Descent Into Darkness:

Y2K's Potential and

Your Survival

By Bruce Pickelheimer

NOTICE

This book is offered as shareware. If you download it, like it, and decide to keep it, please send $5 to the author at:

Bruce Pickelheimer
P.O. Box 15866
Ft. Wayne, IN 46885-5866

If anyone wants to contact the author, you can e-mail me at:

Litz_Out@yahoo.com

This book is the first of several which I have written on this subject, including the start of a nine book fictionalized series, which begins with the Phoenix Project. The other nonfiction books are "Y2K Conspiracy", which describes the reasons why there will be problems at the beginning of the year, and "End of the Millenium", which describes in detail the worst case scenario which is referred to in this book. I am currently working on a book detailing the special circumstances and problems which will be faced by women in the event of major problems, including some suggestions on how to minimize the problems and make preparations before the problems occur.

If there is sufficient demand for the remaining books in the fictionalized series, I will complete them and get them posted as well. If the shareware fees allow me to concentrate on writing instead of getting things set up for my family, all of the books in the series will be completed and posted online by October 15, 1999.

This book has been copyrighted, and all sales, reproductions, and use without permission from the author is prohibited. The author gives permission for the book to be downloaded and read in exchange for the shareware fee. If you do not want to pay the shareware fee, do not keep a copy of the book. The author also gives those who send in their shareware fee the right to make one hard copy for their own use. All copies, electronic or printed, must include this notice.

Introduction

This book is not for the faint of heart. I intend to realistically examine the full extent of the problems which individuals in this society may be forced to face, either directly or indirectly, as a result of Y2K. Much of this book is directed toward the problems which may occur in our current technology as a result of the Y2K bug. However, there is also a lot of discussion related to topics such as politics, human nature, and the interactions they have with technology which affect our society.

I am not politically correct, and I never will be so long as that requires me to change my basic beliefs to conform to some deluded ideology espoused by radical liberals who ignore any facts which conflict with their preconceived beliefs. If you can't face reality, live in you own little dream world. Just don't expect me to allow you to force me to live in it with you.

IF YOU ARE A LIBERAL, YOU WILL NOT AGREE WITH ALMOST ANYTHING IN THIS BOOK. DO NOT BUY IT UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO LIVE WITH THE CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR OWN ACTIONS.

Now that the disclaimer has been taken care of, here is what this book is really about. It is about preparing yourself to survive in the event that Y2K does happen and that the government is unwilling or unable to provide emergency assistance and disaster relief in the area in which you live.

I have detailed three different scenarios throughout the book. The first is the best case scenario, in which there are some problems, but they are limited in both scope and duration. There is some probability that there will be some disease, some suffering, and some violence.

The second is the worst case scenario, in which the problems are widespread, massive, and last for a long time. This could result in the end of our current civilization as we know it, but is more likely to result in the end of our current society as we know it. The problems we face may be due more to our own society and human responses, but the loss of control and normalcy due to technological failures would be a major factor in triggering those responses.

The third is what I consider to be the most likely scenario. Some technological failures will occur, but the majority of the damage to property, lives, and our society will probably come from the reactions of the people themselves to the situation.

Much of this book will cover human behavior under stressful conditions. Instead of going into minute detail about how humans react under stress, I have concentrated on the reasons for the stress in our society. These include conflict with the government over what should be vs. what is, how our government is supposed to operate vs. how it actually operates, and trust.

Trust is a central issue because the actions the government has taken in the last 70 years only highlight their distrust of the citizens of this country. That is why they don't want to tell you everything about what may happen if their "corrections" to prevent Y2K don't work. They also don't want to accept the blame for ignoring the experts for over a decade before finally taking the steps they were forced to in order to "deal" with the situation they were facing now that time was running out.

Of course, many people no longer trust the government, and I have taken some pains to provide examples of why they feel the way they do. Although many in the media call those who distrust the government paranoid, they are wrong. Many people do have a reasonable basis for distrusting the government, or for fearing those who represent the government. Paranoia is an unreasonable, irrational, or baseless fear. Those in the media know this, but choose to ignore the truth because it conflicts with their own personal beliefs. The media is decidedly liberal compared to the majority of the population of this country, and that fact may be partially responsible for the lack of communication between the people who make up this country and those who represent them in Washington, D.C.

Many of the conclusions expressed in this book are my own, but they are based on data gathered from many sources. I have determined which sources are reliable, and which sources must be verified by several other independent sources before what they say can be believed. Most articles written by the mainstream media fall into the latter category. Journalists are biased, and their bias is readily apparent in not only what stories are covered, but in how the stories are presented to the public.

If any facts are incorrect, I am responsible. If any conclusions are incorrect, I am responsible. I wrote this book based on the conclusions I drew from information that I gathered and analyzed. I have arrived at several hypotheses by some rather indirect methods, but I have given you the rationalization which led me to believe that what I concluded was based on rational thinking. Before you disagree with my conclusions, read my rationale and decide for yourself. Am I just stirring up trouble or have I brought together some information which others consider unrelated and managed to come up with a clear picture of what is going on and what the consequences may be in just a few months?

I am not telling you what is going to happen and what you have to do to survive. I am pointing out some things which may happen, explaining why I believe the way I do, and giving you some information which will allow you to decide what you want to do to prepare for those things which you consider reasonable or probable.

If you read this book and decide that I am wrong about everything, you are entitled to your opinion and I wish you well. If there is a disaster when the new year arrives and you haven't prepared for it, don't blame me, and don't come to me looking for help because you've already had all the help I'm going to give you.

If you read this book and decide that I may actually know what I am talking about, you are responsible for making your own decisions about what to prepare for and how to prepare. I would urge you NOT to make any preparations using credit, because that is just digging the hole deeper. Besides, if you are wrong, you may even be prosecuted for fraud if you intentionally set out to run up your credit cards knowing that there is no way for you to even attempt to pay them off. Prepare to the best of your abilities within the limitations of the time and budget you have.

The best advice I can give anyone on how to survive, or how to prepare for survival, is to read and learn as much as you can on the topics you need to know about. Even if you never get any accreditation or degree, learning is never wasted if you can use it to improve yourself. Let's face reality. Since the government, and especially the liberals, took over the education system in this country, the only way to get a truly good education is to educate yourself if you are forced to attend public schools. Those who are outstanding students are those who learn naturally, those who work at it for themselves, those who do extra reading and studying on their own, and the lucky few who are fortunate enough to find a teacher who cares about teaching and learning and who gives the student the encouragement and basics to allow him to excel.

It is the ability to make something of yourself, to improve your own life, the ability of the individual to make a difference in the whole society, which originally made this country great. People came here because this was a land of opportunity, where everyone was able to learn, get a good education, and prosper. No matter what happens next year, I hope that things will change enough to make the American dream possible again. My goal in life is not necessarily to make the world a better place for my children, but to at least make sure that it isn't a worse place than it was when I got it.

I know that isn't much of a goal, but I believe that it is better to go through life with lower goals and high standards than it is to go through life with higher goals and lower standards. It is easy to raise your goals once they are achieved, but it is difficult to raise your standards once you are accustomed to letting them fall. Remember, it is the decay of morals and standards which causes a civilization to fail. Any society can survive adversity so long as those who make it up are willing to work together to preserve it, in spite of the hardships.

Chapter 1

Many people are saying that Y2K will not be the major problem or disaster that is being predicted by those who disagree with the official estimates of what will happen. The official analysis being offered to the public is that there will be a few minor glitches in the business sector, most of which can be attributed to older systems which use Cobol programs and outdated hardware. There may be a few mistakes with some computers which could cause minor problems with utilities and finances, but they are just minor problems which should have no impact on the ability of the citizens of this country to lead their normal lives.

Maybe the government is correct. Maybe they are actually telling us the truth. But many of the computer experts have been claiming for years that there are going to be a lot more problems with Y2K than the government officials realize, and that many of them are going to be a lot more difficult to correct than is currently believed. So, for the sake of argument and to allow everyone to examine the facts and decide for themselves how much personal danger or inconvenience Y2K poses for them, let's go over the potential problems which could occur and let the individual decide how effective and believable the corrective measures taken by the government and industry are going to be.

But first, in order to convince those skeptics who think that government experts are always correct, and that the government always tells us the truth, let's examine a few facts which are pertinent to the credibility of the government. All of the following examples are facts, and are easily verifiable by independent sources. Some are even in modern history books, but the description in the book omits some of the facts in order to save space for what the authors consider more important topics.

After World War II, the U.S. government conducted atomic warfare experiments in the desert southwest which consisted of having troops dig in about a half mile away from a nuclear blast site, wait out the atomic blast, and then march toward the mushroom cloud at ground zero. Approximately 250,000 troops were exposed to what was known to be hazardous levels of radiation during the multiple tests. Many of these veterans later had health problems which were directly related to their exposure, but the government denied their claims and denied them the proper medical treatment.

During the McCarthy era, the government participated in a witch hunt for Communists and Communist sympathizers which allowed people to be black balled professionally and privately for any reports that they were members of the Communist party or were sympathetic to their cause. The moral argument was that this was for the greater good because of the threat that the Communists posed to the free world. The truth was that a small portion of the world at that time could be considered to be free, or under a truly democratic form of government.

Human rights were also not the real consideration, because the U.S. government was still bringing known Nazi scientists into this country to get them to work on secret projects. While the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials were still going on, and the press was widely reporting the convictions of menial prison guards, our government was smuggling known high ranking Nazi scientists into this country, giving them great jobs with good salaries, setting them up with housing, and hiding their past to protect them from any prosecution for their actions and activities during the war. Not that the convicted guards didn't deserve to be punished, but just that their superiors deserved to be more harshly punished, and not to be given a life of luxury as a reward for sharing the knowledge they had acquired by committing their atrocities.

Also, the government did not reveal to the American people that the Communists were guilty of committing more atrocities during World War II than the Nazis were. When the Nazis invaded Russia, they were initially greeted as liberators by the common peasants who did not like Communist rule. It wasn't until the SS started their purges that sentiments started to change. However, the government and the American press hid the fact that the Russians conducted purges of their own when they retook territory from the Nazis. These purges resulted in the extermination of 30 million Russians during World War II, most of whom opposed the Communists. However, the Russians also targeted the Jews and the Gypsies as undesirables. Our government, under Roosevelt, supplied the Russians with arms and munitions even when they knew what was happening. They didn't make this public during the Red Scare because too many high ranking politicians were still in office, and their careers would have been ruined by the public reaction.

If human rights was of any real concern to our government except as a tool to use to sway public opinion and give the media something to talk about, out country would not have many of our current social problems to the extent which they exist today. For example, the CIA is the root cause of much of the drug problem in this country. They have been using illegal drugs to fund their clandestine operations inside and outside of this country for decades. Drugs to money to guns is much older than the Iran-Contra scandal. Our government knows about this, and the war on drugs has never been more than a smoke screen to control who gets drugs into America and who doesn't.

Since the 1960's, education in this country has been on a steady decline. The more direct influence the federal government has had on education, the greater the decline in educational results and standards. Even factoring inflation in, more money is being spent per student on education, and a lower percentage of high school students graduate than 40 years ago. The real problem is that 40 years ago, everyone who graduated met the basic requirements for graduation, and was educated to meet the minimum standards. Today, 40% of high school graduates are funtionally illiterate. This means that they can't read or write well enough to function properly in our society, and that most can't balance a checkbook. Think what this means to a society when those who don't graduate are even less educated than those who complete high school.

But since we are not concerned with sociology at this time, but with technology, let's see what the track record for the government has been concerning technology and science.

There was once a nuclear power plant called Three Mile Island. It had an 'incident' just two weeks after the movie 'The China Syndrome' was released. The experts in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission all stated that there was no possibility that what happened in the movie could ever happen in real life. Our government had hired the best experts in the world and made sure that the plants we built were safe. They had multiple levels of safeguards, and construction was monitored every step of the way to insure that all of the guidelines were followed completely.

There are only three facts which need to be stated, and I won't waste time explaining them in detail. First, there have been numerous occasions reported in the press and in some cases in the courts, where almost every nuclear facility in the country has been shown to have been built or operated with substandard parts due to cutting corners on cost and inspections. Second, the government's experts told everyone throughout the incident at Three Mile Island that there was no danger to the public, and that they had everything under control. They implied that they would have everything taken care of in no time and everything would be back to normal at the plant. Third, two years after the 'incident', when they were finally able to examine the reactor vessel at Three Mile Island, the government's experts found that 50% of the reactor core had melted down. This means that twenty tons of uranium had become hot enough to melt down and form a slag on the bottom of the reactor vessel. In spite of all the vaunted safety measures and emergency procedure training conducted according to NRC guidelines, America had missed seeing what the China Syndrome would look like in real life by luck, not planning or safeguards.

We won't really consider Chernobyl, because that didn't happen in America, although there are a few nuclear reactors in America built on the same general design as the one in Chernobyl. Our computers are considered to be better and more reliable, right?

Of course, there was a nuclear plant in this country recently that had a problem with fluctuating fuel rod levels in the reactor core. The fuel rods control the rate of the nuclear reaction, which, along with the cooling water level, is what keeps the core from getting hot enough to melt down, which was the problem at Three Mile Island. An uncontrolled nuclear reaction will result in a nuclear meltdown. People don't seem to want to believe that you have to have perfectly reliable equipment for the plant to run safely. If the sensors malfunction, the computer believes their input and reacts accordingly. The operators believe what the computer and the sensors tell them, and react accordingly. The problem at this plant was traced to a faulty sensor which was acting up because the air conditioning in the control room had broken down.

Let's look at the Challenger disaster. A very expensive spacecraft and its entire crew was lost because someone made a decision to launch even though they knew that the temperature outside had gone below the parameters for the O-rings during the night. That tragic mistake was only overshadowed by one which was never played up in the press after the investigation was complete. If there had been a locator and a rescue ship available, some of the crew may have survived. NASA records after the crash indicated that some of the crew drowned, which meant that they survived the explosion and the impact, and lived for some time before running out of oxygen. They were probably not conscious, but that information has never been released to my knowledge.

The point of this discussion is that the technology is only as good as how it is built, and how it is used. Our current computer technology is not infallible. Ask anyone who has had his PC repeatedly lock up or crash for no apparent reason. Ask anyone who has been informed that his monthly credit card bill is some astronomical number because a computer glitch moved the decimal place. Ask anyone who has used one of the flawed Pentium processors. Although the company officially stated that it wouldn't affect most users, the simple equation which I saw published to check for the error had a large enough error that it would have affected most types of calculations, and could have been responsible for some serious errors. This is especially true of complex calculations involved in computing things like compound interest on something like a bank loan or your credit card bill.

This means that the true problem lies not with our technology itself, but with how that technology is interconnected with other technology and with those who interact with it. The more complex the system, the more levels that you have to make it interact at, and the more chances that some minor function or reading will be overlooked when you go over the system to upgrade or repair some minor fault.

In a society which has become accustomed to expecting and accepting 'bugs' in every piece of software which is released to the public by its largest software company, we have a problem. If we expect the fully tested and corrected version of some program to be unable to work properly, and the company is not only still operating, but is able because of its marketing and advertising influence to buy up or put out of business many competitors who make more dependable software, can we really be stupid enough to believe that all of our technology will work? The hardware is dependable. It is the software which controls the hardware, and instead of working with perfect software, we expect it to have 'bugs' and 'patches'.

I don't know about you, but I don't consider this to be the most efficient method of running a railroad. In real life we all have to deal with similar situations every day. You fix things before they break down completely. You change your oil before your motor locks up. You check your fluids before your brakes go out. Firemen repair or replace worn equipment before it fails, so your house doesn't burn down while they are figuring out the quickest way to replace the hose that just burst.

There is the real potential for some minor problems to become more important than people realize. Software problems can cause hardware failures. Hardware failures can cause breakdowns. Breakdowns can cause people to experience discomfort, difficulties, or even death, depending on the circumstances.

For example, a valve failure caused the 'incident' at Three Mile Island. The NRC knew that this particular type of valve had been involved in numerous failures before, but failed to warn any of the plant operators or architects. The fuel rod fluctuation at the other plant was caused by a sensor malfunction causing the software to respond accordingly. Fuel rods were raised and lowered unnecessarily. If a reactor failure had occurred, not only would the area have had a loss in electric power, they would have had to worry about getting out of the danger zone. In the case of Three Mile Island, the danger zone would have been the size of the state of Pennsylvania.

Although the immediate danger is not to an area that large in this case, even the government's experts agree that evacuating an area that large can not be accomplished in time to prevent some exposure to many people. Also, the panic will result in many deaths and casualties that have nothing to do with the radiation.

The government has lied before, and they have listened to experts who either did not know what they were talking about, or had no idea what the exact situation was and were speculating based on what they thought was occurring. Remember, in any given situation, even the experts make mistakes. They disagree, and all of them can not be right, even in a given situation. Some are right, and some are wrong. History decides who made the right call.

What is indisputable is the fact that those who have prepared ahead and built a storm shelter have the option of using it while those who have not prepared do not have that option. Another fact is that the same people who laugh at their neighbors for wasting their time and money to build a storm shelter are the first ones to line up outside it when a severe storm threatens. They have been taught by our society that they are not required to contribute anything to preparing for some emergency, but they still have the right to demand that they be given their share of protection when the emergency actually occurs.

When I went to school, we were taught the fable about the ant and the grasshopper. It was meant to teach the idea that rights and responsibilities were tied together. If you work to store food while there is plenty, you have plenty to eat when there is no food. If you choose to play and mock those who work to prepare for what is inevitable, you have the right to remember all those fond memories of playing while you starve.

Disasters are inevitable. Read your newspaper. Watch you TV. Read your history books. Emergency situations occur all the time, whether they are caused by nature or by man. Many different emergency situations, regardless of the cause, require many of the same preparations to be made. There are some differences, depending on the particular emergency or disaster, but they are basically the same.

In any emergency, you need to provide for the basics for survival until the emergency has been corrected or is over. This may mean planning for hours, days, weeks, months, or as long as you consider necessary.

The basics for survival are shelter, food, water, clothing, light, heat, cooking, and medicine. In many emergencies, the duration is short, and you only need to worry about one or two of these items. After a tornado, it may be days or weeks before everything is back to normal. After a hurricane, it may be weeks or months before everything is back to normal. After a nuclear meltdown, it could be thousands of years before anyone is able to live on the land you owned.

The following chapters will cover some of the possible technological problems, how they may affect your life, and how social problems which already exist may become involved in the reactions the public experiences. Remember that all of the events are POSSIBILITIES. I am not God, so I don't claim to know the future. However, I do have a brain and the ability to make the connections between events. I can think, and in doing so, can rationalize the previous behaviors I have seen in my lifetime and make predictions based on the possibility of those behaviors being repeated.

Experience is a wonderful thing, even when it concerns something so terrible that you never want to experience it again. Those who learn from experience, including the experiences of others, are able to reduce their own chances of being forced to go through the same experience in the future. If you don't like hurricanes, you move away from the coast, or you leave when you know one will be there in less than a week.

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Chapter 2

Since it is basic to many of the other systems, lets examine the possible problems which could occur to disrupt electrical power in this country as a result of Y2K.

Power plants are large, complex, complicated technological sites. Power is generated from fuel fired furnaces, water turbines, and nuclear reactors. Power can be generated from other sources, but this is not commonly done on a commercial scale in this country. The hardware may be perfectly functional, even in the event of a complete failure of all computer systems. However, the hardware has to be controlled in order to work properly and safely, and most of the control systems are run by computers. Also, the power must be moved from the generation source to the point where it is to be used. Many of those controls are now completely automated, and under computer control. Switches, transformers, monitors, and emergency shutoffs are controlled by a computer. The computer is controlled by a human, right? Wrong. The computer is controlled by the software - the programs which control what happens to the hardware connected to the computer. This software is what may malfunction due to the Y2K bug.

If a malfunction occurs, the damage may range from negligible to so massive that the entire power grid may fail. In fact, some types of plants could actually be destroyed in the event of a massive failure. If that happens, it will take more than a few days before your life returns to normal. First, we will examine the possible effects on the systems themselves, and the resulting damages and failures. Then, we will examine the results which you may be forced to live with, and how that may affect your life and your lifestyle.

Minor malfunctions can cause massive failures. A critical control switch, failing to activate, may cause a local power failure to affect other areas, even allowing the damage it was designed to prevent to occur instead. If the switches connecting one power grid to another fail, a local failure may cause transformers to explode or burn up because of overloads. A domino effect can be created, especially if this is not a random, isolated incident involving the failure of a single switch.

If a fluestack temperature sensor can shut down a power plant in twenty seconds, and it is not a critical part, you can see the problem in finding and correcting all of the things that can go wrong before they happen. The sensor was not critical. It was supposed to minimize temperature fluctuations over time, so it used a date to calculate the elapsed time. This event has already occurred in this country.

Whatever steps are taken by the utility companies, their customers are going to be forced to pay for them. Even if the 'repairs' do not correct the problem, you will be forced to pay increased rates until the system breaks down. Then, after things are fixed, you will pay increased rates to cover the cost of the repairs they made to fix all the damage that occurred. The only realistic way that this will not happen is if they are unable to fix the problems, in which case you will simply have to do without electricity unless you generate your own.

There are thousands of different systems in a single power plant, with sensors, switches, meters, processors, relays, subsystems and controls. All of this is regulated at various levels by computer control systems. Failure of a single system can result in the shutdown of the entire plant, even if there is nothing physically wrong with any of the components.

If there is a problem, the computer may not respond and shut down because the numbers are not sufficient for a response. Then, there will be a failure in the part or the subsystem, and the equipment will be damaged. If the failure is severe enough, major damage to the plant may occur as a result of the fire or explosion when the part fails.

There are additional dangers involved if the plant generates electrical power by hydroelectric or nuclear means. In the case of a hydroelectric plant, there is a dam involved. With no power, and no method of monitoring and controlling the dam, there is the possibility of a catastrophic failure. The dam could break under the pressure, resulting in flooding downstream and major damage to private property and loss of life. In the case of a nuclear plant, there is the possibility of a meltdown, resulting in widespread radioactive contamination. The affected area could involve large portions of several states, and could displace millions of residents. The big problem is that radiation is undetectable without specialized equipment. Those living in the affected areas might not have warning until after they had been exposed, especially if the failure happened to be part of a widespread systems failure.

If you are too young to remember what happens when circuit breakers do not work properly, as was more common before the advent of computer controlled circuits, look up the great New York blackout. Because the circuits were not cut out, a power failure in New York City ended up causing a cascade failure that blacked ou&127;t most of the East Coast. The same thing can still happen if the controls fail to cut the switches out before power surges cause system components to overload and fail.

We are talking about a highly interconnected network, with individual plants supplying electricity to their local area, but able to pull power from anywhere in the U.S. when their individual needs exceed their generating capacity. The network is protected by circuit breakers, which cut a single plant out of the net exactly the same way that individual circuits are isolated to prevent city-wide blackouts when an individual substation has a power surge and blows a circuit. If the cutouts fail, circuits can overload clear across the country.

