Winter Kill - War With China Has Already Begun

by Gene Skellig

  The inexperienced crew quickly became an effective team under Casey and Danny’s leadership, and the foundation of the HOTH began to take shape. To disguise the true nature of the bunker, Casey and Danny installed window-sized sheets of plywood over parts of the foundation under the garage, simulating window blocking that would presumably be removed at some future time. The deception worked, as nobody asked any questions.

  By the time the construction had advanced to the third level, and other sub-contractors appeared on the worksite, the scale and complexity of the HOTH project was getting hard for Casey to manage. So he called in his old mentor from his construction days in Vancouver. At sixty five years old, Barry Toner was now retired from his developer days, but he still knew how to move and shake. The consummate deal maker, Barry was a high-energy person who was genuinely interested in everybody he met. A “super-grinder” when negotiating materials or contracts, Barry came over on weekends to help Casey with project management. Barry was particularly good at forecasting delays and handling the impact that one sub-trade’s screw-up could have on another part of the project. Casey appreciated any help and all the advice that Barry gave him.

  Barry was also interested in the true purpose of the HOTH, which Casey had shared with him. Barry had his own sanctuary, albeit less over-the-top than Casey’s, down at his winter home in Mazatlan. He always had an eye for opportunity and had Casey hire his young son, Gerard, or “GT”, as a lead-hand. GT had met a girl in Nanaimo, so he wanted to find work on the Island. He was not all that experienced, but to Casey he was essentially family and completely trustworthy.

  As the project advanced, Tanya and Barry were doing their best to help Casey control costs. However, with the economy lurching from one crisis to another, the increasingly unstable price inflation was making it hard to predict how much the local suppliers would ask for the huge quantities of concrete and other materials that were pouring into the construction project.

  None of this bothered Casey, however, as the price of gold and his shares in TFG was outpacing inflation. So in a sense, money was no object by this time. On paper, Casey was now worth millions of dollars more than he expected to spend in building and outfitting the HOTH, however Tanya was still applying her Russian shrewdness, and Barry Toner was grinding the suppliers down relentlessly.

  As construction got into full swing, more and more subcontractors appeared on the job site. On one particularly beautiful day in early October, Casey counted a dozen pickup trucks and small vans on the site. He took a few minutes to video the beehive of activity of so many subcontractors working simultaneously throughout the HOTH.

  In one location, a brick-layer was working on the brick fire-place for the living room, with its two additional flues. The extra flue dedicated to an updated cooking wood-stove for the kitchen annex had already been installed; the other, for the wood stove in the recreation room directly below the kitchen, was still in pieces stacked on the floor. Near each woodstove would be a custom built stainless steel cabinet for lightweight metal boxes with various types and sizes of firewood. Casey had adapted a design first used by his grandfather, to have a handy supply of firewood enclosed in cabinetry to keep it out of view, and fire-safe.

  Yuri and two of Casey’s laborers were working on the concrete roof over the penthouse, laying steel rebar before the next concrete pour. In front of the building, a crane was setting up to support the over-reach of a concrete pumper crane that would arrive the next morning for the high pour.

  On the lowest level, a heating contractor was working on a complex brass “Christmas tree” of fittings that would link together the many lines of Pex tubing that had been incorporated in all the concrete floors of the HOTH for the in-floor radiant heating.

  Another contractor was installing the air handling system designed by Casey and Rob, to move fresh air around the HOTH from the higher floors to the lower ones, keeping an even temperature even when wood burning stoves and fireplaces were providing the heat.

  Casey could hear someone using a concrete core saw to cut through the exterior wall, probably to install the ventilation exhaust with the heat-exchanger sleeve. Another racket was being made by a laborer installing metal studding somewhere.

  On the second level, the window contractor was installing a large window in one of the bedrooms while the plumbers worked in the pair of bathrooms just outside the cluster of bedrooms at the south end of the second floor.

