The Asian Question – Chapter 1

It is difficult to say which is worse, a desperate dictator or a committee running the most
populous country in the world.

Kim Jong-il had it bad, after decades of economic mismanagement and resource misal-
location, the North since the mid-1990s has relied heavily on international aid to feed its
population while continuing to expend resources to maintain an army of about 1 million.
North Korea's long-range missile development and research into nuclear, chemical, and
biological weapons and massive conventional armed forces are of major concern to the
international community. In December 2002, following revelations it was pursuing a nu-
clear weapons program based on enriched uranium in violation of a 1994 agreement
with the United States to freeze and ultimately dismantle its existing plutonium-based
program, North Korea expelled monitors from the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA). In January 2003, it declared its withdrawal from the international Non-
Proliferation Treaty. In mid-2003 Pyongyang announced it had completed the repro-
cessing of spent nuclear fuel rods (to extract weapons-grade plutonium) and was devel-
oping a "nuclear deterrent."

In China, President Hu Jintao, and Vice President ZENG Qinghong Premier WEN Jia-
bao, Vice Premiers HUANG Ju, WU Yi, ZENG Peiyan, and HUI Liangyu needed oil.
There was a matter of national honor and pride, the issue of Taiwan. Never mind that
little dispute with India and Pakistan over the Kashmir region, Vietnam had discovered a
large reserve of natural gas and the Vietnamese didn’t have nuclear weapons. The US
was embroiled in its internal politics over the war on terror and trying to cope with a flu
outbreak, H5N1. Taiwan had announced that they would boycott the games that would
start on August 8, 2008.

North Korea had stalled the 6 party talks until they had 10 atomic bombs, each on the
order of 25kT. With the UN more concerned about Iran developing WMDs, probably be-
cause of Israel, the north had kept processing and stalling. Ten warheads had been
fashioned and rested atop Nadong-1 missiles. By the end of 2002 North Korea was be-
lieved to have about 100 missiles with a range of 800 miles, enough to cover most of
the Japanese archipelago. As of February 2005 Defense Intelligence Agency analysts
believed that North Korea might already have produced as many as 12 to 15 nuclear
weapons. This would imply that by the end of 2004 North Korea had produced some-
where between four and eight uranium bombs [on top of the seven or eight plutonium
bombs already on hand]. One has to understand that when there is a limited supply of
Plutonium and enriched Uranium, a madman is likely to go for more, rather than, bigger.

++++

In far off America, the politicians were engaged in selecting replacements for Bush, the
House and ⅓ of the Senate. The rancor that had developed over the war in Iraq com-
peted with the rancor 40 years earlier when the US had been in Vietnam. It had turned
nasty and the American Congress began to reduce funding for the war, forcing the

1
President to not replace troops. Then with the outbreak of the avian flu, Congress had
passed a Joint Resolution calling for Bush to bring the troops home to help deal with the
epidemic. He caved in.

On Friday, August 1, 2008 the Republic of China declared independence from the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China. Most people know that the PRC government has issued three
triggers for an immediate war with Taiwan. These three conditions are: if events occur
leading to the separation of Taiwan from China in any name, or if Taiwan is invaded and
occupied by foreign countries, or if Taiwan refuses reunification negotiations indefinitely.
Stunned by the audacity of the move, the PRC was outwardly slow to react and it wasn’t
until the night of August 8, 2008, coinciding with the opening of the 2008 Olympic
Games in Beijing, that the PRC attacked Taiwan.

In the intervening time, China had positioned its Navy and quietly moved to a High Alert
status. The fleet of intercontinental missiles was checked and its lone type 092 missile
(12 JL-1) capable submarine and its two type 094 missile (12 JL-2) capable submarines
were moved to the east, off the American coast. The Chinese were unsure whether the
United States would come to the aid of Taiwan; they were no longer obligated to under
existing Treaties. On most calendars August precedes November and that meant the
George W. Bush was still President and would be until the following January 20th. The
Chinese underestimated the attitude of the lame duck President. He had a victory, Iraq,
and a draw, Afghanistan. It appeared that no sooner had the US withdrawn that Iraq
erupted into a Civil War.

Despite sanctions imposed by the UN, Iran was proceeding with its nuclear program. It
had been suggested that with the assistance of the North Koreans, Iran had assembled
3 nuclear weapons. Iran’s inventory of missiles included missiles from North Korea, ca-
pable of reaching Israel. Israel is small, 20,330km² of landmass, an area slightly smaller
than New Jersey. It has a population of between 6-7 million. Arguably, it has the most
powerful military in the Middle East and there is wide speculation that Israel has any-
where from 200-400 nuclear weapons, probably capable of being delivered by its Jeri-
cho 2 and Jericho 3 missiles and F-15 fighters, nobody who knows for sure is talking.

“Mr. President, satellite intelligence shows that the Chinese are moving their forces into
position to attack Taiwan.”

“What’s available?”

“We can have 6 carrier strike groups in the area within 8 days. We can have the Kitty
Hawk in the area within 36 hours. We have raised the Defense Condition from 5 to 4.”

“Notify the Russia Ambassador that we’re moving to DEFCON 3 because of the situa-
tion in the Taiwan Strait and then do it. You’d better get all of the Boomers out of port,
Bob.”

2
“Mr. President, we have Ohio, Michigan and Georgia ready to put to sea with SEAL
teams. We can sail the West Coast SSBNs within 24 hours. We have been replenishing
everyone since August 2nd, just in case. We almost have that completed.”

“Put the 82nd on alert status and transport them to Ft. Irwin. I want them ready to move
to Taiwan in 30 hours.”

“We’re handicapped because of the Olympic Games.”

“Pull our athletes out in protest of the PRC’s invasion of Taiwan. I’ll have Condie speak
to the UK. We better have Chertoff suggest on TV that everyone stock up on a 2 week
supply of food and water and blame it on the epidemic.”

“What about the French?”

“Notify NATO that we’re going to DEFCON 3, they’ll get the word.”

For sake of timelines, all times will be stated in Zulu, GMT. Beijing and Taipei are GMT
+8 while the East Coast of the US is GMT -5 and the West Coast is GMT-8. London is
GMT, Paris is GMT +1, Israel is GMT +2, Moscow is GMT +3 and Tokyo is GMT +9. At
0800 Zulu on 8Aug08, the missile forces stationed across the strait from Taiwan began
a barrage using conventional warheads. The Chinese had more than 1,000 missiles de-
ployed and reloads standing by. It was midnight in London, 7pm in Washington and
4pm on the West Coast. Chinese amphibious forces raced inland on Taiwan as soon as
the missile barrage stopped. A substantial portion of the Taiwanese Air Force had been
destroyed in the barrage; the intended targets were military installations.

“Mr. President, you have a call. President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan is on the line.”

“Mr. President, George Bush, what can I do for you?”

“I know; we’ve got a satellite stationed over your country. We have the 82nd Airborne
being transitioned to Ft. Irwin and all of our West Coast fleet will be at sea within 13
hours. Your adversary has their entire Navy headed your way; it appears that they in-
tend to invade.”

“Not until our people are out of Beijing. I ordered our Olympic Team withdrawn in protest
of the attack. The Kitty Hawk Strike Group is at sea, headed your way.”

“Three Long Angeles I-class subs, Mr. President. We don’t want to start World War
Three if we can avoid it. When the Strike Group gets within combat range we’ll do what
we can to prevent PRC fighter’s from attacking Taipei.”

3
“The Prime Minister said that Britain couldn’t pull its contingent from Beijing, Mr. Presi-
dent.”

“Did he say why, Condie?”

“He said that the United Kingdom wasn’t getting involved in another American war.”

“I think that I’m going to really miss Tony Blair. I want you to file a protest with the Unit-
ed Nations. See whom you can get aboard with the US in the protest. Ask them to con-
vene the Security Council.”

“What are we doing, Mr. President?”

“I’ve sortied the missiles boats, the Carrier Strike Groups and have the 82nd moving to
Ft. Irwin for staging. We’re at DEFCON 3 and I advised the President of Taiwan that the
Kitty Hawk Strike Group would try to keep their airspace clear. I’ll not be the first leader
to employ nuclear weapons. We’ll have 2 Strike Groups there when the Kitty Hawk ar-
rives.”

“The Russian Ambassador advised me that President Putin told Beijing not to use nu-
clear weapons under any circumstances. He told them that Russia would remain rela-
tively neutral so long as they didn’t. What other Strike Group is in the region?”

“The Reagan.”

“The Kitty Hawk was supposed to retire this year.”

“The Bush just entered the Pacific Ocean and is under orders to supplement the forces
off Taiwan. The Kitty Hawk won’t be recalled until this mess is cleared up.”

Sometime later in Colorado Springs, CO…

“I have a launch.”

“How many, from where and what is their projected destination?”

“Sir, 10 missiles launched from North Korea and they’ve targeted Japan.”

“Anything from China?”

“Negative.”

“Mr. President, we have 10 missiles out of North Korea headed to Japan.”

4
“Notify the Japanese. Move us up to DEFCON 2.”

“Sir, the Japanese probably know by now and the missiles are nearly there.”

“Do it anyway and move on the DEFCON.”

“Mr. President, George Bush. Sorry to wake you, but North Korea just launched 10 mis-
siles against Japan. You did? I didn’t realize you had satellites over the area. We’ve or-
dered our athletes out of Beijing and have all of our West Coast assets moving to sup-
port Taiwan. Perhaps you could speak to Beijing again about not going nuclear?”

“Are you sure? When did the Changzheng 6 sail? That type 092 carries 12 Ju Lang-1
(Ju Lang = Giant Wave, NATO code-name: CSS-N-3) or modified JL-1A SLBMs and
they each have a single 250kT nuclear warhead don’t they? The type 094s too? I
thought they wouldn’t be ready before 2010. Oh, I wanted you to know that the United
States is at DEFCON 2 in response to the attack on Japan. My regards to Mrs. Putin.”

“Shucks.”

“What’s wrong?”

“The Changzheng 6 and those two type 094s sailed 10 days ago. What’s our estimate
of the Chinese nuclear forces?”

“We estimate that they have deployed up to 36 of the DF-31A with 3 MIRV’d warheads
in the 350kT range. They have an equal number of DF-5As deployed with a greater
range, 13,000km and a single 3mT warhead. The DF-31As have an estimated range of
12,000km. Beijing is only 11,000km from Washington, Mr. President.”

“So you’re telling me they can launch 36 3mT warheads, 108 350kT warheads and 12
250kT warheads against us?”

“You’ve been briefed before.”

“I didn’t think it would ever come to this. I want 4 of the Ohio-class SSBNs to launch
everything they have on the People’s Republic if they launch on us.”

“Isn’t that a bit of overkill? That would constitute 768 warheads in the 350kT range.”

“154 missiles against this country isn’t overkill? Get choppers up and have them pre-
flight the 747s.”

“Where are you going?”

“New Mexico.”

5
 The Asian Question – Chapter 2

“Get my cabinet assembled and aboard AF-1. I want to depart in one hour or less. Bring
their families too, but no media.”

“Shouldn’t you warn the nation that we’re on the brink of a nuclear war? Shouldn’t we
respond to the North Korean attack on Japan?”

“In time, yes. We already have the Kitty Hawk Carrier Strike Group clear and Japan
doesn’t have any nuclear weapons. Send them $200,000.00 and our apologies. If we
warn the public before the missiles fly, it could lead to tragic consequences. If people
are in their homes, most of them at least have a basement. If we make an announce-
ment, they’ll end up in a traffic jam on the road and die for sure, if it happens.”

“It’s going to take us 3 hours to fly to New Mexico, Mr. President. Wouldn’t you be better
going to Weather Mountain?”

“That’s where everyone expects me to go. I’d guess if the PRC attacks the US, they’d
target NORAD and Weather Mountain. I don’t care which one of the shelters we go to,
but I won’t go either of those places and I’d prefer Holloman.”

“You’re the boss.”

++++

The first we heard of the problem brewing in Southeast Asia was the announcement on
CNN that the President had ordered the US Olympic Team to withdraw from the 2008
Games. I put it on channel 42, Fox News, to listen to John Gibson. Gibson was talking
about Air Force One having left Washington full of government officials earlier in the
day. It was about 2:15pm, 2015 Zulu when I went to the living room.

“Sue, have you been watching the news?”

“I’ve been watching Lifetime, what were you watching?”

“Fox news. John Gibson said that the 747s left Washington earlier in the day with ‘sev-
eral top officials’ aboard.”

“Headed where?”

“He didn’t know. He said that they wouldn’t let any media aboard. Then, about 15
minutes later the second 747 left too with the Vice President and the other half of the
cabinet aboard.”

“Sounds like rats deserting a sinking ship.”

6
“ABC had a short piece on the 82nd Airborne restaging. They called it a training exer-
cise.”

“Restaging where?”

“Ft. Irwin National Training Center.”

“It’s probably nothing. Want to go to the store with me?”

“Grocery shopping?”

“It’s time to stock up again; we’re getting low on several things. If figured we hit Sam’s
Club. Come on Barry, I need help carrying everything.”

I figured that the flu must have invaded Washington and the Executive Branch decided
they had to get out of town. Probably headed to NORAD in Colorado Springs. Sue liked
when I helped with the every-other-month trip to the grocery store. Back around Y2K,
we’d moved out of California and relocated in New Mexico. I liked that and within a year
had more than made up for those stupid gun laws California had enacted. Sue was into
making quilts and had a couple of fancy sewing machines.

We’d bought an old farmhouse about double the size of our home in LA and it had out
buildings. I’d been puttering, I’m retired you know, and all of the buildings were in pretty
good shape, a nail here, a new board there and a coat of paint when I had it done. After
the first power outage, Sue insisted that I put in a standby generator. We put in a Cum-
mins HDCAB 12.5kw diesel powered RV unit with a separate automatic transfer switch.
The salesman said the 1,800-rpm engine was good for years. I liked it because at full
power, it only burned 1⅓ gallon per hour. Sue insisted I put in a 1,000-gallon farm tank
so we had fuel for the generator and our 2005 Dodge 3500.

We found living in rural New Mexico to be far different from LA, fewer sirens for one
thing. We’d done well on our home and had bought the old acreage at a tax sale. Paid
all the back taxes and it was ours. I had my reservations but it was obvious the roof
didn’t leak so we’d gone ahead and bought it. That was just the farmstead; the guy who
owned the land had sold off the ranchland before he’d died. I noticed right off that the air
was a little thin so I hadn’t pushed. It took me until 2005 to have everything repaired and
repainted.

Sue liked to garden and there was a large garden plot on the land. I got a fella to plow
and disk it and I raked it down. The farmhouse had a wood stove and furnace and I’m
not a lumberjack. I didn’t even like splitting the firewood down to kindling for the stove. I
did it, but I mostly cussed the entire time. We’d ordered wood by the large truckload,
usually 5 cords at a time, about $750 worth. That was dumped, not stacked. I moved
the wood to the basement via the coal chute. I suppose I’d have been better off to just

7
buy coal, but that would have meant having wood for the kitchen stove and coal for the
furnace.

“You wouldn’t have thought there be this many people at the store on a weekday,
what’s going on?”

“I talked to a lady who said that the Chinese had attacked Taiwan and that the President
had ordered our athletes out of Beijing.”

“Funny, Gibson didn’t say anything about that. I also heard that North Korea had at-
tacked Japan, I wonder what’s up with that.”

“I think maybe I buy a little extra, just in case.”

“Just in case what, Sue?”

“Just in case the US goes to war with China and North Korea.”

“You don’t think… do you?”

“I don’t know Barry, better safe than sorry.”

She got me to thinking and I started a mental list: the fuel tank was full, but I’d better or-
der another 5 cords of wood to be delivered today; I had enough ammo to fight quite a
battle so I was good there; I’d better stop by the Dodge dealer and pick up spare parts
for the RAM; and, I’d better top off the pickup’s fuel tanks too. Sue had a second cart
and it was filled with toilet paper. By the time we finished at Sam’s Club, we were each
pulling one cart and pushing a second. I mentioned the Dodge dealer and Sue pointed
to an auto parts store. I picked up a few cases of oil, half a case of oil filters, a couple of
spare air filters, fuel filters, belts, PRI products for the fuel tank, glow plugs and so forth.
We stopped by the Chevron station and topped off the dual tanks. Sue called the guy
who sold us firewood on the cell phone and he said he could bring a load during the af-
ternoon.

Where in New Mexico? Between the White Sands Missile Range and the Mescalero
Apache Indian Reservation, north of Tularosa on US 54. I suppose we were about due
north of Holloman AFB. There were mountains in the area and the elevation was push-
ing a mile. That’s mostly why I putted around, didn’t want to get short of air and have a
heart attack. The garden kept us in vegetables and potatoes. Sue had a bread and but-
ter pickle recipe I really liked. I built shelves in the basement to store our food, we’d put
up 105 quarts of green beans, 1,000-pounds of spuds, onions, canned corn, beets, car-
rots and made 49 quarts of pickles. We had a 25ft³ chest freezer that we filled with
Black Angus beef and extra meat from Sam’s Club. We could go a long time on the food
we had, providing I could keep the freezer cold.

8
“I brought the wood, where do you want it dumped?”

“Over there by the coal chute.”

“Mind telling me why you don’t use coal?”

“Wood stove, wood furnace and fireplace. It never made much sense to buy two kinds
of fuel.”

“Fuel is going to be hard to come by in the future; you’ve heard the news, right?”

“Sue told me that the US was getting into it with China.”

“I saw Air Force One fly over Alamogordo; I guess we know where Washington bugged
out to.”

“How could you tell?”

“Mister, there aren’t many airplanes painted like Air Force One. Anyway, I can deliver a
truckload of coal and it will give you 12 times as much heat as that truckload of wood.”

“When could you bring it?”

“Tomorrow morning. If you have a coal room, you ought to empty it out and I can dump
the coal right into that room.”

“You’d better dump that load of wood over there then, you’ll need access to the coal
chute.”

“I’ll be here around 8am. Do you need help moving the wood?”

“There are 5 cords down there. It usually takes me a week.”

“I’ll send my two teenage boys out and they’ll move it in a couple of hours for $60.”

“I can handle that, thanks.”

“That will be $750 for the wood, you can pay the boys directly, in cash.”

“What was that all about?”

“He’s sending his two boys out to empty the coal room and bringing a load of coal in the
morning. That gives us 10 cords of wood and a truckload of coal. They can stack the
wood in that empty corner in the basement. He said that he saw Air Force One coming
into Holloman.”

9
“Are we going to have a war, Barry?”

“I can’t tell you that Sue, but I don’t like them moving the government to New Mexico.”

“I’m going to call Chevron and see if they can put in a second diesel tank.”

“Are you sure?”

“Even if we only run the generator at minimum levels, we won’t have enough fuel for
more than a couple of months, Barry. We’ll have to shut down everything except the
freezer and the refrigerators and use our oil lamps. Sometimes you don’t think ahead.”

“Fine, do it. I ordered the coal; I resent you saying that I don’t think ahead.”

“Did you get the Geiger counters and KIO3? You bought nice guns, but you didn’t get
ammo until I got a hold of Ammoman and ordered it and extra magazines. Who went
surfing on the Internet and found a trauma kit?”

Sue was a little strong willed and I’d learned years before not to argue over her prepar-
edness thing. And if Sue didn’t know what I wanted for weapons, she’d tell me. She
knew exactly what I wanted when it came to guns, 2 Springfield Armory Loaded M1As
and a pair of their mil spec M1911s. She also bought 2 M-6 folding rifles, used, from a
gun store. SA discontinued making the M-6 rifles some time ago. Don’t get me wrong;
I’m not one of those liberals who are opposed to guns. I wanted to buy an assault rifle
as soon as we moved to New Mexico and I had in mind a DSA FAL. Sue insisted that
the M1A would be more politically correct when the Democrats won in 2008. What the
heck, they shot the same ammo. But, I’m wondering if we have a war with the Chinese,
will we still have an election?

The boys came by and moved the wood in about 2½ hours. I gave them $35 apiece and
they said that their dad already had the coal on the truck when they left. If I wanted, he
could deliver it tonight. I told them that was fine with me and if he didn’t, I’d see him in
the morning. They told me it was $50 a ton and the truck held 5 tons of coal. It wasn’t an
hour before he was there with the truckload of coal. He had a good day; he sold me
$750 worth of wood and $250 worth of coal. Sue said that Chevron would bring by a
tank at 8am tomorrow and fill it immediately.

“How big of a tank?”

“All they had on hand was a used 2,000-gallon tank. He told me we could have a new
1,000-gallon tank, but he’d have to order it.”

“That will take a gallon of PRI-D, Sue. I guess it’s a good thing I bought 12 of the 32
ounce bottles, I used 2 so far and will need 4 more for the new tank.”

10
 The Asian Question – Chapter 3

“Did you get PRI-Ocide?”

“Yep, a dozen 16 ounce bottles.”

“I want you to treat the diesel with PRI-D and PRI-Ocide.”

“You realize that if we don’t have a power outage, we have enough diesel fuel for sev-
eral years of driving, don’t you? We get about 15mpg and 3,000 gallons of diesel fuel
will run the truck for 45,000 miles.”

“Well, 3,000-gallons of diesel fuel will run the generator at 50% power for almost 7,000-
hours, Barry. We can probably get a year out of the fuel if all we run are the refrigera-
tors, freezer and furnace fan. Did you get some of those little bottles of PRI-D for your
fuel tank?”

“Yes dear.”

“You’d better add some PRI-Flow to the tanks too, it gets very cold in the winter.”

“Yes dear.”

I went to the basement and got a beer, I can only take so much of her planning my day.
The PRI-Flow would keep diesel fuel from gelling down to –50°, provided you mixed it
with the fuel at the same rate as PRI-D, 1:2,000. I’d bought a case each of the PRI
products; I was beginning to believe that she owned stock in the company. I took a pull
on my Bud and reflected on how having 2 tanks was better, we could completely empty
one and that would make adding my wife’s products much easier. Are you sure Simon
Lagree wasn’t a woman?

++++

Sue wrote the Chevron guy a check to pay for the tank and 2,000-gallons of #2. My only
part in the whole charade was pouring in 1 gallon of PRI-D, 1 gallon of PRI-Flow and ½
gallon of PRI-Ocide. I went in and turned on the TV. The troops had been moved from
Ft. Irwin to Hawaii where the planes were refueled and then headed to Australia. They
were discussing the fleet all being at sea on the West Coast. I must have missed that
before. Apparently, the US had 2 Carrier Strike Groups, the Kitty Hawk and the Reagan
on scene off the East Coast of Taiwan. The George H. W. Bush CSG was making
standard speed having rounded the horn a few days ago. The other Carrier Strike
Groups had sailed 4 days before and were well over ½ of the way to Taiwan. I figured
that they must have been pouring on the coals.

“What are you watching?”

11
“The news. Did you know we sent our entire West Coast Fleet to Taiwan?”

“I heard someone mention that at Sam’s Club.”

“Is that why we’ve been storing wood, coal, fuel and food?”

“Barry, it’s never been a question of if. It’s always been a question of when. You should
have seen the preparations my father made; he was almost psychotic on the subject.”

“I’m not opposed to being prepared, you know.”

“I know, but you were born and raised in California and don’t appreciate the fact that
when the stuff hits the fan, the government won’t be there to bail us out.”

“I’m not a pacifist or a liberal. I did my time in the Army.”

“During peacetime, you did. But that puts you a step up on a lot of people. Once the bul-
lets start flying, you’ll know what to do.”

“Yeah, duck. I was in after Vietnam. Those were the days when the military was down-
sizing. It’s been a long time since I’ve had on ALICE gear.”

“Speaking of which, we should go to Alamogordo and pick up a couple of sets and

some magazine pouches.”

“We can probably find BDUs and Fritz helmets, too.”

“Yeah, right. I don’t think we need military clothes, but those PASGT helmets might not
be a bad idea. What about body armor?”

“Vests, maybe, but I don’t think we need plates, we aren’t going to get into combat.”

“How do you know?”

“I meant that it isn’t likely we’ll get into combat. I suppose it could always happen, Sue.
We’re going to have enough trouble just finding some soft body armor this late in the
game.”

My wife handled the money and she was of Scotch-Irish ancestry. The Scotch mostly
showed through, she was always looking for a deal. I was very surprised when the order
from Ammoman had come. She had 12,000-rounds of 7.62×51mm ammo and 2,500-
rounds of .45ACP. She’d also purchased a 10-pack of new 7-round magazines for the
pistols and a bundle of 80 20-round M-14 magazines. If you’ve ever carried 800 rounds
of that 7.62 ammo, you know how heavy it is. Sue claimed that she only bought 80 be-
cause it was a package price, a likely story. I figured maybe 4 mag pouches per ALICE
set; that would give us 160 rounds plus the 20 in the M1A. We could each carry 4 spare

12
M1911 magazines too. Well, I could carry 6 and she could carry 4, dividing the spares
up between us. That was because the surplus store only had the canvas 2-magazine
pouches.

We bought 2 new sets of ALICE gear, which I assumed was after market, probably
made in China. We found 2 level III vests available, new. They were made by Point
Blank and called The Storm. I asked the guy who sold them about that Zylon fiber I
heard about and he told me that he didn’t carry them. He asked if we had shotguns and
I told him no. Before we got out of the store, we each had new Ruger 10/22s and Re-
mington 11-87s, parkerized with 7 shot magazine extension and Wilson Combat Ghost
Ring (rear) plus XS (front) sights. We also had extra magazines for the Rugers and 2
cases of Remington Tactical 00 buck. How is a fella going to shoot 5 guns at one time?

Since both Sue and I had applied for and gotten CCW’s after we’d bought the farm, we
could carry anywhere not prohibited by law (basically the Courthouse and on the Reser-
vations). Sue got involved in a conversation with the guy at the gun store and he told
her he had whatever it was she asked about. He gave her some forms and told her to
get them signed by the Sheriff. Meanwhile, he handed her a plain brown paper bag and
told her that once she brought the paperwork back, it would take about 90 days. I didn’t
see the size of the check she wrote; lucky her, I would have killed her on the spot.

“Sue, what did you buy?”

“Accessories for our M1As.”

“What kind of accessories?”

“Flashhiders.”

“They already have flashhiders.”

“Not as good as these, they don’t. The one’s I got completely hide the flash.”

“Nothing completely hides the flash except a suppressor.”

“These completely hide the flash, Barry, trust me.”

The last time Sue had told me to trust her she’d gone to town and came home with the
Dodge Ram 3500. It had 4WD, a standard cab, long bed, Cummins turbo diesel engine,
auxiliary fuel tank and 12k Warn winch. She bought a rifle rack for the back window and
a CD of Patsy Cline’s Great Hits, so I forgave her. I never did find out how much she
paid for the pickup, she said she’d paid cash and that it was in both of our names. She
also claimed they gave her a fair trade-in on our old car and that paid for all of the ac-
cessories.

13
“There is a 90-day waiting period for a suppressor, Sue. You have to get fingerprints,
get the Sheriff to sign off and wait for the BATF to approve the purchase.”

“That’s right and in the meantime, we’re just holding them. I’ll do the thing with the Sher-
iff, I’ve never even had a traffic ticket.”

“I priced those things, what brand did you buy?”

“Surefire.”

“They’re about $1,700 each!”

“You obviously have shopped. That’s right, $1,672 plus sales tax, the $200 tax stamp
and the Sheriff’s fees. But, they’re very good flashhiders. I sort of look at the sound
suppression as a bonus, two for the price of one.”

“We going to end up in jail, you know.”

“Right, Barry, just after the Chinese attack.”

“Why are you so certain that’s going to happen?”

“Think about it, Barry. If the Chinese had waited until Bush was out and a Democrat in,
they probably wouldn’t have had a problem. I’m convinced that’s why Taiwan declared
Independence when they did, during the 2008 Olympics. Bush pulled the American par-
ticipants out signaling that he might attack Beijing. He did nothing to respond to the
North Koreans nuking Japan. According to what you’ve told me you’ve seen on TV, the
82nd Airborne is moving west. You also said that we had 2 CSGs in the area already.”

“I can’t fault your logic, Sue, but the United States would never launch nuclear weapons
first.”

“They tested a ship-launched missile that took out a reentry vehicle in 2005 that worked.
It isn’t going to do us any good if they’re all in the Far East. What kind of missile was it?”

“That was a RIM-161, Standard Missile-3. It was fired from the Lake Erie, a Ticonderoga
class Guided Missile Cruiser. If I understand, it’s a Theatre Defense Missile for defend-
ing ships. The Navy has it deployed on all of the Aegis Cruisers and possibly some of
the Guided Missile Destroyers. Although THAAD began deployment this year, I wouldn’t
count on THAAD if I were you. They haven’t made enough tests. Between that and the
PAC-3, we might kill a portion of the incoming warheads.”

“Is there anything else we can do to prepare, Barry?”

14
“Pray I guess. We should stay close to home and keep a radio or the TV on all of the
time.”

“I’ve read that we should have a ham band radio, where could we get one of those?”

“Amateur Electronic Supply or Ham Radio Outlet. I’ve looked into it and we’d need at
least 2 antennas, a tri-band UHF/VHF and a 10-band HF antenna. We can buy one ra-
dio with all of the frequencies and get a mast we can raise. What I’m not sure of is, is
whether we could get the equipment here in time.”

“Do you have the model numbers and all of the information?”

“Kenwood TS-2000 with or without the extra module. Then a MFJ-1798 10 Band vertical
that covers 75/80, 40, 30, 20, 17, 15, 12, 10, 6 and 2 meters and a Comet antenna that
covers 2m, 70cm and 23cm. We should have a CB too for local communications.”

“I’ll call them if you have the numbers.”

“Ask them how fast they could get the equipment here. We can pay for overnight if they
can ship it. We should be able to get a mast in Alamogordo.”

“How long do we have?”

“I really wish I knew. Maybe 4 days and then we’ll either have a war or end up having
spent a lot of money for nothing. You make the calls and if we can get what we need,
order it.”

“Make me a list Barry and I’ll call.”

“What did you get?”

“A TS-2000X, a MFJ-1798, a Comet tri-bander, a power supply, a spool of RG-213U

and it is all coming UPS Red Label. We’d better get into to Alamogordo and arrange for
an antenna mast. I also picked up a better microphone and headphones. Are we plan-
ning on operating without a license?”

“I’d guess so, there isn’t time to get one, is there? After that stunt with the flashhiders, I
can’t imagine that you’d care.”

“I’ll take the rifles with us and get the adapters installed while you’re locating the mast.”

“Fine, but take a portable radio so you can keep an ear on either KYEE or KINN.”

15
 The Asian Question – Chapter 4

While Sue was getting the gunsmith to install and verify the alignment of the adapters, I
located a mast and arranged to it to be installed the next day. I was told they’d need a
concrete base and the salesman gave me written specifications. That afternoon, I dug a
hole and using several sacks of Quikrete, put in the base. The mast was a US Tower
MA-770MDP with standoffs for the Comet and the CB antennas.

Meanwhile, the White House made an announcement on the EAS.

My fellow Americans,

On August 1, the Republic of China declared their Independence from the People’s Re-
public of China. In the aftermath, I recalled our Olympic Team from Beijing and they
have arrived in America. We didn’t respond to the North Korean attack on Japan, but I
had already ordered the Kitty Hawk Carrier Strike Group to sail from Japan, so it was in
the clear.

During the same period of time, our Carrier Strike Groups steamed to Taiwan. The Kitty
Hawk and Reagan Strike Groups have been on scene for several days and will be
joined in the next 48 hours by 4 additional groups. Several days ago, I instructed the
Department of Homeland Security to instruct all citizens to prepare for a contingency
and assemble a 2-weeks supply of food and water.

The avian flu epidemic has been contained but it appears that a possibility exists that
the Chinese could attack the United States. Your government has relocated to shelters
and will continue to operate in the event if an attack. At the conclusion of my message,
FEMA representatives will provide instructions for sheltering in place. As of this time, we
are unsure of the next move the People’s Republic will take.

With the exception of our naval vessels and the 82nd Airborne Division, our entire mili-
tary is presently in the United States. Any action on the part of the United States will be
limited to responding to attacks against the people of the Republic of China and our own
country.

Our ABM Systems that were brought online earlier this year will intercept any attack
against the United States. The Chinese leaders may be assured that we will respond in
kind. Our assessment indicates the possibility of Beijing launching as many as 154
weapons against this country. I have ordered that every missile launched be responded
to by our Trident D missile system. I urge the Chinese leaders to reconsider any possi-
ble attack against this country and discontinue their attack against the Republic of Chi-
na.

“We’re in trouble.”

“Why do you say that?”

16
“He didn’t say anything about Laura and he didn’t end the message with God Bless
America. And, he didn’t do anything to respond to the North Koreans nuking Japan.”

++++

The following day, the installer from Alamogordo assembled the radio tower and in-
stalled the base plate, suggesting that the tower only be installed when the Quikrete fin-
ished curing. Late in the afternoon, UPS showed up with the items Sue had ordered.
She called the installer to return the following day to install the antennas and run the
coax and mast controls to the basement. Meanwhile, I examined the basement with an
eye to surviving fallout. The only opening into the basement from the outside was the
coal chute so I didn’t need to worry about blocking any windows. Just to be extra safe, I
moved some of the woodpile to cover the opening, a metal door.

The more I looked, the more I realized that about the only thing we had in the basement
to provide shielding was the 5 cords of wood stacked in that corner. I figured we had
one day, maybe two, to come up with an expedient shelter to protect the two of us
against possible fallout if TSHTF in earnest. I hadn’t listened to the news and Sue had
spent her time talking to the fella about the mast. 38” of wood had a protection factor of
10 while 16” of earth gave an equal amount of protection. I called the lumberyard to
bring a load of 4×4s and some plywood; I intended to build an improvised shelter in the
corner.

Because the basement had a 12’ ceiling, I could build a shelter large enough for us to
stand up in, 6’ high and put it around the stool and sink, thus ensuring us a water sup-
ply. While I waited for the lumber delivery, I began filling cardboard boxes with soil. I
found that if I filled them more than ½ way full, they were too heavy to lift. The lumber
came late in the afternoon and I was up all night sawing and hammering. I eked out a
12’ x 12’ x 6’ shelter around the basement bathroom. Then I began to dump the boxes
of soil on the top until I had 72” of dirt.

“Did you work all night?”

“I did, yes, keep you up?”

“I didn’t notice after a while. How far did you get?”

“The shelter is framed in and covered with 72” of dirt; I’ll refill the boxes and wrap the
walls in boxes of dirt.”

“How much protection is that shelter going to provide?”

“I figure it has a protection factor of almost 10,000, Sue. Not now, but it will when I have
it surrounded with dirt and wood.”

17
“What do we have to cook on?”

“A Coleman stove and a 2 burner hotplate.”

“That fella is installing the antennas and running the wire today. You want the radio in
the shelter?”

“That would give it the best EMP protection, so I suppose so.”

“Do you really think they’re going to attack?”

“I hope not, but if they do, we should be able to survive. We didn’t respond to the attack
on Japan, but I expect we will nuke the North eventually.”

“Sometimes I almost wonder why we’d want to. What’s going to be left? The US was
already in very poor condition and that avian flu almost pulled our plug. The good news
is that we’ll be rich when it’s all over.”

“Why would that be?”

“We got a quarter million clear for our home. We bought this place cheap and I invested
some of the excess in gold and silver. I picked the gold up for about $350 an ounce. I
checked the Internet and the price of gold today is over $650 an ounce. If we have a
war, it will more than double overnight, Barry. We have everything we need to survive
for a very long time, a good well, food, fuel and a means of protection. Anything we
don’t have, we can buy.”

“I didn’t know you bought gold. Where to you keep it?”

“In my cedar chest at the foot of our bed, under the quilts.”

“How much do we have?”

“300 ounces of gold in the various sizes of coins plus 600 ounces of silver in one ounce
coins.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? What if something had happened to you?”

“You’d have tried to move the cedar chest and figured it out; it’s 75 pounds of precious
metal. I left the purchase invoices with the coins.”

“We need to get those 2 boys back out here to help me move the dirt and the cedar
chest to the basement.”

“I’ll call the firewood man, how long do you think you’ll need them?”

18
“Offer the boys $50 apiece, they’ll come.”

I erected a wall 72” out from the wall of the shelter and followed the FEMA plans, creat-
ing an L-shaped entrance. All I needed to do was to fill the space with soil and stack the
firewood around the whole thing. The boys showed up an hour later and it was the best
$100 we ever spent, our improvised shelter was finished.

Meanwhile the Carrier Strike Groups had reached Taiwan and were spread around the
east of the island nation. They put up a BAR-CAP to prevent Chinese fighters from at-
tacking Taiwan and began to decimate the Chinese forces that had landed on the island
in the week since the attack. The date was August 16, 2008. Back in the US, the forces
remained at DEFCON 2. The fleets were at modified condition Zebra, just short of being
at General Quarters.

