Finally! Who knew that Walter Library ran completely on solar power? I certainly didn’t.

And surprisingly enough, even though the vast majority of the net appears to be down, my trusty blog is still accessible. A silver lining among the gloom, I suppose.

First, on the general situation in Minneapolis:

Life isn’t difficult, but I can’t say that it doesn’t feel bleak. Nathan, Emiko, and I have been driving around to various grocery stores and gathering food. I reckon that we’ll have more than enough to get us through the winter, yet we’re still living off the remains of a industrial food system that will never again function like it once did. At some point, we’re going to need to begin growing our own food.

Luckily, we’ve also found a handful of other survivors, and we’ve started meeting downtown every couple days to exchange information and discuss what we should do next.

I’ve run into survivors in a few other locations as well, now that I think of it, though many are less than friendly. The situation is strange, because although there is little to no real remaining danger, quite a few people are still treating everything and everyone as a threat. Perhaps that’s a natural reaction, yet the truth is that now, more than ever before, we live in a world of abundance.

Abundant food, abundant shelter, abundant death … yes, death still hangs in the air. The virus wiped out somewhere between 90% to 99% of humanity and left us few remaining survivors to clean up the mess. Unfortunately, I think most of the corpses littered around the city will continue to rot rather than receive proper burials, as we simply can’t expect 1% of the people to bury the other 99%.

Though fuel is easy to find for the time being, I have to wonder how much longer that situation will hold. There are plenty of cars with full tanks of gas sitting around, but without a fresh supply of fuel that could change sooner rather than later. Gas doesn’t exactly grow on trees like food does.

Outside of that … well, it’s getting cold. Winter is coming. But as I said, shelter is abundant. I don’t foresee the bite of winter causing us any unforeseen difficulties.

I’ll try to stop by in another week or so to post again. And if anyone else is out there, please get in touch! We’re always looking for more fellow survivors — in the Minneapolis area or otherwise.