The new Federation of Asian Nations (FAN), under Chinese and Indian leadership, included most nations of the region, even Japan. Russia regained political control over the dictatorships of Central Asia, Belarus, and Ukraine. The continent of Africa and its vast resources was a source of conflict between the great blocs, but disputes were limited by a tacit but well understood agreement that such conflicts never expand beyond African issues.
However, the real story of global society was not the breakup into regional blocs, but the division of the world’s population into three classes. Today, these classes largely ignore national and regional boundaries. The first class, the wealthy global elite, benefit from planet-wide economies of scale and capital gains. They live in the regions most protected against climate change, pollution, and civil unrest.
The middle class, mostly concentrated in the cities, is slowly being squeezed economically. Social mobility is all but eliminated as the bourgeois can rarely escape their status as office drones. In desperation, they turn to intense electronic entertainment and substance abuse, or simply become obsessed with their meaningless jobs.
The great fear of the middle class is being fired and suffering banishment to the suburbs of the poor, the vast “third class” that subsists in walled-in areas. The multicolored global underclass has little in common with the “working class” of ages past. The new planetary lumpenproletariat is largely illiterate, violent, and controlled by ethnic gangs and organized crime.
In response to this unstable social system, governments around the world limited political speech to only “constructive criticism.” Frequent financial or moral scandals are usually co-opted by suspiciously timed terrorist attacks that serve to remind people of the “real problems.” The justification of all the regional blocs is the same—“growth.” In the name of growth, industries and governments continue to aggressively pursue resources, even in the midst of ecological disaster.
There is resistance from outside the system, however. Though few are willing to confront the supranational governments directly, new communities are forming in rural areas around the world. These are termed “Fractions,” and they justify themselves as attempts to preserve certain traditions and ways of life.
Fractions have entrenched themselves in the Alps, the Black Forest, the Scottish Highlands, the Apennines, the Rocky Mountains, the Rif, the Balkans, the Urals, the Altai Mountains, the Himalayas, the Andes, and Tierra del Fuego.
Ultimately, this strategy of survival outside the system and revolution from the periphery is proving enduring. After the depletion of marine ecosystems, other ecosystems started to show signs of fragility and instability, before disappearing, one after the other, in just a few years. Food crises were severe (and still are), and each region has, more or less, transformed itself into an insular and paranoid police state. Cries of “Eat the Rich!” are heard, and often taken literally. With no sense of cultural unity or ideological justification to fall back on, the global system of regional blocs is collapsing with startling speed.
By the end of the 21st century, world population has been reduced to less than half a billion. Only those belonging to the Fractions, in fortified villages and farms across the globe, seem hope of surviving and rebuilding civilization.
9. Ragnarök
The World Ends in Fire ...
and is Reborn
Hindus believe that human civilization spiritually degenerates in the course of the “Kali Yuga,” the Dark Age. In Northern mythology, “Ragnarök” is a prophesied End of the World involving a series of events, including three successive winters without sunlight followed by a great battle in which most gods and men die. A series of natural disasters follow: the world is submerged by the waves and destroyed in the flames. But after these tribulations, there is rebirth. The remaining gods help the only remaining couple to repopulate the world.
These myths were in the thoughts of many as the great crises unfolded. At first, it just seemed to be a financial problem. The banks were swallowed up, one after another, and governments seemed confused and impotent.
The real cause of the catastrophe, however, was something entirely unexpected. One night, a little “second moon” appeared in the night sky. NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency announced that it was an uncharted comet, which had hitherto escaped the notice of observatories. They claimed the probability of its hitting the Earth was about 10 percent, though that estimate kept being revised upwards as it drew nearer.
Peoples around the world interpreted the comet through various religious or cultural traditions. In a way, it came out the world’s archetypal nightmare.
There was a sudden burst of religiosity, mass suicides, panics, debauchery, massacres, and murder-for-hire to settle old scores. The Russian, Chinese, and American governments launched nuclear rockets to try to intercept or redirect this comet, but it was already too late. For a time, all wars halted and combatants on all sides watched the sky.
A final desperate strike was successful only in part. The comet was hit by a missile and fragmented . . . but its deadly intent was unaltered.
One part of the comet hit planet Earth on the northern coast of the Red Sea near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which it instantly vaporized. Everything within the radius of 300 miles, including Mecca, was burned to a crisp (though the black stone of the Ka’aba was not damaged, and many began to speak of a miracle). Another piece of the comet, the largest, hit the Earth around the Gulf of Guinea, creating a wave almost one mile high, which destroyed nearly all life within the radius of 750 miles. The third and fourth cometary fragments hit the Mato Grasso region of Brazil and La Paz in Bolivia. Hundreds of millions lost their lives in a few minutes.
