Learning Curve

The council has decided that my brother and I are to remain in charge of long term planning and construction. I chalk this up to the fact that we have had two zombie attacks this morning, and the main gate held nicely. Nothing proves that you should be kept doing what you are good at like the concrete results you get from multiple attacks by the living dead.

We are actually looking at making people in all these desk jobs work in pairs. See, before the fall, my brother pretty much did this for a living. But he is teaching me as we go, how to look at all the logistics and planning, which he is expert at. But a lot of his time is spent out on the wall, teaching people how to build. Redundancy is going to be key in the long term, so that we don't lose someone critical should something happen. Always have a backup.

We have managed to repel the attacks thanks to the determination and quick responses of our lookouts and workers on the wall. For many of us, learning to adapt to new patterns and habits has been a trying experience, but I give full credit to everyone here for being flexible and supremely able.

But it does raise interesting questions, and gives us valuable examples of how we must change our basic way of thinking in order to better survive. I have been talking to my sister about this, as have a few other people, since she is in charge of education. So we have asked ourselves what it is we should be teaching the kids, to prepare them for the future they will face as we progress.

So we are working on a curriculum based on practicality. Self defense is a part of it, including unarmed and armed combat, how to aim, fire, and care for a gun, gun and general weapon safety, etc. Mathematics and basic engineering are integrated, which seems like a good idea as the engineering element will serve to make math much more interesting for the kids. Of course reading is in there as well, and social studies, though we want to make sure that the next generation understands the way the world used to work, and why it failed in so many ways, that they might better avoid repeating those errors. One planned field trip is a visit to the wall, to give them a real understanding of what the zombies are, what they are capable of.

Our aim is to give the next generation a wide variety of skills before adulthood. They need to know how to fix a roof and survive in the wild. How to build a house and farm the land. We want each of them to be able to approach any problem with enough realistic knowledge to have a chance at solving it.

It's not just kids that are still learning.

I have been in touch with the folks at Google, as well. Many of the engineers there are actively researching long term energy solutions, and are going to be sending us some detailed instructions on how to build wind turbines and other sustainable energy devices. They tell me they are working very hard on coming up with grid-level energy storage as well, though they are skeptical on getting anything prototyped in the near future. But I hold out hope. I mean, if companies a few months ago could figure out how to harvest hydrogen from urine, and to power batteries with urine, then I think that with the proper motivation, these guys will come up with a solution using better materials than pee.

That's all for now. Have to go talk to Cortney about some interesting contacts we have been in touch with, and maybe plan another trip.