Charmer153
Senior Member
Waterfall Village.
Well, I guess it’s storytime again.
“Hello. Welcome to Waterfall Village, such as it is. You can just call me Grandpa—everyone does. Only two of these kids are actually my grandkids, but since I’m the oldest person here, everybody just calls me Grandpa. I suppose you want to hear the story of how civilization fell. I’ve told it so many times that everybody here knows it by heart, but since you’re new to our little community, I guess I can tell it again.
It all started when I was nine years old. When I was a kid, my grandpa had always been… lucky… about business investments. He seemed to know which businesses would succeed and which ones would fail, and he always got out of the ones that were about to collapse. Because of this, our family was financially well off. Unfortunately, we couldn’t really enjoy the benefits that came with our lifestyle. Since we were Black and I went to a mostly Black school, most of my friends had the attitude of ‘we deserve, and you owe.’ Dad had always warned us kids that if our friends ever learned we were rich, their attitude toward us would change from ‘we deserve, and you owe’ to ‘they deserve, and we owe.’ Because of this, whenever we had friends coming over, we would always pretend that we were employees or supervisors working for the true owners of the property. None of our friends could ever know that we were the real owners.
The bad times started when a group of asteroids passed dangerously close to the Earth—so close they traveled between the Earth and the Moon. It took three full days and nights for them all to pass. None of them hit the planet; that wasn’t the problem. The problem was the strange effect they had on Earth’s magnetic field. The field had always been fairly stable, but then it started to pulse. Soon the pulses stabilized at about 60 per second—the same frequency as AC power. This caused the AC power grid to start failing, and soon it was all but gone. DC current actually became more stable, but almost everything electric was designed for AC, so most of it no longer worked right.
The governments of the world could have prevented the fall if they had simply changed how the generators worked. But they said it would cost trillions to replace everything, and it wasn’t in the budget. So they just watched as the country descended into chaos within three months. The power plants still operated and the generators could still produce power, but no matter how much they made, it faded to nothing in less than a mile. As long as the generators and the magnetic pulses were in sync, the power simply wouldn’t transmit.
A lot of the old tech still functions if it’s powered by DC, and a few smaller AC items still work, but not nearly as well. We still have radios, and we’re able to communicate with other survivors. Last we heard, D.C. was burning, and every member of Congress had fled on a ship that had been modified so everything ran on DC. They saved themselves while letting the rest of the country burn.
Before the disaster, this area had been protected wilderness. But my grandpa knew that someday the American government would fall, so he prepared for it. He found this place while hiking. People were allowed to hike here as long as they didn’t disturb the wildlife. He discovered a large dry cave hidden behind the waterfall. When he researched it, he found nothing—no records, no mention of it anywhere. No one else knew it existed.
He decided this would be the perfect place to hide the supplies we’d need to survive and rebuild when things got bad. There were no roads within five miles, and the only way to reach it was to hike from the ranger station seven miles away. He got a job working there, and one night when he was the only one on duty, he hired others to bring in waterproof crates and hide them deep in the cave. Those crates held food stocks, seeds, lumber, tools, and everything else we used to build this community.
It was thanks to him that my family survived and was able to create this small community. I’m sure you’re wondering where all the other people came from, since no one else knew about this place. My dad brought them here. At the time I thought he was clever, but now I wonder if he was just stupid and lucky. He had been a trained soldier before everything collapsed, and that training—plus the darker skills he taught himself—saved us more than once.
We spent a year here building and expanding our small farm. Once things outside had calmed down a bit, he went out looking for more people. But he didn’t want just anyone. He wanted people who would be happy to stay here—safe and hidden. So he started seeking out gangs of slave traders.
He would “give them” small solar panels, small batteries, and a few 12-volt lights for their stock trailers. What they didn’t know was that he had no intention of letting them keep anything—not even their slaves, and not even their lives.
The “gifts” were just bait so they wouldn’t kill him on sight. They let him join them for a short while to “maintain” the batteries and make sure everything worked right. What they didn’t know was that Dad had been a trained soldier before the fall. While in service, he had studied every method of silent killing he could find—research that went far beyond standard training. His preferred method was the neck break: quick, silent, and with no outward sign of harm. Once the head was turned back to face forward, the victim simply looked like they were asleep. Even if another gang member glanced over, they wouldn’t realize anything was wrong unless they noticed the body had stopped breathing.
