Free Article - Armageddon Looms

Armageddon Looms

Following is my envisionment of what is soon to come for us, our society, and our world. Am I claiming that this is inevitable and will happen just as I have it laid out? The cleansing is inevitable. The only question left is who is going to do it—us or the Great Mother. If we awaken and make the fundamental changes needed to restore Balance, visions of Armageddon such as this one may be no more than a wake-up call. Based on the increasing evidence that our society has already purchased a one-way ticket to oblivion, I would say that our awakening is a very remote possibility. We show no serious interest in rerouting to avoid the inevitable; amazingly, our main focus appears to be on stepping up the speed to oblivion. That being the case, I present the following as a likely scenario.

This envisionment is based upon my knowledge and experience only; I make no claim to being a prophet. Things could be worse than depicted here—if you can imagine that.

Is the coming cleansing something to fear? I am doing everything in my power to prevent one as dire as what is shaping up by working on healing the scars of civilization and restoring the Old Way. And yet if my efforts and those of others are too little, too late and the likely scenario comes to pass, I will surrender to it and welcome it. I am not working out of fear, because I would be doing exactly what I am doing whether or not Armageddon looms. For me this is not a matter of survival, it is a matter of community. I am going forward not out of fear, but out of love.

Within the lifetime of the generation reading this—probably your lifetime—we are going to run out of usable oil. Then what, more nuclear reactors? Hydrogen? Solar and wind? Fusion? Some other new technology? Perhaps. Maybe one or more of them will keep us going a while longer. And maybe not. Have you noticed that every new level of technology has its dark side? We now know much of what lurks in nuclear power’s shadow, and the solar-wind shadow is starting to show itself. There are no free lunches.

We are a bloated society whose fat belly is dragging us to our knees. What good is another energy source if there is no air to breathe? Where would we go anyway, with all the trees having died or been cut down and the waters being too laced with toxins for anyone to dare go into them or eat anything from them. As you read this, grasslands and savannas are becoming deserts and the polar ice caps are melting away. Soon low-lying coastal areas, where the majority of the world’s population lives, will be flooded.

Ninety five percent of the population in the United States lives in cities. Imagine a city without power. That means no water, no sewer, no heat, no transportation. Without sanitation, plagues will spread like wildfire. Without heat millions of people will die of hypothermia. Without clean water millions will die of dysentery. Oh yes, and there will be no food. In a matter of days supermarket and warehouse shelves will be stripped bare and in a couple short weeks the food will be gone. Forget about the federal grain reserve—there will be no way to process and distribute it.

With millions upon millions of sick and starving people, it will be impossible to maintain civil order. The cities will be taken over by roving gangs of desperate people exploiting and expropriating anything in their paths to keep themselves alive.

Will there be a mass exodus from the cities? I believe that will be out of the question. The bread-and-burger basket of the country (the grain and meat-producing areas) will be protected from being pillaged at any cost. The National Guard is prepared to put a noose around every city to keep the populace contained and the countryside from being overrun. Look at a highway map; every city of any size is circled by a freeway. The National Guard is going to commandeer this freeway loop and stop all movement in or out of our cities. Those freeways (as with all freeways) are designed and built to military specifications so that they can accommodate military vehicles and maneuvers in times of emergency. The collapse of our society is one such emergency the powers that be had in mind.
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I don’t believe the National Guard will be necessary because the freeways will be undrivable. Look now how a single accident can shut down a freeway; imagine the mayhem of a mass exodus! With a populace hell-bent on escaping the city and a completely overtaxed police force, speed limits will not be enforced. Traffic lights will not be working and there will be no one to clean up after the inevitable countless accidents.

Those who make it to the outskirts of the city will be stopped by the National Guard. That will probably be a blessing because anyone who makes it out into the country will be subject to the lawlessness that will prevail there. Roadblocks will be up everywhere. Regional self-protectiveness will have taken the place of law and order. Outsiders will likely be stripped of anything they have that might prove useful, such as food, ammunition, fuel and medications.

Anyone who thinks they are going to be able to make it through those obstacles to reach their rural or mountain hideaway is living a pipedream. Besides, those hideaways are going to be ransacked by the locals and regional protectionism is going to make anywhere you are not a native a very dangerous place to be.

Within two years of a total collapse, up to ninety percent of the population of the industrialized world will likely have perished. Disease, filth and the stench of rotting carcasses will make the cities virtually uninhabitable, not to mention the total lack of anything to live on other than diseased rats and dogs and toxic weeds.

The ten percent who survive will be small town and rural people. Gardens and livestock could keep many of them going for years. However, the predation rate by their fellow humans will gradually dwindle their numbers. Within another two years, half of them will probably be dead.

Vast areas will be devoid of humans. Populations that were sustained by trucked-in foods, outside energy sources and transportation networks dependent upon those energy sources will likely be wiped out completely. The only exception I can envision is the few scavengers who will keep going by rummaging through the endless tracts of abandoned buildings. And by preying upon each other.

What about all our rich farmland—why won’t people be able to grow crops as they always have? That farmland was artificially created and maintained by outside energy. There will be no tractors, no fertilizer, no herbicides or pesticides, no irrigation. Even if the land could be planted it may not produce much because it has been stripped of its natural vitality. The only reason it kept producing was because of fertilizers being continually dumped upon it.

