Viral Survival

by Pete Thorsen

  She purchased a Beretta Tomcat in thirty-two caliber on top of the pistol she bought that was like mine. The thirty-two was certainly smaller and more compact while still being fairly heavy for its small size due to its steel construction. We shot both of her new pistols and both were certainly satisfactory in every way. The small auto could just be put in a pocket or even a small purse or fanny pack and be very un-noticeable while still offering the protection we were looking for.

  Bea immediately started carrying one of the two pistols with her every time she left the house. I do admit I felt better knowing she could defend herself if that need was ever necessary. I often carried my pistol in the glove compartment of my vehicle. At least I would have it with me when I was away from home that way.

  It was not just the protests that had us spooked. The Minneapolis/St Paul area was home to many Muslim refugees, the most of which were Somalia’s. Now these might be fine people but it was a fact that many did cause trouble in the area. I, like many in Minnesota, did not like it when the government relocated many thousands of them into our area. Close to half of all this nation’s Somalian refugees were relocated here to Minnesota.

  And it was not just Somalia’s refugees that were here but many others sharing the religion of Islam. Which, like most people, I don’t really care what religion or lack of religion someone is or is not. But the followers of Islam are different. Their religion is different simply because some of them are terrorists.

  The United States of America has been fighting Muslims (the followers of Islam) for many years. More years than the bulk of the population in this country even realize. We started having trouble with them before we were even a country in the seventeen hundreds.

  Now days we sometimes hear about Somalian pirates attacking some ship or another, but that was happening well over two hundred years ago, not only by them but also by several other Islamic countries in that area of the world. We started out by bribing them or paying “tributes” to them just so they would leave our ships alone. By 1800, 20% of America’s annual federal budget was consumed with tribute and ransom payments to Islamists. Obviously that was just not working out.

  So we went to war with these Islamists and, after fighting for some time, we won. European countries also fought their own separate wars with Islamists in that area. These wars led to many years of peace between Islamists and the rest of the world. This peace was the direct result of the threat of further wars and also the colonization of many of those countries by the European countries who had defeated them.

  Gradually the world changed and colonization was looked down on and those countries that had been colonized around the world regained their independence. This happened many places and some of those places found peaceful coexistence with the rest of the world’s nations.

  It also led to Muslims gaining power in large areas again. Unchecked power. This eventually led to countless terror attacks around the world. Our own 9/11 attack is just one example. This led to the Unites States fighting Muslims in several countries in the world again, which is still going on to this day.

  At the same time that America is fighting with and killing Muslims in far away spots in the world, our own government is also bringing countless Muslim “refugees” into this country. What a bizarre scenario! Many thousands of Americans are dead or have been wounded by Muslims and our government is still bringing them into this country.

  Whether you think every single one of these “refugees” is a good person or not, just think for a minute how totally different our two cultures are to each other. Our cultures are almost opposites! How are they supposed to integrate and assimilate into our society? Well, I can tell you for the most part they aren’t and won’t.

  Some, many, or even most of these Muslims do not want to assimilate into our culture and our way of life. They want to live their lives as they have done for centuries. They want to practice their faith as they always have and live their lives under the rules of that faith and sharia law just like they and their ancestors have always done.

  This is fine for them if they were still living in their own country, but not here in the United States. We have our own laws and if they are to live here they must obey all of those laws, many of which are so different as to be almost the opposite of what they had. And like anyone, they resist any change in their lives. This can only lead to problems for everyone.

  Chapter 5

  So America has many problems right now. I know this to be a fact. We are fighting terror both here and abroad. We are teetering on the brink of a major economic depression which has the earmarks of being both severe and very long lasting. Countless thousands of people from several countries are flooding across our totally open southern border. And our country is very divided in many ways and fighting amongst each other on a daily basis. To say Americans should be concerned about their future is the understatement of the year.

  For the last few decades crime in the United States had been going down. The decreases were large and continued year after year. That is until the last couple of years anyway. Now it has turned completely around and is going up. Going up dramatically in some areas. That is why I agreed with Bea about getting the concealed carry permits and buying the handguns. It just made sense for our safety.

  With the continuing poor economic outlook, along with everything else happening, Bea has finally convinced me that we should take further precautions with the rest of our life, just like we did about our physical safety. So I agreed that we should maybe prepare some. Reading about the current conditions in a few South American countries had a lot to do with that decision for me.

  So it was simple for Bea working at the grocery store to buy extra food when something that we ate fairly often anyway was on sale at a good price. It did not take long and our small pantry area was full of things she had bought for us to have on hand. That’s when she asked me to build some shelves in our junk room. I admit I have quite a time saying no to her. So I bought some wood products and built shelving to her specifications. It was quite a lot of shelving.

