Our asteroid survival: A fictitional history of the ten year survival of a large ELE asteroid impact by a small, pre advised, group

by Lionel Woodhead

  At Fabio’s suggestion we took some weapons including, fortunately as it turned out, two examples of both tear gas and shrapnel grenades. These were light, small and available; in addition we took four pistols; two revolvers and two semi automatics. We took four three man tents each of which could take four people, as long as they were friendly, and two small pots of paint to visually mark waypoints. We also took waist high waders for each of us as we expected to have to cross the river; if it was frozen solid or the flow rate was considered acceptable. If such waders were required it raised the question as to how we would be able to return with those from the rich mans shelter? This question we, of the expedition, considered but it was never raised in front of the committee as we wished to take part in the adventure.

  The carpenter made a small sledge for us to transport our equipment. The sledge was designed that it had the possibility of using wheels or, as a last resort, it could be carried. With this we set out over a landscape that had changed beyond recognition and even in the limited light provided by our touches was almost unknowable to us. We were, in addition, unaware of what conditions we might find and further we were only mentally aware of the general direction of the distant shelter. Because of this we planned to work to a compass bearing and map occasionally confirming our position with the GPS. At each turning point we planned to leave a paint marker; either on a stone or other fixed, recognisable object.

  Although we would do our best and I had volunteered enthusiastically for the mission it was always my opinion that we were taking part in a badly organized trip and we had failed to perform a reasonable analysis of the true situation. The risks were, at best, excessive for any perceived gains apart from our interest in an adventure. It should be remembered that our friends in the rich mans shelter had provisions to live, with reasonable comfort, for a year or more. An additional factor was the fact that, as far as was known to us, our early arrival would not benefit the inmates as the external conditions were appalling and they would not have had the benefit of even our limited exercise routines. They would not, therefore, have had the ability, in the then prevailing conditions, to return with us to the shelter. It was highly probable that we would have either to extend the numbers within their shelter or leave them and return ourselves; if indeed we were then capable of such an effort.

  The first part of our journey was downhill making it relatively easy, though still horrendous, but insignificant compared to the effort that would be required on any return. We followed, to simplify and support our efforts, what had once been the old inter village road over the hill that passed our estate. A large amount of the lower level road surface had been damaged and was partially washed out by the water but still provided a surface that was relatively easy to follow.

  We, at this time, thought this damage to the lower road to have been caused by the impact inundation. The main damage, within our vision, had reached to about one hundred meters vertical distance of our shelter. This should have suggested to us an alternative possibility but, at the time, it did not.

  Assuming these estimates were correct the water had reached, at this point, a height of slightly more, by my estimate, than one hundred meters above the valley floor; a somewhat unlikely scenario for even the inundation we had heard from within the shelter.

  I was pleased to note that the road still provided a route into the valley and from the limited perspective of what we could see it appeared to us then that it should be drivable, with caution, by a suitable vehicle. The path we were on, it was not now a road, was obstructed in some places, though not seriously, by uprooted trees, bushes and stones probably brought down from above. We made an effort to clear the road as we went; partly to assist us on our return. A clear passage would be easier to see if we expected it.

  As we walked we recognized our latest guest’s homes by a single wall supported by the broken remains of a chimney next to the path on which we were travelling. We could only see this house, through the gloom, because it was near the road. Had our recent guests stayed they could not have survived that destruction. As we then saw it we had preserved their lives. The flow of water must have been considerable and it was clear, from this evidence, that the lake village had been destroyed.

  On approaching the valley floor walking became even more difficult as we were now on partly frozen mud. On observing these conditions we put on our waders. The mud itself was treacherous in both its depth and consistency and affected our footing. Within the limited visibility of our touches all we could see was devastation. None of us had witnessed anything like it. Here it was confirmed, though we were unable to see it, that the lovely lake village would provide no more bread, fine wine, companionship or coffees. Unless those charming villagers had moved to a sufficiently protected place on higher ground there would be no joyful renewal of acquaintances. We thought that if they had relied on the government shelters their chances of survival, even to that time, were remote.

  We continued with increasing difficulty to what had been the river. This had become a slow moving, impassable by any means we then had available, river of mud and other material. We could not recognize the origin of the material and probably would not have wanted to. The banks of this river, along which we were travelling, consisted of partly frozen boggy sludge covered with treacherous debris probably brought down from the distant hills.

  The sludge was thick enough to restrict our movements to a slow crawl. Fortunately, as our feet sank into the mess, it was not actually slippery. Luckily though the sludge depth was both difficult and exhausting to wade through it was not too deep and our waders were sufficient to keep us moderately dry. On the other hand travelling through this mess was very strength sapping, difficult and in some cases dangerous due to unseen material within the sludge.

