“Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: so likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” (Matthew 24:32-35)
Understand the Times
If you have been paying attention to current events, especially to economic news and news related to asymmetrical military preparedness (i.e., cyber warfare and financial warfare), you may have become aware that we live in quite perilous times. Indeed, if you’ve been keeping up with the news in these areas you’ve heard some of the financial figures so many times, they’ve probably lost some of their impact on you.
Just to refresh your memory and to set the stage for the rest of this paper here are a few economic facts that should be kept in mind:
- The national debt will be in excess of $20 trillion dollars by the time President Obama leaves office in January of 2017.
- The 2015 interest paid on the national debt was $229 billion dollars, which will continue to increase as the national debt grows. According to The Heritage Foundation a child born in 2016 will be burdened with his share of the debt to the tune of $42,000 dollars. Interest on the debt is the fastest growing area of federal spending, outstripping Medicare and Social Security. The Fed is already raising interest rates, and this will result in further increases in the monies owed on the interest of the national debt. Forty cents of every dollar the federal government spends is obtained by additional borrowing with much of that debt being held by unfriendly nations, like China and Russia.
- The unfunded liabilities (mostly for entitlement programs) is a staggering and terrifying $225 trillion dollars.
- Economies in Europe, China, and Japan have already instituted negative interest rate policies (NIRP) that essentially charge people (read tax) for keeping their money in the bank, and the U.S. may well follow suit in the not too distant future.
If, for some inexplicable reason, you believe that this level of debt is in any way sustainable, well, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d love to sell you! Politicians of both parties have been kicking the proverbial financial “can” down the road respecting the above listed issues for decades. No one has offered a real solution going forward to address these problems.
What could result from this negligent abuse of our national wealth? Many knowledgeable writers concur that the resulting crash of global financial markets could well make the Great Depression of the 1930’s seem like a walk in the park and could possibly result in nothing less than a global economic and possible societal collapse. Many such writers also insist that an economic collapse of the global economy is simply unavoidable at this point.
If the economy isn’t sufficient to get your attention, then consider the work of Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, Executive Director, EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security and the findings of the Congressional Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack, issued in 2004, on the same day that the Congressional 911 report was issued. (This simultaneous release with the 911 report was the reason no one noticed the EMP report.) A second Commission Report affirmed and expanded its findings in a report in 2008.
Both Dr. Pry and the Congressional Commission concluded that a single nuclear device detonated between 200-300 miles above the earth’s surface over the central United States would essentially destroy all electronic devices needed to maintain this nation’s three power grids, render useless all post-1980 automobiles, destroy all cell phones and virtually every unshielded computer and electronic device this society depends on to function as a modern society. The Congressional Commission estimated that up to 90 percent of the U.S. population would die from the resulting starvation, thirst, and violent collapse of our unaware and unprepared society. An economic collapse is a nightmare, but an EMP attack is a true horror show!
Dr. Pry writes:
“Yet the threat of a catastrophic blackout is not merely theoretical, but real:
On April 16, 2013, North Korea flew its KSM-3 satellite on the optimum trajectory and altitude to evade U.S. radars and missile defenses and apparently practiced a surprise nuclear EMP attack on the United States.
On the same day, parties unknown used AK-47s, the favorite assault rifle of rogue states and terrorists, to attack the Metcalf transformer substation that services San Francisco and the Silicon Valley. Jon Wellinghoff, the former chairman of the U.S. agency responsible for grid security, and the U.S. Navy SEALS warn that Metcalf is probably a dry run for a future large-scale attack on the national electric grid.
In July 2013, a North Korean freighter that had transited the Gulf of Mexico was discovered, while undergoing inspection in the Panama Canal for smuggling illegal drugs, to have two nuclear capable SA-2 missiles, mounted on their launchers, hidden in the hold under bags of sugar. Although the missiles were not nuclear armed, the incident demonstrates North Korea’s capability to use a freighter in U.S. coastal waters to launch a nuclear EMP attack anonymously, in order to escape U.S. retaliation. On October 27, 2013, the Knights Templar, a criminal drug cartel, blacked-out Mexico’s Michoacan state and its population of 420,000, so they could terrorize the people and paralyze the police. The Knights, cloaked by the blackout, entered towns and villages and publicly executed leaders opposed to the drug trade.
In July 2014, according to press reports, a Russian cyber-bug called Dragonfly infected 1,000 electric power plants in Western Europe and the United States for purposes unknown, possibly to plant logic bombs in power plant computers to disrupt operations in the future.
On January 25, 2015, terrorist attacked transmission towers and blacked-out 80 percent of Pakistan, a nuclear weapons state.
On March 31, 2015, a mysterious nationwide blackout temporarily plunged into chaos Turkey, a NATO member and important U.S. ally, reportedly from a cyber attack by Iran.
In 2015 the White House issued a draft executive order acknowledging that natural EMP from a geomagnetic super-storm is a potentially catastrophic threat to the nation. A NASA report (July 23, 2014) warns that on July 23, 2012, Earth narrowly missed experiencing a geomagnetic super-storm that could have collapsed electric grids worldwide, and put at risk the lives of billions. NASA estimates that the likelihood of a catastrophic geo-storm happening over the next decade is 12 percent.” (Blackout Wars: State Initiatives to Achieve Preparedness Against An Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Catastrophe, Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, Task Force on National and Homeland Security, 2015, pp. 11-12).
Since Dr. Pry’s book was published, North Korea launched and orbited another satellite on February 7, 2016, again in an orbit of optimal position to launch an EMP attack if a nuclear device is on-board. On July 9, 2016, North Korea launched a nuclear capable intermediate range missile from a submarine. The missile failed early in the flight, but clearly this rogue nation desires the capability of carrying out a nuclear strike on a mobile platform, which will make the development of ICBM’s unnecessary.
Hungry people (even your neighbors and fellow church members) do desperate things! The “Just-in-Time” inventory system virtually all grocery stores use to keep inventory low and availability of goods ready for purchase means that virtually all grocery markets only have about a three day supply of products on hand. If trucks cannot deliver the goods, supermarkets will be stripped bare within a day or two of a national disaster and no replacements will be arriving. Electronic device dependent doctors offices and hospitals will be unable to care for patients.
Additionally, a nuclear EMP attack would disable every nuclear power plant in the nation and once the emergency generators, which would operate their cooling equipment run out of fuel, they would all suffer melt-down much like the Chernobyl disaster in the former Soviet Union on April 26, 1986. Moreover, virtually all municipal water and sewer systems would cease to function. One can only imagine the hardship, terror, and disease that such failures would bring to this nation.
Of course, the government keeps telling us everything is just fine with the economy and downplays the threat of an EMP while at the same time doing nothing to harden the grid from such an attack by rogue nations like North Korea, Iran, or a terrorist organization. The failure of our government to act in the face of this existential clear and present danger is, perhaps, the greatest failure to “provide for the common defense” in the history of the world! A power grid failure lasting at least a year is a virtual certainty with respect to an EMP, and it is also possible (although less likely) with a severe economic collapse.