Ground Zero and the Children of Kakadu

By Jan Ulf

Ground Zero and the Children of Kakadu

Set in the year 2093: this 190 page, 60,000 word story is a rollicking yarn about a tech savvy tribe of 1,200 Home Central survivors of an apocalyptic 30 year mini ice-age in outback Western Australia when it rains for the first time in seventy years.

Of the ensuing flood, the story follows the trials and tribulations of two bow and arrow wielding ‘Home Central’ scouts, Rachel Considine and Stuart Hopkins, who find themselves confronted by an entire army of bloodthirsty, machine gun toting cannibalistic ‘outlanders’ with nefarious, somewhat ‘other worldly’ intentions...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jan Ulf
• Release date: Apr 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9780648747710

Book preview

Introduction

It was Glyphosate and the advent of broad-acre prescription farming in the early 1980’s when all things old became new; what virgin handmaiden, fragile, beautiful and fair, the plow would nary dream touch: would come to be raped and pillaged on a hitherto, never before-seen industrial scale...

As with any new piece of ground, in three short years... the humus layer would be depleted. Having killed the mycorrhizal fungi mycelium in the process of wiping out the native pastures; it was with no means of turning back that the farmers, cap in hand, became slave to an ever-increasing reliance on artificial fertilizers and chemicals.

In Australia, what was forty-five million hectares of land under cultivation in 1980 had become 100 million hectares by 2020.

Of the resident mycorrhizal fungi mycelium and its remarkable ability to exclude foreign invasive weeds through its symbiotic relationship with its native pasture host; the multinational fertilizer and chemical companies, and their front-of-house agronomists cared little.

Of the incredibly carbon rich organic humus layer, an upfront cash crop bonanza for the farmers when it came to covering the costs of clearing and opening up new country; the multinationals, and every successive representative department of agriculture from 1980 onward, cared even less.

At the start of the industrial revolution in 1760, global atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were 280ppm. By 1980, the carbon dioxide levels had increased to 340ppm. By 2020, and with no end in sight... the carbon dioxide levels in the earth’s atmosphere had increased a further 80ppm to the dizzying heights of 420ppm, the highest in 3,000,000 years.

Choked in dust, bogged of sand, baked, flooded and frozen; thus did all things great and small have cause to fall and fail.

Of scorching winds of drought and fire, did ten years of stratospheric dust and sand storms, and four years of fifty degree Category 5 summer hurricanes, target the naked heat and what remaining humus could be had of the 450 million hectares of Australia’s farm, and grazing lands for fuel.

T’was the early morn of the 14th of June, 2034: when the outside ambient temperature suddenly fell from minus twenty degrees, to minus 146 degrees Centigrade and colder for three days and nights. Repeated thrice in a fortnight, what followed was thirty years of rolling Antarctic hurricanes, and continuous ice storms for the better part of nine months of every successive year.

Of cities burned, buried, and frozen solid, did a few, a very few: and the even fewer in the know... dig in with a plan to survive.

A Brief History of Home Central

Richard Dodds (the third) who just happened to be one of the wealthiest men on the face of the planet, had a demonstrable fondness for the finer things in life, most especially food; not only was Richard Dodds larger than life in every respect, he was enormous.

Since suffering a series of heart attacks at the age of fifty-two, the man had been on just about every diet imaginable. That his hard work was always in vain, his weight would return with a vengeance, and then some.

This time it would be different, quite apart from snacking on real sugar based treats whenever he felt like it, Dodds had managed to lose sixty kilograms of weight by way of eating regular, full sized, well-balanced meals. The resulting weight loss, he could directly attribute to the elimination of all artificial sugars, sweeteners, and preservatives from his diet.

Without trying, Dodds had lost 300 grams a week, every single week for the previous four years. At sixty-one years of age, and 176cm in height, Dodds weighed in at eighty-six kilograms soaking wet.

On borrowed time, as a direct result of his ticker being irreparably damaged by his life’s exertions and very much of the realization ‘the human race is only where it is in spite of itself’, Dodds resolved to make good on every second and minute of what little time he had left.

In his own lifetime, and as a direct result of unprecedented levels of agricultural corporatization all over the planet, Dodds had seen the world’s populations double, and double again. As much as Dodds had an active interest in the sustainability of the environment, as he did the sustainability of anything, he in no way considered himself a ‘tree hugger’ or an environmentalist.

However, but for the dramatic increase in the amount of land previously considered marginal being brought into production, the exponential expansion of the 1970’s onward, could not have been possible. In the ensuing fifty years, the increased availability of land and the proportional increase in corporate chemical science, technical biology, and engineering... had become a finely tuned economic machine, an agricultural love story, and an unprecedented financial bonanza enabled of the sun and the earth, the wind and the rain, and the sky.

In response, and for the better part of twenty years, Richard Dodds had been quietly and anonymously underwriting and funding hundreds of research models worldwide into the causes and possible ramifications of climate change. Ebullient and energetic, Dodds would think nothing of going on record as saying, ‘It’s one thing to go on about what’s wrong with this, that and the other; it’s altogether another thing to propose alternatives and solutions and actually do something about it!’

