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#Post#: 182--------------------------------------------------
Doom Fiction
By: K-Dog Date: May 1, 2021, 4:40 am
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Ten Mile Road
Chapter One
Two hundred years ago back when Alaska was Russian and Ferdinand
Wrangel was governor, the harbor was frozen all winter. Now
there is no sea ice in the harbor when days get short and nights
long. before eight-hour days become eight-hour nights. Any
whisper of snow on the island mountains peaks is long gone. Some
of the more sensitive tropical plants calling the island home
only need covering by straw to get through the winter. Some
needed no help at all in their new home. Any snow which does
fall never sticks.
When people found the Galápagos Islands they were beguiled with
a mystery. How could so many creatures who could not swim have
ever reached the Galápagos? But there was no mystery about this
island. After the owner finagled possession of the island. While
the earth exhaled methane and the earth warmed. Invading ships
brought in new fauna and flora. The island had been linked to
other islands nearby by flat meadows of grass when the sea was
low long ago. Original critters had walked to the island then.
That was thousands of years ago. Mammoths ate grass and kept
trees trampled down. Mammoths pursued by hunters wanting flesh
and skin.
Someone not knowing the secret to the islands bounteous florae
would note an out-of-place abundance. With many formerly lush
places of Earth now barren desert the abundant green was out of
place. The white beach shaded by long shadows of palm trees
around a blue lagoon by the motel. This beach is particularly
out of place. It is at the end of Ten Mile Road. The island
never had white sand before southern climates moved north. Or a
motel at the end of ten miles of road. Now in the right place if
you park your butt with a cool drink on the beach and look
around. The ground is sand as far as you can see. It is like
being thousands of miles south only decades ago.
Before shipping stopped in the seas there had been a shortage of
sand for mixing cement. Taking advantage of the opportunity the
owner had mined sand from Alaskan river deltas as they began to
be claimed by rising sea. Alaska river sand was good for making
cement. The island had a stash of it at the other end of the
island under some grassy hills. But not on the beach. Under
magnification the grains of motel beach sand is smooth. Cement
making sand has interlocking grains and it was shipped all over
the world when the world grew itself into oblivion. Buildings
were built with foundations resting on dreams of a white beach.
Buyers of cement sand never knew the owner's plan.
Ships never came back for sand empty even if they had to make
extra stops on the trip back. The operation pretended to return
sand to Alaska. Fake environmental restoration. Most of the sand
intended for restoration never made it to Alaska. But the sand
not replaced did very little damage. The sea was claiming river
deltas anyway. The result was a nice beach built by burnt oil. A
lot of burnt oil. Ships carried back smooth sand, the whitest
sand the crew could find. Ships carrying away as much sand as
they brought to a customer location did not bother anyone.
Switched out sand was worthless for anything but making a beach.
For making the island lagoon beach and the sand dune gardens
nearby it was great, as long as you did not try and make a sand
castle. Nara melons growing in the dunes are doing just fine.
Before becoming part of an offshore artificial reef, some of the
owner's sand ships had made two dozen circuits. The lagoon beach
is huge.
At the edge of the beach is the motel. Most of the time it is
empty. But the well-equipped party room is frequently used by
the town. The owner planned things that way. Keeping the motel
ready for guests (who hopefully never arrive) is an important
thing to do. It is a way to control visitors without being
obvious about it. Time to discover intentions. Having a social
center at the motel helps that mission. The Neon M-O-T-E-L sign
out front is a work of art. The 'L' is slightly crooked and
blinks every five minutes on the hour. The owner wanted it that
way and picked how fast it should blink. The man who bent the
glass tubes for the letters teaches glassblowing at the local CC
on Tuesday night.
Ten mile road bends around artificial fishponds, forest
thickets, and a few pastures. Mostly it is like a road in a big
city warehouse district. But very clean. Warehouses as large as
football fields, some three stories high, stretch along Ten Mile
Road for miles. They stretch most of the way along the road.
They are climate controlled and some refrigerated. Concrete and
windowless except for offices by front doors. Some of the big
boxes are tagged with company logos and the warehouses are
tastefully spaced apart with landscaping in between.
