Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Underground Bunkers for the Masses

[Originally posted at Slacktivist (page 4).]

He saw something out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned to look at it it was gone. He carried on with his sermon. Then he saw it again, this time he got a better idea of where it was, and thought it might be a hand, but it was again gone before he could get a good look at it. The next time he was more prepared for it, it was definitely a hand, raised as if to ask a question, and then retreating from sight.

On the fourth time it went up he saw who it belonged to, and he asked, "Did you want to say something, Elise?"

At first she mumbled and he couldn't make out anything she said. He tried to be encouraging when he said, "You'll have to speak a little louder."

First she asked if she had a few points right, when he told her she did she asked, "So what do we do?"

"I'd like to say I'm glad you asked, but the truth is I wanted more time to think about it in private. I was especially hoping to run my ideas by a couple of people so that if there's an obvious flaw in them I won't look like a fool in front of the entire congregation.

"So what I've been thinking is this, at some point we'll have to go into hiding, we may have to scatter, we'll need secret places to stay to make it through those times. But to even make it that far we'll need to weather natural disasters and a World War. There is no way that we'll keep secret where we keep on going during these events.

"So my plan for the immediate future is this: we don't keep it a secret. We build the best shelter we can as big as we can. Big enough for every member to live in and bring a friend. Bigger if possible.

"I've been told that money won't be a problem by certain members of the congregation with ... interesting ... life experiences." A section of the pews erupted into maniacal laughter and assorted cackling. "Enough of that. Yours is no longer an evil laugh. You are committing identity theft for Jesus now." Some in the congregation didn't seem to know what to do with that so he elaborated, "The 'victims' are all in Heaven now, they won't mind.

"By the time we've finished it I hope to have accomplished two things. First I want us to have a safe place to stay for some of what's to come. Second, I want everyone in this church to have experience building an underground shelter. I want each of us to have some understanding of what goes into it, what the considerations need to be, I want us to know how.

"We'll hire construction experts if we can, but I want everyone who can have hands on experience to have hands on experience because there's going to come a time when we're going to need to do this again, under harsher conditions, and I want us to be ready.

"I also want everyone to think about where they would put a hidden shelter. At some point we're going to need a network of smaller shelters. We'll work out the how while building the public one together, but the where is something we can each think about on our own.

"So ... um ... that's what I've been thinking. I'm open to ideas." He was about to end the service, then he added, "Elise, that was a good question."
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