By John Galt
December 14, 2007
Amanda couldn’t handle it any longer. She was standing in the living room of the modest home in suburban Charlotte screaming at her husband Mike that he was not allowed to go into work under any circumstances. Mike, for what seemed like a daily occurrence calmly tried to reassure her and remind her that it was only a four day shift and that the problems would soon be passed as the FEMA and CDC officials assured the city officials of Matthews that the martial law imposition would be lifted as the Avian Flu outbreak takes about 8 weeks to run it’s course and once the deceased were cleaned up, both human and animal, it would be over. Mike hugged his wife, walked into the foyer, taped the plastic sheeting back up, changed into his city issued biosuit, then walked out the front door with the sound of the tape and more sheeting being placed back over it. Amanda could see his shadow around all the windows as he inspected the home and picking up the dead birds all around the house. The horror of what has happened hit her hard and she could never believe it would happen here. Unfortunately, her sanity was slipping as the non-stop warnings on television and radio to “not go outside” were pushing her to the edge. And Mike was very concerned every time his shift began.
When Mike arrived at Fire Station 4 in Matthews, the National Guard boys said “howdy” through their masks and Mike replied in kind. But there was something different in their attitude and he noticed the Bradley parked in front of the station for the first time. Mike walked in and had to ask, “Hey Cap, what’s up with the extra troops and armor?” The Captain, visiting from another station replied “Sit down Mike, I don’t know if you’re ready for this.” Mike took a seat and listened intently. “The orders came down due to the spreading of the bug, all people caught on the streets without proper permits, protection or being in an unassigned region will be shot on sight and the bodies burned immediately to prevent the spread” the Captain said with some trepidation in his voice. Mike, looking somewhat shaken as he peered at him through his mask then asked, “so why are we so armed here?” The Captain, winced and said “we’ve had runners attempting to attack us and get in the station the last two days; they think we have a vaccine for them.” As the Captain walked into the decontamination trailer, Mike followed. Once inside the fire station, they were safe. This was a new world Mike though, and he feared that the remaining month they had inside the “Ziploc Bag” as it has been called worldwide would be violent and desperate.
As Mike went upstairs to enjoy watching a rerun of a NFL game on the local network, his cell phone started to ring. He looked down and saw “Home” in the display so calmly he said “hi sweetie” but to his shock his son replied “Dad, you have to come home right away!” Mike started to get excited, “What’s wrong son, you sound worried?” His son, sixteen and normally level headed started screaming in the phone “Mom left, she went shopping!” Mike began to panic and asked “Was she masked and covered like I told here?” The son replied almost in tears, “NO, she just ran out of the house and hopped in her car with the spare key!” Mike stood their stunned, only able to get his composure and answer his son after a minute saying “reseal the house, I’ll be right home.” Mike then went over to the Captain’s office and knocked on the door. The Captain opened the door and had two Guard officers in there with him and said “Mike, we’re in an important meeting, can this wait?” Mike replied “My wife’s a runner, she’s lost her mind” and with that the Captain simply said “go, and take this” handing Mike a taser as he ran our the door. Mike put the full biosuit back on and hopped into his open Jeep Wrangler. He had a hunch where she was heading but not letting her back into the house was the moral struggle he faced. With that, he elected to head home and not gamble she went to the mall.
When Mike got home, he went through the tedious procedure of turning the sign to “HOME” on the door and following the DECON procedures before going inside. The son, now sixteen and daughter now ten were both waiting on Mike with the worried look that kids who know what trouble really is and the eyes in the daughter were welled up as she had been crying for hours. “Daddy, where did Mommy go?” was the first thing said by her, as Mike reached down to hug them both. “I don’t know Amy, she’s broken the rules, so I hope she’s ok.” With that statement, Mike looked in horror at the fireplace where Amanda’s suit and mask were still sitting. That horror which hit him caused him to hug his kids tighter and start crying himself. He put the kids down after a minute and asked his children to give him a minute alone and he walked down to the basement and grabbed his cell phone to dial the Captain. “Cap, it’s Mike. I need a favor.” The Captain, stunned said “what happened Mike?” He replied “my wife’s gone code red and I don’t know what to do.” The Captain only offered what seemed like an hour of silence and one minute later replied “Pray and pray hard Mike, but whatever you do, don’t let her back into the home, she could kill all of you.” Mike sunk to his knees, knowing full well the impact of what was just said. “Thank you Cap, give me a day to sort this out please.” And with that Mike hung up.
