Greg considers Marcus's fire approach to water purification.
Might be on to something Marcus but how do we know if the water is purified by boiling or not. If the contamination is bacteria that would probably suffice but if it was some form of virus maybe not. Too risky to test on ourselves. Any ideas on water purification Richard?
Marcus nods to Greg, "Exactly and I don't think either of us is willing to see if the boiling method works?! By any chance did you guys see a fish tank while searching the building? We could user the filter charcoal if they have any spare charcoal?"
Thinking hard Richard nods.
"Well I could jury rig a filtration method, let me see what we all have, so that I can see what to use!"
Richard begins setting up a water purification system. With his chemistry knowledge and a few pieces of equipment laying around the Backwoods office he has devised a means to distill water using heat to boil the water and condense and collect it and funnel it through a filtered system. Running the distillation for a hour under medium heat would produce 1/2 Gal of distilled completely pure water. This would require burning some source of heat for an hour and a means of ventilating the smoke. Richard has constructed a ventilation to the outdoors. The side effect is that when running the still a small smoke plume is put out from the Backwoods office.
Marcus nods his head, "Nice work Richard! First evaporating the water then collecting the steam via a filter is a great process! How many gallons do you think we will get out of it max?"
Richard shrugs and replies. "With luck a few liters more! It all depends!"
Greg looks around and starts piling a bunch of spare lumber and loose pieces of wood for future burning.
Current Time: 10:00 AM
Date: July 29th (3 days into adventure)
Location: Backwoods office ALL
Escape route to Roof: Yes
Richard search for supplies: Yes results of his search coming soon.Richard design and construction of Water distillation system: Yes
Spears: Not yet no Craft Mechanical Roll made (takes 1 hour per spear)
Life Vests: Not yet no Craft Mechanical Roll made (takes 1 hour per spear)
Hacking/Researching: Complex skill check combining Computer Use and Research. Significant DC modifiers to computer use as most servers have lost power and are down a successful Computer Use skill would allow the research check. Then using what remains of the internet would be a research check that takes 1d4 hours. We can do this two ways one way would be you roll and tell me generally what you are looking for. Based on the roll result you would get information about that detailed based on the result. The other RAW way is you specify what information you want as specific you want it and then I set a DC and you roll. This way I think is bad for PbP. So we will use the first way. Often means you don't know the DC though.
Food:yeah you need some of that.
Looking through the canoe paddles Richard looked for tools, any kind of tools, glue and maybe, hidden behind some documents alcohol or medical drugs, like asprin or tylanol. Also any kind of batteries or other emergancy equipment.
2 with a +5 modifier
3 with a +0 modifier
1 with a -5 modifier
5 taking 20 with a -5 Modifier.
Each roll above would take 10 minutes and the taking 20 would take 3 hours and 20 minutes. So total time involved in the above is 17 hours and 50 minutes. I would consider this to be done already if it the time that you had at this office. Richard has also spent 3 hours constructing the water distillation system.
Richard in his first 10 minutes of searching uncovered some spare batteries and some electrical components some spare bolts and driver and a handful of snack bars.
Knowing the longer he waits, the Internet will continue to "fade away" server by server, OC-X by OC-X line, as more and more Nuclear Plants SCRAM and Data Centers run out of diesel fuel for generators. Marcus takes out his computer and satellite phone since that would probably be the best connectivity medium to use at this point. First, he prepares a web crawler to search for key words/phrases and download the associated content for later reviewing/research since the computer can search faster than he can browse. Keywords he will be searching for:
1. Real Life Zombies
2. What is causing the dead to walk
3. Zombie Virus
4. Zombie Bacteria
5. What is causing the living to turn into cannibals/zombies?
6. Nuclear Power Plant Locations in Minnesota, Contact Information, IP Address information
7. Power Plant Locations in Minnesota, Contact Information, IP Address information.
8. Is there a cure for the zombie/sickness/walking dead/cannibals.
"Greg and Richard, any key words you want me to add to look for locally? Tell me now, we may not get another chance if I can not hack into a nuke or power plant to restore power, and then ask ourselves do we really want to without catastrophic failure?""
9.
After he finds what parts of the Internet are still working and pieces them together, he will let the computer do the research collection. He sets that data collection to 75% of his remaining hard drive before stopping. He will also connect his computer and phone into the Solar recharger to extend online time. He places the computer, phone, and solar charger in as safe as a location possible.
As soon as or if the computer web crawl process starts working, Marcus asks, "While the computer process is running, should I or we now make spears from oars or armor from life vests? Are you two interested in a life vest zombie armor? While not perfect, it will offer some protection."