There are lots of examples of what happens when there is a local power failure. Tornadoes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters provide frequent examples of what happens when an area suddenly loses all electrical power. I can tell you from experience that you have no light, no heat, no TV, and only battery powered radios. Your phones may work, depending on local damage and line integrity, but may also not work or may work sporadically. If you have gas, and the lines are intact, you can use your gas stove to cook and boil water. If the water is running, you still have to boil your water to make sure that it is safe to drink. The stores will all be closed because they have no power for lighting, refrigeration, or running their registers. The food you have on hand is all you can count on until disaster relief arrives or the power is restored. If your water is out, the same goes for it.

This is fine, because the damage is localized, and will be corrected in time. Also, disaster relief is often available within 24 hours to relieve suffering and prevent further loss of life. The problem is more severe when you are talking about more extensive damage, over a larger geographical area. As with any country, the U.S. has limited resources. While our ability to respond to a disaster or crisis is extensive compared to many countries, it is not unlimited.

A vast, highly interconnected infrastructure supports our society. A recent reminder of the widespread effects which can occur as a result of a single problem is the small recession the economy suffered last year because two plants for a single automobile manufacturer went on strike. Other plants that supplied other parts for the cars and trucks had to scale back some or all of their production, and ended up cutting hours or laying off employees temporarily. Their suppliers were eventually affected, and so on. The effect was like toppling dominoes, and the actions of a few thousand workers had an effect on the lives and livelihood of millions of other workers. There was even an effect on the support industries because the lost income meant decreases in spending on nonessential items.

Our technology allows us to have the organization, communications, and systems necessary to support that infrastructure. However, the loss of one, or even a few major structural supports is all that is necessary for the entire structure to collapse. Power is central to our society, and the computers control the power systems as well as everything else. If the computers fail, the power fails. Once the power system fails, everything else follows.

If widespread power failures occur within a short period, the chaos in communications and coordination of disaster relief activities will overcome the ability of the systems to deal with the problem. It will not make any difference whether or not you have the parts to replace those damaged at the time of the failure if you are unable to restart your systems without causing a repetition of the failure because your computer control systems have not been corrected to prevent the same problem from recurring.

The Y2K problem has several factors which could make the problems more extensive than most people are willing to admit. Those factors are the timing, the probability that many problems will be unexpected and unplanned for, and the effect that human actions will have on responses to the causes underlying the problems.

The timing is important because the failures should occur in the middle of the winter, when much of the country will be cold and there is an increased probability of severe environmental factors which will make responses more difficult. Cold, snow, and short days will all hamper any efforts to make repairs, deliver supplies, and restore order. The colder the weather, the more people will suffer. Exposure, hypothermia, inhalation of fumes from poorly ventilated heating alternatives, and fires caused by accidents or improper safety will cause injury, property damage, and deaths.

Unexpected problems require the responses to be improvised to solve them. If there are problems with communications or transportation, the parts or resources required to solve the problem may be more difficult to locate or to get to where they are needed. The longer the problem exists, the more difficult it will be to repair or to keep things from getting out of hand. The more difficult things become, or the more it seems that the people are on their own and the government and industry are unable to restore order and normalcy, the more drastic the measures taken by the citizens in the affected areas will become. Human actions, both in planning for the problem and in responding to the situations which actually occur, could be the single most important factor in determining the effects that Y2K will have on our society.

In the event that there is a widespread loss of power, the effects will be worse than any disaster movie you have ever seen. Those effects will only increase as the length of the disruption increases. There will be areas which retain power, but if the affected areas are large enough, the result will be the same as if those areas didn't exist if the power loss continues for more than a few weeks.

Let's examine the effects of a widespread power failure, and what is likely to happen. The consequences of those effects, especially those due to human interactions, will be dealt with in subsequent chapters.

When the power fails, technology follows. Our civilization is dependent upon technology, so it is a logical supposition that if the technology fails, civilization will follow if corrective measures are not taken to restore order and the technology required to support the infrastructure that our civilization is molded upon.

The first things that happen are that you are in darkness. Your lights do not work. No TV, music, or radio other than what you can get from a battery operated device. Most TV stations and radio stations have emergency generators, and will be able to broadcast for at least several days. They may have to reduce their power output, which will reduce their broadcast range and make them more difficult to receive in some areas.

Hospitals will go on emergency generators, as will utilities such as the water treatment plants. Water treatment plants may or may not function properly, even with electricity. The same is true for the hospitals. Hospitals are computerized, with most records and information dependent upon computers. They also require computers to utilize most of their modern equipment for treatment and diagnosis.

Many modern homes are all electric, meaning that they will have no light or heat. Many modern gas furnaces also use electric motors or fans to force air from the furnace to the house through the ducts. These homes will also have no heat because the only air being heated is retained inside the furnace. There is also the possibility that if the furnace runs continuously without circulating the air, fumes may build up inside the house which could be toxic to humans.

Most modern security systems in stores and warehouses have some type of battery backup system. However, the battery will not last forever. Once it is dead, there is no electronic security, and the automatic system will not call for police or security if there is a break-in. If there is a glitch in the computer system, it may sound an alarm even when there is no break-in, tying up the police and security people with a barrage of false alarms as long as the power to the auxiliary back-up systems lasts.

Your phone will probably work as long as the phone company is able to maintain the small charge they use to operate the phone lines. However, dialing, switching, and all other aspects of normal operations require computers and satellites, both of which are also susceptible to failure if they are not Y2K compliant. A breakdown in any part of the system can impair or destroy the ability of the entire system to function properly.

Businesses shut down with no electricity. They have no lights, and no way to run their computers. If they do have emergency power, they are still vulnerable if their own computer messes up. If it does, they may have to shut down even after power is restored until they can correct their computer problems.

Grocery stores will not be able to operate. No lights, no refrigeration, no bar code scanners, and no computerized cash registers all add up to no sales. Many modern supermarkets are so technology dependent that they are even more vulnerable than a small corner market. Sales could be made using calculators, but most stores would have a hard time doing even that, since many don't even price their food items any more because that's what the bar code is for.

Gasoline stations will be unable to make sales. You have to pump the gas out of the storage tanks to get it into your gas tank, and that requires electricity. They also have cash registers, but would be more likely to deal with cash sales if they can pump the gas out or siphon it. Of course, there is also the increased likelihood that you will be gouged on prices in an emergency. It's the law of supply and demand.

Emergency services will have power from their generators to allow them to coordinate efforts. If phone service is affected, however, contacting them may be next to impossible. Police, fire, and ambulance responses require someone notifying the dispatcher that there is a problem before they can assign a priority to that problem and dispatch someone to handle it.

Within one or two weeks at most, the majority of the emergency generators maintained by emergency personnel, hospitals, and utilities will run out of fuel. This situation may be overcome in many places by emergency measures, but that will require stability and order to be maintained in the region. Otherwise, no emergency measures will be effective.

I understand that there are those who would disagree with this assessment. If they can tell me how to maintain order and stability ( without large amounts of outside force such as a battalion of National Guard troops in a city the size of Fort Wayne, IN ), will they please explain to me why such measures have been unable to control any of the rioting that has occurred within the major cities of the U.S. in the last thirty years or so? And for those who suggest that instead of merely threatening the people, we should order the troops to fire on them to maintain order, I would remind you that once the people have finished killing the troops and taking their weapons from them, they will now be interested in dealing with the SOBs who ordered them to do something like that.

It is a fact of human nature that hungry, panicked people will react to danger with the fight or flight response. If they are rioting because they have no food, no water, and no place to go to find these things, their only response will be to fight. They will have nothing to lose, and the weapons, food, and water that the troops have to gain.

Planning for a worst case scenario, in order to be realistic, must take into account the very real possibility that there will be no way to get more fuel for emergency generators once the emergency has started. If there are not supplies on hand, and measures to make sure that they remain where they are supposed to be until they are needed, you will have problems. The idea behind emergency preparedness is to make sure that you minimize the problems you have to deal with, and to take the necessary measures to allow you to effectively deal with all the problems that can not be eliminated or avoided by planning and preparation.

Chapter 3

For survival, you must meet certain basic needs. They are food, water, heat, light, shelter, clothing, and sanitation. How you plan to meet those needs in case of an emergency will determine how well you survive the emergency. If you make no plans to help yourself, you have made yourself totally dependent upon the ability and willingness of others or the government to help you. If the government is unable to help you, things may be so bad that other individuals are unwilling or unable to help you.

Before you consider this to be a bad attitude, consider the fact that those who prepare for an emergency do so at their own expense. They often sacrifice and give up things just to be able to save up the necessary supplies to provide for their own family in the event of a disaster or emergency. They planned to support their family, not the other twenty families on their block who didn't take any pains to plan for an uncertain future. Whether they want to help or not, the reality of the situation is that when given the choice of feeding the neighborhood for one day or less, or feeding your own family for the duration of the emergency until food and water become readily available again, which is not probable in the foreseeable future, only a fool would condemn his family to starve with those who refused to prepare for a fairly probable emergency. If you are unwilling to prepare, do not expect those who do make preparations to feel obligated to support you.

Many in our society seem to be convinced that the individual bears less responsibility for his own actions than society does, especially if those actions or individuals fall into certain categories. Even many of those in power have told the same lies so often that they have even convinced themselves that it is the truth. However, no matter how much you want to believe something is true, you can't get around the laws of nature. All adults are responsible for their own actions.

If you are a responsible adult, you will need to prepare for emergencies. I can't think of a single year when there has not been some kind of emergency where I lived. Many times, the problem was only minor power failures. Other times, it was blizzards, floods, tornadoes, or other disasters. Of course, some of these made it more important to have some kind of emergency supplies on hand. Even when there was disaster relief, some utilities and services were disrupted in some areas for one to several weeks.

In the event that Y2K has a major effect on utilities, your power is going to be disrupted for possibly several weeks or more. The more prepared you are to survive a major emergency, the less problem you will have surviving a minor one. Since electrical power is an essential part of daily life in this country, loss of power will have widespread consequences.

You have no lights in your house. If the power is going to be off for at least several weeks, you will either live in the dark or find some other way to provide lights. If you use flashlights, you will need a lot of them, and a lot of batteries. You can use fewer batteries if you use rechargable batteries and solar chargers, but it will take preparation and planning. You will also need to have some extra bulbs in case any burn out. The positive side is that this method is safe, can be used repeatedly, and doesn't take much storage space. The negative side is that it can be pretty expensive to get set up.

If you use candles, remember that once you burn them, they are gone. Sometimes, you can reuse some wax, but it takes work. Also, candles are an open flame, so there is a possibility of fire. Oil lamps work better, since they produce more light and can be safer to use if used properly. They are more of a fire hazard because they burn much hotter and because they can break when dropped, putting out a pool of flammable liquid. If you want to use lamps, you might want to get some with a metal reservoir to reduce the chance of a large fire if it is dropped or knocked over.

The one thing that you will have to remember is that in order to use candles or lamps, you will need to have some method of starting a fire. This will also be important when you want to use any type of fire for heating or cooking. Matches or butane lighters are cheap and widely available. A more reliable source of fire is a refillable lighter that uses either liquid fuel or butane. They are generally built better than disposable lighters, and a small can of butane can refill your lighter 15 or 20 times.

If you are one of those who has to be prepared for the worst possible event, you might want to consider buying a magnesium firestarter. It is a small block of magnesium with a flint. Use a knife to scrape off a small pile of shavings and then strike the flint to ignite them. Magnesium burns at 5400 degrees Fahrenheit, so be careful. This type of firestarter always works, even when it is wet. This particular method will, if you use a larger pile of magnesium, ignite wet rubber tires. If this method won't start your grill or get a fire started on anything else you need to burn, you should not be making a fire because you will pose a danger to yourself and others if you do.

If you are rich and prepared, you may have a generator and fuel stored. In that case, you can run your generator and have enough electricity to have light, heat, and refrigeration. However, you need to realize several things which may be important. First, generators make noise, so people will know that you have one, even if you don't have a lot of lights on. Second, if people see too many lights, you may become a target. Criminals know that you have something they want or need, so they won't waste time looking elsewhere until after they have eliminated all of the places that are easy to locate. Third, if you obviously have supplies which are highly valued commodities at the time, your local government may decide to appropriate them for the public good, whether you are willing to cooperate or not.

You have no heat in your house. You can use sleeping bags, blankets, and other methods of layering to keep warm. If necessary, you can build a small indoor shelter using furniture, bedding, and blankets so that your body heat is retained in a small area so you can sleep. This will keep you alive, but it won't do anything to keep your house warm, and your pipes may freeze and burst.

You can use a kerosene heater to warm an area of the house. This will probably not be enough to keep your pipes from freezing. The real danger is that without proper ventilation, you can die from carbon monoxide poisoning. There is also a danger of fire, especially if the heater falls over or is too close to combustible materials. The other drawback is that you have to store fuel. Unlike lighting, heating is required 24 hours a day during the winter, so you should have lots of fuel to last for weeks.

You can use a fireplace for heat if you have one, but you'll need to make sure that it is properly cleaned and maintained so that it is ready for use. You will also need to make sure that you have plenty of wood on hand to use in it. Of course, the smoke will be highly visible, so everyone will know that you have a fire and a working fireplace.

Another concern is cooking, since you won't want to go for two or three weeks without eating regularly. Although humans can go that long without food, or even just using fast energy sources without worrying too much about nutritional value, the calorie requirements increase dramatically if you are trying to survive in a cold environment, especially if you need to remain coherent or do any physical activity. Cooking requires a heat source. If you have a gas stove, you can use it to cook as long as the gas remains on. You could also use the oven to heat your house if you aren't worried about fumes building up. Gas burners can also be used to provide some light in your kitchen.

A fireplace can be used for cooking, as can the top of a kerosene heater if one is in use. Another possible cooking source is a camp stove or Coleman stove. If either is used, you must have the stove and fuel on hand. Small stoves which use fuel tablets may be acceptable for one person, but you do not want to try cooking for a family of four on one of them unless you have a lot of time and fuel tabs. Slightly larger stoves which use fuel canisters are more realistic, but you need to have the fuel on hand before you want to use it.

A barbecue grill can be used to cook with using either wood or charcoal. This is not recommended for indoor use because there is a real danger of carbon monoxide fumes if you use a grill indoors or without proper ventilation. The good point is that you can cook many things on a grill even in winter, and there is no danger of a fire burning down your house if you keep the grill outside. The bad point is that this requires you to do your cooking out in the open, where anyone can see and smell the food. If you think that this is a totally unnecessary concern, you have never seen the results of a food riot in a country with a starving population.

Although some of these concerns may seem paranoid or extreme, remember that we are talking about survival. If you are not prepared to survive any situation which can be envisioned, especially since all of the situations described have been documented in various places at various times in the present century, you are not prepared. Just because you don't want to think that something like that could happen does not mean that it can't or won't. If you are not prepared to face the reality of what could happen, you can't prepare for it properly.

You will also need to have water in order to survive. Water is necessary for cooking, drinking, and sanitation. If you want to flush your toilet, you need water. It doesn't have to be fit to drink, so you can melt snow or use rain water if necessary. For cooking and drinking, the water has to be fit for human consumption. If there is a prolonged loss of power, the water in your pipes may not be safe to drink. Not only is a boil water advisory usually issued in many instances, but there is also the danger that a computer malfunction may make the water unsafe. Before you say that this is extreme, remember two things. First, if you are already sitting in the dark, Y2K is a reality, and not just the ravings of some lunatic. Since the danger to your power station has already proven not to be exaggerated, the danger to your water supply may be just as real. Not only may contaminants be in the water, but the water may be untreated or mixed with raw sewage if a computer error messed up the treatment process. Second, you should know that some of the chemicals used to treat water are toxic to humans in high concentrations, and not all of them are going to be readily detectable.

One of the simplest and cheapest methods of storing water is to rinse out 2 liter bottles and fill them with tap water. If you want to store the water for six months or longer, add a few drops of chlorine bleach to each bottle before you seal it. If you do plan to store water for an emergency, remember that you need one gallon per person per day for drinking. You will need additional water for cooking, cleaning, and flushing your toilet if the water isn't working or your house is cold enough to let the pipes freeze. You will also need to store water for your pets.

If you don't want to store water, you can purify water at home and make it safe for drinking. Boiling water for twenty minutes with a tablespoon of chlorine bleach per gallon will make it safe to drink, but you must maintain a rolling boil for twenty minutes. There are also various types of water purification tablets and drops on the market commercially. If you use them, make sure that you follow the directions and wait for the entire required time or the chemicals won't be able to kill all of the bacterial contaminants which may be in the water.

There are also filters which can purify water. One of the smallest is the pocket purifier, which is used just like a straw. You put one end into the water you want to drink and then suck. Impurities are removed by the filter, and purified water comes out inside your mouth. It is disposable, so once the filter is used up, you throw it away. Larger filters for backpackers and campers can filter more water, have filters that can be removed, cleaned, and reused, and you can get replacement filters. It will take you about ten minutes to pump a gallon of water through one of these filters and get the pure water out the other end.

Chemical purification is relatively cheap, and takes almost no storage space. Filters last longer, and will purify more water for the amount you invest, but require a larger initial investment. They are also larger and weigh more. This is important if space is at a premium, or if you are planning for the contingency of having to relocate, you might want to consider these factors as well.

This is how the immediate and direct effects of Y2K will be felt by most individuals if the problem is as big as many people fear it can become, especially with the complex and highly interconnected infrastructure that supports our society. With preparation, all of these hardships can be surmounted and survived as nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

Unfortunately, the government doesn't think that the people of this country can handle bad news. They are worried about panic and stockpiling of supplies by the citizens. They don't care that if their own experts are wrong, many people will be killed, injured, or forced to undergo unnecessary suffering if they are unable to respond properly to the situation, and panic and violence become widespread in areas with no hope of getting enough assistance in time.

If their experts are wrong, or if the government is just lying to prevent panic before something actually happens which would cause the system to crash, hoping that nothing will go wrong, what would the effects be on the system's components and society as a whole? Remember, you live in a society composed of millions of individuals scattered over the entire country. Let's examine the possible problems that could be caused by a breakdown in our technology and see how they could affect our society. You, as an individual, can determine for yourself how much of a problem each of the disruptions could become for you and your family, and how best to reduce its effect on you.

Chapter 4

There will be power outages. Too many nested systems are involved to allow the facilities to escape computer problems, especially since all of the automation and computer control that has been incorporated.

All types of facilities will be affected. As far as can be discerned, none of the power companies has made enough headway to prevent failures, and the extent of the damage will be impossible to predict beyond general estimates. Coal and other fuel driven plants will lose their computer controls. Some will simply shut down, while others will suffer fires, explosions, or equipment damage before the manual shutdown and evaluation can occur. Hydroelectric plants may suffer less damage initially, but the risk of total loss is fairly high if extended problems threaten the structural integrity of the dams. Nuclear facilities have better training on emergency shutdowns, but the risk of serious potential effects is far greater than at any other type of plant due to the consequences of a meltdown and the difficulty of doing some tasks required for shutdown without the aid of computer driven mechanisms. You don't just put on a radiation suit, walk into the reactor core itself, and push the control rod into the reactor pile to shut down the reaction. Not if you want to survive the radiation exposure.

Electricity could be a problem, and the length of the outage would be determined by the amount of damage and the time necessary to repair it and verify that you had the controls operating again. What kind of problems would be expected?

Loss of lighting will affect everyone immediately. Traffic signals will be down, and there will be traffic problems, resulting in congestion for those driving and an increase in traffic accidents. Stores will be unable to operate, and groceries and other necessities may become something of a problem in about three days or so. That is when the refrigeration will be lost completely for most people.

So will people have food and some refrigeration for at least three days before there start to be problems?

Not in many cases, but overall, that is when food and refrigeration will start to become a problem for the majority. Electricity is a major problem because many modern homes have become fully electric. With no power, the occupants will have no light, no heat, no method of cooking, and no refrigeration. If there are no problems before the end of this year, the failures will occur at the beginning of January, when the weather will not be optimal for survival. Even a loss of power for three or four days on a widespread scale will be enough for some people to die from exposure, and the loss of life will increase dramatically as either the length of time increases or the outside temperature decreases. Of course, if the weather is cold enough, you can store your food outside to keep it cold, but you will have to worry about animals or other people stealing and eating your food.

What about other homes with different heat sources? Would moving in with your neighbors increase survival?

To an extent, having more people would allow more heat and resources to be shared. But the problem is that even in homes with gas furnaces for heating, the loss of power will almost eliminate the ability to heat their homes because air circulation depends on electric fans. Emergency measures will be used to allow cooking and heating, and there will be an increase in fires and deaths as a result.

Availability of natural gas would depend upon the source and method of generating pressure. Service would be affected by the amount of computerized control, the method of maintaining pressure, and the ability to maintain plant operations over the long term without external sources of electricity. The same factors apply to waste water and water treatment facilities.

Loss of availability of natural gas would mean that nobody would be able to heat or cook, and would increase the number of fires from accidents with emergency sources. The loss of water means that people will start to suffer dehydration. Sanitation will become a problem, and disease associated with lack of modern sanitation and water treatment will escalate.

With some preparation and planning, some of the small plants could be maintained, especially in the smaller communities that have their own small sanitation plants and water treatment facilities. But the major cities would have to be written off or used for salvage and spare parts because there wouldn't be enough support and infrastructure to keep them operating if damage from rioting, looting, or human violence becomes widespread. Also, if epidemics cause major panic or loss of life, some cities may suffer serious damage.

Telephone service may be lost if they have computer problems. Police services will have to be cut back to emergency services and handling major crimes. There will not be enough people to handle the problems. Fire services may deteriorate if the water pressure drops. Garbage pick-up will probably be eliminated. The fuel will be required for more urgent emergency use.

Banks and financial institutions will be shut down. No computer records, and paper records are going to slow them down when the power comes back on. People will have difficulties because cash flow will affect their ability to get whatever commodities or goods are available.

If there is an extended power outage, emergency generators will run out of fuel, and the power they provide will be cut off as well. Emergency generators are essential for certain emergency services, especially 911 response coordination of police, fire, and medical services. If the power or the phone systems are down because of malfunctions in technology, the services may be able to compensate for dispatch and organization, but the loss of phone systems would make it very difficult for anyone requiring those services to get the message to the people who needed to respond.

Hospitals have emergency generators to allow them to operate without an outside power source, but they often have only enough fuel on hand to run those generators for a limited time. They aren't planning on having to be totally self-sufficient for extended periods of time. If power is not restored or another fuel source is not located, they will run out of power and lose their ability to function as a modern medical facility.

Also, many hospitals in this country are highly dependent upon technology. Most modern medical equipment requires both power and computer chips to operate. If those machines have self diagnostic chips that don't work properly, or if they are run by a computer that is not Y2K compliant, the equipment won't work.

Hospitals are also highly dependent upon a constant supply of water. They use it for drinking, bathing, cleaning, laundry, sterilization, and maintenance. Water treatment plants also use emergency generators because they require power to run, to pump water, and to maintain pressure in the pipes. If they lose power, the city will lose water. At least, the city will lose its source of clean, dependable water on demand at the turn of a tap. Without water, I would not want to be in a hospital. Their supply of chemicals is limited, and when they run out, the hospital would become the largest repository of known pathogens in the city. It would provide the largest concentration of bacterial and viral infection in the area.

In addition to hospitals, most medical offices would be operating in the dark. Although they have less high-tech equipment to malfunction, they are also unable to do more than handle minor medical emergencies. Without power, they also may have problems working their computers, getting any lab work done, or keeping up with any patients they do see on their billing records.

