Apocalypse Smorgasborg E-Book

Ron Foster

• Herausgeber: Ron Foster
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

A delectable stew of post apocalyptic prepper fiction. This book contains the three book dystopia series “Burning Skillet” Smoking Skillet” and “Disaster Du Jour!” A wild romp of chaotic recipes for survival with tips and tricks and survivalist barter skill savvy from a middle-aged prepper couple bugging out with a totally unprepared elderly couple from Alabama to a Florida Fish camp deep in the woods. North Korea has taken down many of the electrical grids worldwide with cyber and terrorist physical attacks and its lights out for America and her allies. Our stalwart survivors team up with others to defend what they have and bravely forage out to scavenge what’s left of society in a coastal city. Supplies are low, food is disappearing at an alarming rate and game is getting scarce as desperate people do even more desperate things to survive. Some people approach this dystopian world with a gun and violence, others use their prepper wits and skills and see an opportunity to thrive and barter. Society can be rebuilt with prepared minds and a crisis planning cookbook based on basics of barter and community resilience. Regular old country folks often are better setup then most of the populace to face this disaster in style and it is a humorous delightful read to find out just who out foxes who when it comes to putting meat and eggs on the dinner table. Better guns or better brains? You decide!

Leseprobe

Apocalypse Smorgasborg

Ron Foster

Published by Ron Foster, 2018.

Apocalypse Smorgasbord

Ron Foster

Alabama, USA

© 20017 by Ron Foster All rights reserved.

ISBN-13:

978-1721865628 

ISBN-10:

1721865624 

Printed in the United States of America.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

APOCALYPSE SMORGASBORG

First edition. June 23, 2018.

Copyright © 2018 Ron Foster.

Written by Ron Foster.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Copyright Page

Apocalypse Smorgasborg

How To Win The War Without Direct Conflict

Milestones On The | Road Towards Armageddon

The Big Meltdown

Road Trips And Rendezvous

Homecoming

Playing In The Preps

A Tearful Farewell

Blocked Off!

Fish Camp

Postmaster

Road Trip

Marina Memories

Act Your Wage

Good Housekeeping

Homecoming

Rum Runners And Relaxing

A TON OF GOODS

Unexpected Neighbor

Mermaids A Plenty

A Plan Comes Together

Focus on Options, Not “Solutions

A Fine Kettle of Fish

Razzmatazz

Good Golly Miss Molly

The Reception Committee

Getting Ready

Party Down

Meeting A Prepper

Air Guns And Attitudes

A Fox Builds A Chicken House

About the Author

1

How To Win The War Without Direct Conflict

The news headlines that everyone had been reading for months now said pretty much the same thing and referred to the basic rhetoric saber rattling going on of "North Korea: Trump and Kim call each other mad" Kim Jong Un had said that remarks by the allegedly “deranged" U.S. President Donald Trump had convinced him that he was right to be developing nuclear weapons for North Korea’s self preservation. That was the whole ticket in a nutshell in his opinion because rocket man was seen in the media regularly brandishing the biggest gun in his arsenal he had at the world allegedly because of his fears of a military invasion by South Korea and the United States.

In other words Kim Jong’s country’s line in the sand was to go nuclear if we did anything to him at all militarily and he was going to hide behind this substantial threat as Supreme Leader of his people and hurl insults and provocations at the world until the war games stopped on his borders.  He was supposedly using these threats to influence political actions behind the safe cover his demonstrations of possessing nuclear missiles of sufficient range to reach any continent and hoped the world would be afraid of his nuclear retaliation enough to get his way. In Kim’s eyes he needed to keep developing nukes to stay in power and be left alone in his hermit kingdom and there was a little something to that. Of course there was a lot to be said for preventing him to do so by a lot of nations.

Mr. Trump responded that the belligerent "North Korean madman... will be tested like never before" if he didn’t stop going down this path. That threat was made before that bastard Kim started making up his own vexing test questions and putting America’s military and political doctrine leaders to the test. Questions that were aimed directly at Washington and that the hermit kingdoms leader knew that the US was most likely pretty much unprepared to handle as he bought more time to prepare his country for war or get his way possibly.

A whole bunch of clever little terrorist pop quizzes and distractions were devised by Kim’s armed forces and intelligence agencies in the form of guerilla tactics designed to add fuel to the fire and upset America’s apple cart while denying any fault or guilt by North Korea. Kim Jong Un was secretly preparing for a major “category one” cyber attack as payback for all the sanctions on his country among other things.

This new attack he was planning was much bigger in comparison to the WannaCry ransom ware virus attack that he had previously unleashed and had already hit the British government badly. This prior economic attack was only considered as a “category three or four” cyber event and this time he had more than getting money for his war chest in his sights. He would claim no credit for the next cyber attack of course, just as he had denied the last and profited mightily he thought.

China as usual didn’t say shit about their troublesome neighbors threatening antics towards the world but made a statement; China responded to the war of escalating threats and retaliatory words, warning that the situation was "complicated and sensitive" and that America should be more diplomatic.

Russia also urged American restraint, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov describing the rhetoric between the two leaders as a "kindergarten fight between children" but like a belligerent classmate they and China relished the thought of egging things on in their own way from the outer circle of a possible fight as instigating observers.

North Korea has been testing and developing missiles recently at an unprecedented rate.  They had already conducted their sixth nuclear test despite all the international condemnation and imposed sanctions. North Korea already had about every sanction imaginable imposed on it and the country itself lacked the power to impose any political or economic revenge on others until its military could hatch a new diabolical plan.