“Bridge, CIC.”

“Bridge, aye”

“Captain, we have a launch.”

“Details?”

“Sir, it appears to be a CSS-2.”

“General Quarters! Notify the Carrier that we are attempting to intercept a nuclear war-
head. Contact the Destroyers and the other Cruiser and determine if they’re tracking.
Get those RIM-161s enabled and set to automatic launch.”

“Tracking.”

“Sir we have additional launches.”

“Headed for us?”

“Negative, the other CSGs.”

“Pass the word.”

“Sir, we have an AEGIS initiated launch.”

Meanwhile from aboard the Reagan, National Command Authority was being notified
that the 7 CSGs had come under attack, presumably by CSS-2 missiles capable of car-
rying a single nuclear warhead or a conventional warhead. In New Mexico, NCA raised
the United States to DEFCON 1 and forwarded the launch codes to 4 of the Ohio-class

19
SSBNs on a 6-hour hold. Absent a rescission of the order, the subs would launch in just
under 6-hours with one missile attacking North Korea and the others China. The B-2
bombers were launched and directed to Area 51 where round the clock work was ongo-
ing to make the F-117s airworthy.

Off Taiwan, the AEGIS Cruisers successfully intercepted all but one of the incoming
warheads.

“Mr. President, they got the Kitty Hawk CSG.”

“Any specifics?”

“It’s too early to tell.”

“Have there been any other launches?”

“Negative.”

“Bob, I think we should leave the Boomers on the 6-hour hold until we get this sorted
out.”

“I concur.”

“Mr. President, is that wise? If we don’t rescind the orders, those subs will automatically
launch.”

“Mr. Hadley, I understand. However, we would lose 30-minutes if we rescinded the or-
ders and then had to turn around and reissue them. Set it up to automatically rescind
the orders at 5-hours, we should know our situation by then.”

“Yes sir.”

Have you seen the aftermath of the tests at Bikini Atoll? The US has produced the big-
gest ever man-made explosion so far in the Pacific archipelago of Bikini, part of the
Marshall Islands. It is believed the hydrogen bomb was up to 1,000 times more powerful
than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. It was so violent that it overwhelmed
the measuring instruments, indicating that the bomb was much more powerful than sci-
entists had anticipated. The bomb was the equivalent of 20m tons of TNT.

20
 The Asian Question – Chapter 5

One of the atolls has been totally vaporized, disappearing into a gigantic mushroom
cloud that spread at least 100 miles wide and dropping back to the sea in the form of
radioactive fallout. The Atomic Energy Commission announced this was the first in a se-
ries of tests to be carried out in the area. Tests first began in Bikini in 1946 after the na-
tives were moved to the island of Rongerik, then to Ujelan a year later and to Kili on
1949. This is the second H-bomb test in the area. A 10.4-megaton bomb was exploded
on 1 November 1952 at Enewatak, west of Bikini. It destroyed one island and left a
crater 175 feet deep. It was hundreds of times more powerful than that used over Hiro-
shima. Unlike that device which tapped energy by splitting atomic nuclei, the Enewetak
weapon forced together nuclei of hydrogen to unleash an even greater destructive
force.

In the shelter at Holloman AFB, the NCA had made a decision that the United States
would wait and see about NOT starting WW III. It would depend on the outcome of the
Chinese attack on the US fleet. That was an interesting decision; would the Chinese
government also wait to attack the US mainland? No one was angry at the Japanese for
their failed response to Hurricane Katrina, but the slate was even now. They could sit in
the radioactive waste and count their Yen. The national government of Japan was criti-
cized for not acting quickly enough to save many people, for poorly managing Japanese
volunteers, and for initially refusing help from foreign nations, including the US, Korea
and England.

From one viewpoint the attack on Japan by North Korea could be seen as justice for the
Japanese actions from 1905 until 1945. A person can’t fault George W. Bush for want-
ing to avoid war with China and arguably an attack on North Korea would provoke a
Chinese attack on the US. With the attacks on the CSGs, the Chinese intentions be-
came clear. Had the RIM-161s taken out all of the Chinese warheads, we still wouldn’t
know anything.

++++

“Mr. President, the Chinese have launched on the US.”

“Activate the EAS and warn the people. Instruct the SSBNs to launch immediately and
activate the ABM system. Someone let the Russians know that were launching 96 mis-
siles, 95 against China and 1 against North Korea. We wouldn’t want them to respond.”

“Mr. President, I concur.”

“Thanks, Bob, I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

Most people think that the National Command Authority is the President of the United
States. The term National Command Authority (NCA) is used in United States military
and government circles to refer to the ultimate lawful source of military orders. Though

21
the term is singular, it in reality refers to the President of the United States and the Sec-
retary of Defense.

Only the NCA can order the use of nuclear weapons, including the Single Integrated
Operational Plan (SIOP). Neither individual, by himself, can order that strategic nuclear
weapons be used against any country or region. If the NCA determines that a nuclear
strike is necessary, they must jointly inform the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
who in turn will direct a general officer on duty in the National Military Command Center
(NMCC) at the Pentagon to execute the SIOP.

The use of the term dates from the Cold War era in which the United States and Soviet
Union had nuclear missiles on constant alert and a responsible official had to be availa-
ble to authorize a retaliatory strike within a matter of minutes. Detailed Continuity of
Government plans provided for monitoring the whereabouts of certain key government
officials who would become the National Command Authority if the President were him-
self victim of an enemy attack.

The Trident D-5 missiles with their 8 W88 300-475 kiloton MIRVs each could wipe out
all major population centers in North Korea and the People’s Republic of China. Stag-
gered launching permitted multiple weapons on a single target. The US had pulled its
athletes and warned others to do the same. It should be noted that some countries took
his advice, especially Israel. The Chinese assumed that with the 2008 Games in Beijing,
the US wouldn’t attack their Capitol. They launched 36 DF-31A with 3 MIRV’d 350kT
warheads, 36 DF-5As with single 3mT warheads, 12 JuLang-1 with 250kT warheads
and the 24 JuLang-2 carrying 3 250kT warheads. Surprisingly although the Chinese had
originally invented the missile, they were latecomers when it came to inter-continental
ballistic missiles. Their missiles had a far greater CEP, but with the larger warheads on
most of their missiles, what difference did it make?

How’s your math? The United States only has 400 W88 warheads and at 8 per that
means that only 80 of the missiles were armed with the 475kT warheads. The remaining
16 were armed with W76 warheads at 100kT each. They were the follow on missiles
launched last in the sequence, 4 each by each of the boomers. Once the initial wave of
warheads did the major damage, a smaller explosion was just as devastating. It’s off the
point, but the reason that the US didn’t have W88 pits for all of the 336 D-5 missiles was
because the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado had been closed and no one else could pro-
duce the pits.

The Chinese targeted the DF-31A missiles on the highest priority targets and the DF-5A
on the largest population centers. The 12 Ju Lang-1 missiles with a range of 1,700km
were limited to low priority west coast targets. The US had 2 Battalions of THAAD
launchers and each Battalion 4 batteries. The THAAD battery will typically operate nine
launch vehicles each carrying eight missiles, with two mobile tactical operations centers
(TOCs) and ground-based radar (GBR). The 9th battery was located at Holloman AFB,
supposedly for further testing.

22
In a typical combat scenario, THAAD’s X-band, phased array, solid-state radar will scan
the horizon for hostile missiles. It was be capable of detecting threats at a range of
1,000 kilometers. Once an incoming missile had been detected, the X-band radar would
relay this information to the C2BMC unit, a mobile command center installed on
HMMWVs that manages and integrates all THAAD components. C2BMC units are ca-
pable of linking THAAD with other missile defense layers to strengthen the overall Bal-
listic Missile Defense System. C2BMC is also responsible for determining friend from
foe.

A typical THAAD battery will include nine M1075 truck-mounted launchers to transport
and fire the interceptors. Each launcher is 12 meters long, 3.25 meters wide, and car-
ries 10 missiles. The Army will be able to transport the launchers by C-130 aircraft for
rapid deployment. After firing, the launcher will take approximately 30 minutes to reload.
The interceptor missile itself is 6.17 meters long, 0.34 meters in diameter, and weighs
900 kilograms. It is powered by a single stage solid fuel rocket motor with thrust vector-
ing. Although the interceptor is not designed to track long-range ballistic missiles, MDA
has not yet ruled out the possibility of upgrading the system to accommodate greater
range and velocity.

Following the launch, the interceptor will receive targeting information from the ground-
based X-band radar. After its burnout stage, the interceptor’s kill vehicle (KV) will sepa-
rate from the booster. The KV is equipped with a liquid Divert and Attitude Control Sys-
tem (DAVS), which will maneuver the KV toward the target interception point. An infra-
red seeker in the KV’s nose will home in on the target. At the point of impact, the KV will
collide with the incoming missile (like a bullet hitting a bullet), causing complete destruc-
tion of the warhead including any nuclear, chemical, or biological agents.

The US Army acquired 80 THAAD launchers, 18 ground based radars and a total of
1,422 THAAD missiles. Two THAAD battalions existed, each with four batteries. The
bottom line was that the US could intercept the Chinese missiles, within the limits of the
new and largely unproven system. George W. Bush was relying on a tested, but un-
proven, system. And, as was pointed out, the THAAD missile system was backed by
PAC-3 batteries. The NCA didn’t have a feel on the JL-2 because it wasn’t expected to
be ready until the type 094 was ready. Therefore, 72 warheads which could reach the
east coast went unanswered.

“Do you have everything we need in the basement, Sue?”

“Why?”

“According to the EAS, the United States is under attack.”

“I hope they think that Bush is in Mt. Weather or NORAD. Help me move a few things to
the basement and we’re good to go.”

23
“I’ve been thinking about that, Bush came to New Mexico at the same time they evacu-
ated Washington, DC. I’m beginning to believe that the Chinese might not realize he’s in
New Mexico. He’s a crafty one.”

“Is that a nice way of saying he’s one sneaky SOB?”

“The only target of interest would be Albuquerque unless they know he’s here. It might
turn out that we won’t have much fallout to deal with.”

“Even so, we’re better start taking the Potassium Iodate. You didn’t build a real shelter
and there is nothing to keep a little radioactive Iodine from slipping into the basement.”

“What did you buy from Radmeters4U?”

“Their standard package deal plus 4 extra bottles of KIO3 and 4 extra dosimeters.”

“You move your things to the basement and I’ll get the mattress, we’ll need something
to sleep on.”

“Have we overlooked anything?”

“God, I hope not. I meant to tell you, they have one THAAD launcher and one Pac-3
launcher at Holloman.”

“I don’t know if that’s a relief or a cause for concern.”

“Time to tuck in Sue and pray for the best.”

Once Barry and Sue were in their improvised shelter, Barry disconnected the antennas
from the back of the T-2000X and turned on an AM radio to follow the action. Ala-
mogordo is 209 road miles or about 160 line-of-sight miles from Albuquerque. Albu-
querque was hit by one of the JL-1 missiles which detonated its warhead at ~2,000’.
The EMP was enough to knock out all radio stations in a 175-mile radius. When the ra-
dio died, Barry noted the date and time: August 20, 2008 at 2:25pm, (20Aug08, 2125
Zulu.) Sue finished replacing the batteries in the CD V-715 and turned it on to the lowest
range. She then charged 2 dosimeters and gave one of the two to Barry. Finally, she
handed him a bottle off KIO3 and told him to initiate prophylactic therapy.

Sue nursed dinner to completion on the electric burner and they ate around 5pm. At that
point in time, the radiation level hadn’t changed. After dinner, Barry reconnected the T-
2000X and started listening, but couldn’t receive anything but static. He busied himself
sharpening their 2 KA-BAR knives to a razor’s edge. Next, he connected their laptop to

24
the Ethernet cable and tried to bring up the Internet. He was unable to log on to his ISP.
Finally, they folded the table, laid the mattress flat and called it a night.

The next morning the Survey meter indicated a small amount of radiation, almost too
little to measure in the confined shelter area. He slid the probe around the corner to
check the basement and it jumped to 150mR.

“What is the reading in the basement?”

“150mR, so apparently the fallout came in during the night.”

“I’ll get a pad and we’ll try and monitor it every hour and keep track. Do you know about
the 7-10 rule?”

“I used to, remind me.”

“For every 7 fold increase in time, the radiation drops 90%. My father made us all learn
7-49-373-2,401.”

“What’s for breakfast?”

“Cereal and milk. There’s another gallon of milk in the basement refrigerator when it’s
safe to get it.”

“I can hear the generator so I assume we lost electricity. Should we try and monitor the
radio or just play cribbage?”

“Check the radio but if all we’re getting is static, leave the darned thing off.”

“I guess we should have planned this better, Sue. I’d be a lot more comfortable in a
dedicated shelter.”

“Time to check the radiation level again.”

“175mR and still negligible inside.”

“Good, it should start to drop soon. At least if they tried to hit Alamogordo we were able
to intercept the incoming warheads.”

“How long to you figure we’ll be down here?”

“That’s hard to say this early.”

25
 The Asian Question – Chapter 6

“Once the radiation level is under 100mR, we should be free to move around the base-
ment. We can live there and leave the mattress set up in here to sleep at night. We’re
bound to get fallout from San Diego, Los Angeles and Phoenix.”

“Is that some magic number, 100mR?”

“The limit for 120 days is 300R or 2.5R per day. That’s 104mR per hour but my father
always said that anything over 50mR was too much for children and people of child-
bearing age. I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that, so we can handle a level of
100mR for 16 hours plus a negligible level for 8 hours. We’ll be getting approximately
66mR per hour, well within limits.”

“So even at the present level, we’re free to get something out of the refrigerator or
freezer?”

“Absolutely. You know, sometimes I’m just too frugal for my own good, Hon. I could
have bought a survey meter with a remote sensor and we wouldn’t be guessing what
the radiation level was outside.”

“As far as that goes, we could have spent $50 grand on an independent shelter, Sue
and then it wouldn’t matter. This seems to have worked out so why worry about it? I
can’t think of a single reason we have to leave the basement until its safe.”

“There you go not wearing your thinking cap, Barry. You’re going to have to change the
oil in the generator, it can’t run forever without being serviced.”

“The owner’s manual says to change the oil filter every 200 hours and the oil every 20
hours. That’s fine for a new genset, but this one has plenty of time on it. I think it’s well
past the break-in stage and we can get by changing the oil when we replace the filter.
That’s a week from now. Anyway, the generator isn’t running at full power hence the
engine isn’t being worked very hard.”

“You’d better be right on that because if you aren’t, we’ll ruin the engine.”

“We only have enough filters to change the oil 6 times and each oil change takes 7
quarts of oil. It’s obvious to me that I should have gotten more filters and oil at the auto
parts store.”

“Do you have the part number?”

“Onan 122-0833 or Fram PH3593A. That filter fits all of the HDK series. I’ll have to find
enough of those to change the oil 46 more times. And, with 4 oil changes per case,
we’re going to need a dozen cases of oil. The fuel filter is Onan 149-2513 or Fram
P3500.”

26
“Why so many?”

“Because the woman I’m married to insisted on having enough fuel for about a year for
the generator.”

++++

TICK, Tick, tick…

Within a week, the basement was totally safe and the outside radiation level was down
to the point where Barry could service the generator. The Alamogordo area didn’t really
get that much fallout and if any incoming had been aimed their way, the ABMs must
have gotten them. Neither Sue nor Barry knew because they’d been in the basement.
There was an eerie silence, almost spooky. The Dodge started so the area didn’t get
any EMP. And, they didn’t have any livestock to attend so they were basically bored.
Sue picked up where she left off on a quilt project and Barry armed up, grabbed a
bunch of cash and headed to the auto parts store to see about getting more filters and
oil.

“We’re out of a lot of parts, mister, some folks had engine problems. Probably the EMP.”

“We didn’t get any EMP up north.”

“You were lucky, what do you need?”

12 cases of SAE 30 oil, 48 Fram PH3593A oil filters and 4 Fram P3500 fuel filters.”

“We don’t take checks.”

“I have cash, can you help me or not?”

“No ignition parts?”

“My Ram runs fine.”

“I only have those filters because we carry them for that RV place. What are you doing,
opening an RV service business?”

“Not exactly, no. Do you have what I need?”

“I do. That’s going to be $936 plus tax, $1,003.86. Make it an even grand.”

“Ouch.”

27
“The oil is $25 a case, the oil filters $12 each and the fuel filters $15 each, is there a
problem?”

“I hate saying goodbye to good old Ben, that’s all. Here you go.”

“Pull around back and we’ll load.”

“Did they have what we needed?”

“For a thousand dollars they did. I don’t think he gouged me either, that’s a lot of oil and
filters.”

“What’s it like in Alamogordo?”

“Quiet as a graveyard. He said that they got EMP down there.”

“Why did your pickup start?”

“I don’t know, because I turned the key?”

“I guess that explains why there haven’t been any radio or TV stations on the air.”

“Does you sewing machine work ok?”

“Sure, why wouldn’t it?”

“It might not work if we’d gotten any EMP; it’s nothing but an electric motor that has an
integrated circuit to control the stitches.”

“Well, it works fine.”

“I wonder if we can top off the fuel tank.”

“How much have we used?”

“About 150 gallons.”

“It hardly seems worth it. Besides, I don’t think they deliver for any purchase less than
300 gallons.”

“It’s chilly out, do you think I should start a fire in the furnace?”

“Before September 1st? Don’t be ridiculous. Stay in the kitchen, it’s warm because I’m
going to bake bread.”

28
“I should probably sit on the front porch and guard the place.”

“Right, you’re cold so instead of staying in the kitchen where it’s warm, you want to sit
outside where it’s cold.”

“But Sue, we just had a war with the Chinese. They must have succeeded in detonating
some weapons if they have an EMP problem in Alamogordo.”

“We don’t have any EMP damage here. You went into Alamogordo and bought parts for
the generator. Why do you believe that we’ll have any trouble?”

“I don’t know, just a feeling. I’ll go listen to the ham radio.”

Barry didn’t know much about the radio because he wasn’t a ham. He did know that he
could listen to just about any frequency.

“Hey Sue, I got something.”

“What frequency?”

“Uh, 243.000.”

“What does it sound like?”

“It sounds like a pilot giving instructions to another pilot.”

“What about?”

“One guy is telling another to land his airplane at Holloman and the other is telling him
to kiss his butt.”

“I have a reference chart, let me check and see what that frequency is used for. Did you
say 243.000?” (UHF Guard)

“Yeah.”

“That’s an air emergency frequency.”

“Let me keep looking, maybe I can find more. Wait, I have the same military pilot on
121.500. (VHF Guard) I don’t know who he’s trying to talk to, but he sounds po’d. He’s
threatening to shoot the guy down.”

“That’s an international air emergency frequency.”

“I’ve got to get outside and see if I can see the flames.”

29
“What flames?”

“The other guy didn’t reply and the military guy said he was going to shoot him down.
He advised the ground he was returning to base.”

“That’s mean!”

“Bush is in the area, what do you expect? They threaten those pilots that over fly Wash-
ington with being shot down. I don’t fly, but if I was in a plane and a military jet came
around wagging his wings and dropping flares, I’d sure respond. Hang on, I’m going to
look and see if I can see anything.”

“Wow! Remind me to never ignore the Air Force. There was a blob of smoke off to the
west of due south that trailed down to the ground in a nearly vertical stream. If I’d have
gone sooner, I could have seen the plane get shot down.”

If I could have boxed and sold the look Sue gave me, I’d be a wealthy man today. Any-
way, I decided right on the spot to start making notes about what happened over the
course of the past several weeks. I backed up to August 1, 2008, the date the snowball
started rolling down the hill. I wrote down what information I’d gleaned of the radio and
TV and did my best to recall the sequence of events. I wish now that I’d paid more at-
tention to Sue and her cockamamie survivalism. We could have had a stand-alone shel-
ter and avoided any risk down in the improvised shelter in the basement.

I am as sure as I can be now that we’d have had 3 times as much diesel fuel and more
food. We would have had the CD V-717 remote sensing survey meter too. I wouldn’t
have been surprised that Sue had 75-pounds of gold and silver in her cedar chest. Ce-
dar Chest??? If I had known, it would have been in a safe! What was it she said about
the price of gold, $650 an ounce? Didn’t she suggest that with the attack it would double
in value? Let’s see, 300 x $1,300 = $390,000. We’re rich!

“Sue, when did you buy the gold?”

“Mid-March of 2003.”

“What did you give for the silver?”

“$4.50 an ounce.”

“And what was it worth when you check the gold price recently?”

“$8.75 an ounce.”

600 x $17.50 = $10,500 + $390,000 = $400,500. Hmm, I think we’ll try to hang onto the
gold and use up the silver. Our profit was $282,000 + $7,800 = $289.800.”

30
 The Asian Question – Chapter 7

“Sue?”

“What now?”

“Why didn’t you buy more?”

“I spent $110,000. I though you flip your lid.”

“I probably would have at the time, but we’re rich. You said it was probably double the
price the last time you checked, did I understand you right?”

“Nothing wrong with your ears, why?”

“The cedar chest contains about $400,500 worth of gold and silver.”

“That ought to keep us in Diesel and food for a while.”

“You don’t suppose you could find another diesel fuel tank could you?”

“I doubt it, all he had was that one used tank. With the attack, I’d bet dollars to donuts
that everyone and their brothers want a tank and a generator. How long will that supply
of oil and filters last?”

“Over a year. An average year contains 365.25 days or 8,766 hours. If I service it every
200 hours, I can keep it going for a total of ((5+48)*200) = 10,600 hours. If we never go
over ½ load, we’d have enough fuel for 6,250 hours. That’s why I asked about another
diesel tank. If we had 2,000 additional gallons we have almost as much run time as we
have oil and filters because that would add another 4,167 hours.”

“The salesman said the generator would probably need to be rebuilt after 15,000-hours.
Maybe we should try and find the parts now. It’s a 3-cylinder engine so it wouldn’t take a
lot of parts. Maybe bearings, a set of rings and new injectors and glow plugs. I’m sure
we could find someone to rebuild it.”

“What would we do for power in the meantime?”

“We could get a 5kw portable gasoline genset and it could cover when I have to turn the
standby down to service it. Or, we could do what we did last time and just go without
power for a little while.”

“Could you find a small diesel fueled genset?”

“Now? I doubt it. I’d be lucky to found any genset, you said so yourself. Maybe a gas
powered set and 25-gallons of gas would cover us for most of the year.”

31
“Get your equipment Barry and let’s head to Alamogordo. We’ll see if we can get repair
parts for the Kubota engine and a 5kw portable. We might as well get another set of fil-
ters and oil while we’re at it.”

++++

“Run out of oil and filters so soon?”

“No, but I was wondering if you had more.”

“I just happen to have 2 more cases of 24. Do you want the same number of fuel filters
and motor oil?”

“Yep. Price still the same, 10 Ben Franklins?”

“That’s right. Are you sure you’re not starting up an RV repair facility?”

“No, our standby generator is one of those RV generators the HDKCB. I don’t suppose
you have any idea where a guy could get parts for the engine do you?”

“I have a standard rebuild kit we assemble for our RV dealer. It has: injectors, all new
bearings, rings, seals and gaskets. Most of the time, you don’t have to sleeve the en-
gine, but we have sleeve sets and new pistons provided you want them.”

“I want everything we might possibly need. In fact, I take a rebuilt set and the sleeve
set.”

“Last name Rockefeller?”

“No, why?”

“You’re spending money like you own Standard Oil. Which engine?”

“The 1,647cc, 3-cylinder Kubota diesel.”

“Good engine, you won’t need the sleeves. The repair parts sets are $1,000 including
tax. Got another 10 of old Ben?”

“Don’t forget the 12 cases of SAE 30 oil, 48 Fram PH3593A oil filters and 4 Fram P3500
fuel filters.”

“You count the money and I’ll get the order around. Anything else?”

“We were looking for a gasoline 5kw portable generator and fuel cans.”

32
“Used ok?”

“Sure, we won’t be running it much.”

“I could sell you the store’s extra generator. It has low hours since the last time it was
rebuilt. It’s rated at 5.5kw with a 6kw surge capacity. You’ll need another case of oil and
gas cans. I ran out of cans, but I have a clean empty 55-gallon drum. $100 for the drum
and the case of oil.”

“Ok, $2,100. How much for that generator, you didn’t say?”

“$900.”

“Sue?”

“Everything we wanted in one stop? Why not.”

“Deal.”

“Keep counting and stop when you get to 30. Say, did you see that airplane get shot
down?”

“I was listening on the radio and heard the military pilot warn him several times. By the
time I made it outside, all I saw was the small cloud and the trail of smoke straight to the
ground.”

“The plane landed more or less safely.”

“No way.”

“Yeah, the Air Force pilot used his cannon instead of a missile. He took out the Cess-
na’s engine and the guy made a dead stick landing at Holloman.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“They issued a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) restricting the airspace and the way I heard
it, the pilot of the Cessna didn’t know about it. Anyway, he’s in a military stockade at
Holloman until they sort out who he is and what he was doing in the restricted airspace.”

“Any idea why he didn’t respond to the fighter?”

“Heard his radios were out.”

“I’m not a pilot, but I can’t believe you’d be allowed to fly without radios.”

“You can’t, legally, the way I hear. That’s part of the reason he’s in trouble.”

33
°

The Important NOTAMs concerning Washington DC:

!FDC 5/1254 ZDC FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS WASHINGTON, DC. EFFECTIVE FROM

0502130501 UTC UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE PURSUANT TO 14 CFR SECTION 99.7,
SPECIAL SECURITY INSTRUCTIONS, THE FOLLOWING PROCEDURES FOR OP-
ERATIONS AT CERTAIN AIRPORTS IN THE WASHINGTON DC METROPOLITAN
AREA FLIGHT RESTRICTED ZONE (FRZ) ARE IN EFFECT:

PART I. DEFINITION. THE WASHINGTON DC METROPOLITAN AREA FLIGHT RE-

STRICTED ZONE (FRZ) IS DEFINED AS AN AREA BOUNDED BY A LINE BEGIN-
NING AT THE WASHINGTON /DCA/ VOR/DME 300 DEGREE RADIAL AT 15 NM
385655N/0772008W THENCE CLOCKWISE ALONG THE DCA 15 NM ARC TO THE
DCA 022 DEGREE RADIAL AT 15 NM 390611N/0765751W THENCE SOUTHEAST
VIA A LINE DRAWN TO THE DCA 049 DEGREE RADIAL AT 14 NM
390218N/0765038W THENCE SOUTH VIA A LINE DRAWN TO THE DCA 064 DE-
GREE RADIAL AT 13 NM 385901N/0764832W THENCE CLOCKWISE ALONG THE
DCA 13 NM ARC TO THE DCA 282 DEGREE RADIAL AT 13 NM 385214N/0771848W
THENCE NORTH VIA A LINE DRAWN TO THE POINT OF BEGINNING; EXCLUDING
THE AIRSPACE WITHIN A 1 NM RADIUS OF FREEWAY AIRPORT /W00/ MITCH-
ELLVILLE, MD, FROM THE SURFACE UP TO BUT NOT INCLUDING FL180.

PART II. EXCEPT FOR DOD, LAW ENFORCEMENT, OR AEROMEDICAL FLIGHT

OPERATIONS, ALL PERSONS OPERATING AN AIRCRAFT TO OR FROM THE
COLLEGE PARK AIRPORT (CGS); POTOMAC AIRFIELD (VKX);OR WASHINGTON
EXECUTIVE/ HYDE FIELD (W32), LOCATED WITHIN THE AIRSPACE DESIGNATED
AS THE WASHINGTON D.C. METROPOLITAN AREA FRZ MUST ABIDE BY THE
FOLLOWING OPERATING REQUIREMENTS AND ALL ADDITIONAL GROUND SE-
CURITY PROCEDURES AND BACKGROUND CHECKS SPECIFIED BY THE
TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION (TSA) AS NECESSARY TO
PROVIDE FOR THE SECURITY OF AIRCRAFT OPERATIONS TO OR FROM THE
AIRPORT.

PART III. OPERATING REQUIREMENTS:

A) NO PERSON MAY OPERATE AN AIRCRAFT TO OR FROM THE ABOVE INDI-

CATED AIRPORTS UNLESS THE AIRPORT OPERATORS SECURITY PROCE-
DURES ARE APPROVED BY TSA AND MEET OR EXCEED THE PROVISIONS OF 49
CFR PART 1562.3.

B) NO PERSON MAY OPERATE AN AIRCRAFT TO OR FROM THE ABOVE INDI-

CATED AIRPORTS UNLESS THE PILOT SATIFIES THE SECURITY PROCEDURES
OUTLINED IN THE PROVISIONS OF 49 CFR PART 1562.3 AND HAS BEEN AP-
PROVED BY TSA FOR OPERATIONS AT THAT AIRPORT.

34
C) EACH PILOT SHALL COMPLY WITH THE FOLLOWING:

1. FOR ALL ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES, FILE EITHER AN IFR OR VFR FLIGHT
PLAN WITH LEESBURG AUTOMATED FLIGHT SERVICE STATION (AFSS), VIA
TELEPHONE AT 866-225-7410. A SEPARATE FLIGHT PLAN IS REQUIRED TO DE-
PART AND ARRIVE AT THESE AIRPORTS REGARDLESS OF WHETHER OR NOT
THERE IS AN INTERMEDIATE STOP.

2. FILING FLIGHT PLANS IN THE AIR IS NOT AUTHORIZED.

3. OBTAIN AN AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL (ATC) CLEARANCE WITH DISCRETE

TRANSPONDER CODE AS DESCRIBED IN DEPARTURE/ARRIVAL PROCEDURES
BELOW.

4. MAINTAIN TWO-WAY RADIO COMMUNICATION WITH ATC WHILE OPERATING

WITHIN THE CONFINES OF THE FRZ AND THE CLASS B AIRSPACE AREA.

5. BE EQUIPPED WITH AN OPERATIONAL MODE C TRANSPONDER.

PART IV. FLIGHT PLAN PROCEDURES:

A) EACH PILOT SHALL CALL LEESBURG AFSS AND PRIOR TO FILING FLIGHT
PLAN SHALL IDENTIFY HIM/HER-SELF AND USE THE CONFIDENTIAL PILOT
IDENTIFICATION CODE ASSIGNED TO THEM.

B) LEESBURG AFSS WILL ACCEPT FLIGHT PLAN AFTER VERIFYING CODE.

C) LEESBURG AFSS WILL FORWARD PILOT'S FLIGHT PLAN TO THE UNITED

STATES SECRET SERVICE.

D) PILOTS SHALL CLOSE VFR FLIGHT PLANS WITH LESSBURG AFSS ONLY AF-
TER THEY ARE ON THE GROUND.

E) PILOTS MAY REQUEST AND ATC MAY ACCEPT CANCELLATION OF IFR WHILE
IN THE AIR. HOWEVER, PILOTS ARE REQUIRED TO REMAIN ON THEIR AS-
SIGNED BEACON CODE UNTIL ON THE GROUND AND REQUIRED TO CONTACT
LEESBURG AFSS AFTER THEY ARE ON THE GROUND.

F) LEESBURG AFSS WILL NOTIFY THE UNITED STATES SECRET SERVICE AND
APPROPRIATE ATC FACILITIES WHEN THE FLIGHT PLANS ARE CLOSED.

PART V. AIR TRAFFIC PROCEDURES: A) DEPARTURE PROCEDURES. NO PILOT

MAY OPERATE AN AIRCRAFT DEPARTING FROM ANY OF THE ABOVE 3 AIR-
PORTS UNLESS THE FOLLOWING REQUIREMENTS ARE MET:

35
1. OBTAIN AN ATC CLEARANCE FROM POTOMAC APPROACH VIA TELEPHONE
NUMBER 540-349-7597.

2. IFR:

A) DEPARTING WASHINGTON EXECUTIVE/HYDE FIELD AND POTOMAC AIR-

PORT: ATC WILL PROVIDE EASTBOUND OR SOUTHBOUND RADAR VECTORS TO
OUTSIDE THE FRZ. AIRCRAFT WILL THEN PROCEED ON COURSE AND REMAIN
CLEAR OF THE FRZ.

B) DEPARTING COLLEGE PARK AIRPORT (CGS): ATC WILL PROVIDE EAST-

BOUND OR NORTHBOUND RADAR VECTORS TO OUTSIDE THE FRZ . AIRCRAFT
WILL THEN PROCEED ON COURSE AND REMAIN CLEAR OF THE FRZ.

3. VFR - DEPARTING WASHINGTON EXECUTIVE/HYDE FIELD, POTOMAC AIR-

PORT, AND COLLEGE PARK AIRPORT:

A) DEPART AS ASSIGNED BY ATC, EXPECTING A HEADING DIRECTLY AWAY

FROM THE FRZ AIRSPACE UNTIL TWO- WAY COMMUNICATION IS ESTABLISHED
WITH POTOMAC APPROACH. AIRCRAFT WILL FLY AS ASSIGNED BY ATC UNTIL
CLEAR OF THE FRZ AND/OR THE CLASS B AIRSPACE AREA.

B) ARRIVAL PROCEDURES. EACH PILOT SHALL:

1. ESTABLISH COMMUNICATIONS WITH ATC FOR AUTHORIZATION TO ENTER

THE FRZ.

2. VFR:

A) APPROACH TO COLLEGE PARK AIRPORT: AIRCRAFT SHALL REMAIN OUT-

SIDE THE FRZ AIRSPACE UNTIL AUTHORIZED BY ATC TO ENTER THE FRZ . PI-
LOTS CAN EXPECT ROUTING TO COLLEGE PARK VIA THE VICINITY OF FREE-
WAY AIRPORT. END PART 6 OF 7

B) APPROACH TO POTOMAC AIRPORT AND WASHINGTON EXECUTIVE/HYDE

FIELD: AIRCRAFT SHALL REMAIN OUTSIDE THE FRZ UNTIL AUTHORIZED BY
ATC TO ENTER THE FRZ . PILOTS CAN EXPECT ROUTING TO POTOMAC AIR-
PORT AND WASHINGTON EXECUTIVE/HYDE FIELD VIA THE VICINITY OF MARY-
LAND AIRPORT OR NOTTINGHAM VORTAC.

3. IFR: IFR ARRIVALS TO COLLEGE PARK, POTOMAC, AND WASHINGTON EXEC-

UTIVE/HYDE AIRPORTS ARE AUTHORIZED.

PART VI. ANY QUESTIONS ON THIS MATTER SHOULD BE DIRECTED TO THE

FEDERAL AVIATION REPRESENTATIVE AT THE NATIONAL CAPITAL REGIONAL
COORDIANTION CENTER (703) 563-3221.

36
!FDC 5/4121 ZDC SPECIAL ADVISORY NOTICE .. A NEW WARNING SIGNAL FOR
COMMUNICATING WITH AIRCRAFT HAS BEEN DEPLOYED AND IS OPERATING
WITHIN THE WASHINGTON DC METROPOLITAN AREA AIR DEFENSE IDENTIFI-
CATION ZONE (DC ADIZ), INCLUDING THE FLIGHT RESTRICTED ZONE (FRZ).
THE SIGNAL CONSISTS OF HIGHLY FOCUSED RED AND GREEN COLORED
LIGHTS IN AN ALTERNATING RED/ RED/ GREEN/ SIGNAL PATTERN. THIS SIGNAL
MAY BE DIRECTED AT SPECIFIC AIRCRAFT SUSPECTED OF MAKING UNAU-
THORIZED ENTRY INTO THE ADIZ/FRZ AND ARE ON A HEADING OR FLIGHT
PATH THAT MAY BE INTERPRETED AS A THREAT OR THAT OPERATE CONTRA-
RY TO THE OPERATING RULES FOR THE ADIZ/FRZ. THE BEAM IS NOT INJURI-
OUS TO THE EYES OF PILOTS/AIRCREWS OR PASSENGERS, REGARDLESS OF
ALTITUDE OR DISTANCE FROM THE SOURCE. IF YOU ARE IN COMMUNICATION
WITH AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL AND THIS SIGNAL IS DIRECTED AT YOUR AIR-
CRAFT, WE ADVISE YOU TO IMMEDIATELY COMMUNICATE WITH ATC THAT YOU
ARE BEING ILLUMINATED BY A VISUAL WARNING SIGNAL. IF THIS SIGNAL IS DI-
RECTED AT YOU AND YOU ARE NOT COMMUNICATING WITH ATC, WE ADVISE
YOU TO TURN TO A HEADING AWAY FROM THE CENTER OF THE FRZ/ADIZ AS
SOON AS POSSIBLE AND IMMEDIATELY CONTACT ATC ON AN APPROPRIATE
FREQUENCY, OR IF UNSURE OF THE FREQUENCY, CONTACT ATC ON VHF
GUARD 121.5 OR UHF GUARD 243.0.