Most pharmacies will be unable to fill any prescriptions because all of their records are on the computer. Even if they get some power to run the computer, you now have to worry about whether or not the computer itself is Y2K compliant. If not, you may not be able to get any prescriptions filled because the orders will all be listed as expired. If the drugs you need are required to sustain life, you may have a problem. If proper steps have not been taken to deal with your particular situation before the problem occurs, you may die before the bureaucracy cuts through the red tape to allow you access to the medication your doctor prescribed.

If you are on oxygen or some other treatment requiring life support devices, you may run out of power for the equipment which keeps you alive. If the phones are tied up or not working, you may have trouble even contacting emergency responders to try to find out what can be done to keep you from dying. If their computer systems are down, they may be as confused and disorganized as you are.

If you think that these situations are exaggerations designed to generate sympathy or some kind of emotional outpouring, you are wrong. They are simply what happens to those who are sick or chronically ill during times of disaster. They are no worse than what happens to the elderly, the mentally retarded, or to physically handicapped individuals when a similar situation occurs. The law of nature is that when times are tough, the tough survive. Survival of the fittest has few loopholes when emergency situations or disasters strip the veneer of civilization off of our society. For these people, their only chance lies in being prepared to cope with the additional challenge in addition to the challenges they face in surviving on a daily basis.

The most significant medical problems may be due to other influences. If the problems are widespread, there will be difficulties with transportation. This will affect the supply of medicine and medical supplies, meaning that hospitals will run out of drugs. They may delay this by getting all of the drugs they can from local pharmacies and warehouses, but that assumes they will be able to locate them and get them before the criminals and junkies do. Also, if there is an increase in disease due to lack of sanitation or pure water, or an epidemic occurs during the crisis, the stockpiles of drugs on hand will dwindle even more rapidly.

Another problem that could really affect medical services is the weather. Hypothermia, malnutrition, food poisoning, and diseases associated with bad water may become much more prevalent if people do not maintain their own sanitation. There is also the possibility that violence and rioting will occur. If so, there will be a lot of casualties. If fires are started and there is not enough water pressure to stop them, or if firefighters are unable to reach the fire because of violence, the hospitals may be inundated with burn victims. If this happens, they will soon exceed their capacity to treat the patients. If you don't think this can happen, look at what happens when there is a large accident or disaster that is highly localized. The sudden influx of patients requires the services of several hospitals because they exceed the capacity of any one hospital to handle them.

So, the bottom line is that we are looking at utility failures, severe financial disruptions, increased incidence of disease, deaths from exposure and other sources, property damage, and almost certainly some level of civil disturbances. And this is the current best case scenario.

There are some suggestions which would limit the amount of damage or the length of its influence. How much influence these suggestions will have depends upon the speed at which they are implemented and how widespread the response is. Most of the suggestions have been kept as simple as possible to allow them to be more easily used.

Power plants can disconnect themselves from the grid. This will eliminate failures from other plants causing damage to their equipment. The most immediate effect will be to limit the number of switches which would need to be controlled or replaced in case a failure damages equipment. That will limit damage, but there are too many systems with too many levels of control, and the corrections to the software have been ignored for too long. The power failures will occur. All we can do is save equipment and shorten repair and recovery.

The public must be made aware of the real dangers before they can prepare to survive them. Although some will ignore everything you do to get them to help themselves, we can increase the number who will store extra food, store water, and get some method of surviving worked out. The problem is that many have been conditioned to expect the government to do these things for them, and many of the others do not know how to plan for an emergency because they have never been forced to do anything like that before. Many of those who are willing simply do not know where to begin..

This will work, but the people need to get the facts without government or media interference. They will try to put a spin on the facts to keep everything politically correct and consistent with officially recognized policy and their version of reality. This will require several lists of necessary items and some description of how to use some of them, or how much is required per person per time period to survive.

Chapter 5

The BEST case scenario would be that Y2K wouldn't be a problem at all. No computer problems would occur, and life would go on just like normal. But that is not going to happen. We know this because of several things. Visa has already experienced a Y2K problem which caused them to have problems with their credit card customers for six months. It took them that long to fix a problem in which their computers simply thought that a card with a year 2000 expiration date was invalid because it had expired in 1900. Also, Prodigy has already announced to their 240,000 internet customers that they will be out of business by October of 1999 because it was too expensive for them to make their business and programs Y2K compliant so that they would not face loss of business and possible lawsuits when their computers froze up or crashed due to system errors related to the Y2K bug.

Problems will start before the end of October, 1999. They will start when the government and many major corporations begin planning for the year 2000 fiscal year. Some of their programs for calculating interest, penalties, and even payrolls will start occasionally crashing because the dates do not give realistic numbers which can be used for their calculations.

Eventually, they will be forced to correct the problems. But first, there will be loss of data, loss of files, loss of work by employees whose job can't be done until the computer glitches are fixed, and loss of profits by the affected companies. Some of the payroll departments may have to calculate and type out their checks by hand, and those who receive direct deposits or debits may have their transfers messed up. This could also affect their credit ratings and trigger a wave of lawsuits against the people who filed false credit reports because they did not confirm the results of their computer printouts before filing the reports even though they knew there were some problems with the results of the printouts.

That could all be a hassle, and an expensive pain in the ass to fix. But it is not life threatening or anything that would affect a normal lifestyle in a major way. As long as the credit card companies did not temporarily shut down because they couldn't keep track of purchases and charge interest accordingly, it might not. But what happens at one second after midnight of December 31st, when the year 2000 begins?

The best realistic estimate is that at least thirty to forty percent of American businesses will experience some computer failures and have problems with their cash flow due to computer errors. They will have slower ordering and billing, will have to pay more to do their books by hand, and will be unable to compete with those who have no problems with their systems. Their profit margins will fall, their customers will go to someone who isn't having computer trouble, and they will lose even more business. Some of these 'businesses' will be banks, whose customers will have problems getting their checks accepted and may even have trouble getting their money out of the bank because the bank will close if there is a run on the bank. People will have their financial assets frozen until the bank can get enough records sorted to verify that the money is indeed due them.

The traffic signals could malfunction, resulting in numerous wrecks on one of the worst nights of the year for drunk drivers. This could happen either as a result of computer malfunctions at traffic control or because of power outages.

The computers which control the electric companies across America are already known to have some susceptibility to Y2K bugs, and the industry has not been keeping up on their efforts to correct the problems before they occur and affect power service. Most of the switches between different regions have been converted to computer control, and many are not centrally located now. If the computers in one area fail, the switches will probably lock open, causing a cascade of failures across the country. Some areas may be unaffected by computer failures, but even some of them will have power outages because of transformers being blown out by the failures in areas around them.

In some areas, power will be out for about four days to a week. In others, it will probably be two weeks or so before they could replace enough transformers and switches to restore power. But they still haven't fixed the computer problem which caused the power outage in the first place. The problems will be recurrent unless the source is fixed.

Four days to a week without power isn't too long for people to survive. But the power outage will occur in January, during one of the coldest times of the year. Many homes are now totally electric, so they will have no heat and no way to cook food. The pipes in the homes that get too cold will burst, causing water damage if the people do not turn their water off.

People could leave their water running to keep their pipes from freezing. And they could go to homes which have heat from gas furnaces to keep warm. But, in a widespread, total blackout, the water treatment facilities will have to be shut down. Also, without electricity for their pumps to maintain water pressure, you can't force water through the pipes to the homes. Having so much pressure bled off at the same time by running open taps would only decrease the time before you ran out of drinkable water. And very few homes would have the ability to heat and cook. Most gas furnaces require a fan to force the hot air through the ducts and do not work efficiently or at all during a power outage. Many of the new gas ranges have electric ignitions. Although they can be lit with a match in the event of a power outage, some of the newer models don't function without electricity.

The supply of food at all of the grocery stores in any city in America is enough to stock the shelves for three days. In the event that there is a local water shortage, all of the liquids inside a store, including bottled water and soft drinks, is not enough to provide enough fluids to sustain life for everyone in the city for even three days. Besides, none of the stores will be open because they can't run their registers or lights.

But there is disaster relief. The Red Cross and the National Guard will be called upon to help out. Who do they help out? You have at least thirty five entire states with no power anywhere. The other fifteen states have some areas with power and some areas with no power. The working facilities can only provide so much extra water for other areas before they start to force their own citizens into rationing. And how do you transport it to other areas when there are no open gas stations in the affected areas because they don't have electricity to pump the gas? And who delivers it when the National Guard fails to show up? Few radio or broadcast stations will have the power to stay on the air for long, and many people won't use battery operated radios for long. Many of the Guardsmen will refuse to report because they won't leave their families unprotected.

Why should they be so worried about their families? In a widespread power outage, the stores have no power, and even battery alarm systems will soon fail during an extended power outage. The criminals will use the opportunity to break in and loot stores, stealing whatever they can. They will also break into homes they think are easy targets because they know that the police will be swamped, and many homes will have no working phone. If the stores are not open, many of them will be looted by normally law-abiding citizens who are simply trying to get enough food and water to survive.

All of the new high tech phones and answering machines that require electricity will not work. Cell phones will be useless because of the number of people trying to use them and because the providers have systems which are highly dependent upon computers and electricity. It's hard to get a computer to work without electricity, even if it is fully Y2K compliant. Many of the satellite systems involved in telecommunications may also be down, resulting in loss of phone, radio, or television services.

In many places, especially those with extended blackouts, there will be rioting, looting, and fires. The fire departments will be unable to contain many fires because of the lack of water pressure, and property damage will soar. Many of the rioters will be trying to simply find food and water.

People, other than infants and small children, will not starve to death in this time frame. Some people will die of thirst or dehydration. The hospitals will be overflowing with sick and injured people from cold, exposure, dehydration, gunshot wounds, fires, beatings, stabbings, and other human related injuries. After a week, they will start to see people who have diseases associated with third world countries. There will be dysentery, cholera, and other diseases associated with a lack of proper sanitation facilities and clean drinking water.

Some of the problems can be decreased in scope, but not eliminated because they depend in part upon human nature and in part upon the ability or willingness of the people to prepare for the disaster and eliminate certain hazards. Some of them can't be changed at all unless certain companies or individuals are willing to prepare and take the recommended measures to minimize the problems.

So this is the best case scenario. What is the worst case scenario that can occur as a result of this problem?

The complete and total collapse of American society as we know it, with the potential loss of at least thirty to fifty percent of the population of this country.

The worst case scenario is a total collapse of our computer systems which can't be fixed for months to years. No bank records, no money, no people willing to work because their job doesn't provide for their survival. Most people in this country are in debt, and live from paycheck to paycheck. Those with some savings or other paper investments will have no way to get their money in cash, and will suffer huge losses on the assets they manage to convert to cash. Even the banks have only a fraction of their total assets available as cash at any one time.

There will be no way to track convicted felons, no way to ship food efficiently over long distances, no way to purify vast amounts of water for huge cities, widespread epidemics and diseases, limited medical support, limited medical supplies, limited medicine, limited travel. What starvation and disease, the elements, or neglect doesn't do, the criminal element our society has created and nurtured will make up the difference, or human nature will. It CAN happen here.

OK. In the interest of your enlightenment, I will explain. Several years ago, the government passed laws making it illegal for the citizens of this country to privately stockpile food so they would be self-sufficient in times of disaster. The government of this, a free country, decided that anyone who wanted to store enough food to survive one or more years in time of disaster or national emergency could be prosecuted for the crime of spending their personal money on non-regulated items and hoarding them. This also gives FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a legal ground for the law they passed which allows FEMA, in time of declared national emergency or disaster, to confiscate without court proceedings or compensation, any and all materials or resources which they consider to be necessary for the survival of those in the affected area and to distribute the resources as they see fit.

The government has decided that it wants people to be dependent upon the government for their very survival, especially in time of disaster or national emergency. They have the right to arrest you for trying to stockpile food or emergency supplies with your own money, even though you bought the food legally, paid all your taxes, and did nothing wrong. They also have the right to take your supplies away from you if they find them during a disaster and redistribute them as they see fit. You will not only not receive compensation, but you may not survive if the government does not consider you a high enough priority to receive enough of your own personal property to allow you to survive. Those who resist confiscation of their property can be killed under martial law.

No. That can't be right. The government wouldn't do that. We live in a free society, where the people rule and the government serves the people, right?

I'm afraid it is right. Under martial law and emergency powers, the Constitution is suspended, and the government can do anything it wants to make sure that the government and those they have designated as a priority for survival do indeed survive, no matter how many other people that directly or indirectly condemns to death. And under martial law, even those who are thought to be breaking the law are sometimes killed even when they have done nothing illegal or to resist military authority. Looters have been shot on sight at disaster relief areas in America for more than twenty years. It isn't that common, but the media never really covers it, so you don't hear much about it.

I'm not politically correct. Punks and murderers should be executed. Anyone who is proud of spending their whole life causing pain and suffering to innocent people by robbing and committing various violent crimes as often as possible is only slightly more responsible for their actions than those who protect these animals and make sure that society is not protected from them.

If you believe that it is inhuman to kill or imprison scum who rape, torture, murder, and molest children for fun, then you should be required to provide housing for them and accept responsibility for their future actions. If you aren't willing to take their place and accept their punishment, then shut up and let the rest of us protect ourselves from these animals. If you take them in and they kill you and your family, rest assured that we will obey the laws of God and punish them for their crimes.

Any society that passes laws which conflict with the laws of God is asking for trouble. No society has the right to deny its law-abiding citizens the right to protect their own life, the life of a loved one, or their property from someone who does not obey the laws and common dictates of that society. When any society values the life or the rights of those who are criminals, or those who seek to destroy that society, over the life or rights of its law-abiding, productive citizens, that society is destined to be destroyed from within or without.

Chapter 6

With minor computer glitches, the systems can be salvaged and the damage can be minimized. However, that assumes that the people do not overreact and cause widescale panic and damage on their own. People are somewhat unpredictable, and could cause massive destruction and loss of life at any time through senseless violence. There may be more trouble if there is no computer problem than there would be if minor or moderate problems occur. The factors involved are related to human nature, but are specific for our culture and society.

There is a high probability that various groups will use this opportunity to stir up violence. White supremacists may take this event as a chance to start riots and fires in the cities, hoping that if the water pressure does fail, the number of minorities killed in the fires or their aftermath will be impressive. They could also wait until water pressure did fail, hoping for even more death and destruction.

That would be horrible. How could they even contemplate such a thing?

You are asking someone who only knows that there are people on this planet whose fondest dream is the day when they and their friends have killed every person on this planet of the race or ethnic group that they currently hate the most. It is unexplainable, it merely is a fact of life that there are people like that. There are people like that of every race, but the media in this country makes no real effort to publicize the actions and rantings of any except those who happen to be white. However, those same people may choose to do nothing, fearing that they will be blamed for whatever happens even if they are completely innocent. That is also a fact of life in this world.

The probability of some groups stirring up trouble is almost a certainty, but it will likely remain random and unorganized acts by a few groups or individuals unless the media is intact and spreads the news. In that event, retaliatory protest actions resulting in fires and riots will be more widespread, increasing the scope and magnitude of the damage.

The bad news is that even in the event of no computer failures at all, there is likely to be an economic collapse at least on the scale of the Great Depression. The cause will be a stock market collapse, and this collapse may be unavoidable. Surely we can do something to make sure that the stock market doesn't collapse. We can shut it down, right?

That would cause a panic, resulting in economic losses, property damage, violence, and loss of life. The extent would depend on the ability to keep the people's reactions controlled and limit news coverage which would inflame people who are already near their own ignition point.

Then we could keep the stock market open and do tests to show that there is no way the computers will crash. We'll have to instill confidence in the public and alleviate their fears. That would solve the problem, right?

That will not work because the people do not trust the government and they do not trust the rich people who control the stock market. The public will believe that the tests were rigged, and will become even more convinced that there really is a problem because the corporations wouldn't be trying to get everyone else to buy their stocks if there was nothing to worry about. Once the stock market begins to fall, there will be panic selling, and the system will shut the market down. The next day will be worse, and it will continue until the system does crash or the market goes up after the new year begins.

Then there won't be violence and panic. Right?

Wrong. Then the violence and panic really begins. The public will start to believe that it was all some plot cooked up by the rich profiteers to take advantage of the market and make millions or billions at their expense. These beliefs will only be bolstered by the fact that many of those who will buy while the stocks are down will be the rich who have the money to risk, and they will have sold some of their stock before it fell too far, allowing them to profit even more. If the banks are suffering some failures or are shut down to prevent panic rushes on their cash reserves, the public may be even more irate at what they consider to be blatant manipulation and control by those who have lots of money.

It won't be long before people start to consider either hunting for "the rich bastards who did this to me" or just begin to start committing random acts of violence out of frustration. Once it starts, all of the other people who feel the same way will follow suit, and the violence will escalate.

Another possibility is that the rich, or a few of them, may actually have engineered some scheme to cause a stock market crash in order to make a killing on the stock market. If so, it would not be difficult, and the results would be the same. In fact, the probability is almost 100% that some rich investors are already selling off stock in case Y2K does hit so that they can survive. They know that there will almost certainly be at least a short panic crash in the last week of December, in which case they can regain the stocks they sold for pennies on the dollar. If there is a computer failure, they still have most of their money to help them survive. If not, they have made a killing which they will probably not see happen again in their lifetime.

This possibility will not escape the notice of the investors. Many of them will feel that they have been manipulated and swindled. There will be some validity to that belief, because a few rumors leaked to reporters would be all that would be required to initiate the panic and ensuing crash. What the rich investors do not count on is that it is almost certain that the public will react violently should this occur. Either way, if the rich profit from a stock market collapse at that time, they will be blamed for it and there will be violence.

So the rich will be blamed and there will be violence if the stock market collapses and millions of small investors lose their life savings. Why would this happen now when nothing like that happened in 1929?

In 1929, the stock market was only used by corporations and the rich. The collapse had such lasting effects because the people who were responsible for the collapse were allowed to profit from their mistakes without punishment. Bankers used bank funds for investments, keeping the profits while risking the life savings of the bank customers. When the market fell, they had to sell short and pay off what they owed. This took most of the money in their banks, and they made sure that most of the rest was withdrawn by themselves and their rich cronies before the public made the rush on the banks. Their record keeping covered their tracks, and they even paid off bank examiners to avoid prosecution.

After the dust settled, these same unscrupulous individuals profited even more when they foreclosed on properties when the owners couldn't pay their mortgage due to the fact that their life savings had been gambled away by the bank officers. They also used some of the cash from the bank that they had withdrawn "from their own private accounts" to buy the stocks they had been forced to sell, knowing that the value would return in a few years. The factory and goods that those stocks represented was still sitting right where it was the day before the crash.

Because the American people were more trusting, they did nothing to those who were responsible for one of the biggest swindles ever perpetrated upon the citizens of this country. Contrast this with the Savings and Loan failures of the last few decades. Congress delayed and put off the problem while it went from a few dozen S&Ls to hundreds of S&Ls, and the cost to American taxpayers went from hundreds of millions of dollars to almost a hundred billion dollars. The people responsible were in many cases forced to sell off all of their assets to repay what they could and were sentenced to jail for their crimes. Not all of them, but enough to keep the people from going ballistic because Congress was openly in collusion with their paid supporters.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times... Nobody likes to think that he is being made the fool, and the public at large has lost its trust of the government and big business. That loss of trust has been repeatedly justified by the actions of the politicians and their cronies. Over the last seven decades, there has been a gradual widening of the gap between the wealthy and the poor, with those in between being gradually pushed closer and closer to those at the bottom of the social scale.

There has also been a gradual decline in the amount of education that the average person receives, especially those who hold jobs at the low end of the ladder. Because of other social and cultural changes, our society has also become more violent. The despair and helplessness of the lower class, combined with their being conditioned to accept the constant violence in their lives, means that they are more prone to accept a violent solution to their problems when the opportunity arises.

Eventually everyone has to be held responsible for their actions, and there will be a whole lot of people who may be facing some form of judgment a lot sooner than they now believe possible. Politicians, like leopards, can not change their spots. Unlike leopards, they can understand the meaning of the quote, "That which ye sow, so shall ye also reap." Unfortunately, they believe that they are above the law, and that there is nobody with the power and authority to make them accountable for their actions. Marie Antoinette held the same belief when she said, "Let them eat cake." instead of addressing the problem of starving peasants who didn't even have bread to eat.

Do I believe that there will be another revolution in this country? If so, do I think that it would start next year?

No, I don't believe that there will be a revolution. A revolution requires organization and a goal. Most of the violence will occur as the result of groups which have many different goals, both short term and long term. I do not believe that there will be any serious threat to the government in the best case scenario. That does not mean that the government, its officials, and its agents will be immune. Many of the individuals and buildings may actually be targets of violence. But I do not believe that there will be a concerted effort to overthrow the government and replace it with something else. However, there is a good probability that the government will make changes in order to restore order. I believe that they are just as aware as I am that if those changes are away from the Constitution and toward a more restrictive or oppressive form of government, it is almost certain that enough people will resist that a civil war will become inevitable. If that happens, the government will be replaced by force because I don't think that there is any way that they could win a civil war at this time.

Why do I think that the government will lose if it comes to a war with the American people?

They don't have enough troops to win a guerrilla war inside this country, and the troops aren't loyal to the politicians. There is a distinct possibility that many of the high-tech weapons will not be usable because of computer malfunctions. If those systems crash, even a totally loyal army couldn't defend the government. There are only about 30,000 riflemen in the Army, and many have no combat experience. Most of the experienced veterans are in the civilian population, and many of them have no love for the government after being screwed over when they returned from combat. Although they have no intention of starting a war with the government, they are not going to back down and let the government screw them over again. If pushed, they will fight back. Most of them are experts in guerrilla warfare and psychological warfare. They had to be to survive.

What does that have to do with the outcome of a civil war in this country?

Guerrilla warfare is nasty, dirty business. The army can't tell the guerrillas from the civilians, so they end up punishing civilians and alienating them. The guerrillas gain support. The only way to destroy all the guerrillas is to nuke the area. Ten minutes after that happens, there wouldn't be a single politician in the country who wouldn't be worried about how many groups had a price on his head for nuking his own people. Nobody in Washington is that stupid or arrogant. They may think that they have more power than anybody else in this country, and I believe that there are some liberal Democrats who think that they are omniscient,but none of them that I am aware of think that they are omnipotent or immortal.

Liberals have claimed for years that they believe it is their duty to run everybody's life from cradle to grave because they know what is in everybody else's best interest, even in everyone else hasn't recognized that fact yet. I believe that is close enough to the definition of omniscient to qualify as a statement of fact.

Chapter 7

If a civil war occurs in this country, most of those who oppose the government will be fighting to return control of the government of this country to the people, which was the intention of those who founded our current government. You are deluded if you think you are going to put the government back under the control of the American people without an army, without winning a bloody, violent, protracted war, without killing or eliminating the entire power base of the elite who have set themselves up as the ruling class in America over the last two centuries.

