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.
Did you know Islamic subversion is infiltrating the highest levels of US government?
Today, Bill Gertz of the Washington Times published the claim that Hillary Clinton might be associated with it, all revealed in a course offered by Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy and Islam-o-phobe Frank Gaffney.
Gaffney’s a birther. And a great deal of his current business is centered around the alleged security threat of shariah-law permeating the US justice system.
Islamists linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and similar groups are working to undermine the U.S. government through “civilization jihad??? aimed at imposing Islamic law rule in the United States.
That is the conclusion of a new 10-part online video course produced by the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a Washington think tank, that was made public Tuesday.
The briefing-style educational video, “The Muslim Brotherhood in America: The Enemy Within,??? features lectures by CSP chief Frank Gaffney.
The video includes a detailed section on “Team Obama??? that identifies six people working close to or inside the Obama administration that the course says are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood or similar Islamist groups through numerous front organizations.
They include Rashad Hussein, special envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation; Huma Abedin, deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton …
It’s a bit unfortunately hilarious in its psychosis because Huma Abedin — a trusted assistant of Hillary Clinton, is Anthony Weiner’s much put upon wife.
Weiner, if you’re a Euro-reader and do not recall, was the Democratic Rep. who saw his career ended for sending someone else not-his-wife a picture of his pecker.
Many years ago Bill Gertz was an investigative journalist who often pried interesting information from the warren that is the US intelligence community.
Over the years Gertz has also been responsible for vaporware/dept. of fiction journalism on electromagnetic pulse.
Today was no exception:
Military officials say the threat of electromagnetic pulse weapons in future warfare is growing …
A military source tells Inside the Ring that Russia has already developed battlefield EMP weapons and used them in combat.
During the early 2000s, Russian military forces fired an EMP mortar round that deployed a small metal-coated parachute. As it floated to earth, the EMP energy burst was reflected downward by the underside of the parachute and also spread by the cords attached to the shell. The result was a cone of anti-electronic energy that disrupted all electronics within its area.
The mortar was used by Russian forces to attack hand-held cellular telephones used by Chechen rebels …
You’ve already seen, or read about, National Geographic’s Doomsday Preppers, a show capitalizing on the demographic of white kooks preparing for the fall of American civilization — and a small audience of other people you don’t want to meet who enjoy watching them, similar to those who love video of hockey fights that bring in the crowd or football players suffering career-ending hits.
The preppers are needy. So they require a dating site tuned to their interests, just like everyone else.
[A] site called Survivalist Singles has entered the online dating scene, catering specifically to this niche community of “preppers,” “survivalists” and “doomsdayers.”
Survivalist Singles, which officially launched in 2010, boasts the slogan, “Don’t face the future alone.” Its ranks are growing — quadrupling to about 1,640 members from around 400 at the end of 2010.
Members of the site range widely in their doomsday beliefs, said Andrea Burke, a 45-year-old middle school art teacher from Montana who took over the site from its previous owner last summer.
“Most will agree that something is brewing that may change life as we know it, whether it be a collapse of the economy, an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) or other natural or government disaster,” Burke said.
Love for less than a box of bullets, or something similar, is the motto.
The dilemma faced by preppers is plain. The image projected is poor because they’re … kooks. A Bible-beating white guy/militia man in Wyoming, the Dakotas, Idaho, Utah, the Piedmont or the wastelands of Texas who dresses in camo is a hard sell.
“It’s hard to connect with someone … You can’t explain why your truck is packed like you’re always ready for an expedition …” reads one quote from a user looking for connection.
“Some members, though, have already found love on the site … Iron Ranger … found his soul mate, or “twin flame,” only two days after joining Survivalist Singles … They live six hours away from each other so they have only met in person twice …” reads another.
Familiarity breeds contempt, as the saying goes.
