They had supplies for when the waste material hit the proverbial fan blades. Their neighbors knew they had stockpiled for a long, long time just in case. Then things went south. The neighbors did not raid them but, instead, came to ask to work with them, as they, themselves, were mildly disabled and could not do everything alone anymore due to their age. This came in handy when others decided to try to raid them, however, and the neighbors let people know, you want to hurt their friend, you have to get through them, first. You want to help, work together, and survive? The door's open, just leave your weapons over there in the locker before you come in. -- Anon Guest
My name is Bob, and I'm not like the other survivalists. A great deal of them focus in the fantasy of themselves and anyone they hold dear against the world. They're all about defending their family and never thinking about what happens when their child grows up.
They never ponder the next generation working their way out of the chaos. For most of them? It's all about the guns.
I mean sure, they make hunting more efficient and you can defend yourself with them, but there's better ways to work things. For example - pick a geologically stable area with decent rainfall and good drainage and then populate all of it with companion plants that are either medicinal or edible or both. Set up an ecology. Build the facilities on places where little to nothing prospers. But most especially, make friends with the people around you.
Survival for one, or one family, makes for a very lonely world on the other side of the apocalypse. If you're one of those dingbats out there shooting up anything else that moves, it's not going to end well. And yes, I do have plans to put down the kind of person who wants to act like an animal.
There's no room for mad dogs in my better world.
When the world around me came crumbling down, I wasn't holed up in my bunker. I was out there with lint and bandages, with baskets and crates of harvests and preserves. Helping where I could, how I could.
Trust a survival nut to have some of the really interesting heavy equipment. Already retrofitted so that fuel is not a concern.
Bet all those bunker types with their oil derivatives in barrels in a tunnel feel real silly when they wake up to the fact that it all expires. Yeah. Petrol, gasoline, diesel, it all rots. It's the smart ones who figured out how to make engines run on moonshine that you have to watch out for. Or, you know, invented the electric backhoe. Like I did.
People get grateful when you help. They don't get dependent on it like those Red Cap folks keep saying. They turn around and help back.
Old Joe was the first, in his ATV wheelchair that I'd made out of bits and bobs. It's mostly solar panels and batteries, with a couple of small wind turbines for redundancy's sake as well.
"Can't do a lot no more," he said, "But I reckon I can help with some o' your harvests and suchlike. Add a trailer to me an' I can take out deliveries. I can bring stuff up here, too. Ain't nothin' stopped this tank o' yours."
Sure, he couldn't really hunt, because the ATV wheelchair made a hell of a ruckus, but he could get around and he could still learn. That was good enough for me.
Next up were some of the kids from the Special Care place. Well. I say 'kids' because society infantilised them, a lot of them were grown-ass adults with learning disabilities.
They do a lot better somewhere green. It's amazing how many in the Before Times missed that. We turned the sportsball arena into farmland and the stands into hanging gardens. Even the ones who need servos to do things are farming. You should see them smiling.
Ah, but you won't, would you? You're a fucking Red Cap who thinks that just because you gave yourself license to be cruel, that the whole world has to be that way. You won't even look for the better world because you're one of the ones who broke the old one.
In the choice between liberty and fascism, you chose fascism. When the world asked you to be kind, you threw a tantrum and demanded rights that never existed. When the world asked you to share what you had to spare, you held onto it all with both hands and shared out death.
We've been through your War Winnebago. We've counted up medicines you don't need, gold you don't spend, and way too many guns and bullets.
And no friends.
You're a mad dog with one last chance left, as far as I know it.
So answer honestly... What are you going to do so that you deserve to live here? How are you going to pay us back for the lives you've taken?
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / LianeM]
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