667

[Saxon Dog]

Personal Log - Tunnel 3 - Day 1 - Outside Temp 50 F

I dont want to call this a diary, and everything official is already in the Daily Report, so everything else I want to keep written down is going to go in here. The Captain insists that the Staff all stay completely professional and appear cheerful at all times. I can understand that. This is going to be hard enough without a lot of whining. But all my bitching goes into the log, for historys sake if not mine.

I cant believe how tired I am but Im not sleepy. Too much caffiene, too much activity. Writing will help settle me down. I have to believe we've done everything. I cant believe how much we have done. Getting the tunnel ready in less than a week. The list of people who worked themselves almost to death and wont be around to thank later is endless. And I have to remember than some people are already dead. Too many accidents, we hurried so much. We'd never cut corners like that unless it was an emergency. I have to remind myself of that over and over.

This is helping. I can feel my eyes getting tired. Hope I can sleep with all the activity. Glad we all got our own bunk. That will probably be seen as a good idea at some point. Its just unbelievable how many little things were big decisions and I hope we got every one of them right.

They've closed the doors now. Everyone who is going to stay inside is in. No one else comes or goes now. They're going to take all the security guards and drive them out to western Kansas somewhere. Poor bastards. The new guards wont be told what they're guarding, and they will only be here a day and then we get new guards again every day til everyone upstairs is ... gone. I dont want to say dead.

I guess they were right about how hard this will be psychologically. I really dont want to think about what comes later.

Anyway, the physical plant is working like a charm so far. We're getting plenty of air and you can barely smell the fresh paint now. It was really bad the first couple days while they were building the bunks and wiring everything. I thought it was a mistake to chance having too many fumes but hopefully it'll dissipate before anyone notices and then we'll be glad for the less dreary walls. Its going to get pretty dreary as it is.

The engine is turning easily, there isnt much load yet since its still a beautiful spring day outside. I'll be busy adjusting the flow once it gets hot. Hopefully the science guys got their estimates close, or this will have been a waste of effort. Im saying hopefully too much I guess. We just better not have forgotten anything major or we're cooked, like everyone else.

Screw it. I'm off to bed. Someone will wake me up in 4 hours and I'll re-check everything. I hope Allison has the kitchen sorted out by then. Her job is going to be a lot harder than mine and I suppose every bit as important.
Good nite Log.

[Saxon Dog]

Personal Log - Tunnel 3 - Day 2 - Outside Temp 48 F

Not nearly as busy today. Still carrying boxes and crates and odd items into the tunnel and finding places to put everything. We're really going to be cramped once the kids arrive. I had second thoughts about changing the date on this log, I should really wait and call Day 1 the day we finally close the gates, but then I thought no, Im in the tunnel, its Day 2 for me and someone else can call it whatever they want.

Its still cool outside, but he sky is starting to look odd. The fans are barely turning to keep the air fresh and we arent running the cooling pumps at all except once today for a test.

Got to spend some free time with Allison today. She's going crazy trying to keep all the food stuff organized. I'm afraid that feeding all these people is going to keep her a lot busier than my job will keep me, since all I will do is monitor the engines and help fix stuff. Hopefully nothing will break and I'll be bored as hell.
Tomorrow the kids are scheduled to arrive. It'll be a lot more hectic after that, I may not have time to write anything in the log.

I wanted to write a lot more about the tunnel today but the boss says to get as much sleep as possible, since getting the kids all settled in will wear everryone to a frazzle tomorrow. He's right. Who would have guessed that the end of the World was going to be so much work?
Goodnite log.

[Saxon Dog]

Personal Log - Tunnel 3 - Day 3 - Outside Temp 64F

I want to scream.
Goddam high school kids bitch about everything constantly. And I have to appear cheerful.

First busload arrived about 10AM, 2 hours late, not sure why. All girls. Thank God I wasnt assigned to Greeting Duty. All I did all day was help monitor the air flow and answer questions from kids.

They gave every kid a number when they got off their bus. All the girls came in thru the West Entrance. 666 girls. They're all bunked in the wide part of the long West Tunnel. All the boys will bunk in the North Tunnel. 333 boys. Did I mention that I hate 17 year olds now? Why couldnt they have selected college kids? They havent been here an entire day yet and I'm fed up with their whining.

Allison is still getting one of the larger rooms ready to serve as a cafeteria. Poor kid, she is so totally overqualified to be a cafeteria cook. I have to remind her how lucky we are to be here, and that everyone on the staff is like a rocket scientist working on a lawnmower.

