Day 217 - A Project Finished, A Project Begins

Well, I've finally done it. I've got the satellite communication dish up and patched in to the many remaining satellite networks as of yet untouched by the fall of humanity. We've had steady electricity here for the better part of two months. Some of it still trickles in from the grid, but mostly we rely on the generation and storing of energy using an old stationary bike we scrounged, and some technology of our own design. I'll try to get our engineer to draft some plans for it, so maybe you can try it too, or suggest improvements. There's a backup gas generator and a store of gas in the basement just in case, but since we need to keep active to keep surviving, this seems the best way.

We decided a while to back to use a part of this power to build and maintain this connection. We've managed to scrap enough hardware from the surrounding area to build a powerful but efficient server. I never thought I'd say this, but thank god for the green movement. Without their obsessive lobbying and their occasional resurgence among the painfully hip, we'd never have been able to pull this off. Well, we've finally done it, and here we are.

We've broken through a bunch of firewalls already and tapped in to some of the larger remaining online resources, mostly those managed by anal retentive IT people who wanted to keep their infrastructure up even in the face of an apocalypse. It looks like it's served them well. I think anyone reading this is in agreement that the most surprising thing is how large an amount of Wikipedia is still up. This has been a blessing for us today, and has helped more than can be believed. Couple that with the always connected e-book readers we've scrounged, and we really do have our own little Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Heh, I remember when Randall Munroe made a joke about this on his delightful web-comic XKCD. Go figure it would turn out to be true.

It's disheartening to see how many networks are left abandoned with no sign of activity for so long. We've seen a little bit of traffic here and there, but have been as of yet unable to trace it. We know we're not the only survivors here in Boston, but we had hoped to see some other communities get back online around the world.

This has spurned us further to start writing here. What we hope to do is to set up another go to resource for anyone else still alive and resourceful enough to get connected. We're using a virus to send out the address here to as many computers as we can reach, so forgive us for the spam. We really hope it reaches someone. You know, I would have never thought a web virus could be so useful, but here it might just save some lives.

We're going to do our best to let you know what we're doing here, for as long as we can survive. Hopefully some of what we talk about will help you, and, if it comes to the worst, maybe it will shed a light on what happened to us, so you can prevent it from happening to you.

The two of us who still feel like talking will be posting here whenever we can, hopefully at least one of us will get to it daily. Occasionally we get caught away on supply runs that take a few days. If you don't hear from us for more than a week, suspect the worst, and don't try to come help us. You need to stay alive.

If you're a survivor too, please make your voice heard here and share what you can about your current situation. The more we all know, the better we can hope to stay alive and maybe, just maybe, turn the tables on this thing.

Crap, there's someone screaming outside. It sounds like a woman this time. That means another lone survivor has dragged a bunch of them along to us. I've got to go and see if we can save her.

More later,

- Brandon