Tidewater Community College – Oleg woke me early today to get a look at some of the power generation efforts of the compound. We started with the sun, with the solar arrays. On the upper floors of the south end of the building, they had lined up just about any kind of solar panel they could find. When I asked where they had come from, they had a long list of places. The largest source had been traffic and construction lots, where solar panels powered road signs and came with large batteries. They had wheeled over two hundred of these here from a few different yards, and were still bringing some in as they found them. They dedicated almost half of their scavenging runs to getting these solar panels and batteries. The panels and batteries became an array, and it had supplied enough power for the compound before the computers came on line. In a unique use of recycling, they reused the lights in the compound and the chassis were modified in the shop into a pair of spikes which were positioned around the border fence to discourage trespass or vehicular breaches of the fence.

This wasn’t the only source of solar panels. They took some from houses, some from public sites, I think they even had a number of solar panels from calculators wired up. When I saw some of these small ones Oleg simply smiled.
“Every little bit helps.”

We then went into the bowels of the buildings. There I met Pawel Raczick, an Eastern European engineer who was in the States on a temporary visa when things happened and he was stuck. He was working on a diesel generator which had been on the property, had converted it to biodiesel production. The generator was not running during the day with the amount of power the solar panels were providing. They tried to run it only overnight, to keep their computer links active. I was actually talking to a significant percentage of the people in the world who had an email address right here.

Pawel took us up to a greenhouse of sorts he had created in the central atrium of one of the buildings. Here, he had constructed many frames which held curtains of sheet plastic tubes filled with water, an algae farm. From these, and several other sites he had on the location, he harvested algae and made biodiesel fuel from them.
Pawel was a small man, humble, with graying straggly hair and a bent pair of glasses. Everywhere he went, the smell of a workshop followed, the smell of lubricants and oil.

We met then for lunch, the biggest meal of the day for all of them, and over lunch they talked about progress and problems, a free exchange of knowledge all in the drive for a better and stronger community. They also spoke about capacity, something on everybody’s mind, and if they could bring in anybody else from the surrounding area and sustain their needs with food and power production. They talked about digging up one of the parking lots to make a field for planting, but they weren’t sure if there was enough fuel for the machines to do it, and how fertile the ground would be afterwards. Intelligent sustainability was the most common thread of the meal, and I began to understand, every meal.

Filed by Lori Kim

You might think Boston would be inhospitable to a self-sufficient community, that the natural resources necessary for such a thing, solar power, wind, heating fuel and the like would be insufficient to provide for eight large buildings worth of people, but Conrad Blankenship has done just that.

The centerpiece of the complex is Conrad tower, 31 stories of living space, cafeterias, workspace and entertainment. Conrad Tower is the home of the residents who started the community with Mr. Blankenship, a consortium of MIT professors, captains of industry and Boston elites who keep the interests of the community constantly in their plans. The tower itself is a magnificent example of late pre-apocalypse Bostonian Architecture, having been recently completed and hardly settled before things began to go wrong in the world. Conrad Blankenship took control of the tower through defaults on the mortgage to his bank.

Originally planned as a low carbon footprint green building, generating much of its own power through solar panels and a battery of wind turbines on the roof, Blankenship had the vision to continue this foundation into a self-sustaining community. Since the building was nearly all glass, he built a ring of hydroponic farming and greenhouses on every floor, at harvest time providing nearly half the food of the community. He also created a large roost for chickens, providing eggs and protein for the resident’s nutrition and fertilizer for the crops. Rainwater is collected, filtered and recycled on site.

As I said, many of the eldest residents of this community are technologists. They are responsible for much of the success and additional resource generation of the community. The building overlooks Boston Harbor, once a busy hub of commerce and international shipping. The Harbor is now idle, but it generates power via wave machines designed on site.

More power is generated from additional solar panels found by scavenging parties sent out through the city. It is one of these scavenging parties that helped extricate me from the situation with Pickman. Neighborhoods are scouted for solar panels, which are removed and added to the buildings. I said before they had a fine architectural style, but it’s only if you look past the solar panels which have been put everywhere they can get a purchase. They said they even have a warehouse of solar calculators that have been collected for the tiny panels which are constantly being built into larger devices.

He was very proud of his claim that he was getting several percent more power for each technology the his community has developed that was in use at the time of the calamity. “We’re pushing the boundaries of what could have been. We’re going to do this right this time around. We’ll be cleaner and better, live up to the promise that we didn’t get the chance to.”

