They had now crossed into it and were searching, wrecked building by wrecked building, for materials to salvage and more grimly remains to bury. Last year they had taken time to identify bodies: now everybody realised it was a pointless exercise. One tool the submarine had bought was radiation detectors (Geiger counters) to confirm excessive contamination by radiation. So rubble was sifted through and separated. Scrap wood was made into charcoal and then pounded into brickets for the steam engines. Metal in the form of joists, bars and wiring were collected: even old kitchen utensils and white goods were piled up to be taken apart by another team. There was a distinct shortage of mechanical help as the few cranes and backhoes they had ran on diesel, a substance they were short of. That was until a vast fuel station in Merignac was found with the tanks intact. Tanks of heating oil were also found and suddenly their diesel problems were not over, but much less acute.

The first anniversary of what was known as Destruction Day arrived and nobody knew quite what to do. Should they celebrate their survival or lament the death of civilisation as they knew it, along with all their friends and family? In the end they did nothing.

It was not easy and it was not going to get easier, but Aquitaine had a future, even if for many on the outside there was despair and grief. They sent out patrols, which found that most people were hungry and disorganised. More and more people wanted to come to Aquitaine, and Ted was concerned they were emptying the countryside around them. He now had to try and get those areas back into productive land and communities back into being self-supporting.

One lesson they had learnt was they needed intelligence on what was happening around them. Vladimir had attacked them twice and on both occasions they had managed to repeal the attacks — though more by luck than anything else. Steve Dawson was ex-SAS so Ted had put him in charge of collecting intelligence, which was to be proactive. They needed sources in surrounding towns and communities so problems could be identified — hopefully, before they got out of control.