We actually had a Bedford lorry for the farm. Very handsome in its own right
There Is No Depression: Protect and Survive New Zealand
- Thread starter Tsar of New Zealand
- Start date
We actually had a Bedford lorry for the farm. Very handsome in its own right
There is always room for more discussion on the economics of forestry as well, you know
Considering we've managed to squeeze more discussion out of copper wire than entire updates have garnered in the past, I've no doubt about that
The industry's going to more than grind to a halt; it'll be practically mothballed outside government mandates. At present ITTL, very much a question for later.
I've not found anything in my trawlings and retrawlings of the P&S-verse (I've been compiling a list of cities hit ITTL), but I assume very. As in "Tiwai Point can afford to go slow for a while" very.
Oh, definitely. I've been consulting the Stats NZ Yearbooks around the time and while there was a considerable boom in the oil industry beginning at the time, oil production domestically (there were coastal tankers on hand to ferry oil from Taranaki to larger ports, or simply to Marsden directly) wasn't unimpressive, but it was only enough to satisfy maybe 40% of NZ's petroleum demands. Maybe.
Here, a good 300,000 will be dead by the end of March, which should take demand down a bit; note also that New Zealand was required under OECD regulations to have 90 days' fuel in reserve (this was stored in Taranaki) and that there is a general if loosely-enforced ban on use of roads for non-essential purposes. All of this should help eke out petrol reserves for some time; New Zealand's fortunate enough that the oil we have is light and sweet - so avgas for flights to Australia (and perhaps further afield
) should be available. Again, more on this to come later.I vividly remember as a child the two Austin Allegras mouldering away around the back of my grandparents' house; when I asked Grandad about them he was not particularly glowing about the quality of British-made cars. This being shortly before he hauled them down a gully with the tractor (a Lamborghini which lasted 50 years and more - his opinion of Italian engineering was and remains substantially higher). He did save a special place in his heart for the old Bedford trucks from his dad's hauling firm, though, as well as an ancient International.
That is the thing with any scenario like this, or ISOT, massive structural unemployment will have to result. It will be like having a Great Depression over-night, so there is no way the government will have the capacity to deal with programmes, even if the civil service HQ hadn't been obliterated.
People are going to have return to the country in vast numbers. Speaking for North Otago anyway, there was a fair bit in the way of spare housing about too. Going back to the Hydro town topic too, places like Otemetata will have houses by the hundreds free.
It'll be a bit like the late 80s-early 90s, when a lot of long term unemployed/ beneficiaries moved out to the cheap rural housing to make their frozen benefits go further, along with growing their own.
Which will have the odd effect of reverting the decline in rural schools.
People are going to have return to the country in vast numbers. Speaking for North Otago anyway, there was a fair bit in the way of spare housing about too. Going back to the Hydro town topic too, places like Otemetata will have houses by the hundreds free.
It'll be a bit like the late 80s-early 90s, when a lot of long term unemployed/ beneficiaries moved out to the cheap rural housing to make their frozen benefits go further, along with growing their own.
Which will have the odd effect of reverting the decline in rural schools.
BooNZ
Banned
Oh, definitely. I've been consulting the Stats NZ Yearbooks around the time and while there was a considerable boom in the oil industry beginning at the time, oil production domestically (there were coastal tankers on hand to ferry oil from Taranaki to larger ports, or simply to Marsden directly) wasn't unimpressive, but it was only enough to satisfy maybe 40% of NZ's petroleum demands. Maybe.
Here, a good 300,000 will be dead by the end of March, which should take demand down a bit; note also that New Zealand was required under OECD regulations to have 90 days' fuel in reserve (this was stored in Taranaki) and that there is a general if loosely-enforced ban on use of roads for non-essential purposes. All of this should help eke out petrol reserves for some time; New Zealand's fortunate enough that the oil we have is light and sweet - so avgas for flights to Australia (and perhaps further afield
I don't believe Marsden processes NZ oil (processes imported heavier grade oil) - I also understood our light and sweet crude gets processed overseas. If this is correct, I assume Marsden can be retooled to process 'the good stuff', but there will be a lot less fuel overall.
In respect of employment, the shortfalls of fuel may create vacancies in the manual labour department...
In OTL I recall watching the following at the movies not long after the POD (mid 1984?)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085404/
I am not very familiar with the P&S timelines, but do nuclear winters feature? At the time as a kid it was the most stressful concern.
