Andy explained his situation to the owners, who were delighted and captivated by his story. He splurged on a bath, a shave, and a haircut, and then laundered most of his clothes. Along with his room and dinner, a horse stall, hay, and oats, his stay at the trading post cost him two five-peso silver coins. Andy felt thoroughly spoiled, sleeping in a real bed in a heated room. But he had trouble getting to sleep, worrying about his horse, and feeling anxious about getting back to his fiancée and his brother. Oddly, he missed the sound of Prieto’s tail swishing.
On the morning of Sunday, November 11, twenty-five months after he had left Afghanistan, Andrew Laine awoke early. He carried his AK, pack, and saddlebags down to the stable. Prieto greeted him with a couple of snorts. Andy said critically, “What, you gettin’ noisy in your old age? Do I smell too darned civilized for you? Well, I missed you, too, pal.” He gave Prieto a quick brush down and examined his hooves. The many miles of riding had not been kind to Prieto’s hooves, which were worn down almost to the frog. Andy now wished that he’d been able to get Prieto shod before their journey. As he saddled the horse, he promised: “Just a few hours, and you’ll be in alfalfa hay up to your eyeballs, buddy.”
Too anxious to eat much breakfast, he munched on an apple and some Indian fry bread as he rode. For the first time in many months, he was self-conscious about dripping on his shirt. Andy declared, “Lord, let this be my last day traveling. Please, Lord, if you so will!”
The guards at the roadblock south of Farmington were satisfied when Andy showed them his surname stamped on his dog tags, and explained that he was the brother of Lars Laine. They seemed impressed to hear that he had ridden his horse all the way from Belize. Andy was surprised to see that the guards at the roadblock had three swivel-mounted muzzle-loading cannons. “Yeah, those are our ‘engine block’ guns. They shoot standard two-and-three-eighths-inch-diameter pistons. They’ll go clean through a car. There are thousands of them that are available used around here, from the natural gas fields. Before the Crunch, you could buy them at just scrap steel prices. They’re made out of 4140 stainless steel.”
As he approached Bloomfield, Andy realized that it was Sunday morning, and that his brother, Beth, and Kaylee would likely be at church by the time he reached the Refinery Road. So he pressed on to town, turned right at Blanco Road, and urged Prieto from a trot to a canter.
Lars, and Beth, Grace, Kaylee, and Shadrach were at church, while Reuben and Matthew were at home, guarding the ranch. As Andy rode his horse up to Berea Baptist, he could hear the congregation singing. He tied up his horse, unstrapped his pack from his saddle, and set it inside the church foyer. With his AK slung muzzle down, he slipped into the sanctuary. His hands were shaking with excitement.
The congregation was singing “Eternal Father, Strong to Save.” Demonstrating his flair for drama, Andy slipped in on Lars’s blind side unnoticed and stood behind him. Lars and Shadrach were in the second-to-last row of pews. Beth and Kaylee were one row farther forward. They were standing beside Grace and two other eight-year-old girls, holding hymnals for them as they usually did. Just after the hymn ended, Andy tapped his brother on the shoulder and said: “Sorry that I was a little late.” Lars gasped and grabbed Andy around his neck. Reaching into his shirt pocket and pulling out a plastic bag, Andy said, “Oh, I got those gas lamp mantles that you asked me to pick up for you on the way home.”
Kaylee nearly fainted. The church erupted into a huge commotion, with lots of hugs and back slapping. Shouts of “Praise God!’ spread like a wave across the church sanctuary. Even the two ladies in the nursery came out to give Andy a hug. Grace ran up to hug Andy around the waist, exclaiming, “Uncle Andy, we really missed you! You got so brown!”
The sermon, to mark Veterans Day, was in praise of military service and its biblical context. Andy and Kaylee sat holding hands all through it, intently gazing at each other, not paying much attention to the pastor’s words. After the closing hymn and benediction, Andy stood up and announced, “I’ve never been one to waste any time, so I’d like to ask everyone to stay for a brief ceremony.” Kaylee put on a huge smile and gave him a hug. Twenty minutes later they were married.
