u/Master_Steward

After our scout almost fell victim to the same fate as Sir John Franklin from “The Terror”, we discovered something unexpected beneath the opaque icy ground of the Frostlands!

It looked like something akin to an underground emergency bunkhouse that had just been built a couple of weeks ago, as indicated by the lack of accumulating ice build-up around the timbers (either that or the wood was treated with antifreeze and anti-fungal wood preservatives to keep it from deteriorating and rotting near the geothermal steam vents warming up the shelter space)

The tins of preserved meats and fruits (hopefully without any defective lead soldering), various exotic trinkets, and a bunker box full of coal made It clear that the old tyrannical Captain had planned to escape from the New Edenberra to start a comfortable life in exile after his city came crumbling down from both the tremors and the political fallout!

Thanks a lot, old Captain! Great use of our tax dollars!

Then again, it would serve well as our secondary scouting headquarters base, function as our new safety shelter and greatly cut down on travel time as we expand our horizons. Just set up a beacon to mark the stash house in the Frostlands and use it as both our new waypoint and whiteout bunker!

It is not uncommon for persons experiencing extreme conditions, social isolation and chronic crisis (e.g. lost in the whiteout storms) to experience what is commonly known as “the third man” effect, in which an auditory and sometimes visual hallucination appears as a another third-party entity in the sufferer’s mind, and they are not uncommon among expedition explorers, mountaineers and victims of life-threatening attacks. This is no different for the lonely man who probably most most of his family members to either starvation or the tremors, and why the guard took pity on the old man in spite of the bust taking up precious space and weighing down the evacuation vehicle.

However, if you are carrying important items required to sustain life support, such as wheelchairs, medications, oxygen tanks, crutches, medicinal stashes, heating units, or any other life-support systems, I may reconsider letting them all in, provided their equipment or tool does not run on batteries, which would become a fire hazard in the evacuation vehicle! As such, Walter would had still been told to leave the bust behind (and have it over as a practice dummy for the New Edinburgh shooting range)

Oh, by the way, u/MrVillager1, WE ARE NOT THROWING MR WALTER OR ANY EVACUEES INTO THE MAGMA!

In spite of a few months in New London, the new O.C.F. in New London are only somewhat open with what their zeitgeist entails, though they have not given much details yet on what their true agenda is for this city they only just migrated a few months ago.

As of the date of this posting, the number of "Virtuosi" in the delegate seats in my New London council has dropped from 83 to 62 after my long absence. While some showstoppers just don't have what it takes to make it big in New London, a couple still remained with the intent of transforming New London into a extravagant musical tourist hotspot that will cater to all folks, regardless of their status, community group or faction affiliation(or so they claim...)

This is what the census auditors managed to gather so far from the Virtuosi's main zeitgeist:

"Through vicissitude, we will prosper in a crescendo

Every talent is valuable in their own forte

Verity nurtures a sound mind con spirito"

NOTE: The faction member is modelled after Vtuber Midas and was chosen to represent the new "gilded age" for post-Frost musicians, entertainers and showstoppers seeking to start and end their life's sonata with a banging fortissimo

The subtitle "Absolute Zero" was made up on a the fly as a pun to both the temperature at which atoms and molecules exhibit minimal entropy, but is also a subtle reference to how conditions in the city would deteriorate and descend to a standstill if even one simple error offended, smeared or even criticizes one of the O.C.F.s (still working on how that would operate)

Original meme: https://www.reddit.com/r/workmemes/comments/1wdj4x1/couldnt_agree_more/

NOTE: The posting of these screenshots have nothing to do with the recent volcanic eruption of Krakatoa in Jakarta, Indonesia! All ongoing and current volcanic and seismic events occurring in Southeast Asia are purely coincidental!

So I did some research about whether it would be possible to evacuate from an active volcano by literally flying the hell outta dodge, and it turns out that an evacuation hub with blimps or dirigibles would not be recommended if you are taking off near the base of the volcano, because the combination of the rising thermals forced upwards to the face of the mountainous terrain and the sinking downward draft of frosty air currents on the other side would cause the blimps to lose control of its flight and eventually lose their altitude.

Here‘s an example clip of a civilian aircraft almost crashing after passing over an active island volcano in Portugal

But let us say for the sake of the story that the evacuation hub has been built at a safe distance from the volcano at a delegated outpost for a safer escape from the thermal downdrafts across the volcano. The final chapter of this story has already established that the entire map of the Frostlands has been blanketed with volcanic ash and pyroclastic clouds. The altitude of these erupting volcanic plumes can reach up to 20,000 to 50,000 feet (6 - 15 km) into the air, but even the best modern passenger cargo airships can only manage to reach 10,000 feet (3 km).