  It was not very long and those new shelves started to fill up. I never said anything and she would just smile at me when she asked me to carry in and put away some boxes of food she had bought at work or would have delivered. Evidently she also ordered some stuff off the internet! She even bought and had delivered a big bunch of firewood from a local guy.

  Fall came around and I went hunting like I did every year. I shot a deer which was no real accomplishment because there were plenty of deer around and I had been a hunter all my life. Both Bea and I enjoyed eating venison and we had been cutting up the deer ourselves now for several years. It was cheaper and gave us control over the meat.

  As part of being prepared Bea insisted that I buy several boxes of ammunition for my deer rifle. She also saw to it that we had several boxes of ammunition for all the handguns we now owned. We did own three twenty two rifles and though we had some ammo for them we did not have all that much. The trouble was that for the last few years or more ammo for them had been very hard to get.

  Every time either of us stopped at a Walmart we always checked the ammunition cabinet there and looked for that now uncommon twenty two ammunition. A couple times one or the other of us was able to buy some but Walmart had a three box limit just because it was in such demand. Then one day Bea brought home three bulk packs which contained five hundred and fifty rounds each and the next week she did the same thing. She finally came clean and told me that a friend’s husband worked at the local Federal Cartridge plant and he was able to buy ammunition there very cheap and was able to get the twenty two ammo for us. Now we had plenty to last us quite awhile.

  And so it went with Bea buying not just food but other common supplies in excess for us to have stored at home in case we ever needed it. It took little time until all the shelving I had built in the junk room was full. Then Bea had me build more shelving in the garage that could only be used for items that could withstand f
reezing conditions. It was soon very apparent that she had many items that fit that criteria.

  For myself I guess I had agreed to it and it turned out not to be very much money for all the extra supplies anyway. Not really. The three handguns we had bought were quite a bit of money but I fully expected them to last us forever. I don’t think I have seen a quality firearm that had been worn out. Oh sure, occasionally a part of some kind might break on a gun but it was very hard to actually wear one out if you were just an average person and not someone making their living as a competitive shooter, so our guns were a lifetime investment.

  Winter came like it always does in Minnesota and it was cold and there was snow. The winter was about normal I guess but I do have to say that each year those winters seem to get longer. I guess it is likely just me getting older.

  But spring finally came and the world around us turned back to green again. Yes, I was happy to see the snow finally disappear. Bea had not really stopped buying supplies to put into storage but she had cut way down. I think mainly because we were running out of room to store much more stuff.

  During that winter is when we first heard about a new virus striking in Africa. At first it was misdiagnosed as the Ebola virus because it had many of the same symptoms. This new virus was also a hemorrhagic fever, which is not very common.

  Before this virus was discovered there were only four families of hemorrhagic fevers. These were the Ebola, Marburg, Lassa fever, and yellow fever viruses. Now there were five. The new one was called the Bissau virus, or sometimes the Bissau Fever. Apparently, because it was first discovered in a country called Bissau Guinea, which I don’t think many people had ever heard of before. I know I had never heard of it.

  Like many things this was no big deal at first (at least for the rest of the world) while I’m sure it was big deal to the people who died from it over there. But the number of cases of this virus grew, and it grew really fast. Soon it was something almost everybody knew about and was afraid of too.

  This Bissau Fever was both quite deadly and easy to spread. There were a couple things that made this one a bad deal all around. It had a fairly long incubation period and it required no direct contact. It was airborne, which made it much easier to catch and spread. The long incubation period of more than one week and up to three weeks allowed a carrier of the disease to spread it around before they succumb to the disease themselves.

  Of course, we know these facts now, but at first nobody knew anything about it. It was totally new and that is why it was unfortunately misdiagnosed in the beginning. Because it was misdiagnosed it was inadvertently allowed to spread. And with the longer incubation period and the time people with the disease were infectious but showed no real symptoms it spread widely.

  While it started in a country in Africa that no one ever heard of (and I’m reasonably sure very few even traveled to), apparently enough people had traveled there to cause this disease to spread. As was normal it first spread to neighboring countries simply because they were closer and people moved between those countries more often.

  It was not very long until it was reported in cities and countries a long way from where it originally started. This was also a major problem. Doctors in those cities and countries had no reason to suspect this weird new disease to show up at their hospitals because for the most part they had never even heard of it at all at that point. So, again, people with this disease were misdiagnosed and this again allowed the virus to spread faster.

  Once it got to a couple of the busier, wealthier countries there was no stopping its spread and very soon found its way all around the world.