Moreland, Kentucky
December, the Third Year
In parts of the territory controlled by the Provisional Government, the supply of gasoline preceded the restoration of grid power. This was the case in most of western Tennessee and western Kentucky. In what was later seen as a brilliant move, Greg Jarvis, the owner of Apogee Solar, in Moreland, Kentucky, ran an AC power line over rooftops two doors down to the gas station that was owned by his second cousin, Alan Archer. The station was open six hours a day, six days a week, and did a booming business. Before the advent of the ProvGov currency, regular gas was twenty cents a gallon, and both diesel and premium gas were twenty-five cents a gallon. These prices were in silver coin.
A prominent sign hand-painted on a four-by-eight sheet of plywood warned, “Silver coin or ammo only! No paper dollars, checks, debit cards, or credit cards accepted.” Archer and Jarvis worked out a credit arrangement with the Catlettsburg refinery. Under the terms of the agreement, they got gas and diesel in bulk at a 25 percent discount, and got their first two tank truck deliveries on credit. After that, they were able to pay in silver, from the proceeds of sales.
Within a few months, Jarvis and Archer launched several other enterprises. The first of these was a store selling packaged petroleum products—nothing larger than five-gallon cans, including kerosene, motor oil, and two-cycle fuel-mixing oil. By agreement, they charged the same prices as offered at the Catlettsburg refinery, but their profit came from buying in bulk at a discount. This store was located in one of the buildings that had “the big dang extension cord” draped over it—between Apogee Solar and the gas station.
The new Jarvis Lubricants store had previously housed a hardware store, but it had been stripped clean because the former owner had imprudently continued to accept payments in greenbacks. In the end he was left with a pile of worthless paper. He sold Jarvis the empty building and the remaining shelving for just two hundred dollars in silver coin. The new store was lit by a pair of 60-watt compact fluorescent lightbulbs. Nobody complained about the dim lighting.
Just as the crash began, Greg Jarvis had used a small-business loan to purchase 212 large REC brand photovoltaic panels at a closeout price. This served as his primary barter stock, through much of the Crunch. After the Crunch set in, he bought up as many deep-cycle batteries as he could find. Most of these came from a forklift company in Frankfort and from the golf cart fleets of two local golf courses. The shipment from Frankfort came by truck, COD, payable in silver. The batteries from the golf course owners were both barter transactions, paid for with compact solar power systems. One of these systems was installed on a golf cart, making the cart into a mobile, self-charging system.
Apogee also harnessed the excess power from their PV array that was not needed for their storefront by charging car and tractor batteries for a fee in their attached shop. This was a profitable business until the grid power was restored.
37
Assets
“Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution; for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.”
—Daniel Webster
Andrew Laine was thrilled to be at the ranch with his new bride. After the hardships of the trail, putting in four-hour guard shifts five days per week seemed trivial. After dinner for several nights in succession, Andy described to Lars, Lisbeth, Grace, Kaylee, and the Phelps boys all of his experiences. He started with his time in Afghanistan and then Germany, France, England, sailing on Durobrabis, Belize, and his horseback ride through Mexico to Texas and New Mexico. They were captivated and asked him d
ozens of questions. Andy felt comfortable in answering most of them except for the details about his gunfights. Regarding those, he clammed up and gave them only sketchy descriptions.
During the quiet winter months he made a living by braiding custom rifle slings, belts, and bridles. Once supplies of parachute cord got scarce, he switched to braiding with horsehair. The coarse hair from horses’ tails was more time-consuming to work with, but it was attractive, so he found that he could demand more for the finished product. In addition to the regular ranch chores, Andy also made a living the same way that the Phelps boys did: by hiring himself out during hay harvesting time.
