Merry christmas.

Once again it's the magical time of year where things get weirder than usual, in this case it turns out the SLC have decided to co-opt Krampusnacht to keep their children in line and behaving, especially considering they have a parade of Krampuses... Krampi?... No idea what the plural form is here.

I also have no clue how she pulled it off, but my mother somehow managed to get fresh made boysenberry cobbler sent from the CR out here...that and my older brother added to the box and sent me a vest that matches up nicely with my gear that I already have, and adds another 5 easily accessible pockets when I layer my stuff properly.... bringing the total up to 18.

So I suppose the yule cat won't try and eat me this year again.

Anyway merry yuletide and all those other well wishes, and a happy new year. Unless something goes sideways again and the world ends a third time, considering the frequency over the last few years it's a good possibility. Maybe we'll get something different, like aliens instead of more nukes.

Someone asked me what I do on a normal day..  I guess since I'm not doing much today due to snow storms blocking up the streets I may as well make a post regarding this.

In general I wake up a bit before dawn and wander downtown to one of the gyms that has a mixed martial arts group and do some exercise and practice, the cold air wakes me up on the walk to and from the druid barrow, then I make my way to City Creek center where some of the food places are and trade some fresh produce for a hot meal and make my way back to the dow barrow to help the druids with tending the gardens.

If there's no work to be done at the barrow I head over to one of the nearby trade districts and check the nearest bulletin boards to see if there any work that needs to be done.

Speaking of, once the streets are cleared I did pick up a contract, I've been asked to head north of the city to one of the ranches and help clear out a pack of coyotes that's been harassing some rancher's cattle operation.

Back in SLC, rain and snow made the mining operations too dangerous to be done because of electrical discharges from the electrum, so that's done for the season.

On an unrelated note the material's been nicknamed electrump which when mispronounced sounds like "elect trump"... which is kinda funny since he's too busy making money to even consider running for office for anything, just as long as no one gets in the way of him shipping products I guess.

Looking for more work just to keep from going stir crazy mostly. I made enough guarding the mining site to make it through the winter though, even if I weren't rooming at the dow barrows I could still live comfortably.

not much to say beyond that other than the CR and SLC folks are still arguing and it looks like the military is going to be hard pressed to keep the peace.

Still guarding the mining operations.. not much to say beyond that.

Aftermath of a party.

Before I cover the party while Fiske took most of the plant samples from the expedition out into yellowstone,  the extras and stuff I intentionally took to sell all went to the druids, they're really interested in the plant life out there and want to negotiate some kind of expedition out into the ashlands, especially after I described the, for lack of better words, Ent and Dragon.

So... I thought the end of winter festival was crazy.... this one topped it.

Imagine if you will a mix of burning man, woodstock and a community farm festival and that's what you get... SLC...is interesting to say the least when everyone gets relaxed and they take a break from their god-fearing and churchgoing. Basically loud music, crazy mechanical contraptions roaming the streets with farmers and craftsmen hawking their wares over the span of about 10 days, despite the political tensions between SLC and the CR there were still people from out west that made it out to check out the festival.

I.. don't really remember most of it but according to Eivan I made some money juggling and eating fireballs and flash freezing stuff for people...a neat party trick, wish I remembered how I did that.

And that's about it for now, well aside from one of the Trump reps asking for skulkers to help guard the mining operations for electrum.... Might take them up on that for a couple weeks.

Rewriting posts is hard IV

Took a breather on posting this so I could sort out my thoughts on what we saw... Still not entirely sure what to say other than a dragon followed us for a couple days in the ashlands after we left yellowstone.

Yeah a dragon... scaled lizardlike, wings as wide as a bus is long spikes along its spine and tail...didn't try and provoke it since it only seemed curious (that or it's the worst at stalking prey), so no idea if it breaths fire or not, two back legs and its wings when folded act as the forelegs.  At the edge of the ashlands we finally saw it land. Out of a precaution I grabbed Fiske by the collar of his jacket and held him in place while Eivan took a bit of time to estimate how big it was compared to the stuff around where it had landed.

We didn't loiter long, and headed south to SLC. We've heard the weather to the west was pretty foul, that and there's some kind of argument between the politicians, so there's no caravans moving, and the Order has its hands full trying to keep the peace without inciting a shootout so there's no help there....

So that leaves Eivan and I (Leishey made arrangements in advance for Fiske to head back west but not us, though he did leave us with an extensive network of contacts and connections) to work odd jobs over the fall and winter. I'm guessing he's using us as a test of the organization he's making.


But first a harvest festival over at the Dow Barrow.

Re-writing posts is hard III

This last week was interesting. Still not entirely certain what I saw but It looked like a giant person. Watched it from afar, and followed for a bit while Eivan and Fiske wandered about chasing mooing noises which turned out to be mutated bison. Eivan shot one in the name of science and fresh meat (pre-smoked and great with a bit of salt) and Fiske had a cow about that. As for the giant, they kinda looked like they had plant matter for flesh or something.. heavy bark as an outer skin with scraggly moss in the spots one would expect hair. And where it walked I found fresh plant life had grown, kinda dark gray/white grasses, additionally newly grown leaves on the manzanita plants we found are a dark gray... I decided not to tell Fiske about the creature. Kinda looked like a Tolkien style Ent, and we've been kinda taking a lot of plant samples and it might take offense to that.

Anyway the day after that, after some experiments with the bison hide (surprisingly heat resistant, though it already looks scorched as it is), we collected some more plant samples and started heading back for the humvee since we're starting to run low on supplies and a genuine earthqakes shook the caldera and more lava started bubbling out of the "spring" we've been camping near.We're going to head out while everything's still good and we're not running from an angry plant giant, or fast moving lava flows.

Rewriting posts is hard II

We've reached the inside of the volcano, for starters when we climbed over the ridge into the volcano the geiger counter we brought along started ticking up above the "normal" background radiation. So I'm guessing it was definitely correct that some of the nukes hit yellowstone... Go humanity and mutually assured destruction?

Anyway Fiske kinda went bonkers when we got here, for anyone curious that's the ecologist, he gave me the ok to mention his name after he calmed down after finding some kind of algae living in one of the thermal springs, he thinks it died after being removed from the hot water.

I'll be honest, there's more plant life inside the caldera than I anticipated. Nothing more complicated than a shrubbery like thing though... it's kinda looks like western manzanita, burns like manzanita and the leaves are like manzanita, buuuuut the leaves are a dark red instead of grey green. Kinda reminds me of the "red weed" from War of the Worlds a little. On a whim I actually slipped one of the leaves under my tongue, I know if my mom reads this she'll be calling me an idiot for doing that, coulda died, possibly poisonous etc... tastes like singed manzanita and does more or less the same thing though, agitates the saliva glands tricks the mind into keeping you from drinking as much water.....well that's what I learned as a kid camping anyway. also make decent toothbrushes in a pinch I guess. going to see if I can find some of the berries to bring back to the druids in SLC... actually now that I think on it they might actually want some samples of everything... I'll need to make a note of that.