LPG cars were non uncommon in the lower South Island in the late 80s, early 90s. The petrol stations all seemed to have tanks too. CNG was a bit more exotic, although perhaps the reverse was true up north.
BooNZ
Banned
I did vaguely recall subsidised CNG conversions pre-POD, but did an inter-web check to be sure - I thought CNG conversions were more common, but that was based on local observations rather than explicit knowledge. There was not much boot after a CNG tank was installed.
My observations are purely anecdotal I'm afraid, rural Otago. CanKiwi probably has a view on this, given his background
Yeah, I do remember a lot more CNG powered vehicles. Dad of a friend of mine had his Holden converted. The CNG tank took up a good half of the boot. It also made it hilarious when North Americans pulled into a petrol station and said "fill her up with gas" - Canadian guy I worked with did that and the petrol station attendant spent a good five minutes looking at his car before telling him "you don't use gas with this car....". Anyway, I think the biggest CNG and LPG users were fleet vehicles, but you did loose a fair bit of power.
What I would see is more than a few Kiwi's turning to this as a solution: http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/01/wood-gas-cars.html - it worked in WW2 and it's something that most Kiwi mechanics could handle... and it's not like there's a shortage of wood. So you'd probably see a charcoal-making industry expand big time to meet demand.
The NZ Army had huge numbers of old Bedford trucks - I think the Unimogs only came in sometime in the mid-1980's - I spent a lot of time in the back of those old 4Wd Bedfords. They could go anywhere and they were tough.....
Guess who's back?
...although sadly, not bearing an update: filming takes up some long, long days and the black dog nipping intermittently at the heels like I'm a cartoon postman hasn't helped
Still, I'm back, for what it's worth, and I aim to have an update up by the start of next week (holiday study? What holiday study?). Don't expect it to be sunny on the home front...
...although sadly, not bearing an update: filming takes up some long, long days and the black dog nipping intermittently at the heels like I'm a cartoon postman hasn't helped
Still, I'm back, for what it's worth, and I aim to have an update up by the start of next week (holiday study? What holiday study?). Don't expect it to be sunny on the home front...
Lovely-looking truck.
An ep of Wartime Farm had them converting a 1930s Morris ambulance to coal fume propulsion.
Click the link, it'll show you the exact bit where they're finishing the conversion. While the fumes don't make the van terribly fast, they still make it more than enough operational.
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British, but locally assembled (Nelson I think). The former NZ Motor Corporation warehouse building in Petone is about to be demolished - in 1984 it was still used by the NZMC. I reduarly drove two minis in my time, and owned one of them. Never drove it to Invercargill though. A friend of mine had a Vauxhall Chevette that became increasingly comically finicky to drive.
Also spent a good deal of my young adulthood driving around in a Triumph 2500TC. Good car if it was well sorted and looked after, although I did learn from them why the Lucas of Lucas Electrics was often referred to as "Lucas, Prince of Darkness".
NOTE: This is not the full update. I've had some writer's block with the second half, so I've just posted one and a half vignettes of the three or four the update details. When I finish, I'll either edit this post or just repost the whole thing - without further ado...
XIV. We Have No Drug Addicts
Well, it’s the happening thing
And it’s happening to you…
Civil Defence Processing Centre AKL-04 [Mangere]
March 20, 1984
“So what were you planning to do, once you left school?”
Grace turned to face Melanie, from whom the question had come.
“Sorry?”
“What did you have lined up, you know, once you were gonna leave school?”
Grace shrugged, the loose-fitting shirt she’d stuffed into a bag a month ago now nearly falling off her shoulder as she did so. “Uni, I guess. I mean, I got bursary last year so…”
A sage little nod. “Fair enough, cruising along in Upper Sixth this year then, huh?”
Grace shrugged again, looking around the tent as if to say ‘you call this cruising along?’ as she absently adjusted the shirt and propped herself up in the camp stretcher with an elbow.
“I guess so. Plan was to go to uni and do a BA in…well, whatever you do in a BA that actually gets you a job.” And whatever wouldn’t prove Mum too right, her mind added tartly. “Past that –” another shrug. “Why, what about you?”
“Well, I’m in my – I mean, I guess I was in my second year at uni. Or about to be, anyway. So much for worrying about the start of lectures, huh?” Grace gave the faintest hint of a smile in response to the wry grin Melanie shot at her. “Still, fucked if we’re gonna need lawyers anymore. I mean – well, if we do need lawyers I’m fine, but yeah, otherwise? Fucked.”