Five months after his return, Andy and Kaylee bought a used Ford pickup truck. It was one of the almost countless white pickups that were seen in great numbers, driven by technicians who serviced natural-gas wellhead compressors. These trucks were typically equipped with tall “safety flags” that looked much like those used on dune buggies. The flags came into use in the 1960s, following a couple of spectacular head-on collisions, as pickups topped the rolling hills of the region on narrow, gravel roads. The field reps were notorious for driving fast, and gravel roads are unforgiving. Hundreds of these ubiquitous white pickup trucks sat idle after the Crunch set in. They were one of the key assets still held by the field service and field engineering companies. Only a small percentage of the field reps were still at work, so this left the majority of the trucks essentially surplus.
Andy thought that a field service truck would be the best choice for reliable transportation, since spare parts and tires were abundant. He realized that as the Crunch continued, gas and oil would be sporadically available, but that unless or until tire factories went back into production, tires would eventually become the key commodity. As he put it, “Just wait another four or five years. By then a like-new set of tires will be worth as much as an entire vehicle. Mark my words.” He practiced what he preached and soon bought eight spare tires—already on rims and balanced—which he stored in a dark back corner of the barn. He eventually bartered for another complete pickup with a blown engine that was the same model year as their own, just for use as a parts rig. From this they could cannibalize parts and of course five more tires on rims.
Their pickup cost twenty dollars face value in pre-1965 silver coins. Ironically, the flat-tan paint that they needed for camouflaging the truck cost almost as much at the truck itself. Trucks were common, but good camouflaging paint was scarce.
Other than the tan paint, the only significant change that Andy made to the pickup was having it retrofitted with a traditional ignition system and carburetor. These came off a 1977 pickup that used the same Ford engine block. His father had once mentioned his survivalist friends doing this to vehicles for EMP protection, but an added benefit was that once thus equipped, a gasoline engine could run on drip oil, the condensate waste by-product of natural-gas wells. (The light oil or hydrocarbon liquids condensed in a natural gas piping system when the gas is cooled. This was sometimes called natural gasoline, condensation gasoline, or simply “drip.”) A mixture of gasoline and drip oil can be burned in most engines. For an engine to run better on pure drip oil, they learned, it was best to retard the timing.
38
Threat Spirals
“Somewhere ahead I expect to see a worldwide panic-scramble for gold as it dawns on the world population that they have been hoodwinked by the central banks’ creation of so-called paper wealth. No central bank has ever produced a single element of true, sustainable wealth. In their heart of hearts, men know this. Which is why, in experiment after experiment with fiat money, gold has always turned out to be the last man standing.”
—Richard Russell
Bradfordsville, Kentucky
December, the Third Year
Sheila Randall was not happy with the advent of the new federal currency. It was produced in such great quantities that inflation set in very rapidly. Her solution was simple: She would continue to take pre-1965 silver coinage in payment, and she still marked all of her prices in silver coin. But on her whiteboard she posted a conversion table for calculating payments in “Fort Knox Dollars.” Initially, the multiplier was 10 to 1, but less than a year later it grew to 19 to 1. Everyone knew that that they were being robbed by the currency inflation, but there was nothing that they could do about it.
The old Federal Reserve notes were completely repudiated, but for the sake of convenience, pre-Crunch coinage was accepted at face value to serve as change for the new bills. (It was explained that minting and issuing new coinage would be a logistical nightmare for the fledgling government.) Thus, anyone who held large quantities of the old coinage had cause to celebrate. To “strengthen” the new Fort Knox dollars, the Hutchings government ordered the confiscation of all gold coins, all gold bullion, and any silver bullion bars 10 ounces or larger.
The bullion ban was largely ignored or circumvented, despite a death penalty for disobedience. Countless 100-ounce Engelhard and Johnson Matthey silver bars were band saw cut into ten pieces to get around the 10 ounce limit. Meanwhile, the total ban on private gold holdings helped contribute to the market value of silver rising in relation to gold, to the point where it took just 12 ounces of silver to buy 1 ounce of gold.