One big concrete box says Reliable Plumbing. Reliable Plumbing
does not actually exist but if you have a key to the front door
you can get into front offices. In one of the offices is a file
cabinet. A folder inside that cabinet shows where enough toilet
repair kits to keep every toilet on the island flushing for the
next 200 years are found. There are enough supplies in the
warehouses to keep classic American Life going on in the town
for centuries. If the owner lives for centuries that is exactly
what will happen.
Along Ten Mile Road an occasional house maintains an orchard.
Some use artificial lighting in the winter months to get the
exotic fruits they grow through the short winter days. A couple
of small strip malls mix into the chain of big concrete blocks.
You can't tell if the stores in the malls are open or closed. In
places alleys behind the big warehouses link farm buildings. The
alley roads see more use than Ten Mile Road does. Ten mile road
is reserved for cars, and small trucks. For commuting to the
farm buildings where people from the town work. Only the cafés
in the malls get customers and nobody needs money there. Workers
eat breakfast lunch or dinner at the cafés depending on the
shifts they draw.
A customer to the 'Rare Books Live Here' store needs a key and a
code for the door to open. Then there is a wait of five minutes
while the door lock keeps the door closed while dry nitrogen
inside is purged. There are only periodic security visits. The
town has a well-equipped library. The store was not intended for
customers. It is storage. The parking lots of the big box
warehouses are mostly empty. The landscaping crew uses them the
most.
There is a single intersection on Ten Mile road, a mile from the
motel. Turning right onto it takes you onto Main Street. The
town street grid begins a kilometer away. Beyond is the harbor.
From the motel, Ten Mile Road turns 90 degrees and becomes
Airport way which goes to the Airstrip. Halfway to the airstrip
is a driveway. The driveway goes to a project that had reduced
the owners financial drain building the island considerably.
Even a billionaire with billions to spend likes to save money.
Getting the most for his money had been an obsession of the
owner for a long time. Personally he was generous. But when it
came to building and stocking warehouses. Or manipulating
financial markets. The owner had made and art of getting it done
on the cheap without compromising quality.
When the government had still sponsored such things the owner
acquired a lucrative DARPA contract to build a small Thorium
Nuclear Reactor. The reactor gives out more than enough power to
keep everything on the island going when it is turned on. When
the thorium demo project was completed and shown to meet
specification the plan was to have shut the reactor down.
Instead the owner kept the reactor functional and modified the
design so it could be turned off and on. His plan all along.
When it was still needed and there was only one American
government in the lower 48, the owner was licensed to run the
reactor. Currently switched off, it is kept ready to go. The
reactor has two warehouses full of spare parts and plenty of
onsite fuel storage. It is turned on every year to light the
town Christmas lights and it drives away darkness for a week.
Christmas decorations are on a different circuit than the
windmill electricity. Windmill electricity is the backbone of
the island power grid. At the current rate of use, thorium and
uranium fuels should last a very long time. Having redundant
power grids with smart switching keeps things reliable. Hydro
from the only island mountain lake supplies power when wind is
finicky. On very windy days charging the lake with downhill
water is one way excessive power is used up.
* I will write and publish chapter two next Friday.
What say you?
#Post#: 183--------------------------------------------------
Re: Doom Fiction
By: Blade of Grass Date: May 1, 2021, 6:48 am
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I liked it! Your vision of the future is loaded with competent
research, and your choice of the island is brilliant...paradox
or natural evolution. Keep on going, but remember to throw a
little sex, pop culture in it. Ha! You might really have
something here. Best wishes on the journey.
#Post#: 185--------------------------------------------------
Re: Doom Fiction
By: Phil Potts Date: May 1, 2021, 7:52 am
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Intriguing indeed
#Post#: 188--------------------------------------------------
Re: Doom Fiction
By: Nearings fault Date: May 1, 2021, 12:14 pm
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A good start looking forward to reading more. I would say there
should be lots of solar panels for making hydrogen for
cooking...
It always amazes me that london has a similar lattitude to
northern Ontario, Paris of thunder bay... warming currents keep
both of them mild. Who know what future warming brings.
#Post#: 190--------------------------------------------------
Re: Doom Fiction
By: K-Dog Date: May 1, 2021, 3:13 pm
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[quote author=Nearings fault link=topic=18.msg188#msg188
date=1619889299]
A good start looking forward to reading more. I would say there
should be lots of solar panels for making hydrogen for
cooking...
