Our University of Alabama patented solar desalination product uses no electricity, has no filters to replace, can be taken anywhere and extracts pure water from any contaminated water source. It removes radiation, fluoride, salt, pesticides, bacteria, dirt and other contaminants from any water. It aids people to be prepared for disasters.
Discovery of these things [the Flame ‘supervirus’] is good for generating interest and international publicity for anti-virus firms. Therefore they will compete more vigorously in the doing of it. Which is a kind of back-handed benefit because it will stand to more quickly spoil cyberwar and harassment campaigns launched by the military and intelligence agencies of the west.
There are a number of ways to see a boost in anti-virus ads. The first is pre-loaded.
If you went out to Kaspersky Labs to read their press release yesterday and didn’t clear your cache, history and cookies at the end of each session — I do — the Internet will serve you Kaspersky ads if they’re available and the opportunity on a site presents itself.
The second, anti-virus firm makes a logical ad buy for impact as interest peaks in the Flame virus story. And you’re served the ad as part of the new daily fare.
Kaspersky Lab announces the discovery of a highly sophisticated malicious program that is actively being used as a cyber weapon attacking entities in several countries. The complexity and functionality of the newly discovered malicious program exceed those of all other cyber menaces known to date.
The malware was discovered by Kaspersky Lab’s experts during an investigation prompted by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The malicious program, detected as Worm.Win32.Flame by Kaspersky Lab’s security products, is designed to carry out cyber espionage. It can steal valuable information, including but not limited to computer display contents, information about targeted systems, stored files, contact data and even audio conversations …
Although the features of Flame differ compared with those of previous notable cyber weapons such as Duqu and Stuxnet, the geography of attacks, use of specific software vulnerabilities, and the fact that only selected computers are being targeted all indicate that Flame belongs to the same category of super-cyberweapons.
Commenting on uncovering Flame, Eugene Kaspersky, CEO and co-founder of Kaspersky Lab, said: “The risk of cyber warfare has been one of the most serious topics in the field of information security for several years now.
A few additional notes:
1. It would appear you can hide your malware longer if it is designed to specifically attack only pariah nations like Iran and Sudan, the latter which has nothing worth stealing by cyber-espionage, anyway. But eventually, even though it takes awhile, the virus will always screw up or splatter and wind up somewhere else. Like Hungary. Oops. Sorry ’bout that.
2. Therefore countries like Iran are still very poor at cybersecurity. They may remain that way due to the nature of the regimes, leadership and really lousy social fit with networked computing, which is directly inimical to their interests and way of doing things. (Notorious braggarts: “The Iranian government said Tuesday it has produced an antivirus program capable of fighting what computer experts are calling ‘the most sophisticated cyber weapon yet unleashed’ …)
3. Flame was probably discovered because it eventually did spread onto non-target systems in Israel or elsewhere causing unspecified problems noted by the “International Telecommunication Union.”
4. Every virus worthy of a press release, discovered infecting the sensitive computers of western enemies, like Iran, is a supervirus of astounding complexity and another proof of the growing terrible menace of cyberwar.
5. Discovery of these things is good for generating interest and international publicity for anti-virus firms. Therefore they will compete more vigorously in the doing of it. Which is a back-handed social benefit because it will more quickly spoil cyberwar and harassment campaigns launched by the military and intelligence agencies of the west.
Eugene Kaspersky, one of the “original” antivirus experts, is nearly a billionaire now. And he’s known of me for a LONG time. B-)
What do you do if your a sub-mediocre writer of thriller fiction for the extreme right and out of ideas on threats to the United States? Go with electromagnetic pulse.
1,633 entries for the Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy. Since it’s generated by an Amazon search algorithm it is not accurate.
However, a quick browse of the list uncovers a stupefying amount of fiction publishing, much of it vanity press digital editions.
It’s prepper/survivalist romance novels. They call it post-apocalypse, a too generous description by far as it insults famous post-apocalypse novels that aren’t atrocious reads. Like Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids, or various novels by J. G. Ballard.
Here’s the eye-watering run down.
