Consider that in the early 1940s when the Shah had just come to power that the average wage in Iran was $160. Just twenty-five years later the average wage had shot up to $2,540. That was the Shah’s final year of being in power . . . 1978 [Pauses as tears well up in his eyes.]
So the question is, how did he fall?
The Shah was pro-Western and pro-free market and sought peace with Israel, even coming to their aid when they needed oil. Unfortunately, the thing that I believe worked against him was that he was anti-Communist. He was generally regarded as a Western ally, but not by the Communist sympathisers that you had infiltrating just about every level of your government at that time. The Shah was the main guy opposing the Soviet expansion in the Middle East. Of course, Communists wanted our oil. Who wouldn’t? The Communist foreign policy-makers in the US and Britain began with a propaganda campaign against the Shah. The Communist mouthpiece, or the “Western media” as you call them, were only too happy to oblige and spread this propaganda far and wide.
At home, the mullahs were upset that women were studying at university, could wear bikinis, and had the same rights as men. These mullahs thirsted for a return to the old days, when the population was shackled by the theological class and trapped under blind subservience. We were also betrayed by President Jimmy Carter. It was a combination of those factors which brought the Shah down in 1979.
Today, you may question how such a revered man as the Shah was toppled in just three years. Bear in mind that in those days there was no internet, no way for any opposing voices to dispute the ridiculous claims that were made against our Shah.
Once the Shah fell, we were subjected to the Ayatollah Khomeini’s terror regime, and you better believe everything changed overnight. What was once a land of freedom, education and opportunity became a police state. I clearly remember people being flogged half to death by the police. Their crime? Drinking a can of beer. A woman’s worse nightmare came not from a crime committed against her, but when she went to the police station and reported the crime - she could then expect to be gang raped by the police.
The standard of living for the average Iranian declined about thirty percent in a decade. The tyranny of the Ayatollah government produced poverty. We had been wrenched back in time to the early 1900s, before the Shah, to a time of ruins, illiteracy, widespread corruption and pure misery. All that human potential gone . . . the Persian scientists . . . the innovation . . . all the things we could have offered the world. [Shakes his head.]
Before the protests in 2018 the Iranian people had a series of smaller protests. I should point out the way that our women protested living under tyranny. Our women were still able to go to university, but given the choice of entering a marriage where she had no rights many women chose prostitution as a means of putting themselves through university and then supporting themselves with a well-paid job. The birth rate plummeted from an average of seven children per woman in the Shah’s time to about one point seven under the Ayatollah’s rule. Such a drop in fertility has never been seen before in history. This greying of our nation, this closing of the Iranian womb, should give you some idea of the national despair we felt, of how much we despised the government we lived under.
So, in 2018 we stood up to the government. We showed the military that not only would we not back down but we would also fight back. They were astonished by that, wondering why civilians who were barely armed would rush towards soldiers with house knives and shovels. It’s true, it took real courage to do that. But then again, by that time the zombies had also arrived, and there’s nothing quite like an army of ghouls bearing down on your cities to motivate you to fight for your country. There was a horrendous loss of life brought about by the soldiers and government we were at war with and also the living dead who sprang up everywhere. In the end when the smoke cleared and showed a country reduced to rubble there were almost too few of us left to even try and rebuild anything at all. [Smiles grimly.]
I’m sure you’ve learned by now that your own freedoms and liberties can be taken away in a moment. There is that saying, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” but that’s only part of the quote, and actually creates a false interpretation of the original quote, which in full goes like this, “Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it sure burned in one.”
MARYBOROUGH, AUSTRALIA
Interviewer: Mick Franklin
INTERVIEW 5:
This small town is about three-hour drive outside the city of Melbourne and was once home to a gold rush in Australia. Visitors such as Mark Twain had travelled here. Now the community supports about ten thousand civilians in farmland and small properties, all of which own firearms and have mandatory practice every month at the local shooting range.
Konstantin Savvidis is a large man, weighing close to one hundred and thirty kilograms and much of that is muscle. This gentle giant offers me a glass of water drawn from the reserve beneath the town. Behind us in a large tin shed Kon’s brother Lazarus is teaching a martial arts class. The sweltering heat has my shirt sticking to my body but the intensity of the class has not lessened at all from the temperature.
Before the War I was a guy who loved my cars and loved training in martial arts. Those were my two hobbies. I have a large family and I spent a lot of time with them too. I had applied to be a prospect for the Hell’s Angels in Australia. This meant that I had to be interviewed first, and the only way to even get an interview with a group like that was for someone they really trusted, like either a Hell’s Angels member or a biker associate, to recommend you. I knew someone like that, my brother Laz. He arranged the interview for me.
How did that go?