It always amazes me that london has a similar lattitude to
northern Ontario, Paris of thunder bay... warming currents keep
both of them mild. Who know what future warming brings.
[/quote]
Ahhhh,
As an island in the pacific real estate is limited so the only
solar panels are a part of the island reservoir watershed. The
Island is only big enough for 6 mountains. The longest straight
road that can be put on the island is a bit over 39 kilometers.
It would have to go through mountains. When winter shortens the
day to eight hours the panels are not good for much.
This fact was not fully apparent until all the island systems
were brought online and a warehouse has enough panels to power a
small city. The owner has a book which everyone is supposed to
read but nobody does. The rule of 500 years or how far ahead
the warehouses should be stocked is explained in the book. In
this case everyone knows the rule and with wind doing so well
the island only has to stock and use enough panels to keep
younger generations trained in panel use. And manufacture. The
CC is a combination Community Center and Community College.
Island life centers around it. In it there are labs which
function as museums and centers of teaching.
The surplus solar panels can be used in some plot line. Trade
goods to some poor unfortunates trying to make a go of it in the
Oregon desert. But I'll have to think where to put the desert.
Having enough panels to replace every one in the exiting 1628 kW
solar grid for 2000 years is four times too many. The warehouse
space is better used to sequester some of the exotic hardwood
the island is growing.
* The solar panels are used to make hydrogen for Fischer-Tropsch
synthesis when the reactor is offline. All the diesel fuel for
the island coast guard cutter is synthetic. Made from biochar,
split water and a lot of electricity.
#Post#: 191--------------------------------------------------
Re: Doom Fiction
By: Nearings fault Date: May 1, 2021, 3:29 pm
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Nice detailing there. We will for sure see more and more synfuel
in the future...
Cheers, NF
#Post#: 244--------------------------------------------------
Re: Doom Fiction
By: K-Dog Date: May 7, 2021, 1:46 pm
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Ten Mile Road
Chapter Two
John Solo exhaled into his regulator. Air bubbled to the top of
the dome over the coral gardens surrounding him an all sides.
Reaching the clear Lucite dome the rising bubbles curved
sideways and up to where the curved dome joined to a high wall.
There machinery lets air bubbles out into the surrounding sea
where they continue up to meet the surging waves and the shore.
This wall, the side of an enormous undersea aquarium, is as long
as a football field. A half arch of clear Lucite panels built
into a frame connects to the top of the wall. From the wall the
dome curves to meet the sea floor. It resembles a huge
greenhouse sunk below the sea. An early concept drawing of the
idea was nicknamed Captain Nemo's Crystal Palace. The frame of
the dome window panels lets large marine mammals and fish know
there is something to avoid. The dome is on a frame to deter big
critters from bumping into the windows and getting at fish
inside. If critters try and poke through windows, the windows
are thick enough to stop them.
Above the Lucite dome the brick of the aquarium wall becomes a
natural rock cliff. It rises twenty feet out of the sea to
become part of the island shore. The wall is part of the island.
Halfway up the wall and inside the dome, a square opening frames
a sunken cube. The square is larger on a side than a man is
tall. Inside the cube a stainless steel ladder goes up a wall
through a round hole in the cube ceiling into an airlock.
The owner likes tropical fish and has a soft spot for the
vanishing coal reefs of the southern seas. Torrid zones seas at
the equator have water too acid for coral to grow in now. Local
seas are no better. But life under the aquarium dome lives in
clear and clean water. Dome water has the chemistry of a
tropical ocean typical of the year 1860. It is not too acidic to
grow coral. The wall has grates through which water pumps in
from the aquarium and back out after treatment. There is no need
for heat. The waters around the island are warm enough to grow
coral. Coral would be growing there now if the water were not
too acidic.
Anton, John's diving buddy snapped his camera at coral clone #
3428. This finished their days work. Pointing at his clipboard
giving John a thumbs up, Anton gestured in the direction of the
airlock. They started swimming to the ladder. John and Anton
were good friends, and it had been a nice dive.