77 Days in September by Ray Gorham.
On a Friday afternoon before Labor Day, Americans are getting ready for the holiday weekend, completely unaware of a long-planned terrorist plot about to be launched against the country. Kyle Tait is settling in for his flight home to Montana when a single nuclear bomb is detonated 300 miles above the heart of America. The blast, an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP), destroys every electrical device in the country…
Death Pulse by David Alexander
Chaos rules when an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapon is set off in orbit, triggering the most massive power failure and blackout in history. The blackout, whose epicenter is New York City, is far more serious than any ordinary mass power outage …
Half Past Midnight by Jeff Brackett
The Doomsday Clock gauges the threat of nuclear war. Currently, the clock is set at six minutes before midnight. What happens after the hands reach midnight? Survivalist Leeland Dawcett finds out when he and his family are plunged into the nightmare of their country returned to a third-world state. No phones. No computers. No television.
Grid Down Reality Bites by Bruce Hemming and Sara Freedman
The author of Buckshot’s Modern Trapper’s Guide for Xtreme Safety, Survival, Profit, Pleasure. This is now a collector’s book. His new novel brings you a working man’s guide to the end of the world. If you enjoyed One Second After and Lights Out then you will love this fast paced novel of 3 different groups surviving the confusion and terror of The End Of The World As We Know It.
Two young men, Mark and Eric struggle desperately trying to make it to their retreat in Northern California. Their truck is dead from an EMP. They have to walk 200 miles.
Land, a Stranded Novel (Volume 1, it threatens) by Theresa D. Shaver
Five go by Land – Five go by Sea A group of teens on a class trip to Disneyland are left stranded. An EMP over North America has destroyed everything electronic. No cars, no planes, no phones, no electricity. Refusing to wait for someone else to help them, ten courageous young people take charge of their future …
Lights Out America by Hale Meserow
The USA, as we know [sic], is gone.
But you won’t see any reports on the 10:00 news, because there is no broadcast signal. There are no computers, no circuit boards, no telephones, no wireless, no trains planes or autos, no refrigerators, furnaces, or lights.
Hundreds of millions of American citizens are instantly thrust into the technological equivalent of the mid-19th century.
The ultimate weapon of mass destruction, an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from a hydrogen bomb, exploded 300 kilometers over Kansas …
Dark Grid by David C. Waldron
In the wake of a solar event, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since 1859 when the height of technology was the telegraph, the northern hemisphere is faced with a new reality…a life without power. The electrical grids of virtually the entire planet have shorted out …
Lights Out by David Crawford (Made by, wait for it, Halffast Publishing)
Downloaded from the internet over three million times, this exciting, action-packed, survival story is finally available in book form. Lights Out chronicles the challenges of Mark “Karate Man??? Turner when the lights go out over most of the free world …
The Long Ride Home by Susan Gregerson
Pedaling her bicycle through the countryside, mile after mile, had been one of Sue’s favorite ways to travel. Despite the shaky conditions in the world, she and a friend embark on a cross-country bicycle trip.
She’s nearly two thousand miles from home when an EMP (Electro-magnetic pulse) over the eastern third of the nation takes out the power grid and cripples transportation. She must get home!
The EMP of the Beginning by Rowan A. Scott
High altitude nuclear explosions generate an Electro Magnetic Pulse over the majority of the world. Electricity transmission lines are taken out, taking with them their transformers and generators. Nothing works any more …
“I normally quite like post apocalypse novels, but this one just didn’t grab me,” writes one Amazon reviewer. “There just wasn’t much character development. ”
The Rally Point: Bugging Home by Susan Gregerson, again
When an EMP over the eastern third of the US knocks out the power grid and disables cars near the detonation point, it takes a while for people to realize this is bigger than a normal power outage. But Sue and her family acted right away. Sue was 2,000 miles from their home in Montana. She was on a cross-country bicycle trip …
Fear of Falling by Susan Kiernan-Lewis
When Matt and Sarah Woodson take a much-needed vacation with their ten-year old son, John, their intention is to find a relaxing, remote spot to take a break from the artificial stimulation of their busy world back in Jacksonville, Florida. What happens within hours of settling in to their rural, rustic little cottage in a far-flung spot on the coast of Ireland is an international incident that leaves the family stranded and dependent on themselves for their survival. Facing starvation, as well as looters and opportunists, they learn the hard way the important things in life. Can a family skilled only in modern day suburbia and corporate workplaces learn to survive when the world is flung back a hundred years? When there is no internet, no telephones, no electricity and no cars?
