STEC Archives, Print Document Division
Curator signature: Jer
Format: Textual Record
Object: Auditory transcript of research report from Cusk
Location (if known): Naval Base Avalon
Time (if known): Dated May 11th, 1988
Okay, hello?
Hello! Okay. Great. So, as you can see, we’re done. Done with this first part.
These eleven sites scattered across the Midwest represent our continued efforts towards the creation of insurance policies against the Abyssal invasion. The application of fairy-based miniaturization technology along with stasis preservation protocols ensure that each depot is capable of storing staple foodstuffs on the order of billions of tons – enough to feed the entire population of the United States as a last resort.
Naturally, this means that the production facilities in Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa are all fully operational. Procurement is proceeding at better than expected rates in thanks due to a combination of record productivity and political activity, and minimal capacity has been reached at all sites. Strategically, we plan on creating at least one such reserve across all fifty states. Construction of Tier II depots have begun within Naval Base Avalon with an estimated delivery time of eighteen months. We estimate functionality within two years.
In addition, I am proud to announce that after six years of work, the United States Agricultural Repository – that’s U.S.A.R or USAR – is online. Adjacent to the Ozark Mountain site in Missouri, this seed facility currently holds around … let me check… approximately seven hundred thousand crop samples preserved in the same method. That’s about three-point-five million seeds, give or take. We’ve recalled all surge personnel from the Agricultural Research Service and are prepared to engage in, what’s the word, our next project.
… To whoever is watching this message.
One day, when this is all over, when we finally release all of this to the public and you can see our journey from the safety and comfort of your home, free from at last the Abyssal threat You might very well laugh at our zeal. What we do could be excessive.
Heck, knowing me, it probably is.
But, part of our operations here at the Special Task and Evaluation Command is to counteract all Abyssal activities. The short-term threat is the entire world being consumed, but we must heed the long term threats, too. If they show up and if we beat them back, what happens next?
How much would the world change because of that war? Because, you know, there’s no way the earth comes through it completely unscathed. What would an Abyssal war do to our planet? How might the war change our environment?
I joke about nukes, but, have you thought about what would happen to our world if we had to throw out our entire nuclear arsenal against the Abyssals?
How do we know the Abyssals will not bring weapons designed to shake the foundations of the world itself?
Some of the girls are optimists. They believe that whatever change may come, humanity shall adapt to our new environment. If the climate change, the crops we plant shall change with it. No biggie. Nothing to worry about.
I see things differently. I’m no pessimist, but! Even small changes to the environment is enough to cause massive shifts to global agriculture. This is to say nothing of the hyper-optimized ways in which we are trying to tackle the problems of food at large. In our attempt to pursue bigger, better, and more plentiful things we have inadvertently lost much of the genetic diversity that once existed in our world. I am not at all optimistic that those varieties that we now grow will survive the changing climate nearly as well as we hope they would, and the Abyssal War will, with a hundred percent certainty, change the world as we know it.
Call what we do here a sort of insurance policy, taken out on behalf of humanity as a whole. Let’s just say on the off-chance that the Abyssal War ends up being catastrophic, that we win by a hair…
On the off-chance that we need to start over and rebuild human civilization as we know it…
Well, let’s just say, it’s gonna be a lot easier if we decided to prepare for it, right? After all, that’s kind of how farming is. Gotta plant the seeds first!