by DL Tolleson
May 21, 2011—The New Dark Age of an EMP
So your alarm doesn't go off and you wake-up one morning late for work. If you take the time to go through an abbreviated morning routine, you quickly realize that the lights are out, the coffee maker isn't working and the refrigerator... Well, you get the idea—the power is still off.
The upside is that since you’re late to work you
skip the cold shower. After mismatching your socks in the
dark of the room, you manage to rush out the door while
dressing on the run. Once outside, you notice that most
of the cars in your neighborhood—or in your
apartment complex—are still there.
That’s weird, you think. Then you jump into
your car, turn the key and...
Nothing. The car won’t start.
Just great.
So you whip out your trusty cell phone to call in late
and it doesn't work either.
When it rains its pours.
You step out of your car to see one of your neighbors
cussing his portable AM/FM radio. Having already learned
everything you are just figuring out, your neighbor is
now miffed at being unable to hear news from his
non-working radio.
Now, on top of all that, you see another neighbor
returning from a short walk to the local store. He
reports that the store is powerless and the ATM at which
he stopped isn't working.
Maybe a transformer went out, you think.
What you don't know is that across the entire country, no
one has power.
In fact, across the entire nation any car build after
about 1980 isn’t starting and will not run.
Worse still, during the night thousands of passenger
airplanes lost power in mid-flight and plummeted from the
skies. At those thousands of crash sites millions of
people have died. And even if the survivors could
be transported to the hospital, it would be a pointless
effort. You see, the same problem has hit the hospitals.
During the night critically injured people in hospitals
across the country died when the life support equipment
on which they depended lost power while back-up
generators failed to kick-in. And anyone depending on
life support equipment during operative procedures died
on the operating room table.
Of course, standing in front of your home, you don’t
yet know all of that. You also don’t yet know that
if you are living at a higher elevation than the local
water supply you will do without because the electrical
infrastructure necessary to pump it up to higher ground
is now gone. And since the electrically driven valve
systems at the water stations are fried, the available
tap water might be only what is left in the lines.
Gone, too, is any chance of accessing your bank holdings
and finances. You are now unable to conduct any
electronic transaction, communication
or—eventually—use what will become valueless
paper money. In the months following this morning, people
in need of life preserving medications will die. As you
stand there in the yard, perishable food everywhere is
spoiling without refrigeration. Without a means of
replenishment, non-perishable food supplies in major
cities will be depleted in under a week—more likely
within three to five days or so.
People without stored food and water will die of hunger.
Society will breakdown and eventually in the cities,
“every man for himself” will be the rule of the
day. Martial law will be declared in some places, but for
the most part even that will be of little consequence
because the automation to enforce it will not exist. The
outlook is so much more bleak than even this that it
staggers the mind to contemplate.
Sounds like science fiction, doesn't it?
Well, it is true that a somewhat similar story is played
out in a recently published novel called, ONE SECOND AFTER
What I've just described is the morning after the
explosion of a nuclear bomb high above the center of the
country. Exploding at an extremely high altitude, the
chances are there isn’t a blast crater, little if
any architectural devastation, no fallout and radiation
of comparative insignificance to those of us on the
ground. Instead, the massive explosive power of the bomb
interacts with atmospheric elements to create a
phenomenon that brings America to its knees in the way
described above.
Here’s how that happens: When the nuclear warhead
detonates in the upper stratosphere, the byproduct of
high-energy gamma radiation travels outward in every
direction. The downward-traveling gamma radiation
interacts with air molecules to produce two types of
ions: Positive ions and recoil ions—the latter of
which are called Compton recoil electrons. The
interaction which creates these ions also produces a
charge that separates (or ejects, if you will) the newly
created Compton recoil electrons. As the Compton recoil
electrons expand outward they interact with the
earth’s magnetic field (as part of a process called,
charge acceleration). The end result utilizes
earth’s electromagnetic field to deliver an
instantaneous electromagnetic pulse overloading every
electronic circuit it its path. This is called an EM
Pulse—or EMP.
And that’s not all. Simultaneously there also occurs
something called a magnetohydrodynarnic EMP that moves
relatively slow (as in perhaps one or two blinks of the
eye) and which is similar to the effects of a geomagnetic
solar storm. This particular aspect of the catastrophe
sends low frequency current into the earth that travels
along transmission lines, contributing to the
event’s extensive damage.
All of that—the whole thing—occurs in the
matter of seconds. One second everything is fine and one
second later every electronic component not
“hardened” (protected) against an EMP is fried.
