Today's post will have to be short, but there is good reason. Overnight, as many of you who use Gmail might know, Google sent out a mass message to every user of their services. It seems a big group of engineers and other employees have made the google campus into a bit of a fortress, and since they added all those solar panels and other renewable energy sources, they have been able to keep blogger and other services up and running. I have managed to contact them back, and have been learning some very interesting news, most of which I will have to share later. But for the record, that is why I am posting so early and so short. I don't want to waste a lot of time, just in case we get cut off from them.
Updates: since my post yesterday and the subsequent announcement to our group of the decisions reached by the committee, several people in the compound have expressed their unhappiness at, most particularly, the idea that we would whip someone as punishment. I will say that this idea was a bone of heavy contention even among the committee, but let me assure you, once more.
We do not want to use this option, if at all possible. But it IS an option. I have said before that we live in a harder, more brutal world. While we strive to be as civilized as possible, when one of us steps across that line, endangering the group or selfishly harming a person (thus reducing our capacity to defend ourselves), strict and severe punishment needs to be available. Because none of us want to die, or for the community to die--so we set a harsh deterrent. This is universal; it applies to me just as much as any other person. It applies to my own mother. But if we act with reasonable restraint and continue to do as we have done to defend and protect each other, I see no real issue.
Moving on: we have established contact with a few smaller groups, thanks to the team at google. These survivors have no internet access, but the google crew have managed to take control of several of the telecom systems abandoned around the country, and have been able to track the movement of cell phones near us. They handed us the numbers, we called them. A few seem promising, and relatively close to us; one group is in Cynthiana, another in Winchester. One is in Ohio. We are actively trying to gauge numbers and see if any of them want to pull up stakes and come here. I'm still a bit wary of bringing in strangers, but to really start over, to have some chance to rebuild against the constant threat of herds of zombies coming against us, we need to be united. Many scattered groups are much weaker than one large group standing as one.
More to come tomorrow, I am trying to coordinate too much at once. Hopefully, this is just the first step.
I look forward to the possibility of meeting other survivors with a mix of wariness and excitement. We could use more warm bodies, fresh perspectives, and the continued hope of rebuilding something resembling a human society.
ReplyDeleteI also must state my objections to the harsher punishments currently in place. I already stated them in person, but I don't want any survivors out there to think that there is agreement among us on these points.
When the Zombie Apocalypse happened, and all hell broke loose, I was very close to slipping into the sort of mindset that lead to this decision. But we need to rethink this gut reaction.
We shouldn't just be focusing on basic survival anymore. We should be focusing on rebuilding society. And we can't rebuild any sort of society I'd like to live in by castrating, whipping, and executing people.
Sure, some of it seems to make some sense in the short term. But as our numbers grow, and our situation becomes more stable, and the last of the zombies are hunted and killed, the structures that we build today are going to be our model for what is built tomorrow. Do we really want to put these policies in there and just keep our fingers crossed that when things settled down, we'll be compassionate enough to remove them?
I agree with josh and pat about the military style justice. Different times we are living in right now. Banishment would be one of my suggestions too. I think justice can adapt as the world hopefully gets back to normal. Good luck at your compund. Holed up in my house in jersey. Been sneaking around at night for supplies. Wish you guys were closer so I could join you.
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