If you think that all men are created equal, why are the majority of the people in this country afraid of the government? And it is the majority. They may not fear the entire government, and they may not think that the government has already targeted them specifically, but many do believe this, and they are not paranoid. Some only fear a particular agency, others the entire government, but the fear is there, and it is more than the fear that they will be caught and punished if they break the law. Many intelligent people in this country know that our government has already become a hydra, with agencies creating their own laws, interpreting their meaning, and deciding how and when to enforce them, often in their own courts. With no oversight, no judicial review, and no way to keep up with all of the regulations, there is no way not to break a federal law during you lifetime.

Paranoia is an unreasonable or irrational fear. It is not irrational to fear a government that habitually targets random citizens for harassment, illegal search and seizure of property, prosecution, or even death based on groundless, unsupported statements from unreliable sources who are trying to escape jail time. It is not unreasonable to expect the government to live up to its end of the contract and protect you from those abuses, but the government doesn't, and does its best to cover up these excesses, including those who successfully defend themselves from illegal, unconstitutional actions being carried out by federal officers.

If things don't change, one day soon the federal agents will find that they are outnumbered, outgunned, and surrounded, and that instead of doing what they please to terrorize some poor guy with impunity, even though they know they have no legal right to enter his property, they will not have his friends and neighbors standing idly by. They will be cut down in a crossfire so bad that even the police will refuse to enter the area. Will the government send the National Guard or military units into a middle class neighborhood to kill a group of families who exercised their Constitutional rights by legally acquiring and keeping weapons and then using them to protect themselves and others from a violent felony when the local law enforcement officials refused to do their duty to serve and protect their community?

Make no mistake. Just because the federal agents are not prosecuted by the government, they don't operate with total impunity for their actions. The government of this country still ultimately draws its power from the people, and should not make the same mistake that the Japanese did in finding out only after it was too late that they had awakened a sleeping tiger instead of a napping housecat.

The people who would be shooting federal agents are the same people who would be serving in the National Guard and have family members in the military. The powerful ruling class of this country knows that any military attempt to force the people let the federal agents continue their unchallenged rule of terror could quite literally cause the combat troops to join the fight on the side of the citizens. Their increased firepower would then be used to hunt down and kill those responsible for keeping them in poverty by using their influence to make sure that the rich got richer while everyone else got poorer. The military would be confined to their bases to guard their equipment so it couldn't be used against the government, and the government would just hope that enough equipment and heavy weapons in the National Guard armories stayed there that the bases didn't come under heavy attack.

When government agencies, and their agents, violate the Constitution with impunity, and it takes the courts at least four years in totally uncontested cases to rule that a law-abiding citizen did nothing wrong, that his rights were intentionally violated, and even then the agency may refuse to make restitution or return his property, then the Constitution means nothing, and the common citizen has no Constitutional rights. If you only have the rights that a court says you have, and it takes four years for the court to give them to you, you have no rights. Unless the government must prove its case, show that you violated the law, be held accountable for its mistakes in a process where any fault or wrongdoing on the part of the government makes it automatically liable, and must make full and complete restitution for all property seized or damaged, and must prosecute all violations of Constitutional and federal law commited by federal agents, the people do not control the government. It controls them.

When enough people have become dissatisfied with the government, when they have quit voting because they know their vote doesn't matter, when they truly believe that eventually the feds will get around to them because everyone knows that it's only a matter of time before the statistics catch up with you, when even thirty percent of the population is mad enough, hungry enough, or just plain fed up enough to do something, the government will have a major problem on its hands. Even if ninety percent of these do nothing to fight actively against the government, they will still identify with and possibly help those who do.

Three percent of the population is nine million pissed people. Too many to imprison, intimidate, threaten, or even track down efficiently. And many of them will fight because they have nothing to lose. Too many for all of the field agents in all of the federal law enforcement agencies combined. Even without organization and planning, it is enough of a force to successfully attrit the government's finest down to nothing, to destroy every federal building they decide to, to execute various government leaders who consider themselves above the law.

What would Congress do if 50,000 armed people stormed the headquarters of the FBI, DEA, CIA, IRS, BATF, and Justice Department in a single day? What would they do if these citizens produced and distrubuted classified documents that showed senior level officials were guilty of violating the Constitution, federal and state laws, and that nothing had been done to punish them? What would they do if these people were tried, sentenced, and executed, according to law, within a few days? There is no reason for the trials to take longer, as the facts are in evidence, and legal loopholes and plea bargains would not be allowed. Justice, and the law, do not require federal courts, or even the Supreme Court to rule on their validity.

Would Congress attempt to kill or stop these people when they were informed that these were the equivalent of the Nuremberg Trials? Not for war crimes, but for crimes commmitted against the people by agents and agencies using the government as an unwitting shield and accomplice. If following orders is enough to execute Nazi prison camp guards for war crimes, then doing the same thing should definitely be enough to warrant the same punishment for federal agents who intentionally violated the Constitution and federal and state laws, committing felonies, and knowingly terrorizing innocent citizens, seizing their property, and even killing them for trying to prevent a felony and protecting themselves, both legal and Constitutional rights.

Our own government cries out about human rights, yet refuses to discipline, let alone prosecute and punish federal agents who knowingly murdered innocent citizens of their own country, including a mother who was unarmed and holding a baby in her arms, and an unarmed fourteen-year-old boy who was shot in the back. In fact, the agents were later honored as heroes for committing these murders, and those who ordered them to do it were promoted. Even after the jury decided that they had lied in court, withheld evidence, and attempted to cover up their crimes by fabricating evidence, withholding evidence, committing perjury, and framing the man they had entrapped into committing a minor, non-violent criminal act in the first place.

Just as it was no coincidence that the Oklahoma City bombing occurred on the anniversary of Waco, it was no coincidence that Waco occurred on the anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord. Certain groups within the government sent a message that not only would they persecute those they found offensive, they would make sure that their agents operated with impunity. The response was that they actually motivated the American people and ignited the militia movement by making many more people believe that the thought that they might actually have to defend themselves against the government, or worse things if the government suddenly lost control of our increasingly violent society, was neither paranoid nor irrational. They also directly sparked the response that showed that one man, or even a few dedicated people, with no education or military training, could do just as much damage to the people and property of the government, and that an eye for an eye was still not only possible, but almost impossible to prevent if they pissed enough people off.

Any attempts to compromise or stop the conflict while the current ruling class still has their wealth and power base intact would inevitably allow them to undermine or bypass all of your changes and regain their power. They might even pretend to go along with the changes to allow themselves newfound respectability and to get rid of a subgroup who was challenging the status quo, but it wouldn't change anything except for a few of the names of those who held the power. The people wouldn't gain, and would only be hurt more by the chaos involved in the power struggle.

This is the picture of the country in the event of civil war. The only difference that Y2K will make is that it may force the issue before it would have occurred naturally. Those who are displeased with the government may think that this is their best opportunity to make lasting and effective changes, by whatever means they decide are most suited to their purposes. The government may decide that this is the perfect opportunity to get rid of their most vocal and violent opponents and use the confusion and unrest to conceal their acitivities.

The military oath, as well as that of the president, states that you are required to 'defend, preserve, and protect the Constitution of the United States of America from all enemies, foreign and domestic'. It doesn't say what to do if that enemy turns out to be the government that is supposed to follow the Constitution. That is because the response is supposed to be the same, regardless of the threat. An individual, a group, an army, a government, a nation, all threats are to be met by the armed militia, which is every armed adult who is willing to fight to defend this country, not a group of individuals picked by the standing army, which our forefathers also knew was a common tool to oppress the people by tyrants, or have you forgotten the warnings against a standing army in time of peace?

The Constitution is the supreme law of this land, and anything done outside of the legal authority of the Constitution, by a citizen, a state, or the federal government or its officers, is illegal. If I have broken no law, the government has no rights to oppress me or seize my property. Even though federal judges rule that any federal agent is immune from prosecution for his actions if he is in the line of duty, they have no legal right or basis for the ruling if the agent violates federal and Constitutional laws and knowingly commits a felony or murders an innocent person. If the Constitution has been suspended, there is no lawful government, so the individual must protect himself. When the law has been usurped by those who have been charged to uphold the law, then the laws of man no longer have power because the contract which gave them power has been abrogated by the one side without the consent of the other. Then, the laws of God and nature are all that is left. Those who defy these laws do so at their own peril, for God is a jealous being, and nature is merciless and unrelenting, and eventually there will be a reckoning which will balance the scales, though the initial swing often is much more than that required to provide mere equalization.

That is a scary thought, but do you think that the individuals who are most concerned with what our government has done can affect the course it will choose in the future without violent revolution? After all, their power is severely limited in comparison to that of the government, isn't it?

Power is not what you actually can do, but also what others perceive you can do under given circumstances. A threat acquires more power as its uncertainty grows, but the response to a threat acquires less power as its uncertainty grows. The only certainty in life is death because it is a necessary component in the life cycle. All analysis drawn from inferences and secondary sources lacks the definitive numbers of primary data analysis from direct observation. But then, sociology and psychology are pseudosciences, as they are subject to various factors which prevent repetition of the same experiment under the same conditions, so the results are interpreted in a subjective manner, and are never more accurate than the person's skill at guessing or making some informed assumptions given certain facts.

It doesn't take a genius to say that people don't jump off of bridges, but some people do. In fact, some do it for sport. You might say that I would not pull a gun right now and blow my own head off. That would be a good guess, with a high percentage of probability that you were right. To say that I wouldn't do the same thing to you right now would have a lower probability of you being correct, and that could drop rapidly if you were threatening me. That is a factor of individual survival.

My interest is not in our current society's problems and how they should be corrected, but in how to prepare the most people to increase their own survival in the event of major problems and failures associated with Y2K. The primary goal is not the desire to change America by making it reflect the original intentions of the people who wrote the Constitution and created our current government, whatever your interpretation of those intentions may be, but to make sure that the people survive. None of this work is geared toward the survival of the government in its current or any other form. That is the responsibility of the government and the people who do survive the currently impending crisis, and is beyond my abilities to predict or affect under the present circumstances.

Am I supporting those who want to change the current form of government by refusing to do everything I can to make sure that it survives intact?

Governments must grow and change, as must societies, to deal with a changing world. Stagnation results in decay, and eventually the government or society collapses if it does not deal with the changing reality of life in an adequate manner.

Perhaps you should consider this in your analysis. Those who oppose the institution of a New World Order are destined, if successful in their attempts to change the policies and organization being formed to support the New World Order, to create another set of rules for government which will differ from those they opposed and from those which were being transformed. They will, by necessity, create a New World Order of their own, and will, of course, support it as being more beneficial for the majority than that which it replaced.

Do they offer this support because they truly believe it, or because they are now the ones in power? Is there even a difference between the two, and does it matter? Time and experience are the only true tests of social and political truths, and the results only matter to those in power when their time is up and another group is taking its turn at the helm. And remember, if your views and methods are not supported by the majority, you will find out how fast an unstable and new government can become susceptible to a hostile takeover. Even if your methods and views are accepted and welcomed by the majority, there will always be someone who doesn't like the new status quo, and how you handle those who dislike you is how people judge the truth of a government. Not by what it says, but by what it does.

Actions always speak louder than words. Not only the actions a government takes to solve a problem that it knows exists, but also the actions a government doesn't take to solve a problem that it knows exists. Not only by who and what the government chooses to subject to enforcement measures, but also by who and what the government doesn't choose to subject to enforcement measures. Not only by how and why a government chooses to enforce its will, but also by how and why a government doesn't choose to enforce its will.

Unless major changes occur, I believe that our present government is doomed, and those running it may be as well, because the only way to forcibly change it is by violent overthrow, and all other methods of change have been blocked for so long that even if change were allowed to occur by other methods, it may be too little and too late. I say this because our present government thinks not of how they can best serve the people, but how they can best control and run the lives of the people. They think of what they can get away with or what the people will put up with instead of what they are supposed to do. They decide not to do certain programs or carry out certain agendas because they don't think the people will allow them to or that the people will not stand for it, not because the things they want to do are wrong. They decide that they must fund certain programs or pass certain laws because the people will replace them if they don't, not because it is the right thing to do.

Thomas Jefferson was a remarkable man for many reasons. He knew that although the people had been subjected to a coup de etat by the framers of the Constitution, he believed that the Bill of Rights and electing good people to the government would allow the people to effect the changes required to safeguard their rights and keep this country a free nation where the people ruled their lives. He not only believed that a government that ruled by power and fear, which controlled the lives of its citizens against their wishes, with no recourse for the citizen to change the government through its laws was a tyranny, but that all tyrants are doomed to be eventually killed by the people they had terrorized.

Jefferson believed in freedom and democracy so strongly that he wrote that he would see half of the earth destroyed willingly so long as there was one Adam and one Eve left in each country, alive and free, so they could repopulate the earth in freedom.

Jefferson also believed that any government that feared guns in the hands of its citizens, should. I believe that is an even more important warning for a government that has spent the last seventy years systematically increasing its own powers while simultaneously increasingly infringing upon certain Constitutional rights by increasingly regulating a right that the Constitution specifically states shall not be infringed upon because the people who created this country stated that this right was necessary for the preservation of a free society. If the tree of Liberty must, of necessity, be watered from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots, remember that the patriots will eventually win. Ideas don't die, and education and creativity flourish only in free societies. They are oppressed and stifled by tyrants because they are a greater threat than a weapon in the hand of any one man. Weapons are only as dangerous as the man who uses them, for they are merely tools. Ideas are dangerous in and of themselves, for they can allow any man to think, to learn, to evaluate, and to decide how best to use the tools he has at his disposal for his own good and the good of those he cares for.

The difference between a hero, a martyr, and a fool is only in the outcome of what they attempted to do. A hero accomplishes his goal or does something, even though some heroes die doing it or attempting it. A martyr dies for his goal, and sometimes accomplishes more by dying than he could have by working toward that goal his entire life. A fool doesn't plan, and as a result, reacts to everything instead of having a chance to act.

If a man has nothing to lose, the cost of his actions means nothing to him. He may not succeed in getting what he wanted, but does he care now that he has nothing left to live for? He may then do whatever he can to make sure that even if he dies, those who were his enemies do not benefit, and then make sure that they can not achieve their goals. If he has nothing to live for, does it matter if the rest of the world is still there? Many people consider death preferable to slavery, or even to being a prisoner in a gilded cage. Others consider that even a slave will eventually get at least one chance to rise up and destroy those who have wronged him. Some even believe that no matter what, as long as you are alive, you have a chance to destroy your enemies, even if that means wiping out all life on the planet.

If you consider this last viewpoint to be an extreme, psychotic, sociopathological expression that no sane person would endorse, consider two phrases taught and encouraged by our current government for the last 45 years. The first is 'Better Dead Than Red', and the second is 'Mutually Assured Destruction'. As long as they had shelters, some warning, and a way to protect themselves, the politicians and military were ready to write off vast numbers of this country's citizens and subject the survivors to a living hell of radiation and forced relocation and prioritization. Does that sound like a servant of the people, or a tyrant?

Be careful what master you choose to serve. For those who say that it is better to choose the devil you know instead of the devil you don't, I remind you that you have already chosen to serve a devil by limiting your choices between the lesser of the two evils, instead of choosing between what you know to be good and right and what you know to be evil and wrong. God gives you free choice. That is a right and a privilege. The price you pay, for no privilege or right comes without a cost, is that you are responsible for every action and decision you make, and you can't blame others for the consequences of the actions you freely entered into. And doing nothing and deciding to take no action is an action. One which sometimes has more lasting consequences than either of the the other choices you were considering.

Sometimes, the right choice is action, regardless of the consequences, and sometimes the right choice is to wait. Action, once begun, can never be undone. Inaction can always be turned into action, but the delay may increase or decrease the cost of the desired outcome. The trick lies in making the proper choice with the information you have available, accepting responsibility for the choice and its consequences, and doing the best you can to achieve the desired outcome with what you have to work with. If it's not possible to achieve the desired outcome, you can still make sure that you do everything possible to make sure that the outcome is as far from the least desirable outcome as you can get.

If you have nothing to live for, the cost is not important. If you do have something to live for, and the outcome is not so bad that death is preferable, there is always the chance that you will be able to do more in the future, when the situation may become more favorable to accomplish what you want. Then the cost must be considered in your decision.

We have had the technology for years to make this country truly a democracy for the first time in its history, but who would have the time to sit and listen to all of the debates about the issues? Does it really matter? If something really needs done at the national level, the people would vote on it and decide. They would have to accept responsibility for their decisions. Those who lost couldn't say that everyone else had been bought off by some special interest group. Nobody has that much money. But those in power do not want to give the power they have accumulated back to the people.

Do you think we really need to regulate how many minutes of commercials a TV station runs in an hour? People will just watch some other station if they run too many commercials, and the idiots will change their policy or go out of business. If any business had been run like Congress ran this country, it would have gone down the tubes, and the people responsible would have been lynched by their investors for abusing their trust and profiteering at the expense of the people who had paid them.

Be careful what you set out to achieve. You may actually succeed, and only find out after it was too late that you didn't really want to accomplish what you set out to do. You never know, though. You may find out that you got something completely different, and that it's what you were looking for all along. Remember, the original ideas of the Constitution led us to where we are today because they were modified in their enforcement without ever changing them. The document still exists, and is supposedly the supreme law of the land, but the law is only as good as those who interpret and enforce it.

The government will either survive or fail depending on its own actions and responses, and how the people respond to it?

That's right. They have had years to convince the people to believe all of their wonderful rhetoric, and to get them to listen to what they say and ignore what they do. Now, the survival of the government depends on the ability of those in charge to adapt and learn. Regardless of what the press does, the people will believe only what they see the government doing, and they will demand proof to back up any claims made by politicians.

One of the advantages of a democracy is that you are only responsible for yourself, and maybe a few others. You control your actions, and are responsible for the actions of your minor children. You only become responsible to answering for the actions of others when you choose to go into government. Any power you receive to limit the actions of others means that you accept responsibility for how that power is used, and will eventually be held accountable by the people who allowed you to have that power. If they find you to be irresponsible, they will take that power away from you. By force, if necessary. Irresponsible individuals are generally replaced and the public is calmed and reassured before that becomes necessary.

Chapter 8

Now, I will cover the worst case scenario.

By the end of this year, there will be a stock market crash and resulting financial crisis. It may become bad enough to affect the banking industry. It may even result in large scale rioting in some places. It will affect the entire economy and will have some effect on every person in the country.

By the beginning of the next year, and possibly just over six months from now, there will be computer failures and glitches which will affect government and corporate computers. They will interfere with money transfers, credit card purchases and billing, debit card purchases, check verification, and automatic deposits and debits. They may interfere with systems other than billing and verification, resulting in the loss of data and even whole files. This will cause cash flow problems, loss of faith in the banks, and loss of savings and investments.

By the beginning of the year, electrical systems will fail as power plants lose their computer control systems. We are talking about widespread or even complete power failures in most or all of the states in this country. The outages could last for months or longer. The longer the power is out, the more severe other problems will be. The extent of the damage to the plant will depend on the type of plant, the type of failure that causes the shutdown, and the severity of the damage to the plant.

Extended problems at hydroelectric plants may jeopardize some dams which have controls to regulate the gates and the amount of water retained. Dam failures will be catastrophic to those downstream, especially if there is little or no warning.

Some of the electric generation plants are nuclear. Although they have more manual shutdowns and more training in handling emergency shutdowns, much of their monitoring and warning system is computer controlled. If they do not manage to respond to the emergency in time to shut down the reactor cores, they will suffer a nuclear meltdown after their computers crash. The result will be widespread radioactive contamination downwind from the affected nuclear site.

When electricity fails, the other utilities will follow depending on the length of the failure and the ability of the other utility to operate on its own. Water treatment will last as long as their own computers and generators function properly. Most plants will not be able to last more than three days to a week at most. After the water pressure is gone, there will be no water for drinking or for fighting fires. People will not survive a week without water, and contaminated water will keep you alive only if you don't die from whatever disease you contract from drinking it.

We are talking about the beginning of January, in what will probably be the coldest part of winter. Homes that are all electric will have no way to heat or cook. Homes that are all gas will probably also lose heat because they won't have a fan to force the heated air through their home.

There will be fires across the country. People with fireplaces they never use will try to burn wood to keep warm. Without proper maintenance and cleaning, these are a fire hazard. People will use kerosene and other heaters to keep warm, and there will be danger of fires from these as well. Accidents happen. People will try to cook with charcoal grills or other devices, and they will start fires. People will die from carbon monoxide poisoning from using heating or cooking devices in improperly ventilated areas. Without proper water pressure, fire departments will be unable to contain or put out the fires, and many people will be left homeless.

People will die from medical complications. With no electricity and working computers, pharmacies don't know if your prescriptions are valid, and they will refuse to dispense medications to most people. Doctors will be overwhelmed treating patients who have major medical problems, and will be unable to take the time for preventive care.

Hospitals will be overflowing. Initially the problem will be burn victims, minor accidents, muggings, and exposure. Later, the problem will be riot victims, burn victims, and people suffering from various diseases. Many diseases related to improper sanitation and bad water are almost unknown to most American doctors. Without their lab facilities and computers, they won't be able to diagnose and treat them as effectively.

With widespread power outages, fuel for transportation will be more difficult to get. There will be delivery and scheduling problems with medical supplies, food, medicine, and all other necessities.

Even if the grocery stores are opened, their frozen and refrigerated foods will spoil without refrigeration. Emergency measures may work in the short term, but will not eliminate the problems. The stores in every major city in this country only have a three day supply of food, and many people do not store extra food in their homes. After the fourth or fifth day, many people will begin to find out what it really means to be truly hungry for the first time in their life.

Fires will start to occur more frequently. They will be the result of arson and rioting. Fire departments will be unable to respond effectively. Police departments will be unable to contain the rioters. In most places they will be outnumbered and underarmed in comparison to the rioters. The National Guard will be unable to respond. Troops will be unable to get the activation call, unable to get to the assembly points, or unable or unwilling to leave their families and loved ones unprotected.

Those National Guard troops who do respond will not be able to get armed right away because they have no ammunition stored at the armories with their weapons. After they are armed, most of them are not trained to respond to the situation they will be placed in, and will only serve to make the rioters become more violent.

The active military will be called up to enforce martial law, but they will only be able to effectively keep order in a few selected major cities at most. Even by arming all of the cooks and clerks, there are less than 2 million troops on active duty, and it would require at least 50 to 100,000 troops to keep order in New York City alone. There are not enough troops to maintain order in every city in this entire country at the same time. Besides, the military will have their hands full with other problems. I will explain more about this in just a few minutes.

People who are sick will overwhelm the ability of the hospitals to treat them. The hospitals will be unable to function at all once they run out of fuel for their emergency generators. Even before that happens, treatment will become progressively worse because they are not set up to operate without modern conveniences. Their laundry and sterilization requires huge amounts of electricity and water. Much of their equipment is dependent on electricity and computers, and many of their computers will not work, meaning that the all-important paperwork will be impossible to verify, keep track of, or even to do. There will be widespread epidemics in various locations, and the ability of the location to properly dispose of contaminated bodies will correlate with their ability to contain the outbreaks and minimize the spread of the disease through rats and other carriers.

There will be an increase in violence, with gangs of violent criminals roaming the countryside looking for food, water, guns, ammo, alcohol, drugs, and sex toys. I say 'sex toys' because the perversion of certain humans means that any other human or animal they can subjugate and use for their sexual satisfaction will do if nothing else is available.

