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fandomhigh2010-07-26 09:57 am
raspberryturk) wrote in fandomhigh2010-07-26 09:57 am
Entry tags:
The Day After Doomsday: Getting By In a Post-Apocalyptic World - Period 2
"Yo, class!" Reno stepped into the Danger Shop today with a small, twitchy grin on his lips. "Hands-on class today, I bet you're all thrilled, zoto."
He gestured around to a Danger Shop re-creation of a place that looked inhospitable, pure and simple. It was the same wasteland scenario that he'd loaded up during the first class, with rocks and sand as far as the eye could see, and not a single plant in sight. He'd tweaked it a bit, though. The greenish-black cast that had been visible in the distance in the first class was now directly overhead, leaving little more than a slightly lighter haze than pitch blackness to suggest that it was, in fact, daytime.
He'd tweaked it a little more, to add a small stream running through. Garbage and other assorted, unidentifiable detritus was floating through it, and the water looked more like a sick, soupy glop than anything meant to be drank. There wasn't a single weed to be found, growing from the banks of the stream. There were animals around it, sure.
If skeletons counted.
"Congratulations, humanity," Reno continued on. "You finally went and polluted the world to death, yo. Nothin' grows in the ground, you can't drink the water, odds are you don't wanna trust the air, and, if you squint at them ruins off in the distance," he gestured toward a massive heap of something that once very well might have been a human city, massive and proud. Now it was little more than broken glass and twisted metal and rust, "that city over there had enough nuclear power facilities to power the whole friggin' planet. Then it exploded."
Okay, maybe he was revisiting Midgar, with a few pointed twists made in the story to make things make sense to most of his students. "So now, you can't go nowhere without the radiation from them reactors seepin' through your skin. There ain't no plants around here, because the soil's all been poisoned by the fallout. The air ain't safe. The water definitely ain't safe. And... if you think you're gonna get supplies in that city there, you petter be prepared to deal with a list of nasty symptoms of radiation poisoning that's as long as my arm, yo." A pause. "And will kill you. Exposure to the fallout won't make you radioactive, it'll just make you friggin' sick. At least if you get sick, so long as you get the fallout off your clothin', you won't be contagious. People can't just pass this shit along like the common cold, yo."
With this class, you never knew if you had to clarify, or not.
"Today's lesson ain't gonna be about cleaning up, long-term. It's gonna be about maybe survivin' with what you got, hopefully long enough to get you somewhere that you got more to work with." He handed out a set of directions for making a homemade water distiller. "If you got everything you need to make one of these, congratulations. You might have water to get you by while you travel, yo. If you don't, you better be damn well ready to improvise. Water'll only be one of your worries, but you can't just set up a giant filter to make the air good to breathe, yo. And without power to make light and plant life that ain't irradiated all to hell, you'll be better off eatin' cockroaches than tryin' to grow your food. Roaches have survived the past 300 million years, yo. They ain't goin' nowhere now."
A pause, and then a small grin all over again. "So. Make water filters outta the junk you can dig up. And you'll be doin' it in this dark," he added, nodding up at the pea-soup sky before gesturing to a pile of masks heaped up next to him, "wearin' these."
Because you all thought that gas masks were an awesome fashion statement, right?
[Open!]
He gestured around to a Danger Shop re-creation of a place that looked inhospitable, pure and simple. It was the same wasteland scenario that he'd loaded up during the first class, with rocks and sand as far as the eye could see, and not a single plant in sight. He'd tweaked it a bit, though. The greenish-black cast that had been visible in the distance in the first class was now directly overhead, leaving little more than a slightly lighter haze than pitch blackness to suggest that it was, in fact, daytime.
He'd tweaked it a little more, to add a small stream running through. Garbage and other assorted, unidentifiable detritus was floating through it, and the water looked more like a sick, soupy glop than anything meant to be drank. There wasn't a single weed to be found, growing from the banks of the stream. There were animals around it, sure.
If skeletons counted.
"Congratulations, humanity," Reno continued on. "You finally went and polluted the world to death, yo. Nothin' grows in the ground, you can't drink the water, odds are you don't wanna trust the air, and, if you squint at them ruins off in the distance," he gestured toward a massive heap of something that once very well might have been a human city, massive and proud. Now it was little more than broken glass and twisted metal and rust, "that city over there had enough nuclear power facilities to power the whole friggin' planet. Then it exploded."
