13th
Haven Needs You!
Ok, so, I guess we need to decide who we need.
Haven has to be fully self-sustaining, like a kibbutz for the catastrophe era, so the community needs members who can get the place running and keep it running.
On the food side, while everyone will be involved in the day to day growing (that’s part of the package - if you want to be part of Haven, you have to be willing to get dirty: weeding, pulling up spuds, sewing etc), we need professionals, too. At least a couple of real farmers, who know about growing grain crops and getting the best yields out of the space we have. And that’s just for the arable farming - we’ll need people who know about animal husbandry, too. There are already a few sheep on the island, but we’ll need a flock big enough to keep us in wool and meat, which means we’ll need a proper shepherd who knows about such things. Chickens are easy enough to look after, so a nice number of chooks will keep us in eggs and meat. Then we’ll need someone who knows about cattle - raising, milking and butchering. Actually, a butcher’s a good point - or at least a proficient game hunter, who knows how to kill, draw and dress anything we want to eat.
A vet’s vital, of course, to look after the health needs of the animals. And a doctor or two (or a doctor and a nurse) to do the same for the human inhabitants.
We can probably suppliment our diets with fish, too, so we’ll need some residents who know how to fish.
Then it’s the infrastruture side of things to think about. Engineers who can set up our power supply, so maybe specialists in renewable energy, who can set up and maintain enough wind turbines and solar cells to keep us powered, and whatever sorts of capacitors and transformers we’d need for a fully functioning local power grid. Maybe I’m thinking too big. Maybe we wouldn’t need a grid, just generators churning out enough juice for each individual house. A couple of turbines or a little solar farm behind each dome. See, this is why we need experts - this isn’t my area.
Also, a computing and communications expert to get us set up with lines of communication to the outside world and an intranet.
We’ll need a few folks who know about construction. The domes are meant to be fairly easy to erect, but we’ll need to level the ground for them and get them built, along with polytunnels and other small building projects.
Long term sustainability means kids, so we’d need a small scale education system, with a couple of professional teachers - a lot can also be taught by the community, like home schooling on a grand scale. Who better to teach the children about renewable energy than our engineers?
Oh, a mechanic, I guess, to keep any machinery going.
librarian-cum-archivist for the information archive might be a luxury, but it’s something to think about.
Who else do we need?
The mercenary realist in me says that we’ll need some sort of militia-style defence force, but I really don’t want it to come to that. I’m just slightly concerned about maintaining the quarantine when there are so many fugees about. All we need is one ReDs carrier to hop a boat over to Haven and the whole project, the whole community, is screwed. We have to be able to prevent that. I guess I know a couple of people at the MoD. Silverfish might have some ideas. Hell, he’ll have more than just defense ideas - he could probably help with most of the infrastructure setup. Definitely a useful geek to know.
So much planning to do!
