PAH Destinations WWYD

[AmadanNaBriona]

I was idly rereading Post Apocalypse Hero and thought it might be a fun thought experiment to toss out a What Would YOU Do? for The Destinations setting (BTW, Steve, love the homage to The Road).

 

So, to recap and set the questions, a massive Solar Flare kills anything that's not at least 3 meters below ground and burns everything. The huge EMP fries anything that can be fried by an EMP.

 

so

How did you survive? Where are you most likely to "just happen" to be safe?

 

and

Presumably, this place is somewhat familiar to you, even if it's just "the tunnel I commute through". So, how do you kit yourself out?

 

I'm pondering my own answers, I'll get back to you

[lapsedgamer]

Re: PAH Destinations WWYD

 

That's rough. The Road is one of those PA settings that made me say, "No thank you, rather be dead." I saw the movie, but didn't read the book. I understand that the book is a great piece of literature, but I now have no desire to read it ever. However, I am interested in seeing what other folks think.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: PAH Destinations WWYD

 

Yeah, that's why I didn't extend this past the "Where are you, how did you get there, and what do you grab to help you survive"

It's a super bleak setting, but the apocalyptic premise is such that I realized that most folk have at most one or two places they'd likely be when they survived, tus making for a nice experiment.

 

Now, lets see...

 

The single place underground I spend the majority of my time is in the prop basement under the theater I work at. I have my props workbench down there and frequently work down there after everyone else has gone home.

 

The theater is part of a city community center built back in the 30's and is of a sort of construction as to probably partially survive.

 

OK, so what resources could I get?

Well, right in the prop shop itself I've got quite a plethora to choose from. Most of which is fairly old but I should be able to put some usable kit together.

Weapons/Tools:

we have a few weapon props that would serve with a bit of work.

A couple of the best stage combat swords and parrying daggers could have edges added and become serviceable.

We have two broken old .40 cal muzzle loading cap lock pistols I could fix into functioning, and I think I could cobble together a firelock musket out of the dozen busted up Les Mis props. No percussion caps, power, or shot though. I've got casting supplies and stuff I can melt into shot, so that's easy. Percussion caps take some work, but there are a lot of high power red plastic caps with the prop capguns. They'll work, if not very well (probably give around a 12- activation). We have several boxes of strike anywhere matches which I can harvest for additional primer material and a potential propellant. We have stashes of flash power and charcoal power, so I can probably mix enough powder for a couple of dozen shots.

All our bows suck. We have a donated LARP crossbow which would be useless as a weapon as it stands, but could be modified into an actual light crossbow for hunting, or could function as a launcher for small homemade munitions.

 

My actual preferred sidearm will be my trusty short crowbar. It terms of total lifetime hours spent destroying things this is my most familiar weapon. It's also damn near indestructible and very useful.

 

Additional tools depend of the shape the topside of the theater is in. In the pro basement itself I only have a limited selection available... A Gerber Multi-tool, a propane torch head, a selection of small files, a bit index, an electrical repair kit with the usual small screwdrivers, wire-cutters/strippers, soldering irons, wirenuts, fuses and the like, and a box of antique hand tools in the handprops storage. Some of those could be useful... Yankee screwdriver, sickle, and drawknife come to mind.

Koran war surplus military pack & parachute from the soft goods wall, as well as all the silk. Respirator, goggles, gloves, filter cartridges, iodine, bandages, chem-ice, hearing protectors, eyewash bottles, vetwrap and protective coveralls from the OSHA supply closet. Paramedic Jumpkit and hand cranked radio/light/dc power supply from our post 9/11 refit (city government regs, yo). Speaking of which, we have a couple of city owned fully equipped mountain bikes stored. One of those will come in handy. We have several sleds, lots of various wheels, metal casters and materials, so I could likely cobble together a trailer as well. Oh, yeah, fill as many of the prop canteens as I can.

 

If I can get into the costume shop, there is a old manual sewing machine that might be handy, at least to make stuff before heading out. There's obviously also sewing supplies. Needles and thread, heavy woolens, furs, chainmail, leather... lots of good stuff.

 

If I can get to the kitchen, I can dig up a few supplies, but not much. A fair amount of instant stuff. The cider, coffee, tea, hot chocolate and oatmeal packs will all be handy. We have pounds of Vitamin C enriched instant lemonade, so I'll be able to stave off scurvy for a while, and I think enough powdered milk type products to stave off rickets for a while. We have cases of chocolate brownie mix and chocolate chips as well (can you tell what our intermission snacks are?). I bet there's a few more dry supplies I might be able to use, like rice and beans, as well as quite a few useful chemicals in the cleaning and laundry supplies.