Okay, maybe he was revisiting Midgar, with a few pointed twists made in the story to make things make sense to most of his students. "So now, you can't go nowhere without the radiation from them reactors seepin' through your skin. There ain't no plants around here, because the soil's all been poisoned by the fallout. The air ain't safe. The water definitely ain't safe. And... if you think you're gonna get supplies in that city there, you petter be prepared to deal with a list of nasty symptoms of radiation poisoning that's as long as my arm, yo." A pause. "And will kill you. Exposure to the fallout won't make you radioactive, it'll just make you friggin' sick. At least if you get sick, so long as you get the fallout off your clothin', you won't be contagious. People can't just pass this shit along like the common cold, yo."
With this class, you never knew if you had to clarify, or not.
"Today's lesson ain't gonna be about cleaning up, long-term. It's gonna be about maybe survivin' with what you got, hopefully long enough to get you somewhere that you got more to work with." He handed out a set of directions for making a homemade water distiller. "If you got everything you need to make one of these, congratulations. You might have water to get you by while you travel, yo. If you don't, you better be damn well ready to improvise. Water'll only be one of your worries, but you can't just set up a giant filter to make the air good to breathe, yo. And without power to make light and plant life that ain't irradiated all to hell, you'll be better off eatin' cockroaches than tryin' to grow your food. Roaches have survived the past 300 million years, yo. They ain't goin' nowhere now."
A pause, and then a small grin all over again. "So. Make water filters outta the junk you can dig up. And you'll be doin' it in this dark," he added, nodding up at the pea-soup sky before gesturing to a pile of masks heaped up next to him, "wearin' these."
Because you all thought that gas masks were an awesome fashion statement, right?
[Open!]
Re: Make a Portable Water Purifier
"Do you ever smile?" she asked curiously.
Because this class was so conductive to smiling, Ino. Right.
Re: Make a Portable Water Purifier
"Sure I do", answered at least, his gaze returning to the waters next to him. "When I feel like", added, late enough to make it sound odd.
Re: Make a Portable Water Purifier
And if he was just going to stare like a creeper at her, well, Ino had dealt with worse in the face of making conversation. That was just who she was.
She shrugged, stepping out onto the sludge, rather than into it, and picked her way carefully through it as she looked for what she’d need. Did it even make sense to make a water purifier from things that had been in the dirty water?
“Guessin’ you don’t smile much,” she noted. “’Cause at your age,” at her age even, but she was younger and so didn't count, “you can generally tell who does and who doesn’t.”
Re: Make a Portable Water Purifier
"No, I'm not much of a smiler anymore", answered in an absent minded way as he picked up a bottle and examined it, before letting it slip again. "At my age? I'm not much older than you. And that sounds...very stereotypical." True, but stereotypical.
Re: Make a Portable Water Purifier
A beat.
"How old do you think I am?"
Re: Make a Portable Water Purifier
"Seventeen." He didn't even stop tp consider it. "Am I wrong?"
Re: Make a Portable Water Purifier
Re: Make a Portable Water Purifier
Re: Make a Portable Water Purifier
"Back home I've been considered adult since I was twelve," she said, making a face at the bottle but deeming it acceptable. "Maybe that's it."
Re: Make a Portable Water Purifier
He tried to remember what else was he supposed to get for the filter. "Childhood shouldn't be thrown away though...just saying."
Re: Make a Portable Water Purifier
Ino glanced sidelong at him. "It weren't thrown away. We grow up different there, that don't mean we're wrong. We're a... warrior village. Training starts young. You gonna tell me it don't start young in Gaia?"
Zack had run away at twelve because he wanted to make something of himself and be a SOLDIER.
Re: Make a Portable Water Purifier
"It doesn't", he said, again with little thought between Ino's and his own words. "Those that wanted to join Shinra over the years were required to be young for other reasons." Minds easier to mold, bodies easier to experiment on, character easier to build. "It marked the end of one's childhood, and it wasn't really a natural thing." Zack was quite an odd case, retaining his joviality.
Re: Make a Portable Water Purifier
"'Bout the same result," she said, lifting her shoulders in a shrug. "I chose what I wanted to do. So did everyone I know. We were little when we decided, but that doesn't mean our choices weren't valid. And it doesn't mean that our childhoods weren't--childhoods."
Re: Make a Portable Water Purifier
"..." Just a short silent stare. "That's good to know then." He meant the second part if it; the result...not quite the same, on his oppinion.
Re: Make a Portable Water Purifier
Even if she thought they were dead wrong! Ino was generous that way!
Re: Make a Portable Water Purifier
"You said something like that once", he muttered as he looked for rags to dry and use, and not so dirty to serve as filters. "I'm glad you got to have a childhood. I don't think the way it works in your town is the same it works on Gaia, though."
The sudden stop was deliberate.
Re: Make a Portable Water Purifier