BE ADVISED THAT FAILURE TO FOLLOW THE RECOMMENDED PROCEDURES

OUTLINED ABOVE MAY RESULT IN INTERCEPTION BY MILITARY AIRCRAFT
AND/OR THE USE OF FORCE. THIS NOTICE APPLIES TO ALL AIRCRAFT OPER-
ATING WITHIN THE ADIZ, INCLUDING DOD, LAW ENFORCEMENT, AND AERO-
MEDICAL OPERATIONS. THIS NOTICE DOES NOT CHANGE PROCEDURES ES-
TABLISHED FOR REPORTING UNAUTHORIZED LASER ILLUMINATION AS PUB-
LISHED IN ADVISORY CIRCULAR 70-2.

That’s a little longer than I planned, but I’ve always wanted to know how they restricted
the airspace over the National Capitol. The answer is – in capital letters! They flash you
in the eyes with a laser and if you ignore them, they shoot you down. Maybe, if you’re
very, very lucky, you won’t lose your pilots license. The feds get pretty heavy handed at
times and I’ll bet the maximum punishment is really something.

“You want the pickup around back?”

37
 The Asian Question – Chapter 8

“Yes, please. Maybe I’ll close up early today. We haven’t been able to get any replace-
ments for the parts we’ve sold so we don’t have much left to sell. The Gun Dealer sold
everything he had in about 4 hours. He locked up and hasn’t been back since.”

“We still can’t pick up any radio or TV, heard when it’s coming back on?”

“Sorry.”

“Have you heard any news from anywhere?” Sue asked.

“You knew they nuked Albuquerque?”

“No, but I’m not surprised.”

“Those ABMs they just deployed managed to shoot down about 60% of the incoming
missiles. I heard that was around 90. A trucker said that he heard that 60 managed to
get by the THADD and Pac-3 missiles. They had all different sizes of nukes, 250s, 350s
and some 3mtT.”

“Have you heard anything about our fleet or what happened to China?”

“I heard that we launched something on North Korea and a whole bunch on China. They
say that North Korea is a glowing parking lot and China isn’t much better off. Only rea-
son I know is ‘cause some Sergeant from the Motor Pool at Holloman needed some
part he couldn’t get and came around the parts stores here in town. Pretty tight lipped,
but he did say that China and North Korea wouldn’t be a problem for almost forever.”

“Did we nuke Beijing?”

“He didn’t say. That’s their Capitol, ain’t it? They got Washington so I suppose we got
Beijing. Why?”

“The 2008 Olympic Games were in Beijing. If we hit it, I’ll bet we lost a lot of friends.”

“Only countries really friendly to the US were the UK and Australia. Canada was on-
again off-again and them Méxicans lie through their teeth.”

“I hope the English keep their stiff upper lip.”

++++

We had that little gas powered backup so we wouldn’t lose lights when I shut down the
12kw genset to change the oil. Sue insisted we go by the Chevron station to fill the 55-
gallon drum with gas and I’ll be damned if they weren’t open. The guy behind the coun-

38
ter told us where to go to find out about more diesel fuel. We went and found out the
guy maybe fibbed a little when he talked to Sue. There set a new 1,000-gallon farm tank
and several larger used tanks.

“You open for business?”

“For now I am, help you?”

“We have 2 diesel tanks, a 1,000 and a used 2,000 we bought from you. We were think-
ing we could use another tank, 2,000 or bigger.”

“You want fuel too?”

“You still have some?”

“Several hundred thousand gallons. With the trouble, there aren’t many trucks on the
road and the truck stop isn’t taking deliveries. I’m sorry but we’re only taking cash, the
banks can’t get their computers to work.”

“Sue, how much cash do you have tucked away?”

“250,” she whispered

“$250?” I asked.

“No! 250 Ben Franklins,” she hissed.

“Uh, I guess the wife has the money. Can you bring by a tank and some fuel?”

“COD.”

“Hey, no problem, the wife is covering our six.”

“How big of a tank do you want?”

“How big do you have?”

“Bigger than you want. How about that 5,000-gallon tank? Give you a fair price, $4,000.”

“How much for the fuel?”

“5,000-gallons at $4 per gallon, $20,000.”

“We just paid $2.75 last fill up,” Sue said.

“That was then, this is now.”

39
“Sue?”

“Mister, it isn’t always going to be the day after Armageddon, $3.50 and not a penny
more. I’ll give you $2,500 for that rusty old tank. That’s $20,000, cash money, take it or
leave it.”

“Lady I’m going to have them lined up at the door, I’ll leave it.”

“Right, we pushed to the head of the line just to buy your rusty old tank. How many
people you figure can pay cash?”

“You can’t keep that fuel good for very long. I sell PRI products too.”

“Fine, we’ll take 4 gallons each of PRI-D and PRI-Flow and 2 gallons of PRI-Ocide.”

By now, Sue was doing all of the talking. She had that fire in her eyes she sometimes
gets when people really po’d her. She told him how much she’d pay for the PRI prod-
ucts and if he didn’t want to sell at that price, it was fine with her. The fella looked at
Sue, looked at the M1911 she was wearing, took in the M1A slung over her shoulder
and then… looked her in the eye.

“Yes Ma’am, whatever you say. $20,000 will get you the tank, the #2 diesel and I’ll even
throw in the first treatment with PRI-D, -Ocide and -Flow.”

I knew right then and there the fella was smarter than he looked. He got out a box and
put in 2½-gallons of PRI-D, 1¼-gallons of PRI-Ocide and 2½-gallons of PRI-Flow. Sue
was making little stacks with the money and she counted out 200 $100 bills and asked
him for a rubber band. She wrapped the bills with the band and asked when to expect
him out at the place.

“Make it 2 hours, Ma’am.”

“Bring extra and you can top off our other tanks, at $3.50, of course.”

“How much more will you need?”

“Not over 400 gallons. I’ll pay for whatever you pump.”

Right then and there, I knew we had a problem. I had enough PRI products, but we
were getting down to measuring it by the fluid ounces. And the thing of it was, I wouldn’t
know how much to add until he filled the tanks. I thought I was being smart connecting
the tanks together like it did. Not! The generator wanted fuel and it didn’t care where it
came from so it had pulled half from each. I knew that the 400 gallons was about right,
maybe a little high. The main thing was to protect that new tank. It was a big sucker

40
painted faded barn red. It had 4 pairs of short legs holding it up and I’ll bet I’d have to
come up with some way to anchor those legs.

That Chevron guy must have figured Sue would hunt him down because they screwed
in auger type anchors at every leg on that stand. I passed his man the jugs of PRI stuff
and it got blended in as the tank was filled. When he finished there, he topped off the
other two tanks and Mr. Chevron man went to talk to Sue.

“$21,050, we added 300 gallons of fuel to your other tanks.”

“Can you break a hundred?”

“Yes Ma’am.”

She handed him the bundle of bills and told him to count them if he wanted. She peeled
of 11 more of the hundreds and got back 2 20s and a 10. At .48gph, we were good for
about 16,667 hours. I sure hoped the generator held out that long. When they had con-
cluded the transaction, the missus says, “Thank ewe,” just like a southern belle. I half
expected her to courtesy.

“What now, Sue? You planning on going down to Holloman and tell good old George
how to run the country?”

“He run her right into the ground, Barry, don’t get me started.”

“Yes dear.”

I didn’t want to try and power the electrical panel with that 5kw backup generator, I don’t
do hot electrical panels. I got a measuring cup and added about 12 ounces of D and
Flow and about 6 ounces of Ocide to each tank. 200-gallons was 1/10 of 2,000-gallons
and a gallon held 128 fluid ounces. The exact measurements were 12.8 and 6.4, but it
was close enough. Probably wouldn’t mix in good anyway.

“Where did you get $25,000 in cash?”

“I figured that we’d have a war and I ran into the bank and made a stink until the man-
ager came up with $25,000 in cash. Didn’t figure anyone would take a check and half
figured the ATMs would be down. I didn’t want to get into that gold and silver coin until
we absolutely had to.”

“We have any money left?”

41
“A few thousand is all. I’m glad the Chevron guy took cash and didn’t insist on gold. I
know it’s still a while to Christmas, but I already got your presents. Considering the state
of the world, I thought maybe you’d like to have them early.”

“What’s her name?”

“I got you several presents, Miss Winchester and the Colt twins.”

“Oh.”

“Oh? Oh!”

“Oh, oh.”

“Here. I hope you shoot yourself in the foot.”

“Since we’re having Christmas before Labor Day, I got you something too.”

“You did? What?”

“A Pfaff GrandQuilter with the Inspira Quilting Frame.”

“Oh, my…”

I most certainly didn’t tell her that I got it on sale. Full price ran about $4,500 and I got it
on one of those 20% off sales. I went to the basement to get the box with the sewing
machine and Sue went into the bedroom to get something else. I sat down the sewing
machine and told her I’d bring the quilting frame upstairs whenever she wanted. She
handed me a holster rig. It was a black Laredoan Crossdraw - Model 1914-2, hand-
tooled with Conchos. I think she came out ahead. Then she went back to the bedroom
and brought out another box for me.

“I got you a Stetson hat, Barry. It’s an El Patron 30X, I couldn’t get the El Presidente. I
hope you like it.” (What’s not to like about a $600 hat?)

“Did you get me boots and some jeans?”

“Of course. Plus a belt and buckle, several shirts and socks.”

“What kind of boots? I understand they pinch your feet until they get them broken in.”

“Since you’re not a real cowboy, I got you some Laredo ankle zip boots. I sighted the
Winchester in for 100 yards and I bought you 1,000 rounds of .45 Colt ammo. “

“I’m going to change into my new clothes and start getting used to wearing guns. Say,
did you get yourself a Winchester and a pair of revolvers?”

42
 The Asian Question – Chapter 9

“I got a Winchester, but I settled for a single Colt with a 5½” barrel. Between us, we
have one of each size. I got myself the same holster as I got you, but only a single.”

“Did you get yourself some western style clothes too?”

“About the only woman who wore men’s clothes was Calamity Jane and I don’t like
wearing long dresses. But yes, I got myself the same duds as I got you. Do you want to
be Dale or Roy?”

“Oh, I suppose Roy would be fine, did you come up with Trigger and Bullet?”

“They stuffed and displayed in the Museum. In 2003, they moved from the museum
from Victorville CA., to Branson, MO. You want a horse we can look for a Palomino for
you and a Buckskin (Buttermilk) for me.”

“I’d be leery of making it known that we have money to buy horses, Sue. It’s one thing
dealing with these business people but quite another if we start flashing cash.”

“We don’t have much cash left to flash. I told you, I got $25k from the bank the day you
went hunting the mast and the gun dealer was installing the fast attach mounts for those
flashhiders. There wasn’t much left after that and I’d guess we burned most of it up with
our other last minute purchases. I was just humoring you about the horses and to tell
the truth, I rather not buy any. You’d have to build a shelter and corral and we’d have to
buy hay and feed.”

“Oh good, maybe I can name the pickup Trigger.”

“Getting a good dog might not be a bad idea, but we should have done that a year ago.
Honey, what we have now is probably what we’ve got and are going to get. We should
probably lock the gate but that won’t keep out anyone determined to try and get at what
we have.”

++++

I felt like asking her, “What now Sue?” I’ve had the lessons of a lifetime to know better
than ask. Nice duds, but I’m too darned old to play Roy Rogers anymore. A pair of sin-
gle action revolvers and a Winchester rifle only gives you 24 immediately available
shots and the gun belt only holds 24 more rounds. I donned my ALICE gear and walked
down and shut the gate. I took a padlock along, put the chain around the post and pad-
locked it shut. I could knock that gate down with my Dodge.

For the next couple of weeks, she and I restacked the firewood in the basement and
hauled the dirt back upstairs. Then I dismantled that improvised shelter, being careful to
save all of the wood. I stored the salvaged plywood and 4×4’s in the machine shed.

43
Can’t really tell why we still call it that, we don’t have any machines. The barn had been
cleaned out when we’d bought the place and now it just smelled musty, dry or both.

My Social Security and pension were directly deposited to our checking account. I sup-
pose if the bank were broke it would be a while before we saw that money, if ever. The
long and short of that was that when we ran out of money, we were probably finished.
On the other hand, we were rich if you counted those coins in Sue’s cedar chest. I
wasn’t actually retired, I was disabled, but it’s the same difference. I took my pension at
55 because the word was that a lot pension plans were in trouble. To top it off, I wasn’t
so disabled I couldn’t putter. Don’t think I’d have wanted to live if I was confined to a
bed. Anyway, we had the basement back and that felt a lot better, I figured things were
getting sort of back to normal. Didn’t take any changes, though, wore the body armor
and ALICE gear whenever I was out and about.

“We ought to go into town and see if Wally World is open, Barry.”

“Do we need something?”

It couldn’t hurt to get some extras, you know.”

“Like what?”

“Coffee, pasta, flour, yeast and the basic sort of stuff.”

“Do we have enough toilet paper for 2 years?”

“See, that’s what I mean. We should inventory what we have, determine how much
we’re going to need and get the difference.”

“I hope the tobacco shop is open, I’m down to my last 5 cigars.”

“We do need to go shopping.”

I cleaned the guy out of his Churchill rejects and topped it off with a box of good cigars.
Wal-Mart was open, but they were limited to the stock on hand. We sort of squeaked by,
substituting as required but getting everything on Sue’s list. I noticed for the first time a
military presence in Alamogordo and these guys weren’t shopping. Saw 4 of those up-
armored HMMWVs with .50 caliber machineguns; I guess you could say that they sort
of had the town surrounded. I don’t see why they were there – the city was quiet
enough.

We took the stuff we bought home, that really eroded our supply of cash, and I piddled
around most of the afternoon putting it away. The radio stations were finally back on
and most of the news was local. I assumed the wire services were down so that meant

44
we couldn’t really find out what was happening in the United States a half dozen weeks
after the end of the world. They were running a small want ads section for about 15
minutes a day and Sue perked right up and listened closely. It was that sort of thing
where they said what was for sale or wanted and gave a contact name.

“Hello the house!”

“What the heck? Sue, saddle up, we have company.”

“I’ll cover you. You go to the gate and see what they want.”

I came boiling out of the house with my M1A at port arms only to see one of those
HMMWVs at the front gate. His .50 caliber machinegun was a whole lot bigger than my
M1A, so I slung my weapon and walked cautiously to the gate.

“What brings the Army here?”

“Census. Mind putting the rifle on the ground until we done talking?”

“Sergeant, that Ma Deuce of yours is bigger than my little .30 caliber rifle, but if it scares
you, hold on while I shed it.”

“How many people living here?”

“Two.”

“Do you have identification?”

“Will my driver’s license do?”

“That will be fine. Who else is here?”

“Just the wife. I’d expect that she has her M1A pointed right at your center mass.”

“Ok, we have your information, what is your wife’s name?”

“Susan.”

“That jives with what we have. Lived here since 1998?”

“1999. Trick question?”

“Do you folks need anything?”

“It would be nice if you people told the radio station what was going on so we could find
out.”

45
“We were attacked by the Chinese.”

“Yeah I know and George Bush and all the public officials came to Holloman to hole up
in that secret shelter.”

“How did you know that?”

“Someone saw the 747s come in. Why did you shoot down that private plane?”

“How did you know that?”

“I listened to it on my ham radio.”

“Several of the Chinese warheads got through. Our country lost about 20 metropolitan
areas. We still don’t have any estimate of the death toll, so I can’t really tell you any
more than that.”

“Sergeant how much longer before they have the lights back on and we have some real
news?”

“It could be months, I don’t really know. Can the two of you hold out that long?”

“Two years tops.”

“That’s better than most. We’ll have a patrol come by once a week and check on you.
There are travel restrictions in place and if you planning on traveling out of the Ala-
mogordo area, stop in town and get a travel pass.”

“Will we need a travel pass to drive up to Ruidoso Downs?”

“Yes. Why would you go there?”

“That’s the other Wal-Mart store in the area.”

“That store is closed. What inventory they had that didn’t get looted was moved down
here to Alamogordo.”

“Sue was listening to the radio now that it’s back on and got all excited over some
darned ad. We need to get a travel permit to go anywhere in the Alamogordo area?”

“No sir. What was she looking for?”

“Horses.”

46
“Check the bulletin board they put up at the city hall. People selling and buying; all have
cards posted.”

“Has there been any trouble in the area? Does one of us need to stay up nights and
keep a watch?”

“You don’t have a dog?”

“Nope.”

“It might be a good idea to find one. No trouble so far, but the stores are starting to run
out of food. There is no telling when we’re going to have trouble in this area. We put 4
patrols in Alamogordo and have a few more out running this census. If you have a good
ham radio, we can get a tech out here to make a simple modification to allow you to
transmit on VHF and UHF Guard frequencies.”

“Send him, I can listen, but can’t transmit. Those are 121.5 and 243, right?”

“Right. Ok, someone will be by during the following week. Then, if you have an emer-
gency, you can get on the Air Guard frequencies and call for help.”

“What was that about?”

“Census, or so he claimed. He seemed to already know who was supposed to be living

here. Let’s see if I can remember everything. There are travel restrictions in place and
we need to go to Alamogordo to get a travel pass to leave the area. The Wal-Mart store
in Ruidoso Downs got looted and what was left was brought down here. There is a bul-
letin board at city hall were people post wanted and for sale items. The Chinese hit 20
metropolitan areas. Oh, they’re sending by an electronic technician to modify our Ken-
wood radio so we can transmit on the VHF and UHF Guard frequencies.”

“Anything else?”

“Uh, they’ll be by about once a week with a patrol. He said they were starting to run low
on food in Alamogordo and once they ran out, he couldn’t say what would happen. Told
me that we should get a dog.”

“Fine, saddle up and let’s go check that bulletin board.”

“What do we want?”

“For starters a dog. Then we should consider getting a couple of horses and hay to feed
them. We can use the manure on the garden come spring. Did you ask him when the
phone would be back up?”

47
“Nope.”

“We’ll need a rototiller to mix in the manure and break up the soil for planting.”

“Maybe we can get another barrel of gas.”

“And some PRI-G.”

“When we get back, I have a project for you Barry. Stack all of that firewood from that
pile on the front porch.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Bullet stop.”

“I’m sorry I asked”

Long story short, Sue bought 2 brown horses that were pregnant and a truckload of hay.
We found a 9-month-old German Shepherd we got for ½ ounce of gold. We went by the
Chevron place and got a 55-gallon drum of 87 octane and some PRI-G. The dog’s
name was Rex and he was house trained and partially guard trained. Ended up with a
new rototiller that wasn’t very big. I sort of guessed it would take a couple of days to ro-
totill the garden. Sue suggested that I do it now so it would be easier in the spring to ro-
totill in the manure. That was like riding an unbroken horse until I got the hang of it.

Frankly, I couldn’t see wearing the ALICE gear while I was rototilling and I took off the
cross draw holster and just wore the 7½” Colt. I bet that 100 years ago you didn’t have
to wear a gun just to rototill your garden. Wait, they didn’t have rototillers 100 years ago,
did they? You know what I mean. Anyway, I was right, it took me 2 days to get the gar-
den plot the way I wanted it and rake it smooth.

I picked up a wheelbarrow I used to haul the manure from the barn to the garden where
I sort of spread it around. Sue picked up 2 good used saddles with saddlebags and
stopped in Alamogordo and bought rifle scabbards. I think she is carrying this Roy Rog-
ers bit too far, but I’m not going to be the one to tell her. The good news is you can’t ride
a pregnant horse. The bad news is that we’re going to have more mouths to feed. We
picked up 250 pounds of dog chow at Wally World. That was about all they had left. It’s
just a good thing we don’t take a bunch of pills, can you imagine trying to stock up a 2-
year supply of prescriptions?

I was sort of getting into a routine. I start out by stoking the furnace with coal, then use
the bathroom and clean up. After, I’d eat breakfast, usually pancakes, and then feed the

48
horses. After lunch, I’d muck out the stalls and haul the manure to the garden and
spread it out. Then it was back to the house to stoke the furnace again.

“How come we don’t have bacon and eggs for breakfast once in a while?”

“I fixed bacon.”

“You never fix eggs.”

“You wanted some powdered eggs, fine, I’ll fix them. I didn’t see any chickens listed on
the bulletin board or we could have bought some.”

“Have you tried the powdered eggs, Sue?”

“You know I have, that’s why I’m not feeding them to you. You’d just have something
else to complain about. I have some eggbeaters in the freezer. If you really want eggs,
I’ll out get out a box. Or, if you’d prefer, I could fix powdered eggs and doctor them up.”

“How?”

“Ortega chilies and bacon bits.”

“Hmm, that sounds good. Got some cheese you could grate on the top?”

“I can manage that. We’re having cowboy beans for supper.”

“What are cowboy beans?”

“Pinto beans doctored up with onion, garlic and diced chilies.”

“How come you always fix tuna salad for lunch?”

“I can fix Spam or chicken salad if you’d prefer. Why don’t you sit down and make up a
menu and I’ll see what I can do to accommodate your choices? If you want something
different for lunch, you can bring it up in the morning after you’ve stoked the furnace.
You just leave it up to me and then complain if I can’t read your mind.”

It was time for a Bud! One of these days I’m going to learn to just keep my mouth shut.
If it wasn’t for her and the way her father raised her, we’d be a whole lot worse off, I can
tell you that. Anyway, I wanted to do something so I could keep an eye on the place and
stay inside at the same time. I looked over the upstairs front bedroom and decided it
would make a good observation post. I moved my table from the basement to right in
front of the upstairs bedroom window and set my radio equipment up on one side of the
table and my computer screen on the other. Then I dragged the creaky old office chair
upstairs and oiled it until it quit squeaking. I also dragged the spare TV in there along
with an AM/FM radio. TV hadn’t come back on yet, but I put together a nice little CIC. I

49
spent the next day or so dinking around until I had a rack for my firearms. There was my
M1A, the 11-87, the Winchester .45 Colt and the Ruger 10/22.

I’ll have to tell you, it’s amazing how small your world becomes when the country has
been though a nuclear war and there are travel restrictions in place. On top of that, the
stores were getting pretty empty. I marked up a calendar to remind me when to service
the 12kw generator, once every 8 days, snow or shine. We had to go into town and buy
some of the empty 55-gallon drums so I had a place to store the used oil. A case of oil
is 6 gallons and I had 24 cases or 144 gallons. And, that didn’t include the oil for the
Dodge or the rototiller. I finally figured out which breakers the 2 refrigerators and the
freezer were on and wired up a circuit that I could connect to the portable. Managed to
do it without electrocuting myself too.

I tried that menu thing Sue mentioned but it only took me about 10 minutes to run out of
ideas. The Army guy came by and worked on my radio for about 1 minute. From now on
it could transmit on all of the frequencies it could receive. I programmed the memory so
I had the two Guard channels on channels 41 and 42. I also programmed channels 1 to
40 for the CB frequencies. I can’t really tell you what the soldier did to the radio, melted
something, I think. Anyway, it removed all the built in blocks.

I thought I could listen to the military communications, but I was wrong. They used those
SINCGARS radio sets and they were encrypted somehow. I had a copy of Army FM6-
02-72 on my computer, but that didn’t help a lot. It did help me to understand why
I couldn’t talk to the military except on Guard. According to the Field Manual, they
weren’t supposed to use their radios in SC (Single Channel) mode and these guys ap-
parently followed orders.

There are many things that I am and there are many things that I am not. I am a man
with 4 years of army experience about 30 years ago. I remember enough of my training
to know to take cover and not expose myself to enemy fire. I figured out how to run the
rototiller and if that makes me a farmer, then I’m a farmer; otherwise, I guess I’m a gar-
dener. We have 2 pregnant mares but I don’t ride and I’ve never raised horses. I can
shovel coal and manure and I did manage to cobble together a suitable shelter in the
basement to get us through the hard part. Even though I have a ham radio, I don’t have
a license so I guess that means I’m not a ham, as in amateur radio operator.

The Asian Question – Chapter 10

My wife Sue is the survivalist in the family and I mostly do what she tells me to do in any
given situation. She has this clever way of letting me think I’m in charge, but I know the
truth. Sometimes I get really po’d with Sue, so I slink down to the basement and get a
Bud and get over it. She seemed to think that my setting up that Op Center in the up-
stairs front bedroom was a good idea, so maybe it was. I asked her what all the conver-
sation with the guy who put up the mast was about and she said he taught her how to

50
repair the coax if it got broken. She showed me and it was pretty complicated unless
you knew how.

I may be repeating myself, but let me tell you about Tamiflu. Tamiflu works to stop the
spread of flu virus in the body. Tamiflu is a neuraminidase (noor-uh-MIN-ih-dase) inhibi-
tor. These inhibitors treat the cause of influenza infection by inhibiting the critical neu-
raminidase protein on the surface of the virus. They have the same effect on all other
neuraminidase proteins and that may explain the 12 deaths in Japan associated with
Tamiflu. In Japan, Tamiflu is prescribed to children 10-12 times more as it is prescribed
in the US. Tamiflu (TAM-ih-flew) is a medicine to treat flu (infection caused by influenza
virus). It belongs to a group of medicines called neuraminidase inhibitors. These medi-
cations attack the influenza virus and prevent it from spreading inside your body.

Tamiflu treats flu at its source by attacking the virus that causes the flu, rather than
simply masking symptoms. Each Tamiflu capsule (grey/light yellow) contains 75 mg of
active drug and should be taken by mouth.

Tamiflu is generally well tolerated. Tamiflu may cause mild-to-moderate nausea or vom-
iting in one out of 10 people. Taking Tamiflu with food may reduce the potential for
these side effects. Other less common side effects may include bronchitis, sleepless-
ness and vertigo.

Tamiflu is authorized by the FDA for children ages 1 and up but not as a prophylactic
treatment. It is available in a syrup form and administered to young children at the rate
of 1mg/kg of body weight. (One teaspoon = ~5mL) The properly reconstituted solution
contains 12mg/mL and one course of treatment costs ~$50 regardless of the form the
drug is in.

Remember, I’m not a doctor and can only tell you what I read. As nearly as I can tell,
the product has an excellent shelf life in powder form. The pharmacist reconstitutes the
suspension by adding 23mL of pure (sterile?) water to the contents of the suspension
bottle and shakes the bottle strongly for at least 15 seconds. It is very high on my list of
meds to acquire and keep for future use. Unfortunately it requires a prescription and
with a family of 5 (3 adults & 2 children), you’re looking at spending $250 in the blink of
an eye. As I understand the standard course of treatment, you take it BID for 5 days.
The outcome is that it reduces you flu term by about 30 percent and seems to work
against H5N1.

++++

I was sitting in the OP reading an old copy of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell (Operation Bar-
racuda) when I noticed a pickup pull up at the gate and stop.

“Sue, are we expecting anyone?”

“Not that I know of, why?”

51
“There’s a pickup parked at the gate. I’ll suit up and you can cover my six from the OP.
You have your scope and it might be a good idea to attach the flashhider. I’ll go see
what they want.”

“They?”

“Driver and one passenger I could see.”

I put on my The Storm vest and the ALICE gear over it. I covered the gear with a slicker,
no sense in advertising. I chambered a round in the M1A, checked my .45 and did the
same and off I went. I could now see there were 3 fellas and I keyed up the FRS radio
and told Sue there were 3 men, not 2. She replied with 2 clicks and I kept going. Did I
mention that we added the Ballistic facemasks to our Kraut helmets? Sorry. As I ap-
proached the passenger next to the door rolled down the window.

“Help you fellas?”

“Got any food you can spare?”

“Actually no, we are short on rations as it is.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Five. Sue, me, Rex, Salina and Juanita.” (The dog and 2 horses) “Sorry.”

“Thanks anyway.”

I turned and headed back to the house. The next thing I heard was the supersonic crack
of a bullet as it went past me. I decided a belly landing was in order. It wasn’t 3 seconds
before a second crack rang out. By this time I’d manage to roll behind a bush, which of-
fered concealment but damned little cover. I brought my M1A around and plugged the
guy in the middle who was doing his very best to get out of that pickup. Sue came run-
ning and I managed to croak out, “What the hell was that about?”

“The passenger leveled a gun on your back and I took him out. I couldn’t see the guy in
the middle so my second shot got the driver. I put out a Mayday on channel 42 and told
the guy where we were. He said a patrol would be here in 10 minutes.”

“Ten minutes? It’s all over except making sure they’re dead. I check them and get their
weapons.”

“Nice a HK91, select fire 7.62×51mm; a MP-5; and a what, maybe an M-40?”

“The back of their pickup is full of stuff.”

52
“Let it sit. The Army will tell what we can have.”

Ten minutes turned to fifteen minutes to twenty minutes. Finally one of those M1114
Hummers pulled up.

“What happened here?”

“They asked for food and I told them that we on the short side. I turned to return to the
house and Sue says the guy on the right brought up that MP5. She plugged him good
and then shot the driver. I got the guy in the middle. The back of that pickup is filled to
overflowing; it appears that they might have been out salvaging.”

“Where are their weapons?”

“Over there in a pile along with the extra magazines. We didn’t touch anything else, in
case you’re wondering.”

“Secure those weapons and check the guy over. Someone look in the back of that
pickup. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you for your weapons.”

“You can ask, but you have to kill us to get them.”

“Fine. Safe the weapons, pull the mags and clear the chambers.”

“That’s better. There, done,” I said returning the round from the chamber to the maga-
zine that I slipped into my waistband.

“Clear here,” Sue announced.

“Hey Sergeant, the back of the pickup if full of loot. There are several firearms, ammo,
food, jewelry and a box with men’s and ladies wallets.”

“Is that a suppressor on your wife’s rifle?”

“Darn right it is.”

“Do you have one too?”

“In my fanny pack I do. We did all of the paperwork, you know.”

“I’m going to take your word on that mister. Do you recognize any of the stuff in the back
of the pickup?”

“I’ll look.”

“I don’t see anything I recognize, how about you, honey?”

53
“That painting was hanging in the living room at the next place down the road. I don’t
see anything else if recognize.”

“The men are all dead Sergeant Collins.”

“What do you think Sergeant?”

“Offhand, I say you killed 3 guys engaged in organized looting.”

“What about their weapons?”

“Evidence.”

“Bull, they’re dead, there isn’t going to be a trial. I liked to keep their weapons, maga-
zines and ammo.”

“What about the food?”

“Sergeant you’re going to have track down where they got it. If they left anyone alive re-
turn it, we have enough. I sure would like to have those weapons though.”

“I’ll tell you what. We take them with us and if we can’t come up with the owners, I bring
them back here, fair enough?”

“Seems fair enough, yes.”

“Ok, here’s the deal, we’ll have to get statements on tape and we’ll get those tran-
scribed and bring them back for the two of you to sign. If all of the people are dead,
what do you want us to do with their things?”

“Give the food to people in Alamogordo who are short on food.”

“What about any money we find?”

“Blood money, donate it too. Like I said, all I want are the weapons, magazines and any
ammo.”

The soldiers took our statements, separately of course, put the bodies in the back of the
pickup and returned the way the pickup came. It was probably 2 weeks later, not all that
long before Christmas, when the Sergeant turned up one day. He had the weapons in-
cluding the ones we hadn’t seen. 3 Browning Hi-Powers with the 13-shot magazines,
the MP-5, the M-40 and the HK91. There were 7 magazines each for the submachine
gun, about 9 for the HK91 and a total of 9 Browning magazines. He also had the partial
cases of 9mm and 7.62×51mm.

54
“I took the liberty of bringing you one case of M118LR for the M-40 and a case of M80
ball for the HK. I also scrounged a case of 9mm M882 ball. There weren’t any military
markings on the weapons so I suppose you might as well have them.”

“Would you and your driver care for a Bud?”

“Like one, yes. Take one, no. Rain check?”

“Any time Sergeant.”

“He bought you the guns? How did you manage that?”

“I asked. He even brought us the precision M118LR ammo for the M-40, 2,000 rounds
of 9mm and 1,000 rounds of M80 ball. You know, we probably did them a favor taking
out those 3 men in that pickup. This could have been his way of saying thanks.”

“I’m glad for the guns, but I don’t like it. Word’s going to get around that we have some-
thing worth taking and that we’re more than ready to protect whatever it is.”

“Sue that’s why we got Rex. We should get some warning if someone shows up. I think
a dog’s sense of hearing is about like their sense of smell, several times better than
ours. You’re a better shot than I am, do you want to take the M-40 with the MP-5 for a
backup?”

“What does it have for a scope?”

“Leopold Mk 4. I didn’t check that close but I believe it’s variable power.”

“That’s a snipers weapon. I’ll run it into Alamogordo and have the guy move the flash-
hider from my M1A to that rifle.”

“Why don’t you just have him install the adapter, Sue? If you do that, you can use it on
both rifles.”

“Good idea. They can machine a mount right into the barrel or thread it for one of the
other fast adapters. We’re out of cash, so I’ll have to pay him in gold.”

“You want me to ride along?”

“I’ll be ok, you stay here and keep an eye on the place. I take Rex with me.”

“I’ll clean the HK91 and get it ready to go. Check and see if he has any more of the
magazines, would you? And if you think we could use more ammo, buy it.”

55
 The Asian Question – Chapter 11

Sue didn’t get back until near dark. I didn’t like that but she must have been in the store
because I couldn’t get her on the radio. The gunsmith had threaded the barrel and in-
stalled a Fast Attach adapter on the M-40. After breakfast the next day, Sue took the M-
40 and some of the M118LR ammo out and got the rifle sighted in. The scope turned
out to be one that automatically compensated for the M118LR ammo so it didn’t really
take her all that long. The rifle ended up in the rack in my OP. The HK91 was in excel-
lent condition and after I figured how to disassemble it, I cleaned it good, used an ap-
proved lube and got it reassembled. Sue picked up 10 more magazines and a single
case of the Lake City 7.62 overruns. I loaded 9 magazines and had them stacked, ready
to switch out with the M1A magazines. I guess I should have asked her to pick up an-
other ALICE rig, but the thought never crossed my mind.

“Here you go.”

“What did you get?”

“Open the bag and look.”

“ALICE gear? Darn, I did good when I married you. I was just thinking that I should have
asked you to get me a second set.”

“When I saw the HK magazines, it occurred to me that you have to switch them around
and knowing you, I figured I’d better eliminate the confusion. Get some tape and label
the rigs, ‘M1A’ and ‘HK’. While I was at it, I got you a couple of other things. Here’s a
second KA-BAR knife for the second set of ALICE gear and here’s a knife to wear with
your cowboy rig.”

“Looks more like a machete, what the heck is it?”

“Look at the box stupid, it’s Rambo III.”

“I can see what I’m going to be doing for the rest of my life. The edge is sharp but the
top needs some work. Thanks honey. Did you get me the auxiliary wheels to carry the
thing?” (2¾ pounds)

“Where are you going?”

“To get a file from my toolbox, the top edge really needs a lot of work.”

“I thought you’d like it, Barry. It weighs about the same as your Colt and you’ll be better
balanced.”

“I love it, Sue. I’ll be able to sharpen knives for the rest of my life.”

56
I did like the knife, but it was pretty heavy for a middle-aged man. I did the KA-BAR first,
that was easy. Then I turned my attention to Rambo III. What I needed was an adjusta-
ble vise to hold it at just the right angle. I could have cut away the extra metal in nothing
flat. Didn’t have one so I did it the hard way. That 420-J2 steel is pretty darned hard. In
between meals and doing all of my chores, I worked on it. Sue made me close the door
to the OP; my language was getting to her.

After my stint in the Army, I always figured if you got close enough to use a bayonet or
knife, you were too darned close. When I was in, we used the M16A1 rifle. After I got
out, they went to the M16A2 in 1983. I didn’t care for the M16; it was far too fragile to be
an infantry weapon. And unlike the rifles used by some of the other military organiza-
tions around the world, it required far too much attention. It was fussier than a baby with
a dirty diaper when it got dirty.

++++

“Come spring, we’ll get some chickens.”

“Oh good, more fertilizer for the garden.”

“When they get to be fryer size, I thought we could butcher some and add them to the
freezer. If you ever get your new toy sharp, it should be handy for cutting off their
heads.”

“One more day of filing and I’ll be ready to use the stone.”

“There was a note on the bulletin board that someone had some old laying hens for
sale. I suppose they quit laying and he’s selling them for meat. Would you like for me to
see about getting some? A baked chicken would be a nice break in our routine.”

“I’d like that, Sue.”

“We’ll see if you’re still singing the same tune when you get to pluck them.”

“I just can’t wait until I have more manure to haul.”

“Sarcasm? It doesn’t become you.”