Had to fish Fiske out of .... 4 different holes in his exploration, managed to keep him from falling into the lava about 7 times, doesn't help that a lot of the soil is unstable and collapses every now and then. We're set up on a rock shelf off near what we think was  Old faithful... or it might be the morning glory spring... hard to tell with a lot of the basalt formations and lava that got pushed up with the eruption. I'd describe it as a lava cake made to look like the devils post pile, cut up and chunked a little bit..

Spent the rest of the week keeping taking turns with Eivan keeping him from getting too close to the lava pits, rained earlier tonight and knocked down the ash clouds enough that and we could see some of the stars again... pretty neat really.  Weatherproofing by Fry's worked much better than I anticipated.... so that's pretty good, sandblasting during an ash storm, water from the storm... all survived so far. Though if it's raining here might need to consider wrapping up this since it might mean snow off at the edges of the ashlands.

Can't think of much else to mention right now.

re-writing posts is hard

Writer's note: over a year later and I still don't have a proper name for the ecologist. Anyone have a suggestion?

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Ash storms, dust storms.. thunder storms, all of it a massive hassle in getting out here to check out the source of the biggest calamity of the times...Well second source I guess, one being that all the nukes got launched.. well I hope all of them did, the other being yellowstone.

I keep going over it in my mind, how did I get convinced to do this job.. it's stupid, insane and ..well exciting.  That and the ecologist, his enthusiasm is a bit infections, even if he is possibly overly cautious. Apparently I wasn't exactly on the list to be chosen for this job, neither was Eivan for that matter. Leishey seems to have gotten some kind of organization put together stupidly fast. Stalkers, thieves, all sorts really, apparently he handed the ecologist a pile of dossiers and after going through it rejected them all. Wanted people with actual experience out in the ashlands... I don't get it. All we did was do our best to survive a hostile environment while trying to make sense of what the fuck was going on.


We all thought we were dying from radiation poisoning, slowly losing our minds. Guessing the nukes cracking yellowstone open like they did....did something.. I dunno I'm not a scientist. Leave figuring out the how and why to the eggheads, could all just be mutations I guess, but that wouldn't explain some of the people that never got exposed having abilities that could be described as magical.. hell even we didn't really get exposed enough to even get a mild case of rad poisoning.  And that doesn't explain the anomalies out here either...


Anyway, final bits here. The GPS stopped giving us an accurate location a while ago... maybe 5 days or so, but we found a map in a wrecked park service truck, no corpse there or nearby, kinda hope he made it out alright, we're going to camp here where we know more or less where we're at, before making our way further into the park. Definitely going to follow the old roads as best as we can.

Found an anomoly.

As some of the rumors indicated.. there are some patches of the ashlands that defy conventional physics. Pockets of magic I guess.

Eivan's the one that found it when we heading along a canyon when he noticed something being just weird ahead, looked up and noticed a bunch of ash swirling around in the air in one spot.... I guess it could be described as as a micro black hole, or just a localized sphere of intense gravity since the rocks we threw into it didn't go anywhere. they just formed up into a clump of rock floating in the air about twenty feet up in the air.


Though it only stuck around for a couple hours, yes we stood around tossing rocks at it till it dissipated. It was interesting to say the least.

Travelling is slow.


List of plants the ecologist has definitively identified:

Spotted knapweed, russian thistle, manzanita, lodgepole pine.

We've also seen two wolves.


Of the plant species we've seen... he thinks hes identified maybe 20, but there's no point listing them right because he's changed his mind three times on all 20.

Leishey stayed behind in SLC to organize things for our return and make sure the supply caches get set up behind us.

Seems the satellite connection is decent enough though. We're four days into the trip, the ecologists is... well giddy and hyper and insisting we stop anytime we see a plant or animal out here now that we're in the ashlands proper, so it's slow going.

Most of what we're seeing is desert plants, spindly and scrubby things, no grasses at all, however it's all stuff that's grown through, or in the ash since the eruption.  I'll get a list of the actual plants later since it's not anything I recognize.

Seems there's good work to be made by stalkers out in the salt lake area, even if it is working for the Order to help them set up survey posts in spots where they won't get ate up by ants and other nasty critters during the night... seems a lot of the experienced folks either split, or got promoted away from non-field positions and all the inexperienced people are now the field grunts. Made for good busywork while waiting on Leishey to catch up with us.

He managed to find us a humvee for the trip, some modified snow treads, and a a couple weeks of supplies for this. The ecologist also insisted that we take the most direct route, so instead of east and then north back around we're heading directly north into unfamiliar areas....I'm actually excited to go back..excited to explore the ashlands... kinda weird really.

Oh well. Tomorrow we set out so I've got... 12 hours to figure out if this is actual excitement for the journey or just anticipation and fear... hard to tell..I think.

That was fun. And unique.. working with the Order (military remnants for those living under a rock) instead of being shot at by them.

So to back up a bit,  that guy that shot me, and killed a couple other stalkers.. well he got on the shitlist of the military after shooting a couple of their guys as well. Seeing as how we had an active hunt for him, they offered to provide some additional muscle when we moved in for the capture.

Not sure who did the arrangements on this but after he was captured I got asked to id the guy, and somehow we wound up in the same room on accident and he started freaking out calling me undead and a ghost.  So.. that solves that anyway.

Eivan found some work for us and I have no idea who he's owed favors by but we're prepping to load up on an Order transport plane heading out to SLC now that the CR and salt lake folks are arguing over trade tarrifs and taxes or something like that. I'll be honest I haven't been paying geopolitics much mind so I'm not up to date... but well there was an argument between some SLC caravaners and some Fresno water merchants and it ended up with guys shooting at each other.....So now the military guys are heading east to keep the peace.

Hopefully this works.

Defining a STALKER part II

So.. I thought I was going to get out of this one but apparently people want to know what the acronym people think Stalker is made of means... to quote a wise man, I do not think it means what you think it means.

anyway, common vernacular for some people who deal in the business of item acquisition aside, this is what the supposed acronym stands for: Scavengers, Trespassers,  Adventurers, Loners, Killers, Explorers and Robbers.

Wandered over into San Jose because I'd heard Axel was out there running a tailoring shop. When he looked up from the counter he broke out laughing saying "I thought one of you was skulking about around here." Asked him to make some modifications to my gear, re-etching the runes on my goggles, adding a couple layers of light cloth stitched up with runes to soften impacts to my vest, that kind of stuff. He even re-did the hood so that it will stay up even during the worst storms and gives the wearer enhanced vision at night. Generally he does't do more complex runes like this except for people who survived out in the ashlands, or for people who pay very...very well. Afterwards I stopped at one of the Fry's electronics which has now grown and taken over half the shopping center and is now called "Fry's Electronic Empire"... I swear if it wren't for the lighting I'd swear these guys in here were cyborgs.... kinda interesting to meet the people who are now maintaining the internet and keeping the limited connectivity alive. They took a unique interest into the battery and electrum ore (it's what I'm calling it anyway) I had and for a chunk about the size of a C-cell battery they took the time to condense my Laptop, car battery, satellite phone and solar panel setup into a single unit, boosted the antennae power. Also some kind of voodoo bullshit to fully weatherproof it... they've asked me to field test it.... I told them I'm taking it to an active volcano and they got all bright eyed and excited like this was the ultimate field test.


