Survivialism

Survivialism.

When Milady and I moved our family from uptown Chicago back to the old family ranch two decades ago, we had in mind the advantages for surviving some societal breakdown. Which breakdown has come a little faster than we figured, but not a lot faster.

Great-grampaw bought this place (a piece of it, anyway) from the Cherokee to whom it had been alloted in order to drill for oil. He "only" found natural gas, and capped that off. I have a clue where that pipe might be, but haven't been able to search for it.

Grampaw built a ginormous concrete water tower on ground level, which filled the swimming pool where I spent a lot of my youth. After Dad died, the executors destroyed the pool, but even before that Dad had the big water tower destroyed and built a smaller metal one on stilts. That one was retired when County water reached us, and it's sat empty and unused for nearly half a century. It's still standing, and might be able to be cleaned up and revived, but it stands there like a big target. Anyway, the line from the artesian well out in the pasture decayed decades ago and now the well is only used to water the cattle in dry times. Supposed to be plentiful and good water; there's photos of cars lined up to it back in the dry days of the '30s.

We'd figured there's always either sun or wind here, so for a little supplemental energy, some solar and a windmill might keep the pumps going when the grid fails, but never got any of that done.

I could go on and on with the litany of planned-to-but-didn't ideas we had. We're not even 30/30 - 30 miles from the nearest city of 30K - more like 7/40.

But the kids all grew up and moved to the urbs, anyway, so what future is there to protect?

At least we have good line-of-sight for approaching zombies. And well-armed neighbors. And it's pretty here. :/

And the art thread is up.