  The five bedrooms at that end of the structure were designed to serve a variety of possible uses. The initial plan was that they would provide each of the Callaghan children with their own four hundred square foot bachelor apartments, with plumbing and wiring roughed-in for small kitchenettes if needed in the future.

  These were not just bedrooms, of course, but were actually suites large enough to accommodate a small family if necessary. The unusual overall design of the HOTH had resulted in excess space that would be quite nice to live in as a family of seven, but could be re-allocated to accommodate at least fifty people in a long term crisis.

  The HOTH design was based on an octagon that had been split and extended in width by adding a sixty foot block in the middle. The octagonal element gave an extra 15% of floor-space for the same quantity of material as a right-angled structure. The large block of space added to the center of the octagon allowed for the vast majority of rooms to be entirely right-angled, while the more complex 135 degree angles only came in to play at the ends of the facility. The large angled corners were used to advantage, opening up bedrooms and common areas and making for some unique architectural spaces in the kitchen and other active areas of the HOTH.

  When Casey saw a man installing some exterior fixtures in the wrong locations, he stopped his moment of calm reflection and sprang back into Project Management mode, stopping the worker and going after his boss to sort him out.

  At the end of that day, Casey blew three short blasts from a compressed air type of ship’s horn, informing everybody that it was time for the weekly barbeque. He loved to fire up the BBQ and serve cold beers and hamburgers to the workers on Fridays. The workers always participated, and it served Casey by ensuring that the subcontractors would call it quits by five pm on Fridays. After all, it was nearly impossible to keep the guys working when free food and beer was available.

  After the BBQ, Casey would then go over all of the work done and note any deficiencies for follow-up with Barry, who would then go after the subcontractors for rectification.

  After that, he would have Saturday and Sunday to do any of the “Special Projects” that had to be taken care of without anybody watching; such as installing power, phone, and video lines to the five Observation Posts that he and Marc had prepared.

  Casey had a lot of special work to do inside as well. Some of the interior spaces were framed in such a way as to appear to be for one purpose, such as storage rooms and walk-in closets, only to be converted later once the construction was complete into panic rooms and secret passages.

  By the end of September, just three months after starting the footings, the HOTH was closed up with all of the suspended slab concrete work completed. Windows and exterior doors had been installed, interior steel-framed walls were in place, plumbing and wiring was roughed in and a few circuits had been activated for use during the remainder of the construction.

  The next phase would be largely interior, starting with a good ten centimeters of rigid polyurethane spray foam insulation to be blown in along the inside portion of all the exterior ICF walls, to raise the insulation value of the exterior walls.

  During this time, the GSHP units were installed in the mechanical room, along with the potable water pumps and air handling system. The full range of air filtration systems would not be completed until after the heating and air conditioning contractor was finished. The main air filtration system to be added later was a secret subsystem called “The Lung”.

  It was essential that the local heating contractor would have no knowledge that th
e air intake and heat exchange ductwork he had so carefully installed would actually be just a “good times” alternate to the more sophisticated “Lung” assembly that Rob and Casey had come up with.

  The Lung would be installed in a room accessible from the penthouse level, comprised of a series of filters designed to remove progressively smaller radioactive and other harmful particles. The first stage would do most of the work by simply drawing the intake air through the perforated aluminum louvers of the soffits of the penthouse level. The overhang and gravity would do most of the work, with the heavier particles being deflected away from the soffits.

  A large sack of canvas rigged as a plenum inside the spaces between the trusses of the overhang would provide a degree of filtration, and had inspired the name “Lung” for the air filtration system.

  Intake air was drawn from the canvas plenum by circulation fans and their associated filters. The periodic task of changing the standard-sized HEPA and allergy type filters would be familiar to any homeowner.

  These filters would remove particles as small as 0.3 microns, which was the smallest-sized radioactive particles that Casey expected. A further ionic filter had been added to remove particles smaller than 0.1 microns, to remove harmful biological organisms or viruses. The ionic system Rob came up with was overkill to Casey; he was not getting ready for biological warfare, but he installed it anyhow.

