The writer lives. And so the story returns.
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You could say there are a lot of things I am thankful for. For one, we're finally in an area where we have satellite coverage for the GPS unit, a second thing to be thankful for... my satellite phone machinations of the past apparently work still, though not the same way as before, this time I'm using the antennae and microprocessor from an Amorok Satellite radio out of a car, not to mention that there are authentication systems working, much less the internet exists.. even if it is slightly less... alive. you could say it is a shell of itself. Used primarily now by those that either could not forget what the world was like before the second strike, those that are looking forward, and simply those that have no other alternative way to contact the rest of the world. Latency sucks, and apparently some programmers and corporations saw....something on the horizon and prepared.
Also I'm thankful to be alive. That alone can be considered a miracle, or pure luck depending on what you believe. According to the clock on the GPS, now that it's sync up with the satellite arrays, and with corroboration with one of the clocks I was able to access online, it's been one year, three months, and 27 days since the world over got bathed in atomic fire...well as far as we know that's what went down.... To be honest, now that we've made it to the edge of a massive field of ashes, it actually doesn't look too worse for it. Granted we haven't seen another living human yet, and the animals we have seen weren't keen for conversation.
I'm going to take the next few posts, and summarize journal entries that I wrote down, since a lot of it boils down to "woke up today, still in the bunker, checked the air vents and the monitoring station, still too hot radiologically to leave."
For starters, you could say we were lucky in the first place that the missile command bunker we made out way to was open at all. The commander said so himself, if we had come through any other day, the doors would have been closed and sealed shut, however that day they had been being resupplied and when they went to seal the bunker, well the door fucked up and wouldn't move and they'd been working on it all day, when the two guys on missile watch came hauling down the main corridor saying the board just lit up and was doing precheck automatically, then the sirens and the missiles launched. We arrived about twenty minutes later, hoping for shelter. This is where our luck started. White Rock missile base happened to be a converted VIP bunker and not just a normal command post. Originally it was built to house 40 people comfortably like a small underground motel complete with exercise and entertainment facilities with a maximum allowable residency of 120. When the air force imminent domained it due to the proximity of the newly planned missile silos they kept most of the gear, but never staffed it with more than four people at the most.
Our second stroke of luck happened to be that Leishey, one of the soldiers from Eivan's group, was part of the cultural exchange with the U.S. during the 90s when we swapped missile engineers for training and understanding during the peace and disarmament talks and he'd actually trained here before. This is one of the reasons why he insisted we run towards the "comms" station when the missiles started flying, and not away. Anyway he actually knew how to manually override the main blast door, and with the combined work of 12 people we managed to manhandle the partially seized machinations into place and get it closed up.
Our third stroke of luck in this time-span, was the resupply they had received earlier in the day that led to the blast door seizing up. Normally enough food to last 4 men a full year (if needed) on very rich meals, when combined with the rations we had, we did the math and, if we wasted nothing, we could make it last 6 months for the 12 of us. Thankfully we only needed 4 months... not because of the radiation, that cooled down enough after about a week that we could go outside for about an hour at a time, weather permitting.... and god damn was the weather terrible.
That's enough typing for one night, Eivan and Leishey just got back to the camp and said something about a group of deer nearby and want to see if I can still shoot straight. We've got a running betting pool against each other, honestly I'd like to see Rogan shoot something off other than his mouth, he talks big about his training from the airforce, but we've yet to see anything come of it. Anyway, fresh venison sounds nice for dinner instead of more two year old canned food.