Amanda reached the Southpark Mall only to recoil in horror. There were huge fires emanating from the parking lots where what appeared to be body bags being tossed on top by men in strange uniforms. All around the car she noticed dead birds, but thought she was immune from the problem, after all, she had the vents closed on the air conditioner and there was no way she could get sick. Suddenly the horror of what she was witnessing hit home and she turned the car around in utter terror. Instead of driving the speed limit and obeying the traffic laws she floored it to get home, crying and shaking the entire way. Then, without warning, a man whose face was swollen up ran in front of her car, splattering everywhere as she hit him at over fifty miles per hour. She skidded and lost control but wound up hitting a stop sign and a tree, coming to a halt with the air bags deploying. An hour later, she woke up, realizing she had been unconscious, and stumbled to get out of the car. She know she couldn’t stay there as the incinerator teams would be by soon to vaporize any bodies out without permission nor cover in the coming darkness. Curfews had yet to be lifted and the delivery service did not run on Saturdays, or was it Fridays she thought. The confinement was driving her insane yet despite losing track of time, she knew what she had to do. She ran out of the car, bleeding a bit from the air bag deployment, but thankfully, awake and aware enough to make a break for safety. As she ran into the woods nearby, she sat down and caught her breath. “Oh no, I forgot my handbag” Amanda thought to herself and after a few minutes stood up to walk back to the car and get it. As she peered through the brush, she noticed the soldiers waking by the car. They had grabbed her handbag and started to sterilize. The body that was left slumped over her hood was incinerated by a man with a flamethrower, and then her car was burned in place. “Oh God, I’m lost and alone” she thought. Yet her troubles were just beginning.
As Amanda walked through the woods, a young child came upon her an hour after she started towards Matthews. The young boy whispered “follow me home” and away she went with him, needing food, water and most of all rest to recover from the accident. After two days with this wonderful family, she thanked them as they seemed healthy and when the weather was nicer started the final ten mile hike back to her home. She felt confident that life would be good and after getting treatment from her husband’s friends life would be back to normal as the flu or virus didn’t seem to affect her. Sadly, after three hours into the hike, she realized she was ill and started to vomit violently. And the sense of urgency to get home grew on her. “Mike had to have an antidote, he just had to. He’s a fireman after all!” was all she kept telling herself. She slumped down for a brief rest, ill as all can be, and figured it must have been the food. There’s no way she could have gotten ill from just the accident with the contaminated man she hit, after all, the vents were closed.
Mike was home against his Captain’s orders for the fourth day in a row. The worrying about his wife, the searches he used with their personal vehicle had used up almost all the gasoline he had left, and the last six masks were never to be used except to evacuate the family and for transit to and from work until he could get some more. As Mike woke up that day, the realization she was gone started to hit home and the kids were not dealing with this well. Mike thought he had prepared for everything, as he had three months worth of canned and dried foods, water for months and everything you could possibly need for this event. Yet Amanda’s fleeing kept him empty. He felt guilty for not doing more. Then suddenly a scream through a bullhorn in front of his house stirred him. “FREEZE, DO NOT MOVE” bellowed the horn from the armored car. This disfigured and disheveled figure fell to it’s knees about one hundred yards from his home. “God no” Mike thought to himself, “please don’t be Amanda.” As Mike hurried the children to the basement and locked them in, he ran for his biosuit desperate to go see if that was his beloved wife. As he ran for the DECON area in the garage, he heard the bullhorn again “LAST WARNING” and the sound of a loud hissing roaring noise, which left a nasty smell of gasoline in the air. As Mike finished putting his gear on, he ran outside, only to smell the smoldering remains and see the ball of fire going out at the end of his driveway. “Oh God, please don’t be Amanda.” And with that scream from behind his mask, Mike walked towards what was left. The horror of this new reality was tearing him apart. And he didn’t want to see that ring he gave her some twenty years ago lying there in the street.
