Founder’s Day, Part 24
Nov07
on November 7, 2018
at 12:01 am
Chapter: Founder's Day, 6564
Characters: Jasmine Crane, Julia Wells (Caladharas)
Requiem: Silence
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First of all, in a hotel those portable fire extinguishers almost certainly are CO2 based, which contain highly pressurized carbon dioxide gas to very quickly and efficiently expel all oxygen from the target area. Which means, especially in an enclosed space, that said area is not going to be very good for humans to stand around in for long – especially not humans whose survival instincts have already been degraded due to inebriation.
You’re breathing normally, and there’s no way you can tell you’re not getting enough oxygen, you just start feeling drowsy and fall asleep. And then you don’t wake up.
Second, fire extinguishers like that are basically meant as single-use; once that security seal has been broken they need to get replaced at next opportunity because there’s no way to tell how much gas is left inside, and you don’t want to grab one during an actual fire and hear it stutter to a halt after a brief burp.
In short, insurance may have covered it all, but they were probably screaming at her all the while. With good reason.
And on a sidenote, this little bit of history was scripted back in 2005 at a Holiday Inn in Gaithersburg, Maryland. A friend I made there, who was the night maintenance man consulted with me on the issues you raised.
I have no idea what happened to him, as they remodeled the hotel back in 2010, and I know he was just working there until he got his collegiate coursework covered to reach the professional standards of this country…but I wish him well. He was a great help, and we talked at length about a great many things, including his experiences surviving the Rwandan Genocide.
Yeah. I’ll remember it until the day I die.
But a lot of the early comics were done like that…with me in a hotel room on the road talking to people and making notes of everything I saw and heard along the way.
For instance, a lot of the background information on the Maris Island storms and island reconstruction, were hashed out in Tyler and Alba Texas back in ’06 and were based on the experiences of contractors who went to Louisiana to help out with the aftermath of Katrina.
…and a lot of the geography of the City of Erech was lined out during a couple of business trips I made to Toronto back in the Spring of 2005. And for the record, Erech is directly based on Toronto. With a few notable changes 😉
I did a lot of location scouting back then…from an abandoned airport in New York (Flushing Airport), to the old Potomac Ship Graveyard, to the Abandoned Pennsylvannia Turnpike that was later used in filming the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’
But I miss those days, truly. When it was just me and a monster laptop creating things. Technically, and from a writing standpoint, I have improved a hell of a lot from those days, but I miss being the nomad writer/artist. Some days I miss it like fire 🙁