Though most of humanity survived the impact, the comet’s fragments sent thousands of cubic meters of dust and ash into the atmosphere. A thick cloud blanketed the Earth, blocking out the Sun. Over the course of the following decade, temperatures fell considerably.
Today, the winters are extremely cold and wet; harvests are reduced to almost nothing; and what little does sprout can barely maintain itself. Most of the world’s flora and fauna is endangered, if not extinct. Everyone fights for the kind of resources we once took for granted. A simple can of food is priceless bounty, as it means living another day. Those who have survived—who can say how many we are?— are concentrated in the regions not cloaked in darkness or in the underground shelters.
Mankind is at risk of disappearing entirely. It was only we, the “paranoid” men and women who had prepared for catastrophe, who didn’t get swept up in the tumult. We survivors, who remained in radio contact during the years of chaos, have organized ourselves into communities. We are the new leaders of humanity. We will repopulate the Earth, as was foretold in myth.
*
President Wolinsky has a serious problem.
Following the revolt and destruction caused by the invasion of downtown areas by inhabitants of the inner cities, the government has been evacuated to a command post in a secure location. The army central command had been put on red alert. But no one foresaw that Wolinsky’s own security—bodyguards, secret-service staff, and the rest—would reroute the presidential plane to a little rural airport like this.
They keep asking him:
“Where’s the central bank’s gold? We know you had the gold transferred to a secure location. If you don’t want to spend your last hours in horrible suffering, tell us quickly. Marcel and Saïd here would just love to show you what they learned to do in Lybia. . .”
“You don’t have any right! You won’t get far!”
“Don’t worry about us, pal—Mister President, I mean to say. We know everything’s fucked. Even the army doesn’t control anything anymore. That’s what happens when you fuck around while your friends are stuffing their pockets. If you don’t give us what we want, we’ll let Marcel and Saïd work on you. They’ll think of something Medieval.”
“Stop, I’ll tell you . . . I’ll let you take it all . . . but there i
sn’t that much gold, you know . . .”
“We know. But it’s enough for our projects.”
“You won’t get far. As soon as you try to spend that gold—there are a few tons, after all—you’re going to get caught!”
“Don’t worry about us. We don’t plan on going shopping with it.”
*
General Hermann Schponz is Commander-in Chief-of the Bundeswehr.
He knows that the history of the world will be changed in the next few hours. He must present the Chancellor with plans for a lightning offensive to resolve the dramatic situation in Germany. Since the world crisis degenerated into a war in the Middle East and all its oil wells came under Chinese control, there hasn’t been more than two months’ worth of oil in the country’s reserves.
The plan he has worked out with his strategic advisors is risky but bold—a surprise seizure of the Romanian wells at Ploieşti by Col. Mustapha Golügolü’s 7th Fallschirmjäger division, later to be relieved by the panzer divisions based in Kosovo. Russia seems willing to accept the German takeover of the Balkans in exchange for an agreement giving them *carte blanche* in Ukraine and the Caucasus.
The more things change . . .
*
Chris regrets what he did.
The virus has done more damage than he ever imagined. The chaos resulting from it has been enormous. Millions in the large cities were quickly infected. The collapse of the hospital system . . . then of the entire economy . . . plunged the world into a violent spiral. Michael, sick in bed, is awaiting the inevitable in his room at the Cabeza Negra Inn where he is hiding out. The buildings are getting burned down one after another by looters from the nearby suburbs. He’s afraid. He’ll be burned alive, like so many others.
He also knows that his killers are his fellow Brothers of God.
*
Lt.Col Sandoz knew it would be a difficult journey.
His mission was to secure the northern frontier of the Canton of Geneva with his reinforced, mechanized infantry battalion. He was mobilized to help out the frontier guards, completely overwhelmed by the first waves of refugees. With the massacres of Grenoble and Lyon, all of France seems to have hit the road in order to pour into Switzerland. There were a thousand refugees the first day, two thousand the second day, and five thousand the third day, just before the government decided to close the border. But many succeeded in crossing the fields or simply forcing their way through. At the Ferney-Voltaire post alone, 1,500 French refugees have already gotten through forcibly.
From now on, no one is to get through—those are the orders. With the same thing happening in the Jura mountains and Basel, it’s obvious that it’s impossible to let everyone in. The crisis and the massacres began after a French TV network, Télé Mille Montagnes, started instigating Nigerian refugees to take revenge for the thousands of years of oppression and crime on the part of Whites.
These refugees were taken in during the terrible war between North and South Nigeria. More than 10 million landed in France and were stuffed into emergency “welcome centers” on the borders of large cities. It appears that a conflict between two gangs in the Lyon region unleashed a series of revolts and looting, involving several murders. The inaction of the French authorities, already overwhelmed with the problems of Pakistani and Egyptian immigrants, allowed the incidents to multiply rapidly. Incitation by a TV personality, calling for justice against the “chalk faces,” was all that was necessary to turn their looting operations into murder raids. Rapes and massacres involving dismemberment and torture multiplied in the center of Lyon, literally stormed by tens of thousands of refugees. Then the same happened in Grenoble, and rumors broke out about similar incidents in other cities. But in Marseille and Lille, at any rate, the Islamic militia, well trained and disciplined, quickly turned things around, massacring the looters and protecting the civilian population. Be that as it may, the few journalists who have gotten out of Lyon are talking of 200,000 dead.