In the faintly uncomfortable silence which followed, punctuated only by the faint drips of water off canvas, it slowly dawned upon Grace that saying something might be desirable.
“Law?”
“Yeah, I’ll bet you thought the Bomb was unlikable, eh?” A snort. “Yeah, I thought I’d try to be a lawyer. Apparently there are more psychopaths there than anywhere else, so I guessed an iron-arsed bitch like me” this statement delivered with a flourish of the hand “would do pretty well.” Another silence. “Still, what can you do, eh?”
“Yeah,” replied Grace quietly, immediately thinking of all the other things you couldn’t help these days as the squelch of footsteps announced the return of the other three. “Suppose what we could do is go out for dinner. Who knows, maybe they stopped a shipment of steaks.”
If the weather had improved even a little, the food certainly hadn’t. Evidently, the steaks were not forthcoming. There were also a lot more people around, so fighting for a place in line for the twice-daily offerings at the mess tents was increasingly a fight in the literal sense. Grace – being a skinny, blonde, seventeen year-old girl – was practically disqualified from the start; even going with one or two others it was an uphill battle to avoid being buffeted about in the mad crush as the usual pack of bastards muscled their way to the front.
Not that you’d ever say no to said usual pack, not if you had any sense. For all that they were reprehensible human beings they had the muscle to back it up, or at least enough to intimidate a few teenagers. From the way they talked and carried themselves and what they wore (crudely, lewdly, and a lot of black) they were Westies of some shade (with the perhaps jaundiced view of someone who considered herself to be from the real Auckland, Grace took that as sufficient explanation for why they acted like they did). On that note, one of them, a scrawny little man with the clinging odour of cigarette smoke and pub urinals, took the chance to brush up against Grace as he made his way towards the row of tents. It wasn’t an accident. It was never an accident. But you didn’t mention it; she’d only been here a week and you heard what happened to people who got too mouthy about liking or disliking things. She merely suppressed the urge to throw a punch or throw up and nudged Melanie, rolling her eyes as the malingering little twat – Rat-face, she’d come to think of him – caught up with his substantially bigger mates to join in on their laughing about something.
From the looks of the great aluminium vats, it was some sort of stew tonight, which for all its sins at least meant meat. As the three of them neared the long bench the sound of scraping became audible as the trusty, a man with forearms like suckling pigs and the bizarrely theatrical motions of a frustrated actor press-ganged into food service, swept the bottom of the barrel with the ladle, looking up and shaking his head at the head of the line (about ten people up from the girls).
“Twenny minutes,” he called out with a shrug, sitting back against a table (which gave a short startled squeak of protest) as he started waiting indifferently. And well he might: what were people here going to do, complain to the management?
So of course it would be then that who should pass by their way but the Bastard Squad themselves? Even as Grace made to talk to Melanie, one of them – not the rat-faced one, but a bigger one covered in uneven stubble and splotches of dirt – looked her way and leered, wafting the bowl in her direction as he spoke.
“If you’re hungry,” he called across the aisle, “I’ve got some meat here for you.” Rat-face sniggered in anticipation of the joke. “Oh, and some in the bowl too, if you’re hungry afterwards.”
Grace paled and tried to shrink away You’re a target shit you’re a target this is bad this is bad get out of the situation carefully shit what do I say…
…and then Melanie laughed and did the unthinkable. She responded.
“Fuck off mate, even the shit they give us here is more filling than your pissy little cheerio.”
That...well, if nothing else it got their attention. More than a few people around laughed at the stunned-looking man. The bloke behind the serving table gave a melodramatic little clap and made as if to doff his hat, sweeping his ladle about. Grace gave a surprised gasp of laughter herself, which quickly died in her throat as a scowl darkened the man’s face like the storm clouds which had only just passed, his finger jabbing at the two young women.
“You two,” he said, “had better fucking learn your place.” As people started to cluster around again, he took note of the situation and apparently decided to make a tactical withdrawal. “C’mon,” he snapped at his mates as he stormed off, leaving a nervous wake behind him. Rat-face shot a glance which was either confused or sympathetic at the two as he trailed along with the pack, the crowd closing back in like the Red Sea after the Israelites. Grace realised she’d stopped inhaling, and drew in a ragged breath. Melanie turned to her.
“So that may not have been my best move ever, but fuck me if it wasn’t satisfying.”