The Great Collapse by Jeff Horton
While scientists prepare for a massive solar flare heading towards the earth, a hostile foreign government steals a top-secret, experimental weapon. When they use the EMP weapon to attack America however, the result is the immediate and catastrophic loss of modern technology …
Terawatt by Des Michaels
In the aftermath of a devastating EMP event, an unprepared suburban Texas school teacher battles his way across a thousand miles of post-apocalyptic terrain to rescue his wife and son stranded in Tennessee.
Our End Of The Lake: Surviving After The 2012 Solar Storm by Ron Foster and Cheryl Chamlies
A solar storm has just hit the world causing a EMP event. A emergency manager visiting Atlanta GA must find his way back home after this electromagnetic pulse has stranded him away from his vehicle and his beloved “bug out bag” …
Rohan Nation: Reinventing America After the 2020 Collapse by Drew Miller
ROHAN NATION tells the compelling story of how survivors of biological warfare and electro-magnetic pulse fight to defend and reinvent America. The disasters that lead to the collapse of America in 2020 and billions of deaths worldwide are based on sound research and analysis, the predictable results of on-going mistakes. ACE, the teenage daughter of a family that prepared for the worst, and Justin, the young refugee she captures who becomes her cavalry scout apprentice, struggle to survive in a post-collapse economy where horses are key to survival …
It’s not every day one can pickup a novel and see the name of a once top secret government project on the cover.
But you can do that with a new book out soon by part-time Naples resident Karna Small Bodman, whose careers in the White House and TV news have made her highly qualified to write her fourth novel — “Castle Bravo.”
Karna’s thriller is about a potentially life changing, international threat to the U.S. The core subject of her story has popped up on TV newscasts several times recently.
It is electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, detonated high in the atmosphere by a nuclear device …
All electromagnetic pulse fiction comes from people who are in the far right. There are no progressives in the bunker after The End of the World As We Know It. The lefties are cannon fodder, faceless characters who get to die first because they lack the virtues of the heroes. After all, it is satisfying to write about the demise of enemies and their eventual replacement by a more virtuous, simpler world of horse, buggy, plenty of guns, and no Democrats.
A majority of these numbers are done through CreateSpace, another Jeff Bezos gift of dubious value.
If you’ve wondered why Amazon has moved into being an on-line Wal-Mart to the world, it’s because Bezos has contributed to the annihilation of traditional publishing. This has blown up the market for real books, developed by publishing houses, often selected for quality and edited by professionals so you can read them enjoyably.
Bezos has replaced this with an on-line store for dry goods, a music competitor to the equally repellent iTunes store, and the sale of one or two copies of millions of vanity titles. This monetizes and aggregates the idea that the authors of the above works will at least buy one, or maybe even two, copies of their work.
I’VE spent the last week traveling to two of America’s greatest innovation hubs — Silicon Valley and Seattle — and the trip left me feeling a combination of exhilaration and dread. The excitement comes from not only seeing the stunning amount of innovation emerging from the ground up, but from seeing the new tools coming on stream that are, as Amazon.com’s founder, Jeff Bezos, put it to me, “eliminating all the gatekeepers??? — making it easier and cheaper than ever to publish your own book, start your own company and chase your own dream. Never have individuals been more empowered, and we’re still just at the start of this trend.
“I see the elimination of gatekeepers everywhere,??? said Bezos … “Sixteen of the top 100 best sellers on Kindle today were self-published,??? said Bezos. That means no agent, no publisher, no paper — just an author, who gets most of the royalties, and Amazon and the reader.
However, there is a significant difference between writers and a horde empowered by Jeff Bezos to churn out mind-numbingly bad and identical disaster stories on electromagnetic pulse doom just because Internet technology allows them to do so with little effort.
Ultimately, this is Bezos’ innovation: The destruction of that which had value, to be replaced with the digital world’s equivalent of beach sand, with Amazon getting a commission on every grain.
Good news, lads! Good news! Brand USA — The National Anthem. Still big with all those on the end of military broadband connections in Afghanistan. Must be the ‘whores and beer’ sing along part.