Police officers will be unable or unwilling to respond to many of the calls they receive. That assumes that the phones are still working, which is unlikely given the complexity of the computerized switching systems. Citizens will be unable to get help, and will be forced to defend themselves from whatever threat they encounter. This will occur at the same time that home invasion rates skyrocket. Criminals who know they won't get stopped by the police, and will probably never even be caught have little to lose by taking the risk. Add in the probability that they will ever be convicted or sentenced, and they have nothing to lose. On the other hand, they have everything to gain. There is the possibility of finding food, water, alcohol, drugs, guns, ammo, and someone to use for their sexual pleasure.

People trying to escape from the cities will be stalled on the expressways because of traffic jams and accidents. They will be unable to refuel because the pumps at the gas stations require electricity to operate. They will be unprepared to survive with just what they are carrying, and will either die or learn to survive. The school of hard knocks is not a gentle teacher, and many mistakes are severely punished. You can imagine the results for yourself.

If some order is not restored and some method of transporting essential supplies is not worked out, there will be widespread famine and violence. Most farmers today are so industrialized that they can not operate without support. Even those that do manage to grow crops will have no way to market them, and no way to ensure their safety if they do get them to a market.

The entire Napa valley and all of the farms in southern California will return to desert if they can't keep diverting water from as far away as Colorado to irrigate their crops. Transportation will also be a problem for them, as will security.

Most of the military troops will be required to provide security for the food convoys to keep criminals and black marketeers from stealing and reselling the food. Many of the rest will be required to keep illegal immigrants from coming across the border from Mexico. We may have problems, but they are already starving, and they will only fare worse when the U.S. suddenly stops sending foreign aid and food to other countries. At least in the U.S., they think that they will have a chance for survival.

The rest of the military will be doing what they can to maintain their effectiveness and defend the country. It is very probable that one or more of our enemies would use this opportunity to attack America. The mode of attack could be anything from terrorist bombing, chemical attacks, biological attacks, or even nuclear weapons. This would be their best opportunity, and with the widespread outbreaks of disease, proving a biological or chemical attack was intentional would be next to impossible.

The damage to property is impossible to accurately estimate due to the number of variables involved and the extreme variability built into some of them. My estimates are that in a worst case scenario, at least 30% of the population will die within the first two years. If there is large scale violence, a prolonged war, or a complete breakdown of society, up to 75 or 80% of the population could be dead in that same time period.

There are simple and cheap preventive measures that can be taken to minimize the problems you have to deal with.

Take the problem with water and sanitation. If you fill your bathtub before the water runs out, you can use the water to flush your toilet. Rainwater and melted snow can also be used. Water from a stream or mud puddle can be used to flush a toilet.

As far as drinking water goes, you can store it for months. Just take your empty two liter plastic bottles, rinse them, and fill them with tap water. You can even add one or two drops of bleach to make sure that nothing grows in them for more than six months. If the water tastes stale, pour it back and forth between two containers to aerate it again, and it will taste OK. Each two liter will keep one person alive for one day, but two is better for hydration. It also recycles the bottles that you would just throw away.

If you can boil the water, a teaspoon of bleach will purify a gallon of clear water if you boil it for twenty minutes. You have to strain the water and allow it to settle to make sure it is clear when you pour it into the pan to boil it.

Resublimated iodine crystals, water purification tablets, and other chemical water treatments are available commercially, and can be fairly inexpensive. There are also filters which purify water that operate without water pressure in your pipes, but they are more expensive. They can be found at different backpacking suppliers.

Stock up while you can. Buy beans and rice in bulk. They are cheap, and they will keep you alive. You can get a 100 pound bag of rice for less than $30, and some beans are only about twice that. Buy generic canned goods. They may not look or taste as good all the time, buy you can keep your grocery budget the same and buy more food than you can eat. Store the excess. It will keep in a closet for years.

Buy some powdered milk. It can be used for drinking, cooking, and baking. It requires no refrigeration, and it will store for years. Instant lemonade or juice mixes will allow you to get some sugar and flavor the stored water when you drink it.

Do the maintenance on your fireplaces and chimneys to make sure that they are safe to use. They can be used for heating and cooking, and are relatively safe. The other methods get more risky because they don't have the built in fire safety and they don't provide proper ventilation.

You can get a backpack cook stove and the fuel, but that only lets you cook while your fuel is available, and they are somewhat expensive relative to other methods. You can stock up on charcoal and lighter fluid when they are on sale. You can cook outdoors on a charcoal grill, but I wouldn't recommend it for indoor use due to smoke and carbon monoxide production. You could also use sterno or other fuel, but fuel becomes the limiting factor again.

If you have the room on your property, you could build a small fire pit. A wood fire would cook your food and you could store wood in a shed or garage to keep it dry. If you own your own home, you might be able to install a fireplace so it would be available for heating and cooking. Even if nothing happens, it increases the value of your home and allows you to enjoy quiet evenings by the fire.

Stock up on disinfectants and soap. Use them. Stock up on over the counter medicine for everything from colds and flu to diarrhea and headaches. Get a bunch of vitamins and take them as directed. Get a good first aid kit together and learn how to use it. Get a few good books on home first aid and preventive medicine. Get in shape by exercising and eating right so that you are less susceptible to disease in the first place.

Quit eating out and going to the movies, or cut back on some other thing you do that you don't need to do. Save the money in cash, and put it somewhere safe. Don't rely on the bank to keep all of your money safe. Have some cash where you can get to it. If all of the utilities go out, you won't have any utility bills to pay, but you better have some way to make your mortgage or rent payment for at least a few months or you may be facing eviction or foreclosure even if the money is stuck in the same bank that is foreclosing on you. You have to prove they have your money in court, while they can just claim that they are working on a computer problem and have no way to verify your claims at this time. However, they do have a deed for your property with them listed as a lienholder.

Those solutions cost more, but they are necessary if you want to protect or keep what you have. Get a good gun, learn how to use it safely, and get enough ammo to make sure that you don't run out any time soon. If you aren't fully prepared to kill someone else to save your own life or protect your family, don't waste your time and money buying a gun.

If you can't afford much, having any safe gun is better than having no gun at all. But if you don't intend to use it, having no gun is safer because that ensures that you are not providing the first person who attacks you with the means to kill you and your entire family.

You can try to make your property more secure by installing a fence, and you can make your house more secure by reinforcing the lower walls and covering the windows with shutters you can close from the inside. Nothing is perfect, but people usually look for the easy way when they are too lazy to do the work themselves.

Lighting is important for security. Don't have a bunch of bright lights on when there is no electricity for miles if you don't want everyone to know where you are and what you have that they don't. On the other hand, if you are stumbling around in the dark and can't see someone sneaking around on your property, you are an easy target. Oil lamps with oil are inexpensive, and provide light and some heat. Candles also work. Make sure you have plenty of matches or fuel for your lighters, because they have to be lit every time they are turned back on.

There are shortwave radios which will run for half an hour on three minutes of cranking on their built in generator, and which have a solar panel to run them in the daytime. Some even have a built in LCD light which will allow you to see in a dark room. The radio allows you to listen to news and weather reports, and gives you some contact with others.

Several companies sell LCD flashlights which will run for two or more days on one or two small batteries. If saved for emergencies, a small box of batteries will allow you to have emergency light whenever you need it.

The power utilities can disconnect themselves from the grid so that they do not cause or suffer a cascade failure, where they go down like dominoes because the breakers do not kick in before the next system overloads and fails. They can also streamline their system to minimize computer control and computer problems. They can make sure that they still have all of their manual controls set up and can disconnect the computers and run with minimal systems.

Hydroelectric facilities need to make sure that they can protect the dam if they suffer a long term outage and are unable to provide any power to the dam. They also need to verify that they can operate the necessary systems manually if their computers crash and refuse to operate properly.

Nuclear facilities need to verify that they can shut down the reactor completely, and can override the computer to keep glitches from interfering with their efforts. Small glitches that have no discernible cause could be more catastrophic than a total failure. The computer could get false sensor readings and either respond automatically or cause someone in control to make the wrong response. Either way, a reactor meltdown would not make many people happy.

Water treatment plants could make sure that they have enough fuel to run their emergency generators for an extended period of time. If they even have one. They can also make sure that they can override their computer and keep the facility running manually for as long as possible.

The businesses that will be the hardest hit will be those that have automated the most or even become completely dependent upon electricity. Places like WalMart, where they don't even price much of their merchandise any more. With no electricity, not only do their registers not work, but they can't even check out their merchandise by hand because they don't have any working bar code scanners to tell them and you what the price is supposed to be.

The press has periodically run stories about Y2K. Even when they had a six month long problem with Visa being unable to issue credit cards, they didn't really cover the story, and they said that everything had been fixed when the programmers only repaired the part of the program that verified that the date was correct. Their fix was probably a stopgap patch such as telling the computer that for numbers lower than 70, the first two digits of the year date was 20 instead of 19. That means that the computer will accept the date as valid.

Buy a small dehydrator and use it. Dry any food in your refrigerator that will go bad if you don't use it soon. Buy extra fresh vegetables when they are on sale and dry them. Buy bags of frozen vegetables on sale and put them straight into the dehydrator. Buy a bushel of apples or pears at a farmer's market and dry them after you peel, core, and slice them. It will take more water to prepare it, but it is more condensed and lighter to carry than any other form of food except for freeze dried food. The food is light, takes up very little room, retains its vitamins, and can be stored at room temperature for years. I have eaten apples that were dried ten years before. The only thing that was done to them was to redry them several years before I ate them. The storage closet had allowed them to slowly start to rehydrate and we needed to redry them before they became wet enough to allow bacteria to grow and cause them to spoil.

If you are backpacking in the woods, you can generally find water more easily than you can find ready to eat food. Food is only ripe and ready to eat when it is in season, and very few things are in season in January in most of this country. A bottle of water purification tablets weighs about an ounce, is slightly over an inch tall, and holds at least 50 tablets, allowing you to purify 50 quarts of water. If you have twenty pounds of dried food in your backpack, you can carry enough food to feed you for more than a month. In the winter, you can supplement your water almost anywhere, even if it is more important than food in most survival situations. Winter survival is one exception. You need energy to maintain your core body temperature. Without it, you will die of exposure long before you die of thirst or suffer from severe dehydration.

All that can be done is to warn the people of the possibilities and educate them to the alternatives. If they are not scared, hungry, and wondering what is going on, the people will not panic and react violently to the least little provocation. It is the unknown, and the accompanying fear, which will allow rational people to panic and resort to senseless violence.

Don't get me wrong. There will still be violence. But if the people know what to expect, and they have been allowed to prepare and given a chance to survive, they will not be desperate enough to resort to senseless violence. At least, probably not quite as often. This limits the severity and the frequency of some of the actions which are most likely to result in needless deaths.

Chapter 9

What will the government, the corporations, and those in power do with this information, and why haven't they disseminated it if they already know all of this?

I just don't believe that they'll do anything except use it however they think will be to their own political advantage. I don't believe that our current government has a prayer of recognizing the unavoidable truth and acting on it in time. They are too far gone to deal with reality and the rest of the world.

They have shown that they can't even recognize or deal with the truth when it is shoved up their nose and rubbed in their face. Clinton got on national TV and "apologized" to the people for his inappropriate actions with Monica Lewinski. This was an admission that he had committed adultery and had sex with her. It was also a direct contradiction of his grand jury testimony under oath.

But shouldn't his private life be his own personal business?

That is not the issue. He had the same legal rights as anyone else, and more because his attorney was present during questioning, he was only asked prepared questions, and he had a time limit for them to ask questions. Some of their time was spent in conferences with his attorney and answering questions with long responses instead of the few words his answer actually provided.

It doesn't take five minutes and three paragraphs to say that I know the legal definition of the word "sex", that I understand the question after going over it with my attorney, and that I did not have sex with Monica Lewinski or Paula Jones.

OK, so he was evasive. A politician has that right, doesn't he?

No. He intentionally lied. He committed perjury, which is a felony. Since the Constitution specifically lists high crimes and misdemeanors as impeachable offenses, and felonies are legally defined as more important offenses than misdemeanors, he committed an impeachable offense. The House of Representatives did their duty and impeached him, but it was a political, partisan effort. No Democrat voted for impeachment even though they all knew that he had committed adultery and had committed perjury while under oath.

The Senate did their job and tried him for the offenses. In another partisan effort, the Democrats voted to support their party member, no matter what. The vote was 50-50 for obstruction of justice, even though his lies to the press and perjury directly impeded a legal case against him and resulted in its dismissal. The vote was 55-45 for the other count of perjury, even though his own statements made it clear that he had lied.

Our government isn't perfect. None of them are. It isn't supposed to be perfect. It is supposed to run to the best of our abilities to make it representative of the wishes and best interests of the people of this country. We have direct proof that Congress considers politics and political considerations to be more important than the direct instructions given to them by the Constitution that is supposed to govern and limit their actions. We have direct proof that they consider the violation of the oath of office to be no problem, because the President can not keep his oath while he is violating the laws set forth by the Constitution.

We also have evidence that the judicial branch of the government does not take this violation of the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, seriously. The federal judge on the case that Clinton was forced to testify under oath before the grand jury in is considering imposing a fine and censure on Clinton after he has publicly stated that he intentionally meant to mislead the judge and the grand jury with his answers under oath. That is an admission that he committed perjury.

But he will be punished, so it doesn't matter, does it?

The punishment is for contempt of court. That is a slap on the wrist compared to the punishment for perjury, which is the actual crime committed. It is equivalent to a punk kicking in your door, beating your wife unconscious, breaking your cookie jar, and eating all of your cookies. When caught and arrested, the judge slaps him on the wrist and says that he shouldn't eat cookies without permission any more because too many cookies are bad for your health. It is an affront to the offended parties.

But what is it that should be so offensive? Did he do something so wrong that he would have been subjected to so much punishment if there was no political reason to go after him? Doesn't everybody fool around and then lie about it?

Many people do fool around outside of marriage, and many more lie about it. Those who lie about it under oath are usually charged with perjury and spend a term of time in prison after being convicted of a felony. His position and power shielded him, allowing him to discredit his accuser and even get the case thrown out of court by lying under oath. That is obstruction of justice, another felony since in this case there was a conspiracy to impede the case and intentionally cause it to be dismissed before it came to trial.

The thing that should be offensive to the people of this country, who are forced to pay 50% of their total income to support the various levels of government, is that the entire federal government has proven itself to be corrupt and self-serving in this one case. The Legislative branch was supposed to try the case fairly and impartially. The fact that the important votes were made along political lines indicates that at least one political party refused to obey the law and represent the best interests of the people of this country.

The Judicial branch was supposed to try the legal cases fairly, and then allowed the President and the press to influence their actions so that the law was broken. When they found out about this, they refused to take more than a token action against an admitted felon who been tried by a fixed jury. At least they haven't taken the precedent of the Rodney King trial to violate the Constitutional rights of the accused and try him again for the same crime. Double jeopardy is a nasty can of worms, but even the Supreme Court won't find in favor of the cops who were convicted because if they do, they know that there will be race riots. Justice in this country is blind only when it means that they have to overlook evidence of innocence or guilt to make sure that the outcome of the trial does not produce more racially or culturally motivated violence and unrest than they are willing to tolerate. The easy response is to convict the innocent white cops or acquit the guilty black athlete instead of having to shoot rioters to convince them that the law applies equally to all, regardless of race.

The Executive branch was supposed to obey the law and the oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. Personal arrogance allowed the President to commit adultery because he wanted to, to commit perjury because he chose to, and to interfere with a lawsuit in a manner which he knew was illegal because it served his own personal interests. He has specifically engineered the timing of several political crises and military actions to manipulate public opinion and influence political events related to cases in which he was a defendant. He considers the law, the Constitution, and the best interests of the American people to be less important than his own personal pleasures and gratification. He is a prime example of what is wrong with both the political system and the government of this country. We could not have picked a better leader to exemplify why the problem we face is a disaster instead of merely a minor footnote describing how a simple problem was located, identified, and fixed years before it could develop into something worth worrying about.

All three branches of our government are rotten, either from apathy, political influence, or having developed the habit of accepting illegal activities as just the usual method of getting things done in the government.

Am I suggesting that since all of the branches are rotten, we should burn down the tree and plant something else?

No, I am not. That would be rebellion. There are options. When you have a fruit tree with a diseased or rotten limb, you remove the limb and graft on a new one so that you retain the healthy roots and still get healthy fruit. If the people of this country decide to change their government, or even their form of government, they are accorded that right under the Constitution. If those in power choose to block these legal activities in order to retain their powers, they are guilty of rebellion and are in direct violation of the laws which control the government of this country.

If that happens, any response made by the people, including use of force to remove the criminals as a threat to the nation, is a Constitutional and legal response. Our country is based on a system in which the people voluntarily give up certain rights in order to allow the government to provide certain services, all of which are contained in a written contract. If the government violates that contract and then refuses to obey its written obligations when reminded by the other party, it can hardly claim to be the legitimate party in a conflict in which the other party is simply trying to enforce the contract.

Let's say that the government is a cop, and the people are citizens. The cop has the right to make you obey certain laws, and to arrest you if you don't. We all agree on that point, because it is necessary for the survival of our society. But what happens if the cop commits crimes and attempts to kill you illegally?

You'd have to try to escape and then press charges, right?

According to the law, cops are people too. If they are violating the law, they are afforded no special protection and status just because they are a cop. You have the same right to kill them in self defense when they are committing a crime as you do to kill any other citizen. As long as a crime is being committed by someone else, and you are acting in self defense, you have the right to kill that person in order to protect your own life or someone else's. In real life, you will have a harder time proving that you were acting in self defense, and that the only person committing a crime was the cop, but you will be alive in court to tell your version of the events to a jury of your peers.

My personal hope is that we can peacefully reform our government, simplify its operation, make it more accountable to the people, and make it more economical. All of these things must happen if this society is to survive, and any problems with our current technology are not responsible for any resulting changes that occur. They simply acted as a trigger to initiate the events which followed. If our government does not change, this society is going to become increasingly fragmented. After a certain point, social collapse becomes inevitable because there are too many conflicts. The people can't cooperate and function cohesively. We don't need to be homogenous to survive, but we have to at least agree on the basic points that are the foundation of our society and have some common goals. Right now, survival is a good start.

Chapter 10

If you want to retain your assets, sell all of your stock in the stock market over the next few months. Do not renew any bonds or CDs. Put all of your money into ready cash, gold, silver, or hard currency. Do not buy gold or silver futures or anything on paper that is not a hard asset such as land or equipment. Because the people who run those big corporations know how badly they will be affected by Y2K even if they haven't told anyone else. It's the one form of insider trading that the stock market will never be able to regulate. If they quietly sell small bundles of their stock over time, they won't crash the market, and they will use the proceeds to diversify. They will also keep some cash back to buy stocks when the market crashes in the last week of December, and some more cash back for survival just in case.

Why would the stock market crash in the last week of December? Because by then, most of the big investors who are cautious will have already sold their stock and minimized their risks. After a sharp peak, the bottom will fall out because so many people will be making the decision to risk losing some money and taking a loss on their investments instead of losing it all if the whole system crashes when the new year begins. They'll figure that they can take their losses on taxes next year if everything works out all right. If it doesn't work out all right, they have some money, and they probably won't be filing any taxes for a while.

Why would the big investors risk losing so much control of their company by selling off so much stock? Because if the market does crash, and it probably will, they can buy their stock back for pennies on the dollar. Even if everything crashes, they made a profit and have all the stock in their company. The government and media are probably downplaying the problem because it supports the interests of big business, which directly supports the interests of the politicians and the political parties.

The entire financial structure of this country is nothing but a big paper sham. If there is a major disaster, the only people who own anything are the ones who hold the physical paper documents that say that they do own whatever is on that paper. All of the computer records will be questionable because they will have to be restored, and you have to examine every single record to prove that it was not tampered with before it was restored. It's impossible. And if the computer records can't be trusted, whoever has the documents on paper must be the legal owner.

Even if they already sold the stocks and received payment for it. They can write off the entire loss on their taxes and pocket the money they did receive. That means that somebody was ripped off. And they are not going to appreciate the courts helping to rip them off, either.

Our economy is totally entertwined with that of the rest of the world. Events around the world that affect the economy of other nations ultimately affect out own economy. One extremely important nation is Japan. Japan happens to be the world's largest creditor nation, which means that more people owe them more money than any other nation in the world. Japan also happens to be owed more money by the U.S. than we own any other nation on earth. They have instruments of credit which they could cash to help their own economy. If they cashed them all in, they would cause an economic collapse in this country that would make the Great Depression look like a minor recession.

We know that we are running out of time. Japan will start their fiscal year on the first of April, and it won't take them long to determine that they will have problems with their own systems by the end of the year. The Japanese government is already aware of the fact that they are not ready for Y2K. They probably won't release the news right away in order to avoid a public panic. They would want to work out some kind of financial deal with the American government, and they would have to work quickly to do it in time to save their own economy, if that was even possible.

There is only one state that will start its fiscal year in April. New York is not a concern because they have been so fiscally screwed up for so long that it would take them months to realize that they even had problems. However, another 44 states will start their fiscal year in July. That meant that even the local governments would be realizing how bad their situation could become by the end of August. Things would start to pick up when local government employees began getting worried and warning their friends and relatives about the real potential.

Common sense and logic are highly overrated. Just ask the press. They still think that we are educating our children in public schools. Never mind the fact that 40% of our high school graduates are functionally illiterate, or that it takes a bachelor's degree from a college to get you as prepared for a job and educated as the average high school graduate was in 1950. Things have gone downhill somewhat. Look at the military over the years. Some people think that their new comic book form manuals were some joke to pacify liberals. They didn't think that the army had to develop a comic book for how to use a LAAWS rocket simply because it was easier than teaching their average recruit how to read a properly written technical manual.

Even if there is no problem, there will be chaos. The people have been programmed. They haven't seen the beast. They haven't heard the beast. But somebody told them there was a beast. Now they're afraid, and they are going to run scared at the first sound before they find out if the beast is a tiger or a mouse.

Applied psychology. Condition the subject and wait for the response at the appropriate time. Right?

No. Psychological warfare. The differences are subtle, but very important. In psychological warfare, you don't condition a subject, you use force or intimidation to influence them, provoking a response. You don't care what the response is as long as fear is the initiator. Fear induces violent reactions from your core. Reactions which can often override reason.

Let's examine two scenarios, and you tell me if the fight or flight response can be used to affect the health of the overall population. First, there is a big storm with major damage. You have no power, no clean water, and little food. You sit in your home because it is dangerous to go outside. You are afraid, but you realize that the storm will end and you will be able to get food and water.

Second, there are rioters down the block. They are looting and setting fires. They were rioting because they wanted food and water, but they have set the grocery stores on fire by accident. You are afraid, and you realize that they are busting down doors to take whatever food and water they can find. You don't have any food or water, but you don't think that they are rational enough to listen or believe you. You do have a gun, and a family to protect.

Which scenario do you think is more likely to occur in a city during a power outage? Remember that everyone thinks that no help is going to come, that they are not important enough for the government to get around to them until it's too late, and that the only way they will ever be able to get anything is to take it. There is no hope, only fear and despair.

That is psychological warfare. Whether it was deliberately done or not does not matter. The fact is that especially in the major cities, many people live in a constant state of fear just in order to survive. It only takes so much to push enough of them beyond their threshold before it becomes contagious. A mob is an angry beast with many mouths and no brain controlling it.

