Wednesday, October 15, 2014

EEEEEEEBOLA!! Or, Please Pass the Popcorn

Yeah, I'm not freaking out.

I knew it was going to happen. How could it not?

"The New World Order", where travel is rampant, illegal immigrants flood our shores and our cities, everyone is mobile and busy and involved. You can make your products in deepest darkest Africa, and with an Internet webpage or even a Facebook account, you can sell anything to anyone. I can type this and hit "post" and suddenly you can read it in England, Australia, Russia, or China if you, too have Internet and the inclination. We are up each other's butts 24/7. We can order English toffee straight from England, Irish sweaters and china straight from Ireland. We can tell people off on pages that are read all over the world, we can tag or poke our kids and grandkids, we can communicate instantaneously.

So I moved to the back hills of Nebraska, because even I could see that this instantaneous and overpopulated sea of dreck and profit was going to wash over everyone, and the salt of ambition and greed would get in their eyes and blind them to the pitfalls. Friends of mine caught antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis, and invariably the first question out of the doctors' mouths was "Been around any illegal immigrants?" We are swarmed with people from all sorts of countries, carrying all sorts of diseases, and we pretend to ourselves that God is in his heaven, we have antibiotic wipes and soaps, we'll be fine, all's right with the world.

Guess where I get my food? My 60 acres. Guess where I rarely go? Places with a population over 2000. Guess Why?

Three months ago, I sent all of my children an email. It told them to pack their bug-out bags, to get paper maps and plot at least three routes to our farm, to never ever let their gas tanks get below the 1/2 full mark. To be ready to bug out, before the quarantines, the panics, the insanity ensued. To be alert and watchful.

Not because I fear the Ebola virus. But because I know that, when the shit gets even close to the fan, everyone is going to freak, to panic, to "when in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout". Once the politicians can't lie any more, once the virus starts taking off and becoming widespread - even slightly or sporadically - suddenly, and without warning, people in power are going to freak. They are going to start demanding restrictions - on travel, on food supplies, on freedoms. This will cause the public's safety to decline rapidly. This will cause panic in the streets - because as usual the idiots will have waited until it is too late to do anything else. Suddenly trucks will stop bringing in supplies, suddenly people will be running to the hospitals for a sneeze or a fever, suddenly those who are really carrying the virus will be exposing tens, then hundreds, then thousands, running back and forth, like chickens with their heads cut off. FREAK OUT!!! Then the hysteria starts, then the looting starts, then the travel restrictions and the quarantines start, and those who never had any chance of getting sick will suddenly be throwing themselves or dragged into situations where they WILL get sick. Guaranteed. This snowball is already rolling downhill, and it is picking up all of the filth, twigs and pointy goathead-burrs of terror and misplaced power.

Me, I'm going to sit right here and watch.

Didja ever see the National Geographic's documentaries on "Earth Without People"?  Or Stephen King's "The Stand"? Yeah, they're wrong.  They make it seem like people will die off relatively peacefully, that most buildings will still be standing, that most infrastructure will remain intact. Oh, sure, there might be some trouble in the bigger cities - gangs trying to steal peoples' food and cars, trying to escape, even shooting some folks; it might be a little dangerous, but that will be brief, and the survivors will have plenty of remaining choices for their shelter and food.. This is a lie. The panic, when it begins, will be on a scale not even imagined by those who wrote abut the Black Plague, the Spanish 'Flu, or who lived through Katrina. Most cities will not be left standing; they will be huge conflagrations all across the countries, as the living try to get rid of the dead, as the looters destroy what they cannot take, as the dead and dying leave their propane heaters and gas stoves running until an errant spark flares... Dying people will be fleeing in fear, running into other dying people, causing massive wrecks and still more fires. Dying people will group together for survival, killing each other off wholesale, as they raid the remaining hospitals and grocery stores for one last drug, one last mouthful of food, before the disease or their neighbor kills them off.

 The politicians and other folks who have talked wisely about "population control" and 'thinning the herd' have literally no idea that they, too, are on the slaughter agenda. Like the kings and nobility during the plagues, they think that their money and position will save them. They are wrong. Even if they make it into the rumored safe houses and enclaves, most people cannot survive for long, locked away with a selected group or even alone. They can't stand themselves or each other for any broad length of time now; they will certainly run amok once the terror and stress of being encapsulated strikes home. The crazy comes out then, and, 2 years from now, there won't be a single survivor in those places, no matter how well equipped or supplied they are.  

Know who survives? Those who don't panic. Those who have a plan - a self-perpetuating plan - in place. Those who like being independent and don't mind being alone. Those who have prepared; who have been prepared, for months and years, for any eventuality - or none at all. Those who didn't bury themselves in the empty, mindless busywork of the cities, where nothing matters except tomorrow's paycheck and the next day's night out. Those who didn't spend half of their lives on Facebook and the other half texting their friends.

No matter how this plays out, I have a front-row seat to either the massive death and destruction of disease, or the massive hysteria and pontificating that results from the fear of it. And even if nothing happens at all - I've still got my cows, my chickens, the wood for my woodburning stove, my bullets, my guns, my already-canned garden produce and their seeds to grow more; my bees and my honey and even wax for candles. I'm comfy, thanks. Please pass the popcorn. The world is my stage, and I'm going to watch it all from right here... until the power goes out and the stage goes dark.

No comments: