[Res]

Journal: I don't remember what day it is. I think the year is 2011.
We had always wondered when it would happen... There were signs that it would always be just around the corner, but every serious warning we got, turned out to be just a play on us to prepare the world for the inevitable. When the true warnings of a nuclear warhead came, we were so used to them being tests and drills, we didn't fully prepare ourselves.

We really messed up.

Now we're trying to make it in a world where nothing is in order. It's the premise for the greatest horror movie ever made, except we're living it. And unlike the movies, we all know how this could end. We're dealing with anarchist warriors roaming our world trying to take it for themselves. We fight each other over every last scrap of food we can find or grow. We manage to grow trust for only those that have proven they should be trusted.

This is our world. It's been ripped in half and glued back together. Now it's falling apart once more.
--- God help us, now.
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I've grown accustomed to the musty smell of old folks. After spending roughly a year in some makeshift bunker, you start to get numb to it. We keep the place as clean as possible, and we've been doing pretty good, but there's sometimes I can't help but just feel ashamed of how we let this place go.

It's some unholy hour of the morning, I assume. I had been sleeping on my worn out mattress in my little hole of the world when I heard someone trip and fall in the main chamber down the hall. There are only fifteen of us living here, and it's always so dark, tripping isn't too uncommon, though it annoys me whenever it wakes me up.

Let me give you a bit of insight on my surroundings. Firstly, it's NOT pleasant. Picture a concrete house that's been buried under a hill. These were made a long time ago, just for scenarios like this, but forgotten and abandoned when the threat 'disappeared'. After the bombing (Which I'll cover later), we remembered these things and tore {expletive antidisestablishmentarianized by Cspace} into them, only to find them in horrendous disrepair and in need of serious renovating.
So we're in a tunnel, right? Now I want to tell you to picture trash, but it's really not that dirty. We keep it clean to a certain extent, but you always have some paper scraps or dirt that gets shuffled into the corner. That's easy to overlook.
There's a main area where we all congregate. From there, it branches off into about twenty little hallways which go to separate rooms. Some of us bunk together, some of us just crash in the main chamber, and a few of us just live in their rooms. We're a pretty ramshackle bunch.

Oh me? I'm Res. 'Least that's what I've called myself and have been called since I can remember. No real reason. Just a unique name that I like to stick with me. Distinguishable, you know?
I don't own or operate this place, but I do what I can to keep an eye on the other people that stay here. We have affectionately named our bunker "Hell House". I'm the guy that keeps any of those freelancers and anarchists out. Waste-Hogs, we call them. Nasty group of people.

Waste-Hogs are a group (Or more like a general race of people) that didn't go underground after the fallout. They've been heavily affected by radiation, and driven nearly insane. Just think "Ravenous monsters with enough intelligence to coordinate surgical strikes on little unsuspecting bunkers like our own." Long title, I know, but it's the quickest way to sum them up.
The long way is just saying they've been so heavily mutated and deranged that some don't even resemble humans anymore. Some walk on all fours, and we've seen some that only walk using a single foot. Don't ask how. It's disgusting.

Anyways. Our conditions aren't too great here. We've got a little opening above the main chamber that lets us out. Other than this, there's only one other entrance (If you could even call it that), that stays bolted, locked, boarded, and jammed at all times. We've had bad ambush experiences.
We're running off a perfectly stable hot spring underneath our bunker that provides a minimal amount of electricity for a few florescent light bulbs, a fully functional kitchen, temperature regulators, a Television, and a Radio.
Time is a mystery. As is the date. When we leave the bunker, we can't see the sun. It's nuclear winter, so we have snow in July. We know from various and sporadic radio broadcasts that it's sometime in 2011, but we don't know if those are recordings. The television is only used for a few DVDs and ancient tapes we have, all in the aide of helping us keep our sanity.

Food is interesting. Sometimes, I, along with a few others, will go outside and hunt some animals. If we find and kill one, we have a Geiger counter on hand to check and see if it's too contaminated with radiation. Sometimes in our hunts, we'll get caught by Waste-Hogs and have to fight for our lives, or be killed. We've developed a good strategy for them, though. They don't dodge bullets, and don't know how to shoot the guns they have. So we get target practice, and incredible amounts of ammunition when we get into fights.
We also have a sort of garden in our Hell Home. We've salvaged some lights and fresh soil and seeds to begin our own little gardening project. The little girls that stay with us do a fantastic job of keeping them healthy, and when they're grown, they make a fantastic dinner. Suppers like that only come every few months or so, when a new 'crop' grows in. We always have a small celebration and congratulate the girls for it.
It makes them feel good, and keeps smiles on all of the tenants. In the world we live in now, that's the most I can hope to do. Keep them happy, keep them alive, keep them safe. I do my job, I've no problem with the world.

This journal, I'll give you a little back-story on the number of us that live here, and a few experiences we have with Waste-Hogs, or hitchhikers we've taken in. Res always has a good story to tell. I suppose that's why the younger kids like me so much. I tell some big ones.

Early or not, it's not my time to wake up yet. I'm going back to sleep.
Goodnight.
Res~

[Star Jedi]

That's really good

Continue

[Res]

Some month through January and December, 2011.