The pyroclastic clouds are rich in high levels of toxic gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, carbonyl sulfide, various NOx gases, sulfur hexafluoride, hydrogen bromide and a whole other range of halogenic, hydrocarbon and inorganic gaseous compounds. Even if you could somehow build a filtration system to vent out these toxic vapours, the red hot ash and the acidic precipitation formed by the toxic gases mixing in with water vapour would eat through the surface membrane of the floating gas bag and rapidly rust the support chassis holding the blimp together, not to mention the fly ash seeping into the propeller engines and wreaking havoc on its internal components!

With these dire consequential factors, I think it would be safer to perform an emergency evacuation on land and commit a risky mass exodus on foot! Better to die out in the desolate cold wastelands than plummet thousands of feet in the air while the falling airship burns into a crisp! Better yet, why not construct snowmobile all-terrain passenger vehicles to escape the volcano instead of passenger blimps or dirigibles? It’s relatively safer AND quicker than flying into the dark volcanic night sky!

If you want more details, here’s a Quora forum thread discussing about why flying over a volcano with a blimp to collect volcanic airborne debris as fertilizer would be the worst idea ever conceived!

When I first saw the vandalized graffiti writing, I initially laughed at the thought of the insult name “Fartfingers” sounding like a business title of a pleasure centre that specializes in serving customers with a flatulent fetish, though not within the public presence of the Fourfingers who personally showed me the tagged wall on their local pub headquarters.

After relieving myself of the canned laughter, I noticed that the Auroral teenagers had incorrectly wrote the phrase “gaw hem!” when the correct inscription should be written as “gae hame!” (Scottish phrase for “go home!”), as “gaw” means to rub or chafe skin and “hem” is an endearing word for a young lady or lovely girl, so the ill-educated vandals had inadvertently wrote a lewder and more suggestive message that is akin to “Fartfingers, feel free to get touchy with our babes!”.

Just like our Canadian bretheren who emanate their bilingualism in their everyday language, we in Edenberra take pride in proper rules and laws in astute language, even when it comes to cursing, swearing and jabbing in writing or in public speaking! If you are going to insult us, at least finish grammar and reading school first before you start spreading your literary message in your crude chalk or painted murals!

Judging by the accounts on the old ice hag’s behaviour and mannerisms (who probably thought the year is still 1887), this old lady must be suffering from a combination of hypothermia-induced cognitive dissonance, dementia and seasonal affective disorder (abbreviated as SAD). Even if her body is protected from the cold, prolonged exposure to the cold can shrink the blood vessels to the brain and her prior diagnosis of seasonal depression during winter may had exacerbated the mental symptoms of childlike mentality and illusionary delirium, especially after her parents presumably ordered her to stay in the ship before leaving and never came back from their trip to scavenge for food or to seek external help.

She probably had survived for a couple months in the sunken and frozen steamer by scouring for salted food rations and canned preserves, and possibly after her starvation-induced euphoric stupor and prolonged weeks of social isolation, she began rearranging the cargo crates, furniture, wooden prefabs, kitchen appliances and other miscellaneous household items to construct a life-size “dollhouse” to fill in the empty familial and social void of her dying life, similar to how hoarders keep all the past and present trash items within their abode in a futile attempt to fill an unfulfilled hole in their soul.

In the end, I figured that removing all of her possessions and precious cargo will break her out of her demented stupor, literally grow the Hel up, and force her into seeking professional psychiatric help elsewhere, whether it be towards New Edenberra (if it has not yet been buried under a lahar or volcanic ash), the newly formed Second Citizen City in Aurora, or some other unaffiliated camp settlement.

I appreciate the fact that in addition to constructing a central aquaculture farm pool, this fishery also has woven trap nets, smokehouses and buoy markers on hand in case they want to send out fishing canoes to capture and breed more Arctic piscine species (most likely Atlantic cod, Arctic char, Norwegian salmon, Barents Sea salmon and rainbow trout)

While doing research on the topic, I learned that the word “aquaculture” originated back in 1855 as a reference to ice block harvesting from artificial freezing ponds, before it slowly began to be associated with the cultivation of aquatic livestock and crops around 1859 to 1887, after the first modern experimental fish farm popped up in West Bloomfield, New York as a brock trout farm by Stephen Ainsworth.