Made a trip home and sorted some stuff out with my dad... we're not on the best of terms, but at least I now know I didn't disown myself. Apparently he's the one who told Leishey where he and Eivan might find me so we couldn't have parted on as bad a terms as I thought we had. Speaking of, Leishey's grouped up with his ecologist at the Stanislaus Campus to lay the groundwork and get it approved so we have more funding than whatever we can find that isn't nailed down and has tasked Eivan and myself with getting out to Salt Lake City to prep for the expedition and gather intelligence for what's going on out there since word of mouth really isn't that reliable.

So while Eivan looks for some work to take us that way, probably some kind of courier job that requires armed guards, I'm helping some of the locals hunt down the guy that's been killing stalkers.

Huh, of all the people I'd have expected to dig me up Leishey was not on that list... Not because I didn't expect he and Eivan would be back, but because I didn't expect them to be back so soon, have work for me, or that my dad would have tipped them off to where I was.....Gonna have to make a trip back home and sort out that mess at some point...probably before this job of Eivan's.

See, they found an ecologist that is insane enough to want to go out to yellowstone.... And for some reason he doesn't trust anyone to guide him there other than people who actually walked out of the ashlands, and somehow he found Eivan and convinced him of this idiocy.

And for some reason I'm contemplating joining them in this...insanity... like something out there calling to me.. like there's some grand mystery to be discovered.

Lot of crazy rumors about the ashlands too. Places where gravity doesn't work right, patches of grass growing unabated, items that were normal now infused with magical energy. There's even a rumor of a golden statue of a coiled snake that grants wishes that turn out with an ironic twist...


I'm going to take a couple days, think on this and even go back home and try and make peace with my dad, it just doesn't feel right leaving that unresolved.

Mondays suck.

Yes I know it's Wednesday now, but still Mondays suck.

So, to back up a little bit, Sunday night I went into the Alamedan DMZ. Pretty simple, sneak in avoid the patrols and the dogs at the border and the landmines, find the address go in, grab the swag and do the same thing in reverse.

Went easy enough. Got back to the drop site sometime Monday morning and the client was waiting for me.... That should have tipped me off that something was wrong... Frankly everything about the guy should have tipped me off something was wrong. He was a little shady, didn't really describe the interior of the house right, the offered pay was too high for the simplicity of the job things like that.

And so as I'm camouflaging the stash,  he walks up, waves hello, asks me how things are, and then shoots me in the chest a couple times before taking the swag and walking off.....I can happily say that yes Axel's runes stopped the bullets.... it still hurt like I got hit with a sledgehammer and I apparently was the pawn in some kind of operation and expected to be disposable... unfortunately I am now pissed off and the information brokers are stirred up like a nest of bees trying to find out what the hell went down, because well, it's bad for business if they get strung along and dragged into some kind of insanity involving people getting shot. Apparently I'm not the first stalker this has happened to either. I'm just the first one that walked away from it alive.


Now before I get inundated with questions, a stalker is someone that sneaks into restricted or dangerous areas to retrieve things for fun, family and profit. Some people say it's an acronym, others don't depends on who you ask and what the guy they're referring to may have done or not done... I however can say I know who first started referring to "retrieval experts" as stalkers. It's some guy who read a bunch of books before the war came up with the term from a book he read about the aftereffects of first contact with aliens, and the stalkers in that pretty much did the same thing and he's the one who is in charge of keeping things sensible in the chaotic world of information trading in the bay area.


Anyway, not sure which is more annoying, that I was shot, or that I was duped into doing the hard part of a retrieval for someone else.... didn't even get paid either. Anyway the only reason I'm even posting this is because someone was asking around in the shadows for me... specifically by name, and that kinda sent up a red flag, so I might be disappearing for a while.

Back in the saddle again.

Happy fourth of July everyone. Historically the celebrated founding day of the U.S. and consequently the day the world actually ended. Decided to post the celebratory post about the 5th a bit early, for those of you who've been living under a rock, or in a bunker (the crazy few that still are) the 5th is called N-day short for the day of the new world.

Anyway, those batteries I mucked about with in Utah. Trump's R&D team started selling them, much better and more refined than what I put together, however it's stupidly expensive due to how rare the ore used in them is, rumor has it there's only three sources off in Utah, and how they haven't been able to replicate the material's magical nature. the short of it is it's a rare material and it's hazardous to mine because it naturally builds up a charge and has a tendency to arc off.

Also if anyone is reading this and is off near cape Canaveral there's an open reward for usable materials and data from the space center out there deliverable to Vandanberg afb. This is includes a second larger reward for the heavy lift crawler, or parts.... so if you want to drive that from florida to the west coast go for it. Reward's being offered by the survivors of a few of the private firms and some of the government space cases that've started getting the national space center beta site up and running.... somehow this included convincing the russians to ship over the Buran, some scientists and a starter kit for building a heavy launch rocket since their cosmodrome got trashed during the war.




And that's enough about the world, now to small matters.



I had a big stupid post thought up and mostly typed out but have decided against it, the basic gist of it is that I got into an argument with my dad...it was kind of a long time coming over my goals in life and him not wanting me to end up in a similar situation to how he was with his brothers regarding the family farm and ranch, and well it ended up with me in self exile... which is why I'm now crashing on the couch of one of my brothers figuring out what to do next working odd-jobs and sneaking into the Alamedan-DMZ to collect scrap, trinkets, stuff from people's homes.

It's surprising how much people will pay for a keepsake from before the war, especially to people who can sneak past poorly equipped patrols who've never dealt with magically enhanced stealth... really they need to keep up with what's been going on with the world regarding magic.... it's funny how quickly people have tried to make some kind of normalcy out of a very abnormal world.

Important announcement.

For the audiologically impaired: Blog with the Blastwave will be returning with semi-regular updates July 4th, 2015.


If you're visually impaired... well I can't do much to help you sorry, though I am impressed that you wound up here.

Reached my hometown a few days ago, kinda haven't had much to post about. I was right though everyone scattered like startled rats when we reached Fresno.

Probably going to be my last post since there's not a war going on and I'm not running for my life or just trying to survive.


It's boring as hell though, even with the cattle chasing that my dad has me doing since despite a few years away I'm one of the few people who knows our ranch well enough to hunt down lost cattle (you'd think some of the hunters would know it well enough). It's kinda like the journey was more interesting than the destination, I wanted to be home but now that I'm home life seems dull by comparison.