North Korea threatened, roared and saber rattled as its leader tried to bluff its way out of the corner that they had backed themselves into demonstrating their nuclear capability. The plan North Korea had come up to lash out once again with was somewhat simple on its surface, it would impose its own misery and financial woes on other countries that had imposed their wills upon it with sanctions But it would be very subtle about it at first and hide behind layers of plausible deniability while it played its chaotic games to keep its leader in power.

Instead of just a simmering pot waiting to boil over into war through world politics, he would turn up the heat and leave a smoking skillet on the burner waiting to erupt into an unquenchable grease fire at the slightest flash point. America was already embroiled in conflicts and various disputes worldwide were distracting its war weary citizens so Iran thought also that this was a good time to take a page out of Korea’s playbook and start testing its own missiles and once again advertising its nuclear intentions.

The Trump administration was due to announce the details of its strategy vis-à-vis Iran around the end of September but knowing that Trump being a strong hawkish president probably wasn’t going to give in to any demands like the lily livered Obama had previously on their nuclear aspirations, they decided to go back to threatening and awaited the inevitable sanctions so that they could go do business openly with North Korea. Iran could plot and scheme on the demise of the “Great Satan” while using proxy henchman Korea and the hundreds of terrorist groups they already funded in the Middle East and elsewhere.

North Korea's foreign minister set the ultimate game ball in play for a cosmic confrontation when he reported that the nation may set off the "most powerful" hydrogen bomb detonation ever in the Pacific. No other details were provided like yield, but at face value everyone assumed such a blast would be 1,000 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bombing. Chinese intelligence was now saying they thought North Korea may have as many as 40-60 nuclear devices of various explosive powers as Russia reminded publicly the US that two of their top generals had already warned that the Russian plans for a Super EMP weapon had already somehow found their way into Kim Jong Un’s hands. Behind closed doors at the Pentagon our own intelligence agencies had warned the same for

things for years but our Nation’s electrical grid remained unprotected

The North Koreans had just taken this war of words up to a whole different level of threat. North Korea has set off several powerful nuclear test blasts in recent years, but they had all occurred deep inside a mountain. A nuclear explosion in the air, on the ground, underwater, or in space has not happened in decades in the modern world and international treaties are in place to hopefully never allow this type of testing to happen again.  America knew that if North Korea sets off an above-ground nuclear explosion — and the most powerful one ever detonated in the Pacific its probable effects.

The Cold War's deep and involved rich history of America’s and Russia’s atomic test blasts suggests what might surely happen should such an event occur, particularly in regards to this much more technology dependant world. The Pentagon knew that class was officially in session for real now and scrambled all its resources to come up with an answer as to what America would do if Kim ever dared for such a thing to occur. If North Korea detonated a nuclear device 200 kilometers or so above the Earth in order to create an electromagnetic pulse, would the U.S.

counterstrike North Korea with conventional and perhaps even multiple nuclear weapons? That option as certainly on the table but no one in the world wanted that outcome.

The problem with nuclear test explosions for one is that they create radioactive fallout. Space detonations come with their own risks, including a more widespread electromagnetic pulse. Now Kim Jong Un knew an EMP attack over or near U.S., Japanese, or South Korean territory is a physical attack that would wreak havoc with communications, the power grid, and civilian physical infrastructure and get massive retaliation. He wasn’t going to do anything as foolish as that, he didn’t have too, just the threat and demonstrated capability might get the desired responses.

However in his mind if America could test its nuclear weapons over the remote pacific than why couldn’t he? Why couldn’t he do it way away from the main countries as a demonstration of his countries super power? His advisors explained timidly to him that atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons can lead to multiple dangerous scenarios and pushed their thoughts about using plans from Russia’s Cold war playbook to seek his status and revenge alternatively.

They asked their Great Leader to please remember that Soviet Premier Khrushchev- had said “We will take America without firing a shot ...We do not have to invade the U.S. - We will destroy you from within...” It was quite dangerous for his military advisors to try to sway Kim Jong Un’s mind away from anything but his newly found knowledge of this great EMP weapon but this quote helped them to sell him on another idea to bring America to its knees for now as they developed bigger stronger weapons.

This coaxing and nudging him to seek other venues and schemes they hoped took the risk out of the threat of themselves possibly getting nuked to oblivion in return for pushing America too far should the psychotic leader get his way.

A war of attrition was already going on everywhere at a scale unimaginable, it occurred at every level and included all nations. When people have nothing to lose they often times lose it, Kim had everything to lose if he miscalculated America’s resolve. As long as he didn’t cause a international incident that caused America to use its first strike or second strike conventional or nuclear capabilities he was in his megalomaniac mind  winning on all fronts, regardless of his nations multitude of starving suffering people..

If his followers were starving from economic and trade sanctions, he figured then the opposing nations should suffer the same fates in return he decided before the day he would ultimately destroy them. He could start with the resources he already had on hand unleash “cybergeddon,” and cause trillion-dollar losses, infrastructure collapse, societal break down on those governments that currently opposed him. They would feel the financial sorrows and hunger pains that his people had felt for years under his communist regime he decided.

Kim Jong Un didn’t have any lack of imagination or advice for that matter when it came to achieving that task, it was rather simple really and the Americans had already provided him and everyone else on the dark net with lots of cyber warfare tools to mess up the worlds financial markets and get paid to do it. He would use the enemy’s weapons of war against themselves.

The UN Banking sanctions weren’t hurting North Korea much except on the surface and the murky normal channels of world finance and commerce. The WannaCry ransomware attack was his first act of implementing his nefarious plans against the US and its allies to impose economic and infrastructure hardships.