[dice=Computer Use]1d20+10
[dice=Research for Inet Nodes]1d20+8
[dice=Search Time in Hours]1d4
Marcus using his SAT phone to connect his laptop computer and some very gray area web tools is able to access what remains of the internet. He seems to have food a server station that is still active located in New Mexico. This server station utilized wind power and was one of the last Eco-Friendly constructions during the Trump presidency. Marcus can only assume that someone smartly disconnected the server's power system from the grid while remaining connected to the internet and serving up massive amounts of data.
Some headlines of articles that flash on the screen follow.
8 ways you can survive the coming Zombie Apocalypse.
Virus vs Bacteria what is likely to cause a Zombie Apocalypse.
Chicagoland Pharmaceutical company denies connection to recent illness.
"We should spent a few more hours to gain enough pure water. Than we should seek elsewhere for better shelter and food!"
Since there is not enough light coming through, Marcus will tie a life vest straps together to form a tether, place something that will jingle (keys, or whatever is in the shop that will jingle) if the solar panels are trying to blow or walk away. He the deploys just outside the escape hole to avoid too much detection from the undead or make it hard for the living undesirables to observe him. He then attaches an extension cord the shop has, plugs the cable into the the inverter, and a surge protector on the other end where the computer and phone will be plugged into just in case of malfunction or act of nature.
While Marcus deploys the solar panel/charger he nods in agreement with Richard, and speaks quietly, "I agree with you Richard, we should keep moving until we find a more perfect shelter that will offer us safety, shelter, water, and food or all of the basic needs, if one exists? And if we assimilate more survivors, we can think of a more nomadic life style. Currently, it's kind of unsafe for a complete nomadic lifestyle.
After the data download, he waits for his computer to charge if necessary. Repacks his satellite phone and spends ...
... spends (2) hours researching afterwards ...
Marcus set up his data mining operation and then returned to fashioning javelins out of canoe paddles. Taking his time with each paddle he makes a fine collection of ranged weapons for the group.
Marcus searches through the GBs of data that his web crawler pulled down through his SAT phone. He begins by trying to find out some information on the outbreak but his keyword filters seem to have pulled a vast amount of red herrings with vast amounts of the data pertaining to pop culture Zombie books, movies, and TV shows. He also noticed when looking at the results for "Real Life Zombies" the voodoo practice showed up again not what he was really desiring. Discouraged he switches his approach to reading about his results for the power plant searches. He discovered the ip address domain for both the Monticello and Prairie Island Nuclear Plants. He also gathers a list of non-nuclear power plants Sherburne County; Clay Boswell; Mankato Energy Center; High Bridge; and Black Dog were the largest. The closest of those being Clay Boswell and still that was over 100 miles away. Definitely something for a different day or maybe even week but good to know. Marcus has the IP addresses of these places but the chance that they are up and running and still on the internet is anybody's guess. Encouraged by these findings Marcus decides to start weeding his searches for Zombie information with a city such as Zombie and St. Paul. This weeds out alot of the garbage but he still needs to sift through St. Paul Zombie Bar Crawls and the like before deciding to add the word Doctor to his search query. This trims down the results a great deal and an online journal article catches his eye. "Current Crisis from a Medical Perspective." By Dr. Horace Boderick. Marcus spends the next 30 minutes reading an article published online July 5th. The tone is frantic but scientific. In the article it describes an outbreak of illness occurring across America and possibly the world. It seems that tracer back vectors the illness started in the Midwest around the Great Lakes chiefly centered around the Northern parts of Illinois and Southern Wisconsin. Those that fell ill seemed to develop high fevers before eventually becoming uncontrollably violent and even cannibalistic. Further more patients at this stage are nonverbal only able to utter growls or moans. The Dr goes one further to state that he and several others in the Medical community have called for an immediate stop to air travel until the situation is contained. He references several attacks that have been on the news. He mentions that currently there seems to be no cure for the illness and patients are unresponsive to antibiotic treatment. Further testing is required but it appears at this time that some form a virus is at the root cause. He also states that due to the outbreak centering around the great lakes that people consider their water source very carefully. He ends with a note of hope reminding the reader that America has several professional people working on this new virus and he has the upmost faith that a vaccine will be developed shortly.
When Marcus once again sits down with his computer to see what he can discover he references Dr. Horace Boderick and outbreak. This produces a few more recent articles that last of which was published July 11th. "The virus continues to spread across America. We have news from overseas that several other countries are now dealing with their own crisis and can not offer US aid at this time. It is now estimated that about 20% of the population have contracted the Virus now being termed CMD Cannibalistic Mobility Disease. The medical community remains hopeful even after the devastating news about the CDC falling to the outbreak. It seems the issue is the long latency period of the virus. No effects are seen for at least 12 hours after exposure. The fever seems to last another 8-12 hours before the carrier finally loses the power of speech and higher brain function. At this point the carrier develops the cannibalistic nature of the disease and is able to spread the disease through a bite."
Marcus keeps one of his newly made spears nearby.