He was patient and methodical. He waited until they were camped for the night, often striking when they were drunk, tired, or distracted after a successful raid. One by one, he moved through the camp like a shadow, ensuring none of the slavers survived until morning. Only then would he release the slaves—mostly young women and girls, many still in their teens or early twenties, along with a few younger boys between eight and twelve years old. The slavers had kept the older boys out of their stock because they could fight back, but the younger ones were useful for menial labor and posed no real threat. From my perspective as an old man now, anyone under forty was “young,” but the truth was harsher: the slavers had targeted the vulnerable and the fertile. Then he would tell them they were free to go on their own, or they could come with him to a place where they would be safe from other slaver gangs.
A few chose to go on their own, and we don’t know what happened to them. But the ones who came here helped us survive and helped the community grow. Those young boys grew up alongside my brother and me. Over time, they started families of their own with the young women who had also been rescued, which is why we now have several different families in Waterfall Village instead of just ours.
Now, if you follow me, I’ll show you around and explain how we have electricity here.”
We walked over to the base of the waterfall, and he pointed up to show three water wheels. Two were just below the top of the falls and had large gears on the sides, with three small DC generators on each one—six total. They supplied DC power to the batteries that ran all our 12-volt lights.
Just below those two was a large pipe that carried water to two storage tanks. One tank was designed to hold the water so it could heat up and provide hot water for the buildings. The other tank kept the water flowing through it, so it stayed cold and supplied fresh cold water to the buildings, animals, and crops.
The third water wheel was just above the bottom of the falls and had an extended axle leading into a large building. It wasn’t tall, but it was long. Inside, a heavy log served as the main drive shaft, running the entire length of the roof. Heavy pulleys and gears were mounted along it, and from there, wide leather belts and smaller drive belts dropped down to power the machines below: drill presses, sanding machines, table saws, planers, and the other tools we used to turn raw trees into usable lumber and finished woodwork.
That line-shaft system let one steady source of power run every tool at once, or we could engage only the ones we needed by shifting the belts. It was how we built the bridge, the animal pens, the new cabins, and just about everything else that required serious woodworking.
That was how we built the bridge and the pens for the animals. Over the years, we captured and tamed rabbits and pigs. By trading with other survivors, we got chickens and goats, and we found an old farm with some sheep. Slowly we were able to build up a good supply of livestock. Now we can shear the sheep and the rabbits to make wool cloth that we trade with other survivors.
Well, I guess it’s storytime again.
“Hello. Welcome to Waterfall Village, such as it is. You can just call me Grandpa—everyone does. Only two of these kids are actually my grandkids, but since I’m the oldest person here, everybody just calls me Grandpa. I suppose you want to hear the story of how civilization fell. I’ve told it so many times that everybody here knows it by heart, but since you’re new to our little community, I guess I can tell it again.
It all started when I was nine years old. When I was a kid, my grandpa had always been… lucky… about business investments. He seemed to know which businesses would succeed and which ones would fail, and he always got out of the ones that were about to collapse. Because of this, our family was financially well off. Unfortunately, we couldn’t really enjoy the benefits that came with our lifestyle. Since we were Black and I went to a mostly Black school, most of my friends had the attitude of ‘we deserve, and you owe.’ Dad had always warned us kids that if our friends ever learned we were rich, their attitude toward us would change from ‘we deserve, and you owe’ to ‘they deserve, and we owe.’ Because of this, whenever we had friends coming over, we would always pretend that we were employees or supervisors working for the true owners of the property. None of our friends could ever know that we were the real owners.
The bad times started when a group of asteroids passed dangerously close to the Earth—so close they traveled between the Earth and the Moon. It took three full days and nights for them all to pass. None of them hit the planet; that wasn’t the problem. The problem was the strange effect they had on Earth’s magnetic field. The field had always been fairly stable, but then it started to pulse. Soon the pulses stabilized at about 60 per second—the same frequency as AC power. This caused the AC power grid to start failing, and soon it was all but gone. DC current actually became more stable, but almost everything electric was designed for AC, so most of it no longer worked right.
The governments of the world could have prevented the fall if they had simply changed how the generators worked. But they said it would cost trillions to replace everything, and it wasn’t in the budget. So they just watched as the country descended into chaos within three months. The power plants still operated and the generators could still produce power, but no matter how much they made, it faded to nothing in less than a mile. As long as the generators and the magnetic pulses were in sync, the power simply wouldn’t transmit.
A lot of the old tech still functions if it’s powered by DC, and a few smaller AC items still work, but not nearly as well. We still have radios, and we’re able to communicate with other survivors. Last we heard, D.C. was burning, and every member of Congress had fled on a ship that had been modified so everything ran on DC. They saved themselves while letting the rest of the country burn.