Anyway, they give every kid their number, tell em to find the bunk with that number, and thats their home for the next couple of years. Then they take em to an orientation upstairs in one of the meeting rooms in the old aircraft factory. They show em some slides, hand out some diagrams, and let em know that tomorrow is the Official End of the World, and welcome to Tunnel 3, where we will be the fortunate survivors. Then they get to spend a quality hour with the psychiatric Staff, and then they get hustled off to their bunks until dinnertime.

Fortunately for Allison, they're still feeding all of us, including the kids, outside from catering trucks. They have some pretty good eats coming in from a bunch of the local resturaunts. We're letting the kids roam around pretty much freely in whichever half of the complex they belong in. Most of the boys played football or frisbee on the east side of the factory, and the girls just hung out in the alley that runs thru the middle of the factory by the West Entrance to the tunnel.

Not sure when the Captain is going to close the Tunnel. Hope its not while Im asleep. I sorta want to see outside one more time before they do.
Good Night Log

[Saxon Dog]

Personal Log - Tunnel 3 - Day 4 - Outside Temp 84F

My buddy Bill and I helped the Captain close up today. One of the last minute additions he asked for were gates at each entrance, and they made em for us in a few hours out of heavy ornate iron fence from the factory managers parking area. All the guards were sent off even before they finished bolting them to the concrete walls. No one said it, but they arent to keep anyone out. Theres no one out there now. They are to keep us in.

The Psych folks told us not to talk today about anything outside. We're supposed to dwell on the tunnel and whats inside. Tomorrow or the next day, depending on the temperature, we can discuss outside, after everyone is positively gone.

So I will talk about the tunnel a little. Its very quiet today. A little too quiet, and I dont mean for that to sound funny. Creepy quiet.

All morning they were still bringing in crates and boxes of food, today mostly fresh fruit and veggies. Those wont last long, and from then on, its canned fruit.

The last item to arrive was 1 last kid, and I already feel sorry for him. The Captain checked that the 666 girls were all settled into their area, and the 333 boys were getting sorted out, and noticed 1 empty bunk assignment. Everything was planned for 1000 kids and right up til today nobody realized that having 2 girls for every boy didnt add up evenly. So they rushed 1 more boy in, and he got bunk # 667. The first batch of boys were assigned their numbers from 1000 and counted down. Naturally 667 is getting more than his share of teasing. I'd forgotten how mean kids are when they are determining the pecking order.
I'll assume anyone reading this was in a tunnel of their own, but doesnt know anything about Tunnel 3 in Kansas.

There are 2 other tunnels in Kansas besides ours, #2 is in a large limestone cave in Kansas City. The State of Missouri has their Primary close to that one. #1 in Kansas is the huge salt mine near Hutchinson, thats the Primary Shelter for the State.

Every State has at least 2 shelters, most 3 or 4, and there are supposedly several small private shelters and Lord knows how many people hiding in caves and basements. But the States all selected 2 or 3 sites and the Feds assisted in modifying them and stocking them for long-term occupation. The best shelter in every state is the Primary. Thats where they put the indispensible people. Everyone the world will need to start the country back up once the planet cools off.

Tunnel #1 is one of the biggest in the country, and the Feds gave them a lot of attention. Besides having around 2000 experts in every field, and engineers and craftsmen and scientists, they have a large herd of farm animals down there, so we'll eventually have real food without having to figure out how to make animals out of DNA. Its a regular Noahs Ark. Tunnel #2 has about 1000 experts and just a few small animals.
Someone in Washington figured out that there was enough food left to stock a Tunnel 3 in every state, which could hold around 1000 people. So besides the staff of 100 ( and we are all experts in something, by the way) all the Tunnel 3s are stocked with 1000 "young adults approaching optimum breeding age" which means seventeen year olds. Breeding stock. Just like the farm animals. So once the planet cools off, we'll be here ready to repopulate the world.

Our Tunnel (home sweet home) is under an old bomber factory built in World War 2. To free up space and make it easier to get around they put these tunnels under the factory floor. There are rest rooms and classrooms and offices and storage rooms. Mostly though, its just square concrete corridor. Concrete floor, walls and ceiling.