‘Pennsyltuckyvoter’ man at 2:31. Thanks Mr. Fussell.
Inescapable in our American landscape are those motivated by fear. The blog covers a lot of them and it’s depressing. One can laugh dryly at how crazy it reads — those prepper survivalists and electromagnetic pulse crazies, ha-ha — but it’s one reason, among a good number, the country has slipped into paralysis.An entire political party thinks only in terms of what it fears. And its actions are then to attack those fears, or more accurately, those who they deem behind them.
The end result has been poisonous in the extreme. The Republican Party fears and hates science. It fears and despises people not exactly like its members, so much so it appears bizarre and mentally to those not part of it. Worse, as quickly as possible it drafts law and policy to attack those believed to be enemies.
Last week, the worst example was in Kansas. I’d skipped it for days but it essentially boiled down to the state legislature crafting a law targeted at Muslims, specifically through the cracked idea that sharia law is infiltrating the US legal system. (Realistically, every week brings news like this. So you may see things equally astonishing and nasty but attacking slightly different classes of people, places and things n your news consumption.)
Previously, the blog has written on this craziness here. Readers will note the constancy of it.
A bill that would outlaw the use of foreign legal codes in Kansas courts — broadly written but particularly aimed at Islamic sharia law — is on its way to the governor.
The final Senate vote, a lopsided 33-3, came after a lengthy and at times emotional debate Friday on the last scheduled day of the session. Lawmakers said they plan to come back next week; unresolved issues include the budget, tax cuts and redistricting …
But in an impassioned speech, Sen. Chris Steineger, R-Kansas City, said the bill was obviously directed at Muslims.
He said he was originally approached about the bill in January. The original pitch wasn’t about protecting the Constitution, but that Muslims were trying to use sharia law to take over the United States and had to be stopped.
“I thought that was quite ludicrous at the time and I still do,??? he said. “This (bill) doesn’t say sharia law, but that’s how it was marketed back in January and all session long, and I have all the e-mails to prove it.???
It’s difficult to find any admiration for Republican Chris Steineger’s admission of regret. There’s a certain contingent within the GOP that knows the party has turned venomous and predatory. But they lack the spine to do anything about it because they are fearful of being purged.
To me, this is a women’s rights issue,” said Sen. Susan Wagle, R-Wichita. “They stone women to death in countries that have sharia law. They have no rights in court. Female children are treated brutally.???
Sen. Jean Schodorf, R-Wichita, said she had confirmed that criminal actions, such as stoning, are prosecuted in Kansas regardless of the offender’s religion, even without the bill.
Sen. John Vratil, R-Leawood, said he quizzed the bill’s supporters on when a Kansas court had ever based a decision on sharia law and had yet to be provided with an example.
The prime instigators who have built up an imaginary sharia law infiltration in US courts are Frank Gaffney, not coincidentally a birther and one of the chiefs of the Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy, and the people who put out the Iranium movie last year. Which, of course, made the case that Iran was a threat to the United States on par with the old Soviet Union and that it ought to be bombed immediately before US civilization was ended by its mullahs.
[The Republican Party has] “become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.???
One cannot fix a problem one will not face. And the new cultishness of the Republican Party is certainly a problem … — opinion piece, the Miami Herald
I coined the name Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy to describe these same manipulative paranoid nutcases years ago. While they do not have their fingers directly on the buttons of power in DC because of the presidency of Obama, they assiduously work the sidelines in other related areas — like attempting to institute Islam-o-phobe laws against an imagined sharia menace in the heartland.
And they have been successful.
“A bill that would ban Sharia law in Kansas has passed both houses of the legislature and awaits the signature of the governor,” reads a news report from yesterday.
“While the rest of us are busy worrying about the economy, partisan gridlock in Washington or maybe even the Facebook IPO, the Kansas legislature has been busy fighting off a perceived ‘threat’ from shariah law,” said Simon Brown of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “[Governor Sam Brownback] hasn’t said what he will do with the anti-shariah bill, but stoning it would seem an appropriate response.”
An anti-sharia law from the heartland listing — from Google.
The Arizona Star published a big piece on survivalists/preppers today. It featured Tim Ralston, mentioned previously on the blog as Tim Thumb, the man who shot a big chunk of his opposable digit off in a gun accident for the worst reality tv show, ever, Doomsday Preppers.