  The actual volume of air that had to be moved throughout the HOTH was far less than a similarly sized conventional facility, as the primary heating system on all levels was a hydronic system of radiant in-floor heat supplied by boilers heated by the GSHP units, so heat radiated upward from the floors rather than from circulated air.

  The Achilles’ heel in the GSHP boiler system was the electricity required to run the pumps and compressors in the system. Should grid electrical power fail, as Casey considered likely, the only remaining sources of electrical power would be wind, battery, or generator. In the case of low wind power, and if there was insufficient diesel fuel for backup generators, the fall-back would be to heat the facility entirely by wood stoves.

  The system also had the capability to bank heat energy in the concrete whenever wind power was available. The HOTH would be warm enough, but cooling was another issue. The GSHP and Pex lines could also be used for cooling the structure and this gave the HOTH a great deal of flexibility.

  The Deep Freeze Room in the bunker had to be kept cold as one of the highest priorities because it was essential for the ultra long-term food storage. The “DFR” was a four hundred square foot walk-in freezer. With Pex tubes set in the thermally isolated concrete walls and ceiling, the DFR was cooled to a steady minus eight degrees C by a closed loop of glycol which transferred the excess heat back into the GSHP system. Essentially a concrete box surrounded by eight inches of rigid insulation, and cut off from the structural concrete of the HOTH, the DFR was intended to be rarely opened. Casey and Rob had calculated its maximum heat transfer demand at just two thousand BTUs, which could easily be shunted into one of the boilers using one of the GSHP units for just a few minutes each day. This was well within the electrical budget of the HOTH, given a few assumptions about the historical wind patterns and the output of the helical wind power-plants.

  With electrical power so essential to the various critical systems of the HOTH, Casey had spent a lot of money on the helical wind power turbines. He and Rob chose the helical type over the traditional three-bladed type for a variety of reasons. Most of all, however, was simplicity of operation. Each helical unit was comprised of a stack of “S” shaped horizontal scoops. With twenty four scoops making the full sixteen foot tower, each scoop was offset by fifteen degrees from the previous one. So regardless of where the wind was coming from, there would always be a few scoops perfectly aligned. Able to withstand wind speeds up to 120 kph, each of the wind power plants could supply the HOTH with up to 4 kWh of electrical power at a wind speed of 16 kph, and could provide the HOTH’s minimum power requirement for critical systems with just 5 kph of wind.

  The design of the Bunker was based on the well-established survival factors of Distance, Time, and Shielding. Casey couldn’t do much about distance, once the location of the HOTH was chosen in the midst of the many nuclear targets in the Pacific Northwest. Regarding time, Casey focused on ensuring an infinite source of clean water and sanitation, filtered air and sufficient food for a very long time without any need to venture outside. With the assumption that food supplies would disappear, the time factor required a great deal of work on ultra long-term food storage. This culminated in the design of the DFR.

  Designing effective shielding was a simple task of ensuring that there was a large mass between the radioactive source and the survivors. Casey ensured that the Bunker would have at least ten “halving thicknesses”, which would reduce radiation to less than a thousandth of the unprotected level.

  This was accomplished by placing the expansive bunker in a windowless corner of the deep excavation, under a twelve inch thick garage floor slab. The eight inches of concrete in the ICF walls, and the six inches of concrete flooring on all levels, meant that even the least protected spaces in the HOTH would reduce radiation by 84%. Even with the HOTH’s smaller windows, however, Casey had window inserts custom-made as an additional shielding measure. These sandwiches of concrete “sturdy-board” bolted to steel plates were stored in the mechanical spaces around the elevator and could be wheeled over and hefted into the window wells if needed. This, along with the steel roll-down shutters, added nearly three halving thicknesses to the window cavities.