There are 4 main corridors. They form a number 9 with square corners, or a square with one side extending past the corner. You know what I mean. The long leg runs east-west, and its the biggest corridor, almost 15 feet wide. Most of the classrooms are on the south side of that corridor. The other corridors are only 8 or 10 feet wide, and the whole place is so full of boxes and crates and bunks that it looks like an old submarine movie. They took out a lot of pipes and wires to make room for us. Up top in the factory they covered the floor above us with insulation of every kind, and covered that all with dirt so the heat wouldnt bleed thru the concrete and cook us in the corridors.

Allisons Food people converted one of the classrooms into a kitchen and another into a cafeteria. Its not big enough to hold even a fourth of us at one time, so everyone will be eating in shifts, like on a Navy ship. One room was turned into a huge freezer, and its packed to the ceiling with frozen sides of beef and every kind of meat by the crate. I hope it has enough in it to last til the weather improves.

Im gonna quit writing now. They warned us that tommorow will be very tense.

My buddy Bill just came by and told me that a cold front went thru this morning. It should be snowing like crazy outside now. It was 80 degrees tho when we closed the gates. Bill said in South America and Australia its already over 130 degr F and folks are dropping like flies.
More tomorrow
Goodnite log

[Saxon Dog]

Personal Log - Tunnel 3 - Day 5 - Outside Temp 158F

Today sucked.

Spent the entire day trying to calm people down. Needed to spend time with Allison, she was as bad as anyone. I hadnt really sunk in that we weren't leaving in a day or two. We just all broke up and tried to keep 10 or 15 kids calmed down at a time. Staying busy didnt seem to help. The kitchen was fubar. No one was concentrating so meals were just grab an apple or make a sandwich. They burned dinner and it smelled up half the tunnel.

Woke up badly too. Some girl started screaming and it spooked everyone. The Psych People said not to think about outside, talk about inside. I dont think so today. Some of the kids swore they could hear screaming coming from outside. We're a long way from any residential areas here, there wasnt supposed to be anyone inside the factories fence. They said the sound must have carried on the wind, but there is NO wind. It is creepy still outside. The sky is a soft red and no clouds at all and not a wisp of wind.

The generators ran smooth all day, and the pumps are pushing water now. The fans are blowing cool air thru the place. The science guys check the outside temp constantly trying to graph a prediction of the max temp. If it gets to 250 F they say the system wont be able to cool the air enough and we'll all cook. They always have the most cheerful news.

We were supposed to be getting news from all the other tunnels in the country on the net, but surprise surprise, the internet is down.
I hate this place.
Going to bunk early, hope tomorrow is no worse.
Goodnite Log

PS - Woke up badly again halfway thru night, more screaming.
We had our first suicide. Some girl cut her wrists in the restroom just down the corridor. Spent an hour cleaning blood off the floor and wall. Allison says they were told to keep track of all the knives from the cafeteria but this one slipped thru.
I hate this place
Goodnite again log

[Saxon Dog]

Personal Log - Tunnel 3 - Day 6 - Outside Temp 177F - Noon

Just a quick entry after lunch (delicious btw, baked tilapia in a cream sauce with scalloped potatos, the high school kids turned their noses up at it because it wasnt a cheeseburger so more for me haha)

The internet is back up.
Just to show you how easily things can get totally fucked up when everyone hurries, and how every little thing might get us all killed.

The smallest room next to the cafeteria is where the Captain runs the show, his office. The kids call it the Principals Office, all us ex-military folks call it HQ or the Bunker. Our computer room is in there. And the radios once the ionization drops off.

All of a sudden the net worked. We have several redundant T3 lines direct to various other Tunnels so there is a spiderweb of connections. Since they expect up to half the tunnels to fail they didnt want any one place to be a critical node. However, since the Air Force installed all the lines in the last week they still had control of everything. Someone was digging a trench with a backhoe up by the big military tunnel in Omaha and cut all their main cables. Since they couldnt monitor all the traffic they shut down all the traffic. Stupid. The Captain was pissed.

The first thing we heard was that some of the more obvious tunnel locations (like the water aquaduct into NYC) had to shoot people to keep them out. A little warning would have been nice if that would have happened here.
More later - I just REALLY needed to BITCH, and la dee dah, thats not allowed.

[Saxon Dog]

Personal Log - Tunnel 3 - Day 6 - Outside Temp 192F

Overall a bad day

Big disasters and little disasters. On the plus side, it kept our minds off all the dying.

The net came back up so lots of news. All bad.

The New York #2 Tunnel is down. That was the biggest tunnel in the country, 10,000 people in that one. They got out one word before their net went down - "flooding". They put a lot of effort into that hole, it was huge, the big water aquaduct project they'd been digging for years to bring water into New York City. Bill said he predicted it would fail, he said it was too big, that there were too many failure points. They should have built bulkheads every mile or so and not lost the entire tunnel. Hindsight.