Goal driven his entire life, once the up front checks and balances boxes had been ticked and the ‘go’ light went green; by way of moving hell on earth if necessary, Dodds would do whatever it took to get the job done. A mover and a shaker who did nothing in halves, Dodds took great pride in the sure knowledge he had never done anything in his life at the expense of someone else.

Quite apart from learning as a child how his great, great, grandfather on his mother’s side had historically eked out an existence of sorts sharecropping in the Texas panhandle in the 1920’s. It was the lesson of his grandfather’s suicide in the late spring of 1929 as a result of biting off more than he could chew, that forevermore became an abject point of conversation for every subsequent Dodds around the dinner table.

Despite having no great affinity for, or personal experience of any form of agricultural pursuit. When it came to making money, Richard Dodd’s finely tuned understanding of the importance of numbers and how they stacked up, had no equal.

In addition to numbers, Dodds knew the value of history, most especially the value of remembering it. It was often, the man would be heard to exclaim to no one in particular ‘those who choose to ignore the past are condemned to repeat it!’

Buried deep in Dodds psyche, lay an acute awareness that ‘not only is gambling for suckers, and life itself is gamble enough - one should never bet or wager any more than they care to lose’. Or, the well tried and trusted, ‘sweetie, that I work far too hard for the money I haven’t got, there’s no way on god’s earth I’m blowing any of it on you.’

As much as Dodds was a bit of a softie, he was nobody’s fool. That he still had the first nickel he ever earned... when it came to the frailties and shortcomings of the less fortunate in life, the man was generous and considerate to a fault.

July the 4th, 2023: As Dodds, fully decked out in chest-high neoprene waders, stood knee deep in ‘cake’ posing for a bevy of cameras with a shovel full of the good stuff in hand, he proudly declared, If you don’t put any cookies in the cookie barrel you won’t get any out.

The proverbial door had just been opened on a digester containing fifteen tons of anaerobically digested personal sewage of over three hundred men, women, and 150 pigs collected over the previous six months. Tellingly, most of the people present for the occasion were more than happy to stand outside in the morning sun to witness such an auspicious moment in the history of ‘Dodds Initiative’.

While the inaugural unveiling was occurring inside a 160’ long x 40’ wide stainless steel, fully insulated, domed roof Nissen Waste Station or ‘Shiglu’... for the assembled audience as they stood outside the Station, the smell was best described as ‘challenging’.

Even though he’d always claimed to the contrary, Dodds very much relished holding the stage and being the centre of attention amongst his peers. Irrespective of what anyone thought, or for that matter did not think... that the unveiling of the first digestor was indeed an auspicious moment, Dodds was more than up to the billion-dollar occasion.

Given the world’s media were not invited, they could not know that Dodds had already personally invested over 3.2 billion dollars of an anticipated 4.5 billion in getting this first thirty tons of human and porcine excrement to the point of being fifteen tons of anaerobically digested cake he was so energetically shoveling into the first wheelbarrow for the first worm tray.

The worm farming operation, integral to the entire biodynamic composting system run by some of the world’s finest soil scientists, geneticists, and biologists; was backed up with the best laboratory equipment and science that money could possibly buy.

That anyone should think to suggest ‘Dodds might be a little eccentric’ would be to utter an understatement of monolithic proportions. Dodds fully intended his technology park (called the Initiative) would ultimately comprise a complex of a two thousand fully insulated hothouses with sufficient accommodation and resources to house and feed up to 2,000 people by 2030.

Located smack in the middle of a totally barren desert in one of the hottest and most arid areas on the face of the planet next to the Sahara Desert. That the project fully stretched the average sensibility at all was mainly due to the fact any thought of produce to market could only be described as somewhat ‘academic’ in the sense there were no sealed roads, or any other roads of any description to speak of. For instance... while the nearest railway line was over 600km away, the nearest ‘as the crow flies’ seaport, stood in at 1,200km.

True facts of the matter be known, the only concession to anything remotely approximating sense and sensibility was the fact that Home Central just happened to be located directly on top of a massive aquifer. Equivalent in size to the Ogallala Aquifer in America, the aquifer contained a ready supply of 560ppm fresh water 1,200 feet down with a head of 400’.

On paper, Dodds Initiative was subsidiary to Ground Zero, a fifteen storey underground former US military installation located 180 kilometres north northwest of Home Central. Officially decommissioned in 2002, Ground Zero was re-commissioned in 2012 as one of eighteen international seed repositories in the event of some sort of catastrophic global cataclysm.

Ground Zero itself, a self funded commercial enterprise underwritten by Dodds Initiative was actually open and available to anyone in the world who wished to reserve a berth and could afford to pay the annual subscription fee up front. ‘Zero’ or ‘Z1’ was designed to accommodate 2,000 people underground on survival rations for a minimum of six years. Being a registered Ark, Ground Zero’s claims, membership, and facilities were subject to biannual audits by both the World Health Organization and the International Red Cross.

It was on the Home Central side of the equation that Dodds’s personal financial input came into play by way of the ‘Initiative’ that paid the salaries of the scientists, their equipment, and laboratories. Apart from Central’s agricultural interests that included machinery, grain, hay, and livestock, the Initiative had also financed and underwritten three hundred and eighty million dollars of water security capital expenditure comprising stainless steel piping, pumps, and associated infrastructure investments.

