don't need to be rewiring the entire electrical harness.

Made a trip back to Reedley to get those maps and see if any of the soldiers recognize the markings on them.  On the way back to Lemoore I decided to drive up to Fresno and find out what's happening up there.

The short form of it is that the city is divided into three districts now. Everything north of the 180 is more or less controlled by the police force, while the southern half of Fresno is split in half by Highway 41 and controlled by two different gangs. the East is under the watch of the Bulldogs, and the west is controlled by the Italians. Most of the druggies were forced out into area around the 180/41 interchange. All three districts are pretty orderly, surprisingly, and they're allowing people to move between, however they're subject to going through checkpoints and outsiders can only go in certain areas. the police officers I spoke with said they were shocked at how organized the Bulldogs were so soon after the bombs hitting.

Back in Lemoore now.

Got ahold of that lieutenant yesterday.

So the short of it is, what the information they had before they lost communications with everyone else was, that the projected targets were almost textbook for an attack with the intent to invade and take over. Targeted strikes at military locations, but leaving the civilian population centers and useful infrastructure, for the most part alone. Probably the only reasons NAS Lemoore wasn't hit directly was that it 's surrounded by useful farmland.

He also couldn't confirm or deny what the chinese propaganda packets said.

It's kinda weird letting civilians onto the base, the navy personal seem weirded out by it as well as the civilians  but it's probably easier to organize rations and care on base rather than going out into the city. Most of what the people are saying are either they don't believe the Chinese, or they think it was an accident rather than intentional.

As an added bonus I've kinda gotten a cozy job working with a couple friends getting cars operational again for folks. I guess because I have a working jeep it somehow makes me an expert to a lot of the people out here.

Earlier today they got a couple jets operational, and people started cheering when they heard them scream down the runway and take off to do an aerial survey. Other than that haven't seen any other planes in the sky, and the radar unit is fubar. the motor pool guys asked me to come over to see how I'm getting the cars working again. And I'm curious to see on their side of the fence. Going to do that tomorrow.

Been waiting for a straight answer for a day and a half now. To be honest I don't even think these guys know what exactly happened. All the talk among the servicemen at the NAS is about the airdrops from the chinese, and what to do.

To be honest I think if our own military had nuked us it'd be a bit more thorough.

I did overhear a Lieutenant say something about the way the bombs fell matching something he'd read in one of the prep books during basic. I'm going to try and find him again and ask a couple questions.

Lot of stuff happened yesterday, was actually trying to sleep cause it's cold and snowy out. Anyway the noise of them is what woke me up.

Some of you may have seen them, planes in the air. Thought I was dreaming or going crazy, or that I had gone crazy and nothing had actually happened and the bombs never actually fell. Then I got really fearful because the planes were dropping things.

Because of that I spent a couple hours inside expecting more bombs to hit. turns out they were crates of leaflets, MRE's medical stuff.

Here's the full text of the leaflet.

"We the People's Republic of China have seen fit to lend our support to the struggling Citizens of the United States of America after their rabid military generals callously attacked their own populace with nuclear weapons in an attempt to quell the Socialist uprising that had begun to gain traction after disarmament and peace talks failed in 2010.

This People's Army care package contains enough rations and medical supplies for four families for one week. Long enough for final preparations to be completed and proper supply lines to be established for the People's Army to lend Aid.

Signed,

Lt. Commander Yao
Peoples Republic of China
People's Army Ministry of Propaganda
Beijing China"

I think I know what I'm going to have to do now.  Hopefully I can get an actual answer out of the Navy personnel in Lemoore. I really hope this isn't true.. About us nuking ourselves.