  With ample square footage for bed-down space and a modicum of comfort and entertainment, the 1,600 square foot main bunker could accommodate over 40 people. They would be about as cramped as a family of six would be in a recreational vehicle. However, as the radioactive fallout decays logarithmically, radiation levels fall fastest in the first 12 to 48 hours. So the survivors would be able to use most of the HOTH’s 8,600 square feet, and the 6,400 square feet of the barn, greenhouse and recreational building attached to the HOTH within a few days. It would be essential to monitor the radiation levels constantly using the array of hand-held and remotely installed sensors, the product of Mr. Skinner’s “Roentgen” project.

  The large flat roof area was essentially cut into two halves by the 900 square foot Penthouse which spanned the width of the HOTH. The penthouse level housed the wide, switch-back staircase, and the small four-person elevator. Casey wanted the elevator as much for his elderly mother to reach the rooftop level as for his own golden years yet to come.

  Projecting a full ten meters above the driveway on the high side of the HOTH, the flat concrete roof on top of the penthouse provided a solid base for the two helical wind power units and base pads and tie downs for communication antennas and cameras.

  In the center of the penthouse roof there was yet another level; the sixteen by twelve concrete room which housed a 6,300 liter water tank. The tank was high enough to provide some hydrostatic pressure for cold water supply should electrical power run short at times. This large, tapered water tank was set into its own interior concrete wall and insulated with blown polyurethane foam to seal it off from temperature extremes and radioactive fallout. This water could also be used to cool the structure and douse any embers from a forest fire, with a small back-up pressure-pump providing a fine spray of water from strategically located sprinklers at various locations around the rooftop of the HOTH. This could also be used to wash away any radioactive fallout or toxic dust particles.

  The rooftop over the penthouse also provided a viewpoint for security operations, with a solid concrete perimeter wall acting as a railing. A similar but much smaller terrace was on top of the water tank level, with an overhanging roof feature making shaded areas on the penthouse roof level below. These successively smaller levels gave the entire HOTH facility the appearance of a ship, with the water tank level looking like the bridge deck.

  A ladder inside the water
tank room provided access to the highest point of the HOTH, the “Bird’s Nest”, a 144 square foot covered observation level. It was capped with a decorative log-framed gable roof. The woodwork was being prepared by Kendal Kelly using elegantly fluted butts of cedar logs that would be joined together in the centre of the small roof. A hand-worked copper roof, evocative of Hotel Vancouver, would be the finishing touch.

  Visible from each successive deck, and from the ground surface around the HOTH, the Bird’s Nest would add a feeling of craftsmanship to the HOTH, and tie in well with other log-work features that Kendal would install at various entrances of the HOTH and associated buildings. Once the decorative granite stonework and other touches were added, these features would give the massive concrete structure a more human, West Coast, flavor that fit the forested landscape well. They gave the HOTH a less militaristic form, disguising its true function.

  The Bird’s Nest had a commanding view of the approaches to the HOTH. Even without binoculars one could make out the taller structures in Qualicum Beach, and see ships plying the Strait of Georgia beyond. An excellent position for a sniper, the nest had roll-down blankets to darken the interior, making security personnel impossible to see from the ground. Tables, sand bags, steel panels and concrete blocks would permit a sniper to set up a very well defended position, oriented to any threat axis. The cameras, intercom and electrical power also installed in the nest were an added bonus.

  The penthouse itself included the central spine of the main staircase, also made of concrete, which supported the water tank deck above. With a bathroom, a small kitchen and sunshine type of eating area for rooftop meals, the penthouse level provided a multi-purpose space with access to the expansive rooftop of the HOTH. There was also a small mechanical room which provided access to the “Lung” air intake and filtration system, and housed some of the controls, spares and specialized equipment needed to maintain or repair the two helical wind power plants. The batteries themselves were stored in the basement mechanical room, adjacent to the main electrical load centre and other critical systems.