Modern-Day Wagon Trains

October 13th, 2008 by admin

Getting anywhere in 2019 is a real challenge…and a lot slower than it used to be. It’s more similar to 1880 than it is to 1980, and we are certainly something like a wagon train.

For one thing…a lot of the time we have to make our own biodiesel. We have a portable mini-refinery which is towed behind one of the trucks, and about every 500 miles or so we have to stop and make more fuel. We have one truck that tows a 1000-gallon tank trailer, and everyone carries extra jerry cans. Unfortunately, the process takes several days, at least.

First thing we have to do is stop in a town and make nice with the locals. I find that having gifts to give certainly helps the process, which is why I have a stock of cigars, cigarettes, whiskey and a few nice pocket knives.

Once we have established contact, we will attempt to barter for feedstocks for making the diesel. Usually this is used cooking oil, which many towns save in tanks now. A lot of time it is the waste from farming, which takes much more time to deal with. But once in a while we get lucky, and there is an abandoned gas station, and we find some old gasoline that has degraded, but which we can re-refine into usable diesel. Most of the time, the town will have some need for our services, which we trade for the feedstocks.

Today, we’re in Truckee, CA. This place used to be mostly a vacation town for weekend skiers, but that pasttime is no longer feasible. Now, it is an important way station on the difficult trek across the Sierra Nevada. Being nestled at the top of the mountain pass, this is where you will find some of the most hardcore and able people, who have managed to survive winters with forty feet of snow and sub-zero temps. But they are not stupid, either. They make us camp well outside of town…an threaten to shoot anyone who breaks camp without an escort. ReDS is all too real here, and real help is days away.

But the whiskey is a big help. The local “big man”, Jack Waters, is a tall, lanky guy of about 70 with the requisite western blazer and wide-brimmed hat. Jack and about 10 mean-looking guys with shotguns showed up last night with a local doctor. They were very fidgety. Apparently, there’s been rumors of some nastiness in Reno. Terrorists there showed up at the Peppermill Casino (gambling still thrives, can you believe it?) with lots of explosives and basically took it over, ordering everyone out. Meanwhile, their buddies went around in armed bands and rounded up all of the ReDS patients they could find. Forced them right out of their homes, supposedly. They brought all of the infected to the Peppermill and quarantined them there. There’s rumors that they threaten to blow up the whole building with the infected people inside! There’s no way to know if this story is true…but doc is here to make sure that we aren’t carriers, and the others are here to make sure that we aren’t terrorists!

Anyhow…after a night of drinking and negotiating, we agree to do some work on the town’s one satellite internet relay in return for access to enough raw vegetable oil to fill half our tanks with refined diesel. They are flush with “veggie” as we usually call it…they stockpile the stuff specifically for trading with passers-through. It’s one of the main ways that they make a living here…similar to mining gold in the 1800s. These “gleaners” travel the backroads trading with homesteads and prospecting abandoned sources of oil. The Gleaners’ main drop-off point is Truckee.

It’s amazing how these crises seem to bring out the best and the worst in human ingenuity…

[This post is part of SuperStruct: the global forecasting game. Come invent the future!]