Chapter Eleven - The Risk of Contamination

The Way of Life
Chapter Eleven
The Risk of Contamination

After the lesson was finished, Haruo spent some time talking about martial arts philosophy to the students. Mental preparation was just as important as physical preparation. Only when mentally were they prepared, were they to be effective as warriors. Both in fighting and in everyday life you should be determined though calm. Meet the situation without tenseness yet not recklessly, your spirit settled yet unbiased. ~Miyamoto Musashi, Book of the Five Rings. Preparation for battle meant that one had to be calm and ready to give the ultimate sacrifice of their lives. What they would be up against in the wilderness was not something that they were going to be used to. What the radiation had done to animals, to humans that still walked the surface; no-one could tell.

Up above on the surface, the winds howled and the radioactive dust was kicked up into the air making a horrific tableau of the surrounding environment with large brownish yellow clouds and the clouds, themselves, pouring a toxic rain onto the ground contaminating hte ground even further with radioactive trace elements. It would make it that much harder to grow things. Even though the bunker was growing their own vegetables hydroponically, they were having to utilize their own waste as fertilizer. Because nothing could be grown outside the bunker without the risk of radiation poisoning the grown items.

Having paired off, Noel and Holly slept.

The biological beings in the bunker were unable to go up to the surface, whereas the plumbots were the only ones able to go topside to survey the devastation. Oh, evidently the bill collectors managed to survive the nuclear holocaust. They were like cockroaches, so naturally they survived the worst that humanity had to offer and still scuttled about expecting their thirty pieces of silver twice a week, regardless of the fact that everything was falling to pieces around them.

And life wasn't great up topside at the very least, especially with meteors falling from the skies, if the nuclear bombs that had fallen previous weren't bad enough.

In the morning, Phil ate breakfast, then tuned up Horace, mainly because after that recon during the night, Horace needed a major tune-up. Horace decontaminated himself with hot steam; though most didn't know whether such decontamination procedures really worked or whether it was just a panacea to soothe the mind from worry. But regardless, everyone who went top side just did it to allay fears that they were tracking something lethal in that they couldn't see.

When they were going to get out of the bunker; they didn't know, but they certainly had no choice in the matter. Until they were absolutely certain of the situation topside; that radiation levels had gone down significantly to the point where they weren't lethal to human habitation, they would continue to remain below ground in their bunker. That was the only way that they could make certain.