“Sarcasm is an art form, Sue. Irony refers to the literal meaning and the intended mean-
ing of the words uttered being different, while sarcasm refers to the mocking intent of
the utterance. It is possible to be ironic without being sarcastic, and to be sarcastic
without being ironic. Sarcasm is also regularly confused with cynicism, which in com-
mon use is seen as a fundamental nihilistic attitude toward other people and life in gen-
eral, whereas sarcasm can also be used to express positive ideas or sentiments. Be-
cause it is vocally-oriented, sarcasm can be difficult to grasp in written form and is easily
misinterpreted.”

57
“I’m sorry I said anything.”

“You should be I think I’ll go get a Bud.”

“Come off it Barry, this isn’t a Bud moment. Save the beer for when we’re done plucking
chickens, you may need it.”

She took off and about 2 hours later brought a dozen big hens home. While she was
gone, I’d hit the big bottom blade of my Rambo knife and it really sharp. I’d driven 2
nails in a stump and could kill the chickens myself, catching their heads between the
nails and giving a whack with Rambo. The first one quit flopping about the time I lopped
the head off the 12th. Sue had a big kettle of boiling water so we scalded the chickens
and started plucking. Yuck, smelly business and I had feathers everywhere. Sue told
me to go get a Bud and she’d singe the chickens, gut them and freeze them. I got a
shower first; oh man I really stunk.

We hadn’t been in bed for more than an hour when Rex started acting up. Sue stuck an
elbow in my rib hard enough to wake the dead.

“What?”

“Shh, Rex is acting up. Slip some clothes on and get to the OP. I’ll finish dressing and
join you. Radio the Army on Guard and tell them we have an emergency.”

“What? We haven’t even looked out the window yet.”

“Look at Rex; I’ve never seen him so upset. Do it and if I’m wrong, I’ll take the heat.”

I slid into my clothes and stumbled to the OP. I couldn’t see the knob on the radio and
turned on my mini-mag light so I could change the radio to Channel 41 or 42. Crack!
Ping! The window shattered and I realized that Sue was right as the flashlight fell to the
floor.

“Mayday, mayday. This is the Ryan Ranch. We have intruders and are taking fire.”

“This channel is reserved for emergencies. State the nature of your emergency or clear
the channel.”

“This is the Ryan Ranch. We have intruders and are under fire. We’re on US 54 just
north and east of Tularosa. You’d better hurry and bring machineguns.”

“Roger, Ryan Ranch, we’ll notify the Army.”

58
“Who am I talking to?”

Crack! Ping!

“Ryan Ranch, this is Holloman AFB. Is that gunfire?”

“It ain’t the 4th of July. Affirmative.”

“Can you hold until the Army arrives?”

“If we’re dead when they get here it means we couldn’t. How in hell do I know? Ryan
Ranch clear.”

“I sure wish we had a yard light.”

“We have a yard light, they must have shot it out. Do you see them?”

“I don’t see anything. What now?”

“Do you know the term recon by fire?”

“We shoot and they shoot back? Then we shoot at their muzzle flashes?”

“Are you glad I bought really good flashhiders?”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot.”

“Use the HK91 and draw their fire. I’ll use the M-40 and you can switch to your M1A.”

“Ryan Ranch, this is Sergeant Collins on VHF Guard channel, do you copy?”

“Sergeant, this is Sue. We were just going to do a recon by fire.”

“Negative, we’re two minutes out. Standby.”

“I hear them coming Sue,” I advised.

The next thing we knew, 2 HMMWVs showed up and their M2HBs were doing all of
their talking. Man, was that a one sided conversation. We started to turn on lights and
headed downstairs. Sue put on a pot of coffee for the soldiers.

“Hello the house.”

“Sgt. Collins, good to see you. Sue’s making coffee. Man did you pull our chestnuts out
of the fire.”

59
“I’d have been by later today to talk to you anyway. We were in the area, I was worried.”

“About what?”

“There’s talk in town that you folks bought 2 horses and paid gold. That Chevron dealer
said you bought 5,000-gallons of diesel and paid cash. Some folks are speculating that
you folks have mucho money out here. Fortunately most of them don’t know where you
live.”

“Tell your soldiers to come in and get coffee, Sgt. Collins. We’d better talk about this,
we’re not rich and we used up most of our cash on the diesel fuel.”

Sue explained that she’d invested some of the money from selling our house in Califor-
nia in a small quantity of gold and silver a few years ago. She also explained that she
was thrifty and we had some money in the bank and that she pulled most of it just be-
fore TSHTF. Then she started talking about how her father was a preparedness freak
and a little of it rubbed off on her.

“I guess that explains most of it, Mrs. Ryan, but it doesn’t do anything for the perception
around parts of town that you folks have a huge stash of money and gold. I see you fig-
ured out the Air Guard frequencies. That controller at Holloman wasn’t the happiest
camper I’ve ever seen.”

“Sgt. Collins, why don’t you give us a SINCGARS to use?” I asked.

“What do you know about SINCGARS?”

“I’ve read Army FM 06-02-72. I have it in a pdf file on my computer. As I recall, the Army
bought a lot of those radios during Iraqi Freedom. They were ICOMs, weren’t they?”

“How did you…?”

“I got the field manual off Global Security. I try my best to keep up on things.”

“So, you don’t have large amounts of gold and silver or large amounts of cash?”

“We have some gold and silver but almost no cash left. We got the dog like you sug-
gested. What else can we do?”

60
 The Asian Question – Chapter 12

“I’ll talk to my Company Commander about getting you a SINCGARS, but don’t count on
it. I can try and get the word out that you folks spent what little money you had. I don’t
think it will do a lot of good, but I’ll try.”

One of the soldiers got some plywood from the machine shed and covered the shot out
window. I knew that I was going to have to drive into town first thing in the morning and
get the glass in the window and the storm window replaced. At least I could stand on
the roof to work on the windows. Maybe I should get one of those sheets of GuardVue
glass-clad polycarbonate and replace the entire storm window. It came in sheets as big
as 48”x84” and probably cost a small fortune.

Sgt. Collins had told us what he could do, not a whole lot, but I was hoping he could talk
his Captain into letting us use one of those military radios. I was so wound up I couldn’t
sleep so when Sue finally went back to bed, I went to the OP to listen to the ham bands.
I listened for a while on 75 meters then moved to 20 meters. Some of these guys must
stay up all night to talk on their radios.

After daylight, I took down the plywood and pulled the storm window. I couldn’t get the
regular window out of the frame. Once I had the storm window out, I put the plywood
back up and headed to town. Sue kept Rex and told me she’d keep an eye on the
place. I could see that the business people were trying to carry on business as usual,
but they didn’t seem to have many customers. I went to the glass shop and told him I
had a window at home that was shot out that I couldn’t get out of the casing. He told me
he could come by, replace it and wanted to know if I wanted the glass replaced in the
storm window. I told him to go ahead and asked about the bulletproof glass.

“What did you have in mind?”

“Replacing the entire storm window with a sheet of GuardVue or something similar.”

“Let me see what I have in stock. The whole window?”

“I can’t see any other way to do it.”

“It’s not exactly inexpensive.”

“My wife has a little money, she can handle it. Here’s where we live, you can bring the
storm window, the bulletproof glass and stuff to replace the regular window. When can
you come by?”

“3:00?”

“We’ll be there.”

61
++++

“Where’s the window?”

“He’ll be by around 3 to repair the window and either install the storm window or a sheet
of bulletproof glass.”

“If you put bulletproof glass in that window, we won’t be able to shoot out!”

“I’m more concerned about them shooting in, Sue.”

“The Vet’s here.”

“Rex sick?”

“The one of the mares is foaling.”

“What’s the deal? Does he have a crystal ball to know when someone’s horse is going
to have a baby? The phones are out and we only have one vehicle, which I had in Ala-
mogordo.”

“He said that he had it in his appointment book to check on the mares. It just so hap-
pened that one of them was ready to foal.”

“I saw her lying down; I just thought she was tired. Should I boil water or something?”

“The Vet has it under control. Why didn’t you tell me the mare was down?”

“She’d lay down for a minute then get back up and pace. How was I supposed to
know?”

“Well folks, you’ve got a filly.”

“Stick with me Rex; we’re getting out numbered here.”

“What about the other Mare?”

“I’ll come back tomorrow morning. Didn’t you folks realize that she was about to foal?”

“What are the symptoms?”

“Restlessness, pawing or nest building, frequent loose bowel movements, frequent uri-
nation, lying down and standing up and yawning.”

“Fine, but the phones are out, how would we contact you?”

62
“I’ve been monitoring channel 9 on the CB radio. What’s with the plywood, break a win-
dow?”

“About 11pm, Rex woke Sue up. I headed to that room to get on the radio and call the
Army. When I turned on my mini-mag light, they started shooting at the window.”

“What was that all about?”

“Someone started a rumor that we had gold, silver and cash. We don’t but apparently
whoever it was last night believed the rumor.”

“How did it turn out?”

“We’re here aren’t we? The Army shot the guys with those .50 caliber machine guns or
something.”

“Your dog had all of his shots?”

“He’s just a year old, is he due for some?”

“I’ll give him a 7 in 1.”

“What about rabies?”

“Once every 3 years. If you got him from a breeder, I’d assume he already had one.”

“If he gets one too soon will it hurt anything?”

“No, why?”

“Give him everything. What about shots for the horses?”

“I’ll set up a schedule and come by when they’re needed.”

“Did you have a sheet of bulletproof glass?”

“It’s a glass over polycarbonate. And, yes, I had a sheet leftover from a job I did for $55
per square foot. The window will run you $825. Let me replace the panes in the window
upstairs and I’ll install it, if you wish.”

“Will you accept payment in gold and silver?”

“I guess. Do you have the exchange rates?”

63
“$1,300 per ounce on gold and $17.50 an ounce on silver.”

“Ok. The windows are $35 per pane. You have 4 panes plus the polycarbonate. Your
total is $1,034.95”

“¾ ounce of gold and 3 ounces of silver and the rest in cash ok with you?”

“I suppose. You aren’t the only people who have gold and silver. But, it’s mostly the old-
er folks who have some. The kids these days seem to believe that plastic is the answer
to everything. Did you hear about the farmer’s market they’ve set up in Alamogordo?”

“No, what do they have for sale?”

“A little bit of everything. Not a lot of food, though. Real brisk trade in firearms.”

“What I’d really like to have is one of those Ma Deuces,” I pointed out.

“Oh, there was a guy there with one of those. His price was 12 ounces of gold for the
machinegun, tripod and 2,000 rounds of standard military 4 to 1 mix.”

“Ball and tracer?”

“AP and APIT.”

“Sue?”

“I’ll get you 12 ounces of gold. Maybe we can get more ammo from that nice Sgt. Col-
lins.”

She gave me 12 of the Gold Eagles and I headed to town. Lots of people were talking to
the guy with the machinegun, but nobody was buying.

“I understand you’re asking 12 ounces of gold for the machinegun, tripod and 2,000
rounds of AP/APIT.”

“That’s right, but nobody seems to have that much gold.”

“I do.”

“Show me.”

“12 gold Eagles.”

“You have a truck? I’ll help you load it.”

“Know where I can get more ammo?”

64
“That’s all I had. Ask the Army, they have plenty.”

“I’m home!”

“Did you buy it?”

“Oh yeah, we’re ready for the bad guys when they come back.”

“Where are you going to put it?”

“I’m going to take those sandbags I got from the Fire Department and fill them with that
loose soil we brought up from the basement. I think we should put it right in front of the
house or on the front porch.”

“We’ll put it at the side of the house, Barry. If you put in front of the house, our home will
be shot full of holes. If you have enough sandbags, you can put in a row from the back
porch to the fighting position.”

“Did he get the window done?”

“Yes, you can sit and watch the road again and not worry about anything up to and in-
cluding .50 caliber armor piercing ammo.”

“Give me a hand with the machinegun, Sue. Man, I’m tired, I stayed up all night.”

“We can set it in the living room by the window and you can fill the sandbags tomorrow.
Before he left, Doc said to check the other mare every hour and let him know when she
was ready to foal.”

“I thought he was coming by this morning.”

“He called me on channel 9 and said he got tied up with another delivery.”

“Have you heard from the Army about the SINCGARS?”

“No.”

“We need to replace the yard light, Barry. They destroyed the fixture when they shot it
out.”

“What I ought to do is run a string of floodlights all around the house on the edge of the
roof. I go into Alamogordo tomorrow and see if I can find some simple fixtures.”

65
 The Asian Question – Chapter 13

Since our horse was ready to foal, I stayed up until midnight checking on her and Sue
took over after. I slept late the following morning, trying to get back some of the sleep I’d
lost. I was in the middle of an audacious dream when I heard a door slam. I staggered
out of bed, hit the can and looked out the new bulletproof window. I saw the Vet’s H2
Hummer, so we must be having a baby. I took a quick shower and got dressed. I purely
hate to shave and only do that on Saturday nights.

“Are we having a baby?”

“She’s about ready to foal.”

“Let me grab a cup of coffee and I’ll go into to town to see about a sodium yard light and
a string of something I can run around the eves of the house.”

“Why don’t you just find an electrician? You don’t like to climb ladders anyway.”

“Can we afford that?”

“Yes. But, I thought maybe I’d set up a table at the farmer’s market once a week and
sell my quilts.”

“What are they worth?”

“Depending on size, anywhere from $500 to $1,500, each.”

“How many do you have?”

“I average about 4 a year and I’ve been making them ever since we moved here, so I’d
guess around 36.”

“I go check with the Vet and drive into Alamogordo and arrange for an electrician.”

I’d climbed a ladder to paint all of the buildings, but I didn’t like it one bit. It was tough
enough hanging on with one hand and slapping on paint with the other. I had no idea
how I was going to install the light fixtures, to tell the truth. I fell out of a tree when I was
a kid, broke my arm and darn near killed myself. Been afraid of heights ever since. Thir-
ty-six quilts with an average price of $1,000 would buy a whole lot of light bulbs. My ex-
perience with electricians was that if it was simple, like installing a $30 fixture, the labor
was about the same amount as the price of the fixture. Didn’t matter, Sue was paying.

++++

Wait a minute; Sue is paying with our money, right? I’d better buy some economical fix-
tures and pay an electrician to install them. I bought 24 fixtures, six per side. I figured

66
the electrician would have an appropriate switch and the wire. I also got a new sodium
fixture for him to install on our yard light. It was one of the kind that automatically turns
itself on and off. I bought what the store recommended, their top seller. The bulbs had a
5,000-hour life; or less if someone shot them out.

The electrician wired all of the fixtures together in parallel and put in a toggle switch box.
I asked why and he said that 24 250w fixtures would pull 50 amps. I hadn’t thought
about that, the generator would get quite a workout when I flipped that switch. He also
said it would light the entire property up like daylight. The mare had a filly, by the way. I
planned to stay up until about 10pm and flip that switch to see if it really did light up the
entire homestead.

What with putting up the lights, I didn’t get any sandbags filled because I was too busy
supervising. I think he charged extra because I watched. You’ve seen those signs,
right? Our labor rates are $20 per hour, $30 per hour if you watch and $40 per hour if
you supervise. I just watched and marveled how he could work at the top of that exten-
sion ladder and not hang on. I didn’t say a single word to him the entire time. Around
10pm, I went outside and shouted to Sue to flip the switch. You couldn’t even see the
house for all of the lights. Wow!

I’d been putting off cleanout the birthing stall because it was a mess. Got a good bunch
of manure and soiled bedding to work into the soil. We ought to get a bumper crop this
year. Sue had 4 king size – $1,500, 10 queen size – $1,250, 12 full size – $1,000, 8 twin
size – $750 and 2 baby size – $500 quits. If she sold them all, she’d have herself a tidy
little sum. She hand lettered a sign with the prices and indicated cash, silver or gold,
barter considered. She said she wanted to set up a table on Fridays.

When I had been in Alamogordo checking on an electrician and buying the light fixtures,
I’d checked on the farmer’s market. They rented spaces with or without a table, but the
table was only $5 more so I suggested she just rent a space with a table. She had a lot
of foot traffic but only sold 2 quilts. It appeared that few people actually had much cash,
gold or silver. I went along and wore my Laredo rig with the Rambo III knife that I’d final-
ly managed to get sharp all around. The guy who sold me the Ma Deuce was there and
he had another one. Same price, too. I wondered if may he was some soldier who
worked in supply or something. I asked him about more ammo but he said all he had
was the 2,000-rounds of AP/APIT that he was selling with the gun. That’s what he’d told
me when I bought the one I have. He did have spare barrels and I asked him how
much. $1,000 each, can you believe that? I bought 2 giving me a total of 4.

Around 5:00, they started to close up so we took the remaining 34 quilts and my new
machinegun barrels out to the truck. He tossed in one of those head spacing gauges.
It’s a little piece of chain with go/no go gauges on one end and a little bar on the other.
I’ll have to study my copy of FM 23-65 to make sure I know how to set the headspace
and timing. After that, I think it might be a good idea to check my Ma Deuce to make

67
darn sure it’s ready to go. Sure wish that we would hear something from Sgt. Collins
about that SINCGARS radio.

Saturday morning we filled sandbags. I had decided that with all of the floodlights, it
didn’t make good sense to have an outside firing position so we sandbagged the front of
our house. I had a lot of sandbags and we put in one layer by Saturday night. The fol-
lowing morning we started in again and filled enough for a second layer of sandbags all
the way from the porch floor to the lid. I’ll have to give her credit – Sue is a real trooper.
She shoveled and I tied the sandbags off and stacked them.

“What’s for supper?”

“There’s a roast in the crock pot with potatoes and carrots.”

“Where did you get carrots?”

“Out of the freezer. There’s a list of what is in the freezer on that clipboard lying on top.”

“I’ll have to check the calendar; I think that the generator is due for an oil change.”

“How is our supply of fuel holding up?”

“We’re in great shape, I think that we only use about .6 of a gallon per hour on average.
Man did you hear that generator lug down when we tested the lights? We wouldn’t want
to turn those on unless we had a problem.”

“I want to see them so tonight around 10pm, I’ll go outside and you flip the switch.”

“Ok. I’ll turn off all the lights in the house like it would be in an emergency situation like
we had last time. What size quilts did you sell?”

“Two of the queen size. If you’re going along to be with me, that’s one thing, but if it’s
going to be an excuse to spend money, you can stay home.”

“Sue, all I bought was two spare barrels for our machinegun. I did ask him about ammo
but he said all he had was 2,000-rounds like he had the last time.”

“That weapon is crew served, right?”

“Yes. The Army uses a crew of 3, a gunner, an assistant gunner and an ammunition
bearer to haul extra ammo. If there is a 4th member, he is the crew leader with the bin-
oculars, compass and one box of ammo. Every member of the crew is trained to oper-
ate at all positions.”

68
“What did you carry for a weapon, a pistol?”

“Either a M1911 or a M16A1. They didn’t come out with the M9 until about 1985. I liked
the M1911; I can’t see why they replaced it with a 9mm weapon. The 9mm pistol carries
15 rounds but you need more rounds because it doesn’t have much knockdown power,
or so I’ve heard. On paper, it is supposed to be better, but I’m not convinced.”

“But the M1911 magazines only hold 7 rounds.”

“I know, but before they came out with the M1911, they had an experience in the Philip-
pines. The weapon originated in response to problems encountered by American units
fighting Moro insurgents during the Philippine-American War. The then-standard .38 cal-
iber (actual bullet diameter: .357 inches or 9.07 mm) revolver was found to be unsuita-
ble for the rigors of jungle warfare, particularly in terms of stopping power. (The Moro’s
were found to be wearing improvised chest armor and frequently used native drugs to
inhibit the sensation of pain.) The Army briefly reverted to the .45 Colt revolvers, which
had been standard during the last decades of the 19th Century; the slower, heavier bul-
let was found to be more effective against charging tribesmen. An Ordnance Board,
headed by John T. Thompson, concluded that a .45 caliber (11.4 mm) semi-automatic
weapon would be most appropriate, and took bids from six firearms manufacturing
companies in 1906.

“Of the six designs submitted, two were selected for field testing in 1907, one of them
being Colt's model, which Browning had basically modified to government specifications
from an earlier autoloading .380 caliber (also known as a 9mm short, .355 inch bullet
diameter) design of his. Most pistols were eliminated early leaving the Savage, Colt,
and DWM designs. Both Colt and Savage required refinements and the DWM Luger
was soon withdrawn. The Luger in .45 caliber was considered suitable and competitive,
however DWM believed their weapon wouldn't receive fair consideration in the trials and
wasn't worth the financial investment required. A series of field tests was designed to
decide between the Arthur Savage designed gun and the Colt. Attended by John Moses
Browning, the Colt gun passed with flying colors, firing 6,000 rounds non-stop, a record
at the time. The soundness of design is also borne out in its longevity of service (over
70 years).

“In order to meet the Ordnance Board's requirements, the 1911 was designed to fire a
.45 caliber (11.4 mm), 230 grain (15 g) bullet at approximately 800 feet per second (240
m/s). These specifications were championed by Gen. Thompson, and were the result of
terminal ballistics tests conducted in 1904 at the Nelson Morris Company stockyards in
Chicago on live cattle and human cadavers. These tests lacked scientific rigor, but the
stopping power of the .45 ACP cartridge was clearly demonstrated.”

“And they replaced it with the 9mm? That’s nothing more than a .38.”

69
“Tell me about it. No don’t, that was just an expression. A 9mm is .354 caliber and a .38
is .357. By the way, the .50 BMG cartridge is 12.7×99mm compared to the 12.7×108mm
carteidge the Russians use.”

“What are the standard NATO cartridges?”

“5.56×45mm, 7.62×51mm, 12.7×99mm and 9×19mm. It also includes the 25mm cannon
shells and the 40mm grenades.”

70
 The Asian Question – Chapter 14

“Where is our radio?”

“I have no idea, maybe the Captain turned him down. Or, maybe they don’t have
enough to go around. Or, maybe he got busy and forgot. Or, maybe he was just shining
us on. Or, maybe…”

“I get the idea, you don’t know and you don’t care.”

“I care a lot, but they have more .50 caliber machineguns than we do. Besides, we can
always call Holloman AFB on the Guard channel and po that guy off again.”

“Is the President still at Holloman?”

“I really don’t know, but I’ll bet they put a lot of nukes on Washington, DC. He’s probably
holed up there until the Secret Service says he can come out and play.”

“Are you keeping the barn clean?”

“Huh? Where is it written that it’s my job to shovel the manure?”

“Wives’ handbook, page 57; the husband is responsible for taking out the trash and any-
thing you can’t eat is trash.”

“Yeah, right, you made that up. I’ll have you know that page 57 of the husbands’ hand-
book only say one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s time for a Bud.”

“You made that up.”

++++

“Are you ready for me to turn on the lights?”

“I thought you forgot.”

“I was busy inventorying the Bud.”

“How much do you have left?”

“Less than what I started with.”

71
“Let me get my coat. Come, Rex.”

“Aren’t you taking a gun?”

“Just to walk out in the yard?”

“How many times do we have to get attacked before you realize that there are unfriend-
ly people out there? To top it off, you sold $2,500 worth of quilts. There are people who
would try and rob you for $2,500.”

“You spent $2,000 of the money I got.”

“Just so I could protect you my dear. Besides, maybe the bad guys didn’t see me
spending your, our, money.”

“Oh, all right, I take the M-40.”

“Take a semi-auto Sue. Either the 11-87 or the M1A.”

Slam. Sue was out the door with empty hands, maybe I hadn’t suggested that right.
Well, I’m here to tell you that if the bad guys show up, she’ll wish she took a gun. I
worked my way to the OP, turning off the lights as I went. After I turned off the lights in
the OP, I flipped the hand on that toggle box. I hadn’t realized how much those lights lit
the place up. The last time the roles were switched and all I knew was that I couldn’t
see the house.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Bright enough out there for you?”

“I couldn’t even see the house.”

“Standing here looking out the window, I wish I hadn’t put in that bulletproof glass.”

“Why?”

“As well as the place is lit up, it would be a perfect place to snipe from.”

“You could cut a firing slot in the wall and cover it with a metal flap.”

“It might be a better idea to put up some metal plates so the bad guys couldn’t shoot at
us through the wall.”

72
“What did you have in mind?”

“A couple of those metal plates they use to cover holes in the road when they don’t fin-
ish the job in one day.”

“¾ of an inch is about 25mm?”

“No, about 19mm.”

“We’ll go to Alamogordo and see what we can find. Is that ok with you?”

It turned out that there was a subsidiary of Esco Corp named Heflin Steel in Phoenix.
The company manufactured and supplied armor plate that was equal to NIJ level IV+
protection. They had a product called ARMOR GARD that had all kinds of applications
even shooting ranges. We explained to the fella who sold us the bulletproof glass what
we wanted. Anyway, he had some ½” armor plate left over from another job he’d done
and no one seemed to want to buy it. It turns out that Phoenix got hit, they didn’t have
THAAD protection or it didn’t work. It was also a little more expensive than the glass at
$100 per ft².

“What do you think, Sue? I think we should just do the area around the bulletproof glass
in the OP. Those sandbags ought to stop bullets for the first floor. We could put road
plates behind the bags if you want.”

“What kind of setup do you have for your ground floor?”

“We have 2 layers of sandbags.”

“Is it sand or clay? Sand does a better job of stopping bullets than clay does.”

“It’s whatever the soil is around the house. What’s that, sand or adobe?”

“A little bit of both, I suppose. I think you could get by putting in a road plate behind 2
layers of sandbags, but you really ought to put armor plating around that window. Have
you had any more trouble?”

“If you mean since they shot out our window and you put in the polycarbonate window,
the answer is no. But that Sergeant said that people were talking about us have money.
I picked up a Ma Deuce from that guy at the farmer’s market but only have 2,000-
rounds of ammo. I was hoping that Sergeant Collins could supply us with a SINCGARS
radio and more ammo.”

“It will run you about $3,000 to protect that window.”

“How many pieces of gold?”

73
“2, the price is up to $1,500 an ounce.”

“Do you have enough plate to do the downstairs window too?” Sue asked.

“Just one window?”

“Yes.”

“Let me check. Uh…Sorry, I don’t. But I do have more of the bulletproof glass and it’s
only $55 ft². For 4 gold Eagles, I’ll include installation for the upstairs armor and the
downstairs bulletproof glass.”

“When can you do it?”

“Is an hour too soon?”

“COD ok with you?”

“As long as you show me the coins before I start working, yes.”

“Come on out,” Sue told him.

He brought help and by sundown, we were wrapped up tight in our armor blanket. Sue
paid him with the 4 gold Eagles she’d taken from the cedar chest in the basement and
laid on the table for him to see. It was up to me to replace the sandbags; I guess instal-
lation didn’t include that. Sue said that we should plan on having quilts at the farmer’s
market everyday next week; we needed to replace the gold we’d used up on this and
that. She also said that I could go with her if I behaved myself.

I assumed that meant stay out of her hair and not spend the money faster than she was
raking it in. I suggested that I could go to the friendly neighborhood tavern and nurse a
Bud. Her comeback was that she’d probably end up driving home every night. I prom-
ised to be good. Be our luck that the bad guys would show up, circle the house and
throw Molotov cocktails or something. I guess that I shouldn’t have dismantled that im-
provised shelter, huh?

Somehow I can just see myself come spring, 2 mares and 2 filly colts to care for plus all
those chickens that Sue wants to get. That’s a whole lot of manure for a city boy to haul.
Seeing how we have a barn, she’ll probably want to buy a feeder calf and a bunch of
hogs, too. That’s where I’m going to draw the line, have you ever smelled pig manure?
Isn’t it enough that I have to muck out the barn and haul it to the garden? No, come
spring, I have to rototill it in. I’m getting mad just thinking about it, I think that it’s Bud
time. Well, I guess I’d better just have one, I only had 8 six-packs to begin with and it’s

74
about ½ gone. I have to see if I can pick up another case of 8 six-packs at the tavern.
It’s almost Christmas and I’d say that 4 six-packs between the end of the world and
Christmas isn’t what you’d really call heavy drinking.

Author’s Note:

Occasionally I put in a lyric to make a point or just share it. A few years ago, I lost my
head and somehow managed to let myself get into something I hadn’t planned on. She
knew of my love for music and referred me to this song by Faith Hill:

I've got this friend who is lonely

She's afraid she'll never find her one and only
A little shy but she can be fun
If the right guy came along
Would you know someone

I've got this friend and it sounds crazy

But he's been feeling that way too a whole lot lately
And interested, oh I'm sure he'd be
I can almost speak for him
He's that close to me

Maybe in each other

They might find the lover
They've been missin' until now
They'd trust the judgment of
Two friends like us who care so much
Can we get them together…somehow

I've got this friend

Yeah, I think I know her
My arms can almost feel the way he'd hold her
It’s like he's here when you describe him
And if he's anything like you I'm sure she'd like him

Maybe in each other

They might find the lover
They've been missin' until now
They'd trust the judgment of
Two friends like us who care so much
Can we get them together…somehow

Can we get together…I've got this friend

75
 The Asian Question – Chapter 15

“I suppose that come spring you’re going to want to put in a feeder beef?”

“That would be nice.”

“I ain’t mucking out any pig manure.”

“But you really love those baby back ribs, Barry. And we could get 2 hams, 2 slabs of
bacon and 2 smoked picnics from one hog. Couldn’t we just have 2 pigs?”

“If you can sell one quilt a day for 5 days in a row, I’ll consider it. Frankly, Sue, I don’t
think that’s going to happen. That plus I can buy some more Bud from the tavern.”

“Are you out of beer?”

“Half out. But if I end up shoving hog manure, I’ll need more. So maybe I’d better plan
on buying a couple of cases, that’s 8 six-packs per case.”

She let me buy the 2 cases of Bud, but I didn’t know that she had customers already
lined up to buy 6 of her quilts. I should have said 2 a day for 5 days. It wouldn’t have
mattered, you know, she sold 2 a day for 5 straight days. By the end of the week, she’d
replaced most of the gold we’d used up. I wasn’t complaining because I had myself 20
six-packs of Bud. On Friday, we came home with a steer.

“At least you didn’t buy any pigs!”

“Sez who? I made a deal with a guy that raises hogs to take 2 off his hands just as soon
as they’re weaned.”

“Are you planning on going back to the farmer’s market next week?”

“I have a couple of ladies who said if I was back they’d probably buy a quilt, why?”

“Because, if I’ve got to haul pig manure, I’m way short on Bud. As much manure as I
already have on the garden, I think I’ll get out the rototiller and mix it in. I may have to
start a compost pile and see if I can convert it to soil.”

“You don’t want to do that, composting manure causes it to lose nitrogen and carbon.”

“How do you know?”

“I can’t remember, but it’s true.”

When Sue says, “I can’t remember, but it’s true,” you can take it to the bank. I decided
to just pile the manure instead of spreading it. If I had the time, I’ll still rototill in what I’d

76
spread and come spring, all I’d have to do to get the garden ready would be rake. It’s a
shame that it didn’t work out that way.

++++

Because we’d done Christmas in September, present wise, it was just another day. We
didn’t have an election in November; apparently they couldn’t put it together. Which
raises an interesting question in my mind at least. Come January 20th when George
Bush’s term expires, who will be the new President? There really isn’t a good answer
according to my research. If the offices of President and Vice Present are vacant be-
cause of a non-election, that also means that the House of Representatives is vacant
for the same reason and that ⅓ of the Senate is vacant. Do we follow the Presidential
line of Succession or do the remaining ⅔ of the Senate appoint a new President? A
person would think that in a world with 20,000 nuclear weapons, the Congress would
have passed a law to deal with the situation. Neither the Constitution nor the 25th
Amendment really has an answer. Thank God the Secretary of Homeland Security is at
the bottom of the list.

Back in 2003 the Continuity of Government Commission suggested that the current law
has at least seven significant issues... that warrant attention, including:

• The reality that all figures in the current line of succession work and reside in the vicini-
ty of Washington, DC. In the event of a terrorist or biological attack, it is possible, per-
haps even likely, that everyone on the list would be killed or incapacitated.

• Doubt (such as those expressed above in Constitutional Questions Regarding Eligibil-

ity to Act) that Congressional leaders are, in fact, eligible to act as President.

• A specific question of the ability of a President pro tempore to act, as the “largely hon-
orific post is traditionally held by the longest serving Senator of the majority party.” For
example, from January 20, 2001 to June 6, 2001, the President pro tempore was the 98
year-old Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.

• A concern that Congressional leaders from the same political party as the President
should be in the line of succession should the opposition party hold a majority in either
house of Congress.

• A concern that the succession line is ordered by the dates of creation of the various
executive departments, without regard to the skills or capacities of the persons serving
as their Secretary.

• The fact that, should a cabinet member begin to act as President, the law allows the
House to elect a new Speaker (or the Senate, a new President Pro Tempore), who
could in effect remove the cabinet member and assume the office himself at any time.

77
• The absence of a provision where a President is disabled and the Vice Presidency is
vacant (for example, if an assassination attempt simultaneously wounded the President,
but killed the Vice President).

Who will be the President on January 20, 2009? It might be the fella with the biggest
gun.

For now, George was in charge and running the country out of Holloman AFB. I can’t
tell where they came from, but in the 4 months following the attack, Alamogordo inherit-
ed a lot of black Chevy Suburban’s. Couldn’t be the CIA, that can’t operate on American
soil so it must be the FBI, the Secret Service and Homeland Security.

The federal government built several bunkers back in the ‘50s, Greenbrier Government
Relocation Facility, WV, Mount Pony Federal Reserve Center, VA, Raven Rock Moun-
tain Complex, PA (Site R), the SAC bunker at Offutt Air Force Base where Bush held
his first strategy session on 9/11/01 and Mount Weather Federal Bunker, VA. After the
Washington Post did its expose on May 31, 1992 (Ted Gup), the government ended up
decommissioning the Greenbrier and Mount Pony. They do bunker tours at the Green-
brier and Mount Pony was converted to a film library. The government never undoes
anything; they simply replace it with something newer, thus the bunker at Holloman ABF
that didn’t exist. It’s probably called Site H.

The people of the US didn’t need to know about the secret bunkers regardless of what
the media might claim. I guess that’s why they didn’t know about the new ones, huh?
After the Cuban Missiles Crisis, John Kennedy pulled the Jupiter C missiles from Tur-
key, right? Not until Polaris carrying submarines relieved them. The US has 4 aircraft E-
4B called NAOC (National Airborne Operations Center). One E-4B is kept on full alert at
all times, and one remains relatively close to Air Force One so that the President can
access it quickly from anywhere in the world. The NAOC fleet was originally deployed in
1974, when it was known as NEACP (National Emergency Airborne Command Post).

The Cold War never ended, it just changed character. The new players were Iraq, Iran,
North Korea and China. North Korea and Iran had a deal, oil and gas for nuclear tech-
nology and missiles. For its part, Russia was getting the money for new weapons sys-
tems by selling off all of the older systems to anyone who could pay the price. One of its
better customers had been the PRC. The Russians must have had a lot of the T-72
tanks because everyone had some now. They also had millions of the AK-47s and its
derivatives that they sold off when they went to the AK-74. Although the Russians still
use the AK-74, some of their luckier troops get the much-improved AN-94. Excuse me, I
have to stop making notes in my journal and go shovel manure.

“Did you finish your chores?”

78
“Yes, dear. I stoked the furnace twice, cleaned up, ate breakfast, feed the horses and
the steer and shoveled the manure and piled it.”

“On Monday you can come to town with me and get your Bud. The rest of the week,
you’d better stay home and do your chores. I don’t want you sitting in a tavern all day for
another week.”

“But, Sue…”

“You said that you wanted to rototill the manure into the garden didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but…”

“And the more I look at the house with all those sandbags stacked on the porch, the
less I like it. You get some of your paint and paint that armor on the second floor to
match the paint on the house. I don’t care what you do with the sandbags, but get them
off the porch.”

“Yeah, but…”

“I’ll see if I can track down that nice Sergeant Collins and see if he has our SINCGARS
radio yet.”

“Yes, dear.” (Bud time).

I guess that I shouldn’t complain, that woman could outshoot me something fierce.
That’s half the reason I gave her the M-40. The other reason was that given the choice
between a bolt-action rifle with only 5 shots and a HK91 or M1A, Remington lost. Like I
said, you can’t shoot more than one gun at a time, but it is very nice to have spares to
switch to if you get a jam or something.

“Sue when I’m in town on Monday, would it be ok with you if I looked around and found
a pair of night vision binoculars?”

“Don’t you have enough toys?”

“But night vision would be great. I could even look for a night vision scope for your M-
40. Wouldn’t it be better if we could see in the dark and decide how many bad guys
there were before we lit up the place?”

“What kind of scope?”