On May 2017 a worldwide cyber attack by the WannaCry ransomware cryptoworm, which targeted computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system by encrypting data and demanding ransom payments in the Bit coin crypto currency was executed. Lots of people considered that information has to be a bit suspect and that this was a big false flag ploy by the US government led by the SEC and other concerned elite parties to discredit Bitcoin by association. The ransom demanded by American intelligence agency software is demanded in Bitcoin after all.  The general public just assumed it was asked to pay this way because it was supposedly an untraceable form of payment and not a lot was said about an alphabet agencies hacking tools getting hacked.

Now China at the same time was doing its own economic thing mucking up the financial and securities markets coming up with its own new currency, one that was actually physically gold backed and was going to be used to replace the FIAT or un asset backed American petro dollar for purchases. Saddam Hussein thought about doing just that that and you know what happened to him when the industrialists and elitists decided they couldn’t have that hard tangible asset currency succeed. Losing the monopoly on oil and gold futures trading and payments based on nothing more than printing presses and promises didn’t sit well the operators of such monetary manipulations. The economists said the dollar would crash. The elites who fund and profit from wars made their move.

The accusations that China and Russia are hacking the world for political influence and finance and focusing on the U.S.A were everywhere in the news now and with Iran and a number of other pissed off Middle eastern nations and terrorist groups all trying their hands at hacking this push shove cyberwar for money and power on the internet as battleground, one might consider this war could go on forever with no clear enemy of the state being directly punished.

Yes indeed earlier on you might remember I said that Bitcoin was chosen for payment of the ransom because it is supposedly a measure of exchange easy to set up and is a technically anonymous banking transaction, but those in the community all know this isn’t true. 

All Bitcoin transactions leave a trail... Kim Jong Un knew this fact but since the whole hacking community had the same programs and capability he had to operate with besides his own software he may or may not released like the Americans evidently said oops and had, then deniability wasn’t a problem.  It was hard to directly confront North Korea of having caused all the damage that was occurring on the internet networks and indeed it was the admitted American spy agencies own software that was being used by more than one several high profile individuals and proxies as well as state sponsored groups to get on this cash cow of hacking for money or influence.

If bit coin was discredited or could be traced to NK it was only a mythical digital number to Kim Jong and no real loss of physical wealth, in the meantime his country still made digital money as long as people accepted it for rice imports etc. If need be he could hack or EMP the whole thing and the world would spiral into financial collapse and be as poor as he was in the end Kim figured. “Mess with him how dare they? He would have his just revenge and they would pay tribute” the hermit kingdom ruler thought.

The malware attack unleashed by North Korea and others paralyzed computers in factories, banks, government agencies and transport systems, hitting 200,000 victims in more than 150 countries. The US couldn’t say it was a state sponsored act using its own software directed by NK. The US National Security Agency believes with “moderate confidence” that the ransomware, called

WannaCry, came from hackers sponsored by North Korea’s spy agency. Notice they said sponsored by and not committed by. Hell there are hackers for hire world wide and the Middle East as well as Russia, China etc. who all have their own software programs as well as state sponsored cyberwarfare and intelligence gathering agencies the same as the US as well as their deniable rogue agents.

The WannaCry malware relied on leaked American NSA agency code, so it doesn’t entirely prove North Korea’s hacking acumen or program creation either. However the country has repeatedly been involved in major hacking incidents over the past few years. In the US, most notably, it was said to be responsible for the 2014 breach of Sony Pictures for making a derogatory movie about the leaders of North Korea. And the NSA says it was linked last year to several thefts from banks throughout Asia to raise funds to prop up its sanctioned finances and loss of revenues from exports and imports. Electronic bank robbery is nothing new these days. You can get your bank account depleted buying gas at a local station that has had a credit card skimmer attached to the pumps or an ATM for that matter.

Messing with a countries infrastructure instead of just hacking in to gain intelligence or corporate manufacturing secrets is a different matter. The rewards and reasoning’s are different and it becomes an act of preparing for war. Kim Jong Un’s cyber war games continue to escalate in complexity and effects as technicians tried to keep up with encroaching probes and threats to gas lines, water systems, electrical substations, oil pipelines, trucking and food distribution systems etc..  Kim Jong’s military and intelligence operatives continue to hit infrastructure targets around the globe of the heartlands of countries every minute practicing and refining techniques for the day when full scale cyber war at the World War Three level is declared.

When the National Security Agency lost control of the software behind the WannaCry cyber attack, it was like "the U.S. military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen," Microsoft President Brad Smith said.

Everybody heard about this fiasco for about a week and then things went quite. Did we false flag ourselves? Who knows really? Somebody got a lot of money to buy a lot more hacking software and employ a lot more hackers though. Technology is a wonderful thing if used and applied responsibly but it appears to be a self-prorogating threat that mere mortal man cannot control his need or abuse of at this time. Now with AI or artificial intelligence being put into the programs we begin to fear our own machines and their impact on our survival as they begin to think for themselves.

Cyber warfare isn’t the only way to mess with digital data. The internet is full of a plethora of plans to create devices made from stuff that you can buy from a hardware store and disable computers at varying range, depending on size at various distances or total impact area. There are plans for small EMP pulse generators to cause even more damage as well as the assembly principles and lists of necessary materials on the black market and dark web to make EMP bombs that use conventional munitions and can take out a whole cities infrastructure.

The electromagnetic anti-drone rifles the North Koreans had already developed and fielded known to all military were basically a GPS neutralizing device that also shuts down all Wi-Fi, 3G, and LTE signals within a radius of one kilometer of its electromagnetic beam, which is invisible to the human eye. You can create a lot of mayhem with such toys depending on what it was you were trying to accomplish and what you were aiming at. At the very least you can confuse any first responder’s communications and by shutting down traffic lights create massive gridlock for a short period of time to allow your infiltrator or commando to escape to do more sabotage.

