The Day After Doomsday: Getting By In a Post-Apocalyptic World, Wednesday, Period 4

[raspberryturk]

When the students stepped into the Danger Shop for Reno's class today, they'd find themselves stepping into the lobby of the dormitory all over again, with a few pointed differences. There seemed to be a barricade built against the boarded-up windows, consisting of a good deal of the furniture that had clearly been dragged down from the floors above them. The power to the simulated building had been cut off completely, which meant that they were sitting in near-absolute darkness, because naturally Reno was going to be an ass and set this scenario for the dead of night.

There were cans of food lined up against one wall. There were weapons, what looked to be the entire contents of both the weapons locker and sharpened, weaponized versions of the practise fare from the Salle, laid out against the other. A sign hastily scribbled down on a piece of paper pointed deeper into the building, directing any possible injured to a first-aid station in the rec room.

Reno was sitting in the middle of the floor, grinning up at the students as they came in, legs splayed out in front of him and his elbows on his knees, Danger Shop supplied stun baton in one hand.

"Trust me," he said coolly, nodding back to the doors that closed themselves and instantly fell behind another barricade the moment the last of the students stepped in, "you don't wanna go back out there. This ain't your everyday Fandom invasion, where somethin' shows up, tapdances nasty around us all for a week, an' then gets sent packin'. This is the real friggin' deal, yo. This is your doomsday scenario, where there ain't no cure for bein' dead. Where if you get bit and infected and turn into one of them, you ain't snappin' out of it. Where the weapon that blew up the school took half of you with it, and you don't got time for so much as a head count to figure out who's left."

He leaned back, the cool metal of his baton scraping against the floor of the lobby, playing an eerie harmony to the sounds from outside, which alternated from complete silence to screams to gunfire, to the sound of something not remotely human calling out into the dark, answered by what had to be a hundred more just like it, all converging in on one point: The Dorms.

"I ain't gonna pretend there ain't heroes among you, I ain't gonna sit here and point at you one by one to tell you the likelihood of comin' back alive, either. If you're one of them who's gonna run out there, then there ain't nobody who'll be able to keep you inside. And that'll cost the island one of its first big advantages early on. Because once you guys are dead, what are the people who ain't fighters gonna do?"

And then, all at once in a flash of speed that was jarringly unnatural, Reno was on his feet, baton on his shoulder, and he was prowling back and forth in front of the students.

"What the enemy out there is don't matter in this scenario. What's out there is the predator, that thing that goes bump in the night, that sees you as prey or pest, but whatever the case is, it don't want us here, and it's lettin' us know with extreme prejudice. This is the Danger Shop, so if you go out them doors here, you'll just be steppin' out into the school again. This lesson ain't about fightin'. This is about stayin' alive. Look around. Take in what's been set up, here. Let it sink in that there isn't a single resource in this lobby that'll last even a severely reduced dorm population more'n a few weeks at best. And then, try an' figure out what the hell you're gonna do about it."

[Open! Go nuts!]

Comments

Re: Plan Ahead!

[notaweenie.livejournal.com]

After gathering the needed materials, Barry built a solar water kettle (http://www.instructables.com/id/Solar-Hot-Water-Kettle-From-Plastic-Bottles-and-G/) and a solar panel (http://www.thesietch.org/projects/solarthermalpanel2/index.htm) for power.

"The solar kettle will boil the water in the pool," Barry said beginning to work on the gas powered generator. "The chlorine will turn into a gas leaving the water safe to drink. The solar panel will do the same thing as well as provide power during the day for whatever we need. And as soon as I'm done with this generator, it should run off this bottle of soy sauce¹ for about five years."

He stretched his shoulders a little bit more before continuing.

"Next up is solar greenhouse which we should be able to use for food all year long and as for weapons a fucking two by four should be good enough to bash anyone's head in until I can build something better."


-----
¹ West Wing reference, yo.

Re: Plan Ahead!

[raspberryturk]

There was a long pause while Reno let all of that sink in.

"... Yeah, so, anybody lets Barry die this semester, it's an automatic F."

Seriously, soy sauce?

Re: Plan Ahead!

[notaweenie.livejournal.com]

Soy sauce. Yo.

"Thanks for the kind words, Boss," Barry smirked. "Oh and if anyone needs water immediately the Vitamin C tablets should work. I lifted them from the medical supplies because I fucking doubt anyone is going to die from fucking scurvy anytime soon."

Re: Plan Ahead!

[spin_kick_snap]

"Umm, not to be a bother, but the problem with a greenhouse is that it takes time for the plants to grow," Kathy said. "And we only have a few weeks worth of food. We either need to scavenge, or to find an alternate place to hole up."

She paused. "Umm, unless you have a method for force-growing food, too?"

She wouldn't put it past him. Not after seeing what he could do with just what he could find in the first five minutes of looking.

Re: Plan Ahead!

[notaweenie.livejournal.com]

"If we have the right components available I should be able to create some fertilizer," Barry replied as he continued to work on the generator. "Three weeks should be plenty of fucking time to get that going. And if we're desperate enough we can always roast a gremlin or two."

Mmm. Gremlin.

Re: Plan Ahead!

[spin_kick_snap]

"Fertilizer that can grow enough food for all of us in days?" Forgive her skepticism, Barry, but...she was skeptical. "Assuming that we even have enough plants and seeds for nutrition anyway."

She hadn't seen the rooftop garden yet, so she wasn't putting any bets on that.

"We need something like 5 pounds of food a day per person, and that includes meats, grains, and dairy. So unless you can also rig up farm animals, I think staying here just means a slow death. We should find somewhere else we can stay."

