It All Went Black: mysterymanjoseph and weird writes
Joseph had been in Boise, Idaho, to check on prospectively moving some of the branch offices of his family’s corporation there from Oregon and California. The environments in those states are becoming to dangerous for his employees, best to move operations somewhere far safer. The city’s mayor and council were very excited at the prospect, making some gracious proposals for land purchase and an expedited permit issuance to get things moving along. That all done, and arrangements now being handled by the appropriate lawyers back a corporate h.q., Joseph was driving South out of the city, wishing to see some of the countryside. It is quite beautiful in some areas, and you don’t get to appreciate it flying over it all the time. Then, the reports started coming in on the news, power blackouts here and there, telecommunications interruptions,...finally, some speculations of a nationwide cyber attack. That gets Joseph’s attention, and after a call to corporate to Janet, his executive assistant to put the emergency contingency plans into motions for this situation, he hangs up. Parked alongside the road, he reaches into the glove compartment of his Grand Cherokee, pulling out a notebook, looking up the State of Idaho page. Joseph’s grandfather, decades ago, had commissioned a study by a think tank on the vulnerabilities of society because of the evolving dependence on high tech, and each follow up study had a worse assessment. That being the case, the old man started a secret project to try and protect the family, isolated bunkers built that if some sort of great catastrophe, of any sort, a family member could take shelter in to ‘ride out the storm’,...long term if necessary. Finding the page he wants, Joseph gets the bunker location, and using the old fashioned state atlas he had bought before traveling to Boise, maps out his route. The thinks, “Good thing I topped off the gas tank a few miles back, doubt any station will have working pumps before long.” “Good thing the cyber security guys at corporate put in protected chips and programmed in firewalls for the Jeep’s brain box.” “At least I should be able to drive until I run out of gas, then it is the ‘two food express’ for me.” Checking the map again, he starts the Jeep, then drives, taking a different road, on that would have less traffic, less desperate people one comes across, the lesser the chance of a violent confrontation.
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