The next crash will spell the end of banking in its current form. It has been predicted for years to happen to the world and has been an option for strategic war planning between opposing forces for centuries. Although warring armies have always operated on “To the victor go the spoils” and replaced the subjugated and defeated citizen’s  accepted currency with their own for a millennium, nobody ever tried yet successfully to just crash the entire worlds financial system especially without a well thought out replacement. Kim couldn’t be troubled with such a capitalistic notion nor could Mao. They cared not for what other countries would do in a financial crisis but instead enforced with an iron hand and a self serving ideology what would be an acceptable form of payment in their own countries. If the reader is a researcher, the author of this book suggests you look at the wide spread indoctrination and propaganda that is spread in North Korea about Kim sending humanitarian aid to the populace of America living in poverty and without medical help after a disaster. Its amusing at best until you realize his state also says he is a divine leader that doesn’t even need the human function of using the bathroom that you must accept or have you and your whole family sent to a prison death camp for reeducation. Millions believe this just like they believed the Emperor of Japan was divine and would fight to the death without reason or humanity in ``W W II. That the Iranians fervently believe a nuclear strike  on the United States will bring about their Prophet the “Mahdi” and start a new age of Muslim caliph rule after Jesus teams up with him and tells Christianity the error of their ways is another matter of extremism and historic fact.

The chief of US Cyber Command has said it's a matter of "when, not if" the US power grid is hit by cyber attackers. And a recent high-profile attack by Russia that shut down power in the Ukraine showed it's certainly possible and feasible infrastructure target.

The goal of a cyberattack like that against the United States infrastructure from a nation-state ... is going to be not just to turn the power off, but be an extended effort to keep it off for an prolonged period of time impacting millions and millions of people. If you add to the mix physical attacks on the grid with explosives, EMP weapons, sniper fire etc. you can accomplish this goal rather easily and efficiently. Time for a wakeup call America, we are sleeping too sound it seems. All bets are off, technology will fail some day and yes it will affect you like a light switch so prepare!

Destroy nine interconnection substations and a transformer manufacturer and the entire United States grid would be down for at least 18 months, probably longer," a government analysis obtained by the Wall Street Journal concluded in 2014. Guess where those big transformers of ours that take a year to build come from? That’s right South Korea!

The government called this the "9 substation problem." As a government study showed, there are approximately 55,000 electric substations — most of which have little security beyond fences — 30 of which are deemed "critical." If just nine transformers of those 30 were messed with, it would be lights out for quite a while.

Let’s look at some possibilities, a conventional attack with a mortar, a bazooka, a sniper rifle and explosives you name it, all of which can be had on the black market but you don’t have to get even that conventional weapon sophisticated or costly to turn the lights out on the heartland for a long time..

A Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) power substation was hit with gunfire not long ago which was deemed an act of vandalism; PG&E spokesman Jason King said the gunshots caused a cooling oil to leak from the substation. Little did they know or want to admit to that this was actually a trial run by a terrorist group using just a hunting rifle.

Perhaps most disturbingly, the California substation attack, in which snipers with AK 47 variant rifles destroyed 17 transformers, "demonstrates that it does not require sophistication to do significant damage to the U.S. grid," according to FERC.

Then there are all of the rural electric cooperatives to be concerned with, there are roughly 1,000 companies responsible for distributing power to tens of millions of Americans. Although these grids aren't the biggest targets, they have been called one of the biggest risks based on their relatively limited security measures. A small team of North Korean commandos could take one over within minutes. You could probably pay the MS 13 street gang or a bunch of meth heads to do it or run interference for a few operatives to do it without much cash or problem. North Korea already had its elite teams of commandos poised on the border of South America as well as infiltrating America that were already known of, the same with the Iranians who had supposedly massed at least 50,000 soldiers in South America. And if you think about it getting a bunch of suicidal jihads together to attack the infidel ain’t that hard to do.

Both Iran and Korea could pay to have it done by any number of groups and give them state sponsored aid to help complete their missions. Wasn’t, us they could  deny, it was those crazy Al Qaeda boys the U.S. already had trouble with or perhaps it was them Muslim ISIS folks you been warring with etc. Hey America they declare, you lift these sanctions off us or we are going to do this or that to you... same old BS repeated for another day. The evil alliance would have no trouble wearing America’s resolve down further and accomplish the mission to make its citizens question their government and commence to riot and protest to cause even more havoc was one of the aims.

Amory Lovins, chairman of the Rocky

Mountain Institute, wrote in his 1982 book Brittle Power that "a few people could probably black out most of the country." The book surprised and rightly concerned people when it came out by citing frequent instances of grid terrorism throughout the 1970s, such as transformer shootings and substation bombings. This was one of Communist Kim’s favorite books and it sat on his desk in the war room bunker far underground. He used it like a board room map pointing here and there to targets he wanted his Generals to arrange to take out.

.

2

Milestones On The

Road Towards Armageddon

Standing outside the main office of a power company in California a hacker the North Koreans had employed known as Drago pulls an employee's electronic badge out of his pocket and waves it at an outside sensor. The door unlocks, even though it’s a fake card made with data stolen earlier that day.

Once Drago gets inside the building which oversees various sites and substations delivering power to around 150,000 customers he is happy that no alarms sound or security guards appear to stop him. Cameras silently watch the hacker as he heads toward a room where the servers are located, aka the "treasure room," intent on taking over as many of the company's systems as he can.

Drago stops, looks around and then rifles through the desk of an information technology (IT) employee looking for anything useful. He moves under the desk, looking for a suitable place to install custom hardware that will call back to him later over the internet. He then unlocks an iPad to look through a few confidential emails before moving on to a stack of notes on the desk. 