Before the disaster, this area had been protected wilderness. But my grandpa knew that someday the American government would fall, so he prepared for it. He found this place while hiking. People were allowed to hike here as long as they didn’t disturb the wildlife. He discovered a large dry cave hidden behind the waterfall. When he researched it, he found nothing—no records, no mention of it anywhere. No one else knew it existed.
He decided this would be the perfect place to hide the supplies we’d need to survive and rebuild when things got bad. There were no roads within five miles, and the only way to reach it was to hike from the ranger station seven miles away. He got a job working there, and one night when he was the only one on duty, he hired others to bring in waterproof crates and hide them deep in the cave. Those crates held food stocks, seeds, lumber, tools, and everything else we used to build this community.
It was thanks to him that my family survived and was able to create this small community. I’m sure you’re wondering where all the other people came from, since no one else knew about this place. My dad brought them here. At the time I thought he was clever, but now I wonder if he was just stupid and lucky. He had been a trained soldier before everything collapsed, and that training—plus the darker skills he taught himself—saved us more than once.
We spent a year here building and expanding our small farm. Once things outside had calmed down a bit, he went out looking for more people. But he didn’t want just anyone. He wanted people who would be happy to stay here—safe and hidden. So he started seeking out gangs of slave traders.
He would “give them” small solar panels, small batteries, and a few 12-volt lights for their stock trailers. What they didn’t know was that he had no intention of letting them keep anything—not even their slaves, and not even their lives.
The “gifts” were just bait so they wouldn’t kill him on sight. They let him join them for a short while to “maintain” the batteries and make sure everything worked right. What they didn’t know was that Dad had been a trained soldier before the fall. While in service, he had studied every method of silent killing he could find—research that went far beyond standard training. His preferred method was the neck break: quick, silent, and with no outward sign of harm. Once the head was turned back to face forward, the victim simply looked like they were asleep. Even if another gang member glanced over, they wouldn’t realize anything was wrong unless they noticed the body had stopped breathing.
He was patient and methodical. He waited until they were camped for the night, often striking when they were drunk, tired, or distracted after a successful raid. One by one, he moved through the camp like a shadow, ensuring none of the slavers survived until morning. Only then would he release the slaves—mostly young women and girls, many still in their teens or early twenties, along with a few younger boys between eight and twelve years old. The slavers had kept the older boys out of their stock because they could fight back, but the younger ones were useful for menial labor and posed no real threat. From my perspective as an old man now, anyone under forty was “young,” but the truth was harsher: the slavers had targeted the vulnerable and the fertile. Then he would tell them they were free to go on their own, or they could come with him to a place where they would be safe from other slaver gangs.
A few chose to go on their own, and we don’t know what happened to them. But the ones who came here helped us survive and helped the community grow. Those young boys grew up alongside my brother and me. Over time, they started families of their own with the young women who had also been rescued, which is why we now have several different families in Waterfall Village instead of just ours.
Now, if you follow me, I’ll show you around and explain how we have electricity here.”
We walked over to the base of the waterfall, and he pointed up to show three water wheels. Two were just below the top of the falls and had large gears on the sides, with three small DC generators on each one—six total. They supplied DC power to the batteries that ran all our 12-volt lights.
Just below those two was a large pipe that carried water to two storage tanks. One tank was designed to hold the water so it could heat up and provide hot water for the buildings. The other tank kept the water flowing through it, so it stayed cold and supplied fresh cold water to the buildings, animals, and crops.
The third water wheel was just above the bottom of the falls and had an extended axle leading into a large building. It wasn’t tall, but it was long. Inside, a heavy log served as the main drive shaft, running the entire length of the roof. Heavy pulleys and gears were mounted along it, and from there, wide leather belts and smaller drive belts dropped down to power the machines below: drill presses, sanding machines, table saws, planers, and the other tools we used to turn raw trees into usable lumber and finished woodwork.
That line-shaft system let one steady source of power run every tool at once, or we could engage only the ones we needed by shifting the belts. It was how we built the bridge, the animal pens, the new cabins, and just about everything else that required serious woodworking.
That was how we built the bridge and the pens for the animals. Over the years, we captured and tamed rabbits and pigs. By trading with other survivors, we got chickens and goats, and we found an old farm with some sheep. Slowly we were able to build up a good supply of livestock. Now we can shear the sheep and the rabbits to make wool cloth that we trade with other survivors.