“How about an AN/PVS-10, night vision sniper scope? They’re built for the M-24 SWS
but they ought to fit on your M-40. Second generation night vision, Sue.”

79
“See if you can find me a 3rd Generation night scope. I heard of one called the Raptor
that comes in 4X and 6X.”

I’d heard of the Raptor, they were military and LEO only and cost about $7,000. The
tube was made by ITT and its light magnification was on the order of 50,000X. I wonder
if that woman wants caviar on her toast for breakfast. Oh, well, if she sells enough
quilts, I guess it doesn’t matter. We can leave Rex home on Monday to guard the place,
he’s really getting big and I wouldn’t want to have him mad at me. Do you suppose that
Sgt. Collins isn’t giving us a SINCGARS because we don’t have ham licenses? Or, is it
because they talk about all kinds of secret stuff on the military radios that we civilians
don’t have a right/need to know?

Need to know is one of those spy thingies that the government uses to keep secrets. It
was like the Greenbrier Resort. For 30 years they had the bunker there and denied its
existence because we didn’t need to know. You can darn well bet the Russians knew
about it. They have a bunch of shelters too. I really doubt if you fly over Area 51, they’ll
have the reassembled flying saucers sitting around for you to gawk at. Sometimes, I
think that the military is its own worst enemy. That goes for the government in general,
too. Sometimes those people act like we’re on different sides. They worked on the
Nighthawk at Area 51 to test it. Did you know how Area 51 got set up in the first place?

Kelly Johnson with Lockheed needed a place to test his super-secret spy plane, the U-
2. Groom Lake was used for bombing and artillery practice during World War II, but was
then abandoned until 1955, when it was selected by Lockheed's skunkworks team as
the ideal location to test the forthcoming U-2 spy plane. The first Have Blue prototype
stealth fighter (a smaller cousin of the F-117 Nighthawk) first flew at Groom in late 1977.
Testing of a series of ultra-secret prototypes continued there until mid-1981, when test-
ing transitioned to the initial production of F-117 stealth fighters. They also flew the su-
per-secret Aurora aircraft into Groom Lake. The project was a failure and the govern-
ment never admitted that the airframe existed. You’ve probably never heard of the man
who cancelled the Aurora program, Dick Cheney. (That’s the Urban Myth on Aurora.
The real story was that Aurora was a cover name for the B-2 bomber.)

The Air Force waived a red flag when the Aurora program got cancelled; they pulled 3
SR-71s out of retirement for a while. Eventually, the duties of the SR-71s were taken
over by satellites. That aircraft cost about $350,000 per flight just to operate. Do I know
that for a fact? No, but I knew the project manager at the skunk works who wasn’t even
allowed to use the word Aurora. The USGS at Pasadena stopped reporting the tracks
across southern California that was made by the returning non-existent Aurora aircraft
shortly thereafter. For every super slick airframe the US has, it has had its share of fail-
ures. We all marvel at the B-2 bomber. The Northrop YB-49, which preceded it, was the
jet-propelled variant of the company's XB-35 bomber. Perhaps it is fair to say that
Northrop’s design concepts were solid, but the means to implement them were still sev-
eral decades away. The YB-49 was simply a generation ahead of its time. The YB-49
was the “wrong plane at the wrong time,” getting trapped in the transition between pro-
peller-driven and jet-powered aircraft.

80
 The Asian Question – Chapter 16

I sure hope that Bud doesn’t get old in the can like Coors does. I scored big on Monday,
getting 4 cases of 8 six-packs each. I got lucky and found Sue her darned Raptor 6X
3rd Generation night vision scope. You’d be positively amazed at how small of a pack-
age you can get a $7,000+ scope in. I say 7+ because it cost more like 8. We could just
add it to all of the other equipment we had that we weren’t supposed to have like the 2
suppressors and the Ma Deuce.

I spend 2 days moving those sandbags. The problem I had was where to put them. I
ended up building a couple of foxholes; they call them fighting positions these days, be-
tween the house and the road. Then I found the 2½-gallons of leftover house paint and
stirred it for a couple of hours until I got it blended back together. I could have used an
electric drill and a piece of coat hanger but I’d burned the motor out on my drill. I could
see right away that that armor plate was going to take 2 coats of paint, maybe 3 to sort
of blend in with the house.

On Thursday after I’d put on the 2nd coat, Sue came home with a present. Apparently
she’d cornered Sgt. Collins and had a SINCGARS radio. She also had 2,000 additional
rounds of .50BMG AP/APIT ammo.

“When are you going to mount my Raptor on my M-40?”

“It looks like the weekend, I still have to put another coat of paint on that armor.”

“If that’s the case, I’ll do it myself.”

“Sell many quilts?”

“I’ve just about sold out. Christmas is next week and people must be buying presents.
Bottom line is we’re actually ahead on money. I ran into that nice Sgt. Collins and per-
suaded him to part with a radio for you and that ammo.”

“I’ll get up that Army field manual and print it out so I know how to use it. Do you know if
he put in the keys?”

“Huh?”

++++

“In the FH Mode. SINCGARS radios can store FH data for unique FH nets. SINCGARS
radios require four data elements to communicate in the FH mode. The data elements
are: hopsets/lockouts; net identification (ID); net sync time; and transmission security
key (TSK). Once FH data is loaded, the user moves from one FH net to the other by se-
lecting another FH net using the channel selector switch (non-ASIP ICOM only). In addi-
tion, users in nets sharing a common hopset, TSK, and sync time can also move from

81
net to net by entering the appropriate net ID. The ASIP ICOM radio does not have a
channel select switch. With the ASIP ICOM radio, switching hopsets is accomplished by
switching to the NCS mode. Move the position select knob to “load”, press “freq”, press
“menu clear”, enter the last two numbers of the hopset, press “STO” and select the
channel where the hopset is to be stored.

(1) Hopsets/lockouts. The hopset is the set of frequencies (2320 frequencies minus pro-
tected frequencies) on which an FH net hops. Hopsets are electronically loaded and
stored in the radio. SINCGARS radios have the capability of storing a unique hopset in
each preset FH channel. Lockouts provide frequency exclusions in conjunction with a
hopset.

(2) Net IDs. The net ID is a three-digit number from 000 to 999 that distinguishes one
FH net from another when all other FH data elements are the same. Unique net IDs
may be stored in each FH preset channel. Net IDs, embedded in the hopset data, are
loaded electronically with a fill device or by electronic remote fill (ERF) and may be
changed using the keypad or control panel of the SINCGARS RT.

(3) Sync time. Sync time is required for synchronization of the frequency hops. Sync
time consists of the last two digits of the Julian date (SINCGARS Julian Date) plus a six-
digit time (hours:minutes:seconds). Each station in the FH radio net must be within plus
or minus four seconds of the net sync time to communicate.

(4) TSK. The TSK is a generated variable that controls the pseudo-random FH pattern.
A TSK must be loaded into the SINCGARS radio prior to opening an FH net. TSKs are
electronically loaded into the radio with a fill device. After net opening, the TSK may be
transferred by ERF.

(5) FH-Master (FH-M) mode. Only one radio in each FH radio net will use this mode.
The FH-M radio maintains the radio net's sync time and performs the ERF. Normally the
designated NCS or alternate NCS will operate in the FH-M mode.

(6) CT communications. CT operations require a traffic encryption key (TEK). A key en-
cryption key (KEK) is required for over-the-air rekey (OTAR). TEK and KEK are elec-
tronically loaded and stored in the radio or external security equipment.

(7) The TEK is used in CT operation and encrypts/decrypts operational voice and digital
data transmissions

(8) The KEK encrypts/decrypts TEKs and is used for OTAR of TEKs.”

“If you say so. I don’t know a thing about all of that, he just gave me the radio and an
antenna and said that it operated on standard military voltage.”

“28 volts, I’ll have to go to town with you tomorrow and get a power supply.”

82
°

“Well, Sgt. Collins has a table set up at the farmer’s market. They seem to be trying to
recruit a few good men and women.”

“I guess that lets us out.”

“That’s an awful thing to say.”

“It may be, but it’s true. Let’s face it, Sue, we’re not kids anymore. After I did my hitch in
the Army, I never figured on needing to carry a gun again. Of course the problem is, the
place you need to carry a gun is California and you can’t do it there. Here where we
don’t need to carry a gun in normal times, it’s not that difficult to get a CCW.”

“You’re preaching to the choir.”

“Sorry. Like I said, I’ll go to town with you tomorrow and talk to Sgt. Collins about the
things I need to know to make the radio work. I think I’ll just use the HF antenna for the
CB radio and turn it to 11 meters. I can replace the CB antenna with the SINCGARS an-
tenna and use the same coax.”

“Did he say why he didn’t give us the radio sooner?”

“Apparently he forgot. Then when he saw us in town on Monday, he went looking and
got one of the spares they keep to swap-out in the HMMWVs. He told me that he’d
heard that you’d bought a Ma Deuce and just figured you’d need more ammo, especial-
ly since you bought more barrels.”

“Sgt. Collins seems to know a lot for someone we haven’t seen in quite a while.”

“They still do those patrols so they’re keeping an eye on us. Now that we can handle
anything that comes along, maybe we won’t have to.”

“Wish in one hand…”

“I’m just happy you didn’t want a Generation 4 Night vision scope.”

“Why?”

“$16 thousand, that’s why.”

“Is it going to be a problem switching between the day vision and night vision scopes?”

“That depends on how far you’re shooting, Sue. You will be ok out to about 500 yards.
At least that’s what I’ve read.”

83
“I was just thinking that since it’s dark anyway it might be a good time for me to sight in
the Raptor.”

“Use the suppressor so you don’t get flash blindness. Do you want me to try and spot
for you? It will give me a chance to check out my new night vision binoculars.”

“Where can we shoot?”

“I think the best bet would be to the south, Sue. It is 3 miles to the nearest house. We
can start at 25 yards so you can dial the Raptor in and then work your way out. What’s
the maximum distance you’ve shot with the day vision scope?”

“500 yards. If I can get the scope zeroed at 300 yards, I think that will be enough. That’s
more than the distance from the house to the road.”

Long story short, the M-40 with the Raptor was good to go out to 400-yards. I figured to
use either my M1A or the HK91 if we had another night attack and just spray and pray.
Of course with the lights on, that wouldn’t be necessary. Those armor plates had holes
cut in them so a person could fire through them. I cut out a firing slot on either side of
the OP window and rigged it up so I could open and close the hole. Nothing fancy, just
cutout remounted with a piano hinge. But I had to do something, when the hole was
open; the wind really blew through that hole. Our house faced north and when the wind
was up and out of the north, the OP cooled off very fast.

I totally slapped on the paint during the 2nd coat hoping to avoid a 3rd. I wasn’t sure if
there was enough paint in the can to paint that armor a 3rd coat. Probably my fault, I
patched the bullet holes and painted over them too. That old saying that the 3rd time is
a charm had better be wrong. If we get attacked 3rd time, I want the luck on our side
again. That’s all it is, you know – luck. Where the 3 bad guys shot around the upstairs
window, the bullets penetrated several layers of wall. I had to spackle all of the holes
and dab a little paint to hide them.

Darn those Chinamen. I was perfectly happy living here without livestock. But no, they
had to go and attack the US simply because George W. Bush wouldn’t give them Tai-
wan. Personally I can’t see the sense of getting our country destroyed to keep one
bunch of Chinese from merging with another bunch of Chinese. The British didn’t put
near a stink when the Chinese claimed Hong Kong. They handed it over on 7/1/97. The
PRC guaranteed that Honk Kong would remain a separate legal entity until 2047.
All the Chinese had to do was make the same deal with Dubya and the Taiwanese.

Our background radiation level was still higher than I liked, but it was probably due to
trans-Pacific radiation. It was low enough that no one was going to get radiation sick-
ness but lower would have been better. After the paint dried I decided that it didn’t need

84
a 3rd coat right now so I was free to go to Alamogordo with Sue on Friday. Sgt. Collins
had his table set up and I went over and sat down.

“I hear you’re looking for a few good men and women.”

“Yeah, but you’re too old. Sorry.”

“That isn’t why I wanted to talk to you Sergeant. I read FM 06-02-72 and I understand
that I need 4 pieces of information to get that SINCGARS radio to work.”

“I forgot to give your wife the CD I copied. You do understand that you’re only to use
that radio in the case of another attack don’t you?”

“Of course. We did some home improvements and I have firing ports and bulletproof
glass in the OP. We also bulletproofed the area around the living room window where
we have that .50 caliber set up.”

“What happened to the sandbags?”

“How do you know that? I just moved them this week.”

“You know we patrol the area, it was mentioned is all.”

“Well, I set up 2 firing positions between the house and the road. It was the only place I
could figure to put the sandbags.”

“The radio is an ICOM with the advanced system improvement program model RT-
1523B. It has built in GPS. The software is on this CD.”

“Thanks a lot for the ammo. Now I have 4 barrels and 4,000-rounds.”

“I know. I went to my Company Commander to get the SINCGARS radio when you
asked. He thought it might be a good idea to have a few sprinkled around the area.
Your home is on US 54 and I would like for you to sit in your OP and keep an eye on the
highway. Either you or Mrs. Ryan, it doesn’t matter which of you watches. We’ll want the
radio back when everything is back to normal.”

“When will that be?”

“Summer at the earliest and quite possible next fall. At the moment, the powers that be
are trying to restore order so they can have an election as soon as possible. You under-
stand, don’t you, that the laws of this country never addressed a situation like the one
we find ourselves in? What they decided to do was leave the sitting President in place,
subject to the pleasure of Congress and try and hold the election by Independence Day.
As soon as the vote count is verified, the new President takes office.”

85
“I was wondering about that myself. I have some documents on my computer like the
Constitution and the Amendments. Is that legal do you suppose?”

“That question is above my pay grade, Mr. Ryan.”

“Obviously the President suspended Posse Comitatus if the military is acting in a law
enforcement capacity.”

86
 The Asian Question – Chapter 17

“That’s just temporary and in order to do it, he had to talk to the Congressional Leaders.
He didn’t do it when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and if it wasn’t for the fact that
so many law enforcement people died in the attacks, I doubt he would have done it
now. I guess it’s a case of the needs of the many overcoming the needs of the one.”

“Spock said that in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.”

“Right, it went something like:”

If I may be so bold, it was a mistake for you to accept promotion. Commanding a star-
ship is your first, best destiny; anything else is a waste of material.

I would not presume to debate you.

That is wise. Were I to invoke logic, however, logic clearly dictates that the needs of the
many outweigh the needs of the few.

Or the one.

You are my superior officer. You are also my friend. I have been and always shall be
yours.

“I think you’ve got it Sgt. Collins. Did you like the Star Trek movies?”

“My favorite was Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. I’ll have a Communications Specialist
by in the next day or so and get that radio up. You need to stop by the Sheriff’s office,
they’re expecting you.”

“Why?”

“This is mostly a civilian show Mr. Ryan, being coordinated by civilian authorities. I had
you on the list because of your location and the fact that you and your wife handled that
first attack yourselves.”

“You’re not from around here are you?”

“Ft. Bliss. I’ll get a pass to go home soon. I really miss my wife and kids. We were here
providing security for the PAC-3 and THAAD battery. It’s not that we’re far from home
but we haven’t seen our families in a while.”

“I heard the Kitty Hawk got sunk.”

“You heard wrong, Mr. Ryan. The Chinese launched on all 7 carrier Strike Groups and
the intercept on the warhead aimed at the Kitty Hawk Strike Group was only a partial

87
success, damaged the warhead but the missile hit the carrier. They limped the carrier
back to Hawaii, but since it was scheduled to be decommissioned, they haven’t repaired
it. The White House saw this coming about a week ahead of time and put out the initial
warning that people should have food and water available.”

“The same guy told me that he thought we probably hit Beijing.”

“We did do that, but it was a follow-up launch. Most of the countries got their athletes
out.”

I was on a roll with the Sgt., he seemed to be reasonably open and I decided to find out
as much as I could. We sure weren’t hearing much on the radio.

“I heard about 60 warheads got past our ABM system.”

“You need to get a better source that’s also incorrect. The THAAD and the PAC-3 sys-
tems worked very well. They were short on perfect, but it’s still a new system. 24 loca-
tions were hit. The west coast was up against their submarine launched systems and a
lot of those got through. They took out San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Se-
attle. Nellis intercepted the one they aimed at Las Vegas. “

“What’s with all of the Suburban’s around town?”

“They flew in some vehicles on the C-5B and the remainder came cross country in a
caravan once they could move. The word is that the Presidential party is dividing up
with some going to Petersen AFB and the President to Crawford. I understand that
Cheney is going to Cheyenne Mountain.”

“Does this program of yours have a name?”

“Neighborhood Watch; as I said, it’s mostly a civilian program with us lending support.
They’re doing everything possible to keeping food in the stores and a limited supply of
fuel available. Be sure to stop by the Sheriff’s office.”

++++

It turned out that the Neighborhood Watch was using SINCGARS equipment but the
Sheriff had a separate tactical net from the Army. Our responsibility was to report any
traffic on US 54. They didn’t even pass out badges to make us Reserve Deputies. In or-
der to keep that radio, Sue and I had to be on the net. It didn’t seem that we had a lot of
choice so I talked it over with her and we signed up. It was a perfect job for a middle-
aged couple, all we had to do was sit in the OP room and report all vehicles.

Since the Sgt. was sending by a soldier to get the radio up, I decided to let him swap
out the antenna. The mast was pretty fancy, you could remotely raise and lower it and
once it was down, you could tip it to access the antennas on top. Before we went home,

88
I bought a Diamond D-130 J, another spool of RG-213U and two more standoffs. When
we got home Friday night, I installed the software from the CD onto my computer. The
SP-4 came by on Saturday morning and we mounted the two new antennas and ran the
cables. He used the software I’d installed to set up the ICOM radio and it was coming in
loud and clear.

Our designation was Unit 12 and our check-in time was 12 minutes past the hour and
18 minutes before the hour. I still had my chores to do so while I was stoking and shov-
eling, Sue would stand by the OP. The rest of the day, I covered the window and she
sewed. Seems that my wife took orders for 2 custom quilts, king-sized with the pur-
chaser specifying the pattern at $1,800, each. With this travel pass situation, there really
wasn’t a lot of traffic on US 54. Furthermore, I got the impression that the Sheriff’s office
was much more interested in inbound traffic than outbound traffic.

I forgot to note why the Sgt. knew so much about what was going on at our little home-
stead. He said they patrolled and I assumed they were using the HMMWVs, but they
were using helicopters instead, OH-58D Kiowa Warriors. I guess may we have 2 in the
area because the President was here.

I discussed inviting the Sgt. and some of his men out for Christmas. Sue said to do it
and I went back in town to talk to the Sergeant. His men and he were getting 4 days off
at Christmas to run down to Bliss and spend Christmas with their families. That made
my invitation second best and I didn’t say anything. I thanked him for getting us set up
with the radio and Neighborhood Watch. I suggested he come by and have a Bud when
he had the time. Ft. Bliss is south of Alamogordo and stretches all the way to El Paso.

Do you know how the concept of Neighborhood Watch got started? The current system
of neighborhood watches began developing as a response to the rape and murder of
Kitty Genovese in Queens, New York. People became outraged that three dozen wit-
nesses did nothing to save Genovese or to apprehend her killer. Some locals formed
groups to watch over their neighborhoods and to look out for any suspicious activity in
their areas. The story of Genovese's murder became an almost-instant parable about
the supposed callousness, or at least apathy to others' plight, of either New York City or
urban America in general. Much of this framing of the event came in reaction to an in-
vestigative article in the New York Times written by journalist Martin Gansberg and pub-
lished on March 27, 1964, two weeks after the murder. The article bore the thrilling
headline, Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police; the public view of the sto-
ry crystallized around a quote from the last line of the article, taken from an unidentified
70-year-old neighbor: I didn't want to get involved. The story was more fiction than fact
as the trial of the killer later proved. It did, however, form the basis for the Neighborhood
Watch program.

89
Sorry, I wander. It wasn’t difficult to set up a routine, especially since I was piling the
manure and not spreading it. We had plenty of hay and straw and Sue wanted me to
keep the barn clean. I can just imagine what it’s going to be like where she brings home
those pigs. Sue and I talked it over and decided we’d better cover our behinds by keep-
ing an observation log. She said to keep it in a Composition Book in ink so no one could
later claim we altered the record. I think she’s sometimes a little paranoid. When she
produced the new book and a dozen ballpoints, I began to wonder if she was writing
down all of my transgressions.

I never got the manure rototilled into the garden either. You may recall that Sue had me
moving sandbags and then painting. Somehow, it doesn’t seem fair because making
quilts is her hobby. She spends most of the day sewing and I have to do chores and
maintain the neighborhood watch. Let me tell you, shoveling manure is NOT my hobby.
Neither is stoking the furnace or hauling the ashes. I’m not a farmer or a rancher, but
you couldn’t tell it by looking. I think the reason that cowboy boots have high heels is so
you don’t step so deep in the cow manure.

I didn’t tell you? Sue bought me 2 pairs of Laredo ankle zip boots, one for every day and
one for going to meeting/town. That didn’t really seem fair; you can tell a real cowboy
from a want-to-be by looking at his boots and his sunburned face. Real cowboys proba-
bly don’t wear Laredo ankle zip boots either, but it’s hard to tell just looking.

When I think back, things would have probably been ok if the Sheriff hadn’t advertised
the neighborhood Watch Program. The problem was it put the bad guys on notice that
at select places, not identified, there were people with radios keeping an eye on the ar-
ea. That had, in my humble opinion, the effect of making everyone a watcher to be
feared and possibly dealt with.

There have always been bad guys. In my lifetime, much of it seemed to center on the
trade in illicit drugs. For whatever reason, these people seem to be drawn to a lifestyle
that involves a lot fast cash. When we have an event like this Chinese attack, either
their source of supply or their market or both, seem to dry up. These people are the
worst kind of survivors. They’ve learned to avoid work and law enforcement and they
rule by the gun. They don’t seem to have any trouble getting whatever they want, be it
AK-47s or M16 rifles, although I hear their favorite weapon is the 9mm pistol. When
TSHTF, those that manage to survive have to resort to stealing for provisions. In my ex-
perience, they prefer to not leave witnesses.

Sue and I never found out much about the 3 guys we were forced to kill way back when
and the Army handled the second bunch. You might think having a heavy machinegun
was overkill, but we did have quite a bit to protect, thanks to Sue’s forward thinking. As I
pointed out, we weren’t what you call over prepared. We had some things and fortu-
nately the means to get some others. Then when Sue started selling quilts, we finally
had a source of income. The prices she was charging was about the price the quilts
would have brought before the balloon went up, $1,500 for a king-sized quilt. If she had
adjusted for inflation, the quilts would have been worth $3-4 thousand. But she had to

90
ask a price that people could afford; there wasn’t a lot of cash around Alamogordo these
days.

In times past, many of our goods came from Albuquerque, down I-25 to US 380 over to
US 54 and on down to Alamogordo. But Albuquerque had been hit, the same as Phoe-
nix, so these days a lot of the goods came over on US 70 from Roswell or down US 54
from Santa Rosa. We also got a few things up US 54 from Las Cruces. Not that there
were a lot of goods, but I was really surprised that they didn’t have to ration more. That
was the President’s idea, rationing.

My Fellow Americans,

The United States has been struck a strong blow by an enemy ½ a world away. I am
pleased to report that our ABM system did a fair job in stopping the incoming missiles. I
regret to say that some of those missile got through.

While the military and the National Guard attend to cleaning up the cities struck, it will
be necessary to impose rationing on select items. I was reminded by one of my advisors
that this will be much like the country was during WW II, with rationing of fuel, tires, and
limited supplies of food. Rationing is often instituted during wartime for civilians as well.
For example, each person may be given ration coupons allowing him or her to purchase
a certain amount of a product each month. Rationing will include food and other neces-
sities for which there is a shortage, including materials needed for the recovery effort
such as rubber tires, leather shoes, clothing and fuel. FEMA was prepared for such an
event and you may register at the County or Parish level to receive you coupon books.

Because of the attack, we were unable to hold elections in November. I have consulted
with Congressional Leaders and a National election will be held the 2nd Tuesday in May
of 2009, May 13th. Until such time as proper elections can be held, all elected officials
will continue in the position to which they were elected. Since before the attack, much of
your government has been housed at Holloman AFB in New Mexico. In the coming
days, I will move to my ranch in Crawford, and the Vice President to Cheyenne Moun-
tain. Other members of my Cabinet will relocate to Northcom facility at Petersen AFB in
Colorado. I have faith in the ability of all Americans to rise above the current calamity
and in the coming days, this nation will rebuild.

God Bless America.

91
 The Asian Question – Chapter 18

Anyway that’s what he said. My father was young during WW II but he did mention ra-
tioning. He said many people put their cars up on blocks to preserve the tires. I assume
that public transportation was big in those days or people walked. Rationing will be ok
with us, it will allow Sue and I to fill in some of what we use up. Dad said that:

OPA, US federal agency in World War II, established to prevent wartime inflation. The
OPA issued (Apr., 1942) a general maximum-price regulation that made prices charged
in March 1942, the ceiling prices for most commodities. Ceilings were also imposed on
residential rents. These regulations were gradually modified and extended by OPA ad-
ministrators until almost 90% of the retail food prices were frozen. Prices continued to
rise, however, and new drives to secure compliance resulted; ultimately the OPA suc-
ceeded in keeping consumer prices relatively stable during the remaining war years.
Besides controlling prices, the OPA was also empowered to ration scarce consumer
goods in wartime. Tires, automobiles, sugar, gasoline, fuel oil, coffee, meats, butter,
cheese and processed foods were ultimately rationed. At the end of the war rationing
was abandoned, and price controls were gradually abolished. The agency was finally
disbanded in 1947.

FEMA even had posters printed. I guess we were lucky, I didn’t see a single one of
those Loose Lips Sink Ships posters. I never thought I’d live to see the day when you
had to have a coupon to buy a pound of sugar or ten gallons of diesel. Unfortunately the
United States imported a substantial portion of its petroleum products. In the latter half
of the first decade China and the US became the largest importers of oil, forcing the
prices much higher. Now with China gone, there was a lot of crude available on the
market but the problem was those refineries destroyed in the attack. And, that gets a
person right back to talking about California.

There was some good news in the whole thing, unfortunately. With about 20 major met-
ropolitan areas destroyed, the demand for fuel was actually down. The other 4 areas hit
were military installations. Sgt. Collins didn’t exactly give me a list, he just said 24 areas
were hit and later commented that that included 4 military installations. The only ones I
know about for sure are San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Phoenix, Al-
buquerque and Washington, DC. You did notice that the President didn’t list the cities
hit in the attack either. I guess we don’t need to know.

During the winter months, there wasn’t a lot of activity for me to report on the Neighbor-
hood Watch. Most of my calls were simply check-in calls. “This is unit 12 at 1412 hours,
negative activity,” and so forth. All duly noted in the log as per Sue’s instructions. Ap-
parently those first two attacks had been opportunists looking for a quick score. We
probably over reacted putting in the bulletproof glass and the armor plate, but once Sue
started selling quilts, it didn’t matter. I did dismantle the M2HB and take it to the range
one day just to make sure it worked. I pleased to report that it went thumpa, thumpa just
like it was supposed to. Then I had to dismantle it, take it home and clean it.

92
I only fired one box of ammo because I wasn’t certain if Sgt. Collins would replace what
I’d used. He not only replaced that box of AP/APIT, he gave me 2 boxes of ball/tracer to
practice with. Considering how much work it is to move the machine gun, I wasn’t so
sure I want to practice again. Between the gun, the tripod and the ammo, we’re talking a
lot of weight to haul around. The gun weighs 84 pounds and the tripod 44 pounds for a
total of 128 pounds before you weigh the ammo. But, I needed to be sure that if push
came to shove Sue and I were up to using the Ma Deuce.

To that end, we took the gun, tripod, 2 boxes of practice ammo and a spare barrel over
to the range. I fired one box of ammo in short bursts and then swapped the barrel, set
the headspace and checked the timing and fired the second box of ammo. While I was
doing that, Sue practiced with her M-40, keeping the imagined bad guys away. It’s sure
a good thing I wore leather gloves, that barrel was very hot.

++++

Except for the two times we took the Ma Deuce to the range and the other times we
took our rifles to practice, this whole routine was rather boring. Day in and day out,
shovel coal, eat breakfast, shove manure, shovel more coal, eat lunch, shovel more
coal, eat dinner and stand watch until 11 or 12pm when Sue took over. Call in every 30
minutes to tell the Army guys attached to the Sheriff’s Department that there was noth-
ing to report.

“Hi, Sgt. Collins what brings you here?”

“Thought maybe I’d take you up on the Bud. I’ve got a little news, too. With the Presi-
dent gone to Crawford and everyone else moved out, we’re returning to Ft. Bliss. I didn’t
want you to be short on practice ammo so I brought you 4 boxes of ball/tracer mix.”

“Come on down to my basement, Sgt. that’s where I keep the Bud.”

“This is where you sat out after the attack?”

“It was different then, Sergeant, I had an improvised shelter over in that corner around
the toilet and shower. I really didn’t believe we’d have another nuclear war, so I used
the dirt to fill those sandbags and recovered the wood and stored it in the machine
shed.”

“I take it that you’ve heard about the election?”

“May 13th.”

“They tell us that the vote ought to be confirmed and the Electoral College vote so we
can have a new President by the first of June.”

“They can do it fast when they want to, huh?”

93
“Well, Bush has served his two terms and a little extra. He’s declined to endorse John
McCain for the Republican Party and it would appear that the Democrats would proba-
bly take both Congress and the Executive Branch. Having a nuclear war doesn’t do
much to improve a party’s popularity.”

“You can’t really blame the war on Bush, can you?”

“I don’t but I’m equally sure that a majority of the people do. It doesn’t matter if you’re
responsible or not if it happens on your watch.”

“I guess it’s sort of gotten that way since WW II, hasn’t it? Didn’t always used to be that
way. Lincoln was reelected in 1864 and Franklin Roosevelt didn’t have any trouble get-
ting reelected.”

“True, but Truman sort of set the stage for Eisenhower. I suppose Jack Kennedy would
have been reelected, but I’ve always heard that he wanted to pull out of Vietnam.”

“I don’t think so, Sergeant. In an interview with John Bartlow Martin, Robert Kennedy
said, “Yeah, but, you know, he's frequently taken that, those, that line or that position on
some of these matters. I don't think that the fact he has an independent view from the
executive branch of the government, particularly in Southeast Asia, indicates that the
lines aren't straight. I, no, I just, I think every. . . . I, the president felt that the. . . . He had
a strong, overwhelming reason for being in Vietnam and that we should win the war in
Vietnam.”

“We were trying to avoid a Korea, is that correct?”

“Yes, because I, everybody including General Macarthur felt that land conflict between
our troops, white troops and Asian, would only lead to, end in disaster. So it was. . . .
We went in as advisers, but to try to get the Vietnamese to fight themselves, because
we couldn't win the war for them. They had to win the war for themselves.”

“Well, I just think he was just, Diem wouldn't make even the slightest concessions. He
was difficult to reason with, well, with the. . . . And then it was built up tremendously in
an adverse fashion here in the United States and that was played back in Vietnam, and
. . . . And I think just the people themselves became concerned about it. And so, it be-
gan to, the situation began to deteriorate in the spring of 1962, uh, spring of 1963. I
think David Halberstam, from the New York Times' articles, had a strong effect on mold-
ing public opinion: the fact that the situation was unsatisfactory. Our problem was that
thinking of Halberstam sort of as the Ma – what Matthews [unidentified] did in Cuba, that
Batista [Fulgencio R. Batista] was not very satisfactory, but the important thing was to
try to get somebody who could replace him and somebody who could keep, continue
the war and keep the country united, and that was far more difficult. So that was what
was of great concern to all of us during this period of time. Nobody liked Diem particu-
larly, but how to get rid of him and get somebody that would continue the war, not split

94
the country in two, and therefore lose not only the war but the country. That was the
great problem.”

“So would Kennedy have fallen into the Vietnam quagmire just as Johnson did? No one
can be sure, and Kennedy supporters can certainly believe that he would have avoided
Johnson's massive commitment – even though he had the same advisors as Johnson
and the same desire to prevent a Communist takeover. However, the Oliver Stone ver-
sion of the Kennedy assassination, as expressed in the movie JFK, holds that Kennedy
had already decided to pull out of Vietnam, and was killed for that reason. That's just not
so.”

“You may be right Mr. Ryan, I wasn’t there and I have no idea.”

“Care for another Bud, Sergeant?”

“I have to be going. Come out to the HMMWV and get those 4 ammo boxes of .50 cali-
ber. If I happen to get back up this way again, I’ll try to get you some more, but no prom-
ises.”

I lugged the ammo and sat it in the living room next to the Ma Deuce. There are 100
rounds in a .50 caliber ammunition can. Leastways, that’s what it says on the side of the
can.

4,000 rounds of AP/APIT plus another 400 of ball/tracer put us in pretty good shape if
we had trouble. I thought the AP/APIT was probably too heavy ammunition for the type
of vehicles I expected we have to deal with. At least I wasn’t aware that any civilians
had up armored HMMWVs with a mounted gun. The gun could be a M60, M240, M2HB
or possibly an Mk 19. I wasn’t aware that anyone had raided armories but like I said be-
fore, we weren’t getting a lot of news. I did manage to identify, by trial and error, the en-
coding I needed to monitor the military tactical net. However, you needed an acceptable
ID number for your radio and I came up short. SINCGARS has two modes, SC, e.g.,
single channel and FH, e.g., frequency hopping.

In early February, shortly after the Army returned to Ft. Bliss I made my first report of
activity to the Sheriff. “This is unit 12 at 12:23 hours. I have traffic on US 54 about 3
miles north of US 70.”

“Acknowledged, Unit 12, say number of vehicles and description.”

“Unit 12. Four late model club cab pickups pulling trailers. Each vehicle appeared filled
to capacity with people. Unable to identify any weapons and we’ll stand by our weapons
in case they attack.”

“Roger Unit 12. Maintain a defensive posture, response on the way.”

95
“Sue, load the Ma Deuce with the ball/tracer mix. I notified Neighborhood Watch dis-
patch and a response is on the way.”

“It figures, Barry, the Army pulled out.”

“They didn’t seem to notice our place, maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Members of a Neighborhood Watch aren’t peace offices and standing rules prohibit our
engaging anyone we report except in self-defense. It never occurred to me that the
Sheriff might intercept those 4 pickups and they flee back the way they came. Nonethe-
less we were ready if necessary. In 9 out of 10 situations use of an automatic weapon is
totally unnecessary. The sole exception might be when you’re seriously outnumbered
and the situation turns into a kill or be killed scenario. While the Sheriff’s office had the
capacity to call up choppers from Ft. Bliss, they couldn’t reply quickly, my best guess
was that it was 100 miles, give or take.

The real advantage to the SINCGARS was that in the FH mode the bad guys couldn’t
listen in with scanners. The Sheriff has a permanent roadblock on the north side of Tu-
larosa and it suddenly became clear that we weren’t the only members of the Neighbor-
hood Watch who were armed. I turned on my scanner to listen to the police calls and
between it and the SINCGARS was trying to follow the action just down the road. That
was the first I’d heard of any Otero County Militia. It was Sheriff Blansett giving the or-
ders personally (he doesn’t look anything like Willem Defoe).

And that raised another interesting question, SINCGARS were 28-volt radios, how did
the Sheriff adapt them to work in the police vehicles? Who knows, maybe a second al-
ternator and 28-volt battery, this wasn’t the time to be worrying about details. Back to
the main issue, why weren’t we informed there was a militia? It’s fair to say that Sue and
I were probably armed as well as any of the militia members. That is unless the military
handed out M16A2s and 40mm grenades. But you’d have thought if that had happened,
Sgt. Collins would have equipped us.

This wasn’t working well, either, the radios were in the OP Center the upstairs front bed-
room and the Ma Deuce was directly below on the first floor. That Spec 4 who set the
radio up said it was capable of acting as a repeater but he didn’t offer us any of those
new handi-talkies the military uses. And he didn’t tell me if the radio would act as a re-
peater for the little radios either.

“Unit 12, Sheriff Blansett. They spotted the roadblock and are headed your way.”

96
 The Asian Question – Chapter 19

“Sheriff, Unit 12. Message received. We’re manning the machine gun.”

“Sue, they’re coming. You be the gunner and I’ll feed the ammo.”

“I loaded it with ball and tracer, Barry.”

“That’s just fine, they only have pickups.”

“Is that one of them?”

“Looks like, let ‘em have it.”

