Personal Log - Tunnel 3 - Day 53 - Outside Temp 235F
Yes, the temperature went up a degree this week. Actually, it was 234.8 most of this time, and it went up a tenth of a degree, so I'm officially rounding up. Dont want to appear like Im minimising or anything.
Spent a lot of this week in the routine of things. Classes and pipe inspection. Havent been talking enough about the food, which is still wonderful. I find myself looking forward to every meal now. The menu is rather noodle heavy here, which I really hadnt noticed til someone pointed out that chicken ala king and hamburger helper arent all that different. Allison says its a good way to sneak canned veggies into the meal.
Emailed a lot with my buddy in Kansas City. He said he was the last one into his shelter, and got in pretty much as they were locking the gates. He got to see the last hours of humanity as the heat was really starting to tear people up.
He said as his escort drove him thru the city he got to see a lot of what folks were spending their last day doing. He was surprised that there wasnt a lot of looting appearant. It was just basically too hot to go outside. People for the most part closed their doors and windows and tried to keep what little coolness their house would hold as long as possible. He said the roads werent busy, there wasnt any traffic jams of people trying to flee, since it seemed obvious there was nowhere better to go. Thats good news for us, because once we do come out, we wont have to waste a lot of time clearing the roads. We wont be finding bodies all over the place like in the movies. Everyone will be at home or at church. Basements are going to be awful. Lots of speculation as to whether we only find piles of dust, or mummies, or whether everyone will look like beef jerky.
What really struck him was seeing a lot of men in front of their houses digging. We'd heard that the Govt asked people to bury their valuables and anything that might be useful to us survivors near the front doors of their homes. The logic being that we'd be able to find the stuff quicker if everyone dug in basically the same place. He says once we start recovering those troves, not to be surprised at the loot we're going to find. People were burying food and guns and money, jewelry, silverware, financial records, photo albums, and weird stuff like televisions and lawnmowers. Hopefully things wont get so desperate that we have to get by on what folks buried in their front yard. I bet nobody dug deep enough.
Bill is trying to talk the Captain into focusing almost all of our effort into tunneling, rather than holding classes. The Science guys have worked out prediction equations for all the different shelter types, and according to their tables, deeper is better. Seems some guy in Indiana who's an expert of Insurance Risk Assesment worked out the variables and no matter what else happens, you have more time to fix a problem is you are deeper. I'm guessing that Bill is right, and naturally that means I'll be getting less sleep.
Not much news from outside. A quiet week is a good week. Or maybe it just means the bad news hasnt gotten to us yet. They say "when it rains, it pours". I wonder when Im going to see rain again?
Of to bed. Good night log.