Re: Plan Ahead!

[notaweenie.livejournal.com]

"Seriously?" Barry said looking incredulous. "I just built a solar power generator out of a fucking refrigerator and you're doubting me?

Re: Plan Ahead!

[spin_kick_snap]

"Your ability to genetically engineer fifty pounds of food a day that also manages to satisfy our every nutritional need and taste like chocolate without access to a proper lab?" Kathy asked, just as incredulous. "You bet your butt I do! I'm not saying you're not, like, the smartest guy I've probably ever met with what you just did, but there are limits."

Re: Plan Ahead!

[notaweenie.livejournal.com]

"When I was ten years old I created a food replicator that made grits," Barry replied snarkily. "How many cures for famine have you made before you were eleven? I can make a lab. I can make almost anything given enough time. Hell, if I can make accelerated beans and quinoa we won't need another source of protein. Making it taste like chocolate? That's not a fucking priority in my book."

Re: Plan Ahead!

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy flung her hands up in the air. "That part was sarcasm and you know it," she said. "But did you hear what you just said? You can make almost anything given enough time. Do you know how much time we have here? Because I don't!"

She wasn't going to yell. Nope, she wasn't going to yell. Yelling never made anything better and just made the other person feel small.

Okay, so, feeling small was probably not one of Barry's problems, but still. They could discuss this calmly and rationally. "There's nothing wrong with wanting to go somewhere a little safer and better equipped," she said in an even tone. "If for no other reason than so you don't have to create everything from scratch. Less time you have to spend on basics, the more time you can devote to coming up with a solution to this whole mess."

Re: Plan Ahead!

[notaweenie.livejournal.com]

"According to our illustrious teacher it sounds like going somewhere else is suicide," Barry commented. "Class isn't even over and I've solved three different problems. Give me a day and I can solve two dozen more and make this bunker secure. Or you can gab away and distract me all to fuck and make this even worse."

Re: Plan Ahead!

[nobloodymessiah.livejournal.com]

"I don't suppose you'd be able to create a cure for whatever plague is causing this infection," Eleanor asked.

Re: Plan Ahead!

[notaweenie.livejournal.com]

Barry looked up briefly from the generator and frowned. "Probably. I'll need a proper lab though."

He paused and looked at his surroundings.

"Or at least any fucking lab. I'd have to build the equipment and get a sample. First priority are provisions though. We have shelter, water and at least some food until the greenhouse kicks in. Power will help. Then once that's out of the fucking way I can do some research."

Re: Plan Ahead!

[nobloodymessiah.livejournal.com]

"I ... might be of assistance there," she said, chewing her lower lip. "With your research."

It was only a simulation. No need to explain her abilities to their fullest. She was going to leave that one cryptic for a more important remark.

"Ever made robot legs?"

Re: Plan Ahead!

[notaweenie.livejournal.com]

Barry looked up with a quizzical look on his face. "Okay. Yeah, I'll take any assistance you can give. What are the robot legs for?"

Re: Plan Ahead!

[nobloodymessiah.livejournal.com]

"If it were real, I'd help," she said. "This isn't."

She was going to leave it at that. Maybe, maybe the stem cells in her could be stabilized somehow. Or they could infect the cells to see how they combated the infection.

"Not what, but who," she added, nodding in Joker's direction.

Re: Plan Ahead!

[notaweenie.livejournal.com]

Barry looked over at Joker and nodded before turning his gaze back to the generator. "Yeah, I can do that. If that's something that he's interested in. I don't push what I can do on other people unless they want it."

Re: Plan Ahead!

[nobloodymessiah.livejournal.com]

"I didn't mean for reality," she said, shuddering over the thought of -- nonconsensual experimentation on Joker, of all people. "I meant for the purposes of this bloody exercise, so he can get out of here."

Re: Plan Ahead!

[fly-so-serious.livejournal.com]

"Off that bottle of soy sauce," Joker repeated dubiously. "You mean, using nuclear fission? 'Cause you ain't going to get that kind of power just by burning it."

Re: Plan Ahead!

[notaweenie.livejournal.com]

"You'd be surprised at what I can do," Barry said with a grin.

Re: Plan Ahead!

[fly-so-serious.livejournal.com]

"So you're telling me you can get out of it more than..." -- Joker checked the nutrition label -- "10 Calories per tablespoon? That's..." -- the air lit up as Joker poked at a holographic calculator and pulled some info from the extranet. "That's less than a megajoule for the whole bottle, which is one quarter of a kilowatt-hour. Depending on how often we use it, that might last a few days, at most. If you're going to do magic, go ahead and do magic, but don't call it 'science'."

Re: Plan Ahead!

[notaweenie.livejournal.com]

"Seriously? I just built a solar generator out of a fucking refrigerator. Are you saying I can't do this?" Barry grumbled.

Re: Plan Ahead!

[fly-so-serious.livejournal.com]

"Yes, I'm saying you can't put that soy sauce in an internal combustion engine and get more energy out of it than you would by eating it," Joker told him. "Unless your universe works WAY differently than mine. I may not be a scientist, or an engineer, but I am a straight-A student."

Re: Plan Ahead!

[notaweenie.livejournal.com]

Barry rolled his eyes. "Fine. Give me your omni tool and I'll walk you through the science of it."

Re: Plan Ahead!

[fly-so-serious.livejournal.com]

Joker held his arm closer, so that Barry could use the controls floating in the air. He had a feeling that actually taking it off and handing it to Barry would be a bad move.

"You should try searching for 'first law of thermodynamics'," Joker suggested.