Blankenship obviously wants to expand.

Additional power is generated in the health clubs. Participating in an exercise program is compulsory for the well-being and energy needs of the community. Stationary bikes, rowing machines, and other pieces of equipment are connected via belts or chains to dynamos which generate power.

As I said, there are eight buildings currently in the Blankenship complex. Some of them are specially purposed, one is solely a factory tasked with recycling and manufacturing more usable power generators and resources for the community. I saw a new wave driven power generator nearly off the line, as well as glass furnaces and machinery for metal shaping. This is the only part of the complex that ever uses any kind of fossil fuel, I was told. This is mostly a legacy from when the building was an active facility on the harbor. Much of the machinery has been repurposed or relocated to here in order to complete the task of providing for his community.

None of the buildings in the complex were originally meant to go together. They all existed separately before Blankenship took control of them, and this presented quite a challenge for the engineers. Infrastructure had to be built between the buildings, up to a half-mile apart, using technologies that hadn’t been completely implemented before the end of life as we knew it. In order to make it a complex with a common community, infrastructure had to be shared.

The community is linked by a transportation system mostly reserved for the community leaders of various small vehicles from golf carts to a couple plug in hybrids they were lucky enough to find. They have a number of vehicles they run on biodiesel which is brewed on site from a variety of sources, and a few cars that are run on whatever petroleum resources they can come up with. One of the most fortified areas of the community is a field of petroleum tanks. It has been fortified by a wall of crushed cars and the beginnings of a all made of tree trunks, giving it the look of a post-industrial frontier fort. But trust me, don’t try anything funny in this area. They shoot first, and don’t bother to ask questions.

“The more resources are shared, the more the community will work together. If you must fight with our neighbors for basic needs, only conflict can come of it,” he explained to me in an interview. It was a philosophy of R. Buckminster Fuller, whom he’d studied deeply in his education. “We certainly saw this happen as resources became scarce during the calamity. There would certainly be more of us here on earth if some of the wars over resources hadn’t been fought.”

Blankenship is a dynamic and energetic figure, he led some of my tours personally, and the community reveres him as a capable leader, a teacher and a friend. He’s tall, handsome, and always well groomed, like a politician used to be.

The accommodations I saw in Blankenship Tower were luxurious even by pre-apocalypse standards. I later saw more typical accommodations, and these were adequate, clean and secure as things go.

Family life in the community is diverse and active. The children are in school most days of the year with few breaks to speak of. Conrad believes that only an educated community is prepared for progress and survival. He claims that the children have a master’s level education by the time they would have been in college. The task of teaching students falls on the adults of the community, most of whom held college degrees or higher, and this is one of the ways in which community members pay into the community. In time off from school children may go to the beach, though swimming is not allowed unless you are wearing a full hazard suit, as the PCB contamination of the harbor is still high, and traveling away from the community might not be safe.

The community provides three meals a day, strictly rationed. Much of the cuisine is vegetarian and raw, as the scientists feel that cooking reduces the nutrition of the food and uses too much energy for such a population of this one’s current size. Every little bit of energy and nutrition must be utilized, they explain. Nothing can be wasted. Alcohol and other intoxicants are strictly prohibited for residents.

There are medical facilities available that are impressive to say the least. Health care is provided by doctors and nurses in the community, who also share their knowledge in classes. Medication is largely on the edge of expiring, and so the treatment is slipping further and further into history. They are looking into creating their own drugs, but this is a technical skill in extremely short supply in the world at large. If somebody came to them with those skills, they’d accept that person willingly.

Once a week, there is a community meeting where the leaders describe progress in their technology and their resource building. The meetings are enthusiastic and practically a revival for the community residents. New members are introduced to the group, and strategies are mapped out for the coming quarter year. A primary focus of the community is acquiring pre-made technologies and and resources. During these meetings, the real business comes down to scavenging details.

For the residents, military training and service are compulsory. Security is a significant consideration for any community of this type, and trespassers can be assured they will meet heavy resistance. This training also pays off in defense for the scavenging teams. Blankenship gave me confident assurance that in nearly 150 scavenging missions the previous month, they had only lost four people to ambush and attack and most of those attackers had been summarily tracked down and dealt with.

If you’re looking for a community where you can enjoy significant benefits in exchange for hard work and service, this is the place to go.

If you would like to apply to join, the best way is to approach a scavenging party, but be sure to do it carefully. Bring a white flag and keep your hands where they can see them.