“I see said the blind man. You evidently didn’t get the latest homeland security warnings or the corporate memo on not leaving passwords lying around on sticky notes. I've got a root password here," he says, holding a yellow bit of paper with the word root and a weak, five character passwords. He's just uncovered the crown jewel in this little foray! This appeared to be possibly a top administrator password that likely would give him unrestricted access to just about any computer on the network. It wasn’t like he needed to ever worry about paying his power bill again; he had plenty of bitcoin and a Swiss bank account box full of cash that nice Korean guy had paid him for a little covert surveillance hacking.

Later on he needed to dig a little deeper into the network to figure out just how much he can do, it's highly likely his find could result in the theft of corporate proprietary information on the company, leaks of private customer details like SSNs, home addresses, or even access to critical systems that could take electricity offline but he didn’t care. He quietly slipped out of the building the same way he came in and went home and waited for the next power company operator to log on.

Over in Washington DC another hired hacker carefully gained access to the districts welfare and food stamp distribution computers before heading to Mexico to enjoy her ill gotten gains. Who cares if someone wants to charge the system for some more free food and money? Everyone that’s on it will still get it or so she thought....

The skillet was hot now and Kim Jong Un decided it was time to turn up the heat and get some smoke going. Terrorist-set wildfires in the west were already creating havoc, silly Californians were blaming the mythical climate change thing... The terrorists and rebels of the world had figured out long ago about using fire as a tactical weapon of war. This was perhaps the simplest form of economic warfare they could think of by causing wild land arson. This tactic allowed them to inflict significant damage with very little investment or risk, fire is an extremely high-leverage weapon of mass effect. The economic damage caused by setting fires in U.S. forests and grasslands was significant as well as tied up many resources. Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld of the New York-based American Center for Democracy's Economic Warfare Institute had previously warned that last a few months ago "al-Qaeda's English-language online magazine,

Inspire, published an article called 'It Is of Your Freedom to Ignite a Firebomb,' which featured instructions on how to build an incendiary bomb to light forests on fire. A few months later, Russia's security (FSB) chief, Aleksandr Bortnikov warned, 'al-Qaeda was complicit in recent forest fires in Europe' as part of the terrorists' 'strategy of a thousand cuts.' All these things were but distractions however as the enemies of the Untied States and its Allies networked its minions to create hell on earth.

The tempest of World War III loomed on the smoke filled horizon most people thought, they started publicly thinking and talking of a nuclear exchange as the war drums beat louder to end these blatant tests or attacks but saner heads tried to prevail. Neither North Korea nor Iran had “demonstrated or “tested” a full blown nuclear device above ground that had damaged anyone as of yet. They hadn’t directly caused sufficient undeniable or blamable damage to our infrastructure computers as of yet we could point more than a finger at.

Israel was on a hair trigger and threatened to take care of Iran itself if the US didn’t hurry and step up to the plate. They were already bombing the hell out of the various terrorist factions threatening its borders as the world began to get even crazier. America’s borders were under continuous siege as numerous Mexican gangs linked to the drug cartels smuggled in so called “refugees” or foreign freedom fighters they didn’t care which and didn’t mind selling them or anybody else that wanted them, guns, explosives or ammo..

The Sun was entering solar minimum and it was throwing off unprecedented coronal mass ejections of enormous size, volcanoes, earthquakes and hurricanes plagued the globe. Various plagues and pestilences were occurring throughout the world as scientists struggled to combat them and find effective cures. A whole Pandora’s Box of woes had seemed to have been wildly let loose in the world.

Weather wars seemed to be occurring as countries accused one another of this or that dastardly deed and tried geoenginering to either offset a wildfire by making rain or in the United States and China and Russia’s case of causing earthquakes and other supposedly natural disasters to get a point across. Could be the US had caused North Korea’s underground nuclear testing mountain to collapse, who knows.

That Kim Jong Un was in back of a lot of this mayhem was a given, what to do about it and him was the problem. The president can order a nuclear strike in about the time it takes to write a tweet. He can easily turn that North Korean fat boy Kim into a Tostito but there were major potential repercussions from Russia and China to consider. They were not likely to be appreciative of the radioactive fall out that might come off such a strike and cross their borders... The president kind of felt like he was being pistol whipped and held hostage by the North Korean atomic threat. Level the playing field is what Kim Jong Un had accomplished in his devious mind. The US didn’t want to fight him conventionally he thought and his threat of nuclear response if attacked held them at bay for now as their country lost power and influence daily.

In a war of attrition, both sides have the same approximate strength, and each attempts to force the other to surrender by wearing the other down. The prevailing side simply outlasts the other, forcing continuous losses of people, equipment, weapons, or food. Tomorrow Kim Jong Un would turn off half of America’s lights and cut off millions of people on welfare and food stamps... By the time the stupid Americans figured out who was truly at fault in this blame game, it would be too late to care about him.

Millions of starving citizens would take to the streets angrily mad at the government for not giving them their dole in few days rioting in a frenzy of unjustified race allegations etc. Kim hoped and this outpouring of America’s ghettos would tie up the military and police. Take down America from within by smartly using its own people to cause even more societal breakdown, vandalism, arson and violence. That was the plan! Of course he wasn’t done playing the game by a long shot yet and neither was Iran. Next week or next month they would both cause the rest of the electrical grid to go down in Europe and the US.