The White population seemed to almost let itself be massacred, docilely. Some have even paid, in money or sexual favors, for the privilege of being killed with a bullet through the head, cleanly and without suffering. They called it “buying a bullet.” After 50 years of being taught—by the state, by the churches, by the media—that they are guilty of racism, sexism, colonialism, and other sins, the French preferred to die rather than fight.
It won’t be like that here, Lt.Col Sandoz tells himself. This isn’t California or Rwanda! There won’t be any excesses or internal unrest here! His colleague Major Bittrich and his special unit have already (in one night, with the help of the Cantonal police, and with impressive efficiency) rounded up all the illegals and non-Europeans of the Canton and transferred them to the interior of the country. The plan is to expel them—but where? With the pogroms taking place in the Italian Social Republic and its Austrian ally, they will have to go to either France or Germany; but this doesn’t seem realistic in light of the chaos in both countries.
Lt.Col. Sandoz chases these thoughts away. The units of his battalion are positioned all along the frontier, keeping its heavy equipment and artillery in reserve close to Meyrin and Cointrin Airport. He will not use them unless a specific position is in danger of being overrun. What worries Lt.Col. Sandoz is Captain Droz’s reserve company. Those 20-year-olds have never been trained how to manage civilians or refugees. He doesn’t know if they will obey orders, and he doesn’t want to have to use drastic disciplinary measures. . . As a security precaution, he has asked lieutenants Ben Hamed and Biagetti (who are in charge of two squads of military police) to prepare their men and women for possible employment as execution squads. The telephone rings.
“Sandoz here.”
“Lieutenant Chevalley here; Ferney post. We have a problem. The refugees are packed in and have advanced into the forbidden perimeter. We have given two warnings, but they are still advancing. Some of them are armed. I’m asking you to confirm the orders.”
“One moment. . .”
He presses a button on his post’s control screen in the commander’s vehicle.
“Sandoz here; infantry battalion 19; give me Brigadier Wicht.”
“GHQ 2nd brigade, Wicht here.”
“Brigadier, the refugees are starting to cross the frontier; can you confirm orders?”
“Sandoz, we must apply the plan. Orders to open fire confirmed.”
“Roger; over and out.”
This is shaping up to be a very bad day.
The Moment of Decision
<
how can we sleep when our beds are burning?
midnight oil
musicians
_diesel and dust
/1987/
<
louis XIV
king of france
1638-1715
<
paulo coelho
author
_o monte cinco
/1996/
So the question is: what should you do?
Perhaps at this point in the book, you are feeling depressed and impotent in the face of so many factors you cannot control, master, or even influence.
However, you have a lot of possibilities and you can act in several ways:
You could go into politics and try to change things. This will take a long, long time. You would need several years to infiltrate the inner system in order to become actively involved (while taking care not to be devoured). In 10 or 20 years, perhaps, if you were talented, patient, and have perseverance and luck, you might be able to change the laws and get important messages across.
You could become a citizen-activist in the NGO sector or in grassroots movements, in order to touch the sensibilities of other citizens and gradually change things, one person at a time.
You could change yourself by transforming your vision o
f the world and your way of life.
Or you can just do nothing, thinking that any measures you might take would be laughable in comparison to the immensity of the problem: either the crises will not come about or you have faith in the ability of the government and civic leaders to overcome any problem they are faced with.
All this is very well, but it is not the way to make a decision! You must begin by evaluating all the factors, possibilities, and probabilities. But none of these evaluations will give you an exact result. No one can predict the future with certainty, still less when we are dealing with the convergence of enormous factors on a global scale. It is impossible to calculate the probability as a percentage, nor can one assign a precise moment when a collapse-like event might occur.
We must, instead, call in the aid of an analytic scheme common in risk management. On the vertical axis we show the only two possibilities we are able to consider: either the collapse occurs or it does not occur. The other axis represents your state of preparedness: either you are prepared or you aren’t. On the quadrant formed by the intersection of these possibilities, we can determine four results.
First of all, let us imagine that the collapse does not occur:
If you are not prepared and the collapse does not occur, your life remains unchanged; everything stays as it is now. If you are prepared, you will have spent time preparing; you will have spent money; and you will probably look silly to your friends who will consider you paranoid or an environmental nut. But apart from some cost to your ego and some expense in time and money, the difference between the two situations is not great.
Survive- The Economic Collapse Page 20
