Day of Destruction
Chapter 16

Copyright© 2010 by Frank Speaks

BOB

Elaine set up the radios at the main house. We were able to make contact with Jim and Ed in Chapel Hill. She continued to work on that issue as I turned to other issues. We had to look to the time that would come when there was no power grid and we needed to start growing. We had no further calls from the radio message. I was beginning to lose hope that anyone else would call. I talked with Doris and we decided to modify a billboard west bound on I-40 to advertise our presence. Elaine thought that was fine.

We found a billboard east of our exit that we could climb safely. We then took rollers and white paint and cleared it. It took three coats! Now, we had to concoct a message. While we were working, I noticed that no cars had passed in either direction. I suspected that most people had gone to ground with a place that would work for them.

That night, the power blinked twice. I woke up to the battery backup beeping at me as everything went off and then back on. When Doris and I woke in the morning, I said, "Well, we have had our warning. That will be our priority until we are covered. We still need too much frozen food as yet."

Doris nodded and we went to wake up the rest of the families. At breakfast, Elaine remarked that she noted the power blinks and that she guessed it would not get better.

I reset work parties to get generating power set up for the coming power failure. At first, we thought of portable generators like what a Home Depot or Lowe's would sell. As I thought further and talked with Doris and Elaine as well as Jim in Chapel Hill, the realization dawned that I was not thinking big enough. We went out searching and found trailers of big generators. I found some manuals in the local electric cooperative that described their use. We determined that we could disconnect the main feed line to our active area and hook it to these generators that were diesel operated. That led us to finding diesel fuel in large quantities which we did though that search brought us close to Memphis. We could see that large parts of the city had been destroyed by fire. The power was out, also. We realized that lighting ourselves at night could draw problems in the future.

I hated to go dark at night but we decided that we didn't need street lights hanging around. We could do well enough but keep our lighting needs to a more reasonable minimum. We survived.

Jim asked me to write of our early experiences and I have. I am going to continue to keep a journal once I catch up the last five years. Jim thinks that we should continue to share information and we have visited each other over these last years.

We are now independent of oil and have our own little community. We have added fifteen families, most escaping from Memphis. It seems that there was little fighting but a fire did start and went out of control. The bridges were claimed back then but are vacant now. Growing food is more fulfilling than trying to collect tolls.

 
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