  We struggled along the river all that day, evening, at that time, being detectable only as a slight increase in the pervading gloom which was confirmed by our watches. By this time we had actually travelled only about four kilometres over the crinkling icy bog that shuddered over its surface as we fought through it. Movement through this morass was compounded by many difficulties and obstructions. We had no wish to investigate the obstructions though they proved extremely exhausting to our group as they had to be circumvented.

  On our way we observed at close range, being the limit of our torches, the two destroyed bridges we had seen on the map. One of these, the furthest from our start point, had once been a solid concrete structure suitable for lorries. We had hoped that we might use this to cross the river if walking across proved inadvisable. The actual bridge was no more but the foundations and concrete supports remained and we saw that we might, at some later date, put a reasonably solid structure on the remains. The other bridge was only recognizable by some metal piles where the map indicated a bridge had once existed.

  Having observed the destruction of such a solid bridge we knew no structures could have survived in this valley. We found no other means of crossing the river so we camped on some higher, dryer ground intending to return to the shelter the following morning. We now knew that until this landscape had frozen into more solid material there was little hope of getting across the river to the rich mans shelter.

  Fortunately, for our conscience, we knew that those in that remote shelter were at a higher level than ours and they had adequate security, food and energy, if they were moderately frugal, to last them for, at least, a year. We were not, therefore, unduly concerned as to their ability to sustain their lives.

  From our mercenary point of view we considered that integrating our friends into our shelter would reduce the overall demand on our energy stocks. It would also free the rich mans shelter to hopefully catch the attention of further personnel to our advantage. In truth, however, we noted that our present attempt at recovering those people had been a mistake though I was pleased that we had made the attempt. We now understood the difficulties and had seen the state of destruction; especially to those bridges which indicated to us the
limited possibility of further survivors in that area. We had done our best but had been beaten by impossible conditions.

  The return journey to our shelter proved worse, beyond our imagining, than the previous day; a considerable portion being uphill. Even though we travelled slowly expending minimum effort we arrived at the shelter both exhausted and dejected by our efforts. This dejection being made worse by our failure to achieve our primary mission and we felt that we had let down our companions.

  Our movements had been slow all that day and on arrival at our home we had given everything. We were so completely exhausted that we required assistance for one of our number to get up the final steep slope from the original access road to our shelter. The mission was not a complete failure, however, as we were able to advise on the weather conditions, the ground and give our opinion, based on experience, that we were very unlikely to have any visitors, wanted or otherwise, until conditions considerably improved or at the very least it got considerably colder.

  After this adventure and trusting in our assessment of the possibility of visitors and the fact that we intended to recover those in the rich mans shelter as soon as it became practical we kept our shelter’s outer tube door uncovered. We did this with considerable confidence based on those conditions we had met on our short external adventure. This had convinced us that any group capable of endangering us could not be expected in the short term. We considered that the possibility of any survivors attempting to move through the valley in a group of any size, without a defined known safe destination, was very small. The carriage of sufficient food and shelter for several days without a suitable mode of transport was currently impossible even for fit, reasonably well fed personnel.

  We, at that time, considered that the lower countryside on the southern side of the hill behind our shelter would have been completely inundated. The flow of water would not have been as severe as through the valley constrictions but the survival of any unprotected persons living above ground in that valley was highly unlikely. During our walk we had detected, in spite of the protecting cold, the smell of corruption but we had seen no bodies; we had not looked very hard. Any bodies existing in that moving material would eventually have been moved, by the flow of the rubble, further down the mountain past the lake village to be lost from the ken of man.

  We had not looked for bodies of man or beast in the semi darkness. The discovery of such remains was of no interest to us as it would not have improved our survival prospects in any way. In any case the mud could have concealed many unpleasant things of no interest to us; hence we did not look for anything. We were alive with the means to, in all probability, remain in that condition for a considerable period. We therefore had to be satisfied with that.

  On our return to our companions, as we had had no contact with anyone outside our group, it was decided that we would not be required to suffer any quarantine segregation. I remember that we were instead provided with a hot meal and a strong cup of hot coffee with whiskey and milk; the latter from our long lasting milk supply and not the threatened dried version. I remember that coffee as one of my life’s greatest gifts. We were given the option of sugar or sweetener if we preferred but I took the whisky. For me this largess from our friends was like re-entering paradise. We, of the expedition, spent the next day resting from our travels and telling anyone that showed any interest the story of our adventures.