Kim Jong Un picked up his favorite book and reread one highlighted quote again for the umpteenth time.” Destroy nine interconnection substations and a transformer manufacturer and the entire United States grid would be down for at least 18 months, probably longer." And called for his aide to take a memo.... “Where was that book that said the American EMP commission had predicted 90% of its population would be dead in 1 year after the electrical grid was taken down?” Kim thought to himself. Ah yes here it is he murmured.

Director James Woolsey and EMP

Commission Chairman Dr. Vincent Pry from the Task Force on National and Homeland Security published an article on TheHill.com, where they argued that a nuclear EMP attack could wipe out 90% of the U.S. population. Woolsey and Pry cite the Congressional EMP Commission, arguing, “a single warhead delivered by North Korean satellite could blackout the national electric grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures for over a year – killing 9 of 10 Americans by starvation and societal collapse.”

The Threat to America’s Electrical Grid

Is Much Bigger Than You Can Possibly Imagine! Do Some Preparations! Wake Up!

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3

The Big Meltdown

The many factions of extremists who historically continually and opportunistically attacked U.S. interests by any means possible, sometimes on U.S. soil, sometimes abroad at a military installation, base, or embassy now had allies with nuclear armed armies to assist them in their own vegenefull full terrorism. The stated goal for some was to wear the U.S. down so that it eventually gave in to their demands but for others it was to establish Sharia law and a new Islamic caliphate. A precipitous collapse of the U.S. was in sight but she wasn’t going down without a fight. The nukes did fly eventually towards Iran and China and did even help kick North Korea’s butt in unconventional warfare but the damage was done. The electrical grid was down in Europe, the US and parts of China. Russia had its own share of terrorists and problems.

South Korea attempted to dig itself out of the rubble as a darkened Japan attempted to control its leaking nuclear reactors hit by missiles fired from North Korea. Turmoil and death like the world had never seen ensued and the age of dying began just as a mini ice age began from the solar minimum and all the ashes and smoke in the air.

The grid had only been totally down and out for a week when the U.S. had eviscerated Iran and

North Korea. The rally around the flag and make America great again after this great calamity messages on the Emergency Broadcast channel by the President eventually went unheeded by the populace. The declaration of martial law held some of the chaos and societal breakdown at bay for awhile, but the dregs of society toads soon surfaced and made peaceful reconstruction for the more civilized majority an impossibility for now. Gang wars, rioters and cops, patriots and terrorists you name it eventually went at it until they had their own war of attrition finding something to eat.

That’s when the military came in under emergency power acts and tried to start sort of a feudal system of raising food and brutally suppressing dissent. This went on in some areas longer than others but the army travels on its belly and dissent in the ranks and food shortages had them staying on bases and trying to run civilian labor campaigns to feed itself as well as the workers. Lots of people participated willingly in this process but many did not and were sometimes forced into labor gangs for their own good or so it was said.

Everyplace was different, just as every commander or leader who was in charge of a base or relief camp was in policy and conditions. Oh yea America still had her government, got's to have “continuity of government” at all costs and they had a plan of sorts for this type of event occurring. They had one for themselves that didn’t include everyone else.

They would hide in a safe place with their families somewhere with tons of food and command what was left of the country from there. But it doesn’t really work like that, well not at first anyway. You see it took them way too long to come up with much of anything at all to offset this disaster on the populace. They got the ready set go military part done pretty quickly about nuking Iran and Korea; they even let Israel take out Damascus. I think that was because the President picked up the Video phone and addressed the Congress and Senate and said “Look guys there is transportation for you out waiting out front to go to your designated shelters. I as President of the United States told the Strategic Air Command to take a little trip and go somewhere for me in 15 minutes. Oh yea, no worries about the other big powers for now.  Russia and China are mumbling something but they are aware of our efforts and accept our apologies for any external damage we do to their borders with our enemies. Now then gentleman I suggest that you now exit the building and board your buses, “and the president walked away from the podium as the vice president stepped forward to another one on the far side of the country.

The military had already put the electronic warfare zap on any cell or satellite phones working in the area where the two houses of government were assembled and there was little that the senators and congressmen could do and no one to call to say they had just heard the president had declared a nuclear attack. Trump himself had left instructions for the bus drivers and the secret service escorting the dignitaries on their trip to secured safe locations. The nation was at war, congress could declare it when they got settled into their new homes for the duration of this tribulation. If any of the braying ass civic leaders not wanting to board the bus wanted to stay or argue about the instructions from the Commander and Chief, well then the President said just leave them there were they were at and restrict their travel anywhere for an hour. Don’t offer them any further help or assistance in anyway; but secure them for the one crucial hour America needed and then they were on their own now the same as their constituents would be to fend for themselves.

The North Koreans at first the pentagon had figured were most likely partaking of a strategy that follows Iran's playbook: Get close to developing a nuclear weapon and the rest of the world will make a deal. They had played that game for awhile and sought American aid and money as a form of extortion for not being bad you might say. However, it was known now that North Korea had also been manufacturing bombs for Iran and exchanging missile technology with them. No word could get out on the Presidents plan and life as we knew it soon imploded.

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4

Road Trips And Rendezvous

Travis eyed the deathly still neighborhood around his house by peeking around a curtain carefully. You couldn’t tell what might be going on these days outside but you knew to look for something amiss before daring to open your front door. Mostly you were looking for signs of any armed people moving around and trying to decide their intentions and why they were about.

Folks still had gas for their vehicles, well what was left in their tanks anyway, but you didn’t see very many cars moving anymore. Seems that everyone had a bit of sense about safely staying at home, but that didn’t necessarily mean staying behind closed doors.

That was the spooky part; you could basically tell how out numbered you were and peoples opinions on your current existence from the neighbors sometimes angry or cautious look in your direction. Those big extended families with lots of little kids up on the corner felt the crush of being cut off from the system the worst day one. A lot of them were used to the generational welfare trap of having babies to increase Federal and State dole income in single parent households.