What is protected against such an event? Mostly high-end
military equipment built to withstand and retaliate in
the event of a nuclear strike.
Everything else is pretty much toast.
None of this is temporary. The only replacement
components available will be in other
countries—provided they haven’t been similarly
attacked and are predisposed to provide help.
And even if those places (like China or Japan, for
example) still exist and are willing to help, it will
easily be years—nearly a generation worth of
years—before we climb back out of the new dark age.
Could this really happen?
Absolutely. Easily. It isn’t likely to be the
results of a massive strike involving dozens of nuclear
warheads such as we feared from the Soviets as recently
as the early 1980s. Rather, it would more likely be only
one or two warheads, launched from off of our shores
using a submarine, container ship, barge, oil transport
or similar vessel. Speculatively speaking, it could even
be launched from our own soil. Regardless of the exact
point of origin, anything launched from so close to home
would be practically impossible to identify and destroy
before it reaches the altitude necessary for the job.
So who would do it? Take your pick from any candidate
calculated to have motive, resources and opportunity. A
state-sponsored terrorist equipped by any one of our
nuclear enemies comes readily to mind (Iran and North
Korea, for example). Whether we contemplate the
traditional devastation of a nuclear blast or the more
wide-spread crippling of an EM pulse, it is no stretch of
the imagination to envision a one or two-warhead attack
by people who have shown no compunction when using
children as instruments of death, beheadings as
praiseworthy and genocide as a routine. We would be
foolish to dismiss the motivations of our opposition and
the wherewithal of their sponsors.
How informed is our government? Well, pursuant to a
National Defense Authorization Act for the fiscal year of
2001 an EMP Commission was cobbled together to study the
matter. They were tasked with identifying the steps
necessary to protect military and civilian systems from
an EMP attack. The Commission was reestablished via a
follow-up statutory enactment of 2006. In all there have
been made public at least two fairly extensive reports
and one written testimony arising out of a 2008
appearance before the House Armed Services Committee.
These reports are feely available as pdf downloads when
you visit online the EMP COMISSION BY CLICKING HERE.
Probing to detailed depths, their reports clearly
innumerate the preventive steps necessary for EMP
survival. In reading their literature, it becomes
alarmingly obvious that we are a nation unprepared for an
EM attack. Even though the reports don’t say it, an
EMP attack would eventually plunge us into something just
short of a modern dark age.
With our economy already facing crisis, unemployment
looming at the threshold of double digits and
Quantitative Easing of the money in line to devalued the
dollar (a common precedent of the process) the questions
facing you are, What have you done to prepare for a
short term or long term emergency? Have you stored
nonperishable food? How about water? Have you thought
about personal and home defense?
An EMP blast could happen at any time—even before
you finish reading the next sentence. Are you prepared?
If not, don’t let further inaction be the source of
regret when you are sitting in the dark without
electricity and thinking back to having read this
warning.
Preparation costs very little. Failing to prepare can
cost your life.
May 4, 2011—Rights vs Privileges
At various times it has been in vogue to assert that certain privileges are actually rights. For example, in his Fireside Chat of January 11 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt proposed that there is a “right to a useful and remunerative job.” More recently it has been widely asserted that there is a right to healthcare.
If not a condition of human psychology, then it is at the
least a habit to accept at face value a message without
regard for the meaning of the underlying words and
precepts.
So, what exactly is a right? Or more to the
point, what is it in the American psychology (or
ideology) that accepts as a given the concept of a right?
For answers we can begin with the foundation of American
government.
From the second paragraph of Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness…
Right off the bat, before we even get to the idea of rights,
some would see a problem: All men are created equal? Some
would ask, “How equal is it when the son of a
wealthy man has all the advantages that money can
buy?” Or, “If we are all created equal, what
about the mentally handicapped?”
Such questions presume a position that the Declaration of
Independence does not advocate. The phrase, all men
are created equal, does not suggest that all men
have equal opportunity. Also, the phrase does not say
that all men are created equally followed by a sentence
ending period.
What the phrase does say is that we are all born
(created), that a Supreme Being (our Creator) endows
(freely furnishes or provides us with) rights (things to
which we have a claim) and that among those things we may
claim are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Nowhere in the phrase is equality equated to a condition
of our circumstances. Rather, the equality is a
condition equated to birth (our creation). Some are born
into wealth, others into poverty. But regardless of the
circumstances into which you are born, we are equally all
born—created. With that, comes the
philosophy that we are all invested with certain rights.
