For all this talk about the location of the SatPhone, it'd just be silly to have brought it with the, especially of they needed to bring the guts back anyway. It'd be an obvious and unnecessary risk.

And in response to Voodoo's timeline, that is exactly what I'm saying. Its too little time for Scratch to do it all. There are other ways of course. Another Telecom expert could be in the colony, Glenn could have gotten the number off the phone and provided instructions remotely, Glenn could have repaired the dialer, but nothing else (to explain the lack of response on the other end). The last one poses an intereasting possibility, in that it presents Michael with an impetus to go to LA, without much information as to what would be going on.

Maybe the LA team had two SatPhones?

As for using the colony as another base, I don't see that happening. There just isn't enough room, and to leave defensible, sustainable Irwin for a crowd of ramshackle buildings around even more mad zombies seems unthinkable.

Unless Irwin goes boom and were again left with a squad of people on the Pelican going back. That's the scenario we might be headed for.

Alternatively, rolling back to someones note earlier, maybe there is a bunch of humans out to Sea. Its been a while, but it was dropped that Kimmet was looking for Pacific ports...