Grace could only tilt her head in assent at that one as her heart slowed back to a normal pace. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be too much of a price for either of them to pay for those fifteen seconds of fame.
Full moon and thunder
Ribbons of blue
Ice on the windows
Ice in my heart…
Christchurch, Canterbury
March 17, 1984
Geoffrey Palmer woke to Saint Patrick’s Day with something he hadn’t permitted himself in two months: a sleep-in. The hotel the Government had commandeered (all through the proper procedures under the Emergency Powers Act, naturally) was a grand Renaissance-style building which sat across the street from the Cathedral, only slightly out of place before the modernist monstrosities which had been sprouting up in the South Island’s largest city for the last decade or so.
The Prime Minister had been given a room overlooking Cathedral Square, and he took a moment to stand and look out over it all while he thought, the steady rain outside falling in the nigh-empty streets.
They’d’ve been celebrating in Chicago come today, he thought. Imagine the University! Even some of the professors eased off if it was a weekday. And the dyeing of the river…only the Americans could think to do that.
Gone now, I suppose. Swept away. Mind you, it’s stone and brick, so maybe bits of it are…
…what about Iowa? It’s in the middle of nowhere in any case; probably it survived to be drowned in a tide of refugees. Virginia U, though…well, it’s up the wop-wops, so it’s probably not too badly-off either. Maybe I should’ve taught at Vic; seems like only my almae matres bloody well copped it as opposed to where I taught…
XIV. We Have No Drug Addicts
Well, it’s the happening thing
And it’s happening to you…
Civil Defence Processing Centre AKL-04 [Mangere]
March 20, 1984
“So what were you planning to do, once you left school?”
Grace turned to face Melanie, from whom the question had come.
“Sorry?”
“What did you have lined up, you know, once you were gonna leave school?”
Grace shrugged, the loose-fitting shirt she’d stuffed into a bag a month ago now nearly falling off her shoulder as she did so. “Uni, I guess. I mean, I got bursary last year so…”
A sage little nod. “Fair enough, cruising along in Upper Sixth this year then, huh?”
Grace shrugged again, looking around the tent as if to say ‘you call this cruising along?’ as she absently adjusted the shirt and propped herself up in the camp stretcher with an elbow.
“I guess so. Plan was to go to uni and do a BA in…well, whatever you do in a BA that actually gets you a job.” And whatever wouldn’t prove Mum too right, her mind added tartly. “Past that –” another shrug. “Why, what about you?”
“Well, I’m in my – I mean, I guess I was in my second year at uni. Or about to be, anyway. So much for worrying about the start of lectures, huh?” Grace gave the faintest hint of a smile in response to the wry grin Melanie shot at her. “Still, fucked if we’re gonna need lawyers anymore. I mean – well, if we do need lawyers I’m fine, but yeah, otherwise? Fucked.”
In the faintly uncomfortable silence which followed, punctuated only by the faint drips of water off canvas, it slowly dawned upon Grace that saying something might be desirable.
“Law?”
“Yeah, I’ll bet you thought the Bomb was unlikable, eh?” A snort. “Yeah, I thought I’d try to be a lawyer. Apparently there are more psychopaths there than anywhere else, so I guessed an iron-arsed bitch like me” this statement delivered with a flourish of the hand “would do pretty well.” Another silence. “Still, what can you do, eh?”
“Yeah,” replied Grace quietly, immediately thinking of all the other things you couldn’t help these days as the squelch of footsteps announced the return of the other three. “Suppose what we could do is go out for dinner. Who knows, maybe they stopped a shipment of steaks.”
If the weather had improved even a little, the food certainly hadn’t. Evidently, the steaks were not forthcoming. There were also a lot more people around, so fighting for a place in line for the twice-daily offerings at the mess tents was increasingly a fight in the literal sense. Grace – being a skinny, blonde, seventeen year-old girl – was practically disqualified from the start; even going with one or two others it was an uphill battle to avoid being buffeted about in the mad crush as the usual pack of bastards muscled their way to the front.
Not that you’d ever say no to said usual pack, not if you had any sense. For all that they were reprehensible human beings they had the muscle to back it up, or at least enough to intimidate a few teenagers. From the way they talked and carried themselves and what they wore (crudely, lewdly, and a lot of black) they were Westies of some shade (with the perhaps jaundiced view of someone who considered herself to be from the real Auckland, Grace took that as sufficient explanation for why they acted like they did). On that note, one of them, a scrawny little man with the clinging odour of cigarette smoke and pub urinals, took the chance to brush up against Grace as he made his way towards the row of tents. It wasn’t an accident. It was never an accident. But you didn’t mention it; she’d only been here a week and you heard what happened to people who got too mouthy about liking or disliking things. She merely suppressed the urge to throw a punch or throw up and nudged Melanie, rolling her eyes as the malingering little twat – Rat-face, she’d come to think of him – caught up with his substantially bigger mates to join in on their laughing about something.