Five days later and most of us have filtered in. Rick showed up last night dragging Vae into the camp by the ear, though we're still missing their fourth squaddie with Tahoe tricking into camp a few hours later. Rick's the squad leader to Vae, Tahoe and  Aaron. Short man, carries a shotgun and has a bit of a temper. Aaron is another intelligence guy, between him Tahoe and Doyle there's enough secrets between them to probably take down a slew of south american governments...Or none at all. To be honest no one's asked them much into their job description.

Anyway, unaccounted for people: Doyle, Aaron and Scott. However we just...kinda know they aren't hurt. Hard to say how or why, just we know.


We're going to pack up tomorrow and actually head further into California and get the lay of the land and then once we reach Fresno probably scatter to the four winds.

This has been a busy week, but I think it's mostly safe enough to post now.


Found Leishey, he ended up getting captured after all but no one realized he was with us, so it was a simple matter of convincing the constables that he was my cousin from Europe that had gotten stuck here when it all went to hell, and Leishey played the part of a clueless foreigner fairly well.

And then I caused a riot and counter revolution when I noticed just who was in charge of the local group of Jeffersonians... This may be ancient history to some but well. Right before the war went down there was an FBI arrest of a California politician, who was being brought up on charges of gun running, spying for the chinese and other general shenanigans like that...and it jut so happened that state Senator Hee was running the show here. It took me a bit to realize where I recognized this guy from. Partly because he wasn't in a suit, and partly because the Jeffersonians are a mostly conservative libertarian movement and Hee was just a few propoganda speeches shy of being bolshevik red.

I made mention of this at a bar and a couple hours later it was like a mini LA riot outside the house he was using as abase of operations. It seems the locals were kind of sick of the shift in how the Jefferson's had been acting and it took a nudge. Either way long story short Hee and a few co conspirators, got handed over to California authorities and the people that got suckered into their line dance also turned themselves in without much of a fuss.

So following that Leishey and I started off for Folsom lake, we found Eivan, well he found us, along the roadside.. then again we weren't exactly subtle with the off key singing in Russian as we drove down the highway pass donner lake, that and he was probably waiting for us.

And now we're slowly cruising around lake Folsom on a borrowed barge looking for everyone else.

We made it into California, someone shot an RPG at us, and we scattered like startled cats....No lie.

 I'm currently in Tahoe at my brother's cabin.... the key still works so I'm assuming it's still his, and the jeep in the garage is the same as his so, yeah.


Anyway, four days ago we finally made it through the inspection checkpoint after three hours of being detained while they took out statements and made radio calls. We got a warning that we'd be passing through Jeffersonian held territory, and were just passing Truckee we thought we were home free till we saw a smoking wreck on the roadway.

At first we were going to stop but it seemed a bit.... suspicious.  So we slowed the truck a bit, rolled by and were about to stop when the person that had been on the ground jumped up yelled something to the effect of "JEFFERSON WILL ALWAYS BE FREE" and then pulled an anti tank missile from the trunk of the car and fired it at us, thankfully it went WAY high. So we floored it, with Doyel and Scott leaning out of the trailer taking potshots at the guy and hopefully deter him from taking another shot and everyone missed the log that got rolled down the hill at us.

The next thing I remember is that Eivan and I are stumbling through the woods near there, I turned around and the truck was on fire and the trailer faring about the same, and the sound of gunfire. I kinda saw Axel and Doyel running up the north embankment of the highway with Wade and Axel firing at someone or something west along the road. Couldn't see anyone else, could hear Leishey and Vae yelling to split up with our rally point being Folsom.

...I hope he means the lake and not the prison.

Anyway a grassfire caught up with us, Eivan and I got separated because of it and it took me a day to sneak my way around Truckee/Tahoe to my brother's cabin, thankfully without having to shoot anyone.

Anyway it seems that Truckee and the surrounding areas out to Donner pass are Jefferson areas... wish we'd known they were that crazy sort to shoot rpgs at passing vehicles. Anyway their "constables" have been doing patrols looking for "some black ops type folks from The CR"... thankfully I grew up in a small and off kilter town and have managed to keep a low profile and talk the talk, even if my face is new. It also helps I by a small miracle had grabbed my day pack and had a spare set of clothes that wasn't stained blue/black with ash in it.


Yesterday I went back to the attack site, the truck and trailer got  pushed off to the side of the road, nothing worth my time was there beyond a melted mess of battery ore, a burnt up M4 and the charred remains of the laptop (yay tablet sized pocket in my pack holding said tablet). No corpses though and I haven't heard anything about anyone being caught so I think we all made it out alright.

I hope my brother understands that I need to borrow the jeep though. I also hope it'll run properly since lord knows how long it's sat. At least two years?

Delays, delays and delays. It's basically a giant backlog at the California border here because the State troopers are insisting on doing full inspections of everyone entering and leaving the state and making a record of where they intend to go and where they're coming from.

Apparently a group of folks who really wanted to form up the state of Jefferson have been doing bombings in the Sacramento area.... oddly enough the seat of government isn't there anymore so I don't see what they're accomplishing to be honest.

I do know one thing, the troopers will likely  shit a brick when they inspect our gear and it's going to take some explanation and radio calls to sort out how to get through considering  what we have.

That's about it really.

Axel wandered out here today a few hours after everyone other than Rogan who has decided to remain here in Vegas. Anyway, Axel's been experimenting with runes some more and has found out some significant things.

Generally speaking a person needs to physically in contact with it. For example those tires that Axel painstakingly inscribed with runes? Wasted time and effort. The goggles that I have however that basically clear dust, fox, ash etc from obscuring my vision? No problem.

We tested this by by stabbing a piece of wood with the runs inscribed in it, and then having someone hold the plank and attempt to stab it again. Failed to stab into it while someone was holding it while everyone could easily stab through the plank while it was sitting on a camp table. We're not exactly sure why or how this works.

We're still not going to test the bullet resistance to the clothes he gave us for Christmas though.


Anyway we've headed north, rather than trying to pick our way through the pass, or across death valley we're going to see if we can cut across over west of Reno to Sacramento.

Sitting in one of the campgrounds watching the sky and everything else, practicing some of the stuff I learned what feels like a lifetime ago.


I had another dream with coyote lecturing me. Well I think I was being lectured. The dream was more of the same sitting beside a campfire in a canyon with the spire of basalt visible in the distance and Coyote sitting across from me talking at me in some indecipherable language... At least the last bit I was told I comprehended "you will understand in due time".

I did see something a few campgrounds down the lakeshore there was a flash of green light, when I made my way over I'd found freshly grown grass and some rejuvenated plants, and nothing else. It was like a druid had walked by decided that this spot needed grass and then left.

Doyel and Tahoe wandered out here last night. It seems that the city finally got on their nerves enough that they're ready to head out. Eivan, Leishey and Joeseph (prefers to be called Vae, a nickname he picked up working at Jimmyjohns before joining the army, he's the designated marksman from the other team) will probably make their way here tomorrow, and then we can decide to wait for everyone else or continue west.

