Book 2 Broch Viavik - Northwest Citian Outpost

YYY was usually the quietest of the so called gang of seven, but she was clearly agitated. "I am not talking about building the city of the future, I am talking about building the city of the present. The Oklahoma rift is spreading, there is a thousand sq kilo hypoxic dead zone forming within our ship travel range, the wildfires keep getting worse, we have to build a sanctuary city and we have to do it now."

Adrian slowly began his trademarked thumbstroke against his goatee using the pause in the conversation to let the silence grow. A fly on the wall observer couldn't say the seven were restless, but out of their comfort zones. This was a big expense and they did not have consensus. Adrian spoke, "We can't build a city, we don't know how. We need to build smaller outposts firsts, make our mistakes, hone our best practices.

Arian, QQQ said, I don't want to be dense, but best practices against what?

"I would start with anti-fragility." A chorus of groans his the ceiling of the room. "Groanperbole all you want, it is not an overstatement to point out that concrete should not have to be replaced every sixty years, that surburban homes last 50 years and then need to be leveled and landfilled. So back to basics, quality. There are two great questions, common cause and special cause. If a developer builds 300 homes and they almost all at the end of lifespan 50 years later, that is common cause, planned obselence. And we will not even mention the health cost to the inhabitants of that much time exposed to particle board."

OK Adrian, I will bite, in this context is special cause.

Building inside known flood plains, inhab zones, on a coast without raising the building 10 meters. You want to hear about special cause? I just read this account published by Sciencenews, before everything started to turn to crap:

In the early evening of March 27, 1964, a magnitude 9.2 earthquake roiled Alaska. For nearly five minutes, the ground shuddered violently in what was, and still is, the second biggest temblor in recorded history.

Across the southern part of the state, land cracked and split, lifting some areas nearly 12 meters — about as high as a telephone pole — in an instant. Deep, house-swallowing maws opened up. Near the coast, ground turned jellylike and slid into bays, dooming almost everyone standing on it. Local tsunamis swamped towns and villages.

A 9.2 quake close enough to reach us is special cause. We can't build something and say that it will stand up to that. Mother nature rules in that case, but she doesn't speak like that every day, week, year, or decade. Back to the example of a flood plain. They used to say that if you built in a floodplain, if you were at the 100 year flood mark, the odds were you and the building would live there without being flooded. I think our perspective needs to be that if we are thinking past ourselves, thinking about our children and grandchildren, then we are saying the odds are very high that one of the generations will have to endure a flood with the disruption, destruction and quite possibly death that comes with it.

I think we have all agreed we want to move past do-overs, band-aids, disposables and limited life manufacturing including construction. We have two core working, tested designs for single family dwellings with a large number of skins or, design options, so they can be optimized for individual preferences. Now, the rich question, in my view is the best way to purpose build a settlement." Adrian, youngest of the seven, paused again, silence was his friend.

OK, I'll bite said YYY. What and where did you have in mind?

XXX, jumped in. Love it or despise it, our center of power, the source of many of our resources is near the clean up, the former Brotentide nuclear plant. We have most of the manufacturing problems licked to produce 30 meter catamarans. We are far from a glut today, but it is not too soon to be thinking about who crews them, where do they go and what can they be used for. I think that should be a factor in whatever we decide; in a world of enemies, synergy is our friend.

YYY nodded, OK, so we are talking coastal, far enough away from Brotentide that a whoopsie doesn't do the new project/projects in, but not much farther. What else?

XXX, I think we should move inland Great Bear Lake is on the Artic Circle. It is full of islands that look alike. Besides the Rockies, when you move inland there are a gazillion lakes, other than first nation, sled teams and aircraft is can't be crossed. It would give us time to learn and establish ourselves and is virtually impossible to approach with a large force. There is enough radioactivity from the old mine to use as an energy source but it is uranium, so whoopsies are unlikely.

YYY, Won't we freeze to death, isn't there a long night? I hear people kill themselves in the Arctic when the sun doesn't shine. Great Bear, isn't that one of the largest in the world?

XXX Yes, with climate change it is now the 7th largest lake globally now that Lake Tanganyika is rapidly headed for pond status. Because of rising temps, we are looking at a site near the Arctic Circle, in December it does stay dark and in June the sun essentially does not set. The average temperature forty years ago was –7.2 °C today it is -3.8 °C, but snow melt will be less of a problem than closer to the Rockies.

In July we can reach 15 °C, a veritable heat wave. The prevailing wind direction is southeast and it does not change much. Even with temperatures rising we do not expect any problems with water, the wet month is August and the average over the past three years is 40mm perception. Cold, dark, and dry, light, warm, wet, what is not to like.









XXX picked it up on the webnews. "Hearty souls, looking for adventure to build and settle Broch Viavik. Service guarantees citizenship."

"Think about it Christy. Open spaces, a chance to build a life, its a dream opportunity."

Christy smiled and tilted her head, her long brown hair flowed over her sweater at the left shoulder. "Dream? Do you dream of the Artic she asked playfully? The Northern lights, the long days and longer nights? A life without flowers or fresh vegetables? When was the last time you snacked on blubber?

Plants can grow North of the circle using insulated greenhouse technology, flowers and vegetables.

[Six months later]
They steered the four cats into a nameless cove and anchored. Even in July there was sea ice. The temperature wasn't bad, 11 on the deck, not bad considering the cloud cover. XXX and Christy took the inflatable dingy to shore and planted the Citian flag naming the cove and surrounds Viavik. The frozen MacKenzie river was a day's sail to the West. This was as far North and West as the planners intended to extend their sphere of influence.

The goal was to establish three Broch posts on the surrounding bare granite foothills. The towers and their supporting settlements would help support the future village of Viavik. Step one was to shape the shore to accomodate two quays on either side of the wharf. This would provide stable docking for the boats supporting the construction. Six berths for catamarans, three on each side, they would also anchor mooring balls for transients. Large enough to defend, small enough to escape casual notice.

As soon as the fence and Broch were in position, attention turned to High Point Tower, (HPT). Built on the highest point in the area, a nameless dry prominence 410 M high, it was a bit over 1.5 KM from Broch Viavek and easily able to lay down fire on the lakes on Viavek's  East side. Viavek's builders reasoned the gentler terrain was a potential attack point if an adversary could land troops by sea or parachute in from the air.




HPT was built primarily of carbon fiber like just about everything else, but there were some panels of composite aluminum foam, lightweight like carbon, but stronger and able to bounce back from bullets or even pulverize them. It went up fast, when the winds were right to blimpies were able to deliver the solar cells and laser drill. When the site was prepared, another set of blimpies dropped off the pre-fab building materials. The skeleton of the tower and its fence were up in under a week.

Jasmine and Keesha, two mature ladies that were both highly qualified marksmen, hot shot fire fighters and sustenance farmers signed up for the first watch. They were both artists and the job paid enough for their supplies and gave them time to work their crafts.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A piece of the action

When silence doesn't mean consent

Sorry for a millionaire from 1.7 deleted, maybe can reuse