From the looks of the great aluminium vats, it was some sort of stew tonight, which for all its sins at least meant meat. As the three of them neared the long bench the sound of scraping became audible as the trusty, a man with forearms like suckling pigs and the bizarrely theatrical motions of a frustrated actor press-ganged into food service, swept the bottom of the barrel with the ladle, looking up and shaking his head at the head of the line (about ten people up from the girls).
“Twenny minutes,” he called out with a shrug, sitting back against a table (which gave a short startled squeak of protest) as he started waiting indifferently. And well he might: what were people here going to do, complain to the management?
So of course it would be then that who should pass by their way but the Bastard Squad themselves? Even as Grace made to talk to Melanie, one of them – not the rat-faced one, but a bigger one covered in uneven stubble and splotches of dirt – looked her way and leered, wafting the bowl in her direction as he spoke.
“If you’re hungry,” he called across the aisle, “I’ve got some meat here for you.” Rat-face sniggered in anticipation of the joke. “Oh, and some in the bowl too, if you’re hungry afterwards.”
Grace paled and tried to shrink away You’re a target shit you’re a target this is bad this is bad get out of the situation carefully shit what do I say…
…and then Melanie laughed and did the unthinkable. She responded.
“Fuck off mate, even the shit they give us here is more filling than your pissy little cheerio.”
That...well, if nothing else it got their attention. More than a few people around laughed at the stunned-looking man. The bloke behind the serving table gave a melodramatic little clap and made as if to doff his hat, sweeping his ladle about. Grace gave a surprised gasp of laughter herself, which quickly died in her throat as a scowl darkened the man’s face like the storm clouds which had only just passed, his finger jabbing at the two young women.
“You two,” he said, “had better fucking learn your place.” As people started to cluster around again, he took note of the situation and apparently decided to make a tactical withdrawal. “C’mon,” he snapped at his mates as he stormed off, leaving a nervous wake behind him. Rat-face shot a glance which was either confused or sympathetic at the two as he trailed along with the pack, the crowd closing back in like the Red Sea after the Israelites. Grace realised she’d stopped inhaling, and drew in a ragged breath. Melanie turned to her.
“So that may not have been my best move ever, but fuck me if it wasn’t satisfying.”
Grace could only tilt her head in assent at that one as her heart slowed back to a normal pace. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be too much of a price for either of them to pay for those fifteen seconds of fame.
Full moon and thunder
Ribbons of blue
Ice on the windows
Ice in my heart…
Christchurch, Canterbury
March 17, 1984
Geoffrey Palmer woke to Saint Patrick’s Day with something he hadn’t permitted himself in two months: a sleep-in. The hotel the Government had commandeered (all through the proper procedures under the Emergency Powers Act, naturally) was a grand Renaissance-style building which sat across the street from the Cathedral, only slightly out of place before the modernist monstrosities which had been sprouting up in the South Island’s largest city for the last decade or so.
The Prime Minister had been given a room overlooking Cathedral Square, and he took a moment to stand and look out over it all while he thought, the steady rain outside falling in the nigh-empty streets.
They’d’ve been celebrating in Chicago come today, he thought. Imagine the University! Even some of the professors eased off if it was a weekday. And the dyeing of the river…only the Americans could think to do that.
Gone now, I suppose. Swept away. Mind you, it’s stone and brick, so maybe bits of it are…
…what about Iowa? It’s in the middle of nowhere in any case; probably it survived to be drowned in a tide of refugees. Virginia U, though…well, it’s up the wop-wops, so it’s probably not too badly-off either. Maybe I should’ve taught at Vic; seems like only my almae matres bloody well copped it as opposed to where I taught…
Just a question, what are your thoughts on nuclear weapons and due authority?
Just a question, what are your thoughts on nuclear weapons and due authority?
All I can say is that I know I need to go to bed when the only image I get is the Queen riding a bomb like Major Kong
But come on, I have enough trouble purging the Tinfoil Hat Brigade on Facebook events; don't invite them here!