I'm not even sure why I keep this little book nearby anymore. It may be to keep me from insanity. I think I'll reach that stage eventually though, whenever the pages run out. That, or I'll have to go salvage another.

I feel I left on a bit of a bad note in the last entry. Though it was the first, I don't want to seem... -too- negative, considering our circumstances.

I'll be honest. I chuckled at that.

To recount everything that happened, just so memory isn't mistaken with reality and the actual events will be noted as best as possible, here's how it all went down, and the background to why we're in the world we live in now.
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Way back around 2005, it's general common knowledge that wars broke out between countries over suspicion of nuclear weapons. At the time, it had just about everyone focused on everyone else to the extent we weren't worrying about the homefront.
To make an incredibly long story short, yes. Weapons WERE found eventually, but not truly accounted for. The media of course attacked any official that said nuclear weapons existed, saying "Well, you were right, but only kinda.", because the weapons were more bioterror weapons than nuclear.

Fast forward four years. March 2008. I remember that date for no specific reason, just like I remember the name of the guy that invented barbed wire is named Joseph Glidden. Anyways... March 2008. Some pissant little country nearabouts the area of Russia started making political jokes about having nukes. This wasn't taken too kindly by the people they directed it at (us) and we went after 'em. Well, being a pissant little country means it wasn't too hard to sweep the place clean in a search. They didn't resist, either. They WELCOMED our army and troops and special agents with open arms, basically saying 'Please! We're playing. Look for youself!'.
And we did. We spent roughly a year there, sweeping the entire place with little to no resistance. Found NOTHING. Some folks were satisfied, others weren't. But officials made statements saying we were okay and could leave.

Well, about a month after we left (April 2009), they start making more threatening 'jokes' about us and how they're gonna wipe not only us off the map, but everywhere else. Think of those little editorial comics you see in the paper. You know, the ones we have? Like those. But theirs were serious.

By the way. During the year we were inspecting the country, the stateside fellows did a good job trying to keep us safe. They spent so much effort and time replacing and renovating all buildings to withstand the blast of nuclear weapons, and they coated everything with a substance (Hell if I know what it is) that has zero toxicity compared to lead, but keeps radiation back to an amazing degree. They also gave classes and PSAs all around explaining what to do if a nuke blows up near you. Basic 'Duck and cover' stuff. Because as we all know, in the middle of a thermonuclear blast, no one can hear you scream.

So, as we were about to quit putting up with these things, we decided to send another search team to check the place out just to be sure again. When word of this reached our playful little 'jokers', they gave us the punch line.

We heard reports over the radio that missiles were on their way, but nobody knew how many. Damn if we only knew how many. It what seemed like a perpetual carpet bombing, one by one states all over started turning into the biggest pile of pummeled buildings you can imagine. The construction made to withstand the blast didn't hold for beans, but the chemical that was supposed to reduce radiation worked wonderfully. In some places.
Some city in California was the first to go. We all watched worried and discombobulated news channels trying to cover the events, and each one slowly went off the air. Poor souls. There were a lot of them that day.

I managed to make a little measurement in my head, figuring the rate of fire and my location, and by the time I had figured out how much time I had left, I was out of time. Next thing I knew, the west side of my house was impacted, and I was thrown from my bedroom chair into the east wall as I felt a horrendous wind, followed by a heat that I can't even try and describe. Past the wind, I tried to get under whatever I could so I could get cool. Think 'hot wind'. Never feels good.

Lucky me though. The warhead that gave the blast to me was nowhere near as bad as it could have been. The distance from my house to the detonation zone was just far enough to where I wasn't obliterated on the spot. Instead of fiery tornadoes, I got a hot wind. Dissipated just enough to keep me from roasting alive. I threw my matress off of my bed and grabbed a few blankets. Everything was thrown askew outside. Other houses not as sturdy as mine were torn from their foundations. I had a firsthand view from my window, as a small section of my north wall was torn away. Stupidly, I peeked my head outside and looked to the area the blast came from.
It was the most heartbreaking thing I had ever seen. Five minutes ago I would have looked west and peered down a large hill/mountain and seen a busy little town with trees surrounding the outer areas. That town was now just a pile of rocks, and those trees were toothpicks in a burnt landscape. I saw a few buildings that survived, but I couldn't imagine anyone inside making it past the blast.
For the record, the little town was roughly seven to ten miles away. I live(d) on the edge of a hill and had a magnificent view of the land. I don't know about your generic nuclear blast radius, but this was horrible. I was thinking before the blast, if they hit anywhere, they'd avoid out little speck of a town.
But of course by all laws of how the world works, that wasn't going to happen. As soon as I thought "Naaaaah", I sealed our fate. This makes me feel very guilty in fact, and causes me to cry myself to sleep some nights to this day.

Anyways... As I looked at the terrible sight, I started to feel... sick, kind of. Then I caught myself actually thinking for once, and hauling my little {expletive antidisestablishmentarianized by Cspace} back inside whispering 'radiation' to myself.
What's radioactivity? Listening to the radio and doing stuff.