Had our own flood in here. Did I mention everyone here is overqualified? I can fly and fix anything on a Space Shuttle, and Im trained to do spacewalks and fix antennas in space, and the Captain hands me a toilet plunger and says its my first spacewalk. One of the toilets plugged up. Appearantly besides being the assistant in the engine room Im also the Primary Plumber. Terrific.

The Comm people are busy with the net now and we're getting a lot of info and ideas from other tunnels, and weather reports. Average temperature over the whole planet is over 190F now, and most likely everyone who isnt in a prepared tunnel is gone. All the people who just barricaded themselves into their basements have probably run out of air, and air conditioners wont work at all over 150. There may be some folks still alive in ice storage rooms, but drawing in air to breath and cooling it will melt their shelter in a day or two.

Seems that international cooperation is still just a nice idea. Russia and China turned their internet connections with the rest of the world off very early, and most of the Islamic countries followed suit soon after. Hope they figure out on their own not to flood their tunnels.

More tomorrow on the tunnel. Was just told I volunteered to help build a back up cooling unit. Gotta get some shut eye before an early start.
Gnite log

[Saxon Dog]

Personal Log - Tunnel 3 - Day 7 - Outside Temp 211F

I am beat. But at last a good day. Much accomplished and mostly good news.

Almost finished with back-up cooling system. I got to do an actual "spacewalk" so Im feeling pretty proud of myself. Almost all the stuff inside the tunnel is food, but just outside they buried a lot and I do mean a LOT of extra stuff we might need. There are extra generators and wire and light bulbs and all kinds of stuff. The first thing we needed was pipe, so I got to go out in one of the big silver fireman suits and haul a bunch of it inside. Fortunately it wasnt buried or it would have been a real chore. I want to see the list of everything they buried, Bill said they have all sorts of military equipment and tractors and trucks and god knows what all waiting to be dug up. It'll be like a treasure hunt.

Once I got the pipe in and it cooled off, the real plumbing experts built a big set of monkey bars out of it down at the west end of the main corridor. Its hooked up to one of the back-up pumps on one of the extra water wells. Once they get a big fan set up and wired to the back-up generator they'll be able to turn off the primary cooling system and still blow cool air thru the place. The Primary Cooling system is pretty much the same thing except bigger and fancier. They built what amounts to a bunker over the largest entrance. There are two short corridors running south off the main corridor, did I mention that? The larger of the two is over 20 foot wide and has a stairway going up to what used to be a parking lot. The bunker sits on top of that stairway. Its full of pipes like a huge radiator. The main pump runs cold groundwater from a well thru em and the main ventilation fan draws air over the cool pipe to get it down to an acceptable temperature. as the heat goes up outside we have to run more and more water thru to keep the pipes cool. No water means we breath air from an oven. No fan means we suffocate on our own CO2. No electricty means no fan or pump. Anything could break and if we dont fix it we cook.

Speaking of cooking Allisons cafeteria made the best meatloaf and mashed potatos Ive ever had for dinner. The kids didnt even complain for a change. The Food People are already starting to hound us about eating everything we're given, I think they're worried we'll run out.

The only bad news was another toilet plugged up, which I didnt have to fix, thank goodness I was outside moonwalking when it happened. And the #4 Tunnel in Massachusetts is having trouble. Flooding again. Water is pouring in from somewhere, probably their own air cooler. It hasnt gotten to their generator yet, and hopefully they can figure out a way to pump it out before they lose their cool air.

PS - a couple of shelters in Russia are still chatting on the net, but we arent supposed to know about that. Way to GO Comrades!

Enough for one day -
Goodnite Log

[Saxon Dog]

Personal Log - Tunnel 3 - Day 8 - Outside Temp 228F

First the Bad News:
Woke up early again by girls screaming. I hate that. Rats. Or more probably mice. Should have assumed a few of em would have found their way in. Too bad we dont have any cats. Captain said they sprayed before we got here but we have cockroaches already too.

Now for the Good News!
Found out that my old buddy Brad is one of the survivors. I was his wingman when we flew off the Stennis.
He is the Second Officer on one of the submarines parked in San Francisco Bay. I think THAT would be the safest place to be of any I've heard of so far, but I aint sure I'd want to spend 2 or 3 years inside a submarine without shore leave. More on that later.