Now, an unalienable right is something to which
you have not only a claim but also a claim that is
impossible to have taken away from you. In other words,
the right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
are things that you may not be denied or refused. Through
your own efforts—or lack thereof—you might
forfeit your Life, your Liberty or the Pursuit of your
Happiness. But barring an illegal infringement upon
others or the civil society, it is impossible for another
person to take away these rights to which you have a
claim.
Why? Well, this brings us to the wisdom of
accepting—or at least acquiescing—the source
from which our rights are derived. Legitimate historical
scholarship tells us that all of the signers of the
Declaration of Independence believed in the existence of
God. There were a few of these men—numbering 3 as
far as can be easily documented—who believed in the
existence of God but did not identify with specific
churches. But regardless of religion or theology, the
signers to the Declaration of Independence established
that the Creator (God) is the source of our right to
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. This had
far-reaching consequences as far as government is
concerned. After all, if God grants a right to a person,
who among us may take or infringe upon that right granted
by God?
It goes without saying—but I will make note of it
nonetheless—that it is beyond the powers of mankind
or government to take away, limit or re-define rights
that are granted by God. Or to contrast the supremacy of
these rights in another way, any right granted by
government can be altered, regulated or taken away by
government. Thus, for these reasons, whether you believe
in the existence of God, it is to your own foolish
detriment to advocate the removal of Him as an integral
necessity to American philosophy, ideology and
government.
So, knowing all of this, and understanding that a right
is something to which you have a just claim; do you have
a right to healthcare? Do you have a right to own a
house? Do you have a right to an apartment? Do you have a
right to own a car? Do you have a right to a job? When
you lose your job, do you have a right to unemployment
compensation? It is certainly popular to suggest that
there are a wide range of rights to which a person is
entitled. But are we really entitled to these things in
the way we hold that we are entitled to Life, Liberty and
the Pursuit of Happiness?
To answer that, consider this: As a result of each
individual’s employment, money is paid toward a fund
upon which an individual may depend during finite periods
of unemployment (provided they meet specific
qualifications). It is important to note that the fund is
a result of what the individual did to contribute to its
existence. In other words, you have a right to
unemployment compensation because your previous
employment was contributory to the existence of the fund.
Unemployment compensation is a right established and
managed by government but which you and your employers
are the source. This right comes to you because of your
own effort and not because you are infringing upon
someone else to provide that right.
This illustrates that for a right to exist there
is at least one component upon which that right rests:
The source—or provider—of that right.
Can this be compared to other rights? Certainly. For
example, do you have a right to a job at another
person’s private enterprise? If my company makes and
sells the Super-Duper Grand Widgets, what just claim do
you have to a job in my company? After all, in creating
my company I am exerting my God-given right to Life,
Liberty and the Pursuit of my Happiness. It is my right
to have the company and you do not have a just claim to a
job in my company. If you did have a right to that job,
it would be at the expense of me—your claim would
reduce the value of what would otherwise be my God-Given
right (to have the company and deny you that job). Since
you do not have that authority, then a job is not a
right.
It is, however, the exercising of your Life, your Liberty
and your Pursuit of Happiness to do whatever is necessary
to obtain employment within my company—to sway or
convince me to hire you.
And that is the difference between a right and a
privilege. You have a job, you own a car, you have an
apartment, you own a house and/or you have healthcare as
a privilege—not a right.
Healthcare only seems to be something of a different
matter because it can impact your life on a primal
level—it can mean the very perpetuation of your
life. We live in a country where you can now go to the
hospital and if your situation is life-threatening, you
will be treated. But If you can afford to pay, you are
expected to do so. If you cannot, you are fortunate
enough to be in a place where help is available to meet
the financial obligations for the services rendered.
However, the financial assistance in such instances is
not available because the heathcare is a right to which
you are entitled. Instead, the assistance is available
because you live in a civil society with an economic
system that motivates rather than mandates such charity.
Indeed, this matter is often clouded by arguments
concerning the financial impact of healthcare. Such
arguments are usually along the lines of, “You
shouldn’t have your life savings wiped-out and be
left destitute because of the expense in treating a
life-threatening ailment.”
Really? What about house payments, investments and even
IRS intrusions? All of these things and others—some
freely chosen and others imposed—can leave you
destitute. And yet you do not have a right to these
things. The very moment that the thing you want must be
provided by someone else, it becomes a privilege for
which you are responsible to obtain. A job is offered by
someone and you qualify for it. A car, a house or an
apartment are all built and sold by others—and it is
your privilege to purchase those things. You decide what
is important to you and you spend accordingly. Foolishly
overburdening yourself with a mortgage, vacation
expenses, car payments, consequences of pregnancy or
deciding against the monthly expense of healthcare
coverage are decisions that can leave you homeless and
broke.