Sue was thumbing the trigger mechanism sending out short bursts. She riddled that
pickup, it burst into flames and I can only assume she hit the gas tank. The pickup slid
to a halt crossways in the road, essentially forming a roadblock right in front of our
place.

“Where’s the second truck?”

“Darned if I know, you’d better get to the OP and limber up the M-40. I stay here and try
to manage the Ma Deuce by myself.”

Those bad guys were really screwed. We had the road blocked in front of our place and
the militia, Sheriff or whomever was closing in from the rear. The bad guys were left with
2 choices, neither good. They chose to go north rather than try to go up against a heavy
machinegun. I don’t know how you measure adrenaline levels but mine was so high I
was shaking. I needed a Bud. But until the sheriff had the situation under control, we
needed to remain alert. I moved to the OP where Sue took the right side I took the left. I
thought about that a moment and we switched. She had the M-40 while I had my M1A.
If we hadn’t switched, I’d have peppered her with brass in a firefight.

They cornered those guys about a mile north and we got a radio call to stand down. I
clear the M1A and head for the basement to settle my nerves. Surprisingly, Sue joined
me. I guess she wanted her annual can of beer.

“Honey, we have a little problem. Those FRS radios are ok for communication here on
the ranch but we need to be able to communicate with the Sheriff. He mainly uses the
police radios and while we can pick them up on the scanner, we can’t communicate.”

“All of those Motorola radios are the same, why don’t we buy a couple and get the Sher-
iff to put in the correct frequencies.”

“Really, what does the Sheriff use?”

97
“He uses the Motorola CP 200 portables and CM 300 mobiles, which are 16 or 32-
channel radios. We’d need a mobile for the OP and one for the truck. We could set the
CP 200s up with the Ear Microphone System (EMS) with Voice Activated/PTT Inter-
face.”

“Fine, but, we’ll ask first.”

We were both right and wrong; the Sheriff’s Department recommended the Motorola
Tetra radio, models MTH800 handheld and MTM800 mobile. It was big in Europe and
making headway in the US. It couldn’t be simple; we needed 2 sets of radios, the Tetra
and the CP/CM radios. Not that it mattered, Sue had done well on the quilts and just for
once in our lives we deserved the better communications gear. More stuff to hang on
our ALICE gear.

Voice activated mikes wouldn’t work when we were using more than one radio. We
picked out the earpieces that featured the PTT (push to talk) switch. The inside of my
pickup was beginning to look like a police car. I had a CB radio, MTM800 and CM300. If
they’d just get the phones back up life could have been much easier.

On January 20, 2009, the now acting President addressed the nation:

My Fellow Americans,

As of noon today, my term of office expired. I will continue in my position as your acting
President until a successor is selected on May 13th. I bring you this message from Col-
orado Springs tonight. My purpose is to tell you the state of our nation.

Shortly after the attack on our beloved country members of our armed forces conducted
an informal census. I shall share the results with you tonight. Your government has as-
sessed the current availability of food, fuel, medical care, shelter and other necessities
so necessary to life. I shall share the results of those assessments with you tonight.

Immediately following the attack, I was forced to suspend Posse Comitatus. Existing
laws, including Title 10, Chapter 15 commonly known as The Insurrection Act, and The
Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act Title 42, Chapter 68,
grant the your President broad powers that may be invoked in the event of domestic
emergencies, including an attack against the Nation using weapons of mass destruc-
tion, and these laws specifically authorize the President to use the Armed Forces to
help restore public order. As of noon today, Posse Comitatus has been restored.
Henceforth, our military will support the nation but will no longer be used in a law en-
forcement capacity. Their attention will turn to aiding in the recovery.

NORAD identified 154 weapons used to attack our country. Of these, all but 24 failed to
reach their targets, having been successfully intercepted by our ABM umbrella consist-
ing of Patriot-3 and THAAD missiles. Four military installation and 20 metropolitan areas
were successfully targeted by the People Republic of China. These include: New York,

98
Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, Dallas, San Anto-
nio, Detroit, San Jose, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Albuquerque, Austin, Baltimore,
Milwaukee, Boston, Seattle and our nation’s Capital, Washington, DC. Due to the radio-
active fallout, it is impossible to determine the actual loss of life. Our census estimates
that it exceeds 30 million.

The circumstances that lead to the attack came about when the Republic of China, the
island nation of Taiwan, declared Independence from the People’s Republic of China on
August 1 last year. No doubt Taiwan hoped to take advantage of the 2008 Olympics in
Beijing. The People’s Republic of China acted predictably and began a missile attack on
Taiwan, followed up with action by its Naval Forces to reclaim Taiwan.

The position of my administration was to support Democracy and when President Chen
Shui-bian of Taiwan asked for our assistance, I sent the Seventh Fleet in response. Re-
sulting actions in the area apparently compelled the Peoples Republic to launch nuclear
weapons against our fleet. All incoming warheads were intercepted although one weap-
on was only deflected resulting in damage to the Kitty Hawk Carrier Strike Group. Our
Naval Forces have now been repositioned in a total blockade of our eastern and west-
ern coasts.

There exist adequate supplies of food and fuel to see the country through this winter.
High priority has been given, and protection provided to, convoys of these essential
supplies. In those instances where our normal distribution system has been disrupted
road and rail transportation are being employed to distribute vital supplies. As you know,
we have implemented temporary rationing. Although there are indications of minor
shortages, your government is working with all haste to insure that those bottlenecks
are eliminated everyone has food on their table and all necessary supplies made avail-
able.

Throughout the United States there is adequate housing available for our population.
Temporary relocation centers are available but continue to be closed, as more perma-
nent housing is located for our citizens. Medical services are limited in some areas but
adequate care is available for every person in need of care.

During the 8 years I served as your President, this country has been engaged by forces
from without to bring down our form of government and our people. That began on Sep-
tember 11, 2001 and resulted in our engaging in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Rep-
resentative governments have replaced the despotic leaderships of both countries. Is
our world more secure today than it was 10 years ago? It will be, if it isn’t. As we rebuild
this great nation of ours let us resolve to maintain the Democratic Republic envisioned
by our founding fathers. We will succeed.

God Bless America.

“He sounds like he’s making it sound better than it is.”

99
“Sue, the thing that really po’s me is that they finally get TV up and running and the first
program they broadcast is George W. Bush trying to explain away what happened.”

“I still don’t know what happened. Did the US retaliate on China for attacking our fleet or
did China attack the US when its attack on our fleet failed?”

“Offhand I’d say it was one of the above.”

“Well, it doesn’t make any sense. If their attack on our fleet failed, they could have wait-
ed to see how we’d respond. What did China have to gain by making a first strike on the
United States? No leader in his right mind could have possibly thought that we wouldn’t
respond to an attack. Even school children know that the US is the most powerful nation
in the world. I have to believe that we still are, Barry. It’s changing the subject, but what
did you learn about the Otero County Militia?”

“Not much, I think that’s just the name they gave to the neighborhood Watch program.”

“We’re going to town tomorrow and get our food and fuel rations.”

“Did we get coupons to replace the fuel for the generator?”

“We have coupons for enough food for the two of us and 10 gallons per week, is all.”

“Near as I can tell, we’ve burned a little over 2,500-gallons of diesel keeping the genera-
tor running. I wouldn’t want to run out if they’re not going to get the electricity back on.”

“Run out? How are we going to run out? We started out with 8,000-gallons. If you’re
right on our usage, we still have 5,500-gallons.”

“I’m right on our usage, we emptied the 1,000-gallon tank and have used about ¾ of the
2,000-gallon tank. Although the tanks were all plumbed together, each had a shutoff
valve so I turned off all but one tank at a time.”

“It’s been 5 months, I’d imagine that they’ll have the power on soon.”

“Yeah, me too.”

++++

If you’re familiar with the Alamogordo area, you know there is a large military presence.
White Sands Missile Range, located west of White Sands National Monument 47 miles
from Alamogordo, is the premier test range in the world. The Army installation range is
committed to testing for government agencies, the Department of Defense and both pri-
vate entities and foreign countries. The Range covers two million acres (3,200 square
miles). The Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS), Patriot, Army Tactical Missile Sys-

100
tem and the Theater High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD) are tested at the
range on a regular basis.

Holloman Air Force Base and White Sands Missile Range work hand in hand in that for
safety reasons Holloman Air Force Base controls the air space above White Sands.
Holloman Air Force Base became home to the world's only wing of F-117A Stealth
fighters in 1990 when then US Defense Secretary Dick Cheney proposed that the wing
be moved from Tonopah Test Range in Nevada. The 9,200-acre base is located west of
Alamogordo.

The F-117A Nighthawk, the Stealth fighter, is the plane that played such a major role in
the Persian Gulf War. Three squadrons regularly fly the Stealth above the White Sands
Missile Range. Other squadrons at the base fly the F-4F Phantom II and the T-38A Tal-
on, which are a part of the 49th Fighter Wing. The 46th Test Group at Holloman man-
ages the ten mile-long, high-speed test track–the longest, most precisely surveyed and
best instrumented track in the world. The Test Group also operates a Global Positioning
Systems test bed, radar signature test platform, and is developing a Magnetic Levitation
(MagLev) track.

The German Air Force Flying Training Center (GAF FTC) contingent at Holloman Air
Force Base currently consists of 680 military personnel plus families. The program is
structured to train German Air Force pilots to fly TORNADO Fighter Aircraft.

Navy facilities include the USS Desert Ship. The Desert Ship serves as a primary live
fire test bed for today's surface-to-air weapons including Standard Missile and Evolved
Seasparrow Missile (ESSM). The Desert Ship is continually being upgraded to meet live
fire testing requirements. The Desert Ship has tested all versions of Standard Missile
(SM) including Tartar, Terrier and Aegis variants of SM-1 and SM-2, Seasparrow, Seal-
ance, and Vertical Launched AntiSubmarine Rocket (VL ASROC). Testing is performed
at sites other than the Desert Ship.

The Navy's Launch Complex 34 (LC34) is the land-based test site for the Rolling Air-
frame Missile (RAM). LC34 is a semi-hardened facility, which can be used in self-
defense and close-in engagements. Lot acceptance tests for both US and NATO rounds
have been conducted at this site. The Navy's research rocket program supports a varie-
ty of government and commercial firms in the launch and recovery of suborbital pay-
loads. Payloads include Theater Missile Defense countermeasures experiments, ad-
vanced technology demonstrations, and targets to support testing of theater missile de-
fense systems. The low cost ballistic target alternative supports requirements where low
to medium fidelity is acceptable.

And to the south is Ft. Bliss, TX, which adjoins the White Sands Missile Range. It is the
home of the US Army Air Defense Artillery Center. Ft. Bliss is the Army’s largest training
center in the United States. This provides the Installation Commander with a distinct ad-
vantage in conducting all of the Mobilization Missions he has been assigned by FOR-
SCOM and TRADOC: Deployment of all Army Air Defense Assets, Mobilization and

101
Deployment of numerous large scale, priority Reserve Component Units, CONUS Re-
placement Center operations and Training Base Expansion.

102
 The Asian Question – Chapter 20

Living where we do, we’re basically surrounded by the military. It didn’t hurt one little bit
that Holloman had that Executive Shelter, it meant that we got protected. So naturally,
the only problems we had to deal with were a major supply shortage and an occasional
bad guy. I’ll tell what I think they should do with the bodies of the bad guys that were
killed. They ought to string them on sections of fence around the area with a sign that
says, “Bad Guys Not Welcome. Your Place Is Reserved.”

Instead, we have a Neighborhood Watch. Wouldn’t it be better to prevent forest fires

than to put them out? It’s ok; it gave me something to do besides shovel. The last time
we were in Alamogordo, I picked up one of the little under counter refrigerators and
started to keep a couple of six-packs in the OP, a six-pack of Coke Classic and a six-
pack of Bud. I don’t drink when I have the duty.

Sue got very tired of staying up at night to watch and with Rex, we decided that it wasn’t
necessary, he must hear those cars coming from a mile away. New Mexico is famous
for its mineral resources including uranium ore, manganese ore, potash, salt, perlite,
copper ore, beryllium, and tin concentrates. Cattle and dairy products top the list of ma-
jor animal products of New Mexico. Major crops include hay, nursery stock, pecans, and
chili peppers. Hay and sorghum top the list of major dryland crops. Farmers also pro-
duce onions, potatoes, and dairy products. New Mexico specialty crops include piñon
nuts, pinto beans and chilies.

It’s a real shame about Albuquerque; about ¼ of the population of New Mexico lived
there, with the population higher in the winter due to those snowbirds. But it was early in
the year when the Chinese attacked, so I don’t suppose many of them had shown up
yet. I suppose that same thing applied to Phoenix, the snowbirds usually began showing
up after the hot weather was gone, usually late September or early October.

Sitting there looking out the window with nothing happening, I began to consider the
President’s speech. It was awfully short, for one thing. You’d think the State of the Na-
tion Speech would take more than what was probably a single page of text. Twenty met-
ropolitan areas? Which military installations? Why didn’t we have more PAC-3/THAAD
systems in place and intercept all of the incoming weapons? I suppose it was because
they’d had their share of troubles developing THAAD. If they’d done it the simple way
like the Russians had by getting the missile close and exploding a nuke they wouldn’t
have had near the problems they had with a kinetic weapon. Go figure, probably afraid
they’d create too much EMP.

++++

I’m not a philosopher, but it seems to me that the elected officials in the US spend a lot
of time being politicians and very little time representing their constituents. With the war,
I’ll bet a lot of the liberals won’t get back to Congress. I miss Ronald Reagan.

103
There was one smart politician; he ended the Cold War by bankrupting the Russians.
We didn’t need a 600 ship Navy, which was a plan put forth as a campaign plank by
Reagan in 1980 to rebuild the US Navy to its former size after post-Vietnam cutbacks. It
was one of the ideas to rebuild the whole armed forces. The program included:

• Recommisioning the Iowa-class battleships.

• Keeping older ships in service longer.
• A large new construction program.

Under Reagan, the first of the Ohio-class SSBN was completed. Construction on the
Nimitz-class of super carriers and Los Angeles-class subs were dramatically stepped
up. The revolutionary, new Aegis combat system was installed on the up-and-coming
Ticonderoga-class cruisers, production of which was also stepped up. And the Iowa-
class battleships were all recommissioned and refitted with Harpoon, Tomahawk and
CIWS system capabilities. The first Harpoons, the first Tomahawks, and the AGM-88
HARM missiles all debuted on the navy's ships. Naval aviation was stepped up with the
introduction of the F/A-18 Hornet, along with improved versions of the EA-6 Prowler
electronic countermeasure aircraft, the A-6 Intruder and the F-14 Tomcat.

Many of those systems were gone now, 3 battlewagons permanently retired and 1 in
inactive reserve. The Super Hornet replaced the Tomcat and they had been planning on
the next generation of fighter, the F-35. It had 3 variants:

F-35A – Multi-role conventional takeoff (CTOL) fighter based on the X-35A but with a
slightly lengthened fuselage and modified tail surfaces, developed for the US Air Force
and equipped with an internal gun, infrared sensors, and a laser designator; USAF
plans to buy 1,736 but announced in December 2004 that this total will be reduced.

F-35B – Multi-role short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) fighter based on the X-
35B intended for the US Marines, UK Royal Navy, and UK Royal Air Force and
equipped with a lift fan located in an enlarged spine behind the cockpit, an external gun
pod rather than a fixed internal gun, and smaller internal bays; USMC had planned to
buy 609 but this total has been cut almost in half while plans to purchase 60 for the RN
and 90 for the RAF are also under review.

F-35C – Multi-role carrier variant (CV) fighter based on the X-35C and similar to the F-
35A but with larger wings for increased fuel capacity plus slats as well as larger horizon-
tal tails and control surfaces for better low-speed landing performance, strengthened
structure and landing gear for carrier landings, and removal of the internal cannon in fa-
vor of an optional gun pod on the centerline station; Navy plans to buy 480 have been
scaled back to about 370.

It didn’t look to me like we’d be seeing the F-35 anytime soon. When the Chinese at-
tacked the 3 models were still in flight-testing. Sue seemed to think that the government
would rush to replace all of its aging airframes and might even order more of the F-22
Raptor. If the Air Force, Marines and Navy get new airplanes, I’ll bet the Army will be

104
looking for the next generation Abrams tank. The more things change, the more they
stay the same. But, I’m not sure about the F-22, you could buy two of the F-35s for what
one of those cost. Originally, the estimated cost was $89 million per. It had risen to
more than $200 million per.

Just because a weapons system is old doesn’t mean that it’s bad. Consider the M1911,
the M2HB and the B-52. The Air Force was claiming they were going to continue to fly
the B-52 until they were 100 years old. The Army might go for a replacement to the tur-
bine engine in the Abrams. What they needed was something a little more fuel efficient,
more durable and just as quiet. If they could improve the horsepower to say 1,800hp,
they could recapture some of the power to weight ratio they lost when they increased
the weight from 60 to 70 tons. I had heard much in recent years about the scheme to
put the Crusader engine in the Abrams tank.

Began daydreaming for a little bit there, sorry, easy to do with no traffic on the road. I
blame that mostly on this fuel rationing. I forgot to tell you, they brought the F-117
Nighthawks back from Nellis. Probably moved them there because they didn’t figure the
Chinese would target our flying saucers. Anyway, I have the TV on in the background
with the sound down low listening to the news while I watch the road. I don’t believe I
know any of these new reporters, most of the old ones were killed off when the big cities
were bombed.

There are a bunch of oddballs, if you ask me. This new generation of reporters seems
more interested in creating the news than reporting it. I do recognize one of those guys,
Geraldo. After he got his chest in the wringer drawing maps in the sand, he seemed to
settle down a little. Did a pretty fair job reporting on Katrina back in ’05. The 3 reporters I
lost the most respect for out of that deal was Sheppard Smith, Anderson Cooper and
Wolf Blitzer. Wolf may think he’s Bernard Shaw, but he wasn’t fit to wipe the sweat of
Bernie’s brow. Shep sort of cleaned up his act after, but Cooper and Blitzer gave report-
ing a bad name.

“Here you go, want chips with that?”

“Lunch time already? I go stoke the furnace after I eat.”

“How is our supply of coal holding up?”

“It’s going, but we still have 10 cords of firewood. Do you think I should try to get more?”

“Wait until summer. How are we going to refill the diesel tanks if they don’t get the elec-
tricity back on?”

105
“We’ll cross that bridge when we switch to the 5,000-gallon tank Sue. To be perfectly
honest, I don’t know. If we could find a second generator like the 12.5kw model we
have, I’d really be tempted to part with the gold, though.”

“We have the 5kw generator, why would you want another big one?”

“I wouldn’t want to depend on that smaller genset for very long. Running it while I ser-
vice the big one is fine, but the quality just isn’t there. I doubt we’ll get 3,000-hours out
of it before the motor is worn out.”

“We could always get another diesel tank; he had several on the lot.”

“What good would another 5,000-gallon tank do us if we couldn’t get diesel?”

“He was very cooperative the last time.”

“I believe he was just afraid of a gun toting woman. He seemed to want to sell off what-
ever he could and get out of town.”

“Call the Sheriff on the radio and tell them you’re going to be off the air for a while. You
eat your lunch, stoke the furnace and let’s go in to Alamogordo and see what we can
come up with. I’ll dig out a few of those gold coins.”

“Make up a list of what you want to get.”

“I know what I want, a Cummins 12.5 HDCAB; a 5,000-gallon diesel tank; and, 7,500-
gallons of diesel fuel.”

“Might be easier to get a M1A2SEP than those things.”

“What’s that?”

“The latest version of the Abrams tank.”

“Don’t forget that if you can get the diesel, you’re going to need PRI-D, PRI-Flow and
PRI-Ocide.”

“If we had been smart, we would have bought all of those things before the war.”

“Who knew? I didn’t really think that the Chinese would go to war during the Olympics
and I was surprised that the Taiwanese took just that moment to declare Independence.
If you had asked me, Sue, I would have told you the greatest threat was another terror-
ist attack.”

“I that why you never worried about building a shelter?”

106
“The way I looked at it, if we were ever attacked and they hit Holloman, we were toast.
Otherwise, I assumed we didn’t have anything to worry about.”

“We should still have a shelter. Maybe the dealer has a large used fuel tank that we
could clean out and bury.”

“I don’t understand, who would attack the US now, especially after what we did to China
and North Korea?”

“Since the war, we have been attacked 3 times. Three times, Barry and we were just
lucky. What would happen if you put in a call to the Sheriff’s Department for backup and
they were off somewhere else handling another problem? Would the 2 of us be able to
stand off a large force with that machinegun and a few rifles? And, don’t tell me that
we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

I could see right off that Sue was testy. There are some times a man has to stand up for
what he thinks and others where the only wise decision is to let his wife spend the gold
she got from selling quilts. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you which one of those times this
was. I could almost hear the bee buzzing in her bonnet.

“Of course I have fuel, do you have ration coupons?”

“Not for as much as we want, no.”

“Well then, that’s a horse of a different color. Say, I remember you, you’re the lady who
wanted 5,000-gallons of diesel and didn’t want to pay the going price. How would you
expect me to cover a shortage of 7,500-gallons without coupons? You said it wouldn’t
always be the day after Armageddon. Well, it’s six months after Armageddon and we
have fuel rationing.”

“I need another 5,000-gallon tank, too,” Sue said undeterred. “When the government
instituted rationing, they also instituted price controls, didn’t they?”

“Yes, so what?”

“So, say I was willing to pay you the $4 a gallon you asked last time?”

107
 The Asian Question – Chapter 21

“Lady the penalties for violating the rationing laws are pretty severe.”

“$4.25.”

“I could go to jail for several years.”

“$4.50.”

“$4.75.”

“Do you take gold?”

“$1,200 an ounce.”

“$1,800.”

“Spit the difference?”

“Sure, bring the tank and the fuel around tomorrow morning and I have the gold ready
for you. Same price on the tank, $4,000?”

“Yeah, no one is buying tanks because they can’t get fuel.”

“You sell a lot of it at $4.75 a gallon?”

“I usually get $5, but you carry guns. Anything else you need?”

“4 gallons of PRI-D, 4 gallons of PRI-Flow and 2 gallons of PRI-Ocide. You don’t have a
really large used tank do you?”

“How large?”

“Big, we want to use it as a shelter.”

“Say 30’ long and 8’ in diameter?”

“Do you have one that size?”

“Yes, can you afford it?”

“I don’t know that until you tell me how much.”

“$12,000.”

108
“We’ll pass. We can get a 40’ section of corrugated culvert 10’ in diameter for $8,000.”

“If you can find it.”

“We stopped there before we stopped here. Thanks but no thanks.”

“I’ll match the $8,000. If you buy a culvert you’ll have to put on end plates, etc.”

“But if this is a used fuel tank, won’t it stink and be filthy?”

“We steam clean them and inspect them for leaks when we buy them. I do have one
just the size you want that has an access hatch.”

“I don’t know. 7,500-gallons at $4.75 a gallon is $35 grand, plus another $4 grand for
the tank. Then there are the PRI-Products at $75 a gallon. We’re talking $40,000 here.”

“I’ll throw in the PRI products like I did the last time.”

“Last time you only want $4 a gallon for the fuel and I’m sure this is the same diesel fuel
you had then. Right?”

“Yes, but…”

“So, you’re basically doubling the price of the fuel simply because we don’t have cou-
pons, right?”

“I told you that I could…”

“I’d be willing to give you $4 a gallon for the fuel, accept the free PRI products and pay
you $4 and $8 grand for those two tanks. Think about it, that’s 28 gold Eagles.”

“30 or it’s been nice talking to you.”

“Deal.”

“What?”

“I said I agree.”

“Oh. We’ll be by in the morning with the two tanks and the fuel. How do I know you have
30 gold Eagles?”

“Do you want to count them now?”

“Just show them to me.”

109
“Here.”

“See you tomorrow.”

++++

“How big is than tank Sue?”

“I calculated it and its 1,508ft³ and there are 7.48 gallons per ft³, so about 11,280-
gallons. Listen, Barry, let’s see about the generator and then something to store the
second generator underground to power the shelter and act as a backup to the primary
generator.”

“Help you?”

“We want a Cummins 12.5 HDCAB generator.”

“I might have one, say for $12,000.”

“$10,000 gold. That’s my only offer. I don’t need it, it’s just a spare, so don’t go thinking
you can hold us up because we’re desperate.”

“Geez, lady, don’t get your water hot.”

“Do you have one?”

“As a matter of fact, I do, $12,000.”

“$10,000, including tax. If you still have it that means that no one is willing to buy it. Col-
orado Standby’s price was $8,645. If they can sell it for that, so can you. Even with tax,
it only comes to $9,272.”

“I don’t know lady, someone might want it at $12,000.”

“Barry, this man is a thief. Let’s go turn him in for price gouging. He must not know that
there are price controls in place.”

“Yes, dear.”

“Wait.”

“Why should I, you can go to jail for price gouging.”

“I’ve already been warned. Alright, $9,272.”

“We need 4 fuel filters, 48 oil filters and 12 cases of oil.”

110
“How much are you going to pay me for those?”

“Just what they’re worth, $1,003.86 including tax.”

“Why do I feel like I’ve been robbed?”

“Think in terms of me not bringing you cookies at the jail.”

“Geez, Sue, what’s gotten into you?”

“Men! They think just because you’re a woman, they can push you around. I won’t have
any man treat me any differently than he’d treat another man.”

“Ladies and Gentlemen, may I now introduce Miss Calamity Jane Canary!”

“She was just ahead of her time, that’s all. You watch it or you’ll be sleeping on the
couch.”

“Bud time!”

“When we get home, you stoke the furnace. Then if you want a Bud, that’s fine with me.
Besides, you’re going to need to stay up all night.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t trust that Chevron dealer and he knows we have 30 pieces of gold to
pay for the tanks and the fuel. After he’s got everything delivered and leaves, I want you
to go to town and spend our last silver on ammo for the Ma Deuce.”

“Are we out of gold?”

“No way, we’re out, but it would be very nice knowing that people think we spent the last
of our money on fuel, a generator and more ammo. They might be less inclined to try
and get what we have, especially if they know we have lots of .50 caliber ammo.”

“Sneaky. Sure, I’ll see if I can buy up some of the .50 caliber that the Army gave to other
people who bought Ma Deuces from that guy.”

“What are we going to do with all of our illegal weapons when things settle down? If the
Democrats take over Congress and the White House, it won’t be long before even BB-
guns are illegal.”

111
“You bought a shelter even though I don’t believe we need it. We can store our stuff
there. It might be a good place to store your cedar chest, too.”

“If that tank has an access port, we can lay it on its side and extend the hole with a
piece of pipe that’s the same size. We can run that into a concrete box and a pipe up to
ground level.”

“How deep are we going to bury the tank?”

“If we bury it 9’ deep, we’ll have a protection factor of 10 to the 96/16th power.”

“Sixth power, Sue. The power number tells you the number of zeroes and 6 zeroes is
1,000,000. Where are we going to put the genset?”

“In the concrete box I mentioned.”

“I’ll arrange for someone to come dig a hole, tunnel and smaller hole. I’ll look around for
some metal pipe and something we can use for a ladder to get down into the generator
room.”

To tell the truth, I figured when I let her spend her money like that, I get some loving. I
quickly lost that illusion when she mentioned the couch. Sue was right, in the six months
since the end of our world, we’d flashed a bit of gold. Of course the gold I’d spent was
on a Ma Deuce so people might think twice about trying to get our gold. Having them
think that we’d gone on a buying spree and had spent all of the gold and were down to
our last silver was even better. Fortunately we could convert the gold and silver to cash
money, if necessary. The guy charged a small percentage, but not everyone wanted
gold or silver. That was just plain stupid if you asked me, which you didn’t.

If gold had gone from $350 to $1,500 an ounce in a short span of years, it could just as
easily fall back to $350 or even lower, though I doubted it. Not in our lifetime! Maybe I
ought to see about getting a couple of those M16A1/M203s, magazines and 40mm gre-
nades the guy was now carrying. Sue should go along and she can tell the world that
we’re out of money! I’m not a very good liar. He was asking $1,000 each for the rifles
and M203s, $5 each for the grenades and $250 a case of 1,000-rounds of 5.56×45mm.
I have to give the guy credit, if nothing else he was bold about what he sold. Hmm,
$2,000 per weapon and ammo on top of it, I suppose that we’d better buy plenty. He
never seems to have ammo when you want more.

She was wrong about the Chevron man or my having the lights on all night scared him
off. It was a small price to pay to keep us safe. Rex lay down next to my table and kept
me company. He’s full size and I can tell you I wouldn’t want to have him mad at me.

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 The Asian Question – Chapter 22

“We’d like 2 M16A3 rifles, 2 M203s 10,000 rounds of 5.56×45mm and 144 of those gre-
nades.”

“That Ma Deuce I sold you work out ok?”

“Just like new.”

“Maybe that’s because it was brand new, do you think?”

“I’d really like to get more ammo for it. I can’t ask the Army because they went back to
Ft. Bliss.”

“I’m selling it for $500 a crate of 2 cans.”

“That’s $2.50 around!”

“Maybe, but it is a seller’s market.”

“Ok, 10 crates, if you can handle it plus what I mention earlier.”

“You do seem to have a lot of gold.”

“THAT’S THE LAST OF THE GOLD!” Sue all but shouted. “It just about finishes off our
silver, too. We want 10 magazines per rifle. What’s that all come to?”

“Let me add it up: 4 times $1,000 plus 10 times $250 plus $5 times 144 plus 10 times
$500. That is a total of, uh, $12,220. Divided by $1500 equals 8.146667 ounces of
gold.”

“Fine we’ll give you our last Eagles and remaining silver. Will you accept cash for the
rest?”

“I suppose. Cash isn’t as good a deal though.”

“Ok, our 8 last gold Eagles and our last 12 silver Eagles. That leaves a balance of $10.
All I have is singles, ok?”

“Whatever. Pull your truck up to the door and the boy will bring the stuff out on a cart.”

“SUE! WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO FOR FOOD?”

“Beans and rice, Barry,” she replied loud enough for several people to hear.

113
“That’s quite the little show the two of you put on at the farmer’s market. Do you really
expect anyone to believe it?”

“That’s really hard to say, Deputy. But if they don’t and come by looking for gold, silver,
cash or food they’re going to be awfully disappointed. We have just enough money
coming from Sue’s quilts to pay for food. She’s making 2 custom quilts, on order, at
$1,800 each.”

“How are the two of you going to handle a Ma Deuce and 2 of the M16s?”

“I don’t really know, start at the top and work our way down, I suppose. Our best bet is
the Ma Deuce because nothing resists AP/APIT, even a vest. After that I suppose we’ll
switch to 40mm grenades until we run out and then to the .22 rifle.”

++++

“Do you think they believed us?”

“Too well, the contractor wanted to know how we were going to pay him for digging the
hole.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That we’d saved back enough of the silver to pay him. Man, am I tired; I should have
tried to get some sleep last night. I turned the lights on and left them on. Rex never
stirred so apparently no one came around.”

“If we’re going to maintain that cover story, it’s going to take all of our silver.”

“I figured about half, he wants $5,000 for digging the hole and setting the tank.”

“It seems strange to be putting in a shelter after WW III, but it will give us someplace to
hide if we weren’t believed.”

“Maybe we should orient the tank so I can extend a tunnel from the concrete box to the
basement.”

“Do whatever you think is best.”

I gave it some thought and if we set the tank about 20’ from the house, we could have
an 8’ run of pipe to the concrete box and another 7’-8’ to the basement wall. That would
depend on how I made the box. But, I had to have the same distance from the tank to
the box as I had from ground level to the box to prevent radiation from turning the cor-
ner. Yeah, like we’re ever going to be nuked a second time! I also had to come up with
something to disguise the hole into the basement wall. I could use that set of enclosed
shelving, I suppose.

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Utah Shelters Systems says that you should fill the hole with the culvert in to midline
with rock and the remainder of the way with soil. I had to try and figure out how much
rock that would take. Assuming we dug a hole 34’ long, 8’ deep and 12’ wide, the hole
would be 3,264ft³. Now, if I subtract the volume of the tank (1,508ft³) from that it leaves
1,752ft³ divided by 2 or 878ft³. If I divide that by 27, it works out to 32.5 yards of rock.
Heck, I thought that would be hard to calculate. It didn’t matter how deep we buried the
tank, the space needing rock was 1,632 minus 754 or 878ft³.

Guess what movie I watched on guard duty that night?

Close Encounters of the First Kind: This is a simple encounter that occurs when seeing
a strange object at a distance from a few hundred feet all the way down to a few yards.
In this type encounter, there is no interaction with the environment. There aren’t any
scorched earth or trees; nothing remains can be collected or measured.

Close Encounters of the Second Kind: This is an encounter that meets the criteria of
CE1 but the object leaves some type of evidence. Broken tree limbs, scorched earth,
and a barren patch of lawn where grass does not grow for a long time are just a few
types of interactions UFOs have been reported to have with their surroundings.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind: This is a sighting where occupants are seen in or
around the craft. Sounds simple enough, but these are the sightings that are among the
most intriguing.

That explains how Speilberg came up with the title. Dr. J. Allen Hynek, long time official
Project Blue Book consultant and founder of the Center for UFO Studies, coined not on-
ly the phrase, but also a system to classify different types of close encounters with
UFOs. This system served as Speilberg’s origin for the film. Dr. Hynek even had a small
role at the end of the movie. He appears sporting his trademark Van Dyke peering into
the landed mothership, with a look in his eye that says, "I knew they were real".

I hadn’t stayed up all night and instead went to bed when the movie ended. I wanted to
watch the next movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still. Fair to good movie, but the old
SciFi flick that was most interesting was Gene Barry’s version of War of the Worlds. In
the former, the American authorities were worried about an aircraft moving 4,000 miles
per (obviously the Aurora experimental aircraft). Turned out to be Michael Rennie and a
robot (Lock Martin who stood 7’7” tall). In case you’re still curious, the expression is
"Klaatu barada nikto". Patricia O’Neal has admitted in interviews that she was complete-
ly unaware during the filming that the film would turn out so well and become one of the
great science-fiction classics of all time. She assumed it would be just another one of
the then-current and rather trashy flying saucer films that were popular at the time, and
she found it difficult to keep a straight face while saying her lines.

115
I almost busted out laughing at the idea of getting all of the World’s leaders together in a
single setting. I guess if Klaatu came to visit now, we wouldn’t have to worry about invit-
ing China. At the end of the movie he warned that if the Earth didn’t get its act together,
we’d be wiped out, but he didn’t say how long we had.

At breakfast, there was cereal with toast. The milk sort of tasted funny.

“What’s wrong with the milk?”

“Nothing. I made it fresh this morning.”

“I miss milk in a bottle.”

“To have fresh milk, we’d have to have a cow. You’re the one always complaining about
shoveling manure so I never brought it up.”

“Do you think we could find a pregnant cow to add to our growing herd of animals?”

“The man who sold us the calf told me anytime I wanted a cow to let him know. I didn’t
bring it up because frankly I’m tired of your complaining.”

“What would you think if I connect the new shelter to the basement using an oval cul-
vert?”

“You have to explain that.”

“We lay the tank on its side about 20’ from the house. We dig a trench from there to the
basement wall. Halfway in between we build the concrete box with the ladder to the sur-
face. We cut a hole into the basement wall that we cover with the enclosed shelf. I’ll bet
that I could mount it to the wall with a heavy piano hinge that would conceal it.”

“Are you going to have the excavator fill the hole?”

“I hadn’t planned on it, no.”

“You’ll be shoveling from now until doomsday. We can always explain away the money
by claiming I sold a couple extra quilts. I can’t see you forming up that box or installing
the culverts, maybe we’d better hire it done.”

“We should have done all these things before we made the production about being out
of money.”

“It doesn’t matter, Barry. We can do these things on the sly and get the people we hire
to promise not to talk about it.”

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“You have more faith in human nature than I do, Sue.”

“Then you just let me handle it. You have to stay here because they’re coming to exca-
vate today. I run down to Alamogordo and arrange for the cow. We can’t get chicks for a
while yet so we won’t worry about that. I’ll find someone to put in the culvert, etc. Have
you figured out how much rock you need?”

“Call it 33 yards.”

“I’ll get extra, it couldn’t hurt to put some in around the culvert.”

“Fine, get 40. If there is any left over, we can spread it on the driveway.”

“How much culvert do you need?”

“About 16’ of 6’ oval culvert. I probably should have a bucket of some sort of a sealer,
like tar. I have no idea how much concrete the generator room will take. Then we’ll need
pipe to connect the new tank and run a line to the new generator. We could put both
generators in the generator room and centralize the wiring. That’s going to take an elec-
trician.”

“And it explains why you want a tunnel from the basement. You won’t have to climb
down a ladder to service the generators.”

