I am not someone who signs on to every moronic conspiracy that flies around the net….but recently I read something that made me stop and think about a couple of things that had been happening over the last year…..
Remember Jade Helm? That was a military exercise that made the Right go batcrap crazy….the government was accused of actually trying to takeover certain areas by force…..do you remember the term now?
Really! But in case you are scratching that empty head….I can help….
Jade Helm is a multi-state training exercise taking place July 15 through Sept. 15 with members of U.S. Army Special Operations Command and service members from the military’s four branches. While the exercise is taking place across seven states, the Special Operations Forces are only training in five states: Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado.
In a March 24 press release from the Army, Jade Helm 15 was described simply as a “routine training exercise to maintain a high level of readiness.” The reason given for picking out the particular states, including Texas, is because each possesses a “unique terrain” that soldiers might find themselves operating in overseas.
People in Texas were sent into a flying rage saying that the government was basically declaring martial law and taking over the state….so the governor put the Texas national guard on alert to monitor the actions during this exercise….
These types of exercise are nothing new…..nothing at all….
After thinking about all the concern I figure it there is a disaster then there will be a need for the military to step in and keep law and order….I mean think about it…..if there is some sort of Apocalypse there will be those ya-hoos that will want to take advantage, right?
Okay I realize that I may be sounding like a conspiracy nut……and I would agree but after I read a piece I got to thinking that there was more to the exercise than we actually knew…….
If a giant solar flare hit the Earth, it could knock out the entire power grid, meaning no more new Taylor Swift singles, no more televised presidential debates, and no more Facebook photos of babies. But it wouldn’t be all good news. The Washington Post reports the elecromagnetic pulse—or EMP—created by such an event could wipe out electricity for months on end, creating a global catastrophe. That’s why the White House released its National Space Weather Strategy on Thursday. According to the Houston Chronicle, the multiagency plan details how the US will prepare for—and deal with—a massive EMP from space. The six-step plan requires government agencies, schools, the media, the insurance industry, nonprofits, and more to work together. In other words: We might be doomed.
“This is a real and present danger,” the White House’s assistant director for space weather tells the Post. Back in 1859, the sun whacked the Earth with a large EMP. At the time, it only caused some sparking telegraph lines, but the National Academy of Sciences says something like that today could have a $2 trillion economic impact. Something like that almost did happen in 2012, when NASA says we were nearly hit by two large plasma clouds. “If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces,” one physicist says. The White House’s new plan calls for the US to get better at predicting space weather, shore up our infrastructure against EMPs, and more, the Chronicle reports. According to the Post, the plan isn’t a moment too soon, as NASA states there’s a 12% chance we will be hit by a massive solar flare in the next 10 years.
Put the two stories together and I am beginning to see something that is not very attractive…..
Surely I am not the only person that put these two stories together……
Maybe I’m just paranoid?
There is no end to the possible horrors that could descend upon us from the vast reaches of space.
In an age where every single communication you make is being recorded & stored forever by governments, there is NO such thing as paranoia anymore. It’s just a question of “Does this specific theory hold water, given the evidence we are permitted to see?”
I know little about this specific military “exercise”. But I do know these Pentagon fuckers are continually dreaming up insane new weapons and ways of “neutralizing” populations. Increasingly, they seem to be getting into the monitoring of citizens, crowd control and domestic “crisis management”.
It’s getting harder & harder to pretend they aren’t preparing for The Collapse.
Watching Fear of The Walking Dead just made it even more obvious to me how quickly what we (laughingly) call modern “civilization” will collapse into complete (small a) anarchy.
We have designed a “just in time” industrial system that can grind to a halt just with one flood, snowstorm, or wildcat strike. Across the board, we’ve gone from simple, reliable, analogue technology to complicated, unpredictable, highly hackable, digital technology that rules our “lives”. Our financial system & corporations are “too big to fail”, but designed to do exactly that. Budgets for all (non-military) emergency services are being cut.
Right down to our increasingly “every man for himself” ethos, even at the best of times, we have designed a system that couldn’t be more vulnerable to collapse. All we need to fall over the cliff is the slightest of nudges.
No wonder the military is preparing for The Collapse. Me? I’ve been saving up for one of these units for about 10 years now and am only 25 years away from being able to buy one.
http://survivalcondo.com/
A luxury condo? Love it! Looks more like a missile silo that a condo complex…anyway…I live with hurricanes every year so I always have a “survival” plan in place….