Wow it's really been eight days since I last posted. Place is really that chaotic and distracting.

Rogan has decided to stay out here and work security for caravans between here and the east, the rest of us will be headed west into California.


honestly this much civilization is annoying me, there's too much stuff going on. Yeah I know hypocritical of me.

Additionally I've been asked by the Trump folks to not post anymore about the battery I've been messing around with since they want to try and corner the market on that.

...I'll mention if I accidentally cause it to blow up though since some batteries like to do that.


Part of why we're still here is that there was a freak snowstorm buried the main pass into California... though we could take the tunnel into death valley and out that way... Or go north to Reno and see what's going on there. Many options with very little motivation to do so when all the world's vices are available for the right price. I think I'm just going to go camp out at lake mead and wait for everyone else to come to their senses.

We've made it to Las Vegas a couple days ago.  It was an interesting reception, Tump himself was there in greet the pollworkers from SLC and got them set up in the Tower convention center to let the population cycle through and give their opinion.  It seem's he's the defacto power at play here (well he does have a pricate army of security troops with standardized gear that looks surprisingly new) with a few other high ranking corporate folks from before the war making up a governing body. Interestingly enough most of the strip casinos have been converted into low rent housing and a lot of the subdivisions have been tore up to be used for agricultural purposes.

A few of the casino's however are still setup for travellers and gambling, we're at the Golden Nugget off of fremont street.

I finally got some sleep last night.

Apparently there's a group of Californian's here as well courting Vegas to be trade partners. Power from the grid here for ag products at a lower rate than Reno.

Rogan found his wife and kid and is staying with them for now and looking for work.

Wade and Doyel managed to get kicked out of Ceasar's Palace for playing slapjack in the lobby, and possibly stealing a deck of cards to do so.

And that's about everything interesting going on.

This is rather boring. Haven't posted anything because nothing really interesting has happened. We're in Cedar City, just north of Zion national park. Once the poll-workers are done collecting opinions here we're going to be going all the way to Las Vegas, and that's where our contract ends unless we want to re-up and escort them back to SLC.

Not much to report. aside from that I've become nocturnal but that's more to me taking night watch than anything else.

Can't sleep. Testing the tablet's radio and connection to the net.

Additionally I've had it running for the last five days on one of my experimental batteries. Still holding charge and the multimeter show's no drop in voltage, I even rigged up a dummyload testing using a toaster fillament.. though to be honest I am not an electrical engineer, nor do I fully comprehend it... for all I know when it runs dry the batter might go critical and explode in a subatomic fireworks display.


I really hope I'm joking, but well I got to see a cave arcing electricity between veins of reddish half melted copper ore... sooooo....I think a lot of traditional laws of physics may have gone out the window at some point during the last two years.

Anyway we're finally leaving Salt Lake City... as nice as the town (and weird as some of the people are) it's nice to get moving again. We've sat around for too long.. I probably could have walked all the way home. Speaking of, on a whim I tried calling home on the tablet. Lines disconnected. Hopefully that's just because my dad didn't see the point of keeping it connected what with the apocolypse and surviving the fallout being a more pressing concern.

I went and showed the prospector what I'd found out about his mystery metal and the battery I was working on. He was blown away by it and wants to know if I'll stay out here and work for him making batteries. I said no but gave him schematics on what I've worked on and offered to keep him posted on anything else I came up with. I want to go home.


I also have been messing around with some scrap electronics from a radioshack, a stripper clip of bullets to the guys using it as a root cellar and I got free access to all the old stock still around, and have a small tablet working now. The laptop is nice but it, the solar panel, the car battery and the satellite transceiver is heavy enough that it's troublesome for hiking around with it unless I'm in a group and there's some talk that the 12 of us are probably going to start splitting up in Vegas. Rogan's wife should be somewhere there, so he'd have no reason to go further west than there, while Doyel (Tahoe's opposite number from the air force, intelligence, jokes are a bit crude but always well timed. Canadian Ex-pat, signed on with the airforce and scored top marks and got the pick of the job options) and Wade have said they're considering staying here in SLC. Though personally I'd say they'd only last a week before a joke got them tarred and ran out on a rail, they are religious, but the humor is crass enough that some of the locals occasionally take offense.

Anyway tablet is some nokia thing I found, pretty bombproof more or less, I mean two years later the screen's not cracked or damaged and when I gave it a charge it came to life so there's that, and with a whole radioshack's stock to work with I replaced a few of the burnt out and terrible hardware and through some guides I found on the internet boosted the internal radio strength enough that in theory I could do the same trick I'm using for the laptop with it, with negotiations taking so long I'm tempted to keep experimenting.


Additionally I've had a couple more dreams similar to the one where I saw the progression of humankind from start to spacefaring odyssey. The latest one I could see the pillar of basalt from where I was sitting tending a fire on the floor of a desert basin. The coyote from the first dream was there and sitting opposite me across the fire... I heard it speaking but understood nothing. Not a single word. After a while it's like it just knew whatever it was trying to tell me was going over my head and it wandered off into the desert without me...I wonder if there's someone out here who does dream interpretation. Might see if I can bother the druids some about this.

Checked out the airport. It's mostly been restored to serviceable condition, however it's very expensive to buy tickets because fuel of that grade is something that takes a lot of resources to make, and they won't accept ammunition, only prewar bills and coins. The point of it is that they used the plane to fly over a load of tools, parts and chemicals needed by the desalinization plant crew to increase capacity and maintain the equipment, stuff that is apparently available in excess in California. The plane however is going to be here till they have enough cargo, passengers or a mix of the two to make it cost effective to fly out again.

Additionally I got bored and wandered around the market while Rogan and Tahoe (an intelligence officer who was with the actual team I and the others were providing a distraction for) are finalizing how we get paid and the duration of our contract will be to protect the SLC "missionaries". Tahoe has a few screws loose, then again I think we all do in one way or another, might be how we survived. Anyway in my wandering I found a guy trying to sell some rocks he'd found poking around a copper mine that had been, up until a recent earthquake gotten buried by a pyroclastic flow. He says it's like a natural battery, the nearby shopkeepers called him a snakeoil salesman. I gave him a shot and messed around with it using a voltmeter I found out in the ashlands in some town we wandered through and it does indeed have a charge, albeit very low, less than 1 volt. I bought him a sandwhich and that bought me a few chunks of the material about the size of a baseball, all of which I did test first and it all has a charge proportional to the size of the material.

So the material itself is copperish with a rosy tint to it. At first glance a person could be forgiven for thinking it was just chunks of refined copper ore, it's darker and not a shiny, with a bit of electrolosis in water I was able to tanish it even more and it didn't turn green like copper but was more of a reddish gray. I broke off a chunk and dug around till I'd found a mineralogist who'd worked in the mine before the war. A few hours of doing various tests on it his determination is that it's an alloy of copper, lead and zinc rich silica. I relayed the story of how the prospector had found it in a copper mine that had shut down and then been hit by a volcanic landslide and he figures that under those conditions such an alloy could have been made through sheer luck, but can't explain the electric charge. Additionally the alloy has a low melting point, 230 degrees Fahrenheit, however it becomes very malleable at 150 to 160. 