And once rioting begins, it usually has to burn itself out. I understand. Many people will be injured or killed even if nothing goes wrong because some people will snap under the pressure of the disaster they think is about to happen. If the disaster does happen, it will only be worse because people will not be reacting rationally and will think that they have nothing to lose because the only thing left right now is survival.

That is why we begin planning and taking the necessary precautions to survive in the event of the worst case scenario. We gather the items necessary to survive now, while it is calm and there is no difficulty in obtaining them. We prepare ourselves physically, mentally, and spiritually to survive any type of disaster. We don't hope that it comes. We hope that we are prepared and are capable of surviving it IF it comes.

What if the disaster never comes? I have survived floods, blizzards, tornadoes, droughts, armed attacks, being hit by cars while crossing the street, and disease. Many other people can make the same claims, but many others can not. I am a survivor. All of these things could be survived just by chance alone by any individual. However, if a little planning and a few simple preparations not only make it more likely that I will survive, but that I will be in better shape afterwards than if I had not taken those precautions, what would your decision be?

Prepare and plan for the worst while you hope and pray for the best.

Chapter 11

In the worst case, those with grudges will use the opportunity to settle scores. White supremacists will torch the cities, knowing that many of those killed will be minorities. Some minorities will even start the fires themselves. To cover up evidence of looting, to protest, or just because they have been conditioned to understand that when they burn their neighborhoods down, the government will put out the fires and come in and build them a nice, new neighborhood. They won't be able to accept that there won't be any government to come in and build them a new city this time.

Am I saying that the government won't be able to survive this crisis?

Not in a worst case scenario. At least not any government that bears more than a passing resemblance to the one you know right now. Think of the damages, the loss of property, the loss of income, the damage to the entire financial infrastructure, and the loss of taxes. Think of the changes that would have to be made in our financial system to allow the people to survive, probably resulting in a barter economy.

But the government has gold reserves. Won't they be able to use them to finance rebuilding?

What good is a bar of gold when you have a family to feed? You took care of yourself for two years, and now the government shows up and says that they are going to take all of your trees to build houses to move you back into a city that they can't even get running. You need that wood as a renewable resource to allow your family to cook food and keep warm in the winter. What would you say?

But they could sieze resources for rebuilding for the common good. And they could threaten to use the military to make you let them, couldn't they?

All governments operate by fear. It works well to keep a few dissidents in line as long as the majority support the government. It does not work well to make the majority serve the wishes of a few who have power over them. People tend to revolt and overthrow oppressive dictatorships, and the Americans who survive two years in the worst case scenario will be well armed and willing to use those arms to defend themselves from a threat. What would you say would be the odds of those tactics triggering a civil war among millions of survivors who were forced to become self reliant to stay alive and who resent a government that failed them coming back when things are stabilizing and trying to reassume control without the people deciding that they wanted to resume their old form of government?

Probably on the order of a ninety five percent chance of open armed revolt by fifty percent or more of the survivors, with about thirty percent of the rest supporting them as much as possible. The government would last about three months at most, and the more force they used against the people, the more likely that all government officials and their families would become hunted fugitives after the war ended.

Frustration with an entrenched bureaucracy is often perceived as senseless, often leading to 'senseless violence' when there is no other course left to the injured party to have at least some sort of justice when it becomes obvious that getting his just compensation is no longer feasible.

You need to understand that many of the people in this country are already frustrated. They have seen the law twisted by attorneys for the rich, have seen corporations win in court simply because they could spend a million dollars a year for legal defenses while the people suing them went broke or died. They have seen the government use the same tactics on citizens who had done nothing wrong, but were considered undesirable by the government because of their opinions or views.

George Washington said that government 'is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.' Politicians know this fact. They also know that in order to maintain fear, you have to make a few examples of people. The examples you choose let the people know what the government is willing to tolerate and what it is not. Also, the way the government allows its agencies to operate tells them and the people what is considered more important.

We know that there are going to have to be major changes if something does not occur to minimize the effects of the coming crisis. You need to keep in mind that a large number of the people in this country have been trying to institute changes for a very long time. They are not satisfied with how things have been going, and they want the government to represent their interests.

These same people are a majority of the population, but the bureaucracy is slow to change in response to the demands of the people. It was built to be that way. However, this majority will become even more substantial during the coming hard times. These people live in the areas where they are more likely to survive, they are more likely to prepare for their own survival, and they are more likely to be ready to kill to protect their own lives and their own property. If the responses the government makes to 'correct' the problems which are going to occur do not represent the will of the people, and the government ignores their demands for an accounting, the people just may decide to put in a government of the people and by the people since letting someone govern for the people doesn't seem to have worked too well over the last hundred years or so.

If the government tries to restore the same old routine after having just demonstrated their complete inability to perform the functions which they were charged with, the people who have been forced to survive on their own due to government incompetence will not tolerate being informed that they must now obey that same government or else they will be punished. If that threat is ever openly made, there will be no turning back. There is almost certain to be a civil war in this country, and the government will not win unless they can convince the entire military to stand behind them and they are willing to nuke half of the surviving population. That will not happen. In the end, they will force the people to create another form of government.

If you and everyone you know had to survive on your own for months or years, knowing that all of your problems could have been easily averted if the government you appointed to look out for your interests had taken action when they learned of the problem, how would you feel about the government? Would you feel friendly or some form of gratitude? Would you even trust them?

Now, what would you do if someone showed up one day and told you that the government was back, and that they had now reassumed control of your life?

I'd tell him that he was nuts. Then I'd probably contact the government and ask them where they thought they got off. I didn't elect them, and there were no legal elections to allow them to assume power.

The Constitution was suspended because of the emergency, and the representatives were appointed by the remaining representatives so that they had a quorum to allow them to run the government. They have passed new laws to protect you, and they do not like people questioning the authority of their representatives. If you do not follow their directives, you will be arrested, tried, and punished.

You'd tell them to go to hell. Then you'd tell everyone you knew about how they threatened you without provocation, right?

The shot heard round the world. Congratulations, you have just started the rebellion. You are a marked person, and your only chance for a life is to win the war and overthrow the government so they can't make an example of you.

You see, under the right conditions, it does not take much to start a war. Even simple misunderstandings have started more wars than most people would imagine.

Since all governments operate at least in some part based on fear, it would make sense that there would have to be some basis for that fear, at least some of the time. Our government is a bureaucracy that wants to continue as it is. None of the parts want to lose any power or control. Over time, as parts get to the point where they are no longer useful, they are simply retained out of habit. Instead of being downsized like any corporation that can't afford dead weight, they are kept on even if they are doing nothing useful or productive. Instead of reassigning them to new jobs if any become necessary, the government hires new people and creates a new department to do those jobs. The bureaucratic beast simply grows, regardless of the cost or its effect on the people who are forced to support it.

But that can't go on forever, can it?

No. Eventually, the government becomes so large, so corrupt, and so unsupportable that it kills the economy and rots the society from within. It happened to the Roman Empire, and we have blindly followed in their footsteps. If nothing happens to change the road the government is taking, we will also eventually collapse into anarchy. It looks like we are being given a large shove in that direction, since the government has left the people with no choice but to ignore the government and protect themselves if they want to survive the crash of our technology.

There's an old saying that you can't go home again. You can go back to where you grew up and relive your old memories, but everything has changed. It just isn't the same. It shouldn't be. In nature, those things which do not change and adapt stagnate and die. The same thing is true of societies and civilizations. It just takes longer.

What are the factors that are most responsible for making the people feel so frustrated with the government?

There is no response to the will of the people. The political parties have taken over the elections to the point that there is no real difference on most issues between either candidate. When there is any abuse of power by government agencies, or an infringement of the rights of the people by government agents, the standard response is to whitewash the whole thing. Investigations end in coverups, when they are even conducted. Some investigations are not even covered up, and even the recommendations of the Senate are ignored. Business as usual continues, and the people are reminded that the government tolerates some things and does not tolerate others, regardless of the legality or the morality of the situation.

I can't be serious that the government covers up illegal activities and nobody has been able to do anything about it, right? When have illegal activities occurred that the government has refused to punish anyone for and that everyone knows that illegal activities have actually occurred?

Do you remember an investigation by Congress concerning what was called the Iran-Contra Affair? It concerned a scheme to bring drugs into the country, sell them, use the money to buy military weapons, and ship them out of the country to support rebel groups because the military aid had been refused by Congress.

It was a big scandal involving the White House, President Reagan, and Colonel Oliver North. After the hearings, the guilty parties were punished, right?

Do you really believe that a Colonel in the U.S. military could organize and run something that complex on his own? Do you really believe that someone with that little authority could make the state and local police turn a blind eye to illegal activities involving smuggling drugs and military weapons? There were attempts to investigate and stop the activities, but they were stopped by someone with the authority to make the local law enforcement keep their noses out of what was obviously not their business.

Was there really interference in local law enforcement's efforts to stop the illegal activities?

According to the Congressional findings, records did indicate that someone made sure that the activities continued for as long as possible. No real investigation was made into who was responsible, because the people were not agitated enough to force a thorough investigation. The facts were there, but nobody cared enough to make those responsible pay for their crimes.

'What facts?'

The fact that all of the transfers occurred in one state. The fact that the governor, or someone representing his office, made sure that the transfers continued to occur because of their positive influence on his state's lagging economy.

OK, so there was some politics involved, and they threw somebody to the wolves as a sacrificial lamb. That happens all the time, and there is nothing you can do to stop it.

That is why the people are frustrated. Politics, politicians, and the government have become so corrupt and so intertwined that there is nothing that the people can do to overcome the entrenched bureaucracy. The people with the power don't want to make the changes that the people are demanding, so they drag things out until the people get tired and lose interest.

That doesn't mean that the government has intentionally violated people's rights and covered up the evidence of those crimes. How can you believe that those things actually happened? I know that there may be a few aberrations or mistakes, but that doesn't mean that they happened all the time, does it?

There is an agency of the federal government that at least one U.S. President has publicly considered abolishing completely. It served no purpose that could not be handled by other agencies, and was so out of control that even the agency that it was a part of wanted nothing to do with most of the agents in the event they were to be retained by the government. Even the government's own investigators concluded that this agency's normal operations were a violation of the rights of the citizens. At least 70% of all cases brought by this agency could be demonstrated in court to be entrapment or other violations of the law.

What do you mean 'entrapment or other violations'? If there was that much illegal activity going on, wouldn't the media have made a ruckus and made the government do something about the problem?

By entrapment, I mean that they hired undercover operatives to talk someone into breaking the law, sometimes even using coercion. When the perpetrator was busted for his illegal activities, he was often given the choice of being prosecuted or becoming an informant or spy for the feds. The agents were paid for each person they got to work as a spy or for each person who was convicted based on their testimony. Many search warrants can be routinely shown to have been issued after the agents committed perjury by swearing under oath to lies in order to convince the judge to issue the search warrant.

But why wouldn't the press do anything about this? They represent the people, and they have a duty to inform the public, don't they?

The press neither represents the people, nor has any duty to inform the public of the facts they uncover. The members of the major media are mostly liberals, and many of them are extremely liberal. The members of this society list themselves in most of their opinions and views as conservative, with 70% of the population opposing most or all of the views expressed by liberals, especially the extreme liberals.

The only duty the press has is to use its vocation of reporting facts or stories they consider to be of interest to make money. If they make a profit, they get paid. If they don't want to cover a story, they will distort facts or slant the story with their own opinions and half truths to make the story more useful in convincing the public that the viewpoint espoused by the press is correct and truly represents that of the majority of the people.

So why would they profit from withholding facts from the people and protecting an agency that was doing so much damage?

Because the agency is the B.A.T.F., and the press and all other liberals do not like people with guns. They say that they are against guns because of moral reasons, but they are against people being armed because they are afraid. If people are armed, they can resist abuses, even those committed by their own government, much more effectively than unarmed people can. Liberals want to decide what is best for everyone, and then force everyone to obey the laws they have passed because in their own opinion, it is in the best interests of everyone.

They want to disarm the American people by convincing them that the second amendment is not really important any more because the world has changed and we are more civilized. Besides, we have all of these police officers whose job it is to protect you and your property, so why would individuals need their own firearms for self protection?

Pretty speeches from people who know that the police can not do that job, and that the courts have repeatedly upheld the ruling that the police are not responsible for the safety of any individual, but to the community in general. Not to mention the fact that our society is more violent, and more dangerous for the individual than during any previous era, including the Colonial period of expansion and Indian wars. If it conflicts with their own goals or beliefs, the press will intentionally lie to the people and twist the facts that they report to more accurately match their own beliefs.

But why are the people becoming so disillusioned with the government now?

Because agencies that have been trustworthy for decades are becoming as corrupt and political as the rest of the government bureaucracy. The FBI has been proven in court to have intentionally withheld evidence, committed perjury under oath pertaining to that evidence, and to have even manufactured evidence in an attempt to convict an innocent man when the only crimes committed in the case were by government agents. In the Randy Weaver case, in particular, they were fined by the judge presiding over their prosecution. Later, the government lost $3.1 million in a settlement to the Weaver family for the wrongful death of the mother and son.

Even though a Congressional investigation concluded that the government had been at fault, and had committed crimes, nothing was done to punish those responsible for the crimes.

But they didn't really determine that any crimes had been committed, did they?

Well, with the trouble that politicians have in just saying something without covering their political asses from those who might have a different opinion, you tell me. Their finding was that a small fourteen year old boy had been shot in the back by federal agents who had not identified themselves and had no legal right to be on the property at the time. Their finding was that the FBI sniper who shot and wounded Randy Weaver had violated FBI policy. That same sniper shot at a running target and ended up killing an unarmed woman with a baby in her arms and wounding another man with the bullet after it passed through her. They ruled that this second shot was clearly Unconstitutional, and violated the rights of the individuals who had been killed or injured.

The wording is fairly strong for a politician, and would seem to indicate that they agreed that crimes had been committed, correct?

The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Any act which violates the constitution is illegal. Killing someone in an illegal shooting is murder. All of these are basic legal definitions which can be proven in court by any second year law student. The fact that the government has refused to even prosecute the agent, to allow a jury to determine his guilt or innocence as proscribed by law, or to determine if he is guilty of a lesser charge, only indicates that the government or several of its agencies seem to consider themselves capable of determining when and where the law will be applied.

The people are losing faith in the government because equal protection under the law is one of the cornerstones of our form of government. Any government which refuses to abide by its own basic tenets is generally not considered to be worthy of trust, especially in the areas considered to be less important than those that form the foundation of our society.

Why have things been getting so bad? Why are so many people losing faith in the government, and seem so unwilling to trust the government?

Because the government has repeatedly proven that it is not worthy of trust. Respect for the citizens has been eroded to the point that it no longer exists. Those who run the government believe that they are more important, and that the citizens are not important enough to be worthy of respect. Respect must be mutual for trust to remain. It has taken time, but that trust has diminished, and it is fading fast among many people. The lack of voter turnout for elections is an indicator of the extent that the people have lost faith in their government.

Recent events have shown the people that there is little chance that the politicians will even perform the essential duties required of them by the Constitution. The same governor of Arkansas who was protected during the Iran-Contra hearings is now the President of this country. We have a commander in chief of the military who was a draft dodger. A man with a history of committing crimes lied openly about another crime which he committed, and the Senate has found him not guilty. All of the press coverage was slanted to remove the emphasis of the trial from the most important facts. This was a smoke screen to allow politics as usual to continue.

Isn't the President entitled to a private life? Wasn't the invasion of his privacy and all of the investigation just an attempt to attack him politically?

Regardless of the politics, there were a few basic facts which were intentionally downplayed by the media and the Democratic party for their own reasons. President Clinton, even when given more leeway than any other American in history, intentionally lied under oath during grand jury testimony. He was not required to answer their questions, but he intentionally chose to answer, and he knew that the answer he gave was a lie. Perjury is a felony, which he committed on videotape. His testimony was also written, allowing his lies to be examined easily. Even the content of his own 'apologies' was sufficient to convict him of the charge.

OK, so another politician got off. What is the big deal, and why should it have so much effect on the people?

Put yourself in the place of the people. They know that the government can not be trusted, and that the government is not deserving of their respect. They know that the government will ignore the law and even the Constitution in order to achieve their desired goals. They know that at least 45% of their senators will follow party dictates even if it means letting someone off when there is enough evidence to make even a five year old child of average intelligence know that he is busted and is going to be punished.

Chapter 12

Now, the people are going to be subjected to the chaos and deprivations that are being predicted as a direct result of the failure of the government to take action to prevent the problem. The commander in chief of the armed forces, who will be in command when martial law is declared and the Constitution is suspended, is someone who will lie, commit adultery, commit perjury, and dodge the draft whenever it suits him.

Tell me that a sane, rational, sensible person would have to be mentally unbalanced to worry that there would be no logical reason to believe that there was a possibility that once martial law was declared, a person of this caliber would have no possible reason to attempt to retain the power and control indefinitely. Tell me that there is no reason why he would not behave exactly as he was supposed to when he has proven repeatedly that he will break the law whenever it suits him. Tell me that there is no reason for intelligent, rational people to worry about what is in store for them when their own government has intentionally made sure that whatever happens within the next year will happen, and that the citizens have not been properly prepared.

It's really paranoid to believe that the government is out to get you, isn't it?

Tell that to Randy Weaver, or to the thousands who have been subjected to Gestapo tactics at the hands of the BATF and have no way to get compensated even through the legal system that is supposed to protect their rights. It's only paranoid when the fear is irrational. When there is a rational reason for the fear, only an insane person would consider it paranoia.

This will make the most likely scenario more violent if something is not done to make the two sides willing to talk to and trust each other. But the probability of that happening in the time available is about zero. Those in power know that the public backlash will be directed at them personally, and that they will be forced to accept responsibility and be held accountable for the actions they have chosen to make. They will not consider this an acceptable solution.

So, what useful purpose would be served by making this information public?

It might make the public more likely to moderate their responses. They would be acting on rational information instead of on generalized fear and mistrust of the government. But the information could also have the effect of focusing their anger. It could end up causing some of the violence that I are trying to prevent.

That may be. If so, it will be the will of the people.

So I am saying that just because the people want to, they should be allowed to overthrow their government by force?

No, I am not the one saying that. The founding fathers of our country said that the reason for keeping the people armed was to insure that our system of government always remained faithful to its intended purpose. You must remember that our country was founded by people who desired freedom, who won it by rebellion, and who desired to retain that freedom for their progeny. They set up the safeguards in our Constitution to make sure that there would be no chance of losing that freedom.

You mean that they were a bunch of Rebels, and they made sure that they didn't lose that trait when they set up their government?

Some of their more famous quotes have been labeled as sedition against our current government until the source of the quote was proven in court.

'Any government that fears arms in the hands of its citizens, should.'

Thomas Jefferson.

'The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.'

Thomas Jefferson.

'And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.'

Thomas Jefferson.

'My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed I would have seen half the earth desolated; were there but an Adam and an Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than it is now.'

Thomas Jefferson.

He was always a rebel who believed in the rights of the individual. He also said, 'Our age will present two remarkable contrasts in history: the birth of political liberty, and the death of political morality.' I guess he figured that the farther the people were from self rule, the more the political parties would influence the course of the government. He also recommended exercise to supplement education and keep a healthy mind and strong body. The single exercise he proposed as most important was taking long walks with a gun. He said that sports with balls didn't promote or develop good character.

'For I consider all the ill as established, which may be established. I have a right to nothing, which another has the right to take away; and Congress will have a right to take away trials by jury in all civil cases. Let me add, that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.'

Thomas Jefferson.

Is that referring to the Bill of Rights, and why we really need one?

Yes. It wasn't include in the Constitution, and that was one of the most convincing arguments against adoption of the Constitution as it was written. The Federalists agreed that all individuals were intended to retain their rights, and agreed to the conditional acceptance of the Constitution pending the addition of a Bill of Rights by the first congress.

'When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe, and go to eating one another as they do there.'

Thomas Jefferson.

'The people have the right to alter or abolish their form of government, by force if necessary.'

I believe that Abraham Lincoln said that. I thought it ironic that he believed in the Constitutional right to change the government if the people wanted to make the change, and that he even believed that the people had the right to force the government to obey their wishes. But he was responsible for forcing a form of government that the citizens of thirteen states had rejected upon them simply because the current government retained the strength and population to win the war. Evidently, he didn't believe that the right existed unless it was representative of a majority of the entire population of the country.

That is a pretty cynical view, but it fits the facts. Even though the Confederacy was forced to remain in the Union, they allowed West Virginia to secede from the state of Virginia during the war and become an independent state simply because they supported the Union. This occurred in 1863, in direct violation of the portion of the Constitution that prohibits any new states from being admitted into the Union by joining two or more states or by dividing a current state.

So, it seems like we keep coming back to the same thing. If things get bad, and they probably will, there will be violence. If the government reacts as they have become accustomed to doing recently, which is almost certain, the violence will be worse, and will probably result in a civil war or a rebellion against the government.

The outcome would depend upon too many factors to predict accurately, but the general prediction would be that there would be a lot of chaos, violence, and loss of life. If the dissident groups sieze their chance, which they are almost certain to do, the government will be forced to react to defend itself. Many of these extremist groups do hate the government, and they do provoke violent confrontations to achieve their goals.

The real problem will be in how the government responds. Although they are a vocal minority, the extremist groups are easy to spot. But the government is likely to also take action against the much larger group of people who are simply voicing their displeasure with the government and listing legitimate grievances which they have been trying to get the government to address properly for decades. They have a right to expect their representatives to look out for their interests, and not to vote according to which political action committee is giving them the biggest bribe for their campaign funds. They have a right to be upset that the people they pay several times the income of the average family, and provide with a house and expenses, think that they are entitled to be bribed in order to perform their job.

You can't really consider the political contributions to be bribes, can you?

Our founding fathers did. They wanted the job to pay enough, but not so much that someone would want to hold the job throughout his lifetime just for the pay and benefits. They wanted the best and most qualified people to come, serve, and return to their private life. They believed that you couldn't do your job and represent your constituents over a long period of time because after a few years, you would no longer be as aware of your constituents wishes and needs.

But technology has changed all of that. They can hear from everybody, and still never leave their offices, can't they?

They can hear from a certain group of people. Those with access to the technology to contact them who wish to waste their time trying to do so.

What do you mean 'waste their time'? Is it wasting their time to tell their congressman what their concerns are?

It is when the congressman doesn't even see the messages. His staff of lifetime politicians and assistants, who know the ins and outs of the local political scene, screen his calls and correspondence. They summarize the messages into statistical data, and give him the message that a certain percentage of his constituency is behind him on any particular issue. They filter the information according to their own biases, and can even weight the data by saying that the 100 calls opposing a vote all came from an area that only represents 10% of his voters, while the 50 calls supporting the same vote came from areas representing 90% of his voters. The statistical breakdown could then legitimately say that 90% of his voters want him to vote in favor of a particular topic when the real data says that 67% of his voters oppose the vote.

But congress isn't all bad. They aren't all interested in staying in office forever, no matter what the cost, are they?