Check the website out. It IS an old missile base converted into floors of condos. The silo acts as an underground apartment building. It’s got a pool, an exercise room, movie theatre and trained, experienced, killers guarding the perimeter. Short of a nuke hit, the place is indestructible and impenetrable.
It’s also pretty green. It’s got great air filters. It’s off the grid and uses wind power. It has a hydroponic/aquaculture system that grows its own food. Hey, finally a carbon neutral future! I can’t wait.
I want one…..the rock climbing facility has got to go….no exercise stuff…..I like the “military grade security”…..how much blood will I have to sell to afford one? LOL
http://www.underground-homes.com/underground-house.htm
At least selling blood is an option for you. That doesn’t happen in Canuckistan. I gotta skrimp & save for my Post Collapse home. Then again, health care is free here, so that puts me ahead.
“Rock climbing facilities” are all just plastic anchors stuck in walls, so that’s not a space-eater. It’s just ugly. As stupid/douchey as rock climbing is, climbing walls may be an important skill in the post-Collapse Era. You never know when you’ll have to skitter up a wall to dodge a riotous mob. Even in a facility like this, you need to be in the best physical condition you can be in. At some point, you’ll probably have to patrol the perimeter to keep the swarms of refugees at bay. Military grade security, or not, there’s bound to be some attrition from years of human swarms…or guards eating their guns because they can’t handle killing so many desperate people looking for food & shelter.
Thanks for the link. I actually came across most of these places a few years back, during my research. One of them cost $25 million 1960 dollars to build. It was decommissioned less than 5 years later and eventually sold to the owner for $40,000. Factor in staffing, operation & shutdown costs…shit, that’s a lot of money for absolutely nothing. Now multiply it by the number of silos (Thousands?)
While these 2 examples have no armed guards, I really liked the price of them and the handy locations (for me). While NY will be pretty dicey when the shit goes down, I could probably get to both fast enough to survive. But I think they’re more of a buy, move in, & hunker down for life, rather than an “apocalypse bomb shelter” to flee to.
http://www.zillow.com/blog/house-of-the-week-missile-silo-home-66159/
http://www.today.com/money/sale-decommissioned-missile-silo-40-feet-underground-6C10262995
The last one (sold for ONLY $575,000!) The restored launch desk (and other historical features) would be super-cool! I’d have more space, but I’d have to install all the filtration, aquaculture, etc. I hope it comes up for sale again. I could move to NY & pay the mortgage by selling my blood.
Hey your post was so good I got it twice….LOL
Yeah. Sorry about that.
Until right now, I got it “nonce”, even after the 2nd attempt. So, I figured it was one of those “2 links in a comment and straight to the spam bin” thing.
No problem….
At least selling blood is an option for you. That doesn’t happen in Canuckistan. I gotta skrimp & save for my Post Collapse home. Then again, health care is free here, so that puts me ahead.
“Rock climbing facilities” are all just plastic anchors stuck in walls, so that’s not a space-eater. It’s just ugly. As stupid/douchey as rock climbing is, climbing walls may be an important skill in the post-Collapse Era. You never know when you’ll have to skitter up a wall to dodge a riotous mob. Even in a facility like this, you need to be in the best physical condition you can be in. At some point, you’ll probably have to patrol the perimeter to keep the swarms of refugees at bay. Military grade security, or not, there’s bound to be some attrition from years of human swarms…or guards eating their guns because they can’t handle killing so many desperate people looking for food & shelter.
Thanks for the link. I’ve actually come across a some of these places a few years back, during my research.
While they have no armed guards, I really liked the price of these 2 in particularly and the handy locations (for me). While NY will be pretty dicey when the shit goes down, I could probably get to both fast enough to survive. But I think they’re more of a buy, move in, & hunker down for life, rather than an “apocalypse bomb shelter” to flee to.
http://www.zillow.com/blog/house-of-the-week-missile-silo-home-66159/
http://www.today.com/money/sale-decommissioned-missile-silo-40-feet-underground-6C10262995
The last one (sold for ONLY $575,000!) The restored launch desk (and other historical features) would be super-cool! I’d have more space, but I’d have to install all the filtration, aquaculture, etc. I hope it comes up for sale again. I could move to NY & pay the mortgage by selling my blood.