How you succeed or fail is the result of privileges
afforded to you at the behest of your right to Life,
Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness.
That is the nature of life and the risk inherent to
living.
April 14, 2011—American Affiars Thus Far
During 1946, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York wrote an article in a publication called American Affairs (I donated all my old copies to the library just a few years ago and went back to the libarary to personally look this up).
The then Chairman, Beardsley Ruml, noted that the Federal
Reserve was able to create out of nothing all the money
that the government would ever want. He said, in short,
that since people with money spend on goods and services,
prices respond by going up. To control this process money
should be taken away through taxation so that instead,
the government could spend it (this raises prices also,
but he didn't point that out).
And then he wrote:
"The second principal purpose of federal taxes is to attain more equality of wealth and income than would result from economic forces working alone. The taxes which are effective for this purpose are the progressive individual income tax, the progressive estate tax and the gift tax. What these taxes should be depends on public policy with respect to the distribution of wealth and of income. These taxes should be defended and attacked in terms of their effect on the character of American life, not as revenue measures."
—"Taxes for Revenue Are Obsolete," Beardsley Ruml, American Affairs, January, 1946 pp. 35-36
The above quote is indicative of the evidence that
America has reached the present state of affairs as an
end result of Socialism permeating our society from the
top forces in economic oversight down to the man in the
street. Throughout history Socialism has failed every
time it was tried and it is again failing now. America,
with a population that has been the most
socioeconomically comfortable of any throughout history,
is the ultimate and final proof that vindicates Margaret
Thatcher when, in 1976, she said, "...socialist
governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They
(socialists) always run out of other people's money. It's
quite a characteristic of them."
Welcome to Amerika.
March 31, 2011—A Thousand Years and 9.86 Microseconds
I’ve long-heard discussions regarding the biblical account of creation in 7 days. Some arguments are that it could have just as easily been 7,000 years since another biblical verse (rendered in a different context) indicates that for God, a day is as a thousand years. Looking at it that way, science can more easily tolerate a creation wherein God’s use of the “natural laws” that He had created might be more accommodating of the geological record.
Well, now I’d like to add to that discussion. In a
number of places I’ve read that the March 11 2011
earthquake—which reportedly moved the Japanese
mainland by as much as 8 feet—caused a change in our
planet’s mass, thus shortening the length of a day
by 1.8 Microseconds. Many of these sources, such as the
text at the CBS News story, EARTH’S DAY LENGTH SHORTENED BY JAPAN
EARTHQUAKE, indicate that this wasn’t the first
earthquake-induced shortening of the day. This article
suggest a total shortening of the day by 9.86
microseconds after tabulating the effects of the
8.9-magnitude Japan earthquake, the 8.8-magnitude Chilean
earthquake of 2010 and the 9.1-magnitude Sumatra
earthquake in 2004.
This got me to thinking. The world is covered in
volcanoes popping-off throughout history. If you hold to
the creation belief, who is to say that God’s use of
the geology He created didn’t involved world-wide
volcanic eruptions affecting the passage of time (as we
understand it). Maybe the planet was spinning like a top!
Or maybe there was one huge continent and the
“spreading” factor of erupting volcanoes moved
the earth’s mass outward, thus slowing the passage
of time that constituted, “a day.”
Otto Muck, the writer of The Secret of Atlantis (ANALYZED HERE) once postulated that
an asteroid struck the mid-Atlantic ridge, opening an
ocean-wide rift along the submariner floor. If even
partly true, surely the impact on the passage of time
could have been massive.
So, what am I saying? Well, I don’t have a
conclusion in which to neatly wrap this up and I
can’t even confirm if this speculation is all that
original. I’m just throwing it out there to suggest
an influence on the passage of time in relation to the
biblical and geological record concerning creation.
March 10, 2011—Guess Who Went To Breakfast in Chile?
I’ve spent the last few months working on a massive web site re-vamp and expansion. I hope you like it because I learned my lesson and will not be doing that again!
Book news: I’ve already announced that the print
edition of Socials is coming. The delay has been
me because I want to reshoot the cover. Yeah, yeah, I
know—most writers hand it off to the publisher who
takes care of it. Fortunately The Lighthouse Press allows
me the latitude to bring to life my own vision. So, the
re-shoot for Socials is next followed closely be
the release of the novella.