In the airlock they dressed and stowed away their dive gear away
with a quiet and purposeful intensity. The sooner they could get
finished and into the decompression lounge. The faster the
20-minute ride to the surface could begin. Then the
communications center was then only a short bike trip away. The
decompression lounge did not move or ride anywhere. The
decompression chamber is part of the shore offices. It is a very
nice room at the end of a long staircase up to the surface from
the airlock. The room stays in one place. The ride consists of
waiting for the decompression cycle to finish. Bringing the room
to sea level pressure. Then Anton and John can walk right out
the front door and bicycle into town. Divers on the island take
turns at aquarium duty. John and Anton had dove because it was
their turn to dive. Despite a world in chaos, life on the island
tried to go on as things were normal.
Being away from the communication center with so much going on
was distressing. The problems of the outside world were gone
when John and Anton were swimming with the fish.
But world problems returned the moment they climbed up the
ladder into the pressurized air of the airlock. Before the dive
the Moscow office told Anton everything was being done to get
through to St. Petersburg. Anton wanted to get back to the
communications center to know if there was news. In his head
John was already back as the island chief of security. The dive
forgotten.
Anton had not been able to contact his family in St.Petersburg
since the closing of the city borders. Closing the borders had
shut the city off from the rest of the world two days ago. Anton
worried. Reminding himself that everything that could be done.
Was being done. But that did not help. He knew that St.
Petersburg, besieged by climate refugees, would soon be without
food. Anton had been working in the St. Petersburg office until
a month ago. He had come to the island ahead of his family.
A few hours before the dive Johns' phone lit up glaring at him
with two words. The owner had typed 'Helter Skelter' to John.
Seeing these words John wasted no time sending out several texts
of his own. Helter Skelter was code that launched a plan. The
time for closing the island off from the rest of the world had
come.
In St. Peterburg a helicopter was taking off. Natalia, Anton's
wife and Sergy his son were on the helicopter. Plans were to
bring them both to the island soon; but Helter Skelter had moved
up plans. Everyone scheduled for final assignment to the island
was on their way in. Anyone working a contract job was being
flown off to Anchorage. After nine time zones the helicopter
would bring Anton's family to the island. Then the helicopter
would be parked, shut away in a hangar, and mothballed. Not part
of the islands regular air fleet, the helicopter would not fly
unless another helicopter crashed. Today no helicopters were
being parked for the last time. The island airstrip had not been
so busy since the island buildings were first built. There would
be many comings and goings across the owner's properties while
Helter Skelter was carried out.
Building on the island finished three years ago. Some of the
colonists were already living on the island. They ran essential
services and kept lights on while the island waited for the
world to end. Over the next few days. Island population would
double. Like the island itself, which more resembled paradise
than an American overseas possession, island population was
atypical. The world would be losing over three billion people in
the next two years. World population was already in sharp
decline. Once everyone arrived, the island population would be
stable for centuries.
Twelve hundred people worked for the owner on various projects
and in all his businesses. Three hundred of them would soon be
living on the island with their families. The rest of the
owner's employees were going off to other owner properties if
they desired. All owner properties were set up as survival
centers. Considering the alternative, these properties were
excellent places to be while famine consumed the world. But the
other properties were run-of-the-mill billionaire bunkers.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Except for an inner circle most employees thought one owner
property was as good as another. Most owner employees did not
know the island was set up with the sophistication and planning
of a Martian city or a Moon base. You had to work for the owner
a long time and show you were worth trust before you found out
what the island was all about. The island is a living museum. A
museum able to keep the best of civilization alive while the
earth heals. Heals from a mindless human infestation. An
infestation that had plagued the Earth since it was born, in
Italy, in 1472.
#Post#: 245--------------------------------------------------
Re: Doom Fiction
By: Phil Potts Date: May 7, 2021, 8:32 pm
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I wonder if the owner is Paul McCartney or Charles Manson
HTML http://www.atwaearth.com/manson.html
#Post#: 250--------------------------------------------------
Re: Doom Fiction
By: K-Dog Date: May 9, 2021, 8:56 pm
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Charlie was not a Billionaire. Paul, not smart enough to build
the island and fill the warehouses. He could only buy an
island. My Billionaire is not ordinary.
#Post#: 310--------------------------------------------------
Re: Doom Fiction
By: K-Dog Date: May 14, 2021, 5:00 am
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Ten Mile Road
Chapter Three
Anton and John parked their bicycles leaping up the stairway to
main communications. Claire stood up looking away from her wall
of video screens to face them. One of her screens had followed
them along their ride from the marine center. As the tracking
algorithm switched village cameras along the way, a speaker
beeped.
