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.