After that… Well, would you believe a 4th edition of
The Gray Stopgap? Lighthouse Press mailed to me
the remaining 40 or so copies of the last edition and is
okay for one more trip to the well—a trip to precede
the long awaited Stopgap Sequel. So, the first
novel is still unavailable unless you find it on line for
a price ranging from a few bucks to $500 (no, really, I'm
serious). The out-of-the-world price is a topic I address
in Q&A on the News page (link to
your left) so I won't go into that here.
And there's no date on the release of the Stopgap
sequel, either.
If you’ve been following the political world—or
my e-mail rants about it, then the entry below is old hat
to you. However, you might be interested to know that it
was to be a featured discussion on the March 11th, Look
Who's Coming to Breakfast show, a weekly radio
program of I love Chile Radio.
Why a radio station in the country of Chile? Well, I gave
some serious consideration to moving there and it was
John Allan--one of Breakfast's co-hosts who
hooked me up with enough information that I was able to
make an informed decision. At any rate, Mr. Allan took a
shine to my narrative below and I granted him permission
to discuss it on air—along with his co-host Steward
Steward (no really, that's his name—I'd come up with
something more believable if I were making this up).
Of course, that was the morning of the Tsunami in Japan
and while I was up all night and morning, I missed most
of the Breakfast show and am unable to report
whether the topic was bumped. Since that particular show
hasn't started offering pod cast, yet, one can't go back
and listen.
If you get chance, though, you might give the show a try.
It's not one of those really slick, high-end productions.
It’s more like two friends who agree with one
another only about a third of the time and while
you’re puttering around the house with your coffee
they're in your living room during their two-thirds time
of disagreeing. Oh, okay, it’s not quite that
confrontational—presumeabley they are friends, after
all.
If you're in the USA catch the show via your web browser
every Friday at 6-9 am PST, 7-10 am MST, 8-11 am CDT,
9-12 am EST (and 10 am - 1 pm in Chile). I know that all
looks a little confusing, but we're talking about 4 U.S.
time zones and a fifth time zone for Chile: And don't
even get me started on the whole Daylight Savings thing!
For the Friday radio show web site, click, LOOK WHO'S COMING TO BREAKFAST, and
to select audio streaming from the radio station web
site, click, I LOVE CHILE.
March 4, 2011—Take That, Obama!
In case you haven’t been closely following it—or you’ve been foolishly following the lame liberal media reports—I’m pleased to report that team Obama got a figurative whipping for having ignored constitutional law and the court. As you should know by now, about 28 states filed suit against the government, arguing that Obama Care was unconstitutional. The Florida Supreme Court agreed, and in his 75-page decision, the judge said, basically, that because the foundation of the individual mandate upon with Obama Care rested was unconstitutional, the whole bloody thing was null and void.
(NOTE: Some have argued that the government made the
mistake of not employing Obama Care
“severability” language that would have allowed
the implementation of legal portions of the law while
unconstitutional portions were thrown out: Be that a
mistake or not, it wouldn’t have mattered. Since
both the government and the judge agreed that the law was
nothing without the individual mandate—which was
subsequently ruled unconstitutional—the whole
unconstitutional house of cards fell and
“severability” was and is a moot point. )
At any rate, that was 10 days ago and starting 9 days ago
the Executive branch of our government has openly
violated the Constitution by proceeding with
implementation of Obama Care instead of adhering to the
judge’s ruling that stayed implementation. They
should have ceased implementation and immediately
appealed. What Team Obama next did next was insulting:
They filed for a clarification since they, said, the
judge hadn’t issued a separate “stay” that
allowed them to implement the law while on appeal. The
problem is that on page 75 of the original ruling, the
judge CLEARLY said that the decision was the declaratory
equivalent of a stay and that he EXPECTED the government
to comply.
And so when this clarification thing came up, the judge
socked it to them. The end result, after a very much
needed chastising, was that the Judge went a step further
than they would have liked. He has forced the
administration to stop playing word games by allowing
them 7 days of further implementation BUT they MUST also
appeal to either the 11th Circuit or the Supreme court by
that 7th day: Failing that, they whole thing is over.
Done.
So, Obama and company now have to actually abide by the
rules (which must really aggravate King Obama). I’m
sure they’ll file in time, but I’m gleeful that
they have been thoroughly lectured and forced to get this
mess over with even sooner than they would have wanted.
As former Reagan administration official/conservative
talk show host/Landmark Legal Foundation president and
attorney Mark Levine described it on his March 3rd radio
program: “The judge shoved it down Obama’s
throat.”
Gotta love that!
For better details see this link: SPEED
UP OR STOP