I've been experimenting with it since then and managed to make simple battery like how in highschool chem you could use pennies vinegar and cardboard and a bit of sandpaper to make a basic wet cell battery.. it's kinda like that only I'm using distilled water to just wet some paper, and layering thin plates of the metal that I flattened out with a controlled fireball and a hammer... it was actually harder than I'd expected because I can boil water pretty easy and keeping it cool enough not to melt the metal was a challenge. I wonder how thin I can get the plates and how long it'll keep a charge... this is going to be interesting to experiment with.

Today, a plane flew into the airport.... Everyone in town just stopped and stared as it circled, waggled the wings as if it was waving then turned towards the runway.  It was strangely abnormal compared to every day life. It was some kind of propeller driven cargo plane, I don't think anyone actually expected to see a plane considering the storm that whipped through from the east last night.


On a whim I poked around one of the public libraries. An ancient looking lady with a ruler as long as I am tall nearly took my head off when I coughed louder than was "acceptable"....I'm assuming she's the head librarian. Anyway I looked up the index card for the public record on the building the druid's tree grew out of. I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories but it was a joint ownership of Dow, Monsanto and a Chinese firm that I couldn't read, much less figure out the phonetic pronunciation as there aren't any Chinese people out here to translate for me.


Reviewing what I wrote down and typed from my dream...I dunno. I guess it is kinda calming to me.

I had meant to make a post a few days ago after a party being held by a group of druids but I slept more or less the last couple of days as a result. I suppose you could say the party was that good.

Anyway druids, harvest wardens, useful heathen treeworshippers or whatever you call them. They're the people who can  somehow commune with the plants and convince them to grow faster and in certain ways.... the ones in SLC also throw a wicked party, and I'm still trying to make sense of the dream I had after drinking a mug of the filtered sap they were passing around. The ones here have a massive maple tree that they consider to be the source of their abilities... I'm not interested in arguing theology so there's that. Grew up through the center of a building and smashed it all to pieces and when they aren't out tending to the fields most of them hang out under the tree and have converted it into apartments for the lot of them.

Anyway, last Monday they invited Eivan to their second spring festival, and Eivan in turn invited the rest of us to come along on Friday for that. Drums, bonfires (which honestly still seems like a bad idea in an underground environment that close to the root system of a tree but it works out fairly well apparently since no one died of smoke inhalation or fire) and alcohol of various sorts. It was kinda like burning man only under a huge tree instead of out in the desert. Anyway the sap, it's purple, glows and tastes like bananas... and that's about all I remember about it. After I drank the mug everything about the party after is kinda blurry, and the dream I had was.. fairly weird then again I guess compared to the reality of the world.. it wasn't that weird.


Basically I watched the history of the world sped up rapidly atop a perch made of basalt. Think like the Devils Tower in Wyoming (Or Close Encounters of the Third Kind if that's your forte), only instead of a mesa it ended in a spire with pillars of basalt below forming something of a spiral down to the ground below, though I didn't climb down. I just sat there and watched as humanity started from hunter groups to hunter/gatherer tribes, agrarian societies formed in the span of minutes. Occasionally I glanced up to catch glimpses of the old "gods" and "spirits"holding vigil. Empires rose and fell over a mere hour, the sky grew dark as the fires of industry erupted filling the air with ash and soot heating the forge of world wide war before clearing into a brief relative peace. Then the sky split with lightning the gods of old fled into the ether and the earth shook with thunder as the stars fell from the sky erupting and scorching the earth, shattering the basalt beneath me I clung to the largest pile I could find and managed to find my footing to watch below as the earth cooled, humanity emerged from the shelters and bunkers, rebuilt, squabbled and fought over resources, constructed new fiefdoms and restored empires. Then the stars appeared again rocketing up from the earth into the sky, but destruction did not come this time. The rock I was perched on followed slowly as my view changed showing the stars now allowing me glimpses of a vast network and star spanning empires and clusters....And then I woke up after a spectral coyote, similar to the old petroglyphs depicting the old stories of the southwestern spirit "Coyote", as in the Coyote that scattered the stars at random after taking over for the great spirit to put up the constellations then getting bored, jumped onto the floating rock I was sitting on, and knocked me off into the gulf of space.

Woke up missing a boot and laying on a bough about fifty feet up the tree feeling like someone hit me in the head and elbow with a tomahawk.....So word of advice if you get offered a mug of unknown substance that looks purple and smells like bananas...eh I dunno I don't feel any worse for the experience.... So it's up to your discretion.


Don't know if much word has made it east or west but the areas around Utah are currently collecting opinion of the folks living here to decide if they should try and unify with the rest of the country or form their own type of centralized government.  Somehow Rogan managed to hook us up as an escort/scout group for the delegation going to Las Vegas to poll opinion there.

Salt lake city.. interesting place. Sundays a ghost town while they take the "on the seventh day he rested" quite literally. Day spent with family and a community wide service near dusk at the cathedral.

Majority of the people here hid out in the, for lack of a better term, huge ass bunker at the bottom of the Bingham Canyon mine. I mean literally the housed more or less the entire population of Salt Lake City. the story goes that after the cuban missile crisis the owners of the mine got a wild hair that maybe the fingers on the trigger wouldn't be so calm in the future, so they quietly started constructing a bunker under the mine and into the bedrock. While doing that they ran an eight lane wide tunnel from the mine along underground to the heart of SLC. The bunker itself was designed to fit the population of the city and to hold enough gear and supplies to last two years. As the population of SLC grew, so did the bunker.

Salt Lake city didn't get hit directly, however the nearby airbase, completely glassed, so the majority of the structures here are still intact, though the residents didn't know for sure until four months after when they cracked the seal on the main blast doors. When they came out they found various squatters in the cathedral running a market and bartertown. There was a standoff between the old chuchgoers and the folks inhabiting their house of worship. Interestingly enough before there was any bloodshed, some guy wandered in out of Zion canyon national park, flipped over the squatter tables and beat the everloving fear of god into a few of them with a whip made of skeletonweed before wandering back out into the desert.....I swear I've heard this story before, but they have a whip made of skeletonweed and there's a couple people who swear to have witnessed it and a few blurry photos, so I dunno.

We got into town and just sorta scattered and wandered around for the last few days. People are very nice, and John Moses Browning would be proud of all the rifles, shotguns and pistols I've seen of his designs. There's a nice manufacturing base and I traded a couple bullets to get my rifle refinished and fix the scratch that was put into it. Eivan found a small group of Russians here, they had been on layover at SLC international when the nukes started flying and got almost forcibly dragged into the bunker by some very insistent members of the community. Rogan met up with his brother-in-law yesterday and got word his wife and kid had been here and then headed west once caravans started forming and travelling, so there's some good news for some of us.