Even if food could be produced there would be no way to distribute it. With no one to maintain highways and railroads, they will quickly be in shambles. And remember, there is no fuel anyway. Not even bicycles will be functional because the simplest of replacement parts such as tires and tubes will be unavailable.

And forget about solar and wind power. Even though these energy sources are "free and endless," they rely upon a high level of technology. As with anything else hi-tech, these solar and wind gizmos are going to be tossed on rusting heaps along with the rest of our manufactured marvels as soon as they need replacement parts.
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What about our government; isn’t it going take care of us? I think the question will be more like, "What government?" Based on what I have learned from past societal meltdowns, our officialdom will either be burrowed away in bunkers or off to some isolated tropical island. If they stayed they wouldn’t have anything to offer except perhaps a bit more than the average person to expropriate. With no functioning military, no judiciary, no communication system, and hardly anyone who cares about anything other than basic survival, official title will mean nothing. If anything it will get the title bearers quick executions if they dare show their faces. There is going to be a lot of hatred and anger focused on them for feeding the pockets of their greedy capitalist cronies and pulling a smoke job on the populace rather than being honest and realistic about the state of affairs and helping to prepare people for the transition.

What about those who had prepared? I give military-techno style survivalists three to five years, depending upon how long their ammunition, food and fuel stores last. Because their survival is entirely dependent upon manufactured goods they will die shortly after their goods run out. After that the independent me-first psychological makeup of the average survivalist will probably drive him/her to begin preying upon his/her survivalist kin. That will only hasten their collective demise. Especially when they start killing each other off.

Many of these people will be in trouble even before their butane burners and bullets run out. Because they have guns and ammo does not necessarily mean that they are going to be able to procure food. Some areas are going to be quickly hunted out, in part because of the sheer numbers of hunters. Look at what we exterminated back in the days when we had a fraction of our present population and primitive firearms!

Even in areas where big game remains plentiful, survivalist hunters will suffer from failing health and not realize why. One reason is that they are trying to live on big game. Most of them will not be aware of the fact that Native people do not subsist entirely upon big game. In fact, most of their animal-based nourishment comes from rodents, fish, insects, birds, amphibians and reptiles. And Natives eat the whole animal, including lungs, stomach, intestines, brain, eyes, gonads, mammary glands and so on.

A third factor that will contribute to their demise is that they are not hunters. I live in a hunting state where each Thanksgiving week, 600,000 people hit the woods in pursuit of deer so abundant that they number from 15 to 40 per square mile. These are hunters who have every advantage—modern high-powered long-range rifles, the latest hunting accessories and gamefinding technology, they hunt over bait piles and co-operate on drives (lines of people herding deer into waiting shooters), they head into the woods each morning warm and well-fed, and most of them are veteran hunters from families with hunting traditions that go back generations. And yet, after the close of the nine-day season, only one in four of them has gotten a deer. Imagine someone trying to hunt who is hungry, stressed and sick. His odds are only going to go down. The math spells out the hard reality. Even the best-case scenario, which would likely be one out of four are getting a deer every nine days, there’s going to be constant hunger and slow starvation. Remember these hunters are trying to feed their families as well as themselves.

What about the primitive survivalists—those who will be relying upon native technologies such as bow and arrow and traps and snares. In one sense they should fare considerably better than the techno survivalists—they will be able to make and repair their own equipment and many of them will have some knowledge of native diet. This will help them last longer than the techno-survivalists.

How much longer? Without growing up in a hunting culture, a bow hunter has a decided disadvantage next to a gun hunter. A high velocity rifle with a scope shortens the distance between a recreational hunter and a seasoned hunter. Bow hunting is different; it can take a decade or more of steady hunting for a novice to become proficient. These people will not have that kind of time.

Won’t gun hunters adapt to Native hunting techniques once they see the writing on the wall? A few undoubtedly will, and that will help them to keep alive. The real question is whether or not they will be able to build a sustainable culture and lifeway. This will by far be their greatest hurdle. The Missing Piece—the most vital component to long-term survival—is clan lifeway, the Circle Way. Without rites of passage, the Guardian-Warrior way, passed-down clan knowledge, the guidance of Elders, and children being raised in these clan ways, survivors of Armageddon will likely end up living just like the miserable hungry dogs who will be driven together out of necessity. It will be fear and desperation-driven banding together rather than community based on trust. It will be existing rather than living. It will be bare tolerance rather than love. Any group who lives this way may survive for a while, yet its eventual fate is virtually sealed.
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Then who will survive, if anybody? Some Native prophecies talk about a new people who will emerge from the old. They will be the sons and daughters of the Earth destroyers, and they will have learned from their parents’ offenses. They will have prepared themselves for the cleansing by returning to clan ways. Some of them will join with the remnant Natives who still remember a few of their old ways, and together they will form the new seed for the second coming of humankind.

Following is an envisionment of that blooming. I do not present it as something that will happen but rather what could happen if we wake up and apply ourselves now to growing in awareness, personal and planetary healing, and the renewal of the old ways. If there is going to be a future, it has to begin now. After the collapse will be too late—way too late. If we do not reawaken and prepare, we will end up dirty, disease-infested scavengers—if we survive at all.

This envisionment is not all honey and roses. Throughout the text you will find issues that need special attention. These will be critical points in our returning to balance that, if heeded, will save much weeping and gnashing of teeth. I don’t think the question has to be whether we will live or die, but rather how we are going to prepare for our second coming.
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