Then why has congress made sure that although bills calling for term limits are introduced regularly in order to pacify the people calling for a change, they are never brought out of committee and voted on? The people in power know that if it is called to a vote, they will either have to vote to give up their power and lose their office, or they will be voted out of office during the next election by voters who are mad that they were lied to again. The old saying is that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. New members of congress are never allowed to chair powerful subcommittees, and those committees decide much of what is allowed to go to the floor for a vote by the entire House or Senate.

Many senators know that there is no way for them to lose office between elections unless they are impeached by their fellow senators. Even if 100% of their constituents want to remove them from office, it is almost impossible to do legally. That means that except for elections, which hamper them somewhat, they are immune from any action taken by their constituents. If that is not almost absolute power, I don't know what is. Even in the Federalist Papers, the supporters of our current form of government warned that getting a political elite, who ran the government for the duration of their lifetime, would quickly lead to corruption. Their opponents, who believed that the form of government proposed asked for too much loss of liberty for the protections promised in return, were much more specific in their criticisms. They were also more adamant in reminding the people that they had just fought a war to remove one tyrant, and they didn't want to set up a form of government that would require their children or grandchildren to do the same.

But the government didn't do that. It has been generations since our government was established, hasn't it?

You are forgetting that a large percentage of the population did fight a war because they thought the government was neglecting their views and not representing them. That occurred about four or five generations after the government was founded, and it was not founded according to the plan put forth by the Federalists. It was modified by those who had more democratic ideals, and was greatly modified by one tiny addition, which was required by many of the states that ratified the Constitution.

What am I talking about?

Many of the states made their ratification contingent upon the inclusion of a Bill of Rights, which was already in the constitution of almost every state. But the Federalists agreed, even in their Federalist Papers, that the people were entitled to the rights, and that they didn't need to be enumerated by Congress, didn't they?

But their enumeration, in writing, was exactly what kept the Civil War from happening before it did. The Federalists knew that once the rights were spelled out in writing, the citizens would have more power over the government because the government would be more constrained by maintaining certain specific rights than by rights which were not spelled out. The southern states almost didn't join the Union because of the debate over slavery. By the time the Civil War occurred, even the southern states knew that slavery would be abolished within twenty or thirty years because it was becoming economically unfeasible.

Then why did they fight the Civil War over the slavery issue?

They didn't. By the 1860's the federal government was becoming a bureaucracy, and the political parties were becoming powerful enough to affect the way the government was run. The Confederacy fought the war over the issue of states' rights. They were not happy with the government's increasing infringement into areas which had previously been the domain of the individual states. Slavery was the issue which was used as a litmus test because previous agreements had been worked out that it was the right of the state to decide whether or not slavery would be legal within its borders when it became a state.

So, if we have another war, we will be fighting and nobody will know the real reason for the war because it will probably not be the reason cited by the media.

It will not be for the reason cited by the media, because that would not sell their story and make money for them. It would also not fit their views. But the people who fought would know why. It would be because they had the right to tell the government what rights and privileges they agreed to give up to the government, and to tell the government what parts of their lives were private. In other words, they had the right to tell the government what the government could and could not do.

That sounds pretty inflexible. Don't you have to compromise to keep peace?

That particular viewpoint is the cornerstone of the Constitution. It says that the government has the rights which are given to it by the people. All other rights are retained by the states, or by the people. That is the tenth amendment. It says nothing about giving congress the right to pass laws which strip those rights from the states or from the people. The only exception is to pass an amendment, which requires the people to ratify it before it becomes law.

As far as inflexibility, any government that uses force to coerce the people into giving up their rights in direct violation of the laws which supposedly govern its operation is no longer a legitimate government. Once it is operating outside the law, it cannot be considered to be operating legally. Ben Franklin said, 'They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.' He believed that you had to maintain your rights to ensure that the government remained a servant of the people and not the other way around.

But that doesn't mean that he would support a rebellion to force the government to change more quickly just because the people were dissatisfied, does it?

Although he was a great diplomat and ambassador, Ben Franklin was one of the most influential of the rebels when it came to philosophy. He supported the revolution in this country, and also in France when they had their revolution. He maintained that we should always be active in our own government, to ensure that it truly represented the wishes of the people.

He was not the only patriot to state that the people had to use the necessary means to maintain their freedom. Patrick Henry was one of the staunchest defenders of personal liberties. He said, 'We are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature has placed in our power...The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.' I am sure that he believed that only through remaining active in our own government, and making sure that it did not stray from its obligations to the people, could we make sure that we remained free and did not have to fight to restore the proper order.

And what would he have said if it became necessary to fight in order to retain your liberty?

Patrick Henry is best remembered for one speech he made. His conclusion to that speech is often quoted in part. His last sentence is, 'I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.' I believe that means that he was perfectly willing to fight to retain his freedom, and was even willing to die in the process if necessary.

Remember one thing. Court documents have stated that our current government considers the private possession of certain documents in your home to be subversive materials which are spread by groups whose aim is the overthrow of the legitimate government of this country.

What's wrong with that? Aren't some materials are subversive, or evenly openly seditious?

Yes, some are. But the documents I am referring to are the Federalist Papers, which the Supreme Court uses to determine the thinking of our founding fathers on points of Constitutional law, the Constitution of the United States of America, and the Declaration of Independence. It seems that the government wants to make sure that the people are ignorant of whatever points they do not want contested at that particular time. The general attitude is that the government knows what is best for everyone, and if you need to know something, they will make sure that you are educated and informed.

What's wrong with that? You can't learn everything, can you?

In a free society, the individual has the right to educate himself on any subject of interest to better understand what is going on. Thomas Jefferson said, 'If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.' He also said, 'Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the the dawn of day.' Only by making informed decisions can individuals make sure that their own best interests and liberties are preserved. If you choose to trust the government for everything, remember it is the same government that has made sure that forty percent of high school graduates are functionally illiterate. They changed the educational system, and that is the result. They must accept responsibility for their actions, for many of the parents have fought to keep those changes from taking place for decades.

But why would they want to undereducate the people? Wouldn't it also affect their own children's educations?

The majority of politicians, even at the state and local levels, send their children to private or religious schools which have not been affected by the changes they have made to the public education system.

'What are some of the possible benefits or reasons for making sure that so many people are not educated to their full potential?

People who can not read, or who don't enjoy reading, only learn what they are told. That makes them more controllable. People who are uneducated can only expect to get low paying jobs or service industry jobs, making sure that they have no problem filling these positions with people who need the income. People who live from paycheck to paycheck do not have time for extra activities, making them less politically active. That makes them negligible in terms of politics. People who are struggling to survive do not rock the boat as long as you make sure that they are not too cold, too hungry, or too bored. This makes them easy to control or pacify with a minimum investment of resources.

I know that all of this sounds bad, but it is all basic population dynamics and applied psychology. Even people who don't have much don't want to risk losing what they have if you keep social conditions stable enough to prevent them from being pushed beyond the limits they will tolerate.

Chapter 13

Without more details about what changes will be made before the problems occur, it is impossible to be more specific about exactly what will occur. However, it is possible to get a generalized picture of what will probably occur unless steps are taken to prevent it. Most of the current action is really inaction. Although many companies are telling their customers that they are doing everything to correct the problem, they are not taking it seriously behind closed doors. If they find a problem that they consider critical, they are taking some steps to correct it, but they are not concerned with eliminating the root cause, and are taking whatever steps are cheapest as long as their experts tell them that it will correct everything with the exception of a few minor bugs which may have to be worked out in the system. They don't believe that there will be any major problem, and are gambling that they are right so they don't have to decrease their profits.

Does this present a real problem in terms of fixing the errors?

Yes. Many of those in charge do not understand the time delay in finding, fixing, and testing these "minor bugs" in the system. They ignore or have already forgotten the credit card problems which took six months to find and fix. The size of the company or utility won't affect the time involved in fixing the problem that much.

What do I mean? There is a lot of difference in the number of programs, their complexity, and the size of the programs used by a multinational corporation and a small private business, isn't there?

On the surface, that is true. But the problem is easily diagnosed. If your computer won't recognize new cards that have been activated because it says they are expired or out of date, the problem is in your date verification subroutines. You don't have to correct a million lines of code to rewrite those subroutines, and they are not hard to find in the program. Any programmer who tells you differently is either lying or doesn't know what he is doing with the program he is responsible for correcting. If the proper action had been taken when the problem was discovered, there would be no problem.

What should we really be ready to expect even if the companies are just using PR to calm the public down?

There will be power outages in some places. Probably in many or most regions in the country. Some will be a few hours, while others will last for days. In some regions, the outages will last for weeks or months. This will be critical if it happens in the areas that supply the desert regions with electricity to pump their water from deep underground reservoirs, or those that supply southern California with the water to irrigate its crops.

In the areas most affected, water and sanitation will also be affected. This will lead to increased outbreaks of disease, and some deaths from food and water shortages. The more widespread the problem, the more severe the outcome. The estimates are that, depending on the locations affected, it would only take ten to twenty percent of the U.S. to be subjected to systems failures before the ability of the government to handle the emergency responses would be overwhelmed. The resources just aren't there to cope with something of that magnitude.

There will be some human problems in any affected region as soon as the crash occurs. This will increase damages, and will greatly decrease the ability of the government to cope with the real emergency areas because it will take time to reestablish order and repair damages in areas that would have been only temporarily affected.

What human problems will we have to be ready to deal with?

Human problems covers the list of things that are directly attributable to human actions and have nothing to do with the systems failures directly. This includes increased criminal activity, rioting, arson, violence committed by various groups who target other groups of individuals, panic, and even suicides and violence by groups who believe that the "end of the millenium" is God's time of reckoning and the end of civilization as we know it.

There is the possibility that foreign governments may use the opportunity to strike while America is less able to respond effectively. Such actions may include terrorist attacks, chemical attacks, biological attacks, and even limited small scale nuclear attacks if they believe that the military systems are significantly affected. With the number of foreign nationals inside this country, some of whom are known to be spies or plants, this is almost certain to happen on some scale, but it would be difficult or impossible to prove that the countries responsible were actually involved in most small scale activities.

Before you totally dismiss the possibility of terrorists using nuclear warheads on American soil, remember that Saddam Hussein has nuclear capabilities, and does support terrorist groups who openly hate America. Also, Osama bin Ladin, the terrorist who financed and supported many attacks on American embassies overseas has been recently reported to have acquired at least three nuclear warheads from one of the former Soviet states. If you think that he can't detonate it, remember that terrorists are only interested in the fissionable material, not the delivery system. No group that has ever attempted to detonate a nuclear weapon has failed to get some sort of atomic explosion. Also, if the warhead contains plutonium instead of uranium, no explosion is necessary. Plutonium dust is highly toxic and highly radioactive, and can be easily spread by many methods available to any terrorist group.

There is the possibility that our own government, or some of its agents acting either on their own authority or on verbal commands, may overrespond during any crisis response and use any excuse to eliminate some of what they consider to be troublemakers who have twisted the law for their own protection. This is also almost certain to happen on some scale. It would not take much for this to cause those who think they may be targets to react and begin retaliations on federal and state agents and government workers that they know about and do not like. Many of these undesirables are better prepared to survive under emergency conditions, and have a better communication system worked out that does not rely on outside sources or power. Remember, the government designated them "survivalists" for a reason.

If there are any widespread systems failures in the power grid, or a cascade effect happens because emergency cutoffs fail, there is the possibility of damage to some of the power generation systems. If there are computer malfunctions in the power plant itself, more damage will occur. This won't be important if it doesn't significantly prolong the loss of power, unless the plant is nuclear. Glitches causing systems failures or improper sensor readings may require the entire plant to be completely shut down manually until all systems and sensor relays are checked and verified manually. Failure to do so could result in an accident ranging from an emergency core shutdown to a core meltdown.

What would the consequences be if a core meltdown occurred?

It would probably be worse than Chernobyl. Our nuclear plants are set up differently, and they contain more fissionable material. A meltdown would breach the nuclear containment and spew a radioactive cloud into the atmosphere. Prevailing winds would disperse the particles over an area the size of a large state. Cleanup and decontamination would be enormous undertakings, even if that was the only thing the government had to handle at the time.

The affected area, depending on the spread and concentration of radiation, would range from dangerous for humans to spend extended periods of time in to lethal to humans. Without cleanup, the land would be poisoned for centuries, and any animals or plants in the area would be mutated by the high background radiation levels. Crops grown in the contaminated soil would be unsafe for consumption. Cancer would become more prevalent in those who were exposed or who ate contaminated food or water.

The emergency responders who had to deal with the containment would probably all suffer from radiation poisoning, and many would accumulate lethal doses before the meltdown was contained. At Chernobyl, Russian soldiers ran up and threw dirt and concrete onto the exposed reactor core to eventually bury it and limit the spread of radiation. Many of them knew that they were taking lethal doses of radiation within minutes, but they kept working until they were unable to continue. Some of them were saved by bone marrow transplants, but it took months to years of hospitalization and intensive treatment before they recovered. The unlucky ones are all dead.

What about food and water?

Water will be available in any area that retains power as long as rioting, sabotage, or other human factors do not interfere with the plant operations. In other areas, emergency measures will be taken to make sure that the water treatment facilities remain in operation. There may be problems with water quality. It won't do much good to have water in the system if the residents must boil it themselves before they can drink it. Especially if most of the residents have no way to boil the water safely. There may also be instances where a computer malfunction in the treatment makes the water lethal. Some of the chemicals used in water treatment are toxic if the concentration is too high, and they are not continuously tested as long as the computer says that the readouts for the amount added are normal.

Food will be a problem in many areas. There will be some communications and computer failures, and these will affect transportation significantly. Some places won't be able to pump fuel from their storage tanks so that cars and trucks can refuel, and others will run out of fuel because deliveries are messed up. This will cause congestion and routing problems. Much of the food in this country is shipped frozen or refrigerated to retain freshness, and there will be problems maintaining normal temperatures and handling procedures. There will be increased loss of produce during shipping because of this and increased shipping times. The normal result is higher prices and rationing, both of which will contribute to the anxiety of the consumers who live in those areas. This is especially true in areas that have problems with the banks and their normal cash flow systems.

If the telephones are usable, it could cause even more problems. Those who know that their loved ones live in an area without power, water, and heat, will be really worried and trying to do what they can to help them. People will be trying to leave affected areas to find an area where things are normal. This will strain the resources of the areas where they have a sudden, unexpected influx of people. Other people will be trying to travel to the most affected areas. Some will be trying to bring in needed supplies, while others will be trying to make a profit by selling necessary items at black market prices. Others will be going there to steal what they can from those who have abandoned their homes. Human nature is predictable if you just learn from the past.

Power failures will be more destructive in the north because loss of heat in January is more critical in colder climates. Secondary effects will be hypothermia, freezing pipes in homes and businesses, and loss of water treatment in prolonged outages. They will also be critical in desert areas that depend on power to pump water from deep underground reservoirs or to pump it from distant sources. The effect of power losses will be most significant in the cities. The larger the population center, the more damage will occur due to primary loss of light and heat, secondary effects, and panic within the population. More people means more chance of panic, rioting, looting, and other problems associated with stress and the inability of a small percentage to either deal with the situation constructively or follow the laws of this society.

Loss of water will be most significant in areas of desert or those areas without sufficient surface water sources to allow the population to survive on what can be gathered and purified. Water rationing will affect the survival of the individuals within about a week to ten days in cold weather. Total lack of water will affect survival within two to three days for healthy individuals. Drinking polluted or contaminated water would probably be worse for most people than not drinking anything. Diarrhea and vomiting from infections caused by drinking contaminated water can dehydrate your body in hours instead of days. Without sufficient fluids to rehydrate you, and medicine to control the infection, you will die. While it only takes about a gallon of water a day to keep you healthy, it can take much more water than that just to replace the fluids lost in a few hours by someone with dysentery.

Loss of communication won't significantly affect most people immediately, but it can tie up resources that would normally be routed to relieve the shortages in the affected areas and fix the problem. It would be like an army supply foul-up where you got shipped cold weather survival gear in the summer instead of the mosquito netting and water that you required. Communications will be required to allow those in charge to determine where the problems are worst, what the specific problem requires, what the people in each location need the most, and what they have available at each emergency response location.

Medical care will be a primary concern, and will increase in importance as the severity or length of the shortages increase. Hospitals will run out of the drugs and medical supplies if they can't receive shipments to replace their stocks. Even the warehouses within the cities may not be useful because they will be shut down and will remain high priority targets for those who want to steal drugs. In a power outage, their security systems will be less effective. Also, the supplies that the hospital has on hand may not last as long as they usually would. If there is an outbreak of dysentery, food poisoning, or influenza, the problem may soon reach epidemic proportions. If that happens, the hospital will run out of the necessary drugs in record time.

Just to give you an example, if there was an outbreak of influenza in New York City that was unable to be contained and treated effectively before it reached epidemic proportions, it would take a large percentage of all of the available antibiotics in the country to treat those who were infected and prevent massive loss of life from secondary infections such as pneumonia. If those supplies did not reach New York in time, the death toll could be staggering. Remember that the influenza outbreak in 1918 killed millions of people around the world.

Although many modern doctors say that they could prevent such a recurrence with modern medicine, they are mistaken. Many of the victims who died were healthy in the morning and had died within 12 hours after becoming sick. If such a virulent strain was around and had time to spread before it was discovered today, even modern medical treatment would be unable to save many of the victims. There are not enough beds, not enough supplies, and not enough health care providers to adequately treat that many people aggressively enough to keep them alive. Many of the modern drugs and therapies would not work quickly enough to prevent the inevitable, meaning that the disease would run its course and nature would once again select for the survival of the fittest.

The more extensive the problems with financial institutions, the more problems there will be with cash flow even in areas unaffected by power failures. Without money or credit, you can not buy the things you need to survive even if they are available and the stores are open for business as usual.

The larger the affected area, the more complicated it is to organize relief efforts and make sure that the needs of everyone are met. The first response is to send supplies to the major population centers, but even there it is difficult to make sure that people are not overlooked. Distance becomes the problem when trying to make sure that the people in less densely populated areas receive the things they need to survive. It takes more time and resources per person helped to distribute the supplies even when you use centralized distribution centers for disaster relief.

In order to understand the complexity, here are some of the general guidelines. Remember that you will have less time for some things to be fixed and more time for others to be fixed depending on location, weather, and the exact local situation. Also, remember that if twenty percent or more of the country is affected for any length of time, the government will be generally overwhelmed by the scope of the problem and will be unable to respond effectively in many cases for an extended period of time.

If 80% or more of the country is affected for more than three days, there will be problems with food, water, and heat in most areas. If the problem lasts more than two weeks, people will die of dehydration, disease, and other causes. Many medical problems will be aggravated by the lack of medical care and the decreased availability of many prescription drugs.

If 50% of the country is affected, it will probably take about seven days for problems with food and water to become noticable. It may also take up to three weeks before disease and lack of water become major problems, depending on the ability of unaffected areas to send in relief supplies.

If 10% of the country is affected, it will depend on the location as to how severe the problem is. In densely populated areas, the lack of water will cause problems within three days, and relief efforts could be complicated by urban violence. In sparsely populated areas, the amount of relief would be dramatically decreased, and concentrated efforts by the government could conceivably limit the damage to almost negligible levels.

What is the most likely result?

Probably thirty to fifty percent of the country will be affected by one or more major systems failures for more than two weeks. Electrical failures will only mask the financial failures for a week or more in most other areas. When the population realizes that they still have their debts, but their cash and savings are tied up in a bank where they can't get it out to use for their needs, they will get pissed. It will only get worse if their credit cards are not usable, and they can't cash checks because the computer system for verifying available funds is working too slowly, if at all.

Heating will become a problem in most affected areas within days, as will cooking the food that they do have available. Water will be a problem within two days of the failure of the water treatment facility in each location. Most hospitals will want to cut back on services, but will probably be filled beyond capacity. Their generators aren't designed and maintained for prolonged constant use, and getting the fuel to keep them running will become a problem. Their operation will also be severely affected by any water shortage. Hospitals use enormous amounts of water for washing, bathing, laundry, sterilization, consumption, and treatment.

Food will become a problem when local supplies run out. Barring outside deliveries to stores, and allowing that some food will be distributed or sold from the stores to help out in the emergency, most people will begin to run out of food in about seven days. After another seven days, they will really be out of food, and starting to get hungry. The poor will have less time than those with money, but those who are used to eating regularly think that they are starving if they miss one or two meals. They are also less inclined to use every last bit of food before claiming that they are starving because they have nothing to eat. Of course, with no safe way to cook much of their food, they may have some food left that is just not usable.

With no power, frozen food will begin to thaw. If it is cold enough outside, you could store some of it in a cooler to make it last longer. Generally, food in a freezer will keep for three days, but you lose time with each time you open the freezer, especially if you don't get in and out quickly. Refrigerated food has about the same life expectancy. Some food that is normally refrigerated will keep for weeks at room temperature. Butter, hard cheese, condiments, and pickles are good examples. Carrots and cabbage will store in a cool, dry room for weeks, although they will start to lose some of their appeal as they dry out some. Carrots get soft and spongy over time.

The problem will probably be more severe than either the government or the private sector want to admit. They are worried about liability if they admit that they know how bad things can get, especially since they have had years to prepare and have chosen to largely ignore the problem and hope it goes away or doesn't really happen. They have not only failed to educate the public, but they have actively discouraged any real attempts to educate the public in how to prepare for or survive disasters on their own. All of the materials available for natural or other disasters suggest that you have a few supplies to help keep you comfortable until everything is back to normal in a few days. Anyone who wants to stock up and prepare for extended periods of survival on their own is ridiculed as a survival nut or some kind or paranoid who insists on worrying about things that could never happen.

Chapter 14

What steps can you take to prepare for Y2K or other emergency situations if you don't want to spend much money or take up too much storage space?

Water is one of your primary concerns. Fill empty two liter bottles or gallon milk jugs with tap water and add about two drops of chlorine bleach for each liter or quart of water. Screw the cap on tightly, and store in a closet or somewhere out of the way. The water should keep for about six months without going stale. If it tastes stale, pour it into a clean pan and then pour it back and forth between that pan and another clean pan for a few minutes to aerate it again and make it taste better. The water is cheap, and the bottles are readily available by simply rinsing out and using your old soda bottles after you drink the contents.

Food can be stocked by buying slightly more than you use and storing the excess. This limits you to canned and dried foods, but you only buy things you already eat. You will need water to rehydrate and cook dried beans, pasta, and other things in addition to what you need to drink. Stock up on whatever spices you like, since they will make your food taste better. You will also need to provide some method of preparing food. Cans can be opened with a manual can opener, and canned fruits, vegetables, and meat can be eaten without cooking in a survival situation. However, a small hibachi or barbecue grill can be used to heat up food if you have it outside or in a ventilated area. A grill can use dried wood or charcoal to make the fire. Camping cookstoves and fuel can also be stored to provide for cooking if you have the resources.

Heat can be provided by an emergency source such as a kerosene heater, but you are limited by the fuel availability. A fireplace can be used to heat and cook if you have it maintained and store the wood. You can get survival blankets for under $10 each, and they will keep you warm and dry. You can put a mattress on the floor and arrange the furniture with a few blankets to make an emergency tent inside a house with no heat. Just one or a few people huddled in your "tent" will generate enough heat to keep you from freezing to death. Sleeping bags rated to about ten degrees fahrenheit are also readily available for less than $40.