Why feature the heevahavas?
Well, they’re local color. And for some, including Tim Thumb, training preppers has become a business in a down economy. While the logic of taking survival advice from someone known for a spectacularly stupid and painful accident with a firearm on television escapes me it has apparently worked in just the opposite manner for Ralston.
There are firearms too, including handguns and a laser-sighted rifle. Because if there is one thing Ralston is sure about, people are going to get very angry very quickly when a solar storm knocks out the power grid. Or the economy collapses. Or zombies attack (though fictional, Ralston still has the perfect tool for reintroducing the undead to death).
The more people ready to face doomsday, he figures, the fewer who will come knocking at his bunker (and those of others) looking for food and water.
And that day could arrive next year, Ralston says, riding a coronal mass ejection (which is even sloppier than it sounds) that triggers an electromagnetic pulse …
Lisa Bedford considers herself a turtle in the disaster-prepping race. Slowly, steadily, the Peoria mom has amassed the food, water and equipment necessary to deal with a disaster — not the “asteroid strikes Earth” kind, necessarily, but the sort that might force the family to live on their own for weeks and months.
Bedford is a calmer survivalist, cringing when she hears of people talking about super volcanoes or nuclear attacks or melting polar ice caps and the global flooding that will result.
“It (doomsday prepping) seems to hinge on fear-mongering,” Bedford says. “At the core, I believe it’s about common sense and an awareness of what’s going on worldwide, not just in America.”
Certainly survival plays a part, and the author of “Survival Mom: How to Prepare Your Family for Everyday Disasters and Worst-Case Scenarios” has a gun and knows how to use it.
Her fears are more down-to-earth than those buried 3 feet under in a bunker. Should economic jitters give way to strife and panic, she will be ready. And if the doomsday scenarios pitched by extreme preppers make people more apt to stockpile necessities, so be it.
“Yes, the shows are fear-mongering,” Bedford says …
There is mention that preparation mania has roots from deep in the Cold War, specifically mentioning the Cuban missile crisis. There’s not much merit to the argument. A nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union was a real possibility although the number of warheads in the arsenals made fallout shelters pointless. And everyone was in the same boat together.
For the modern preppers/survivalists, everyone is definitely not in the same boat. If there is a shared community, it is one on the extreme nuts right and most of its theology is aimed at telling stories about how all the undesirables “in the city” will need to be warded off and/or killed after a disaster. And the end-of-civilization scenarios have little basis in the real world.
This bothers one of the preppers profiled in the Arizona Star piece. It’s been his business for decades and of the current craziness:
Cody Lundin of Prescott is someone who knows well the cyclic trends of prepping.
When Lundin began preaching the value of self-reliance almost 30 years ago … he was a voice in the wilderness …
But Lundin is having a difficult time bearing all the doomsday-prepper chatter. He shakes his head at the extremism espoused by those who want to store mountains of food and an arsenal of guns in a remote bunker.
The survival at all costs ethic makes him queasy.
Reporter Scott Craven mentions Tim Thumb’s Crovel entrenching tool for beating someone’s head in as a hit with the prepper crowd.
In the 1985 NYC world of the Watchmen, Rorschach only dealt with the city’s underbelly. His favorite activity was putting the squeeze on ex-felons at Happy Harry’s and beating to death those he ran across in the act of perpetrating violent crime. One scene from the comic shows him readying his cravat for use in strangling someone interrupted while raping a woman in an alley. When Rorschach finally comes to blows with a ‘better class’ of person, Veidt, he is easily defeated. Refusing to compromise on his black and white sense of right and wrong, he’s put to death in the snow at the bottom of the world by Dr. Manhattan.
So it’s hard to know what Rorschach would think is right for Wall Street. Because he avidly reads The New Frontiersman, a raggedy-ass newspaper from the extreme right, he would not be sympathetic to over-compensated business executives.
Since Rorschach’s sense of morality defined him, compelling him into the streets to destroy the wicked without mercy or hesitation, it is inspiring to think of what he might do to the shadowy bonus recipients of Wall Street. Would he throw one down an elevator? Handcuff another to a stanchion in an apartment, leave a hacksaw within reach, and set the room ablaze with gasoline? Would he “put fourteen in the hospital needlessly” while squeezing the name and address of their boss from them? Would he crush one of their skulls out of sight in the men’s room?
