"Alas, Brave New Babylon" new fiction by Matt Bracken

Western Rifle Shooters Association ^ | August 26, 2013 | Matthew Bracken

[Travis McGee]

Yes, that is a great paradox I could not explore in such a short story with one isolated POV. Primitive folks living close to the land will be hurt the least by the cutoff of power. In some cases, they might only notice the lack of the glow of city lights on a distant horizon. But there are not too many of them left. Most depend on grid power to one measure or another, even if it’s to supply a trading post by truck. Power goes down, the trucks will stop coming.

[Travis McGee]

God willing. All of the signs are certainly flashing red.

[Travis McGee]

That’s why I put “Alas” on my anthology on Kindle, instead of as a new stand-alone. I want more folks to read “Music Stops,” “What I was at the coup,” etc.

[Travis McGee]

I had a shallow well with a hand pump put in my back yard a few months back. It gives me a lot of comfort for the thousand bucks or so it cost.

[WI_Rifleman]

Great story, Matt! It’s very depressing, but realistic. We truly have built our own Tower of Babel, just ready to fall.

[Travis McGee]

I drove around the three-state NC/SC/GA region on two road trips to get the flavor. Hiked some of the trail in snow exactly like in the story with my daughter last March. Bridal Veil Falls outside of Highland NC was frozen solid, most impressive. Sky Valley GA, what can I say?

That entire area of western NC is amazing, and down into GA too. Who knew that northern GA has 4,000’ mountains? I didn’t.

I had to go a little hazy on the specific geographical details, to not get pinned into inconsistencies, but I think it’s pretty true to the region.

[Travis McGee]

Thanks, your comment captured my feelings and intentions perfectly.

[Travis McGee]

They’ll suddenly care when their TV, tuned to “Celebrity Addiction,” goes black, the lights go out, and the fridge defrosts. And the water goes to a gurgle and stops too.

[Travis McGee]

Katrina was just a quick glimpse, quickly remedied and forgotten, so imagine NOLA at two months with no power, and no outside help coming, ever.

[Joe 6-pack]

What I skimmed is excellent. Bump for a whole read tonight. Thanks for sharing this!

[Travis McGee]

Wow, another feather in Kipling’s cap that he predated Huxley’s Brave New World in Copybook.

[WVKayaker]

Thanks, Watchman Matt!

^^^^^^^^^^^

Ezekiel 3: 16 At the end of seven days the word of the Lord came to me: 17 “Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the people of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. 18 When I say to a wicked person, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn them or speak out to dissuade them from their evil ways in order to save their life, that wicked person will die for their sin, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. 19 But if you do warn the wicked person and they do not turn from their wickedness or from their evil ways, they will die for their sin; but you will have saved yourself.

20 “Again, when a righteous person turns from their righteousness and does evil, and I put a stumbling block before them, they will die. Since you did not warn them, they will die for their sin. The righteous things that person did will not be remembered, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. 21 But if you do warn the righteous person not to sin and they do not sin, they will surely live because they took warning, and you will have saved yourself.”

[Travis McGee]

Shakespeare, amazing. A throwaway line cribbed by both Kipling and Huxley.

[Travis McGee]

I hope so, that’s my goal.

[Travis McGee]

Yes, that would be a nice outcome. A remote valley could run power machines off of water power the way they did centuries ago. Defend itself, maybe, depending. Plenty of water, enough to eat. “Foxfire Books” and similar printed literature would be essential to rediscover the timeless old ways to make soap, candles, butter etc.

[Travis McGee]

We all have to do what we can, and not succumb to PC timidity.

At the moment, it’s very unpopular to discuss possible North Atlantic icebergs ahead of the currently unsinkable Titanic.

[DuncanWaring]

And in “Copybook” he foretold the next century.

[who knows what evil?]

I don’t know what a potato seed looks like, but I’ve got some seed pods that are green and about 1/2” in diameter - like an unripe grape tomato.

Sounds like you have the pods containing the potato seed...check out the vid at post #92.

[Nowhere Man]

I wrote and rewrote this story so many times, I had mentioned ham radios etc in other versions, but the story grew too long, and my primary objective was brevity. Before, I had the narrator mention that if anybody was running ham or HF radios on their own power, he had no way of knowing it. It didn’t really add much to the story, so I dropped it. But yes, hams could still be operating, if they wound up in a safe location, with food, and could make their own power. But to non-hams, they might as well not exist, unless some rumors were passed along. In time, hams might develop their own news programming based on the reports they heard and shared.

Good story, I guess I role played it in my mind if I was in it. BTW, I'd like to add CB radio in there too, it is low powered but there are times you can shoot skip for hundred or thousands of miles in the daytime if the sunspots are cooperating. When I was on CB, there were times I talked to places like Maine, Compton, California and even Mexico. Just the other day on my shortwave, I heard "outbanders" (illegally modified CB's or other radios operating outside the CB band) just below the standard CB band talking in Spanish from Central America.

Even as far back as the 1960's and 1970's, hams have made minature transceivers for voice and CW (Morse code) about the size of a transistor radio where you can make worldwide contacts using 1 watt or less running them off of flashlight or even penlight batteries. There was interest in even using solar power to charge up the batteries and run a CB/Ham station, then again it was the Carter 1970's, interesting parallel I see.

The interesting thing in your story is if there are fewer station on the air, the AM band will be less crowded and at night, it should be easier to receive weaker stations (like the 100, 500, 5000 watters) as well as across the Atlantic (or Pacific if you live there). KDKA first put 100 watts out in 1920 on 909 kc (in our present AM band) and they were received in Canada, Finland and even New Zealand. I've picked up stations as far away as Cuba, Berkeley, California and Anguilla in the West Indies here in Pittsburgh. Heck, if the UK is still intact, you might be able to receive BBC Radio 4 on 198 kc longwave (or Allouis in France on 162 kc) if things are right.

Somebody, somewhere will still be broadcasting but the trick is if the info is correct or based on rumor but still if it is there, at least you can try to put the pieces together as to the real story as well as knowing there is a voice out there.

Lastly about hearing things in radio static (or "snow" on an old analogue TV receiver), if you go above 30 Mc, most of it is generated radio noise in the receiver and any signal received must overcome it, it is a matter of physics, but other parts of the sound comes from space like the Sun, Jupiter, the Milky Way and even echos of the Big Bang at The Creation. It is an interesting thing to ponder but I think most people, even hams, most likely would not be involved into amateur, ad-hoc radio astronomy, except to contact the ISS if there is anyone there or if any ham radio satellites still exist and are working. There is even an amateur radio satellite that has been working since 1974.

It's just me, it is like when the power goes out, the first thing, after reaching for a light source, is to get my police scanner, usually I find out what's going on if it is storm, someone whacks a pole, etc.

[SteveH]

Get off the F*cking Freeway

http://neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2005/09/4683.php