Starting Over

My name is Jacquelin. The war started when I was 16 years old. My family was not the typical household in the USA. My parents were called dooms day preppers. My father was an engineer, and my mother was a freelance You Tuber. I had 3 older brother that were in college. I was the only daughter. We were really close as a family helping each other with love and support. Then the s**t hit the fan, as the saying goes. My father was brilliant, but all the neighbors said he was insane. He had built a wall surrounding our homestead using shipping containers. They were stacked 3 high and welded in place. The first one was buried in the ground, and the others stacked on top. people thought that it was an eyesore (ugly). My parents had bought 300 acres with pasture and wooded land when I was around 5. I grew up helping with animals and learning how to work the land. Prepping was an everyday thing in our household. We would can food, cut wood, garden, feed all the animals. Mom thought that the lost arts like sewing and making soap were essential to my upbringing and most of the content for her channel. She had a presence that people were drawn too. That was the basis of how this all started. I had just come home from school and was doing my chores when my dad and brothers came home. Mom was in the kitchen cooking dinner. After checking the garden, I came in and washed up. All of a sudden, all the phones in the house start screaming. The emergency alarms were going off. We all look at our phones, and dad starts cursing. There was an attack in Los Angeles.The alarms sounded again, another attack in New York. Then, the alarms are screaming again. Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin have been hit. The emergency broadcast system is going insane city after city are being bombed. All we can do is sit in silence and imagine the devastation. The televisions are not working properly, so we go to the internet. It's Horific the destruction casualties and injured. Dad tells the boys to "go lock the gates," which is an old semi with welded plates to prevent anyone from crawling beneath to enter the homestead. "Everyone to your positions it's going to be a long night." He shakes his head then turns to me "Jaq is the barns ready for the herd" "Yes, daddy I check it every Sunday like you taught me" I look down and was a little upset that he would ask. But as you think of these things there are a lot of little things that need to be done to bug down at your home. As I'm thinking to myself he's shooting off questions to everyone it wasn't just me. "Jaq and I are going for the herds. Be prepared for us at the back gate." we saddle the horses and ride out to our herds. we have cattle, sheep and goats. We had practiced this many times and for some reason the animals cooperated perfectly. It was as if they sensed something. "daddy?" I ask "Yes, baby girl?" He returns with a straight face. "daddy is this for real?" I question "unfortunately, yes it is. You know why we have taught your brothers and you how to do all of these things. They seemed trivial at the time but we have to put it to use now." He shakes his head "I had hoped I would never see this, but was afraid not to take the proper steps. Because all of you are my life." I see a tear fall from his eye before he turns his head. "ok, daddy we got this! let's get the herds in and buckle everything down. Your aware all those people who said you were insane will be coming in a few days right." I make a statement not expecting an answer. "Remember what I told you, we can't save them all. We have enough to keep us going for awhile. We will need more people to keep watch because we will need sleep but we have the luxury of being selective." That is truly the hardest fact, (we can't save them all) this has been drilled into my mind all my life.