Effectively speaking, Home Central comprised a satellite joint venture between Richard Dodds and the World Health Organization. On the 1st of July 2016, Home Central’s tenure over 100,000 square kilometres of territory was officially secured by way of a 100-year lease from the Australian Government.

* * * * *

How hot is this sun for the start of July, remarked Don Chick of his wife Marianna.

I know, I’ve noticed, replied Mari. It’s a freezing cold day, and yet it’s burning hot, like being in the Himalayas at 14,000 feet in the middle of January. Remember when we were trekking back in 2010, and had to cover up every bit of exposed skin with clothing and sunscreen at the risk of raised blisters and second degree burns without even feeling it happening?

I do, said Don. It reminds me of northern Scotland in the summer, except this is Central Australia in the middle of winter at 10.00am. That the locals are openly saying the sun doesn’t feel right, you can’t help but wonder what the coming summer is going to be like.

Mmmm, that’s if we get a summer, Mari retorted.

Just then young George Ross turned up, and having the hearing of superman... he exclaimed, Are you two ten-pound poms up and whinging about the weather again? Let me guess, just because the sun happens to be shining and you’re thinking it’s too hot, perhaps I could recommend your immediate deportation back to Stibbington on the premise a little freezing rain will cool the pair of you down no end? Well it just so happens, you might be in luck... I’ve just heard on the radio that the river Cam has burst its banks in Cambridge and Ely in the last 24 hours, and over half of the Midlands are under three feet of water. Hell’s bells guys, I can’t see any reason why the two of you couldn’t go mud running, or even snorkeling to your hearts content.

That Don, Mari, and George were all good friends of long standing, they couldn’t help but share a little smile at the irony of the relative disparity in the varying extremes of weather all over the world; the Middle East, Egypt, Turkey, Mongolia, and western China had all experienced recent heavy rains and flooding.

So how’s the old Shamrock coming along these days, George? enquired Mari. What does your radar tell you about what’s in store for it?

Of Mari’s enquiry, George’s ears twitched ever so slightly; after moving a quarter of an inch forward and then back again, he replied. Currently, Dublin is in the middle of a Category 4 hurricane that has come from the west, all the phones and cells are out, I can’t even call home on the satellite phone, let alone get any kind of response to my emails. Haven’t you guys been watching the news?

No, we haven’t, replied Don. We only just got in for this ‘shite’ ceremony from Zero about two hours ago.

Dodds and his bloody compost in the middle of nowhere, God help us, exclaimed ‘Hoppie’. Smiling and shaking his head, Stuart Hopkins had just joined in the conversation. Stuart Edward Hopkins, the renowned microbiologist had been headhunted out of retirement by Dodds to spearhead the research into the microbial specificity of mycorrhizal fungi from all over the world. Most specifically with a view of ascertaining how different strains may be replicated or propagated into cooperating with specific plants to the exclusion of others, native or otherwise, and at what levels of efficiency.

Birds of a feather, Hoppie and Dodds both recognized the incredible quarantine opportunities the remoteness of the location and its 200 stand-alone independent hothouses supported by several world class biologically secure laboratories could guarantee.

Has anyone seen Sid? enquired Hoppie.

He’s inside the Shiglu with Dodds, the both of them are up to their eyeballs in shit, retorted George shrugging his shoulders to wit his ears twitched in abject agreement.

Ah, just like Sid, no way would he miss the opening of the first digester, remarked Hoppie.

As George grinned, it was with a twinkle in his eye that he exclaimed. If it looks like shit, smells like shit, and tastes like shit - - - it’s fucking shit!

Of wit, Mari grinning in agreement, exclaimed. There’s no way I’d be standing in it up to my knees and shoveling it that’s for sure.

Hear, hear, Mari, exclaimed Don as everyone had a good chuckle.

Hoppie, exclaimed Dodds as he emerged from the digester station and strolled across. While not exactly smelling of roses, he shook everyone’s hands, So Hoppie when did you get here? About ten minutes ago, replied Hoppie. That he had in fact arrived two hours previous in the same Land Cruiser as Don, Mari, and their three year-old son Ryan... having found other, less confrontational things to do in the interim, Hoppie asked. How’s the cake?

I must say the cake appears to have matured very nicely, replied Dodds... that he suddenly relaxed, and took in a breath of relatively fresh air, he said. Given the auto-feed wood fired boiler and the automatic hydronic temperature control system has worked an absolute treat from start to finish, it only remains that the methane collection system has several minor issues to attend to before it can autonomously assist with maintaining a constant reliable temperature in conjunction with the wood. That it’s a good start, right now I think I’ll go and have a soak in a bath for a little while, then we can all catch up over lunch.

Having excused himself, Dodds turned and wandered off in search of a bath full of hot water, a bar of soap, and some shampoo.

Little did anyone realize when the first sod of cake was dug on the 4th of July 2023 the die of things to come had already been cast. In ten short years, hell itself would literally freeze over; tellingly... even as and when it