Nice town, little unnerving how nice everyone is, but nothing's overtly sinister about it.

Weird, my birthday passed by without my even noticing.

Anyway we reached grand Junction on the third and Salt Lake City this evening.

While scott hasn't figured out how to teach us how to do the eye trick he does, Axel did figure out a group of runes that work well enough together to increase viability in terrible weather.... so we now have a set of goggles with those runes inscribed into the frames that a person can see about 300 feet in 10 foot visibility. Axel then inscribed the same runes into the frame around the windows on the truck rather than tire himself out making goggles for each of us.

We did encounter one bandit during a relatively calm period on the road, I was the one who was on top of the second trailer with the 240 when some guy tried to creep up on us while we were turtling along.... I guess he just didn't see me because of the ash clouds roiling around behind me or something, and only when I yelled "Oy! Can't you see the fuckhuge auto rifle?" did he actually notice me before falling backwards startled into an ash drift yelling out apologies and running back into the wastes. Only one I saw from the top of the trailer though, and I was looking for them..or well anything. Did see a group of deer bedded down at a relatively sheltered spring up a draw but that's about it.

grand junction folks appreciated the supplies.

Anyway the reason for a lack of posts, the storm brought a lot of interference making it impossible to connect to the internet.

Tomorrow we get to meet the people of Salt lake city.

We now have a second trailer. Though we don't get to keep it. It's loaded with supplies to take to the people manning Grand Junction.

While we could leave now we're holding off from leaving now because an ash storm rolled in from the north and visibility is down to fifteen feet.

About the trailer. It's a re-purposed horse trailer that has been up-armored with 3/4's steel plating along the floor and axles. According to he last guy to do the supply run a group of raiders has been harassing any one dumb enough to go farther than a couple miles out to the west, however they haven't killed or harmed anyone yet, just tried to blow the axle off the supply trailer a couple times (he said that so nonchalantly too like talking about bland weather...)

I suspect this will be an "interesting" drive.

We're waiting till the storm starts to trail off and we can see enough to follow the road. Scott can see through the storm though, so there's that (very useful for him acting as a scout or driver but not for the rest of us unless he can teach us how to do so ourselves), we could leave with him driving now if we wanted to.  His eyes are glowing blue so we're assuming it's some kind of magic.

That's all for tonight.

Some things I've noticed now that we're in a larger more populated area.

Ammunition seems to be the new norm in currency. Everyone can use it in some way or another, it can be broken down into base components for use in other applications, used for hunting and defense from roving groups of marauders (which apparently is an issue outside of the larger cities). This is a currency I can understand, I know it's kinda still bartering but it's still similar to money. Home reloads are worth less (with exception depending on the quality of the reload), there's a shop on the east side of denver that's got a factory remanufacturing setup going and thats more or less the middle grade of ammunition and anything that's sealed in the box pre-war (unless it's trashed to the elements) is your top shelf ammunition.

For example: One round of pre-war new manufacture in good condition will net you a box of 20 re-manufactured of the same caliber, or a box of 50 rounds of some of the same that some guy made in his basement. The basement ammo get you more shots, but the re-manufactured is more consistent in quality, while the pre-war can be used as hard currency with very little variation in value from shop to shop. We caught onto this rather quickly though and have been sparing with selling our ammunition for goods. While it is a fast way to get supplies, it also invites the possibility of not having anything to defend ourselves or hunt for food if we do need to do so.

Eivan, Axel and myself are not anomolies. There are others that can for all intents and purposes use magic. Not sue if it's the radiation that caused it or what, but honestly I'm not complaining because it has its uses. If Denver is a good representative sample it appears that one in 4 people has some kind of aptitude for it, and among those people it's 1 in 50 or so that can do things that would make for an amazing one man Vegas act.

Rogan linked up with the airforce group that's here. They made their way north from Cheyenne mountain after the radar and sat links were blown off the top and while they were headed north a big one hit the side of the mountain and cracked it in half. According to them the East coast looks like it got hit with the densest bombing campaign. They were tracking at least 30 missiles that deployed over the DC area with a followup of a full bomber wing heading over Canada in their general direction, but that one didn't get to be tracked to destination. They also said something about a trio of missiles deploying over western wyoming, one of ours and two from the east. It's a guess that would require someone going back into the area, but it seems that Yellowstone's eruption wasn't exactly a fluke but rather may have been intentional as part of some obscure mutually assured destruction protocol from the cold war.  Rogan asked this one for me, and I know everyone probably wants to know too "who shot first?", unfortunately that's inconclusive. Due to the air-traffic that was on the east and western coasts and interference due to the fighting on the west coast and staging in the pacific with the Russian fleet for a counter invasion into the Chinese mainland the NORAD guys said they can't say for certain but that it may have been an automated system based around continuity of the white house, or lack ther-of since it was hit during the first salvo. Either way they said one radar pass everything was clear, the next pass everything was lit up like  new years with launch pings across the U.S., Eurasia and Eastern Europe, with western Europe following suit about ten minutes later.

Kinda heavy stuff, but it's probably one of those things that need to be out there for people to read, even if there isn't a clear idea of where the first missile was fired from.


That's about it, an explanation of the new economy for people who are still inside the bunkers (or up at the IMS) and a heavy topic.

In Denver, helping Axel with tailoring to scrape up enough goods to barter for fuel and food, there's also the possibility of us hauling supplies from here to Grand Junction since it's the only inhabited town between Golden and Salt Lake city, and it's mostly just a stopping point for people to spend the night and refuel since it takes a full day to get there by vehicle.

Rogan and his guys went looking for the airforce guys that are out here, yesterday. It sounds like Cheyenne mountain got hit hard enough that the bunker there was compromised and they had to evacuate the facilities.

Not much to report beyond that. Nothing else has really happened.

That was an exercise of frustration and beating ones head against a wall.

It took a talk with the town council, getting in contact with someone in command of the Army who remembered us and having two teams to the east (one distraction and the other a covert kill team for Chinese soldiers wreaking havoc east of the continental divide... guess which one I was on), as well as someone who could verify the credentials of Rogan, Wade, Scott and Axel of being airforce... as well as a lynch mob of angry villagers dragging the police chief out of the council meeting to tar and feather him to actually get our gear back... Apparently a few of the local police had decided taking things from evidence now and then since the apocalypse had happened wasn't a problem and there had been a growing movement in the shadows against the chief who was covering for them. And our arrival and discontent at not all of our gear being returned tipped the balance.

...I swear we don't sic' lynch mobs on people....well we'll try not to make a habit of it. Either way I've got my rifle back, it has a nasty scratch through the finish now and that's annoying me greatly. We're going to leave fort Collins as soon as things settle down enough that we can barter for supplies.

Plan is that next stop is Denver, they'll have a better idea of whether or not the interstate is clear enough to head west, or if we'll need to keep going south. There's also an enclave of airforce folks there according to the rumor mill.