The mommas baby daddies that used to come around there once in awhile with a bit of money from odd jobs or drug dealing didn’t come around much at all after the first week or so. Seems that a house full of screaming disrespectful misbehaving kids and naked babies running around from lack of diapers wasn’t to their liking either and they moved on.

Oh some stayed in the neighborhood, others brought back some food from their looting like modern day hunters providing for their tribe but the food and the patience of would be victims and places to loot quickly run out.

Seems like I have heard folks say that as much as 80 % of them poor kids didn’t even know who their father was or if they did know his name they had no way of knowing where he was at. They were used to not having father figures in the house and running amok and it was rare to have a responsible two parent household to raise them properly.

It was time to man up and provide and take care of families as a Father now but that wasn’t how it was playing out for the most part. Cousins, brothers, uncles, sisters etc. teamed up some if they lived close enough to each other and often times did but they were just as apt to get into a fight over food among themselves as they were with others they tried to victimize.

People that only knew how to respond to a problem by screaming, being ignorant, selfish and cussing hysterically and fighting or rioting to get what they wanted found out that didn’t work out too well for them anymore. A tantrum no longer got what they wanted or was even tolerated much or for very long either.

The cops weren’t putting up with it, the working-class citizens were already tired of it and after a few violent confrontations all sides got their guns and went at it as a free for all. The police formed their own enclaves protecting government buildings that served as communication centers for a time and let the streets run wild. Neighborhoods sometimes became armed camps and with the quantity of guns that existed in most of southern society they faired better than the northern cities by expressing  with out further warning that things would turn pretty deadly if you stepped out of line or appeared to be a threat.

Middle class neighborhoods armed themselves and locked their doors and ate what little food was left in their pantries dreading the all too soon day when nothing but the dust would be left. They watched the streets for signs of trouble, large groups on the move and dreaded any knock that came to the door, cowered behind barricaded doors at the gunshots and screams that came in the night.

They talked to their neighbors about self protection; they sought defensive alliances and asked for answers about what they should do next which no one had. People tried to eat grass, hunted pets, stole, robbed and anything else to live another day. Some sought the easy way out through suicide, the woods filled with hunters and many people never made it home again, the church pews filled and suburbs became graveyards.

Many citizens offered to take a stand with the police to fight what they saw as destruction. Mayors attempted to recruit the big farmers to help feed the masses but it wasn’t planting season and the juggernaught of famine and societal strife rolled on gathering speed and more fires started. The cities tried to keep the water pumping for as long as they possibly could for drinking water. National Guard water purification units offered their services in some areas and small towns but these were few and far between. When the taps shut off, people for the most part would leave or die heading for the temporary respite of the nearest known source of that precious and necessary life giving liquid.

Oh many would be just drinking on cases of looted soft drinks to stave off dehydration and such and still be hanging around their own neighborhoods but that wouldn’t last long. They also would be driven with need to migrate towards finding a dependable source of water as well as food.

The threat of death by dehydration was a better equalizer than a gun for your own safety at first. That is if you had water stored in your home and could stay off the streets and avoid the worst of it awhile. There would soon be less people left around to rob you, rape you, beat you, steal from you or compete with you for survival very quickly once the city water quit flowing and they were forced to migrate elsewhere. You would be left behind with whatever pitiful crap resources remained in your area to try to survive on where as the criminals and regular survivors would have absolutely nothing as soon as they got a half tank away and would never be coming back to bother you. They would like a plague of locust soon deplete certain areas resources and you had time on your side to scrounge where you were at if resourceful.

A funny thing occurs that running out of water does for a city and its inhabitants besides making them migrate further out, it also increases fuel consumption and demand further in. People seeking water at first daily would transport it back and forth to home from known natural or manmade sources burning up gas before they decided they needed to move closer to the water to conserve fuel. It was also the last desperate act they did when realizing they were but a tank of gas away from surviving or not surviving in many cases because of the bodies need for water.

Getting dressed for foraging and getting ready to go to the water hole with the rest of the animals meant looking out for predators. You avoided going to the water hole if you could. You didn’t know what was hiding in the bushes or along the path waiting for you to come to get something to drink or for that matter eat.

Travis and his wife Tina had immediately dutifully filled up the bath tub, the sinks, pots and pans etc. the day that half the power in the US went out and they had done it even faster when it was announced that it was done by a terrorist act. They had started doing it slowly just to be on the safe side at first to have extra in the bathtub to flush the toilet with remembering a broken water main not long ago. This proved to be very wise move because many people got caught off guard when the water itself was shutoff all at once. The power companies announced limited power

availability for the first few days after the initial attack and in Travis’s community they lost all power completely about a week into the big meltdown.

When residents were warned in other states  to conserve water because there was only a threeday reserve and available unless the power came back on (it didn’t) panic swept through far too much of the country and the emergency water supply was gone in 24 hours.

The water stayed on for another week at Travis’s house but with barely any pressure to push it through the pipes. He and his wife had both got compulsive about filling a glass or some other container with the slow flow to reassure themselves that it was still trickling and also use it as a crystal ball clock for when the big migration to waterways to start up in earnest.

Travis and Tina used their time to make they rain catchments around their backyard gardens and attempted to grow some more greens. They had very little seed for the task but Travis advised that the natural weeds would soon move into the garden on their own and many of them would be edible if Mother Nature blessed them.

