Chapter 3 I

Boone and his mates had started to weave a net. A net of who they considered  worth, either because of their knowledge, skills or abilities.Criteria were broad and basically it boiled down to "anyone who could contribute with something useful to society " and was in reasonably good physical  condition. There was another criteria; they had to be hard. Not Dirty Harry hard, but resilient. The kind of person that could go through hardships. On this department my grandfather way my reference point. Everyone in his family worked on fishing when he was a kid. It was still that time when you would not choose a profession, but this was given to you by your family and, often, written as your surname. The family had a small open boat and they went fishing every night. when he was still a boy about 5 or 6, it was the time for him to start to do something productive for the common good. Before dawn they took to sea, but to the young boy, the rolling of the Atlantic at night was not doing the best for him. His father, exasperated and seeing that the kid was more of a ballast than a useful hand took the decision of let the ballast loose. Fishermen do not get up early because of the incredible dawns, but in order to get a good position, so his father could not lose time going back. He pointed at the dark coast and said: there is this or that beach 1 km in that direction, then it is about 3 or 4 km walk home. Have a nice day. I guess difficulties is a relative term.

On the other hand, sure enough, that theory of civilizations going up on wooden shoes and down on silk ones seemed a little too simplistic to me.

Another information package was about the background and history of the project. Many of the people working with Boone had a university degree, but there was a bit of everything. There were many mathematicians and computer scientists, but there were engineers, climatologists, physics graduates... those were the core of the project from the people who decided to take another path. These people recognized quite rapidly that they were lacking on a lot of areas and thus it would be very hard for them to design a viable plan for the future. Thus, the first step was defining what was to be done at all about this future. Survival was one thing, but they were thinking on a social transplant. Take a small sample of the society and spice it with the knowledge, courage and decisiveness to carry on with it and conquer the future... whatever was coming. In order to get the needed skills and knowledge, the group needed to grow and not necessarily within a university environment. The small core group got on to recruit more people up to about 30. Most of what they were doing at the beginning is what you would expect of university people: they talked about it, they threw ideas around and started to sketch plans, sometimes utopic. Nevertheless, through the new additions, the group got in gear. Their solution to the crumbling of society was to do this transplant somewhere else, where would be easy to reestablish and resettle. Working on this basis, the recruitment went on to select the needed seeds.

Of course, this would not necessarily be too easy. How to find these seeds and pluck them out?, where to transplant it? how to do it without interference? 

The fist question, though deemed easy to answer, turned out to be the hardest one to answer. The candidates had to be functional and useful members of society, but also to participate and believe in the project. They needed to work in a society, but also in a lack of society.

With regards to how to do this transplant, the participants had to kick start a new society, so Anthropologists, doctors, historians and engineers were to be needed, but sure enough, artists, designers, cooks and butchers and carpenters would not be less important. Not only academics with ideas, they needed people with principles and skills. One of the team was a professional swimmer. She had taken place in the Olympics once and had done a lot of cold water swimming competition. These type of experiences could benefit the whole team .

A small core of the participants would be dedicated to select and study the candidates, who, at least the majority could carry on with their lives until moment came, this being the start of the training. This change was also difficult, as a normal member of the society would have a some difficulties to change their normal life in a brink. These training was aimed to help the candidates make the transition and to improve and enhance their skills for the coming. In addition, these people was strongly attached to others: parents, children, couples... and it would not be quite easy or attractive to leave them behind. Thus, the plan had to include them too.