Due to questions from readers I'm aware many people in the USA and UK have a different idea of what is or isn't in a bathroom, and bed sizes. Here in Australia we have a number of arrangements for a bathroom, and different sized beds.
Beds
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed_size
The link above has a good list of the various bed sizes. What's important is here in Australia we have King single which is 42 inches by 80 inches which I often mention.
Bathrooms
A bathroom may contain a bath, a shower, a basin sink in a bench, a toilet, and space to dress - or any combination of them. Also, a bath may or may not have a shower over it. The simple rule is if any one of the above is shown as having its own room, then it's not in the bathroom. Thus the bathroom in Survivor: Moving On has a bath (in this case with a shower over it), a basin sink area, and space to dress. We also have a thing called a four way bathroom where there's a sort of central basin sink area with three doors off it to have the bath, toilet, and shower each in their own little area to allow privacy and multiple users. A three way bathroom is the same but no separate shower.
An en-suite is a cut down version with a sink, toilet, and shower or bath with a shower over it.
I hope this helps you to understand the plans I include as a memory aid.
Chips!
Here in Australia chips are bits of hot fried potato. Due to certain US fast food stores doing business here we sometimes call the very thin cut ones French Fries (some people call them shoe strings fries). We also have potato crisps, these are cold, precooked, and in packets from companies like Smiths; sometimes they are called a packet of chips. Chips are hot and eaten with meals or as a snack or meal of their own, crisps are a small snack and never eaten with a meal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_fries
Figures in conversation - especially money.
A common verbal short-cut is to mention the baseline of figures the first time you speak of the figure and then only talk of what's in front of the baseline. Example: "I got a budget of a hundred million bucks, the first ten is for the new building, thirty for operating costs ..." and so on. This is to save saying the million or thousand or grand several times.
Past Values.
Due to inflation and other economic factors it's hard to relate prices and values of long ago with those of today. Improved manufacturing makes things cheaper while other factors push prices up. For example, the common desktop computer that cost $2,000 today has more computing power than a $5,000 system did 20 years ago or a $5,000,000 computer did 50 years ago. Yet a gallon of fuel 50 years ago was only a few cents.
You can't really compare prices of then to now. Back in 1860 the latest Colt .45 revolver sold for $20, based on inflation between then and now it would cost about $500, while the changes in manufacturing should make it available for much less for the same gun today, but other factors like increased labor means they sell for $1,500 today - which is much higher than the inflation rate. Rural land in Arizona sold for $5 to $10 an acre in 1860 and now sells for thousands an acre.
The best way to get an idea of prices is to look at key factors of the time and place. In 1860 farm land in Maryland sold for $30 an acre while most people were paid $1.00 a day for a full day of work or about $0.10 per hour (or less), and new revolvers cost $20 each.
I hope this helps with looking at comparative values.
What is a Ute?
I've had people asking: what is a ute? It's the short form of utility vehicle, but is a specific type of vehicle here in Australia and has had the meaning expanded a bit. This wikipedia page gives the basics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ute_%28vehicle%29
A close US equivalent (as reported by a US reader).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_El_Camino
The most common form is a sedan type vehicle front with an integrated bed, kind of like a normal sedan version of the US pick-up truck. Today it's been expanded to include most 1 tonne vehicles used on a rural property, like the typical US pick-up truck, and even a flat-bed tray style 1 tonne truck.
Plan Images
I've had people ask about plans of places I design and use in my stories. High quality images of them are on DropBox. Within the folder is a folder for each story, and you can open it to see the images for the story you're reading. Be warned, I'm putting images up as I create them, so there may be some for stories not yet finished, so don't get upset when you don't recognise the folder, you will, when it's finished. Although I tried, some aren't to scale, due my system's limitations. The URL is:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ebk8ve052m0c1rs/AACohN7e_x8OuRFrn0EbQ2L6a?dl=0
The Contagion
Anti-biotics: This term is used in two ways. One is in regards to the commercial products for sale, these are designed to target specific biological infections, and not a virus. In general scientific research anti-biotics is used to refer to any chemical or biological agent used to fight or destroy something biological, and includes more than the commercial formulas just mentioned. This wider use of the term is what I have in the story.
Cheyenne Mountain Complex: The facility entrance is part way up a high mountain and visible from a number of areas where a line of sight is available over a lower ridge and along the roadway. Access is along Norad Road and Google Maps shows Norad Road takes a large hook left up through a valley before it reaches the lower car-park for the facility and then continues along the valley to the upper car-park at the top of a steep slope. The valley where the road takes that major curve is a good spot to set up a barricade, and what I refer to.