  During that rest day I reread the book that I had read so often in the recent past. The subject of that book was the extinction of the dinosaurs caused, like our situation, by the earth’s collision with an asteroid. It gave me no further insights but I now, from personnel experience, understood so much better some of the terrifying problems faced by those animals all those millions of years ago. They were large, had received no warning, were stuck in the open without a shelter to return to and their food store (vegetarian or meat eater) was removed hence they had had, realistically, no chance of survival. We, as a species, are supposed to be more intelligent than the dinosaurs. We had been warned, had produced our shelter and our group had managed to provide a reasonable repository of provisions, requirements and even some comforts. With all this preparation we had stood a far better chance of preventing our extinction than those magnificent ancient animals in their ignorance. If the government had done a little bit more to assist their citizens during the preceding nine months of discussions perhaps a lot more of our friends could have survived.

  As long as others had survived, however, mankind had a good chance of recovery; given time. I believed that having experienced a previous world that had hardly been ideal, either politically or in relation to personnel freedoms, we survivors who had proven our drive, strengths and abilities to beat the initial odds should be able to create a better one.

  The idea that a representative at an old political assembly could suppress his allegiance to a political group in preference to his local area constituents had, in almost every case, been proven a fallacy. Politicians had always survived by stealth to achieve objectives that they would not have dared to propose in public. They had manufactured objectives very contrary to the wishes of those that voted for them in preference to their paymasters; that being, in any reality, both corrupt and undemocratic.

  I then believed, and still do, that we could hardly do worse for our new world than what we had seen in our old. We had accepted the old world version of democracy solely because it was easier than trying to force change. Now we had a chance for change and we had, from our experience of the old, knowledge of what was required. Our wish was to create a truly better world that we would have to wrest from the remains of the old. We felt we owed that to all those that had died and to our children who would inherit whatever we could create.

  Work inside the shelter had continued while we had been away and the assembly of the hospital and other offices, with their furniture, had been completed. The work was completed so quickly as it required only the fixing of partitions to previously installed standard supports and the installation of their equipment. The homes had been set up and my rest period was largely spent in my family accommodation. Though I found that accommodation limited in size it had been made surprisingly comfortable by my family and it met all our basic requirements. My family had succeeded in giving our home a personality that I recognized and I truly felt I had returned home. I sat in a reasonably comfortable chair reading my book under a reading light. How I would have loved to have turned on the television, changed channels and just wasted my time but we had a new world to build and I was quite excited by that prospect.

  Life within our shelter was reaching what could then be described as reassuring. Our entertainment options, compared to those previously available, were limited. The loss, however, affected us little. The old version of mass entertainment had become so dumbed down that it had become merely background noise. The media, controlled by so few, had been reduced to platitudes or, even more common, obvious propaganda.

  We all studied to become acquainted with new, for us, old technologies. These technologies would be required by us to achieve even a medium term, maintainable, technology based world. We had to relearn manufacturing techniques required to produce such ubiquitous items as simple transistors, resistors, reactive components etc. From these we could design circuits for simple communication and control systems based on elements that had recently been provided on a tiny wafer made up of possibly many millions of electronic components. Even the manufacture of soap required the relearning of small scale chemical industries. The manufacturing of crude transistors, however, proved unexpectedly simple. Some of our INTERNET data stored on some of our invaluable paper gave a relatively simple procedure for achieving this objective.

  Manufacturing, unfortunately, of even these simple transistors necessarily included the use of considerable quantities of energy including a thousand degree centigrade furnace. Then we had to produce charcoal to make steel and after that it got worse.

  The use of the energy
necessary for the project of the transistor production team was unanimously agreed by the shelter group. This experiment was necessary to allow us to test the principles involved in order to ensure that we had the capability when it was required. When that time came we hoped that we would have sustainable energy resources to benefit from our early experiments.

  Those early transistors were inefficient but they worked and were, therefore, a recognised first step. A crude resistor could be made quite simply with carbon or graphite on paper (using a pencil). A crude capacitor can be made with two strips of insulated coiled metal foil being similarly not a major problem. The problem was that we would need something better, repeatable and more stable than such units to be included in electronic circuits intended for use with adjustable component values. The major problem was the production of elements having consistent values in many situations. In order to test our manufactured components we would need to produce an acceptable measuring device, using elements we could produce, allowing reproducible measurements. Providing these components, however, would inevitable be an iterative process.

  Our work on LED’s soon produced promising results working with silicon carbide crystals obtained from the university. Our then current work was, however, a long way from the development of even a reasonably efficient lighting source; this took us over eight years. Fortunately our “in house” modern lighting components were both very long lasting and numerous so we had sufficient material available for a far longer period. This allowed us to maintain a better than basic standard of lighting even into our current external buildings. In this respect we could reasonably expect continuity beyond the middle future.