Here is an excerpt from the Baltimore Sun (published on November 1, 1855):

“THE CULTIVATION OF ICE — Nature is a stepmother to Massachusetts in the climate she has given her; yet she has many crops, and as late in the season, as any State of the Union. She has no sooner housed her corn and potatoes than she commences the cultivation of her ice crop. This aquaculture costs no manure, still the soil is not exhausted. Winter after winter she reaps abundant harvests from the same spot without rotation, and frequently several in a season, as appears from the following paragraph:

We learn from the Bunker Hill Aurora* that a new plan for procuring ice early, or when the season is too mild to freeze over the deep water of Fresh Pond, has been adopted by Mr. Tudor. This is by making an artificial pond, of an equal depth, and letting the water into it as fast as it freezes. Workmen are now engaged in large numbers on the Fresh Pond Meadows in preparing such as pond. It will cover about twenty-five acres of land, with a clay bottom, and so much lower than Fresh Water that the water of the port may let into it in any quantity desirable. As the pond is very shallow, it will freeze over readily, and it would seem must secure a crop of ice in the mildest of our winters. Of course it may be cropped as often as it can be frozen of sufficient thickness. The making of the pond, it is calculated, will cost about $25,000, or $1,000 per acre, and the necessary buildings for storing the ice about as much more.”

*No relation to the Aurora colony (it’s a historical newspaper company in Massachusetts)

Even if my diplomatic and trade relations with Aurora has established far enough that we should be considered allies, this is no excuse to back out from my deontological duty to enforce freedom and liberty for all citizens of New Edenberra.

The lack of sufficient capital industrial machinery and insignificant competitive advantage in coal mining, goods manufacturing and raw materials extraction may be the reason why Aurora had to resort to the slave market to uphold their labour-intensive workforce. It still does not justify their practice, but I can understand why they would resort to these extreme measures.

Thus, after I freed their slaves from their chains, dog collars, leg braces and handcuffs, I will compensate the former Auroral algae plantation and fishery owners with industrial investment and subsidization into their business ventures, so that they would not have to resort to slavery any longer to uphold large food demand (both locally and abroad)

When I first heard about the mass grave site at our new residential community construction site at Second Citizen City, I seriously thought that one of Sawney Bean’s incestuous descendants may had survived and started roaming around the Frostlands killing off the Lochmores and hiding their bodies in plain field view of Aurora!

But then after realizing that this was a result of a simple relations dispute turned mass brawl fest turned mass genocidal war between the Auroral colonists and the former Captain’s fascist goons, I decided to butt in as the foreign third-party impartial judge on the matter and commit to my deontological duty of enacting compensatory justice with restitution money to the families of the Aurora victims

Though I may not know the full details of how this mass purge had started, my main headcanon theory is that the old Captain became insulted and offended by one of the locals who expressed resentment and disappointment in his exploitation of the colonial fisheries and algae farmers, and levying heavy taxation without representation of the satellite colonialists, which prompted a punitive expedition to decimate the dissidents within key targeted districts

We cannot move forward if we do not address to the burdensome chained weight of the past…

Their faction title Lochmores originates from the Scottish Gaelic word meaning “great loch” (or the great lake, more specifically a landlocked inlet of the sea), which may refer to their numerous frozen fishing grounds around their newly independent former colony of Aurora (though it could refer to their former freshwater loch homeland located in Sutherland of Scotland)

Before the game developers completely removed the action interface with the Lochmores and Tinkerers in Aurora, I managed to take a screenshot and recording of their specific traits (and the Overseers placeholder in the Faction Hub before they replaced it with a proper Lochmore profile)

Honestly, part of me wishes they kept the interface options from their early stage development because it would be interesting to add a new faction that will invest into public aquaculture stocks in exchange for return heat stamp dividends (and also add interesting new challenges to the colony management system), but the other part of me felt glad that they removed it entirely because there is no way I can sustain a self-sufficient Arctic cod and salmon farm colony and sushi restaurant without getting my precious fish flayed by these slimy and fishy dock unions!

Heck, I kind of imagine that the sea-faring faction operated like a Loch-on mafia extortion gang similar to the Genovese mafia that once dominated and extorted the Fulton Fish Market in New York! Be late in the deal by even one second or deliver a fish stock one pound short of order, and suddenly the Lochness mafia would inconveniently delay your fish shipments to your colonial city or New Edinburgh and leave them starving for a few more weeks, or if they really want to send a message without attracting too much attention from the guards, they might have an unscrupulous and rebellious dockworker literally sleep with the fishes at nightfall!

