Korean Chaos

by Pete Thorsen

  So why are all three of these world players constantly taunting each other? All three do it. They fly military planes or sail military ships into the others’ space just to try and get a reaction. Or to show they are not scared of you type thing. At first glance, it all seems childish.

  But it is also very dangerous. When any foreign ships or planes enter another’s space the home team always sends out fighter jets to intercept. Then you have the heavily armed military on two sides in very close proximity playing a deadly game of chicken with each other. Sooner or later there is bound to be an accident. And such an accident could escalate into an almost world destroying war or certainly a world changing war.

  Karen and I plan for some emergencies or disasters. But you cannot really plan for worldwide thermo-nuclear war. Not that it wouldn’t be survivable, but it would mean living in a totally changed world. We have researched nuclear war, the effects, and the survivability. While it is the thing of nightmares, even a full nuclear exchange by all countries will not wipe out the human race. But it will kill millions or billions and change the world.

  Who knows the likelihood of that happening. A limited nuclear exchange is a more likely scenario, but still, it would be a horrifying event. Besides the major players of the USA, Russia, and China you have all the minor nuclear players. England, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel, are all armed with nukes. And then there are the countries that might have such weapons or have the capability to have them, such as Iran or Japan.

  There are also NATO countries where the United States commonly keeps some nukes at times. Examples might be Belgium, Germany, Turkey, Italy, and some others. So there are nukes spread all around the globe. Along with nuclear-armed submarines that could be anywhere in any ocean of the world. Many countries have mobile nuclear missile launchers that can be put on any larger ship. Nuclear bombs can also be carried by many bombers and so quickly dispatched anyplace in the whole world.

  If you think about this much, it is a wonder that the world is still here. All this destructive power spread all over the world every minute of every day, all depending on ever changing world leaders to keep their cool and keep their fingers off the button. And many different people in the military of many different nations who could have a personal meltdown and trigger this destructive power by accident or on purpose without their leaders direct orders to do so.

  That does not even consider all the countless terrorist organizations scattered around the world that are constantly trying to build or acquire one or many nuclear weapons with the full intent of using them immediately on someone or even on anyone.

  So yes, informed people have at least some reason to be concerned about war and many other things. The key thing is to keep informed but not to dwell on negative things and still lead a healthy and happy life.

  So that is what we do at the William Larson (commonly called Lars) household. And why we are now contemplating something new.

  We have never taken a trip or even a honeymoon. At first, we were just too poor. And then just too busy and then our lovely daughter came into our lives. Now that we can afford a vacation and Karen can get time off work and I can take time off my business we are talking it over.

  There is certainly appeal in seeing sights we have never seen before, and there are places in the States that we would like to visit. And really there is little reason for us not to go and spend some time away as a family. We are both quite sure we would have fun. But there just seems to be something holding us back.

  So we make excuses not to go. Cassy is too young to enjoy it. Or I hate to lose the business when I am so busy right now. Or another girl at work just took maternity leave so it would be hard to leave now. Or the fruit trees are all producing right now so we can’t go now. There is always something. And all the flimsy excuses cause no friction between us. Both of us seem relieved instead when the other thinks of a new excuse to put off any traveling for now.

  But we are happy to be together at home, so I guess there is no real reason to leave anyway. I was still fairly busy at work, but that would be changing as fall turned into winter. Every spare minute I am now spending picking fruit or berries. The berries I just clean and freeze, so those are pretty easy.

  The fruit is a little more work because those have to be cleaned, sliced, and put in the dehydrators. Then later removed from the dryers and put into bags or plastic containers. Sometimes we do use regular fruit jars, and we vacuum seal the jars full of the dried fruit with our vacuum sealer and the jar adapter.

  On the weekend Karen made some jelly with the fresh berries, some apple butter with the fresh apples along with an apple pie. We had plenty of room in the freezer, so she told me to freeze some of the apples for pies and cobbler in the winter.

  We likely eat too much fresh fruit during the time when they are ripe and can be picked. Luckily all the different fruits do not get ripe at the same time. In the mornings we have fresh fruit mixed with our oatmeal or cold cereal. Throughout the day we snack on fresh fruit and often have something for dessert that includes fruit. Cassy enjoys most of the different kinds, and it’s something that is healthy for her to eat.

  The dried fruit is used for about all the same things. In cereal, for snacks, mixed in many things we bake, like bread. Once dry the fruit lasts a long time as does the frozen fruit. The dried fruit would easily last until the next season without spoilage. We use electric dehydrators. We have two, and we bought extra trays for them so we can do more drying at the same time.

  When using the extra trays, we shuffle the trays during the drying process, so everything in there dries evenly and finishes at the same time. I found plans on the internet and built two passive solar dehydrators for us to use also.