Where will I get a steak? I do not know if I will make it underground….Is all services included? What are the “house rules”? There are many questions…..so few answers…..chuq
Unless you’re lucky (& stupid) enough to leave your bunker and stumble across the luckiest cow in America, a cow so lucky that it somehow managed to avoid tens of millions of starving Americans with guns….sorry, Food Nazi…”No steak for you!” But if you like fish, especially tallapia, you’re in luck. Aquaculture systems can accommodate fish. Their shit helps provide plant nutrients.
Because missile silos usually come with a decent amount of land, I suppose a survival silo complex could have a walled-in, secured, pasture large enough for a small herd to graze. But that’s only good if The Collapse hasn’t gone nuclear/biological. And mooing cows will draw unwanted attention from human scavengers, which will drain your supply of bullets. Besides increasing pressure on your security resources, your complex would also have to have someone with butchering skills & equipment, because trying to take your cows to the butcher would resemble a scene from Mad Max.
In our overpopulated world, meat isn’t the wisest use of farmland during the good times. It’s a luxury we all can’t afford as it is. Calorie wise, it’s FAR more efficient to eat what the cow eats and “cut out (up?) the middle man”. So, you’re better off dedicating that walled-in pasture to a veggie garden. At most, a tiny dairy-only heard and some chickens.
As you can see, I’ve given this a little TOO much thought 😉 But like the Scouts say, “Be prepared!” Because, without a miracle, this shit is coming. It’s only a matter of when, how fast and how severe.
Best Case Scenario:
It’ll be like the Canuckistan Classic, 1977’s Deadly Harvest. As it says in the opening, a couple decades of slow slide allowed for society to stumble along as if nothing was happening…until it started accelerating! Suddenly, city folk were going to the country and, in one scene, trying to steal the family cow. (about minute 10)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QafLCb_S4
Even though it was terrifying, I LOVED this movie as a kid because it felt so realistic & authentic. They got so much right. Only thing they got wrong was that their Climate Change was Global Cooling, not warming. (and yes, that’s a young, dark haired, Kim Cattrall…and a few other faces familiar to Canuckistan audiences, mostly for comedy & children’s TV of all things.)
Then I am screwed…no can eat fish…I guess their is always tofu (would rather eat the fish poop)…..thanx for the link….I will watch and comment a little later…..
Yeah, as if a coffee swilling, news force-feed junkie who posts 10 stories a day can sit still for 1 hour and 26 minutes! And someday, I’m going to learn how to post links to videos, rather than imbed them. But at least this one was highly relevant.
Haven’t seen this forgotten, low budget, movie in 15+ years, but that cow scene is burned into my memory. Maybe because I grew up next to a dairy farm. Every time I think of the impending Collapse, I think of this movie. Corn fed innocents trying to hold onto their humanity vs the grisly reality of societal collapse. Groovy clothes, autos & musical score, too. This is NOT a very good print of the film, so unfortunately the video & sound isn’t very clear. But hey, it still makes me nostalgic for the grisly future the past saw coming.
Oh shit! And unless you turn your silo unit into a coffee themed episode of Hoarders, coffee will certainly be out of the equation too. When the shit hits the fan, maybe you want to opt for the film’s urban family’s final pot roast dinner…also burned into my memory. Other than a couple other scenes, the rest is a little fuzzy after 15 years. I’ll have to watch it again myself.
You are right…the movie was shoddy and I made it thru about 48 minutes….the music was cheesy the hair-dos too retro….and the cow scene was a Bambi moment….did they ever get the damn tractor to work?
you were right too does sound familiar to some of the predictions of today….
Clint Walker? The acting was horrible I guess his only hit was the TV show Cheyenne for WB back in the 60’s…
(Talk about over-acting. The following is some Shatner-esque over-acting to defend a movie nobody has ever seen. But it sure beats my 2nd choice…thinking about drones.)
Hey, in the modern dystopia in which we live, there’s NO such thing as “too retro” in my book! These days, cheesy outdated notions like “constitutional rights”, “democracy” & “peace time” are also openly mocked as “too retro”. I say we need more retro in this world! 🙂 We need more lines like:
Rich But Starving Charles: “The business. Can I give you my business?”
Food Hoarding Shyster Crook Logan: “What would I do with a computer business? There’s nothing left to compute.”
Rich people begging for food? Technology rendered meaningless? Maybe the collapse does have a silver lining!
I saw a MUCH better print of the film 15 years ago. This print, especially on a goddamn computer screen , is fairly hard to watch. The lack of clarity in both picture & sound really hurts the movie’s watchability and allows a few shortcomings to get noticed. The indoor scenes suffered because they were supposed to be using candle light due to chronic electrical shortages. That made some scenes look almost as orange as ex-Speaker, John Boner. The musical score was really hurt by the low quality sound. The soundtrack in the print I saw, while still very groovy, had a more haunting Clockwork Orange tone to it.