Times of Old: Here in Australia I was taught by a carpenter to call the cut a rebate. In the US most seem to call the same thing a rabbet - the wiki article on a Dado joints calls it both, amongst other things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dado_%28joinery%29
I've had a few emails where people say I should credit cmsix.
First, yes, I'm aware of his writing and make an oblique reference to one of his works early on in Times of Old.
Second, cmsix did NOT create this genre and he was far from my first introduction to aliens and time travel. The first story I read along these lines was back in the 1970s and was in an old pulp fiction paperback. At SOL I first read time travel stories by authors like aubie 56, The Scot, Jim War, and Old Guy before I found cmsix's works. Some of those pre-date the stories cmsix has on SOL. His big one, John and Argent seems to have been written in 2005 or 2006, from what I can find on the Internet, well after I had read stories by others. So please stop saying I should credit him for the idea, as it was around before him.
Early dialogues with the aliens - Ed thought he was going to die and is surprised not to be dead. Then he's hit with the idea about being the star in a survival show. He realises they can just eliminate him if he disagrees, so he takes the job on. No need for a serious discussion at all and he's also still a bit shocked by the situation. I defy anyone to be anything but a little flippant in that situation.
Weapons and the Wagons About them being useless after a few decades and Ed should take books, information, paper and printing presses. I need only say: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs - which I've applied to the story. Ed is a guy wanting to stay alive, not an evangelistic scientist on a quest to change the world by taking a hundred tons of gear with him.
He first ensures his survival; designer cave to live in, armoured clothing, guns to survive a major attack, a show and tell manual on medicine and the local herbs, (think of these as insurance) then standard weapons of the era to hunt and survive normal attacks, basic tools and seed to convert from a hunter gatherer lifestyle to an agricultural one, salt and cooking gear to get an in with the locals, finally a wagon and horsepower to move it all to his living area. He also gets the knowledge to talk to the locals.
For those who've not studied it, no culture can develop and sustain metalworking and metal based tools or implements until AFTER they've developed a decent agricultural lifestyle that enables them enough people to be free to concentrate on such activities as mining, smelting, and blacksmithing. No one person can do all that themselves, and it takes one hell of an infrastructure behind the society to do it - an infrastructure that would take decades or lifetimes to develop from a hunter gather society, no matter how smart and knowledgeable the leaders are.
Ed has to move the society along at a sane pace they can absorb and change to, one step at a time. Which is why the book on tools he asked for and why the focus on woodworking tools. Yes, he cheats and gets long lasting high quality metal ones to start with, but all are tools that can be duplicated from within the available materials and technology of the era. The only thing he has that can't are the guns, and he doesn't want them to be available to anyone else, anyway.
In short, Ed's approach is to improve the life of the people and advance towards civilisation, but at a rate they can handle and sustain, not huge unsupported leaps of tech that can't be sustained.
Will to Survive
The rifle is an AR-7 which was issued to pilots as a survival weapon for many years (it was designed for that purpose). A .22 LR will kill a person if you hit a critical spot like the heart, lungs, or spine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AR-7
The nukes are Tactical Nuclear Weapons meant for quick use in the field as artillery shells, or small missiles, or demolition charges, and are constructed with two sub-critical masses brought to critical mass by violently slamming them together with a small explosive charge (some links below). Many TNWs have been retired from deployment with active service units. Some were dismantled, and some are still stored in armories in case higher command feel they need them. I don't know if any new ones are being constructed, but design work for new units was still going on as late as 2008. A TNW of this type can be set off by an explosion close to them setting off the activation explosives by the explosions of the cannon shells and thus detonate the TNWs, it was one of the known risks with them and a strong argument against their deployment with front-line combat units. In this story the explosive rounds from the cannon (like the GAU 22/A in the links below) going off beside them sets them off at the same time, or so close together it doesn't matter. The four nuclear explosions overlap to create interesting explosions and shock waves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_device%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W48
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W54
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAU-12_Equalizer#GAU-22.2FA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/25_mm_caliber
In the radio operations I called upon what I was taught back in the 1970s. At that time the organisation I was with used the word 'zero' specifically to mean something of nil value and was below 'one' - thus there were 'zero casualties' meaning no one was hurt. The numbers sounded like: zero, one, two-o, three, foour, fieve, six, seven, eight, niner, one oh; they used 'oh' to indicate the units value after a value in the tens column. What did become an issue was when they changed compass reading to be all three digits so what was four, five (45) became oh, four, five (045) - this was supposed to reduce the risks of an error with the first digit being misheard for the lower directions. Other organisations and other countries did use different values and sounds for radio phonetic values. Some examples being names for the letters, like Bob instead of Bravo and David instead of the Delta I was taught, and so on. Any long discussion on this will see many variations listed by different people.