  While those home-made ones do work, we always use the electric ones which dry faster and can be used indoors making them much handier. Obviously, the solar ones only work on sunny days also. I put the solar ones in storage. We have them, and they do work, but we will only use them if we need to for extra capacity.

  Here in the fall, my business slows, and that is great because as soon as the fruit work is done, it is time for me to start hunting. It’s my time of the year.

  Chapter 5

  The first thing is dove hunting. I usually wait until the teal season opens so I have the opportunity to shoot both when I go out. I use all steel shot anyway, so it works out for me. The dove and teal hunting gets me ready for the turkey season.

  You can only shoot two turkeys, and I often shoot both in one day. I am not after large old toms and usually wait until I can shoot younger birds. They are way more tender, and I believe they taste better too.

  After I get my two turkeys, I usually shoot a few rabbits and squirrels. Many don’t hunt for either of these, and while they do not have a lot of meat on them the meat tastes really good, so I figure they are well worth going after.

  Then quail, waterfowl, and pheasant seasons open up. I hunt all of those pretty hard. And I hunt as much as I can right up until deer season opens. Usually, I can get a buck and a doe. There is an antler restriction here, so the buck has to have four points or more on one side of his antlers to be a legal deer.

  There are plenty of deer, and I usually have no problem. I have been hunting deer for many years and know what I am doing. During all my other hunting prior to deer season, I am always watching for deer and deer sign. I always have several spots picked out to go before the season opens.

  After I get my deer, I go back to other game again until seasons close. I try to fill the freezer if I can every year. We eat all the meat, and it is good for us too. We do turn some of the deer meat into jerky that we make ourselves. All the meat is processed here at home. The cost of processing a deer at even a part-time butcher is over a hundred dollars now. Thanks but we will butcher our own.

  Really other than a large amount of fruit and the fair amount of wild game meat, we buy everything else. The small amount we get from our little garden hardly counts for anything
. But food in the United States is plentiful and relatively cheap. While there is always a safety issue with any kind of food that you buy, overall it is pretty safe. Yes, it makes the news when some company screws up, but that is a tiny fraction of the food people are buying and eating. And if food is cooked thoroughly there is very little danger of any kind of sickness.

  Because we buy most of our food, we do stock up whenever there is a sale on something we generally buy. We always have a fair supply of regular food in the house. We do also have a second supply of food. By mutual agreement by Karen and I, we have purchased a fair amount of Long Term Storage food.

  We bought no kits, or package deals, or six-month selection or anything like that. Instead, we looked at everything that was available and only purchased food that we knew we would eat and eat now. We did buy quite a variety, so if and when we did start eating it we would have plenty of choices.

  We decided right away not just to buy what someone else recommended. Everyone has different likes and different needs. Thanks but we will just pick out our own selection. We were hardly going to buy three pails of lentils when we have never eaten lentils. Maybe they are great, but they have never been part of our diet.

  Making a big change in your diet can cause you many problems. And if we are talking about eating LTS foods that means if you are eating them chances are there are big problems around you. Not a good time to drastically change your diet and face even more problems at a time when enough stuff is going on anyway.

  So we bought and stored just things like we normally eat anyway. That way if down the road if we decide to cycle through some of the LTS food to rotate the stock, we would still be eating normally. Maybe instead of having frozen sweet corn we would just be eating dried, reconstituted sweet corn instead. Not that much of a change.

  And we were practical about buying things for ‘just in case.' We live in the country in the middle of America in Missouri. There just is not all that much that would normally happen to us here. Other than maybe damage to the county road we did not have to worry about floods here at our place. A huge blizzard was extremely unlikely. A tornado was certainly a possibility but I made the basement very strong, and we would always be safe down there even from a direct hit from a tornado. The house might be gone, but we would be safe.

  Most natural disasters were not much of a threat to us here in this location. Man-made disasters were another thing entirely. Like a pandemic which might be natural but to me more likely to be man-made and certainly man transported. Something like that would cover the whole country so where you lived in America would make little difference.

  A pandemic is something that I think at some point in time will likely happen. Whether it would be natural is possible, but I feel it is more likely that a weaponized bug will ‘get away’ at some point. Maybe released on purpose by terrorists or a rogue country. Or maybe just a single doctor or scientist that has access and for whatever personal reason releases a weaponized virus on an unsuspecting population.

  It’s a big world out there with a whole lot of dangerous stuff, and anything can happen. People from all walks of life around the world commit suicide every single day. Some of those people might just have access to some kinds of weapons, maybe very powerful weapons of some kind. What is to stop them when they decide to commit suicide not to take a million or a billion other people with them?

  So while I feel quite safe here where we live, I also admit to the possibility that nowhere is totally safe. And while you can prepare for many different things that might happen, you can never prepare for everything. I know that so we just do what we feel is enough so we can sleep sound at night.