 

Storage next to the kitchen... Grab the boxes of nitrile gloves, the ziplock bags and all the foil. Loot all the rechargeable batteries and a couple of the chargers (I might be able to fix 'em up and get them to work with the crank genny).

 

The shop in the back is unfortunately one of the weak points on the building, being a later retrofit, but if it's navigable there's a generator, compressor, and every bloody tool I could desire subject to weight requirements. I'd leave most of it, but for a few more hand tools. Would probably use any remaining facilities to cobble together a few cut down survival tools from parts. If either of the armored flammables cabinets are intact I grab anything that burns and all the propane bottles that survived.

 

If I can dig out the ruins of the outside shed I grab the iceaxe and a prybar and head to the other underground storage sections of the community center to see what survived. The new section of the Children's Library has a geothermal heating well in the basement. Would make a good starting point. I'd eventually be heading for the coast, looking for a boat I could manage. See about taking Alcatraz.

[Shadow Hawk]

Re: PAH Destinations WWYD

 

I often joke that I "work in a bomb shelter". So, that's where I am if I survive. It's also on a navy base. My fellow survivors will be military personnel. So, I'm going to try to be the plucky comic relief, because otherwise this movie will kill me.

[L. Marcus]

Re: PAH Destinations WWYD

 

... Mayhap the changing room at the hospital? It's underground, and doubles as a bomb shelter.

[Zeropoint]

Re: PAH Destinations WWYD

 

First, I'd be unlikely to survive at all, in that I think the last time I had three meters of earth between me and the sky was when I toured the Hoover Dam.

 

Second, if I did survive . . . I think I'd kit myself out with a bullet in the brain. Better than wasting away on a planet with no ecosystem.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: PAH Destinations WWYD

 

Not to subvert the trope or anything, but 3 meters isn't that big a deal. If your town is like Vancouver, and you're like me, your best chance of survival is being in a deep subway tunnel. Which means, chances are, that there'll be a lot of you. With some luck, there'll be a convenience store inside the station and some fruit to get your Post-Solar Flare Agricultural Revolution started.

 

Now, before anyone goes anywhere, you want to scrape everyone's shoes and pockets and go through everyone's stuff, because someone will be carrying their groceries, and thus some produce. By this time, you have quite a stock of biota. Once you get out of your subway tunnel, or what have you, you want to get out to the suburbs, fire up the heavy equipment, and start turning deep-buried soil out over the landscape. The most efficient way of doing that is to use the load from a delta channel dredger, but digging up recent construction sites will also be productive. Turn the silt out over good land, and you should be good to go.

 

If you don't have the foresight to do all this, don't worry. The blasted ecosystem will come back on its own, more slowly, as soil is turned over and recirculated. With human help there'll be more forage grass* and wheat and less moss and lichen, but people can eat lichen, too.

 

Finding animals to eat forage grass (carp and catfish aside) will be more challenging. There'll be rats, of course. And I take it for granted that there'll be surviving cattle from railway tunnels and highway underpasses, but early and energetic human intervention will make the difference between a ecological recovery that takes tens of years instead of tens of thousands.

 

Which brings me to a final point, depressing as it always is to people who enjoy thinking about post-apocalyptic scenarios. The most important single piece of equipment to guarantee your long term survival is government.

[Susano]

Re: PAH Destinations WWYD

 

I was idly rereading Post Apocalypse Hero and thought it might be a fun thought experiment to toss out a What Would YOU Do? for The Destinations setting (BTW' date=' Steve, love the homage to [i']The Road[/i]).

 

Actually, Jason Walters did that one. And if you saw the movie, then you've 'read' The Road. A few bits are left out or altered, but over all it's the closest book to move transition I've ever seen. Except the movie actually has a slightly more positive outlook.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: PAH Destinations WWYD

 

Actually' date=' Jason Walters did that one. And if you saw the movie, then you've 'read' [i']The Road[/i]. A few bits are left out or altered, but over all it's the closest book to move transition I've ever seen. Except the movie actually has a slightly more positive outlook.

Thanks for the correction, credit where due, after all.

I couldn't agree more... he nailed the feel of it.

I've read the book 3 or 4 times and own the dvd, yeah, I agree it's one of the best adaptations I've seen