Marcus carefully deletes the zombie genre findings and says to himself, "I KNOW! Such a shame but why read make believe stories about the ZPOC when you are currently living through one? However, I will keep the zombie survival stuff by Mel Brooks and other authors to test it out when we are bored and safe." "Hmm, what is this?" Marcus reads out loud in a non-carrying voice of Dr Horace Boderick findings and research to Rich and Greg.
Looking up Richard listen´s intentently to what´s written. "You found some information, nice but why not the viral strains, if penecellin works or counters, the effort of ,,, no matter this is grim. A good start. Can you save it on your hard-disk?" Thinking for a moment he continues can you get a satellite map and what kind of companies and shops are close. I am not sure if I want a car, but we need more equipment. A Hagebau, I am sorry what do you call those store where you get building materials, well in any case one of those. Most people will go to military stores but those usually have also food, weapons and durable clothing, maybe even knee paddings!"[/B]
Looking at their faces, he shrugs."I used to work in one once, to help finance my studies!"
Marcus nods, "I can save the information to my flash disks and/or internal Solid State Drives and even compress the data. I went completely solid state with this computer, no moving parts that will break easy excluding the cooling fans but that is easier to fix than failed hard drives. We can do the searches you mentioned tomorrow or when it is safe to again. I copied down a list of local nuclear plants and power plants which I maybe can bring back online. Although, maybe not the nuclear plants but at least I can monitor their cooling ponds to know when we should flee an area because the cooling pond went dry and now exposed fuel rods are spewing radioactive dust into the atmosphere. As for what we call hardware stores in America, we call them Home Depot, Lows, or Mom and Pop Hardware Stores. And military stores are called Military Surplus stores. We can walk, drive, or ride by these stores but depending on how fast this disease spread, there may have been a run on these stores or people may have seek refuge in them which they can be guarding fiercely or as a zombie?"
Marcus keeps one of his newly made spears nearby.
Richard addresses Greg."Well, let us assume that it didn´t happen overnight. So most stores should and could be looted. But think hard, where can we get food. Families who are usually on vacation this time of the year? Someone who recently died and were the relatives might not have had time to clean the house, or flat? A pharmacy? A fitness studio? They usually have proteen shakes and stuff like that?"
Judging from what Marcus discovered from the Internet it's been about 4 weeks since the start of all this. So I guess you are right the grocery stores would have been looted already. Not sure about every house though. We can probably search a few to get an idea of how picked over they would be. We need to think outside the box like you suggested with the fitness center idea. Ely has a small dance and fitness center called Studio North. Oh and you had a question about home improvement stores. Ely is too small to have a Home Depot or Menards but we do have a local hardware store. As for food we can try restaurants. If we get desperate there is a pet store. I doubt people would think about looting it. What do you all think we should search first dance studio, house, restaurant, pet store or hardware store? Greg paused and waited for input from the other survivors.
Marcus nods, "We should pick up dry protein shakes since we don't know where the water originated in the liquid protein shakes. However, we should focus on eating like the Native Americans ate and I will do some research to see if there has been any reported cases of infection from animal meat. That is why we are facing this problem, we are civilization that embraced it was a good idea to introduce chemicals as a source of food. If we would just eat like our ancient relatives and exercise like them, we would all be in better shape. Although, the protein drinks and food is better than nothing."
Greg nods slowly. The one time my date brought me to a dance class there I did notice they had both protein powder jars and some refrigerated pre-made stuff in plastic bottles. Guessing most of that stuff has gone bad. 4 weeks without power. In fact thinking about any looting we are going to do we are going to smell some horrible stuff. I think we should search this place more thoroughly first though.
A quick search by Greg doesn't uncover anything new.
So each building has a random size that I will determine for every 1000
ft^2 a search/scavenge attempt is possible. One of the chief modifiers is how scavenged the building is already.
Never Scavenged: +15 (Only applies to first scavenge attempt on buildings that have not been looted)
Very Lightly Scavenged: +5 (Could be starting level or level after 1 scavenge attempt until at least 1/4 of scavenge attempts have been rolled)
Lightly Scavenged:+0 (Either starting level or level once 1/4 attempts made)
Moderately Scavenged:-5 (Either starting level or after 1/2 attempts made)
Heavily Scavenged:-15 (After Taking 20 on 1/2 attempts)
A result of 20 nets some items with more for every 5 over that.
That being said it is probably best to take 20 for several rolls at the beginning of searching but not exceeding half. Then do all the other rolls before ending with the final taking 20. To take a 20 on the roll means 3 hours and 20 minutes so only do this when you deem it safe.
Backwoods is 12000 ft^2 office/warehouse. Meaning 12 attempts before exhausted. Richard did 1. Greg did 1. No 20s taken yet. 5 are allowed before penalty.