In the United States, it has not yet come to that. However, if the men of Wall Street are seen to be beyond punishment …
On the other hand, Rorschach had no fondness for liberals or others thought to be soft and morally ambiguous, those he thought equally responsible for the collapse of the alternate history 1985 America in Watchmen. He could be just as likely to take a look at the toxic decay foaming up out of the gutters of Wall Street, threatening to drown everyone not at the top and upon hearing screams for help, just whisper, “No…”
The crazies are already crazy enough, buddy. Don’t make it worse. A new series created by JJ Abrams — Revolution — illustrates how marinated US popular culture is in electromagnetic pulse doom stories. In the real world it’s solely the property of the extreme right wing. But you can’t have a television show with just those characters. That would be called Doomsday Preppers, an existing niche product designed to monetize the peculiar rather than vend something for network primetime family viewing.
It’s gotten so you can’t turn around without being hit by another JJ Abrams creation. There are so many of them you know he’s now like everyone else in such a production position, an exalted deity who assigns his name to lackeys, allowing them to phone in whatever it is that needs phoning in under his blessings.
And it sure looks it from the trailer. How unique. Another tv series with civilization destroyed, electricity gone, people playing survivalist, down to the various tribes, this time using bows, arrows and muskets.
Is there anyone who doesn’t see “electromagnetic pulse” crap on tv or in movies as plot devices/scenarios/predictions a couple times a month in 2012 USA? Not likely.
What sets Revolution slightly apart, and any other thing like it in the last three or four years, from the kook survivalist craze is that the cast can never be like anyone you see in prepper videos.
Everyone is caught flat-flooted when disaster arrives. Nobody has a years worth of dried corn and pemmican, no basement armories with a quarter ton of ammunition, no gun room with a couple belt-fed weapons. The houses are never built from cast-off shipping containers. And they’re not all camo-dressed right wingers. About half the cast will be visibly worried about falling into a world where only the gun, mercilessness and physical strength rule. The fascists are almost always the bad guys.
While you’ll see the bits about having to fight off others coming for your stuff, those coming for it are never the same types the prepper/survivalists mean when they advise on learning how to shoot moving targets. The progressive, liberals, educated and registered Democrats/Commies aren’t the unprepared targets everyone is hoping they won’t have to shoot up because they’ve come stumbling up the road to the safe house.
With a peak in the cycle of solar flares approaching, U.S. electricity regulators are weighing their options for protecting the nation’s grid from the sun’s eruptions—including new equipment standards and retrofits—while keeping a lid on the cost …
They are studying the impact of historic sunstorms …
“This is arguably the largest natural-disaster scenario that the nation could face,” said Mr. Kappenman.
Mr. Kappenman has consulted for companies that make equipment to harden the grid.
Others are more cautious in their predictions …
The private sector and scientists with the US government have now turned wise to what happens when the lobbyists from the Cult of EMP Crazy (or EMPAct America) run wild. And they have successfully shoved off to the fringes the constant assertions that the nation faces an imminent return to the days of the horse and buggy.
That hasn’t stopped the EMP lobby, which is the same as the Bomb Iran lobby. They simply change their name to something that sounds important knowing that reporters won’t check the rosters from the old kook brigades for matches.
And so, one of the chief lobbyists for EMPAct America, Peter Pry, appears in the Journal story as “executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, a group that members of Congress designated to track electrical-grid risks and that supports Mr. Kappenman’s conclusions.”
The Task Force on National and Homeland Security is EMPAct America with a second name, the same group of right-wingers that has always been lobbying for ballistic missile defense and bombing Iran before the mullahs send American civilization into the abyss using a missile launched from an offshore barge.
Not a week goes by that my news tab doesn’t have a few stories on the American survivalist movement, courtesy of the presence of doomsday electromagnetic pulse references in all such pieces. The homespun country paranoids are now firmly in the US entertainment mainstream, notably in newspapers, almost purely because of the semi-success of one of the crummiest television reality series ever, National Geographic’s Doomsday Preppers.