“Honest to God, Sue, that never occurred to me. I just now thought of co-locating the
generators. It is actually a good idea; centralize the wiring all in the generator room. I
don’t know how big that hatch is in that tank, but I doubt it’s over 2’ in diameter. It going
to be tough getting much of anything into the tank so I suppose we have to keep most of
our stuff in the basement.”

“You’re assuming that we use the hatch. Is there any reason we couldn’t cut it bigger
and put in a door?”

“This is getting complicated.”

“Leave it to me. I’ll work out the details. Rex and you can man the OP and stay out of
my way.”

Good advice, I took it. Hauled a couple of six-packs (coke) to the OP and got a nice little
rug for Rex to lie on. I’m too old to be playing war games, I just want to relax and have
everything back to normal. But no, we had to get in a war with China.

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 The Asian Question – Chapter 23

For the next week to ten days, our little homestead was a flurry of activity. Sue had the
excavator lay the tank on its side with the hole away from the house. I asked and she
explained that it was going to be an escape tunnel from the shelter. I quit asking and
took a couple of Tylenol. I didn’t want to know until it was all done. I wondered how the
electrician was going to manage to do all of the wiring, too. Way above my pay grade, to
quote Sgt. Collins.

“I had them bury the fuel tanks to protect them.”

“Whatever. How are you going to get the fuel out of the tanks?”

“With a pump.”

“Show me when it’s done. I don’t see how I can do a watch when you have trucks com-
ing in at all hours of the day. I hope the guy who sold you the cow taught you how to
milk it, I’m drawing the line.”

++++

Provo’s Privy has a nice ring to it, Rancher Barry doesn’t. The couch is very uncomfort-
able, but I’m starting to get used to it. If I had to add milking a cow twice a day to my
schedule, I wouldn’t have a lot of time to watch the road. To top it off, I still haven’t had
a chance to rototill the garden. I think she felt a little guilty with me being on the couch,
she had a guy come in with a power rototiller mounted on the back of a tractor and the
garden looked pretty nice. But, I ain’t milking no cow.

I didn’t realize what her plan was until she had the whole thing done. By the time they
finished landscaping, there wasn’t any sign of a buried shelter or buried generator room.
Sue must have learned to milk, she got the cow and we had fresh milk on the table.
Then she offered to show me how to milk, just in case she got sick and couldn’t do it.
Given the circumstances, I learned. Next thing you know, she’s got a headache and
would I milk the cow this morning? Marriage is all about compromise, but why does it
seem to me that I’m the one doing all of the compromising?

The living room window where we had the Ma Deuce had the storm removed and the
upper half of where the storm window went had a piece of that bullet proof glass. To use
the machinegun, we open the lower window until it was all the way up. It gave us about
a 32” square to shoot out of. And for 4’ on either side of the window, the Glassman had
installed the 48”x84” laminated bulletproof glass. During the daytime, you could tell that
the OP Center and living room windows were protected, but at night with the 24 lights
turned on you could barely see the house. Can you get calluses from milking cows?

“What do you think?”

118
“I think you tricked me into milking the cow.”

“I meant about the shelter generator room and everything.”

“I haven’t looked. It seems to me that we told everyone we were out of money so they’d
leave us alone and then you set out to make it true.”

“Come with me and I’ll give you the grand tour. You may be surprised and I’m sure
you’re going to like what you see.”

“That’s the ladder to the generator room.”

“Where?”

“You can’t see it?”

“See what?”

“Good. I’ll show you, you move this piece of wood to expose the handle and just lift. It is
counterbalance so even you can lift it.”

“Nice, but I’m not climbing any ladders unless it’s an absolute emergency.”

“Come over here. What do you see?”

“The barn. We’re inside of the barn.”

“This is where the emergency exit tunnel comes out of the shelter. We ran a 40’ piece of
3’ pipe and turned it up to the surface.”

“I don’t see anything Sue, but I believe you.”

“Let’s go to the basement, next. I figured we should have a closed, locking storage cab-
inet for our medical supplies and we used that for the entrance to the tunnel to the shel-
ter.”

“How does it work?”

“You open the cabinet and pull the latch. I took your idea of using a piano hinge and
used it. The cabinet swings open and, voila, the tunnel.”

“You didn’t use oval culvert!”

“I couldn’t get it so we used round concrete culvert. Follow me.”

“This is what we should have had before the war.”

119
“If you hadn’t dismantled that improvised shelter, we probably still wouldn’t have it, dear.
The way the electrician set up the generators is that we’d only run one at a time. When
it’s time to service one, you start the other and use the control panel to transfer power to
the other generator. Then, you can let the first generator cool down before you service
it. We put all of you filters and spare parts on those shelves over there. If the generator
fails for any reason, the other one kicks in.”

“Nice. What are all of these doors made of?”

“Road plate. This door over here leads to the shelter.”

“Lead the way.”

“We bunk on this end and the bathroom is on the other. Next to the bathroom is a small
kitchen. We did it that way to minimize the amount of plumbing. It is a flush toilet that
drains into a black water tank. That’s pumped into the septic system. We have a 200-
gallon water tank replenished by the well. I put in a 12ft² freezer and a small refrigerator.
I stocked the freezer from our large freezer and will rotate out the stock when we get
replacements. There is a table there for your radio gear and we ran parallel lines and
terminated them in antenna switches.”

“What about guns?”

“I’d suggest that we keep out what we think we’re going to need and store the remain-
der down here along with the extra ammunition.”

“Sue, it’s perfect but like I said before, this is what we should have before the war.”

“You mean the Chinese War don’t you? In case you haven’t been paying attention, the
only thing slowing people from coming into the area is the weather. We’ve already had
to defend our home 3 times in less than a year. I have one more improvement to make.
I want to replace the basement door with a road plate and cover it with a bookcase
that’s mounted right on the door. We can’t possible store everything we have in the
shelter and I’d prefer if the basement wasn’t easily accessible.”

“Fine, just show me how it works when you get it done. Ok, I’ll milk the cow.”

In case you’re curious, Sue had it set up so flipping one particular light switch released
the latch on the bookcase door. The switch could be disabled from the other side of the
door. This was getting way over my head, but I sort of liked having a wife who looked
out for our long-term interests. She’d finished the 2 custom quilts and collected the
$3,600. She spent that money several times over on the project but the way she ar-
ranged it, most of the people thought they were being paid with the money she got from

120
selling quilts. So complete was the illusion that people asked us if we had money to pay
for things before they’d talk to us.

To look at our place, a person would never believe that we had much to offer. However,
if you looked close, you’d see the protected windows and begin to wonder. By this time
everyone in the area knew I had purchased that Ma Deuce at the farmer’s market and
wasn’t afraid to use it to protect the two of us. Being from California, I’m the sort of fel-
low who thinks good fences makes good neighbors. But, all we had around the place
was 3 strands of barbed wire, the same as everyone else. There was a feedlot behind
the barn for the animals to enter and leave the barn itself. There was also the machine
shed that I used for storage and a garage. Other than that, there was just the 100-year-
old 2-story farmhouse.

Our picking up the 2 M16A3/M203s hadn’t hurt reinforcing the image that we were peo-
ple that it didn’t pay to fool with. Heck, it was only by the strangest of circumstances that
we were even alive. Back in ’99, our first choice had been Mesa, AZ. We couldn’t afford
it and checked out Albuquerque next. It was a little better but not much. Then a realtor
asked us if we cared where we lived if we could do it cheap. Cheap is good, we told him
and he mentioned the place for sale by the Sheriff North of Alamogordo. We drove
down and checked it out and before we knew it, made the highest bid at the auction.
And that’s how we came to live on US 54 just north of Tularosa.

The well was from a deep aquifer and had a fairly new pump. Like I said, I spent from
’99 until ’05 repairing and painting and the place did look pretty good. Painted the barn,
hen house and machine shed red and trimmed them out in white paint. Painted the
house white and trimmed it out in green paint. Added a few touches like decorative
shutters that didn’t shut and so on and the place really looked nice. When we put in that
armor plate and bulletproof glass the shutters came down and were put back up after
with contractor’s cement. We tried to keep the house looking as nice as possible. I know
I told you what I did with the sandbags, right? I built a couple of foxholes aka fighting
positions.

“Long time no see, Sgt. Collins, what brings you here?”

“My enlistment is up and I’m not going to reenlist.”

“Thinking of moving to Alamogordo?”

“Not exactly no. I don’t suppose you’d have some land to sell would you?”

“Nope, just have the place. The piece next to us to the east isn’t occupied by anyone,
maybe you could buy it. Going to build a home?”

121
“No, we were just going to have our mobile home transported to our new location. But
you know by the time a man buys land, puts in a septic system, drills a well and so forth
he’s in the poorhouse. Army pay isn’t the greatest and it’s hard saving when you’re mar-
ried and have a couple of kids.”

“I think I owe you a couple of Bud’s come in, sit and we’ll talk.”

“Hi Sergeant.”

“Hello Mrs. Ryan, how are you?”

“We’re getting by. What with the rationing and everything, it hard sometimes to make
ends meet. What bring you here?”

“I was looking for a place to set our mobile home. Mr. Ryan said that you folks don’t own
any extra land.”

“We don’t, but how big is a mobile home, 15’ wide and 70’ long? How much space
would that take?”

“Our home is 16’ x 90’, Mrs. Ryan. 3 bedrooms and 2 baths.”

“You know, Barry, we could let them set their home up here until they can find a perma-
nent place.”

“Yeah, Sergeant Collins, we could do that. We have a good well, oversized septic sys-
tem and a generator for power.”

“I wouldn’t want to impose, but thanks for offering.”

“Hey, you pulled our behinds out at least once, if I recall. There aren’t a lot of jobs avail-
able so what would you live on?”

“I was raised on a farm so maybe I could find a job as a ranch hand.”

“You know about horses, cattle, pigs and chickens?”

“I’m originally from Nebraska and we raised those and a lot of grain.”

“You mind shoveling manure?”

“What goes in comes out and you use it for fertilizer.”

“Sergeant, I was born and raised in Los Angeles. I never considered farming when we
bought this farmstead, all I wanted was the house. Then, I worked for 5-6 years repair-
ing, painting and such and got it to look nice. But never did I want any livestock.”

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 The Asian Question – Chapter 24

“We have 2 mares, 2 fillies, a cow, a steer and Sue plans to buy pigs and chickens. I
don’t want to farm and I do not like shoveling manure or milking that darned cow. If Sue
agrees, how would you like to work for us? We can’t pay much, but you’d get food from
the garden, meat, eggs, milk and a little money. You would get a place for your home
rent free with utility connections and have electricity. Then when you found a job, you
could work it and continue to work for us doing the farm chores. You’d still get the lot
and so forth in compensation.”

“Sergeant Collins, where are your wife and children?”

“Looking around Alamogordo.”

“Well get in your pickup and go get them. It doesn’t make much sense you getting a mo-
tel when we have a 2-story house. That way, we can meet your family and we can all
discuss this offer Barry made you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Barry go get a big beef roast out of the freezer. Of course I’m sure Sergeant. By the
way, what is your first name?”

“Richard. My wife’s name is Mary and our kids are Susan and Ron.”

“Did you hear that Barry, their daughter’s name is the same as mine?”

“Yes, dear.”

Sue had always liked Sgt. Dick Collins. When she found out that he and his wife had a
daughter named Susan, she just beamed. Our only child, Barry Jr., had been killed in
junior high school, the victim of a drive by shooting where he wasn’t even the target.
That had been tough on both of us, but then, that was a long time ago. He probably
would have been just about Dick’s age, 30. A man needs a legacy and some want-to-be
gangster stole ours. Never caught the kid either. By God if they had, I’d have sure
wanted to have 5 minutes alone with that kid. I have saved the state of California about
$15 grand a year. Back in those days, I was pretty depressed; I’d have done him and
probably myself. I’ll have to tell you, the more I think about having a young man about
Barry’s age around the place and some youngsters that we can sort of substitute for the
grandchildren we never had, the more I like the idea. I sure hope this works out.

“Hello, I’m Sue Ryan, you must be Mary.”

“Very pleased to meet you Mrs. Ryan.”

123
“Call me Sue and Richard, you call me Sue too. Come in and bring your things, I made
up 3 of the bedrooms for you.”

“We really appreciate everything, but we don’t want to impose. We can get a motel in
Alamogordo.”

“You’ll do no such thing. Motels are expensive and this is a huge house. I needed to
change that dusty bedding anyway.”

“This is Susan and that remarkable young man over there is Ron.”

“If you kids want a soda, there’s coke in the refrigerator. Let me show you your rooms.”

Sue took the 4 of them upstairs and put each of the kids in a separate room and Dick
and Mary in our guest room, the one with the queen sized bed. That was the mattress
I’d dragged down to the improvised shelter. Our room had a king sized bed and the oth-
er bedrooms full sized beds. The upstairs had a total of 5 bedrooms and 2 baths. On the
main floor was another bedroom that Sue used for her sewing room, a living room with
the machine gun, a dining rooms and the kitchen. You know that I used one of the bed-
rooms for my OP, the one on the front of the house on the other side of the bath. Our
master bedroom had a master bath. Of course, there was a ½ bath, powder room, on
the main floor. Stool and sink, you know.

“Do you prefer Richard or Dick?”

“Dick.”

“Well, Dick, let me get you a beer out of the refrigerator and show you the downstairs.
We’ve made a few changes since you were here last.”

“Wasn’t the door right about there?”

“You have a good memory. It still is, but you now open it by flipping this light switch.”

I flipped the switch and the door released and came open a couple of inches. I turned
off the switch and then showed him the shutoff switch that disabled the living room
switch. We went down stairs and looked around. About the only things that had
changed was the removal of the improvised shelter and installation of the medicine cab-
inet that led to the shelter.

“Now, if you unlock this cabinet and pull this ring, it releases the latch on the door to our
new shelter.”

“When did you put this in?”

124
“The paint is almost still wet, Dick. Follow me to our new generator room. Watch your
head, it’s only a 6’ concrete culvert.”

“What are those doors made of?”

“Road plate. That was Sue’s idea. I’ll tell you the truth; I didn’t have anything to do with
this project. This is the generator room and as you can see, we have 2 of the 12.5kw
RV gensets now. Plus, we have the 5kw gasoline powered unit I used to use to supply
power when I service the main generator. That hole over there goes up to ground level
and I’ll show you the access tomorrow. This door over here leads to the actual shelter.”

“This is what you should have had during the war.”

“I think I’ve said that 3 or 4 times myself, Dick. Anyway, this door is the shelter door and
it is a 30’ x 8’ tank. I think Sue calculated the volume as something over 11,000 gallons.
She added a small freezer, put in a ¾ bath and a small kitchenette. We have hammocks
on the other end and there is room for 6, easy. I have a table to put my radios on and
she had extra antenna wires run. There is also a small gun cabinet.”

“Wow. You’re ready for World War 4.”

“Actually we were thinking more about bad guys come spring. How are you fixed up for
weapons?”

“I have a M1911, a 12-gauge shotgun and a .22 rifle.”

“No military weapons?”

“Other than the .45, no.”

“Sue and I picked up a couple to round out our firepower but I don’t much care for them.
If you’re going to live here, would you be willing to use them?”

“What do you have?”

“A pair of M16A3s with the M203s, 10,000 rounds of ammo, 144 40mm grenades and
10 magazines per rifle.”

“Really? Where did you get those?”

“At the farmer’s market from the guy who used to sell the .50 caliber machineguns. You
know the strange thing was that when he ran out of machineguns, he didn’t run out of
ammo. We manage to pick up an additional 2,000 rounds of .50BMG. 2 cans of 100
rounds each to the crate and we got 10 crates.”

“Ball/tracer?”

125
“AP/APIT.”

“Would you like some more?”

“Would a drunk like a case of Jack Daniel’s?”

“I take it that was yes. I have a friend in supply who has a bunch of the stuff, but it’s all
ball/tracer.”

“It shoots, right?”

“Yes.”

“I take all I can get and buy more if the price is right. I have 4 barrels for the Ma Deuce,
the original and the spare plus 2 more spares I picked up. You might want to see about
extra ammo and grenades for the 2 rifles I’m giving to you to use.”

“Do you have bayonets?”

“If you’re close enough to use a bayonet, you’re too darned close.”

“Well feast your eyes on those.”

“Those are M16A3s, Barry. The M16A3 Rifle is a full-auto M16A2 Rifle with a flat top
upper receiver and detachable carrying handle. The flat top upper receiver has an inte-
gral rail that will be utilized (when the carrying handle is removed) to mount optical de-
vices to the weapon. The M16A3 Rifle in combination with the M5 Rail Adapter forms
the Modular Weapon System (rifle version), which provides soldiers the flexibility to con-
figure their weapons with those accessories required to fulfill an assigned mission.
There are no differences between the internal dimensions of the M16A2 Rifle and the
M16A3 Rifle. I can also get 2 of the M4 Carbine (SOPMOD M4) Accessory Kits com-
prised of the following components: 4X Day Scope, Reflex Sight, Rail Interface System
(MIL-STD 1913), Vertical Forward Handgrip, Quick Attach/Detach M203 Grenade
Launcher Mount and Sight, Infrared Laser Pointer/Illuminator, Visible Laser, Visible
Bright Light, Backup Iron Sight, Combat Sling, Sloping Cheek Weld Stock, Mini Night
Sight, Suppressor and 9" M203 Grenade Launcher Barrel.”

“Can you figure out how to put the M203s on our M1A rifles?”

“I could probably figure out something. In 1961, an experimental breech loading X-1
40mm grenade launcher was built for the M14. It attached to the gas cylinder and bayo-
net lug. Aiming was performed using the standard M15 grenade launcher sight.”

“Dick, if you could do that, you’d have my eternal gratitude.”

126
Sue said supper would be a while so I took Dick out and showed him the entrance to
the shelter, the escape tunnel that went to the barn and we decided where might be a
good place to set a massive 16’ x 90’ trailer house. Is there a rule that says if you im-
prove your generating capacity, you’re going to need it? Is there a rule that says if you
build a bomb shelter the Russians or someone will attack the US with nukes? There is!
It says somewhere that God never gives you more than you can handle. We might be
out a little food and some extra fuel, but I wouldn’t have to shovel manure anymore.

“Dick, are your appliance gas or electric?”

“Gas.”

“Crap. We’ll have to get a propane tank and convert your stove and other major appli-
ances to bottle gas.”

“Oh, I have the jets. The home came with natural gas jets installed but a plastic bags
containing the propane/LP jets.”

“Sue, we need a propane tank. Know anyone who sells propane?”

“How big of a tank?”

“What do I know? Get either a 500 or 1,000 gallon tank, assuming you can.”

“What do you folks use for fuel?”

“Coal or wood in the furnace and wood in the kitchen stove and fireplace.”

“I guess that explains all of the firewood.”

“We put in a load of coal, just before the war. Seems to last longer than the wood and
produces a lot of heat.”

++++

The next morning, after breakfast, Dick left for El Paso to get the home moved. Sue
headed to Alamogordo to find a propane tank and propane. Mary and Susan busied
themselves with something and Ron stuck to me like a tick on a hound.

127
 The Asian Question – Chapter 25

That kid must have had 10,000 questions. I wasn’t used to playing the $64,000 Ques-
tion, and I suppose that after a while, my patience began to wear a little thin. They
hadn’t said how old Ron and Susan were but I was guessing Susan was maybe 11 or
12 and Ron was about 9 going on 30. That kid had a remarkable a memory. He’d point
to a gun in my gun rack and recite to official nomenclature, as in rifle, 7.62mm, M14 or
M14A1, is a light-weight air-cooled, gas operated, magazine fed, shoulder fired…

“That’s not a M14, it’s a M1A, Ron.”

“What’s that on the end of the barrel?”

“A suppressor. Call it the ultimate flashhider.”

“What’s the difference between a M14 and a M1A?”

“The M1A is the civilian version of the rifle built by Springfield Armory most recently.
They make several models: the Standard model, the Loaded model, the National Match,
the Super Match, the M21, the M25 and they later introduced the Scout Squad rifle, the
SOCOM 16 and the SOCOM II.”

“What model is yours?”

“That’s the Loaded model. My wife is frugal and said that we weren’t shooting competi-
tion so we didn’t need anything fancy like those other models.”

“What does frugal mean?”

“She’s a cheapskate, Ron. I don’t suppose that’s fair, boy. Thrifty might be a better
word. She makes sure she gets value for her money. She bought the Mil Standard
M1911 semiautomatic pistols because she said they were good enough.”

“What kind of horses are those?”

“Brown horses. Females. About 15-16 hands high. How do I know, they all look alike to
me?”

“What kind of radio is that?”

“Here you go Ron, read the manual and you can explain it to me.”

“Did you find a propane tank?”

128
“1,000-gallons and they recommend burying it. Installation is extra, but I told them to
just bring it, install it and fill it. Did you decide where to spot their mobile home?”

“Dick did. He said he’d prefer to set it behind the machine shed. It is level there and it
wouldn’t be noticeable from the road. I doubt he’ll be back until tomorrow or the day af-
ter. He’s doing some shopping for us and himself.”

“Oh, what for?”

“He’s picking up SOPMOD kits for the 2 M16A3s we have and more of the ball/tracer
mix for the Ma Deuce. Those kits come with M203s and he said that he thinks he can
adapt something to install them on our M1As. Apparently the Army experimented with
mounting one on a M14 rifle in the early ‘60s.”

“You just gave him those rifles? What were you thinking of? I thought they were
M16A2s.”

“I was thinking that 4 rifles firing at the same time beat the heck out of 2 rifles firing at
the same time. The A3 and the A4 are nearly identical. Be careful of Ron. That kid ab-
sorbs information like a sponge and asks a lot of questions.”

“Does Mary know how to use a M16?”

“I have no idea Sue, but she’s a mother with 2 children to protect married to a man who
spent 8 years in the Army. Stop, I spent all morning being grilled by a 9-year-old
sponge.”

“Want to know about the birds and the bees?”

“No, he wanted me to explain the difference between a M14 and a M1A. I’ll bet you he
can repeat every word I said to him. I used the frugal in a sentence and then had to de-
fine it for him.”

“Oh, talking about me?”

“I guess so, I told him frugal meant thrifty.”

“Hah! I’ll bet you called me a cheapskate.”

“If I did I’d never admit it. Do you think it will work out having Dick and Mary here?”

“Now is a strange time to ask. You could have discussed it with me before you suggest-
ed they could set their trailer here. Like you said, Barry, 4 guns are better than 2. It’s
starting to warm up a little, I think spring is almost here. Have you given any thought to
what we should plant this year?”

129
“I’m not planting pinto beans; I’ll probably plant green beans, potatoes, onions, corn,
beets, carrots and cucumbers. We could grow tomatoes and green peppers and freeze
the green peppers. Want to make spaghetti sauce?”

“You’ll need to plant garlic if you want that, Barry.”

“Why don’t you make a list and so will I? I’ll try to plant everything either of us thinks of.”

“I’ll ask Mary if there is anything she or Richard would like.”

“He prefers to be called Dick.”

My buying all of that Bud probably had the bartender thinking I was a drunk. If I drank 3
cans in a week, it was a lot. In all earnestness, some times were a Bud moment, but
one shouldn’t infer that that meant a drunk. Coke Classic, on the other hand, didn’t last
long. We’d really stocked up on Coke and a mixture of soft drinks but I had four times as
much Coke as I had anything else, including Bud. We had left over jars every year but
Sue liked to hit the garage sales. Some people washed out their spaghetti sauce jars
and saved them because she’d always buy them. She had enough jars to can 400
quarts and 200 pints of vegetables, preserves or whatever. There was a multi-year sup-
ply of lids and rings and we had enough hermetically sealed cans of seeds for several
seasons and all were heirloom varieties. It even include thing we didn’t care for like
Swiss chard.

Dick showed up on the third day leading the semi pulling their trailer and I had stakes
laid out showing where it should go. I never set a trailer before, but Dick showed me
how to level it and marry it to the ground with those little stands. When he was satisfied,
we began connecting the electricity, water and sewer. The last thing we hooked up was
the propane and I refused to do that until he converted their appliances to propane. The
propane man said the average family probably used about 500 gallons a year. It would
depend on how warm they kept the home, the weather and a number of things. I’d lost
track of time but it was Friday or Saturday before their home was ready to occupy.

There were so many things left to accomplish, store the .50BMG ammo, install the
SOPMOD kits on the M16A3s, figure out how to adapt the M203 to the M1As, and al-
ways, the chores. Dick asked when was the last time we’d had the mares shod and
added that to a list to things to do. We figured we could start planting garden in 4
weeks, may sooner. They couldn’t have timed it better either, the following week the
rancher showed up with the pigs Sue wanted. Because we had 6 mouths instead of 2,
he returned with 4 more pigs.

Sue made a run into town and came back with the chickens, a doubled order. I like to
work from lists, do you suppose I’m a shade on the Obsessive Compulsive side? I
turned that little handicap into an asset, scheduling the planting of the garden. Where

130
Dick got the blueprints of the experimental X-1 grenade launcher-mounting device is
anyone’s guess. The gunsmith in town was more than happy to build two for us. Well, 1)
they weren’t experimental; and, 2) they launched rifle grenades. It carried the military
designation M76 and required an M15 grenade launcher sight.

Folks, don’t come to the farmstead unless you radio first or you may object to the greet-
ing you get. You’ll know we’re on alert if you hear the surplus military klaxon going. If
you hear it, stop at the property entrance and announce yourself. Sue and I will be in
the OP center and Dick and Mary will be crewing that Ma Deuce. You’ll be up against
amazing firepower. Dick brought back an interesting assortment of things including 4
containers of M72 LAW rockets. A military detachment might smirk at what we had, but
it would take a sizeable force to overrun us.

The M72 were packed as 5 rockets to the cardboard box, 3 boxes to the wooden crate
(FM 3-23-.25, Chapter 2). We had 4 crates or 60 weapons, enough for one heck of a
firefight. He also brought another case of M118LR for Sue’s M-40 and 10 boxes, 2,000
rounds, of .50BMG 4 to 1 ball/tracer mix. He picked up 2 of the M9s somewhere but he
avoided the GI ball ammo with a passion, electing instead to get 1,000 rounds of Speer
Gold Dot law enforcement ammo.

We made sure the Sheriff knew all about our recent preps and he assured me that he’d
pass the word to the militia. While additional radios would have been nice, we could get
by with what we had (I think now that was more of a prayer than any real knowledge on
my part). What I hadn’t anticipated was Mary’s reluctant to use a firearm. I’d always as-
sumed that she be a willing student. Sue told me to back off and allow her to get accus-
tomed to the idea. She’d handle this but Dick and I weren’t to bring it up. At 13, Susan
could probably handle a M16 but at 9, Ron could only handle a .22. Not wanting him to
feel left out; I supplied him with a 10/22 and some of the 25 round magazines. We had
those 3 Browning Hi-Powers and with the Speer ammo, they were respectable weap-
ons. They were the standard 13-round Browning magazines and I made a note to try
and find 6 more so we’d have 5 per pistol.

Sue started the tomatoes and peppers and set them in front of all of the windows to get
the available daylight. That hadn’t even occurred to me. She preferred Roma’s for can-
ning and a large fruited hybrid for eating. Once we had the lists of what everyone want-
ed, I sorted through the seeds to see if we could accommodate the lists. I could, but it
would mean using some hybrids. There is nothing wrong with using hybrid seeds unless
you’re trying to produce seed for future plantings. I wasn‘t worried about that I had heir-
loom seeds for most of the key vegetables and enough hybrids for 8-10 seasons.

The government might be slower than the 7-year itch, but they’d get everything cleaned
up and rebuilt, eventually. As far as security went, we had the Neighborhood Watch and
the County militia. We should be able to hold any ill-intentioned people at bay until the
Sheriff could roll in a rescue force. What more could a pair of families ask for? We had

131
water, sewage, electricity and fuel including wood, coal, propane and diesel. As far as
food went, we had really stocked up on staples before the war and we’d barely put a
dent in our supplies. The rationing was nice; it allowed us to fill in a little here and a little
there. For a family that didn’t have a large supply of food to begin with, living on what
you were allowed by rationing might have been hard. You’d probably be eating lots of
beans, rice and pasta. The last time the US had rationing, victory gardens were all the
rage.

You may recall that the subject of replenishing the coal had come up and we’d put that
off until spring. Spring was just around the corner and I wasn’t loading the furnace with
near as much coal, just enough to keep it going and produce a small amount of heat.
Sue informed me that she’d taken care of the coal the last time she’d been in town.

“Still flashing money that we don’t have?”

“Not at all, I did it on the sly. I did have a couple people wanting to know about our build-
ing project and I told them that was money we had set-aside specifically for the pur-
pose. They asked what we built and I told them we’d just made some minor improve-
ments. Oh, our favorite gun dealer at the farmer’s market wasn’t there. ATF arrested
him for dealing in stolen weapons.”

“I wondered. Well, I suppose everything we bought was hot.”

“I consider it a tax refund, dear. Don’t worry about it, he sold a lot of weapons and no-
body said anything about the government looking to pick up the weapons he sold. By
the way, the election is in a couple of weeks, did you decide who you were going to vote
for?”

“Some choice, John McCain or Barack Obama. I’m not so sure I want to vote for either.”

“Me either. There is no law that says we have to vote, but I was thinking we ought to
vote against one of them.”

“When in doubt I always vote Republican. McCain was a war hero of sorts, so I guess
I’d bite the bullet and vote for him. What has Barack Obama ever done?”

“You do know that McCain will probably win, right?”

“What makes you think so?”

“20 metropolitan areas were destroyed, that would have sharply reduced the Democrats
base.”

“Maybe, but Bush started the war with China and Bush is a Republican.”

132
 The Asian Question – Chapter 26

“Did Bush start the war with China or did the Chinese simply attack our country?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think there can be any doubt that the Chinese had weapons of
mass destruction.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.”

“Oh, you meant Iraq. We all know they had them Barry because they used them on the
Kurds. Saddam probably moved his stuff to Syria when it appeared to him that the US
was going to invade.”

“So you’re suggesting that Bush got a bad rap on the war in Iraq?”

“Don’t you find it strange that all of the Representatives and Senators who voted for the
war suddenly claimed that they were lied to when the war began to drag out? We may
never know if Bush was entirely at fault, but like Harry Truman said, the buck stops
here. If you had been the President and Taiwan asked you for assistance, would you
have provided it?”

“I imagine that I would have, yes Sue.”

“I think that I would have done the same thing the President did, so I can’t see where
that makes Bush responsible for the Chinese attacking the United States. If that’s the
case, then it can’t be the fault of any political party. I’m going to vote against Obama,
just on principles.”

“Like I said, when in doubt, vote Republican.”

“At least McCain has never been caught cheating on his wife.”

++++

Did you ever notice how when you get older you begin to engage in meaningful discus-
sions with your spouse? Two people out of the remaining ~1.5 million in the state of
New Mexico probably wouldn’t have much effect on the May 13th election. But it was
possible that many couples were having the same discussion a couple of weeks before
the election. Anyway, it was time to get the first planting started in the garden. In previ-
ous years, I might have started a little earlier, but winter this past year had been colder
and longer than usual.

If there was any message in the war between China and the United States, the mes-
sage probably was, “Don’t mess with the US, we’re wipe your country off the map.”

133
Even with the country having launched a massive attack against China, I’d be willing to
bet that the population of China far exceeded the population of the US; they had 1 bil-
lion more people than we had to start off with. Moreover, I can’t believe that we hit ran-
dom locations in China; therefore a majority of their population must have survived.
Whether or not we took out the leadership hadn’t been revealed. As I’ve pointed out,
there wasn’t a lot of news these days.

Just to grind the point into the ground. If you were the leadership of China and had de-
cided to launch an attack on a vastly more powerful enemy, would you leave you Back-
fire C bombers sitting in their hangers? Or, would you have them airborne loaded with
weapons that you wanted to save, much in the fashion that the US moved the F-117s
and B-2s to Area 51? There were no reports on the news announcing what we’d done
to the Chinese Navy, if anything. All that had been reported was that we’d halted the in-
vasion with a bombing campaign and the Chinese had launched nukes on the 7th Fleet,
most of which had survived.

Did the United States have any of the PAC-3 or THAAD systems left in case we were
attacked again? Or, had we launched everything in an effort to intercept the warheads.
If you’ve really read my journal, you already know the answer. We had one heck of a lot
more missiles than launchers. The Patriot missile system had undergone continual up-
grading. The current iteration was a kinetic kill weapon with an enhancement, 78kg of
explosives. Originally fielded in batteries with 4 missiles per canister, they now had 8.

One of those Communist front newspapers, Pravda North (the Boston Globe) had been
highly critical of the Patriot system after the Gulf War. But, I’d imagine that in the 15
years since the criticism, the Army got it right. Which brings up another interesting point.
If we only successfully intercepted ~90 of the warheads and ~60 got through, why were
only 20 MAs and 4 military bases hit? Multiple targeting? I stopped trying to make sense
of it a while back.

I had to get the rototiller running so I could cultivate between the rows of things we’d al-
ready planted and prepare the seed beds for the remainder. I suppose I should add
more PRI-G to the drums of gasoline, because the manufacturer recommends treating it
every year. The question now becomes, how do you shake a 55-gallon drum of gas to
blend the contents? Dick suggested that we add the PRI-G and roll the barrels around.
Having Mary and him was going to work out good!

On May 13th, we voted early and then I worked in the garden. Dick contacted someone
to shoe the horses because they were way overdue. We had to find someone to buy
feed from so we could feed those stinking hogs, too. While we were at it, Dick added
grain for the remainder of the livestock. Sue picked up the chicks, and I’m guessing she
must have gotten 200, give or take. She said that a portion of them would be for fryers
and the remainder would be laying hens. I can still smell the feathers from when she
bought 12 baking hens, so it’s going to be up to Dick to butcher these chickens.

134
Except for keeping watch in the OP and living with rationing, the country here in this ar-
ea wasn’t much different from before the war. The word was that electricity would be
restored soon and we could finally give our generators a rest. I think I should write
Cummins/Onan a letter and offer to become an official tester for their products. From
mid-August 2008 until mid-May 2009 (9 months), that RV genset never missed a beat.
Well, make it 7 months because in March we added the second genset. Or, was that
April? Didn’t matter they both worked just fine. The Sheriff called us all into Alamogordo
for a meeting because it seemed that there was trouble brewing.

“Everyone find a seat and listen up, I’ll try to be short, but this is very important,” the
Sheriff said.

“We’re getting reports of several armed groups moving around and attacking rural loca-
tions. We need to be especially vigilant from now on.”

“Why doesn’t the Army bring in forces?” Mort asked.

“That would be a law enforcement function and the President reinstated Posse Comita-
tus several months back. At the moment, it is a state and local law enforcement prob-
lem. The Army will only come in if there is a case of insurrection.”

“What would you call roving bands of killers and thieves?”

“Insurrection is the act or an instance of open revolt against civil authority or a constitut-
ed government,” The Sheriff replied. “I’d call them just what they are, murderers and
thieves. This isn’t California and our militia is well armed. Our main problem seems to
be fuel and the shrinkage that the Chevron distributor reported. Fortunately, it was die-
sel, not gasoline.”

Hmm, the Chevron distributor covered the fuel he sold Sue and me by reporting it as
stolen? It figures, but I can’t say that I like the implications of that. If anyone found out
that we’d bought the fuel and another generator, there could be trouble. Sue had been
very careful about who she selected to do the work at the farmstead, but still… Doesn’t
matter, the darned fool gave us a receipt for 7,500 gallons of #2 diesel fuel and 2 tanks,
a 11,000-gallon and a 5,000-gallon. Well, loose lips sink ships so I’m not about to bring
it up.

“Sheriff, any word on when we can expect electrical service to be restored?”

“Sometime in June and when the electrical service is back, we should have the phones
up and running. They’re working on the problem as fast as they can.”

“What do you want us to do if we see a roving band of murderers and thieves?”

135
“Call it in on your SINCGARS and do the best that you can to protect your families. We
anticipate a response time anywhere in the County in less than 30 minutes.”

“Sheriff, 30 minutes is a very long time,” I pointed out.

“Barry, in your case it would be more like 15-20 minutes. Anyway, you have that ma-
chinegun of yours. And, if I recall correctly, Sue and you bought 2 of the M16s with the
grenade launchers, didn’t you?”

“Yes, we did. And we have Dick Collins and his wife to help us defend the place. By the
way, Dick is looking for a job as a ranch hand if anyone has work.”

“Put a notice on the bulletin board. While we’re talking Barry, I understand the Sue and
you made some home improvements.”

“A couple of minor improvements are all. We set the money aside for the work and
spent the last of our money on the things from the gun dealer at the farmer’s market.”

“How are you getting by?”

“Sue is making quilts. We’re getting just enough to buy food.”