Claire spoke. 'We have them in the air over Lake Lagoda along
with the 'Island Crew' from the Moscow office. They are all
coming in.
John Solo knew what the words 'Island Crew' meant. Nobody except
members of the 'Island Crew' had worked inside communications
for months. The security of code words was not necessary. But
until movement finished, the right words would be used.
John spoke. 'Good news, anything else?
Claire nodded, 'Everybody coming in from Europe is meeting up in
Belushya Guba. We were going to put them on one flight and bring
them in over the pole. But the owner does not want all our eggs
in one basket, that's what he said. Some will hop northern
island airfields into Alaska. We can bring them in by boat from
there if our Airports close.
Getting across the Russian polar islands would be the easy part.
In the Northern islands civilization still bloomed. The Owner
had financed farms on Wrangel Island after the first methane
burp. Wrangel would grow more wheat and oats this year than the
island had ever grown before. Wrangel farm concepts were used on
Kotelny Island. The entire polar region was under military
control. The owner relationship with the Russians was excellent.
While the world collapsed the Arctic grew wheat.
American airspace was also under military control but unlike
Russian airspace, the owner could not get permission to fly as
easily. More phone calls had to be made. More strings pulled.
With refugee riots putting LA and Miami under martial law, and
the rest of the country in a panic. Airports could close at any
time.
John had not been surprised when the owner ordered Helter
Skelter. Earth had become a three ring circus of misery. For
years, one crisis following another. But supply chains were
breaking like they had not broken before. Transportation and
shipping slowed by chronic fuel shortages. The sclerosis in
global trade was causing people to starve. Food could not be
shipped where it was needed at rates everyone could afford.
But things were about to get worse. Not being able to move food
cheaply is bad. Having climate changed agriculture which can no
longer feed the whole human population is going to be horrible.
No amount of smarts can find creative ways to move food when
food does not exist.
The owner's computer models showed him this is the year. Only
Siberian agriculture is on the increase. For years reduced crop
yields have been the trend everywhere else. Almost without
exception. Large areas of the planet once fertile are now barren
desert. Some places so hot and humid that heat kills everyone
who can't find air conditioning. Even using last years surplus
models say this years' crops will not feed the world through
next winter.
Weather will have to be perfect for the models to be wrong and
this is unlikely. The chance of avoiding serious disaster is
only 5%. If the models are right, hundreds of millions of people
will starve next year. Southern crops will not help. The
majority of arable land is in the northern hemisphere, more than
ever before. Cutting the Amazon destroyed the water cycle of
Amazon rains. Brazil is a stubble of grassland suitable only for
goats. The south of Argentina does well, but south Argentina is
not large. Cutting the rain forest down had only given five
years of extra agricultural land and now that land is gone.
Anton was the island food expert. As a student he had done his
doctors' thesis at The Magadan Institute of Humane Technology.
"Social Fragility as a Function of Food Choices". Anton
carefully surveyed all the different foods that people can
possibly eat. He identified where they could be grown or
harvested. He identified yield issues and crop economics in
great detail. Understanding all this is a monumental task. Anton
developed an efficient methodology which made the job easier.
Anton rated foods by local availability, comparing his
theoretical availabilities to actual real world availabilities.
He correlated these availabilities against various indicators of
social stability.
Anton showed food availability was more a function of political
and social condition than strict environmental considerations.
Human conflict and war clearly jumped out as the leading cause
of famine and hunger. A clear pattern over several centuries
emerged. The methodical detail of Anton's work showed a pattern
which was not intuitivly clear and his work greatly facilitated
computer model design. Anton's work suggested any plan to go
local not waste any time when a hard envelope of physics
suggests collapse is on the horizon. With a hard envelope of
starvation on our horizon. Human conflict can be counted on to
bring it on early. The time for Helter Skelter is now.
Claire's focus was on the island. Other screens showed world
news. Several screens showed smoke trails of rockets being blown
up by a city defensive shield. The landscape was sandy. It was
like an invisible metal dome. The owner's daily news report was
being written. There was a chatter of communications between
various airplanes and helicopters on other screens. Everyone
wanted Helter Skelter finished before any EMP pulses started
dropping planes out of the sky.
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