Search3: Take 20 with +5 modifier (Very Lightly Scavenged)
Search4: Take 20 with 0 modifier (Lightly Scavenged)
Search5: Take 20 with 0 modifier (Lightly Scavenged)
Search6: Take 20 with 0 modifier (Lightly Scavenged)
Search7: Roll with -5 modifier if someone has Search modifier greater than +5. Otherwise stop here. If someone has Search +5 or greater roll 5 results and last one Search12 take 20.
This would equate to a total time of 17.5 man-hours would be consider retroactive time for Richard. I just need to know that's what you want to do. Also just checked no-one in the party has search greater than +4 so the searching wouldn't give you anything past Search6. That would be 13 hours 20 minutes of searching for Richard. Since there is no rolling involved here and you expressed that you wanted to search the place and nothing else.
electrical and mechanical parts
misc items
misc items
misc items
electrical and mechanical parts
Since both you and Marcus have Multipurpose Tools going to cheat and give you Mechanical Kit, Basic
Battery
Chemical Light Sticks 5
Taking 5 times 20. only if Marcus is not better in it.
Water: 12 Liters (4 days supply)
Richard the chemical genius constructed a makeshift water distillation device (1 hour of boiling produces 1 liter of water) Requires venting of smoke for wood-burning. (+2 to notice checks) or could use generator to run on electrical heat (+1 Listen check)
Food: Roger found 1 days rations in the Backwoods office. Group leaning towards search of Studio North Dance and Fitness Center.
Weapons: What you started the game with. Also if you had anything stored in your vehicle you can access it now it is parked outside.
Marcus sharpened some paddles into javelins. Geoffrey's gun was last seen at the Community Center.
Fuel: What remains in your gas tank if you had a vehicle and about 5 gallons for the generator.
Parts:
Electrical: 4
Mechanical: 1
Survivors: 3
Morale: SNAFU - No modifiers
Location: Backwoods office
Known NPCs:
Yael: MIA
Canterburys: Whereabouts unknown
While looking at the map, "While we may find a lot of medicine and antibiotics at the hospital, we should try to keep away from there unless we have a really good plan. I am guessing that is where large number of CMDs or Zombies are at?"
Marcus made 3 Spears the size of javelins as the paddles were not long enough to make any type of reach weapon. Greg at least would like a life vest armor gives a +2 bonus or +3 if you have light armor proficiency. Does Richard want one as well? Consider the life vests spent in creation of 3 sets of armor. There are still a bunch of paddles so more javelin could be made. As for cars there are a few in the parking lot. Did you both arrive by bus?
Richard declines, feeling that it will hinder his movements.
Marcus still makes a life vest armor for Richard, "Richard, using the armor is up to you but this is for zombie ambushes not fighting zombies like Geralt of Rivia from the Witcher video game series. The extra padding just may save your life. In addition, it will still act as a life vest." Marcus laughs.
After finishing the vests, and the data mining operation just in case they have to quickly exit the building, Marcus uses the remaining time to make more javelins.
"A well, in a way you are right. May be better than nothing. But, um I do no know what you mean, I do not play video games. I read the books though. And saw the movies."
"Yeah, I played video games during idle time, boring executive status meetings, and during times of insomnia. Otherwise, I was working, geeking out, working out, or learning about survival. Well, we could run to my car to head out to the studio and if we can ascertain a bus on the way, we would be sitting pretty, especially a newer school bus."
"Do you guys want to go to the studio in my car, and maybe spot a school bus on the way? We will probably have to clear of CMDs and some could be children?"
"Hmm, I thought we start maybe with some of the closest buildings. But your car sounds good. Hope it still works."
Ely has one school bus I think finding it might be a bit difficult. Why exactly would we want a bus though? In my opinion we should be looking for something much more fuel efficient.
"Agreed. The pick-up seemed decent. Well very inefficient but better on offroads I guess. An electro car would be great. Maybe we can switch off the sound."
The three survivors leave the Backwoods office very cautiously through the back door of the office. They have packed up their gear for a quick search of some of the local buildings in town. Marcus looks over his car quickly and notices no damage done to it. He does notice that two other cars had windows smashed out and the trunks were still ajar. That blue one was Yael's maybe she got back here before us. If so it was nice of her to leave your car alone Marcus.[b]
There was another car a yellow Toyota Camry that had a pair of dice hanging from the rear view mirror. The dice are twenty sided. The two of you remember that Jojo kept mentioning how he liked to roleplay and you are correctly assume it is his vehicle. The vehicle is locked but unlooted you notice that there is a car alarm by its blinking red light. A quick glance shows that Greg's pickup is gone. [b]Well that figures company policy is to leave your keys at the office when going on a long trip like ours. Guessing one of the coworkers decided I wouldn't be needed my truck since it was the end of the world and all. Damn!
"We should raise the car, so that it thinks it´s towed? Well, saw that one in twins. Me for one, I can´t disable that one. Sorry!"