Horrific enough for you?
Is this a long dissertation on the Avian Flu threat? I do not intend for it to be as it is not even close to my field of expertise. It does bring to mind the subject just a tad. My friend Steve Quayle addressed the issues of genetic modification in his book Genetic Armageddon and yet the warnings continue to fall on deaf ears. No one has ever addressed the subject of modifying the agriculture output of this world through DNA manipulation and the impacts on the animal or avian population to determine the long term effects on humanity, yet the same companies which create genetically modified diseases for bio warfare purposes are also the same ones which assure us that the crop modifications will not impact the various insects and animals which share our environment. Thus the Avian or Bird Flu appears to remain the most viable and visible pandemic threat that our corporate and government entities continue to prepare for. The preparations for the civilian population are lacking though, and the warnings have ceased. Or have you noticed that?
This scenario outlined above could just have easily been a nightmare scenario created from a biological warfare terrorist attack or “other” distribution program designed to cull the herd or expand controls on the civilians of this nation. The primary thing I was trying to get across is that there is more than just a physical mode of preparation which must be undertaken. The physical items, as Mike in the story above had, are easy to obtain, store and get in sufficient quantities to survive the eight weeks outlined above. To begin a program where you store those items it simply takes the will to do so. While food, water, energy, etc. are the obvious, the duct tape, sheeting, and other items are the government standard thus most average folks will have those and be ready for the three day minimum worst case scenario being hammered home on the television and radio. The problem is the “What If” scenarios they, the government and corporate America, practice for and we are not privy to. The “whatifs” are the ones that will kill you and your family and you had best start practicing for those also.
Does this mean you need to put plywood up, practice shooting squirrels or pigeons in your front yard while wearing a gas mask or dressing the family up in plastic sheeting or bio outfits to get them ready? Uh, no, not quite. The real preps are not physical, but if you can get your family to buy into them, that’s fantastic. It took me over a year to convince my spouse to agree to my stocking program, despite the groans, moans and protests, she “got it” about a year ago and figured out that I was not completely insane. Yet the most difficult prepping item is not something you can buy, not something for trade or barter and nothing you can hold in your hands:
Faith.
Am I making a call to prayer for all good men and women now? Sure, please, go right ahead as I heartily endorse the idea, but that’s not the kind of faith I’m referring to. Amanda in the story above may or may not have been incinerated in front of her home not because of Mike’s failure to run out there and rescue her. I’ll leave your imagination to determine her fate. Mike’s failure was the inability to psychologically get her to have the faith and trust in the program for any eventuality and to trust his actions and instruction. You, I or anyone can have the greatest cache of preps in the world, but if the one’s you love do not buy into any aspect of your planning the it’s all for naught. The most important aspect of prepping is to include the family in the process. You will find yourself eventually alone in this future as described above or worse, paralyzed by the inability to act due to your family no having FAITH in the plans you made without their input. It is not the time to make plans alone nor simply use the age old argument “she’ll come around when it hits” (Or “He’ll”) and trust that when the bad times or event happen you’re good to go. It’s time to incrementally introduce those that you love into the idea of preparing for several possible future events thanks to the future we face and the predicaments our nation has managed to get itself in.
For over a decade now, Steve Quayle and many others have been preaching to prepare for the future at hand. Steve’s approach has been a balanced one of getting ready for unforeseen events while at the same time using a religious or moral basis to keep the faith while preparing for trying times. Time and events do not move in a linear fashion, nor do they have a logical outcome despite the beliefs and proclamations that many have offered on what is next. I can not tell you that tomorrow our economy won’t collapse nor that it will be solid a year from now. But I can warn you that history is not on America’s side this time as our total disintegration on a moral, political and economic scale will eventually cause our society to implode on a scale unseen since Roman times. Thus my philosophy that praying for the best and preparing for the worst is why I write this. I hope for everyone who reads this decides to tell those that they love why they are preparing and why this is not the time to be weak for the hard times ahead.
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