December 23, 2080
I almost forgot what it was like to be with my family during that fucking war. Most people wouldn't call it one, but it was a war. Though even just six months away was an eternity. I missed my wife. I missed my daughter. I missed the comfort of simple togetherness. It did however make me realize how badly many of the others must have suffered. My wife, my daughter, my home. I was able to go back to them. But for so many others it's just all ashes and regrets.
Had an interesting run in with Mei Ling.
She thanked me. She said knows that a lot of people wanted her dead but I refused. She realizes she killed an innocent man but I gave her as much mercy as I could. And I made sure she was given painkillers and good treatment after.
She seems pretty happy with Bear and Helen too. Bear doesn't talk much, but he's a pretty decent guy and is extremely protective. Helen's just a friendly, warm, good natured person who's impossible to like.
She also seems to utterly adore Cub. Seems she was from a large family and having a chance to become part of a family again is actually helping her recover from some of her loss.
Almost makes me wish I put her with Jim and Roberta. Then she'd have more family than she could stand. But I jest. I'm just happy to see the kid smile.
I think at the end of the season I'll talk to them and see how everything is going. If they're open to the idea I'm thinking of suggesting that they offer to adopt her.
Wish I could say everything was going well, but there was a rape. One of the Chinese girls got cornered by a on her way to the outhouse. Idiot got liquored up and made a very stupid decision.
Would have been a pretty clear case with a pretty clear punishment if it has gotten to that, but it didn't. It was Fred Black, one of Bear's Dirty Dozen, that found him. Didn't take too kindly and ended up gutting the bastard like a fish before he could finish.
I told Fred that if he ever sees anything like that again, he should take him alive. That way we get a proper hanging out of it. Sends a clearer message. And it would spare the girl the additional trauma of having to wash off the son of a bitch's blood. But otherwise, he's not getting punished. Clear case of defense of another.
Gave a pretty strongly worded speech to the effect myself. This shit is not going to be tolerated here. Some people took it as a chance to bring up me sparing Mei Ling, but I made it clear. One was a frightened girl shooting at a perceived threat. She fucked up and she was punished for it. Another was a man choosing to dominate and violate a woman for his own sense of gratification.
They're not the same thing.
I've done what I can to offer restitution to the girl. I've relieved her of any mandatory duties for the season so she can spend the time resting and recovering mentally. I've also asked some of the other girls who've lived through such experiences to talk with her. In fact I might talk to Helen and the Pastor about arranging a regular group. In fact I think we could all use a chance to sit and talk our our Trauma.
I am however considering punishing the couple she was staying with. Or at least interrogating them to see if there was any negligence or wrongdoing. They promised they'd look out for her but from the looks of things were actually pretty blase about it.
In general though, the tension is slowly diminishing. I'm hoping we'll be able to get information about the regions to the east out of them but we're still dealing with something of a language barrier. Most of them were from San Francisco's Chinatown and don't have the best English.
That's probably why they were in the camp to be honest. The government was pretty paranoid about Chinese people in general, but as long as they were pretty assimilated they were for the most part left alone. It was the people who had a language barrier or kept up a strong traditional identity that were targeted. Ironic too because the PRC had done much to stomp out much of that identity in favor of blind obedience to the party.
I also found out why Mr. Wu was in a camp. He's waa Buddhist monk who was arrested in a government crackdown. His experiences seem to have embittered him, but he cares very much about his people. I'm thinking of sitting him down with the Reverend and suggesting that they work together to help tend the flock. They might follow different traditions, but in the end, the message is often the same.
Recoilless rifles and plastic explosives are outside our capability. The only reason we have rocket is because they can be built with scrap and they're at just the level of technology achievable by a pyromaniac high school student with access to a basic machine shop and a simple chemistry set.
Our biggest problem is our ammo supply. With the war against the Pale Riders, we had to shoot off a lot of rounds and many of the people who'd otherwise be scavenging had to fight instead. I think it was Eisenhower who said that every shell fired in anger is a meal taken out of a child's mouth. He was right.
Between the reduction in production, exploration, and sheer resource expenditure, all this shit probably put Yellowstone back by a good six months of constructive effort. And compared to Pittsplace or god forbid, Missoula, we got off easy.
Oh, and while I didn't mention it the stockade was reinforced during the year. Another one of those "military expenditures" that took up time better spent trying to find food and supplies.
Come spring we're going to have to double up on our exploration and scavenging efforts to make up for lost time. Plus we need to know where Necros went if only so we can keep an eye on that sick fuck. Though personally I still want to see him dead.
They did have coal liquefaction technology. In fact, without it China would have been pretty much unable to fight. The issue is that it's normally a complicated process. It's not cheap enough to compete with natural petroleum sources. Plus, it requires a very specific feedstock which needs to be mine and shipped using petroleum fueled machines.
The reason Kelly freaked out about Thermal Depolymerization is it's almost comical simplicity. I mean, even I can understand the process. That should tell you something. It will convert pretty much anything organic into oil. That includes pretty much everything in nature. And once you figure it out it can theoretically be run on municipal waste and raw sewage.
You grind the feedstock. You feed it into a pressure vessel and super saturate it with water. You cook it for about 15 minutes at high temperatures and pressure, then you let the steam flash evaporate and separate off any sediment. Then you cook the hydrocarbon mix again under pressure to complete the process. Bang. Done. The end result is oil. No catalysts, no solvents, nothing at all except whatever you decide to toss into the grinder and regular old water.
With some help from some engineers from Pittsplace, she was able to rig up a small converter using salvaged parts. They were pretty shocked about it too. The big thing is that the most complicated part involved in the process is the pressure vessels which are actually pretty easy to find if you know where to look. Beyond that, as long as you know what you're doing it's not that hard.
If you don't know if you're doing it'll probably explode. There's a reason they set it up well outside the stockade.
I'll also take this chance to restate something. The US was beyond a petroleum based economy. China was not, mainly because this China wasn't the Communist in Name Only China you're used to. It was pretty much hard core Maoist Dieselpunk China. A nation where the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution never stopped. Basically Maoist North Korea writ large.
The rest of the world really wasn't capable of switching over to an atomic energy economy like the US was. Europe and the Middle East were too busy blowing themselves to hell with Russia stuck in the middle, while China simply did not have the educated population needed to support the needed technological framework.
I'll give you a clear example. By the end of the war, the average American soldier was clad in head to toe in lightweight but highly effective composite combat armor, had a helmet with a built in military Pip-boy, and were often armed with some form of basic energy weapon.
The average Chinese soldier had a set of PJs, an AK-47 clone, and lots of reserves.
JJ Abrams? Really? Fucking seriously. So he gets to rape two of my favorite childhood franchises. What are you going to tell me next, they let fucking Michael Bay do Ninja Turtles?
I'm still wanting more news on media (with links) and I need Lets Plays. Though Fallout 4 is sounding more and more idiotic as time passes but I'm not about to assume none of those events happen.
Not building underground. This is reality, it isn't Minecraft. That takes LOTS of effort.
I also think you're overestimating the size of the quarry trucks. Think less 30ft tall mining monsters and more the size of a really big semi.
