34th Vipers Comms: Devastation Report

## Devastation Report

### Description

A 34th Viper records a report on the scale of the True Sons environmental damage.

### Speaker(s)

Jake Jensen

**Jensen:** Entry 11/26/17. Report on deep covert recon mission to determine scale of environmental destruction caused by the True Sons resource extraction efforts. Starting audio report now.

**Jensen:** Fuck me, Goldstien. It's worse than I thought. Worse than any of us thought. I suppose me might've guessed but....damn. *(pause, sigh)* It's fine, I'm good. Just...grew up in woods just like these. Hits close to home. You more so, I'd wager.

**Jensen:** I haven't seen a tree that isn't a burning husk or a stump in at least fifty miles. I saw some flamethrower squads moving through this burning valley in North Carolina. Sky and earth were black from ash, only the scant husks of burnt trees and charred bones of the animals too slow to get away to remind you there ever was life in the area. But this team, they were burning anything that even looked like it was starting to grow back. Why? What do they gain from that? Do they not want the region to grow back? Hell, why'd they burn it down in the first place? They clearly haven't turned the land into anything.

**Jensen:** But that's just the tip of it. I swear to you, every day I see convoys fifty, sixty trucks long filled with logs going east. Next day, that same convoy filled with workers and machinery. Some of it? You ever see those machines from the Lorax? The ones with all those axes spinning on a long pole they'd use to cut down all those trees? Yeah, kinda like that, but a lot less goofy and a lot more terrifying. The cycle repeats every day. People talked about deforestation before. They didn't know what deforestation looked like.

**Jensen:** Worse are the mines. Ore, iron, gold, silver, uranium. Take your pick. I've seen some big fucking trucks, man. I mean four, five story tall armored monsters that carry enough coal to supply a small country for a year. And the natural gas plants, the oil fields? You thought they were big before? Horizon to horizon, Goldstein. Thousands of the things, just churning away. Never stopping. The True Sons are efficient, I'll give them that. They know how to keep infrastructure running. I'm a little impressed. They're providing constant results. Granted, they're also fucking insane. That's a bit of a deal breaker for me.

**Jensen:** I haven't been there yet, but I heard they got this giant hydroponics farm out in Silicon Valley. Used to be run by Skell Tech, I think. But I've also seen some of their meat farms. Cows, pigs, goats, chickens, all that basic stuff. A few fish farms too. But I think they're trying to expand their diets. God knows why, maybe they want to make sure they have plenty of options in case of another bird flu or Mad Cow disease. Saw this place is Ohio where they were herding up deer. Another in Wyoming were trying to slowly rebuilding the Buffalo population, only harvesting the weaker or older ones for meat. Smart strategy. Up in Maine, I saw these big old fleets of trawlers harvesting lobster, shellfish, crabs. They were taking half to be processed for food and half to be sent to a controlled, well-protected facility where they could grow their own supply. I have to admit, never heard of a crab farm before. That's a new one.

**Jensen:** Make no mistake. This goes well beyond what they could ever need just to survive. And I get that things are different now. There's nobody to uphold environmental legislation. Protected areas and national parks shouldn't take priority over putting food on the table and keeping the heat on, I understand that. And I also know they got a lot of people to take care of. But they've literally torn up mountain ranges, cut down entire forests in just a couple weeks. It seems like they're trying to stock up on everything they possibly can. But they can't possibly be using all this stuff. Maybe they're expecting to be cut off and they want contingencies? Trying to be completely self-reliant if their global allies get taken out? Or are they taking the Empire underground? I've seen more and more underground facilities. Couldn't get inside one, but a lot of the convoys are heading there lately. Big old bunkers, the kind that can house tens of thousands full of people.

**Jensen:** Everything they're doing, you'd think the end of the world was coming...