Air Power

A few people have mentioned the concern that the UAS may have sustainable air superiority--in other words, planes, pliots, fuel, and ammunition. If that's the case, the argument goes, then things can and will get very bad for us.

So far we haven't been bombed, which doesn't mean it won't happen. I tend to think the UAS would have used shock and awe tactics if they were going to. Their leadership are people who used to send troops in for little or no reason, and spent ridiculous amounts of money and manpower showing the natives of whatever country how hard their fist could strike. Unless more has changed than I'm aware of, I can't see them avoiding those tactics if they had the ability to use them.

Could be wrong, but that's pretty much my entire opinion on the matter. The only thing I'd add is that if they do actually have a field of planes and pilots to man them, there's not a lot we can do about it except duck and cover.

Right now the war is at something of a standstill. Who'd have thought the weather would hold out being so bad for this long? Here at home you wouldn't even know we're in a conflict if it weren't for some of our people heading to North Jackson to help out. The undead, however many of them are left in the county, aren't showing themselves. We have regular teams of Beaters going out with soldiers in an attempt to find those that remain, but so far we've come up empty.

For the moment, things are quiet. Big K and I are working on the survival manual, our records, and various other small projects, but that's all fairly easy stuff. New Haven is doing pretty well right now. Jess is still busy getting her seedlings and sprouts going in the greenhouses. Will seems to be taking it a little easier; I heard he asked someone out on a date the other day. I haven't seen Becky in a fair bit, Patrick is taking every third day off from his usual work and picking up new skills. I tried to find Rachel yesterday, but her husband told me she's spending a lot of her free time honing her fighting skills, which still seems really weird to me. Seeing her in combat just doesn't compute.

Steve and I have sort of reconnected. I don't know that I mentioned it, but Courtney is out west. She was the diplomat we sent out with Ketill and his people. Not all of that scenario was a sham, after all, and while we expect her home within the next few weeks, Steve is missing her hard. He didn't go with her because he had the flu at the time. I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't even know until a few days ago. But the timing was critical, the caravans couldn't wait, and Steve was contagious.

Of all the people I have known for any length of time, Steve has changed the least. I'm not sure what it is about his personality that somehow manages to resist being broken down or bent into new directions. The violence of the new world hasn't made him harder; it's almost as if he was always that way but needed a situation around him for it to show. He's still the happy, funny, imminently understanding guy he has always been. It's like...he's just more. More of who he was, the new aspects of him just uncovered by the tempest of The Fall.

He worries just like the rest of us, but even with his wife out of state and in considerably more danger than the rest of us, he still sits and listens when I have problems I want to share. It's never about him. There's a zen quality in him for how things are. He really seems to accept the things he cannot change just like the serenity prayer. He has been coming by in the afternoons to just hang out recently, and being around him makes me feel so normal I get afraid I'll slip and forget for a while I'm living in a world of the walking dead and violent human enemies. That's both a good and a bad thing, I suppose.

I wish I had his resilience. But a wise man once said that wishing for what can't be is a fool's game. Instead, focus on what is, and what you can change.

So it goes with airplanes and enemies. Only worry about and plan for what you can actually do something about, and leave what you can't up to fate.