  Neither Karen nor I ever talk about preparedness with anyone, not even our friends. We never say anything about what we have done or what we have stored here. Our friends know we have a small orchard of course, but they do not think we have that orchard for preparedness reasons. They think we just like to eat the fruit and give some to them.

  Many of our friends know we have a generator, but they also know that is not uncommon for everybody around here living in the country to own one. They never think the generator might be an item for us to prepare for a big disaster.

  Most of our friends know we have guns. They think we have them for hunting, for protection from a burglar, or just to collect them. They never think we might have guns just in case there is a complete breakdown in the rule of law and everyone has to protect themselves from the total anarchy.

  We are friends, but they do not have to know everything about us. And while we sometimes drop hints of different preparedness things that might make sense for someone we never say too much or that we have done something. And on occasion, a couple of our friends have done a few simple things like keeping some extra food in the house in case they get snowed in or something to that effect.

  We want to help them get ready themselves just in case something ever does happen. But we would never come right out and say that. So instead it is just occasional hints. Or if we see something on TV we might say “Oh that might not be such a bad idea” or something to that effect. Just an innocent comment.

  Chapter 6

  North Korea has me worried. With Russia and China, you are at least dealing with rational people. They may not like us, and they may want us to fail, but they are rational. Not so with North Korea. The leader there continues to make outlandish threats against America at least once a week. The people of North Korea from birth are taught to hate America and are fed anti-American propaganda throughout their whole lives. So they would totally back their leader if he says it’s time to attack the United States.

  And lately, we have been threatening them back with military action. Obviously, North Korea could not fight and win a war with the United States. But there are many reasons for us not to attack North Korea.

  One reason is they have a treaty or agreement with China for military aid in case of attack. That is what happened back in the fifty’s when we fought in North Korea; the Chinese sent in aid and troops. Would China back North Korea again, up to even using nuclear weapons against us? That is the big question.

  Another reason not to attack the North is that South Korea is our ally. And they fully know the threat the North poses to them. But there is an issue there.

  North Korea has an amazing amount of artillery. Some of it is old, but it can still shoot. And that huge amount of artillery (like thousands of pieces) is very near the North’s southern border, and unfortunately, the largest city in South Korea is within easy range of all those pieces of artillery.

  That artillery is ready to shoot all the time. And it is in covered, hardened positions, so it has at least some protection even from direct bombing. And there is just so much of it. If America or South Korea attacked North Korea, those artillery units would start firing into the South’s city of Seoul, which has a population of around ten million civilians. Many tens of thousands or even possibly hundreds of thousands could die.

  Then there is the fact that we have a strong military base in South Korea very near the border with North Korea and also well within the range of their artillery. The base has about twenty-five thousand or more Americans on it all the time, and at the first hint of an attack North Korea would shell our base and kill thousands of those American troops some of which have their families there on base with them who would also die.

  And that is just if North Korea attacked using standard artillery. What if they used chemical or biological weapons? They certainly have those, and they do have nuclear weapons. What if they used those?

  North Korea has tested Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that are capable of hitting Hawaii and much of the continental USA. There is some question on whether they have the ability to place powerful nuclear warheads on those missiles, yet. If they do not have that ability today, they certainly will soon. At that point, they could nuke America, and there would be little we could do to stop those missiles when they are in flight.

  It i
s a catch-22 for America. With North Korea telling the world all the time that they will nuke the USA it seems that maybe we should stop them before they get the ability to carry out that threat and kill millions of Americans. But if we do use our military to stop that threat, thousands of South Koreans and thousands of American troops stationed there will die. And there is still the chance that North Korea could launch a nuke before we could destroy all their facilities and totally remove that threat.

  It is a totally unacceptable situation with no good remedies to change it. So Americans go about their daily lives every day and do not even think about the very real threat that North Korea might launch one or more nuclear missiles into the United States just because the leader there feels like today is the day. There would likely be very little if any warning. They have mobile launchers that can launch from concealment. Once launched the travel time is well under an hour.

  Obviously, if they ever did decide to launch nuclear missiles against us at the same time, they would start firing all their available artillery into South Korea and our base there. They also have a very large standing Army that they undoubtedly would send into South Korea. They also have many submarines that they would use to bolster any attack and with medium range missiles that they would likely use to strike Japan.

  So yes I am concerned about North Korea. I am not shaking in my boots or running around like my hair is on fire, but I am concerned. We have done nothing here at home to address this concern, and neither of us can think of anything else to do. So we just keep an eye on the news and go about our lives.

  I had a good season hunting, and the freezer is full of meat. We have plenty of food in storage, and we have some gasoline stored for the generator. Winter came and is now starting to fade into spring. Life goes on.