Chapter 26 - The Yellow Peril
Tracy could see that something wasn't quite right with these two. Time to start probing. "Hey I'll show you each of you how to hose these quads down. It's something I do to clear the mud off. Mud holds on to moisture and moisture causes rust." She had their compliance which gave Tracy the perfect opportunity to closely inspect the quads without them realising it. Nothing wrong.
They both seemed alert, not high or anything like that. They were moving OK, not walking with a limp. No marks on them. "So we don't like meteors anymore?"
"If there was a car and out of that car stepped a mass murderer would you stop liking cars?", asked Imogen.
The penny dropped for Tracy. "Wait you did your thing on that meteor didn't you. I mean the Fat Lewis's watch thing. You found something out didn't you. Hey there's living shit up there isn't there?!"
"Tracy, since it's you I shall simply say yes and leave it at that. There are bacteria kicking around the solar system. Some came down in the meteorite. The only reason this is a big deal to you is because the media have brainwashed you in the opposite direction. Watch Patrick McGoohan's 'The Prisoner' and it will become obvious why they did that. By the way, don't quote me on any of this or I will deny it. The meteorite is safe for you to handle."
"Thank you."
The women prepared dinner while Daniel got the USB TV dongle out of his pocket. "I can hook this up to your laptop. I've made up the xspf file for the local TV stations. Since you're using Linux and the dongle was built for Windows you'll have to watch it through VLC media player. The interface is a bit wretched but the picture quality is tops. That way you can watch TV without having to remember to check your emails. It also saves power to have the one device running."
Tracy tried it out and thanked him.
" ... and now from Yellowstone national park. Scientists have reassured us unanimously that there is nothing to fear from the tremors that have been felt around the area. Detailed examination of a viral drone video purportedly showing the extremophile archaea to have died has been confirmed to be a deep fake. The camera switched to a psychologist explaining the lengths some people will go to in order to have their 15 minutes of fame.
Imogen spoke slowly, "Assuming we have just watched censorship in action then we, as in the whole planet, are in deep shit. Yellowstone National Park is home to a dormant super volcano and if it blows it could create an extinction event. I need to go out and get my own answers."
"Out where", asked Tracy.
"Your deep litter chicken coup. It provides a bacterial interface to the Earth. If there's going to be a catastrophic eruption then this information will be communicated throughout the worlds bacteria so they can prepare the ecosystem for lock down."
"First things first. Lets verify this first. I know its dark, I'll take a torch and I'll be back in a while."
"Mind you don't catch a cold.", Tracy called after her. The message hadn't sunk in yet. Now lets keep young Daniel occupied so there will be no peeping, although it was quite dark already. "Can you run that TV thingy by me again.", she pleaded.
Tracy learned more than just how to watch the TV. She learned about the Android app to get the frequency information. How to put that into VLC and generate her own xspf file. Eventually she heard Imogen call out that she was going to the shower. Well at least bits of her are still normal, thought Tracy. She got up to make everyone a hot chocolate. It was just served as Imogen entered the room with a grave look on her face.
"Now, what was that about ecosystem lockdown."
"Greatly increased growth, greatly reduced yield in order to build up reserves of biomass. Look what's going to happen is a big bang which is going to kick huge amounts of dust into the atmosphere, triggering a global winter. Crops will fail, there will be famine, there will be mass extinctions. Civilisation could well go under, in fact probably will do. I'll keep this practical for you since it's your job to prepare this place for emergency. You'll have time for little else. Fire up the database, here is what you must do:
- Buy in dead wood, firewood would be a good start. 100 tonnes
- Stack the wood 60cm high in lots of 4 square metres.
- Put a tarp over the first pile with drip irrigation using dilute fertiliser to provide minerals. The wood should be kept just damp
- Introduce some termites and let them breed."
"For food", Imogen replied. "If this volcano blows it's top, and I think it will, its going to make Mount St Helens look like a firecracker. There's going to be enough dust kicked up into the atmosphere to occlude the suns rays for several years. That's going to result in famines of biblical proportions. There will be fighting, not so much nation to nation because each nation will be fighting within itself. There will be debauchery and bloodshed. What happens in Australia depends a lot on whether the Australian Government is wised up about this. But keep in mind the difference between government and thugs matters very little when they want to take the food off your table.
In any famine it gets difficult to hide the fact that you're not starving to death. Buy some fat womens clothes, online so none of the locals remember, and wear them as people start looking skinny. However you do have the advantage that this is an isolated homestead. Not many people come through here. However there is a pretty good chance that someone is going to find this place with you here and they are going to kill for food. But if they don't recognise something as food they are not going to fight over it and they are not going to take it.
Just so that you don't put all your eggs in one basket you can also get in a wood grinding machine to produce fine sawdust and some chainsaws and axes to cut up any logs into pieces small enough to feed into the grinder. You can also stock up on a complete fertiliser, one with trace elements, to apply to the sawdust. Then you can eat the worms. If you eat the worms and the termites raw you'll have enough vitamin c to get by on. Stock up on diesel, some in an obvious place but most of it hidden.
Also stock up on pulses and hide them underground as these are recognised as food. These can be eaten as is for protein or sprouted for vitamins.
I can't see the window for danger being that long. There's a thin line between people being hungry enough to kill and too weak to kill in a sudden unexpected famine, especially when they've never had one before. The government could be the biggest threat. They have their strategic fuel supplies and will raid the CBH bins for wheat. By the time the population realises that the fair distribution is just a sham they won't be in much of a condition to do anything about it."
"Is there any other way of doing this?", asked Daniel. "I mean, it may work technically but damn, it's gross."
"Getting back to fundamentals. Life needs energy. Volcano blocks out suns energy. Can sunlight be stored? Yes, in wood and it can be stored for a long time. Wood exists so multicellular life can get through global disruptions. You can also dehydrate food, have powdered food etc but that is recognised as food by raiders and so is a security risk. So Tracy, how is your budget, because this is going to take some doing"
"Andy had it in mind to have sheds equipped with milking machines. However these haven't been bought yet as we were going to wait until the land had more fully recovered and we knew where the trees grew best so we could put additional buildings where the trees grew the least, subject to convenience of access. The bottom line is that its not so much that we're ahead of budget. We were ahead until the truck accident, which put us roughly inline. But we have held back on expenditure for the sheds. If Andy is going to spend money on volcano preps then the sheds will be forfeit. It's going to take both of us to convince him."