For lack of anything better to do and to get some exercise he also tore up patches of their lawn here and there and offered it to the fast growing weeds. If they were lucky purslane or some other kind of edible weed would take up residence on its own and they would be eating on those not particularly tasty greens before any kale or turnip tops grew in. He did spend some of his time shoring up the sides of his rain garden though. He considered it might be a futile act because they would be bugging out eventually but when that was they hadn’t decided as of yet.

Rain gardens are as old as agriculture itself especially in arid lands. For thousands of years, humans have harvested the water from rains too heavy to fully soak into the ground. A rain garden or catchment is a depression or basin on the surface of the soil where rainwater is collected from the surrounding landscape and can be used by plants in the basin. Basically a mud puddle.

A depression may be man-made; however, many occur naturally. A man-made rain garden should be placed to optimize the capture of water from the immediate drainage area, guide the run off. Ditches or swales also may be used to divert water from other drainage areas. Water from a rooftop may be channeled through gutters and pipes to the rain garden.

Travis and Tina’s neighbors were a long retired elderly couple that had a sloping hill in their backyard and Travis took his mattock over and Tina grabbed a hoe and they set about fish scaling the sides of the landscape with swales.

A swale is a depression or ditch that follows the contour of the land like the lines used on topographical maps to illustrate elevation and gradient.

As with a rice terrace, when seen from above the line of the swale it may curve across the surface of the land but when viewed edge on it will be perfectly horizontal and level allowing water to pool from end to end.

This type of water gathering gardening not a lot of use if you have no rain but it is a good rain extender to benefit the plants longer and try to make up for a drought. Boredom was another reason the job was undertaken. Waiting patiently to die is not in the human spirit or nature, people want to fight to live and so they did, but most people only ended up dying a little sooner expending useless calories. Travis however had decided long ago that he wasn’t going to be bored and would rather fight with a spade and a pick axe first and hopefully only have to tussle Mother Nature once in a while to get through a calamity like this. But that was all going to depend on other folks leaving him alone long enough to grow something that was edible.

Old people like the Jones next-door tried their best to be resourceful as they could but you could see it in their eyes they had given up on life mostly. They were just going to admittedly resolve to die sooner than they expected and go through the motions of living another day while hopefully not having any further health issues soon..

Tina encouraged them to help out doing everything even when they weren’t needed and Travis made Carl feel more useful standing guard while he dug his garden or had him staying behind guarding the houses if he and Tina went on water procurement or foraging trips.

They had both been lucky so far and had not been targeted by thieves but they both knew they were out there and waiting. Travis dropped the dark window curtain he had been peering out of and told Tina that he was going out to check the snares out in the tree in the front yard.

“Ok Hon, is the street all quiet?” Tina asked.

“Yes it’s empty right now.” Travis replied picking up the old single shot 20 gauge Iver Johnson shotgun of his and going out the front door.

Travis sure wished he had a pellet gun of some sort instead of this single banger. There were plenty of birds around here but he wasn’t going to disintegrate them small things into feathers with his shotgun and the .22 Henry survival rifle he had wasn’t up to the task of hunting them effectively either. He had some aforethought though and he was lucky he had packed a couple rat traps in his bug out bag that sort of worked for song birds, but he still did wish that he had thought about to add some of the smaller mouse traps also. Wasn’t it himself that had said often if a Prepper cant catch a bird he or she would be reduced to eating what the bird ate and that included bugs and worms?

He had himself more than one way to accomplish that task however that also made up or his lack of small mouse traps. He had a lightweight survival gill net in his gear that he considered using as a “mist net” for birds on their flyways but he figured now that he finally unpacked that thing the mesh was too big so he left it in his pack for now.

He had been trying to remember every bird trap he had ever seen and it had taken him some experimenting to remember just how to do a few.

This works best when set in a clearing where the trigger stick offers a handy perch. The slightest weight on the trigger should cause it to fall and the noose to catch the bird by its feet.

1.  Cut a 1/4-inch-diameter hole through one end of a stout 3-6 foot-long pole with a knife. If necessary, shave the sides of the pole to make it thin enough to make the hole. Sharpen the bottom end of the pole and drive it into the ground.

2.  Whittle the end of the, about 6 inch, trigger stick so that it resembles a pencil with the point cut off. This end should fit loosely inside the hole in the pole.

3.  Insert thin cord or fishing line through the hole and tie an overhand knot. Beyond the knot, form a slip noose. Tie the other end of the cord to a rock. Make the slip noose so that it drapes over the perch. Tension should hold it in position

4.  Drape the noose over both sides of the trigger and insert it into the pole (if it's breezy, wet the cord with saliva to help it stay put). Draw the cord until the knot catches at the point where the trigger fits into the hole, to keep it from falling back through–until a bird alights on the small stick. When a bird flies down and perches, it will displace the stick, the rock will fall, and its feet will be caught as the loop quickly slides through the hole.

Itty bitty birds and wild weeds don’t make much of a meal but you can get by on them.

He and Tina’s meals these days had everything disguised as some kind of Chinese food creations with soy sauce etc. added. Travis reminded Tina they were doing good because of his ability to catch the birds because if you can’t catch them you’re reduced to eating what they eat which includes them worms and bugs he was damned if he would be eating.

“Good morning, Travis!”  Mr. Jones called out from his garden across the fence.

“Morning, Carl! You out here getting yourself a little weeding done before the sun gets too hot out here?” Travis asked strolling over.

“Well sort of, I weed a bit and scratch around to see what’s edible maybe... Are you out pie making?” Carl said joking with him.

Carl’s wife Wilma had exclaimed jokingly and at the thought of eating common birds that it reminded her of an old nursery rhyme she had heard as a child and started singing “Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.” And this became their standing apocalyptic cookbook joke about being able to actually make one someday. Bird pot pie was sounding pretty good about right now.