Fort Collins isn't as bad a first impressions made it out to be, though they're still weird.

So..yes the people of Fort Collins are pretty weird. At first they thought we were a gang of marauders.... here to torch the countryside....and then they found out we were survivors from off in the ashlands and welcomed us into the town with open arms then one of the ladies....I use that term lightly...noticed we had firearms, nailed Rogan with a rock right in the face and everything went to hell with her shrieking about us being gun toting murderers from the wilds out to kill the whole town... It did not help that with Rogan knocked to the ground and blood gushing from his head (she played softball at Colorado U apparently) and Eivan yelling at her in Russian pointing a rifle at her did not help things. The local police showed up and once we managed to talk Eivan down we all got arrested and disarmed. It's a wonder we didn't wind up shot yesterday.

And somehow Scott slept through all of this.

Thankfully once our statements were made and Rogan got medical treatment, as well as a few witnesses from the town backing up our version of events we were released, and now we're trying to barter our weapons back, which is currently... an interesting situation as according to the officer I spoke with earlier, three of the rifles were "misplaced". It was like pulling teeth from a chicken just to get the laptop back.

I almost told him that we've hiked and lived in the ashlands for over 400 miles and a year and a half, they are effectively extensions of ourselves and by god if some greedy damn cops just freakin take. I'm just going to stop here and not voice my full opinion.

.....Sorry bit of rage there. It's kinda pissing me off that they "lost" my rifle.


So yeah... interesting reception in Fort Collins...I want to leave and...I swear I never thought I'd say this I want to head back into the wastes...

Headed west.

So, after getting used to humanity again and a long discussion among ourselves, we've decided to head west. All of us have varying reasons for it, but  it's boils down to being tired of seeing all this damn ash.


And honestly there's not much to boil down on my journals between  the last time I did a summary and now. I didn't write much and most everything was buried in ash or burned. Other than Wade spending...a lot of time trying to make some kind of knife grenade.

Anyway beyond that, there are some people here that have figured out how to do...as Rogan has put it "mystical bullshit" nothing as pronounced as Eivan's "miracle grow" druidism (best description anyone came up with yet) and Axel made quite a bit of credit with his skills at tailoring (I managed to help with this too, thanks mom, so we've actually gotten to basically barter for a truck and camper trailer. Though I do feel we're getting the short end of the stick on the truck, the windshield has some spots where it looks like a pissed off jackrabbit went after it with a ball peen hammer, the passenger side headlight is smashed and the bumper has seen better days.  Thankfully it has 4wheel drive which will be useful driving through the ash, and Axel immediately inscribed a dizzying number of Scandinavian moon runes (no not real runes I just can't read Danish), he says it's to make the tires puncture and slash proof, and I think he put a lot into it because he slept like a bear for half the day in the bed of the truck once he was done.

Arguably we probably could have put all 12 of us in the truck, 4-6 in the cab and 8-6 in the back since it's a longbed f250, but they offered the camper trailer for free since no one really needs them in town and they had a megadealership. Works for us. The truck is also a diesel so fuel will be easier to come by. Anyway tomorrow we start heading west.....by heading south. the only roads that they know are clear and in good enough shape to drive on are Interstate 25, well a slight lie, I80 is clear enough west to drive to Laramie but no one's really gone much further west than that because everything between there and Salt Lake City is probably shattered and broken. One of the people giving us directions said that there are people in Fort Collins (and surrounding cities), but they're kinda weird.

To be honest I went through there during a college trip, I'd call them weird too. Strange town that had sort of a "California bay area elitism" to it. Wonder what it's like now.

Hopefully tomorrow we'll find out.

No, they aren't cannibals.

And no I'm not sitting in a cage made up of the bones of my comrades.... that would be gruesome, who could even think of...especially suspending it off a cliff... that would be silly.

So the last 7 days has been us more or less getting used to socializing with other people again, anyway the people Cheyenne don't celebrate the new year... Well not on the first of January, they decided to do that in march after their first winter after the bombs dropped.

Regarding the town full of kids over in Wheatland, that's an experiment the highschoolers started during last march. One of the more influential kids at the school basically decided that the end of the world was the fault of the adults, and so they and a small group one night headed to Wheatland which had been abandoned in favor of everyone moving to Cheyenne. Left notes to their families and whatnot, the next day there was a standoff, since some of the older highschoolers had taken rifles with them, and the parents decided, after a couple days of talking it over to let them play their own version of "civilization". All the kids in Cheyenne got a choice to go or not, and well.. so far it hasn't turned into lord of the flies...so there's that, and I suppose they also know that if they so chose to, they could always come back to their families down here.

That's basically the short form of the story between Cheyenne and Wheatland right now...or at least that's what the people we've spoken to so far have said.

Anyway, so it was kinda tense for a bit. Axel, Rogan, Wade (finds humor in EVERYTHING and cracks bad jokes, he was staff at the bunker, he also likes knives and explosives, and has spent at least 3 months of the trip trying to combine the two) and Scout (Scott actually, but he's basically been acting as a long range scout  for us for the last 6 months since he's somehow figured out how to run through the ash without getting exhausted. He's from the other team that we were the distraction team for.), those four were the ones that initially made contact on the second. Considering we didn't hear gunshots or see them leave till nightfall we were expecting that yes the town was full of cannibals, something that Wade immediately cracked a joke about as soon as he was in town.  To be fair four, heavily armed folks walking out of the ashfields from the north did leave the people who met them first a bit concerned. Their first questions were not about who we were but rather Wheatland, thankfully Wade did not make a bad joke and Rogan explained that since it was a town full of children and only children we'd chosen not to visit since we had no context for why they were only children living there. So after a few hours, and a hot meal Scott headed out to make a report with those of us that had stayed out of the town, what was interesting that he was followed, however the guy who tried to follow him got lost off the beaten path and we ended up having to rescue him since he fell down a hole hidden by an ash drift.

On the third we ended up heading into town, the rest of us along with the guy we'd rescued. Other than that, the last few days have been spent getting used to civilization again and linking up with the air force guys who were stationed at Francis AFB and catching up with what we missed.

So I'm pretty certain most anyone that's reading this is aware that the war ended after the bombs dropped, and the military has split up into factions and micro peacekeeping forces with only a hint of a unifying structure remaining since it was a few months before communications were restored.... so we're more or less free to do what we want. We can "re-enlist" or try and go home.... we're mostly considering the "home option"... Though a few of us might have more trouble with that than others.


That's about it for today. I'll keep updating my travels, and also finish recapping the trip from Sherridan to here, though really I can sum it up as the following: "A lot of walking, a lot of praying for the dead in towns we walked through, and hoping things would get better."....So kinda pretty similar to Frodo's journey in lord of the rings now that I think about it after Boromir tried to steal the ring and he and Sam split from the fellowship, however all twelve of us got to walk to "Mordor" and back.