Much of the privately held gold bullion in the country was cast into rings. These were not intended to be worn, and in fact they were too soft to be worn regularly, since they were 24-karat. These rings were simply a means of avoiding prosecution under the bullion gold ban. Some of these rings were even stamped or engraved with their exact weight. Another substantial quantity of gold bullion was acquired by dentists, who took advantage of an exemption for “dental gold.” Much of this gold was traded for dentistry services.
The conversations that Sheila Randall had with her customers, and those that she overheard, began to take on an ominous tone. People began talking about the corruption, nepotism, and uneven justice dispensed by the Provisional Government. They soon spoke of putting up some sort of resistance to Maynard Hutchings and his cronies. Often they couldn’t articulate exactly how they might resist the government, but their voices became more and more strident as time went on. Gradually, it became clear that the Hutchings government would never restore the freedom and prosperity that they had been accustomed to before the Crunch. Sheila wondered: If people were being this vocal and this strident in public, then what must they be saying in the privacy of their homes? In a conversation with Deputy Dustin Hodges, Sheila asked, “What do you think will happen?”
“Well, I think there’s a civil war coming,” he answered gravely.
After a long pause, he added: “It’s pretty clear there’s no way that Hutchings and his camp followers are going to somehow magically reform themselves into an honest and law-abiding government all by themselves. They’re gonna need at least a push of some sort, and I have a feeling it’ll be a stout shove. And as for the ‘peacekeeping troops’ from the UN, there’s just more and more of them every day, right? I don’t see any solution except kicking them out of the country, because they’re going to continue to throw their weight around and make our lives miserable. They’re not here to restore order or to hand out charity. They’re just here to take and take and take.”
“So what are we going to do?” Sheila asked.
Hodges sighed. After another long pause, he answered, “We just keep our heads down and we pick our fights. If we come out slugging too soon, or fight them on their terms, then we’re going to get creamed. But if we pick the time and the place, then we can do some considerable damage and they won’t know what hit them.”
39
Whirlwind
“You are as much serving God in looking after your own children, training them up in God’s fear, minding the house, and making your household a church for God as you would be if you had been called to lead an army to battle for the Lord of hosts.”
—Charles Spurgeon
> The hundreds of thousands of Americans who were abroad when the Crunch began found themselves in a very difficult position. Those who were missionaries and tourists were largely forced to hunker down wherever they happened to be. With most airline and ship traffic halted, only a resourceful few, like Andrew Laine, were able to return to the U.S., in the first few years. Most of those who were stranded in non-English-speaking nations were quickly impoverished, and many died. American servicemen deployed overseas didn’t fare much better. Hot spots like Afghanistan and Bosnia (where there was renewed fighting between Christians and Muslims after the Crunch) became untenable death traps for U.S. troops. Cut off from logistical support, they fought on bravely, but eventually their casualties mounted to the point where the units lost integrity.
A few soldiers were able to extract themselves with escape and evasion tactics, but most died from starvation, exposure, illness, wounds, or execution after being captured. Half of the entire U.S. Marine Corps—heavily deployed in Afghanistan—was written off in this manner. The Maynard Hutchings government gave lip service to repatriating its stranded soldiers, sailors, and airmen, but in actuality it mostly did nothing.
There were a few notable exceptions. A contingent of U.S. Air Force technicians working at the solid-state phased-array radar system (SSPARS) at Clear Air Force Station, Alaska, survived two winters of isolation, eating mostly moose and bear meat. After a spring breakup, they loaded up in a mixture of military and civilian vehicles and convoyed to Fairbanks, Alaska. There they found that there was virtually no fuel available and the local populace was starving. With no other alternative, and joined by 372 residents of the Tanana Valley, they marched more than 1,500 miles to Lynden, Washington. What they dubbed “Colonel Haskins’ Hike for Health” took seven months.
Survivors - A Novel of the Coming Collapse Page 32