I was terrified. But the Hell’s Angels were really nice to me. They had decided that we should meet up in a biker bar, the kind of place I had never set foot in before. They offered me a beer and I accepted it, even though I don’t drink. They asked me questions: What I thought I would be doing in the Hell’s Angels, and what appealed to me the most about joining. I told them that I loved the sense of brotherhood I could see they had, and as I came from a large family myself, I thought that would naturally suit me.
When they asked me what I thought I could bring to the table I told them I’m pretty knowledgeable about cars and can fix just about any type of engine, I’m reliable and don’t go around upsetting people, and I also train regularly. Even in those days, I trained as a powerlifter with my brother. We also trained in a wide range of martial arts, from grappling to kickboxing. It’s been a lifelong interest for both of us.
So, I was taken on as a prospect. The Hell’s Angels are very strict when it comes to meetings. They had a rule that if you missed more than one meeting in a row you were out. I never missed a single meeting, no matter what was going on in the rest of my life. I thought that being a prospect would be glamorous, that because I wore the vest that said “Hell’s Angels Prospect” on my back that every time I walked down the street men would drool in envy and fear and women would rip their clothes off and hurl themselves at me [Laughs.] The reality was a little different to that. I had to run a lot of errands, none of it was overly difficult, but quite a lot of it would be at inconvenient times such as the middle of the night, or else when something else really exciting and cool was happening with the club. I could be told to go and pick up a car from a mechanic, deliver packages . . . I wasn’t told what was inside them and I never checked . . . I was also asked to follow people as well.
I didn’t get in to much trouble as a prospect. I had envisioned that I might be fighting people every weekend, in which case I probably would have backed out of the club because I don’t actually like violence. Instead, my time as a prospect went mostly peacefully. Then one day about twelve months after I had become a prospect I was called in to the club and our President was there. It was Peter Murphy, former heavy weight boxing champion of Australia.
Have you ever seen those documentaries that show you what Neanderthal men looked like, with broad faces, huge shoulders, and big mu
scly frames? That’s what Peter looked like, but with a shaved head. With many violent people, they don’t actually look like they’re capable of much but with Peter one look at him and anyone would say, “Yeah, that’s a real killer.” Funny thing is that he was a true gentleman.
However, nice guy that he was, on that day he wasn’t smiling. They called me in to the club and sat me down. Everyone was real serious. I was worried, but I didn’t say anything.
Big Peter asked me, “Kon, do you think you’ve been a good prospect?”
I answered, “Yes, sir, I’ve always taken my responsibilities very seriously.”
He just looked at me for about a minute and then said, “Because I think you’ve done a shit job as a prospect. You’re the worst I’ve ever seen.”
I swallowed and said, “With respect, sir, I disagree with you.”
Peter said, “I don’t think you can even be relied on to clean a toilet without falling in. I wouldn’t trust you to pour me a beer let alone wear the club colours. I’ve seen you ride your bike and a three-year-old kid could do better. Do you really think you have what it takes to be a Hell’s Angel? Because I sure don’t. You’re out of the club, Kon.”
“Sir, I respect your decision, but I also disagree with you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes, sir.”
Peter had turned his back to me with his arms folded in disgust, then he said, “That’s good, because I was just playing with you,” he had a huge smile on his face when he extended his hand to me and shook my hand, “Welcome to the club! You’re a Hell’s Angel now!”
He pulled me to my feet and everyone cheered. That has to be the proudest moment of my life. Laz said that was one of the best initiations he’d ever seen. Everyone was clapping and most of the club began drinking beer. I declined and had a few glasses of soft drink instead. But it was such a happy time. Later that night we got the first reports of the outbreak. The zombie war had reached Australia.
What were the first signs something was wrong?
Apart from the news reports, we suddenly saw a lot more traffic on the roads. Our club was based just outside of Melbourne and there was a huge exodus of people fleeing the city during the Panic. Our club had a meeting and discussed what we should do. Almost unanimously, we voted to help. A scouting party was sent to the city to assess what was going on there. The bikes could get onto footpaths easier and manoeuvre through abandoned cars and traffic fairly well, but the guys still had a difficult task actually making it to Melbourne.
They came back a day later and reported the city was in chaos. The news reports were true –the dead had returned to life. The police were kept busy all the time not only with the zombie threat, but also with the looting and violence. The fire service was working twenty-four hour shifts because buildings were burning in the cities and away from them there were bushfires raging out of control. Australia is overall a very hot country so to have people intentionally light fires . . . The army was also being mobilised to deal with the threat, but the problem had been sprung too quickly for any real organised response. Besides, people were just going mad in those early days. No one had any reliable information. Ordinary people were just grabbing what they could from home, most of it not even helpful for survival, and just hitting the road. God only knows where they thought they were going.