“When you have somebody within single digit feet of you … the dynamics of that situation are just going to be a wee bit different than somebody 25 yards away, who you have a clear shot at …”
The idea that hackers — now to mean Anonymous, the Chinese, or any other alleged enemy of the US anywhere in the world, can turn out the lights from the Internet is pervasive.
There isn’t a week that passes without some media outlet publishing a story or running a televised news segment mentioning it.
All this despite any extraordinary evidence in support of the extraordinary claims.
It is a claim abused by government and corporate security men using arguments from authority.
The power grid can be taken down because many important people say so. And the more people say so, the more true it must be.
However, a recent Government Accounting Office report entitled Cybersecurity — Challenges in Securing the Modernized Electricity Grid — shows the threadbare quality of the argument. For such an important issue — and we can agree that turning off the nation’s power by trivially flicking some software switches a world away is a serious matter — the report is a mere 19 pages long.
This is because the report has nothing, well, to report.
When it gets to delivering examples of blackouts caused by cyberattack it has none. Actually, it tries to use one, now part of our techno-mythology, and I’ll get to it in a minute.
Since the report can offer no examples it cites a couple instances of malware at energy facilities, not particularly remarkable news.
Another example offered by GAO is the Slammer worm, a widespread malware infection that was also found disabling a “safety monitoring system” at Davis-Besse, an idled nuclear power plant in 2003.
Moreover, in 2008, the Central Intelligence Agency reported that malicious activities against IT systems and networks have caused disruption of electrical power capabilities in multiple regions overseas, including a case that resulted in a multi-city power outage.
The attribution is the White House’s brief Cyberspace Policy Review, published in 2009.
CIA reports malicious activities against information technology systems have caused the disruption of electrical power in multiple regions overseas, including a case that resulted in a multi-city power outage.
It is footnoted. However, the footnote does not attribute the CIA. Instead it points to a seller of computer security training, SANS, which announced this remarkable bit of hearsay at a security vendor conference in 2008.
Also note the GAO report does not put the White House reports claim in quotation marks. It just cut and pastes it, dropping it directly into the GAO text as if composed anew.
In any case, that single claim — although now passed through many authorities who simply repeat it over and over like dogma — has never come with any reasonable substantiating evidence.
Instead, it has simply been used in an argument that relies on the maxim that if bullshit is repeated often enough it eventually transforms into not-bullshit, no matter how scant the evidence.
It’s nature is that of a myth or a rumor.
In mulling it over it’s worth taking some time to consider an old myth — a hoax, actually, from antique America, one involving the story of the Cardiff Giant.
Unlike the claim about shutting down the power in faraway places, the Cardiff giant actually existed. It was stone sculpture, unearthed at some farm in upstate New York, taken by many as a fossilized example of a race of giants that had once walked the land.
Andrew D. White, the first president and founder of Cornell, wrote about the Cardiff hoax in his autobiography and the parts relevant to this discussion are here.
Wrote White:
Entering, we saw a large pit or grave, and, at the bottom of it, perhaps five feet below the surface, an enormous figure, apparently of Onondaga gray limestone. It was a stone giant, with massive features, the whole body nude, the limbs contracted as if in agony. It had a color as if it had lain long in the earth, and over its surface were minute punctures, like pores. An especial appearance of great age was given it by deep grooves and channels in its under side, apparently worn by the water which flowed in streams through the earth and along the rock on which the figure rested. Lying in its grave, with the subdued light from the roof of the tent falling upon it, and with the limbs contorted as if in a death struggle, it produced a most weird effect. An air of great solemnity pervaded the place. Visitors hardly spoke above a whisper.
Coming out, I asked some questions, and was told that the farmer who lived there had discovered the figure when digging a well. Being asked my opinion, my answer was that the whole matter was undoubtedly a hoax …
Like the story about the power being offed in faraway lands, the Cardiff
giant inspired great enthusiasms in those convinced of its reality.
“The current of belief ran more and more strongly, and soon embraced a large number of really thoughtful people,” wrote White.
