My intention with this story is that it is an enclosed set piece, over, done. It’s sort of like Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” for me, but shorter. Just an image of a world, with more back story explanation of how the calamity might have happened.
All of my novels have as a background some type of infrastructure decay or collapse. My Dan Kilmer novels will delve much more into outlaw radio, since their setting is a 60’ steel schooner with two equal masts, which any sailor knows is a perfect dipole setup, with 60’ of steel as the ground plate to the earth. A dipole antenna 90* to its target like that is a hot setup for long range comms, or so I am told.
The inclusion of of technology in a survival story, done realistically as opposed to the “deus ex machina” plot device, can fatally complicate things. A HAM radio introduces it’s own necessary logistical tail, it brings in an element of the “stationary”. This story, I perceived as being very much about motion, keeping on the move, the survival skill of knowing when to get out.
I watched “The Road” again a couple of days ago. Those people had nothing and that’s the way it will be after several days here if they haven’t prepare at all, which most haven’t.