And don’t get me started on how these phishing scammers goad you into arranging the Lochmores to be promoted to high-ranking official spots as representatives of the workers’ union, CEOs in aquacultural firms, or market regulators in the private fishing sector! Like a fat pelican who likes his feathers preened with fatty fish oil, the Lochmores would extort the local union dockworkers, corporate brown-nosers, and local politicians to carry their fat feathery and oily ass up the socioeconomic and political ladder, instead of flying up there themselves while they flaunt their greedy beak full of cold hard catch!

And while they do not mind making a chaotic mess in the fish market from behind the scenes, they expect the dockworkers and fishing captains to run a really tight icebreaking ship and not pull any punches, while also hypocritically expecting us to protect their own interests from other new competing mafia fish firms, just so the Lochmores would appear ”friendlier“ and ”amicable” in their public relations!

On the other hand though, I do like the fact that you could consign your Lochmores to sell the limited high-quality and high-calorie surplus fish stocks at higher market equilibrium prices to maximize profit shares at the deadweight loss of consumer welfare. Just imagine one of the Lochmore-affiliated fishmongers singing one of those catchy market jingles like “One Pound Fish” at the New Edenberra expats!

Thanks to my prior capital investment into iron smelting, blue steel production and prefabs construction, I have no need to dismantle an important timeless piece of New Edenberra’s historical heritage! Maybe someday, we’ll turn this into a tourist museum site to keep our city’s memory alive…

But my winters are 18c at a minimum here in Australia. But went to Japan at the start of the year and loved it.

Source: https://x.com/updatingonrome/status/2093525351930515548

Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures | LOW←TECH MAGAZINE

"During the first half of the twentieth century, Soviet citrologists grew (sub)tropical plants in temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius – outdoors, and without the use of glass or any fossil fuel-powered assistance."

Click on the news article link above to learn more about this pro-adaptation hothouse technique!

Hel, ditch the hothouse all together and start creeping out your machinist neighbors!

You'll be growing so many lemons and oranges at your limonarium that even Jackie Frost will leave New London with a sour taste in his mouth!

Based on the investigation into this amateurish blasting coal mine on this scorched and frozen beach boardwalk, there are a couple of highlighted errors I would like to point out

1. The demolitionists didn’t packed enough sodium bicarbonate powder (or any inert dust) to cool down the hot byproduct gases of the explosion and dampen its blasting effect against the stability of the whole mine itself
2. They did not clean up the pink contaminated snow after they gave up on the nitro-blasting coal mine project
3. Somebody left the picrate solution open down the office room which evaporated and deposited crystallized explosive salt residue in the walls and door frames
4. The Aurorans did not store their sensitive explosives and blasting caps in separate underground concrete warehouse bunkers to minimize risk of accidental explosions
5. Miners did not follow safety procedures such as no smoking in the mines, or do not use outdated mine gas lamps with inadequate shielding from firedamp and explosive debris!
6. There is no tag board to keep track of which personnel has entered and departed the blasting mine zone

Learn the deadly mistakes of the past so that others may live to work another day in the future!

According to the the doctor experts in general medicine, if you are experiencing extreme hypothermia after prolonged exposure to the Arctic Frost, DO NOT DIRECTLY place any part of your body directly onto a hot surface such as a stove, heat pipe or radiator!

Since the extreme cold would induce numbness on the pain nerves, the hypothermic person would not be able to register the sudden high-temperature shock exposure onto the skin, leading to severe damage to the skin to second to third degree burns!

If you want to provide medicinal warm to yourself (or to another hypothermia victim), first remove any freezing wet clothing and wrap the frostbitten area with a warm dry blanket for 30 minutes.

Draw an adequately lukewarm bath or fill up a warm bowl or bucket of lukewarm water (NEVER HOT BOILING) and gently soak the affected frostbitten body (or body part) for 30 minutes. Take it slow and steady to avoid temperature shock to the body.

Drink ONLY warm non-alcoholic beverages (alcohol consumption may make you feel warm but that sensation is actually caused by the dilation of blood vessels, which can actually expedite loss of body temperature heat away from the core and worsen the hypothermia symptoms)

P.S. DO NOT accept strangers' invitations to warm shelter at the Auroran district! They only want your money, not your welfare! New Edinburgh already has sufficient rockwool insulation and other construction materials to renovate all housing districts in Second Citizen City!