“I met them at their hotel and discussed with them the subject which so interested us all, urging them especially to be cautious and stating that a mistake might prove very injurious to the reputation of the regents, and to the proper standing of scientific men and methods in the state, that if the matter should turn out to be a fraud, and such eminent authorities should be found to have committed themselves to it, there would be a guffaw from one end of the country to the other at the expense of the men intrusted by the State with its scientific and educational interests …”
White’s essay on the nature of the Cardiff Giant and his observations on the belief in it make for absorbing reading, particularly in light of how various received wisdoms are accepted as stark truth in America today — a century and a half later.
It seems we haven’t gotten very far beyond the rubes in our modern techno-society:
At no period of my life have I ever been more discouraged as regards the possibility of making right reason prevail among men.
As a refrain to every argument there seemed to go jeering and sneering through my brain Schiller’s famous line:
“Against stupidity the gods themselves fight in vain.”
There was evidently a “joy in believing” in the marvel, and this was increased by the peculiarly American superstition that the correctness of a belief is decided by the number of people who can be induced to adopt it–that truth is a matter of majorities. The current of credulity seemed irresistible.
The Cardiff Giant, it should be noted, was far more substantial than the story about offing the lights in a faraway place. At least you could examine it.
“If you’re talking about terrorism in the real world where you want to blow up a dam or do some destruction, you can potentially do that remotely through a cyber attack??? — another modern Cardiff Giant believer, from last week
Looking ahead 20 years was the subject of my last question posed to readers. The responses varied in tone …
A comprehensive perspective was contributed by L.R.K., from South Euclid, whose full comments appear online.
He has a cautionary view of the future …
“What will the world look like in twenty years? That is a very interesting question. I wrestle with it because my grandchildren will be in their mid-20s then. In the next 20 years we, the United States, will be or have been engaged in at least two regional wars. I don’t like the idea; but our enemies tend to choose us (as with Afghanistan) rather then we them (as with Iraq). My nightmare is not a nuclear war, which although possible is not likely, but an EMP attack which would put American society back to the 1820s. It would be totally devastating, and also relatively inexpensive, and therefore is more likely.”
The Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy is everywhere, indelibly written into a unique mythology alleged modern Americans hold dear.
Neem oil and turmeric are prescribed for smallpox, just in case the disease comes to your bugout location after the collapse. Turmeric is said to be good for acne, too.
Smallpox was eradicated in the world population in the late Seventies.
Watch now. The prepper disables embedding when she discovers the wrong people are watching. Hee.
You can also do the overdub the soundtrack trick I did with the Scorpions and Taxi Zum Klo a week or so back. Mute the smallpox prepper vid and immediately launch Act Naturally, below.
Much better!
All they gotta do is act naturally … I hope you’ll come and see ’em in the movies.
State representatives on Friday advanced legislation to launch a study into what Wyoming should do in the event of a complete economic or political collapse in the United States.
House Bill 85 passed on first reading by a voice vote. It would create a state-run government continuity task force, which would study and prepare Wyoming for potential catastrophes, from disruptions in food and energy supplies to a complete meltdown of the federal government.
The task force would look at the feasibility of Wyoming issuing its own alternative currency, if needed. And House members approved an amendment Friday by state Rep. Kermit Brown, R-Laramie, to have the task force also examine conditions under which Wyoming would need to implement its own military draft, raise a standing army, and acquire strike aircraft and an aircraft carrier.
population of Wyoming 538,000
population of Pasadena, CA 137,000
population of LA County 9.8 million
I’m betting Pasadena has more books and more people with advanced degrees than Wyoming.
In any case, this isn’t new.
Down through the ages the hinterlands have been filled with unthinking, easily influenced paranoids. If you still watch Glenn Beck, or read his publication — The Blaze, you’d think the country was going to collapse next week.
National Geographic’s Doomsday Preppers has monetized the kooks and televised them nationwide. The country is coming to an end, they all insist.
