July 5th

the remaining parking lot. If people take our chassis (or the exposed Freightliners), it will take that much longer for us to be moved.

The container access doors are all ‘inside’ and test-opened to confirm we can get to the provisions within them. A couple containers have special side entrances because both of their ends are exposed. To speed up the process, the perimeter looks more like a very-squished hexagon. The side entrances are needed at the top and bottom, where all the rest (except the doors) can face ‘left’ or ‘right’ as you look down on the hexagon. We lose a fair amount of internal space to the thickness/width of the containers and parked Box Trucks, but we still have a 500 x 100 foot (more than an acre) remaining space. We have about 120 live people and two dozen vampires, so our density is a bit better than the Buena Vista amusement park.

The fifth-wheelers provide facilities — like bathrooms and kitchens, and the Living Vehicles also provide a large amount of Solar power. The ones we have pull over 3kW from the sun at peak and can store more than 2kW-days. We ended up using eight of them to get 25kW and more than a kW-week of storage. They are also our primary dialysis caves, so are the most essential. We also have caves set up in the containers in case the primaries are targeted, but getting power to them requires either wiring or a diesel generator. And washing is more complicated. We did bring a large number of ‘cable speed bumps’ so we can run electricity and water where ever we need them.

The other four fifth-wheelers are all Forest River Sandpipers because they have two bathrooms. In total, we have 16 bathrooms, which is quite luxurious for a group like this.

We set up twenty six tents — to mostly cover the grounds.

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The awnings extend down to 8-feet off the ground, so to a bit below the container heights. This enabled the containers to protect the tents from the elements and avoided any gaping holes at the edges. The peaks are about 20-feet high, so the whole thing looks a bit like a small circus.

Twenty four identical 40-foot by 30-foot tents run the North/Bay side of the camp in two rows of twelve. These are the most flexible tents, and can be easily replaced or moved. Assuming 8-feet by 6-feet as the allotment (‘lot’) for each Pico House, 25 homes can fit under each tent.

Next to the main collection of tents are two 20-foot by 240-foot tents attached tightly to each other at the center. These were ‘stilted’ up an extra 4 feet with wooden 4x4s so they can function as a driveway for tall vehicles moving anywhere between the front and back doors. Box truck or anything with a significant roof rack are taller than eight feet, so we provide twelve feet of clearance for them. Extra awnings prevented gaps at the sides and ends.

Finally, the LVs “fill in” the hexagon on the South/Mall side of the camp. With the solar-awnings deployed and after staggering them for easier movement, the eight units take up a 20-foot strip on the far side of the driveway which they share with the other narrower fifth wheelers and the parked vehicles that we don’t want to hide under the tents.

With the tents in place — very little of the ground is visible from the air… unless someone crawls onto the 20-foot high tents or hovers a drone near the gaps. The tents are white & tall, and enough light comes through the spacing that it is not at all claustrophobic.

Probably the least “homey” aspect was the freeway noise. The 101 was very close and there isn’t even a sound wall blocking its

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noise. Only the containers, tiny house insulation, and any ear-plugs made sleeping similar to a more normal house. But many of the patients were used to much worse.

The tanker trucks — are under the driveway canopy because they represent how long a ‘siege’ we are ready to handle. We have much more water and fuel in jerry cans, but the image of 50K-liter triple-axel tankers would make ‘the man’ think in terms of months instead of days. We would rather ‘the man’ not learn that with just a cursory view of our compound.

Pico Pico Houses are rectangular cubes — normally 40 inches by 80 inches by 52 inches high. These dimensions come from standard pallet sizes: a 48x40 and 32x40 are combined side-by-side. The houses come unassembled (floor, sides, ceiling, all stacked on top of each other), and are less than two feet high in that form. In an eight-foot high container or box truck, you could potentially get two per 40x48 floor space, of 10 in a 20-footer, 20 in a 40-footer. We have less than 160 people, so need 8 40-foot containers dedicated to this, or have them dispersed in the box trucks. We spread all supplies around fairly evenly in case any trucks were attacked or crippled somehow.

With the perimeter setup, the Solar deployed, and the containers all verified, about half of the group starts assembling houses while the other half rests or patrols. Although we use power wrenches to assemble the Pico houses, there is enough freeway noise combined with distance to any housing to make us as quiet as a bat.

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