  Chapter 6

  Bissau Fever was certainly the talk of town. Any town. No one noticed much when it was just in Africa. I suppose because they really didn’t care and thought it would never effect them. That has now changed. The Bissau Fever is a very deadly disease. Like any disease some people are just somehow naturally immune to it I guess. And like people do with the flu, some people get Bissau Fever, get sick, then simply get better. But many people get this disease and then they die from it.

  The CDC and WHO and likely many other groups and individuals are supposedly working nonstop to find a cure and or vaccine to try and stop this disease that seems unstoppable so far. Once the disease hit Europe it almost immediately came to the United States (along with almost every other country in the world thanks to constant world travel by air and sea).

  I was like everyone else and when I heard about Bissau Fever from the internet I just blew it off as another nothing event. Like with Ebola and the Swine Flu and any other diseases there were countless people on the internet saying that this would cause the end of the world and such. Of course, some people thought just about everything would cause the end of the world. Well I guess in this particular case those people were correct for once.

  When the virus hit America it did not start out in Minnesota and I thought the CDC would stop it before it got to lonely Minnesota. I was wrong of course. By the time the first case of Bissau Fever was reported in this state I told Bea she should quit her job or at least take a leave of absence. She never even argued with me. She just called in and said she needed an extended leave of absence due to health reasons. I’m not even sure if she waited for an answer before she said goodbye and hung the phone up on her boss.

  She ordered a pile of more supplies from the internet. I told her that shipping companies were likely major carriers of the disease but she said she had a plan. When the boxes showed up we did not have to sign for them and those boxes were just left outside. Bea said just leave them outside because it would not hurt them any.

  She even used a stick to push them into the sun. She said the sun sterilizes almost everything. Or at least she thought so anyway. So we left the boxes out in the sun and sometimes she or I would use a stick to turn or flip the boxes so the sun could reach all sides. We would only bring them into the garage if it started to rain, which it didn’t happen to do for a week. By that time we hoped that if the boxes were contaminated to begin with they would now be OK to touch.

  But Bea had another plan and loaded a spray bottle with a strong bleach solution and sprayed the boxes before we ever touched them. I took the items out of the boxes and put them away and I wore rubber gloves the whole time. We even made sure to put these items of food in one area so they could be used last.

  Though I had asked Bea to quit working because she had a job with constant interaction with the public I kept working. At my job I interacted with almost no one. But it only lasted a week anyway and the boss said that for everyone’s safety they were shutting down the plant until this thing blew over.

  So Bea and I were both home all the time now. At this point our government had said or done very little other than tell everyone that the CDC was “working on it” and that people should, firstly, avoid travel overseas and then, secondly, avoid unnecessary travel within the United States, too.

  Next they said people should wash their hands often and avoid crowded conditions as much as possible. At this point airlines were still in operation both for flights within the states and even to some foreign destinations.

  Then the Fever, as most were just calling it now, really took off in America (it was already very bad in many other countries). And there were many deaths. Too many to even list on the nightly news. The President closed down all airports in the nation. An obvious case of too little, too late.

  The symptoms were a simple fever, muscle aches, headaches, and fatigue. At least at first anyway, and not even as bad as some common flu symptoms. But at this point you either started getting better or you went to the next stage. This next stage was bleeding and bruising. If you got those symptoms then you died.

  That was it whether you went to the now-overcrowded hospitals or not. There was no other outcome. If you got the bleeding symptoms you were as good as dead.

  Things in the nation got worse and worse amazingly quickly. All events of any kind were canceled. Ports were
closed. All public transportation ceased. Then all businesses closed, other than a few the government deemed necessary for the nation to continue to operate. Gas stations and grocery stores were the two obvious ones. Mail delivery was halted.

  Some TV and radio stations kept working but in a limited amount. News programs had no interviews other than by phone or Skype. They had no sports news simply because there was none because all games had long since been canceled. The news anchors were now only seen alone on the set and often with a doctor style mask on. They had no papers to read from and used a laptop or electronic pad so news could be transmitted to them without any direct contact of any kind with others who might be infected with the deadly disease.

  At first passenger trains had all been halted along with other public transportation, but freight trains continued to operate. This was necessary mainly because those trains carried coal to the coal fired electric plants that supplied the bulk of the nation’s electric power. But people were still dying all around the country and that included coal miners and train workmen. I’m sure they kept those coal trains moving just as long as they possibly could but they too eventually stopped running.

  Of course this did not all happen overnight but it did happen amazingly quickly. As a nation we were cruising along just fine one minute and then this virus sweeps across the whole nation very fast (because it started in many places at the same time just because of all the international airports spread across every state in the union).

  Of course the virus struck just about every family across the nation whether it was a large family or only a family of two.

  That included us.