Well, they do know where they are, they know the streets and Laura was said to know the city pretty well thanks to her job.
I don't know how large this city is suposed to be, but something like knowing where the larger supermarkets are seems kinda normal when you live there for years, even if you are not a regular there.
Yeah, not saying they should start blindly searching. Just wondering that it never came up in some talk.
I think one of the challenges that the group is continuing to deal with is that the one person who 'should' know about resources near where she lived - Shelley - was about the last person on the planet you wanted to ask for directions; she could get to her classes for the semester but I imagine she had challenges any time a new location was added to the class schedule for a new semester.
As to being able to find malls or super stores, I liken this to my own medium size city:
I know where 5 major grocery stores and one super store are (having shopped at all of them) and can easily reach them... by car. I can also find two major malls, one 15 minutes away by car and the other 45 minutes away.
If I had to work downtown and escape from my work location though, all my 'how to get to those suburban stockpiles of food and gear' would be based on taking major highways with a car. They would be walkable in decent weather but in the fog or the modern equivalent (from a LOS and health danger perspective), a hard snowstorm with dangerous wind chill, it could take a week or more to walk the 5 - 10 miles to reach them given the need for rest stops and food breaks with time committed to finding a safe place to rest each day of travel.
Then - are the stores I know about even in the direction of travel I believe is most likely to lead to getting out of the danger area?
From downtown, almost all the stores I know about are now west of me and if the direction of travel most likely to reach safety was walking NE - I would not know shit about the stores in the needed direction of travel. Take away WAZE and Google Maps as well as my now limited LOS and I can only hope to get lucky by finding a gas station or corner grocery store that has not been fully looted - and multiply the quantity of food needed by 4 given the size of the group.
The other thing that is easy to ignore is that these are office workers and a semi-frail college student who live a sedentary life style - so not used to a lot of physical exertion.
IMO - they are toughening up to the rigors of traveling in the fog hazard but the lack of a proper diet coupled with the damage the fog seems to do to the respiratory systems of our band of four makes this feel like a losing proposition. They need to find better gear (especially to filter out almost all fog to avoid more damage to the lungs) and a source of safety with enough food to address the balanced diet issue for at least 3 days of rest and recovery.
I'm hoping that the woman in the gas station (she's the first person I've seen with proper gear to protect her lungs - assuming the gas mask actually has viable filters of course) can help with more than just the safe place to rest up.
If she is local, she may well be the key to finding both better food and gear nearby, because she Has to be better at navigating her neighborhood and the surrounding area than Shelley.
Cheers!!