Bill says if we are going to keep logs, we should include all the science stuff, in case we are the only survivors or our logs are the only record that survives. He insists, so I'll cut and paste from something he fwd'd to me.

Originally named Comet Levy-Gaume 3, the name was naturally changed to "Nemisis" once the trajectory was calculated to pass closer than the orbit of the Moon. In spite of the comets size, over 100 miles in diameter, public interest waned when the path was updated and collison with Earth was definitively ruled out. Numerous scientific space shots were hurridly throw together in hopes of gathering data from the tantilizingly close approach.
Only when the object passed Jupiter did the new danger become appearant. Just as Shoemaker-Levy 9 was torn apart by Jupiters gravitational pull, Nemisis, never more than an enormous loosely packed dirty snowball, became a cloud of particles, most no larger than a marble. Instead of being missed by a cannonball, the earth was going to be struck by a snowstorm from space. Early estimates showed nearly a fouth of Nemisis would eventually enter Earths atmosphere.
The small size of most of the particles meant that very few would reach the surface, instead burning up high in the stratosphere. However the incredible number of particles meant that so much heat was going to be added that essentially the sky was going to be turned into an oven.

OK, thats better than I could have said it. Bill says that we finished passing thru the comet cloud, the snowstorm, yesterday about noon. The temperature is going to start to level out soon, he hopes. The Big Science guys havent come anywhere near agreeing how hot its going to get, or how long it will take to cool off. Bill says they have a pool and they all bet $10. He took 240 degrees and 35 months. The average of the bets is 220 and 26 months, and some guy at CalTech that Bill claims is a God took 255 degrees and 38 months. I hope it stays under 250 because thats when our pumps start having to run past capacity. I pointed out that all the oceans and lakes would start to boil before that and he says they factored that in.

News from outside:
Still getting reports on the sly from Russia. Seems that one hacker in St Petersburg is talking to someone in Finland and since Russia isnt talking to anyone no one is telling them about it. Its condensed but he's giving the temperature in a dozen places in Russia and thats very important to the Science Guys.
Rumors that not all the comet dust was small. There could be some craters the size of the one in New Mexico.
I think I like rumors better than news. They give me more to look forward to.
Thats enough for one day.
Good Night Log

[Saxon Dog]

Personal Log - Tunnel 3 - Day 9 - Outside Temp 232F

Im a bit worn out today. Things just ground away on me. Tested the backup cooling system, it works fine but it makes whistling sounds at the first set of doors downwind of it. Some fine tuning will be needed.

In the middle of that not working, the toilets plugged up again. The REAL plumbing expert says its from the girls flushing tampons. Since Im just the Assistant Everything I get the fun jobs. He has to inspect all the pipes every day with an ultrasonic rig, so I suppose that would get boring.

I was still in a good mood, and the Captain himself comes in while Im snaking the toilet, and tells me that tomorrow we start assigning the kids as assistants too, and enrolling them all in classes to keep em busy. And by the way, I volunteered to teach College Level Thermodynamics. I HATED Thermo in college but it was in my folder that I tutored the other pilots back in the day.

That still hadnt bothered me. But just then someone asked me real casually how long the coffee was going to last. It hadnt dawned on me til then that coffee trees take years to produce, and even if spmeone plants new ones as soon as we come up it'll be a long gap between the coffe from those trees and the last fresh coffee we have down here.

And that got me thinking about all the other stuff we arent supposed to dwell on.

Gonna be a long time before we go to a football game. Or the opera. Or skiing. Or to see a new movie. Actually I wont miss opera. Allison made me go once.
I will likely never go into space. Four years at NASA wasted I guess, except thats probably what go me into this tunnel. Coffee and chocolate and bourbon are history for the foreseeable future.

More news on Brads Sub Shelter - there are 12 attack subs and 1 boomer anchored in San Fran Bay. They have about 80 people each aboard, mixed up among the original crew, some non-military expert types, and their wives, so the mix is 50/50 male female. The rest of the Navys nuclear powered subs are in groups in Puget Sound, Boston and Norfolk with the same arrangment. Thats another 8000 survivors.

By the way, someone estimated the population of the USA at around 200,000 now. Sorta makes ya think. Losing a whole tunnel full of people is now a real National Disaster.

We had two more suicides today. Two girls who bunked next to each other and wouldnt stop crying about their boyfriends. Negative feedback. The Psych People said it was understandable and predictable, the captain called it attrition. It gives me the creeps. What if one of them decides to take us all with them?

I hate this place.
Gnite Log