Matches, butane lighters, and various forms of firestarters are readily available at low cost, so starting a fire should not be a problem regardless of how poor you are. I have seen people who claimed that they were so poor that they didn't have enough money to eat pull out a pack of cigarettes and light up. It is not that hard to find something to start a fire with.

If you are serious about having light in an emergency, buy a stock of candles, some oil lamps and oil, or a small generator flashlight. You could buy a solar battery charger if you had the money. Otherwise, flashlights that require batteries are a short term solution to lighting problems.

Stock up on first aid supplies. Go to a discount store or a dollar store and buy band-aids, tape, aspirin, cold medicine, anti-diarrhea medicine, cough drops, peroxide, alcohol, baby wipes, and medicine for upset stomach. Buy any other medicine that you use regularly, and try to stock up on your prescription drugs so that you don't run out if something happens that keeps you from getting a refill for at least a week or two longer than normal.

Make sure that you have a radio to receive emergency reports and news. You can also improve your morale by listening to music to relieve boredom. Some radios eat batteries, so you want to make sure you have plenty, or that you get a radio that doesn't take so much juice to run. Using earphones can increase your battery life on some radios. There are also radios available which operate on their own internal generator. Crank the handle for a few minutes, and they run for thirty minutes. These radios cost a little more, but they require no batteries. If you have to use it for a week, the cost of the batteries will offset the difference in the cost of the radios.

Make sure that you have some fire extinguishers around if you are using open flames for heating or lighting. You don't want to burn your house down around you just by trying to keep yourself warm and fed. Be paranoid about fire safety in an emergency. It's better to check everything three or four times to make sure that there is no danger than it is to catch your house on fire.

Get some books or games that don't need electricity. Boredom is a primary cause of cabin fever, and distractions such as reading or playing some board or card games can be educational and entertaining.

You can play darts if you have a dart board. You can even teach someone to shoot in the privacy of your own home. If you set up a board for a backdrop, you can use a dart board as a target for a blowgun. Or you can set up a box filled with old newspapers and use it as a backdrop for paper targets and use an air rifle or BB gun to shoot BBs at the target for fun or competition. The BBs are reusable, and there is almost no noise or mess to clean up.

You need to plan for what you are likely to face in your area. Hurricanes can cause you to lose power for extended periods of time, but they usually give some warning. Tornadoes don't affect as large an area, but they strike without any warning. Blizzards occur in winter. If you think that you may have no power during a blizzard, you do what you can to make sure you have supplies for a week or two.

What are some of the things that many people tend to overlook or forget when they are preparing for an emergency, and what can they do to prevent that?

If you don't have electricity, your Mr. Coffee doesn't work, and the coffee pot that it uses can explode if you use it on a stove burner. If you absolutely have to have coffee, you need to make sure that you have a percolator that can be used on a fire unless you want to use instant coffee. If you don't have a percolator, a teapot can be used to heat water efficiently. Many kinds of tea actually contain more caffeine than coffee.

People with children tend to forget that the microwave and refrigerator both go out at the same time. They will need powdered or canned formula, or powdered milk for their babies. Also, they will have to heat up the formula in a pan or have a glass bottle so they can heat it in a pan of water if their child needs warm formula. Milk won't keep without refrigeration, and few people breastfeed any more.

Many people either don't have, or don't remember where they put their manual can opener, and their electric one won't work in many emergency situations. You can open cans without a can opener, but it can become dangerous. It is also dangerous to heat an unopened can on a fire or in boiling water. If it explodes, it can send shrapnel for several feet at least.

Once you have something heated up, you can still use your thermos to keep it warm for an extended period of time. It's just as easy to make a pot of coffee as it is to make a cup, and the rest can be stored in a thermos so you don't have to keep a fire going all of the time to keep it warm.

If your diet is changed, you can maintain nutrition by taking vitamins. Most people who have them forget to take them when their normal routine is changed. Also, most people forget that when they are operating in a cold environment, or when their heat in the house is reduced, and they are working more than normal, they can burn two to three times their normal number of calories, so they will have to eat more to maintain weight. Your brain requires a minimum of 600 calories a day from glucose to operate normally and prevent brain damage. You don't have to eat that much sugar, but you do have to eat enough for your body to produce that much glucose for your brain.

Many people forget that they should drink a lot of water each day to remain healthy. They need to plan on each person drinking two two-liter bottles of water each day, and plan any water storage program around that amount per day for the number of days they want to prepare for. They also usually forget to plan for the normal food, water, and other needs for their pets.

Many people think that buying a handgun or a shotgun and a box of shells is a magic cure for the problem of burglars or rioters. If they get out the gun and show everyone that they are armed, everyone will be afraid and just go away and leave them alone. Not only is it dangerous to own a gun without having the training to store and use it safely, it is often only going to make a situation worse if you show people your gun or threaten to shoot them when you are not ready to do whatever it takes to survive the situation.

Those few instances provide the statistics that the people who want to ban all guns use to show how guns can be used against the owner, often resulting in injury or death to the owner or a family member. There are no statistics for the number of times that a gun owner used his gun to frighten off a burglar, rapist, or murderer without firing a shot, but the best estimates are that it happens at least 1000 times more often than the burglar disarming the owner and using his own gun on him. Also, the statistics do not discriminate between someone finding the gun and using it on the owner and someone taking the gun away from the owner and using it on him.

Taking the time to prepare and train is the most important factor I can emphasize. It doesn't do you much good to have the best gear and all the state of the art equipment that you could ever need in any emergency situation if you don't know how to use it properly. Someone cooking on an open fire in a pit is going to survive if they know how to do it. You won't survive if you manage to set up your portable propane stove so that it explodes while you are sitting there cooking with it.

Learn what you may need to be able to do, then take the time to make sure that you can do it if the need arises. You are the only one who can decide what you are willing to do, and an "expert" can only help by making suggestions based on what you tell him you want and what you have to spend.

Why so much stress on the importance of what the individual is willing to do? How important is it really, compared to what they have been able to prepare for?

All the preparations and training in the world are not enough to make sure that you survive a disaster or emergency. They increase the likelihood that you will survive if you respond appropriately. People panic, and forget all of their training sometimes. This can even happen to professionals. Accidents happen. Things you can't train for or prepare for happen unexpectedly. All you can do is prepare for what you believe is reasonably possible.

Even with all the preparations, training, resources, and everything that money can buy, in the event of civil disorder, there are people who are going to die simply because they decided not to kill someone who was threatening to kill them and their family. Many people have been conditioned by our society to the point that they are physically incapable of killing someone else, even in self defense. Many others are able to kill, but only when pushed to the point that there is no other choice. In a survival situation, this is too late. If you won't kill someone who is overtly threatening you and planning to kill you until he is already shooting, you or someone with you may already be dead before you fire your first shot in self defense. If that happens, all of your preparations and training have been for nothing. If it doesn't, then preparing for the emergency will probably allow you to survive.

This may seem extreme, but you have to remember that the government has been educating the people that they have the right to get some things regardless of their own actions. They believe that they have the right to be given things without regard for the rights of the owner. "You got this, I want it, so you have to give it to me or share it with me because it ain't right for you to keep everything for yourself when I need it." What they ignore is the fact that they believe that they do have the right to keep everything they have, even if someone else needs it more. They believe that they are always "me" and everybody else is always "you". This thinking is typical of a spoiled three year old, not a responsible adult. And that is the key clue. They do not accept responsibility for their own actions, so they are not responsible adults.

If you do not take social and personal interactions into account when preparing, you will not be making preparations for anything except the physical dangers. You can prepare to put out the fires on your block, and be perfectly safe to respond to fires on most occasions. However, if you try to put out the fires started by a mob during a riot or some book burning, you had better take snipers and be prepared for the possibility of being in the middle of a shooting war if you want to survive.

If there is a major disaster, and the government is unable to respond quickly to your particular location, you will have different dangers than the next city where they have 5000 military troops patrolling and handing out relief kits. If your streets are filled with angry, armed, hungry mobs who "know" that you have food, you will probably be on your own. You can fight, and possibly die if they overrun your position, they shoot you, or you run out of ammo before they run out of fight. You can run, and possibly die if they catch you. Or you can try to convince them either that the food is yours and they should have got their own food when they could, or that you don't have any food. Either of the choices that involve you convincing a mob that they are wrong only works in the movies. You will die or will be beaten almost to death if you allow that choice to happen. If they find food, they are almost certain to kill you. If they don't, they may torture you to make you tell them where you hid all the food you have that you wouldn't share with them, even if you really don't have any food.

If there is a mob, you are in a survival situation. Mobs do not listen to reason. If any of them were thinking rationally, they would not be a mob. You can run from it or you can kill it. Killing a mob means injuring or killing enough of the individuals that the ones who are left realize that they are in danger and should get the hell away from here. Once this happens, they are beginning to think again, and they are no longer a mob. The problem with trying to kill a mob is that once they can think again, the members will rationalize their actions and blame you for the deaths and injuries suffered by their friends and family members. They will then attempt to get even for the terrible things that you have done to them. They may try to use the law and courts against you, they may try to murder you, or they may do both at the same time.

The bottom line is that in a true survival situation, those who survive in a city will have to maintain a very low profile to avoid detection by those who are willing to kill to steal what they want or need to survive. If you are alone or in a small group, you probably have too much stuff to transport easily, but not enough strength and firepower to make sure that nobody tries to take your property away from you.

This is not much of a problem in normal times because disasters are limited in scope and duration, and the unaffected area has much more resources and manpower than is required to provide quick and efficient disaster relief. However, if the disaster is widespread, and the problem takes a long time to correct, human nature will surface, and there will be violence. How you prepare to deal with that violence will determine whether or not you have a high probability of survival even if you have adequately prepared for every other eventuality.

There are people who believe that guys are big, bad, tough, macho men, and they can handle anything as long as they act tough. They even believe that no woman can ever learn how to handle a gun as good as any man can, and that they have the right and even the responsibility to disarm any female they find with a gun to show that they are right and to protect her from her genetic ignorance. They are a part of the problem. I can only hope that they learn the difference between arrogance and ignorance without having to find out why so many snipers in the Russian army of World War II and the Israeli army of today are women.

The bottom line is that there will be problems associated with Y2K, and anyone who is willing to prepare for them can make sure that he has the resources to survive even if the government collapses, which is not likely to happen. The problems that are more difficult to predict accurately are all associated with the response to the problems that occur. If people go crazy and panic in a bid for survival after ignoring all the warnings and refusing to prepare on their own, there may be widespread death and disease. A civil war could even occur, changing the structure of our entire civilization.

If everyone takes the remaining time and makes the necessary preparations, they will survive until the country is back on its feet and our technology has been restored. Then they will be able, if they choose, to hold the government and those responsible for utilities and industry responsible for their deliberate refusal to solve the problem before it caused so much damage and inconvenience. Then they will determine what to do if those responsible are not held accountable by the courts and the government.

Chapter 15

The following are recommendations for emergency situation supplies. All of these supplies should be considered if you want to adequately prepare for the possible problems which you could encounter during the Y2K crisis. The amount of supplies for each category will depend on how many people you are trying to take care of and how long you are planning to make sure that you have supplies for. Many people figure that they may require at least enough food for one year so they have time to plant and harvest crops if the problems last more than a few weeks or months. How much you are willing to prepare for depends on your own beliefs and finances.

Just remember one thing when you decide how seriously you intend to take your planning. If you have more than you need, you will survive in comfort and with ease in the event that things are more serious than the government and media are willing to tell you. If you have less than you need, you will have difficulty surviving and you will have even more difficulty obtaining the supplies you need when they are in low supply and high demand. In fact, you may not survive if you do not have the necessary supplies when the emergency situation arises.

You are a responsible adult. You are responsible for your own actions, and for keeping yourself and your loved ones alive. If you place all your trust in the government, remember that the courts have already ruled that the cops, and by extension, the local governments, have no responsibility for the safety of the individual, but only to protect, defend, and serve the community as a whole. If you think that the federal government is going to be more concerned with your personal welfare than your local government is, you have my sincere wishes for lots of luck because you are going to need it.

Remember one other thing. Those of us who are preparing to survive on our own have already paid our taxes to support the government. We're spending our own time and money to get prepared and stock the supplies we consider necessary for our survival. Regardless of the situation, any attempt to force those with stored food or other supplies to share it is attemped armed robbery or some other felony. If the police aren't doing their jobs at the time, you will probably be seriously injured or killed in the attempt. If you put all of your faith in the government, cry to them and get them to give you what you need from the resources they have. If they don't listen, you are on your own unless someone is willing to share what they have. If not, maybe you will survive and learn not to demean those with the foresight to prepare for emergencies before they occur.

Light

Battery operated flashlights / batteries

Rechargeable batteries with a solar charger are recommended for long term situations

Generator flashlight no batteries required

Spare flashlight bulbs (if it burns out, your light is useless otherwise)

Oil lamps / fuel (Kerosene or Coleman lamps may substitute, but usually cost more to buy and operate)

Candles / candleholders

Matches / lighters

Water

Enough water stored for one gallon per day per person.

Extra water, including rain water, can be collected and used for flushing toilets.

Extra drinking water should be included to care for pets.

Extra water for bathing can be included, but you can use wet wipes or take sponge baths to conserve water.

Extra water should be included if you have a lot of dehydrated food to allow for rehydration before use.

Water Purification (for making unsafe water drinkable)

Water purification tablets, drops

Resublimated iodine crystals

Chlorine bleach

Coffee filters, pan for boiling

Water purification straw

Water filter (camping type that has filters for purifying water from streams, etc.)

Gravity powered water filtration cartridges

Food

Enough dried, canned, or other food that requires no refrigeration to supply five or six normal sized meals per day per person.

You must allow extra calories because you will need them if you are in a cold climate without adequate heat or doing more exertion than normal in order to survive and clean up from the disaster.

Amount of preparation (rehydration / cooking) depends on the type of food you choose, which is a matter of cost, availability, and personal taste.

Amount of food you stock depends on number of people and length of time you are willing and able to plan for in an emergency.

If you have children, you will need to pack extra powdered milk, canned milk, cheese powder, and peanut butter to allow for the needs of growing bodies. Extra crackers and jam or jelly will also come in handy.

If you have infants or toddlers, you should have a stock of infant formula (both dried powder and canned liquid) and some baby food. These will have to be checked, rotated out to keep fresh stock, and updated to keep up with the changing diet and dietary needs of your little one.

Clothing

Having clothing should be no problem if you are at home when the disaster or emergency occurs. However, you may have a problem with clean clothes appropriate for the situation if you have power outages for extended periods. You may want to make sure that each person has cold weather outfits, good boots, extra hats, extra gloves, and several extra pairs of warm socks.

If doing laundry becomes necessary, you can hand wash clothes in a large sink or tub with some liquid soap, or even just rinse them out with clean water until they are fairly clean. Then wring them out by hand and hang them up to dry. If it is winter, they can be still hung up outside and allowed to freeze. Once the ice is beaten off, they will be almost completely dry.

Diapers, diapers, diapers. You DON'T want to run out in an emergency.

First Aid

Bandages (Band-aids, gauze pads, gauze wrap, tape, blister pads)

Antibiotic ointment

Petroleum jelly

Lip balm

Sunscreen

Anti-diarrhea medicine (Loperamide)

Pepto Bismol

Antacid tablets

Cold medicine (cough drops, cough syrup, Nyquil, cold / flu tablets)

Recommend Fisherman's friend or other cough drop that won't melt when heated so they don't go bad in storage.

Vapo Rub (or mentolatum rub)

Sports creme or red pepper (capsicum) creme for muscle aches

Aspirin, Ibuprofen, Acetaminophen, Ketoprofen

Benadryl (or other allergy medicine)

Vitamins

Mercurochrome / Iodine

Alcohol / witch hazel

Alcohol pads / wet wipes / cotton balls

Q-tips

Ace bandages, athletic tape / wrap

Tweezers / forceps, scalpel, needles

Toiletries

Feminine napkins / tampons

Deodorant

Toothbrush / toothpaste (baking soda can be used)

Razor (can dry shave or use small amount of water or foam)

Baby wipes (lots for washing, cleaning cuts, sponge bathing)

Kleenex tissues

Toilet paper (you really do not want to run out in an emergency)

Other Gear

Sleeping bags / groundsheets

Tents / tarps / stakes / rope

Hand tools (hammer, nails, screwdriver, screws, saw, pliers, tape measure, chalk or pencil, wrenches, pliers)

Useful for minor repairs, turning off water if pipes broken, turning off gas, sealing broken windows.

Cooking / Heating

Gas stove if gas is still working. Can also use oven to heat house if you open the door while it is on. Remember that ventilation is extremely important.

Small charcoal grill can be used for cooking, but should be outdoors to prevent toxic fume buildup inside shelter. Remember to stock up on charcoal and lighter fluid if you plan to use a grill for emergency cooking over an extended period of time.

Kerosene heater can be used for heating, but requires extra ventilation.

Electric generator can be used to allow lights and furnace / stove to be used just like normal. Generator needs to be large enough to provide all the electricity you need without using unnecessary devices. You must have enough fuel stored to provide the electricity you need for the time period you are planning to have coverage.

Fireplace can be used for heating, light, and cooking, but you must make sure it is cleaned and maintained to retain safety during use. Remember to stock up on dried hardwood if you plan to use a fireplace for more than an occasional romantic fire, and remember that keeping a fire going means that you have to clean the ashes out around the burning logs. Hot coals will be a fire hazard, especially in carpeted rooms.

Firestarter (Magnesium, fire ribbon, fire starter blocks, fuel pellets, matches, lighter, flint and steel). Remember that a magnesium firestarter burns at 5400 degrees Fahrenheit. This is hot enough to cut through steel or start a fire on wet rubber tires. Be very careful where you start a fire and how much magnesium shavings you use.

Miscellaneous

Radio for listening to weather, emergency broadcasts, news.

Batteries for radio. Remember that many radios go through batteries quickly.

Generator radio (requires no batteries, can operate for thirty minutes or more without cranking up again, can be bought with small light so you can see while operating it indoors or at night, can add a solar charger to allow the sun to operate it without any cranking, can get ear buds to allow less energy requirements than speakers so it runs longer on a single charge and you don't make as much noise)

Good hunting knife

Good folding pocket knife

Tape, duct tape, reinforced tape, rope, and cord

Additional Considerations

For those who are expecting to have to provide their own protection against two legged or four legged predators, firearms are recommended, although a compound bow or crossbow may be sufficient. Also, a blowgun and darts provide a quiet, inexpensive method of eliminating small pests and can provide some entertainment value to yourself or older youngsters at the same time. A good air rifle will also kill mice, rats, and squirrels.

For those who want to be self-sufficient for both hunting and self-defense, the following items are recommended:

Bow / arrows (arrows are reusable and can be made from scratch)

Air rifle / pellets and BBs (good for pest removal)

22 caliber rifle / ammo

large caliber rifle / ammo

12 gauge shotgun / ammo

9 mm or larger caliber pistol / ammo

Caliber of rifle and pistol depends on personal preference and budget. Amount of ammo for each weapon, total number of weapons, depends on personal estimates of how much you will need and how much you can afford to plan for. Type of pistol (revolver or automatic) depends on personal preferance, availability, and budget.

Remember that a good quality, reliable rifle or pistol, even if it is of a smaller caliber than you really want to get, is better than breaking your budget for an inferior quality gun of the caliber you want. When you are planning for survival or self-sufficiency, it is more important to have a working tool that will do the job than a bigger tool that will break down before the job is completed.

Anyone who tells you that a .22 caliber rifle won't kill an adult male human does not know what he is talking about. Although .22 short and .25 auto ammo are underpowered and will often not harm an adult, .22 LR will travel for more than a mile, and can still kill someone at several hundred yards. This means that you want to be careful and not shoot indiscriminately just because you think that your dinky .22 rifle isn't a threat to anyone down range of your position.

Although a .380 auto is almost the same caliber as a 9 mm bullet, it has less powder, less mass, less penetration, and less stopping power. A handgun is a close range weapon, but the longer barrel of a 9 mm auto means that it is more accurate, and that is what counts. It does not matter how many shots you take, or what size gun you use if you do not hit your target. The person who hits something with two rounds out of his .22 target pistol has a chance of killing it, while the person who misses with all six rounds from his .50 cal magnum has no chance of killing his target.

Any handgun above a .380 in ballistics will do the job when it comes to self defense. This has been proven by police and military over the years. If you are worried about penetration and damage to the target, use hollow points. You don't want a handgun to penetrate armor. That is not its basic design. If you need to penetrate armor, use a bazooka, a guided missile, or a LAAWs rocket. A handgun is for close range defense, and in most modern applications, any penetration beyond what is required to penetrate a large, thick, bony skull is excessive. If it will stop a bull or a bear at close range, it works.

Learn how to care for, store, handle, and use your weapon properly. Learn how to shoot it accurately, because any tool only performs to the potential of the individual to use it properly. Make sure that you understand what you expect to be able to do with your weapon, and that it is the proper tool for the job you have in mind. You may shoot a mouse inside your house safely with an air rifle, but using a shotgun would not only make a mess of your house, but could even result in you living somewhere else when your house burns to the ground from the electrical or gas fire that you inadvertantly started.

If you are planning for an emergency or disaster, make sure that your survival supplies are good, and that you know how to use them. MREs will keep you alive, but you have to be able to eat them. They also tend to constipate people if they don't drink a LOT of water, so you might also need to add a laxative to your first aid kit if you know that MREs have that effect on you. You might be able to avoid this by using iodine to treat your drinking water, since it has the effect of making some people have a slight case of the runs.

If you normally take medicine, and it must be refrigerated, you can get chemical cold packs and a small cooler to keep your medicine cold in the event of even a prolonged power failure. You will need to stock enough cold packs to maintain refrigeration, and to make sure that you have enough medicine on hand to allow you to get through the emergency.

Planning ahead for special considerations before an emergency occurs will allow you to provide for the special needs or be ready to improvise a workable solution. Food allergies are one thing that need to be addressed before a disaster. It won't matter that you have enough MREs for a month if you are allergic to the contents because of one or two ingredients. The same applies to extreme allergies. If you can't keep a bee sting kit, you may still survive if you take enough Benadryl to prevent anaphylactic shock. It may not work, but if you know that you go anaphylactic when you get stung by a bee, you know that you are certain to be dead if you are two days from the nearest medical help, you get stung multiple times, and you don't have a good bee sting kit with you. In that situation, any chance is better than none at all.

Planning ahead will help you to remain calm because you know what to expect and what to do when it happens. If you remain calm and respond properly, you have a very good chance of surviving an emergency. If you panic, you have an increased probability of injury or death. Panic is the one thing that will eradicate all of the safety barriers and buffers provided by all of your planning and hard work to prepare for dealing with an emergency situation effectively.

Also remember that boredom will be a major concern. Kids want to play, and they won't like it if they can't go outside and there is no TV and no computer games inside. Plan activities to keep them, and yourself, occupied. Read books, play board games, play cards. Stock some 2-liter bottles of soda and chips so they can have some treats and snacks. You can also store some candy, chocolate, raisins, dried fruit, nuts, and other nutritious snacks to keep your little monsters from revolting. The only thing worse than being stuck in an emergency situation is being stuck there with a lot of unhappy kids who are bored stiff. That isn't survival. It's a preview of hell.