The prepper movement shows all the collateral damage [the rubbish from the Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy, a GOP construction] has wrought on the suggestible and unbalanced.
Conspicuously, this increasingly nuts demographic is almost entirely white, far right, heartland, fundie Christian religious and breast-beatingly patriotic.
It is not a surprise that cable television feels this niche large enough to monetize. Death cults/apocalypse believers have always been part of the American experience. However, until social media, micro-casting and the Internet there wasn’t an easy way to cynically gather all of them up into a nice exploitative package for advertising.
[Tom Martin, 34, a long-haul truck driver based out of Port Angeles] and other preppers are adamant about not being mistaken for survivalists, especially after the recent news stories about the North Bend man who police say shot himself in a hillside bunker after killing his wife and teen daughter.
Says Martin, “That guy sounded like a nut case, somebody who thinks everybody is out to get them.”
On its website, Puget Sound Preppers says, “This group is NOT involved in: revolution, war, militia, political parties, religious activities, racism, or lobbying. This group is about skills and knowledge.”
An upcoming meeting, for example, is on raising chickens.
He doth protest too loudly, offering only a standard and easily shot up likely story in defense.
At once paranoid and practical, preppers are essentially pessimistic boy scouts. Some prepare for war, others for economic collapse, and in parts of Western North Carolina many worry about an Electromagnetic Pulse weapon (EMP) that would disable electronics and turn back the clock by a full century. In every scenario there is reference to a fallen society that’s “WROL” (without rule of law) in which only the well-prepared can prosper.
EMP is the primary concern of Jan Sterritt who, along with husband Bill, runs Carolina Readiness Supply in Waynesville N.C..
“It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when (an EMP will hit)”, she says.
Jan scurries around her store with a cordless phone clipped to her belt. It rings at 5 minute intervals with new questions from the Sterritt’s now growing customer base.
“It was just like we’ve gotta do something. We’ve gotta tell people about it and get them prepared,” she says when pulled aside for a quick interview.
OPSEC makes interviews tricky. Jan and Bill only allowed us in the store, with some reservations, after we promised not to blow their customers cover. Both Sterritts say that for most of their first year in business shoppers would wait until the store was empty before revealing their prepper needs in whispered voices.
Now, Bill says, people are beginning to “wake up”.
“There’s fewer and fewer people that think we’re nuts,” he says …
Of particular concern to Bill, is the “occupy” movement. Bill points his finger toward Asheville, about 20 miles East, where protesters gathered over the summer.
“There are those who want to disrupt our constitutional system. I mean there are anarchists in the street. They’ve been in the street since last fall. I fear they’ll be out in the streets this spring and summer. They’re being subverted by anarchist elements, communists, there’s a lot of subversion going on within these groups. It’s scary.”
Bill is now more animated as he talks about his real motivations. His political interest in prepping dovetails with trends in the national news. When the economy cratered in 2008, when Barack Obama moved into the Oval Office, when concern grew about Federal debt, preppers multiplied nationwide. In the western Carolinas they’re around every corner.
There is no progressive viewpoint within the prepper movement. And they have an allergy to the descriptor “survivalist” because of its association with neo-Nazis, militias and the far right. They are inescapably a part of this social fringe, on television, always visibly infatuated with fortified home ammo dumps, machine guns, and paramilitary training.
They all share an uneducated, simplistic and diseased world view, half of their daytime life spent obsessing over how they’ll defend themselves from the others who will come for their stuff in the inevitable fall. And you know who all the others are.
Poke them hard enough with hard questions, or supercilious articles, and they’ll snap. Since they are always carrying and displaying weapons, general news reporters may feel reluctant to press them on such matters.
However, one does not have to go very far on YouTube to find men in camouflage, advertising themselves as preppers, recommending shotguns or other firearms for use in shooting government men or strangers in one situation or another.
“We want someone in our group who is very familiar with weaponry and the art of fighting … I am thrilled to have somebody who actually knows how to use a gun and that means more than plinking away at a range where the target does not move …” sez my favorite prepper, the Patriot Nurse, in her latest video.
It’s arguable that National Geographic has done anyone a service by thrusting these people into the limelight as sometimes reasonable, for the sake of some money on cable television.