What was the likelihood of them surviving away from the cities and suburbs?
In a country like Australia? Practically zero. You know, prior to the War we had loads of tourists die every year in Australia because they would jump in a car and want to go into the Outback. They would go into the middle of nowhere without having told anyone first and then when their car broke down all they could sit and do was wait for another car to stop and help them. Don’t get me wrong, most people are nice and they would stop and help if they saw someone broken down on the side of the road. The problem is that many of these roads in the Outback only had one car travelling on them every two weeks. If a person was stranded out there, the odds of them being found in time were not good.
The correct way to go into the Outback was to visit your local police station first and tell them where you were going, which roads you intended to take and how long you would be out there. Then if you never reported in to a police station on the other side of your journey, at least the alarm would be raised and people would come looking for you and would know where to look. There were also guidelines about what to take with you in the car, like how many litres of water you should carry, which spare parts for the car you should take, and so on.
During the Panic, I don’t think many of the city folk thought to pack much of that stuff. Hell, most of them had never even left the suburbs before. They had gone from living in a super-civilised society with air conditioning in almost every building to suddenly having to survive in a harsh wasteland with scorching heat, very little water, little food and almost no shelter.
The heat can affect you quite quickly out there. Even people who knew what they were doing, like bushmen and gold prospectors, they could easily become confused due to the heat and then start making really stupid decisions, like wandering away from their car or trying to walk across a desert. A friend of mine did that, he was determined to walk across a lifeless desert wearing his bike leathers, all because the heat had gotten to him. No matter what I said he was determined to go. I had to punch him in the jaw and physically restrain him to make him stay. Later, when he had recovered and was himself again, he thanked me for it.
It is not a pleasant death dying out there. When a person is dehydrated, they reach a point where they can’t even move. They’ll be sitting there on the road leaning against a car, still aware of everything while a crow lands on their chest and pecks their eyes out, unable to stop it happening. It’s a horrible way to go.
Another danger is that so much of Australia is flat. What I mean by that is that if you are stranded somewhere with a broken down car you can’t just climb a tree or a hill and look for which direction the nearest town is in. No, everything looks the same out there and the trees can obscure your view by a surprising amount. I did find a few people who starved to death or died from the heat and were walking distance from a friendly town.
I would think during the Panic many people died from the heat.
Yeah, I think the number was in the hundreds of thousands, although don’t quote me on that. It could be less, could be more. I mean, there are so many other things that can kill you out there. I think six out of ten of the world’s deadliest snakes are in Australia. We’ve got lots of poisonous spiders too, for example if you get bitten by a funnel-web spider and don’t have someone nearby who can drive you to hospital then it’s game over. Simple starvation was another killer. So was freezing to death.
Freezing to death?
You wouldn’t think it, would you? But in the Outback, the temperature can drop by thirty degrees at night. That means that someone fleeing the city might be prepared for the heat, might have enough water, food, maps and other survival gear, but still dies anyway because they didn’t have anything to keep them warm at night. What I normally do is dig a hole and then just before going to bed I put the embers from the campfire in there and cover it with dirt. That way, I have a nice warm bed for the night regardless of how cold it gets.
So, what did the Hell’s Angels do to help?
First of all, there were millions of people on the roads fleeing the cities that were absolutely swarming with ghouls. Anytime someone’s car broke down or they ran out of fuel then they were at risk of being overtaken by these enormous armies of zombies that were leaving the cities in search of food in the suburbs and beyond. We were all armed with rifles, shotguns and handguns. The gun laws in Australia were pretty good before the War, and what we couldn’t attain through legal channels, we were adept at acquiring “off the books”. But even an organised group like us couldn’t fight that many zombies, certainly not in the time that it would take everyone to make it to safety. And again, we ha
d the problem that there were few established safe zones.
We started by driving our bikes past the swarms, getting their attention and directing them away from people. A Harley Davidson is quite loud, and we could certainly draw a lot of zombies that way. Next, we could co-ordinate a defence, at least in places that we thought had the potential to be defended. Usually these towns were well away from the cities that had lots of open space where you could see zombies approaching you. These small towns also had the advantage that everybody was already familiar with everybody there, so that made teamwork much easier and meant that any strangers who turned up were immediately identified – remember that not everybody has good intentions.
Many of us bikers were former soldiers. We set checkpoints leading in to towns that were always manned; we usually posted a few men on bikes to act as scouts to report if any ghouls or any other threat was headed our way. That gave us lots of time to set up traps and dig ditches. We blew up quite a few zombies by detonating roadside bombs at strategic points or even using the noise of our bikes to lure them out into fields, trapping them there by closing the gates and then burning them all alive . . . or burning them while they were still moving, I should say.
Zombie War: Interviews From The Frontline Page 4
