The Ark

Yesterday was warm, far more so than any day in winter than I can ever remember. It hit sixty degrees here. Which happens to be the temperature around which even regular zombies become fully active.

Call it fate, luck, or god, but we didn't get pummeled with zombies again. Oh, there were always a few medium sized groups wandering around the hospital, but nothing too severe. We got lucky, and all of us know that no matter how great this location is, it simply isn't a long term solution as it is. We would need many more people than we have now to build a wall that would both keep out the zombies and give us enough area to farm.

One of the things that makes the compound such an ideal spot is that the surrounding landscape makes it very easy to see the undead coming and very hard for them to get you. Even at the farming areas we were running that held true. Maybe I'm just pining for home, but the more of the outside world I see, the less I think we'll find anything like home for us...

I'm on guard duty again at nine, so I'll get to the point of this post quickly. I've been in touch with the people at Google as often as possible over the last few weeks. They've been helping me and the other refugees out in a variety of ways, as well as providing tips and assistance to Courtney and her merry band on their trips around the country.

Now, Google is asking for our help. Apparently a team of people there have been working on something I touched on months ago as an idea, though they started doing it before I ever said a word. In fact, they've been working on it nearly since day one: Data backup.

Without hyping it up too much, a team of people have been working to collect and copy pretty much every piece of data they can find, to safely store and distribute. I'm talking library of congress times a thousand, here. Pretty much every piece of useful data is getting tagged and copied onto thousands of hard drives, Cd's, Dvd's, flash drives...any and every type of media. So far there are over a hundred total sets of copies made, with more to come. The folks at El Goog are sending out crews to farm info from data centers every day. I'm told one of them managed to bring in a truckload of hard drives he'd unplugged from the Wikipedia data center closest to Google HQ.

Google has asked us to find a place to hide several copies of the project. What they're going to give us isn't the completed product (I don't know that it will ever be "complete") but it is a vast array of knowledge in all the areas people will need to rebuild society to the level of technology it was at. Everything from agriculture to circuit diagrams...it's pretty huge. They are also giving us a copy of it, several actually, in hard drive, cd, and flash forms. I'm thrilled.

So, they are sending a courier sometime in the next few days, though how long it will take them to get near us from California is anyone's guess. I've been asked to find some trustworthy folks to go and meet up with him. I intend on going if possible. I know just the place to hide the ones we don't keep...

It's an amazing thing they're doing. In addition to the backups, the teams at Google are leaving laptops with each copy, wrapped and boxed to withstand pretty much any weather (I'm told that includes total submersion in water. Wow.) along with portable solar arrays to power the whole shebang. It's a big effort, but the payoff would likely be something even bigger--like the continuation of the human race.

So...any volunteers out there with knowledge of safe hiding places? I'd be happy to put you in touch.