Granted, my favourite movie genres are 70’s Drive-in movies and “dystopian future” films, so I’m a fish-in-a-barrel for this one. But on the whole, I think the “subdued” acting style and the low budget feel made the movie far more believable. Remember, these were supposed to be ordinary 1970’s rural Canucks, not 2015 model-turned-actors from big, crime-infested, American cities whose only connection to manure was the big budget pieces of CGI driven Hollywood bullshit they star in. I hate that ultra-glossy, overproduced, overacted, unrealistic shit. Michael Bay can eat a bag of dicks!!!
As someone -er- VERY familiar with ordinary 70’s rural Canucks…I can say these guys absolutely “nailed it”! Hell, I knew a dairy farmer exactly like Clint Walker’s character, minus the moustache. You could shoot him in the nuts and he wouldn’t lose control of his emotions! Even in the face of the Apocalypse, Canucks…especially of the rural 70’s variety…would be naive, polite, apologetic and a little tongue tied. (See: the discussions of rationing, a concept NO American could wrap their head around) And the movie’s Canuckistan audience would expect this from a movie clearly set in rural Ontario. Set it in an American city and Canucks would be ready to smugly mock the American propensity to mindless violence & total anarchy as a “first & only” option. 😉
The film’s strength was in the imperfection, the understatement, and the “Relax. It’ll be alright -eh?” attitude in the face of certain death. Ordinary people trying to hang on to the ordinary in the face of extraordinary crisis. Which is the exact opposite of today. Everything, even a pre-season high school football game is “the most important thing in the history of the universe”. A movie car chase must defy the laws of physics to look more intense, have 7,000 rounds fired and several massive explosions that the overpaid stars miraculously survive. The Apocalypse is far more like Deadly Harvest (Or Soylent Green) than that vastly over-hyped, godless awful, 2012 bullshit.
As for the family tractor, (SPOILER ALERT!) the farm equipment makes a triumphant (but futile) comeback. And that brings up one of the sad ironies of this movie. Since Toronto & nearly every other Canadian city has sprawled to at least double the size they were in ’77, odds are good the farmland featured in the movie has been taken over by the city….paved over, covered in big box stores and taken out of the food supply…one of the key points mentioned in the opening.
Anyway…I’ve babbled on long enough so that I don’t have to write about drones (Mission Accomplished)
But do muster up the strength to watch the last half of the movie….because that’s where the action picks up. And there’s also another really great “Bambi moment” in the city that serves as a nice bookend to the “family cow” scene.
But I’m already impressed a coffee addled, ADD-er like you made it as far as you did.
I still have it marked and will watch it soon….my frig crapped out so I will have to sit around waiting for the repairman…..will be the perfect time to watch the entire movie….
Will I have eggs in the silo?
If you don’t mind sharing your unit with a few chickens…yes!
But those eggs come ONLY while the chicken lives, and at best only 1 per day. To have a steady, long-term, supply, you need a breeding program. That means roosters and a decent sized flock. Remember, you ain’t gonna be able to drop by Farmer Jack’s place and give him some money for a replacement rooster. When The Collapse comes, your money will only be good as a fire starter. Farmer Jack will be a bullet ridden corpse and his chickens will all have been devoured by starving city folk rampaging the country-side looking for food.
Chickens would work very nicely, but only if your complex has a well secured enclosure. And if it does, that enclosure should be packed with wind, solar, outdoor veggie & grain growing and fruit trees small enough to be invisible from outside. Even with the mandatory coop, chickens take up very little space. They eat kitchen scraps and bugs they find. They also produce compost-able manure…and EGGS! I hear they even make decent pets, right up until Red the Rooster can’t get it up anymore and has to take a “wine bath” in a “hot tub”. (aka Coq au Vin)
However, depending on how isolated you are, crowing roosters are a possible security threat. One ill timed “cock-a-doodle-doo” and you’ve got an assault on your compound. And, while outside, you have to guard them from predatory birds. But your security staff could handle that…and maybe score a Bald Eagle roast for supper.
But as I stressed before, above ground food is ONLY to be done if The Collapse doesn’t go nuclear/biological. If you get the chance, buy the relevant detection equipment.
Thought to self: How have I NOT watched Doomsday Preppers yet?