In decades past in Allentown, PA, I was sent to cover a local municipal meeting of a local ‘burg just prior to the first Gulf War. There, a couple of the local townsmen talked of emergency preparations for a town of about three thousand, in case Saddam Hussein destroyed the local interstate with a Scud missile.
Paphlagonians were drawn in crowds by the news. Only their outward appearance distinguished them from sheep. The thick and uncultured natives of Pontus and Paphlygonia were easily deceived … Alexander, who had medical training, prescribed ointments made of bear’s fat as one of his quack remedies … [Real Paphlagonians were] shod in heavy leather clogs, they belched garlic fumes. Garlic, as well as a readiness to believe false oracles, was an insulting leitmotif that went back to Aristophanes …
Reads Toward the Rhetoric of Insult:
Paphlagon is so named because he is allegedly of Paphlagonian ancestry (Paphlagonia, at the eastern limits of the known world, is like Al Capp’s Slobbovia …)
While I’m not watching any more episodes of National Geographic’s pitiful series, Doomsday Preppers, that doesn’t mean press releases for it go unseen. Published to to maximize the appearance of one of the show’s profiled preppers, it advertises a a fellow who has unsurprisingly built a business on survivalism.
Much of Doomsday Preppers is obviously devoted to the acquisition of survival gear and militaria.
For example, the appeal of the doomsday shovel must be its adaptability born in the tradition of the battlefield entrenching tool. It is not only for digging a hole but also for bashing those who would steal your dried corn, pemmican and preserves in the head.
The channel commissioned an online survey of 1,007 adults in the USA, and found that 61% of Americans believe the country will experience a major catastrophic event within the next 20 years, but only 15% feel they are fully prepared for it.
“I think between the survey and the show, people will get to examine their own beliefs, compare them to the survey, see how people in the show are spending their lives and learn to prepare themselves,” says Brad Dancer, senior vice president of research and digital media at the channel.
So it’s a public service to show lamentable crazy people, collateral damage of the fear-based economy.
Another bit:
Prepper Tim Ralston of Arizona views destruction of the electrical grid caused by an electromagnetic pulse weapon or solar flares as his worst-case scenario. To prepare, he regularly conducts a dry run to an underground bunker with his kids.
Reality television is the perfect place for monetizing kooks. In this case it’s National Geographic’s Doomsday Preppers series on what I’ve called End Timers. I caught a commercial and won’t be tuning in. (It begins airing Tuesday.) Topics common to the blog have already shown all one needs to know.
The central focus, of course, is the collapse of the power grid, the end of American civilization and the people determined to be ready for it. One of the reasons for this belief is, of course, because it has been published ad nauseam in the news over the last decade.
Whether it’s an electromagnetic pulse from a barge-launched a-bomb, a cyberattack on the national infrastructure, or man-made plagues and totally unrealistic terror onslaughts, it’s been pounded into gullible heads, often several times a week, as probable, easy to do and often imminent.
The prepper movement shows all the collateral damage it 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.
Up until the last decade small fringe book publishers catering solely to the militias and violent survivalist far right used to be the only place for it.
Watch too many of them and you’re deeply discouraged.
While all the individuals in the videos appear painfully sincere with the aim being to give advice to help survive the travails said to be coming, all they’re really successful at is showing how idiosyncratic insanity can be mainstreamed as entertainment. They leak intolerance like a fine sweat. Eternal damnation for the lazy, the unprepared, all the outsiders. is a constant current.
“The first wave of death will be those with chronic disease,” she informs. A second wave of death will overtake the more healthy and it will be caused by diseases and lack of sanitation incubated and spread by the weak and sick. I didn’t last long enough to get to any more waves.
In another video the prepper survivors are advised to keep a book of hymns and prayers on hand because music helps one through the hard times. A dulcimer, an instrument from the Appalachian hill country, is recommended. It served the poor in the olden days and will again.