The murmur that went through that crowd at the meeting seemed to suggest that not
everyone believed my explanation. Tough! The less I said the better. Presumably when
they got the phones back up, we’d receive my back disability and pension payments so
I have another means to explain why we still had a little money. I have 10 months’ worth
of money coming.

“Any chance we could get more of the SINCGARS radios, Sheriff?”

“Not likely. What’s the problem, Barry, you have an all band ham radio that you can
raise VHF and UHF Guard frequencies on? You can always call Holloman AFB if your
SINCGARS goes out.”

“Never mind, Sheriff.”

“We have some handouts and I’d appreciate it if everyone could take one on your way
out. That’s all I have. Everyone keep their heads up, butts down and let us know if there
is trouble. If anyone has any questions, speak to one of my Deputies.”

Dick and I grabbed the handouts and got out of there fast. It looked to me like the Sher-
iff was headed my direction and I didn’t want to answer a lot of questions. On the way
back home, I asked Dick about the radios.

136
“Are you dead certain you can’t get us another SINCGARS?”

“Where did you get the idea that I couldn’t? You never asked, Barry. Yes, I can get a
SINCGARS if you want. I might even be able to get you a good used TS2000X, for a
price.”

“Sue still has plenty of gold, that’s just a story we’re spreading around to eliminate the
idea that we have money. You tell her how much you need to get 2 SINCGARS and the
used TS2000X. I’d really like to set up duplicate radios in the shelter and you should
have a SINCGARS in your mobile home.”

“Do you want anything else while I’m off on a buying trip?”

“Could you get us any hand grenades?”

“What kind would you like? I can get some M67s and some of the Mk3A2 concussion
grenades. If you want, I can get smoke and incendiary grenades.”

“All of the above, in whatever proportions you can get them. Will it take you long?”

“With gold? You’re kidding, right? Since the advent of computers, supply personnel
have to do things differently, but that doesn’t mean that shipments they receive don’t
sometimes come up short.”

Dick was only gone about 4 hours. It took us 30 minutes to unload his pickup. There
were 2 SINCGARS radios and a TS2000X in the box, but obviously used. He told me
that if came from that Spec 4 and it had been modified to an all frequency radio. Dick
had quite the assortment of hand grenades and even one item I hadn’t thought of,
M18A1 Claymore mines. He only had 12, but that was probably enough for one round of
protecting the roadside of the property. Dick said they should be placed 3 meters apart,
but with only 12, all we could do was evenly space them, assuming we used them.

I guess we’re ready for WW IV and WW V, now. Maybe not for a global climate change
or a rock coming in at the planet from behind the Sun, but how can you get ready for
something like that? I never really believed that bad things come in 3s. If H.G. Wells
was right, what we should be preparing for is a Martian invasion. That sort of gives a
whole new meaning to the term World War. The majority of the action takes place in the
countryside of early 20th century southeast England. The first Martian landing is on
Horsell common, on the outskirts of the narrator's home town, Woking. Other major ac-
tion occurs near Southend, where the narrator's brother and his companions gain pas-
sage on a steamboat while fleeing to mainland Europe.

There were ten mentioned Martian landings commencing just after midnight in June dur-
ing "the first years of the Twentieth Century":

137
First Martian Landing (Day 1): Horsell Common.
Second Martian Landing (Day 2): Addlestone Golf Links.
Third Martian Landing (Day 3): Pryford.
Fourth Martian Landing (Day 4): Bushey Heath.
Fifth Martian Landing (Day 5): Sheen.
Sixth Martian Landing (Day 6): Wimbledon.
Seventh Martian Landing (Day 7): Primrose Hill, London.
8th, 9th, 10th Landings (Days 8, 9, 10): not mentioned in the book - presumably within
London.

The duration of the war was three weeks:

Days One and Two were the Martians securing their initial bridgehead around Woking.
Day Three was the first major offensives of the invasion (Battle of
Weybridge/Shepperton and the opening of the attack on London).
Day Four was the day of the great panic and escape from London.
Day Five was when the narrator was imprisoned by the fifth Martian landing.
Day Six was when the city of London was totally occupied by the Martians.
Day Seven was the Battle of Southend.
Days Eight through twenty-one was when the narrator was watching the Martians while
still trapped.
Days 19 and 20 was when the narrator made his way to London.
Day 21 (early morning) was when the Martians were found dead.

I had War of the Worlds in my book collection and while I sat on watch eating peanuts
and drinking Coke, I read to keep myself entertained. It beat the heck out of being bored
or playing $64,000 Question with Ron. Surely by now the Martians had received the
1938 broadcast by Mercury Theatre of the air and knew that if they invaded our world,
we’d get them with biological weapons. Those dry roasted peanuts are a good snack if
you’re not allergic to peanuts.

They finally delivered the coal so we were ready for next winter. Funny, thinking about
next winter when we’re barely into spring. We’d just finished planting the last of the veg-
etables, but I’m concerned, it isn’t quite as warm as it has been in the past. Maybe there
is something to this theory Carl Sagan had about nuclear winter. It didn’t matter be-
cause I had all sorts of varieties of plants. Sure was nice having Dick to shovel the ma-
nure. About all I had to do now was use the rototiller to get the weeds out and a little bit
of hoe work between the plants.

We’re just trying to get by in face of great adversity. What’s it going to be like when they
get the electricity restored? Are they going to be able to get the Internet up or was that
just wishful thinking on the part of the Sheriff? Whoa, the Sheriff said they’d have the
phones up, he didn’t say anything about the Internet. We’ll, it wasn’t up yet even though

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TV service had long since been restored. People with cable TV had a choice of getting
Internet service from their cable provider or their telephone company. Since you know
where we live, you know that we didn’t have high-speed Internet available from either a
cable or telephone provider. That’s not to say that we didn’t have high-speed available,
but who wanted to spend $500 a month for T-1 service? We had (past tense) dialup,
almost an archaic form of service.

“I understand that you have some Browning Hi-Powers.”

“You should know, you returned them to us after the shootout last year with those 3 bad
guys.”

“I also understand that you were thinking of providing Ron with a 10/22.”

“That’s right Dick. Both of your children should have firearms and know how to safely
handle them. I can give both Ron and Susan a Browning and a 10/22. Susan is old
enough and big enough to handle the Browning and it’s totally up to you whether you
give the whiz kid a handgun.”

“Do you have any ball ammo we could use up for target practice? I really hate to use up
the Gold Dot.”

“I still have that case of M882 you gave me when you gave me the guns. Say, Ron is at
that age where he’s not old enough for a main battle rifle and we only have 2 M16s. I
still have the MP-5, you know.”

“Give a submachine gun to a 9 year old boy? Are you nuts?”

“He’s big for his age.”

“He’s 9 years old in his head. I’ll teach him to shoot a 10/22 and a Browning, but I think
that’s stretching the limits.”

“Maybe you’re right, Dick. But, what could it hurt to teach him to shoot the MP-5? As
long as you control the weapons, I believe that you should teach him to shoot both the
MP-5 and one of the M16s in addition to the Browning and the Ruger. I just wish I had a
Mini-14; it would be the perfect weapon for him. It would also serve as a good training
Platform for the M1A.”

“Honey, I need one gold Eagle.”

“What for?”

139
“I was talking to Dick about arming his kids and I happened to mention that a Mini-14
would be a perfect weapon for Ron. The more I think about it, the more I think it would
be a perfect weapon for both of those kids. It shoots the same ammo as the M16 and it
operates like a M1A. The recoil isn’t punishing in any way and I could get 2 Mini-14s
and enough of the 30-round magazines to equip both kids for an ounce of gold.”

“Good idea, mind if I ride along?”

“Good to have you. I just finished reading War of the Worlds. It wasn’t anything like the
movie, because it was set in England before WW I.”

“Was Orson Wells related to H.G. Wells?”

“Orson Welles, with an ‘E’, not Wells, Sue, different spelling. I don’t believe they were
related. Why did you ask?”

“One made the other more famous.”

“Scared the crap out of the country, or so I understand. In the aftermath of the reported
"panic," a public outcry arose, but CBS informed officials that listeners were reminded
throughout the broadcast that it was only a performance. Welles and the Mercury Thea-
tre escaped punishment, but not censure, and CBS had to promise never again to use
the "we interrupt this program" device for dramatic purposes.

A study by the Radio Project discovered that most of the people who panicked assumed
Germans - not Martians - had invaded. Other studies have suggested that the extent of
the panic was exaggerated by contemporary media

When a meeting between H.G. Wells and Orson Welles was broadcast on Radio KTSA
San Antonio on October 28, 1940 the former expressed a lack of understanding of the
apparent panic and suggested that it was, perhaps, only pretense put on, like the Amer-
ican version of Halloween, for fun. The two men and their radio interviewer joked politely
about the matter, though clearly with some embarrassment. KTSA, as a CBS affiliate,
had carried the original broadcast.”

“How do you know that?”

“Oh, it was mentioned in the book cover. The book was a reprint from the ‘80s. When
you consider that Wells wrote the book and it was published in 1898, it was ahead of its
time.”

The gun dealer wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to the Brady Law these days. You
showed him you CCW and filled out the 4473. If you had cash, gold or silver you could
be in and out in a few minutes. Providing, of course, he had what you wanted. He’d had
a run on guns early on, but this is New Mexico, not California, and most of the people in
Alamogordo already had a few firearms. He had a couple of the ranch rifles and a large

140
number of the 30-round PMI aftermarket magazines. The only thing he was short on
was .223 ammo. We bought his last case of surplus .223. We were in and out in under
½ hour.

“Dick, Sue and I went shopping. These rifles are for the kids, but it’s up to you and Mary
to decide when they can have them. We got them each a rifle, 10 30-round magazines
and a ½ case of .223.”

“It’s still a lot of rifle for Ron, Barry. Being around weapons as he has since we moved
here, he’s been advocating for a rifle of his own. But I thought you were thinking about
the 10/22s.”

“I was, but the Mini-14 seemed like a better solution. Anyway, I brought you the 2 rifles
and 2 of the Browning’s with 5 mags each. The dealer was low on .223, so they’ll have
to split the case of surplus.”

“I really don’t know what to say.”

“If you agree with what Sue and I decided, thank you would be more than sufficient.”

I’d noticed when I gone into their house that Mary was wearing a Beretta in a dropdown
thigh holster. I could only imagine that the issue of whether or not she was willing to pro-
tect her family had been resolved. It would be up to the parents to decide when the kids
got their weapons and when they were taught to shoot. We had bigger fish to fry, we
needed to lower the mast and add another SINCGARS antenna for Dick and Mary’s ra-
dio. I had to finish weeding between the plants in the garden and Dick had to finish his
chores in the barn. Two things were of paramount importance, our security and growing
food for the coming year.

Mary and Sue talked quite a bit, about what I have no idea. Unless it was something
important, Sue rarely shared. On the 12th of June, electricity was restored so I picked
up the phone to see if the telephone company was back too. Nada. I let the generator
cool off and serviced it so when the power went back down, we’d still have electricity. I
set the system to make the new generator the primary unit and gave our longtime com-
panion a rest. That generator had been a good investment, it had run 7,000-hours and
we hadn’t had a bit of trouble. I’d serviced it regularly and in return it had kept us in
lights for 10 months.

“We should call the Chevron distributor and see if he can top our tanks off,” Sue sug-
gested.

“Did I tell you how he covered the fuel he sold us? Reported it as shrinkage, e.g. stolen.
I wonder if we could talk him into topping everything off if we gave him all the coupons
we have?”

141
“I rather doubt that, dear. Not when he can get $1.50 per gallon over the fixed price and
get away with reporting it as stolen.”

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 The Asian Question – Chapter 27

We needed just over 2,000-gallons to refill the tanks and yes, at $1.50 a gallon over the
fixed price, we could buy more #2 diesel. We worked it out that he should bring exactly
2,000-gallons and it was to be treated with all of the PRI products. We weren’t so short
on fuel that we couldn’t divert some of the rationed fuel to finish off the tanks. We didn’t
make many trips to Alamogordo and since each family was getting 10 gallons per week,
we were getting the diesel in 5-gallon cans and adding it to the storage tanks.

I had serviced the generator 36 times and at 6 quarts per, had a full drum of used oil.
There was a place in Alamogordo where we could empty the drum and they’d even take
the used oil filters. The drop off was free, but I’m willing to bet that one of these days
you’ll buy a can of recycled oil that spent 200 hours in my generator. Motor oil doesn't
wear out - it just gets dirty. The oil you take to a collection center to be recycled saves
energy. It can be reprocessed and used in furnaces for heat, or in power plants to gen-
erate electricity for homes, schools and businesses. It can also be made into lubricating
oils that meet the same specifications as virgin motor oil.

I probably didn’t mention that one of the things I planted was peas. I put in 2 extra hills
of potatoes just so we could have new potatoes and peas. I think the time of the year I
love best is in the spring and early summer when the first crops start coming in with
fresh green beans, new potatoes and peas, fresh lettuce and radishes and all those
things that taste so fresh and good.

Dick and Mary had a small upright freezer, about 14ft³. During their Army days, she’d
stock up on things, occasionally, when the commissary had a special because of an
overstock. Sue and she went through our big chest freezer and pulled the oldest things
out and gave them to them so they could get used up before they freezer burned. I
didn’t get involved in their playing musical freezers but I believe that Dick was pressed
into service hauling a few boxes of food.

A person has to understand how rationing works. They don’t ration everything, just the
things that are hard to get. We had a cow and she produced milk. We could skim the
cream and produce our own butter and even a little cheese. Fresh skim milk still tastes
better than instant. Dick took the 2 mares over to another ranch for breeding. He sug-
gested we wait a year on the fillies. That was fine with me, but it occurred to me that we
had 4 adults and 2 children and only 2 mares and 2 fillies. Breeding the mares would
preclude us riding them and the fillies had to finish growing and be broken to saddle.

To keep the cow fresh, she’d have to be bred too. The only way to guarantee a supply
of fresh milk year around was to have 2 cows on different breeding cycles. With 4 pigs
we could keep one female, have her bred and begin producing our own pork. I don’t
know what you think, but it sounds to me like this place is turning into a farm or ranch.
And, with an increasing herd of livestock, sooner or later it meant I’d be shoveling ma-
nure again. We couldn’t keep buying hay; we still weren’t getting my Disability or pen-

143
sion. I’d never realized before how dependent the country had become on the telephone
and data links.

“Can we plant alfalfa?”

“Where? You don’t own any land to plant alfalfa on, or did I misunderstand?”

“The remainder of the ranch has lain fallow ever since we moved here. I think the peo-
ple who bought it must have been looking at a long-term investment and eventually a
housing tract or something. I don’t see why we can’t use the land to grow feed for our
livestock.”

“Barry, you don’t have any farm equipment. To grow and harvest hay, you’d need a
tractor, mower, rake, baler, wagon at a minimum.”

“I have a machine shed so all it’s going to take is money to get those things, right?”

“Do you have the money? I know you said that you and your wife still had a little gold,
but that’s a lot of equipment.”

“Money isn’t the problem. Find the minimum equipment you need might be. We have
lots of fuel so it would have to be a diesel tractor, assuming we bought a tractor. We
could get a couple of wagons and use the pickups to pull those. As far as the other stuff,
I think we can hire it done.”

“If you’re going to grow hay, we’d better get started, Barry. We’ve already lost one cut-
ting.”

“You take care of it, Dick. What I know about farming and raising crops wouldn’t fill the
inside cover of a gardening book.”

“What about grain?”

“If you can find it, we can buy it. Tell Sue what you need and where to get it. I…”

Ring… ring… ring.

“What was that?”

“The phone! We have phone service back.”

++++

Dick and Mary didn’t have a phone line. When we’d set the trailer, that hadn’t been a
consideration. They trailer was wired, but we only had 2 phone lines, one for voice and
the other solely for Internet. Sue and I discussed it and she told me that the phone

144
company said it would take a couple of weeks to add a third line. She said they’d have
to make a service call and connect the third pair of wires. I usually surfed the web at
night so I told Dick to use our Internet line to provide them with phone service to their
trailer. When the phone company put in the 3rd line, we’d restore the line back to our
computer and they could put the third line in their name.

If you’re looking for adventure, you can come to the OP and watch for the bad guys
yourself. We had been attacked more than enough. What was it, 3 times? The first time
was those 3 guys we shot, the 2nd was the guys the Army took out and the 3rd time
was when we were doing our Neighborhood Watch thing. But, I had a sinking feeling,
especially after that session with the Sheriff. North of Tularosa the only real community
was Salinas and beyond that Three Rivers. To the east, on US 70 was Bent and it was
about 10 miles, give or take. Both communities were in Otero County and the Sheriff
had equipped them with SINCGARS radios. Because of their locations, the Sheriff had
designated Three Rivers as Unit 1 and Bent as Unit 2. Our little homestead was Unit 12
unless we got excited. In that case, we seemed to revert to Ryan Ranch.

I had finished weeding and had eaten lunch. It was Coke time and I went upstairs to the
OP to drink my Coke and listen to the radio.

“Unit 12, Unit 2.”

“This is Unit 12, what’s up?”

“You didn’t hear the previous radio calls?”

“Negative, what’s up?”

“We advised the Sheriff that Salinas was under attack. Has he come by your place yet?”

“I didn’t hear any sirens. When did you call?”

“Ten minutes ago.”

“Sorry, but his usual response time to our 20 is 15-20 minutes. Sitrep?” (A SITREP, Sit-
uation Report, is defined as "an update to an existing report, issued as conditions
change or events begin to unfold." Put simply, it's a method of keeping everyone in-
formed.)

“We got the crap kicked out of us but they didn’t stay. You have several vehicles coming
towards you.”

“Roger. How many?”

“I didn’t get a chance to count. Several, at least 6.”

145
“Roger.”

“This is Sheriff’s Dispatch, The Sheriff reports that they’re just south of Tularosa. ETA at
Unit 12 is 5 minutes and at Unit 2 is 15 minutes.”

“Unit 12, Roger.”

I took off like my pants were on fire yelling for Dick, Mary and Sue to get ready for in-
coming. I didn’t mention the kids, because I didn’t know what Mary and he had decided
back when I gave them the firearms (last week). The four of them came out carrying
weapons, question answered. Sue was up in the OP (Observation Post) with her M-40
pointed out the left firing slit. Dick and Mary began putting a belt in the Ma Deuce and
the kids came upstairs. I grabbed something for them to stand on and apparently doing
as they were taught, they inserted magazines and cycled the actions on their Mini-14s.
The Claymores were still in their packaging, a fat lot of good they were going to do.

“This is the Sheriff. We’re turning on to US 54. Unit 12, are you still in the clear?”

“Affirmative.”

I could hear the sirens now; the Sheriff couldn’t be more than a mile away, maybe less.
Just then, the vehicles coming in from Salinas passed by.

“Sheriff, Unit 12. They just passed.”

The Sheriff didn’t respond. Ten seconds later we heard gunfire. I spoke into my FRS
radio, advising, “Standby, they might be back.”

Just about then, a Jeep Wagoneer, maybe a ’90, backed into view. Dick and Mary
opened up with the .50 cal and the vehicle exploded, blocking the road. Moments later,
a 2nd vehicle stopped and disgorged its occupants. Sue opened fire, as did the chil-
dren. I didn’t have a target and couldn’t see the point of shooting just for the sake of it. I
doubt the kids had targets either, but they were managing to keep the people in that ve-
hicle heads down. Dick and Mary abandoned the Ma Deuce and lobbed 40mm gre-
nades in the general area where the people had moved.

Then a man stood with a RPG-7 on his shoulder and before anyone could totally react,
fired the missile. He had a good idea and had his aim been true and we had not added
armor plate and bullet resistance glass, we would have surely died. One of the kids fired
just moments before the rocket was released and the guy took a round in the shoulder.
This forced him to lean back slightly and caused the rocket to fly high, over the house.
Sue ended his discomfort with a well place shot, center mass. I said, “Screw it,” and
opened up with the M1A doing my best imitation of spray and pray with a semi auto rifle.
I only wanted to keep these peoples’ heads down.

146
“Dick, hose that area down with the 50 cal, we need to keep them from getting any
closer to the house.”

I was still holding the mike button when Ma Deuce started to talk with short, carefully
spaced bursts. In response, we stopped receiving fire. The thunder of the Sheriff’s peo-
ple and the militia firing was moving closer too. This bunch was boxed up tight and ap-
parently failed to realize that they could escape US 54 into an open area and possibly
avoid detection. I can only conclude that they didn’t know the area.

Dick must not have had a chance to complete the children’s’ training. Ron got a stove-
pipe and he was out of action. I grabbed his rifle yanked the bolt back hard, cleared the
action and returned his rifle. “Velda, make a note; we have to finish up the kid’s training
before this happens again.”

“What are you babbling about?”

“Nothing, keep shooting.”

“I don’t have a target.”

“Sue, switch to your M1A and lay down covering fire.”

Do you remember the line out of Top Gun where Stinger says to ready cats 3 and 4 and
launch Willard and Simpkins?

“Both Catapults are broken Sir.”

“How long will it take?”
“It'll take ten minutes.”
“Bull shit ten minutes! This thing will be over in two minutes! Get on it!”

It came to mind because a minute later all of the firing stopped.

“Unit 12, stand down, the situation is under control.”

The Sheriff did a short after action debrief. He credited Dick and Mary with blocking the
road and making the outcome possible. Then, he offered Dick a job as a Deputy. I held
my breath, but Dick declined. The Sheriff then offered him a position as a Reserve Dep-
uty and he could stay right here on the farmstead.

When Dick, accept his offer, I suggested, “It couldn’t hurt to have an extra Reserve
Deputy here.”

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 The Asian Question – Chapter 27

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, go for it. Then if the ATF shows up, we can claim you own all of the NFA weap-
ons.”

“Well… fine.”

After the mess on the road was cleaned up and the militia and Sheriff’s people had re-
turned to Alamogordo, I managed to corner Dick to discuss the kids.

“Ron had a smokestack jam and was uncertain how to clear it.”

“Oh, he knows how, I taught him. The problem probably was that he simply lacked the
strength to pull back hard enough on the bolt.”

“If that’s the case, we’d better not let the children operate alone.”

“Good point. The only thing that’s worse to handle is a case separation or a misfire that
lodges a bullet in the bore. I’ll locate cleaning kit for the M16 that they can carry to clear
the bores. I’ll also have to come up with case extractors. Mary and I will keep working
with them until they can do it all in their sleep.”

“Can Ron work the action on the Browning?”

“Barely, but yes. I don’t want to have him carrying cocked and locked, so we’ll work on
that too.”

“He got that guy with the RPG in the shoulder, you know. The boy really saved our ba-
con. You tell your kids that those rifles and pistols are theirs to keep. If I can find them
M1As, I intend to buy them for when they’re bigger.”

“Let’s ask the Sheriff what they came up with when they collected the weapons from
that bunch we took care of earlier.”

“I’ll phone. We’ll want 4 M1As and another pair of M16s.”

“Barry Ryan, is the Sheriff in? I’ll hold.”

“Sheriff, what did you come up with weapons on that bunch we stopped today? Oh, 4
M1As and a pair of M16s. Yes, I could live with 1 HK91 and 2 M1As, what about M16s?
Are the HBARS Colt? Yeah, that will work, any chance we could get them? No, I don’t
need a lot of M1A magazines but I’ll take all of the M16 and HK91 magazines you can
spare. At least 10 per weapon. What about ammo? Is that all? Fine 2 cases of 7.62 and

148
one of 5.56. We’ll be into Alamogordo within the hour. We’ll take any .50 caliber belted
you can find.

++++

“The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances
and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring
about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of prox-
imity and degree. When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of
peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long
as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional
right.”

The 1919 Supreme Court decision in Schenck was reversed in 1951 in Dennis and re-
stored in 1969 in Brandenburg. The Brandenburg decision changed the test to the im-
minent lawless action test. In the original case, Holmes said, “The most stringent protec-
tion of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing
a panic.”

It came up because that evening, Sue put on the old Harrison Ford movie based on
Tom Clancy’s story, A Clear and Present Danger. It was nice having the net back up
and I was curious where the expression first came from. How they managed to convert
the test for freedom of speech into part of the plot for an action movie was a mystery.

The adaptation that Dick had worked out to install the M203s on the M1As, proved to be
unsatisfactory because, although it worked, it moved the center of gravity of the weapon
too far forward. Instead, we used the things out of the SOPMOD kit to mount the M203s
on the AR-15s. Mary and Dick took the 2 M1As. The extra HK91 made it to my rifle rack
in the OP. We could get adapters but the supply of Surefire suppressors had totally
dried up. The easiest thing to do was to install adapters on all of the 7.62 weapons that
lacked one.

It might be appropriate here to list the weapons in our armories: 2 M1A Loadeds; 2
HK91s; 1 M-40; 2 11-97 with magazine extensions; 2 10/22s; 2 Browning Hi Power; 2
M1911s; 1 MP5; and, 1 M2HB. Dick and Mary had, including the kids, had: 1 M1911; 1
Remington 870; 1 Marlin model 39A; 2 Beretta 92FS; 2 M16A3; 2 Colt AR-15 HBAR, 2
Browning Hi-Powers; and 2 M1As. In addition to the weapons, we had 12 M18A1 Clay-
more mines, a substantial quantity of concussion, fragmentation and smoke hand gre-
nades, 4 M203s and a substantial supply of 40mm grenades, hand grenades and the
LAWs. You might say that if you wanted trouble, this was the right place to visit.

“Can you get any more of the Claymores?”

149
“Barry, that’s hard to say, I can call, but it would depend on what my friend in Logistics
can come up with. Expendables are always easier to get than equipment. Anything else
you’d want?”

“If you can get suppressors for those AR-15s, I wouldn’t mind and if you could come up
with some Surefire 7.62mm suppressors, we could always use 4 more.”

“The standard SOPMOD kit doesn’t contain the suppressor, those are separate. As for
the Surefire suppressors, I don’t know if they even have any. I’ll try.”

With our latest acquisitions from the Sheriff, everyone had at least two shoulder weap-
ons, a primary rifle and a backup. A County crew cleaned up the destroyed vehicles and
patched the highway. I was beginning to realize why no one had wanted the place back
in the late ‘90s – road noise and bad traffic. In 20 years, assuming we lived that long, it
wouldn’t make a bit of difference. That last adventure was a mix of bad luck and good
luck. Good because they passed us by and bad because they came back. The best
piece of luck was Ron hitting that guy with the RPG in the shoulder just as he fired. The
grenade can penetrate up to 330mm of steel.

“Sue, how would you feel about planting some trees between the house and the road?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“You could call it a wind break or anything that suited your fancy, Sue. We need some-
thing that grows fast. Maybe some poplars.”

“You’re being foolish, dear. It will take those trees 2-4 years to get established and big
enough to provide any cover.”

“It has been nearly a year, and I see things getting worse, not better. This area isn’t get-
ting any attention because the Chinese didn’t hit it. In case you haven’t noticed, this last
group was by far the largest. Einstein said that he didn’t know what weapons they’d use
to fight WW III, but they’d use clubs to fight WW IV. In my heart, I truly believe that this
is the beginning, not the end.”

“Are you saying that even though we survived the attack, it’s the end of the world?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. I will go so far as to suggest that it will take a number of years to
restore civilization, as we’ve known it. I think we can grow a herd of livestock and meet
our needs for food, especially with Dick and Mary to help. I also think it will be worse
than having gold and silver. Unless we can turn the country around, food is going to be-
come precious, especially meat.”

“What kind of trees do you want?”

150
“Lombardy poplars grow fast and if you space them close together present quite a bar-
rier.”

Allow me to say that sometimes the ideas I get are a whole lot of work to implement. I
had the idea to grow our own alfalfa and Dick was left to manage that. He found ground
feed for the livestock and had to arrange to store it in the loft of the barn. Sue went to
town and found the poplars but I had to plant them. I decided on 3 rows with the plants
and rows spaced 3’ apart. When they filled in, the trees would be better than having a
living stonewall.

I’m too old for this crap. I was busy weeding the garden, planting trees and growing blis-
ters. Sue attended the next meeting at the Sheriff’s office and reported that the general
sentiment was that that bunch we’d taken out was the major gang in the area. With
them gone, we should be secure. I kept planting trees, we might be done for a while, but
my gut told me it wouldn’t last. I may be slow, but I’m not stupid and was still learning. In
some ways, things were about the same as before the war, but in others, we’d gone
around a dark corner and had entered a period of unrest unrivaled in American history.

The plants were about 6’ tall. According to the pamphlet that came with the trees, they’d
take up to 10 years to turn into a solid barrier. Fine, it would take the same period of
time to really build a large herd of livestock. I discussed it with Sue and we sat Mary and
Dick down at the kitchen table to tell them how we saw things.

“Dick, I’ve decided that we’re going to use whatever land we need to grow feed. The
farm operation will be totally your responsibility. You’d better start to lie in supplies of
what seed you think you’re going to need. If you need equipment, Sue and you can go
shopping. My pension finally hit but I’m still behind on my disability payments. It’s almost
unimportant because of the inflation. If you do get equipment, get used. You need to es-
tablish a breeding program to increase our herd. I don’t want to develop a siege mentali-
ty, here. Our only son, Barry Jr. died and we don’t have any family to inherit what we
have when we’re gone. We’ve drawn up papers transferring what we have to Mary and
you when the time comes.”

“I left the farm to join the Army, Barry. I never planned on being a farmer.”

“Neither did I. If you had told me 10 years ago I’d be shoveling manure, I’d have said
you were crazy. Sue tells me that the fuel we have stored is the last we’re going to see
for a very long time. It would seem that we’re going to need to come up with an alterna-
tive means of generating electricity; the fuel is too valuable to run the generators unless
we can get more. It took them from August until June to get the electricity back up and
we can’t count on it lasting.”

“What kind of arrangement do you want to have?”

151
“How about a full share, 50-50? When we’re gone it will all be yours.”

“Where are the kids going to go to school?” Mary asked.

“Tularosa had an Elementary, Middle and High School. I don’t know if they’ll have bus
service, but they’re only a couple of miles away.”

“I’m inclined to say yes, Barry, but let Mary and me talk it over.”

“How did you make out down at Ft. Bliss with your friend in supply?”

“It cost Sue 6 ounces of gold, but I got everything on your list and a lot of ammo. He
said that they were running into resupply problems and that this would probably be the
last time he had anything available to let go. That’s how he does it, creating shortages
in incoming shipments.”

“Did you get all of the rifles suppressed?”

“I did, but I couldn’t get suppressors for the pistols. The one thing on your list I didn’t get
was M18A1 mines.”

“Can we rig the 12 we have to protect the driveway?”

“Six on each side?”

“If that’s what you’d recommend. We could make them remotely detonated from the
OP.”

“I’ll take care of it. How big of a herd to you want to grow?”

“We’ll keep all of the female cattle and up to 20 sows. We’ll have to get breeding stock
to become independent. I think we’re going to have to dry lot the livestock, that high
chaparral won’t provide much feed.”

This was all working out well with Dick being a Reserve Deputy but no duties off the
farm/ranch. We had legitimacy to our having the NFA weapons and as you know by
now, we had our share. In time, the Mini-14s were retired from the kids’ primary weapon
to their secondary weapon. They moved up to the Colt HBARs and it didn’t seem to
matter to them that the weapons weren’t capable of burst or continuous fire. That Susan
took a growth spurt and she was nearly as tall as Mary. I figured it was just a matter of
time before Ron added a foot to his size. It was like those trees I planted, just a matter
of time.

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 The Asian Question – Chapter 28

It had been a while since I’d had time to make notes in my journal, what with harvesting
and canning and helping Dick get the baled hay into the barn. The kids started school
last week and we were most fortunate, bus service was available. Dick said we couldn’t
breed the 2 fillies until age 3. We passed the first anniversary of the attack on the United
States and of course, we had a new Congress and Obama edged out McCain. I can on-
ly think that it was a party thing, but I was sure that with the big cities gone, McCain was
a shoo-in. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d voted for the loser and probably not the last.

The Democrat Party had been making huge promises about rebuilding the country and
putting food on everyone’s table. They had pushed through legislation almost immedi-
ately raising taxes. I didn’t care; a person had to have an income to be subject to an in-
come tax. At least they resumed Social Security payments. That bank gave us a choice
of Federal Reserve notes at face value or gold at $1,600 an ounce. We took the gold.
Between my pension and the Disability, we were pulling out about 1½ ounces of gold
per month.

One thing that no one had counted on was the brisk trade in ration stamps. I wasn’t
alive in WW II so I don’t know how it worked then, but these ration stamps sort of looked
like Food Stamps and weren’t assigned to an individual. Most of the things we wanted
weren’t rationed to begin with and how many sets of tires do you need? Sue and Mary
went to the store shopping about once a month and when they were there would trade
off the ration coupons they didn’t need to people in exchange for things they did want.
You may recall that New Mexico grows pinto beans, right? Bumper crop this year, de-
spite the lower than normal temperatures.

Labor Day was just that, another day of labor. The kids were out of school so they
helped in the garden. We’d replanted some crops and were getting a second harvest.
We were running out of mason jars and none of the people in Alamogordo were willing
to part with their used spaghetti sauce jars this year. We bought what we could and
ended up freezing some vegetables that we normally canned. After checking around
about getting the steer and the hogs butchered, Dick and I concluded that we’d have to
do it ourselves. We decided to wait until October when it was cold so the meat didn’t
spoil. He’d used some of the surplus plywood in the machine shed to construct a smoke
house and we’d brine and smoke the hams, picnics and bacon ourselves.

We’d butchered chickens in July and kept 2-dozen hens for layers. Word was that pul-
lets would be available this coming year so we didn’t try to grow our own chicks. Once
we’d figured out what it would cost to have custom work done, we also concluded we’d
be better off with our own farm equipment. We’d started with a Ford tractor and a
broadcast seeder. Then while the alfalfa was growing, found a mower and repaired the
sickle bar and ledger plates. We finally found a pull type twine baler and several rolls of
twine. Dick let the bales drop in the field and later, we used 2 wagons to load and haul
the hay to the barn. Sue drove the tractor, I worked the wagon and Dick lifted the bales

153
up from the ground. If anyone ever tells you that hard work won’t kill you, don’t believe
him.

“I’m tired.”

“Good, once you get those jars down to the basement you can take the rest of the day
off.”

“How much did you get canned today?”

“Six batches of 14 jars each, 7 cases. That second crop of cucumbers looks like they’re
about ready to make into pickles. Do you want more bread and butter, or do you want
dill or sweet pickles?”

“Could you do half dill and half sweet? I prefer sweet on my peanut butter sandwiches.”

“I can do whatever you want, Barry. We should get about 21 quarts of each.”

“That’s a lot of pickles.”

“You forget that we’re feeding 6 mouths, not 2. Did Dick and you decide when you were
going to butcher?”

“I thought I told you. We’ll butcher when it gets cold so we can hang the meat in the ma-
chine shed to age. We’re going to butcher the steer and 3 pigs. Dick says he can get
that female pig bred and we can have 10 pigs next year. How are we doing on food?”

“You can’t imagine what a difference it makes churning your own butter and producing
your own cheese. About the only thing we use a ration coupon for is to buy sugar.”

Frankly, I’m surprised that gold has stayed as low as it has. Back in the ’97-’01 time pe-
riod, gold was under $300. By December of ’05, it had topped $500 an ounce. The cur-
rent trading was at $1,600 an ounce and the banks were back to dealing in gold and sil-
ver. Silver had slowly slid up to almost $20 an ounce. I had expected gold to top $1,800
by the end of the year, but the banker said that he doubted it would. When we pulled
our money out each month, we sort of mixed it up, sometimes taking 3 ½ ounce Eagles,
other times taking 6 ¼ ounce and sometimes taking 15 1∕10th ounce coins. One month we
took silver to have money to do our buying with.

It snowed in early September and Sue did manage to get Dick and Mary’s propane
topped off. We bought that coal back in spring and now I was back to shoveling. The
snow stopped the growing season dead in its tracks. We had no more than got the pota-
toes out of the ground than we got 3” of snow. Temperatures vary with elevation. At
higher elevations, 7,000 feet and up, summer nights are a chilly 40°F and days are a

154
warm 78°F, while winter temperatures can drop to 15°F at night and rise to 40-50°F dur-
ing the day. At lower elevations, 6,000-7,000 feet, winter temperatures rarely fall below
0°F and usually run from the teens to 50°F. Summer temperatures range from 50° to
85°F. At the lowest elevations, 4,000 to 6,000 feet, temperatures are generally 10°
higher throughout the year. Are you interested in the history of our area?

250 million years ago, a shallow sea that covered most of eastern New Mexico covered
what is now the Tularosa Basin. Marine deposits and sediment filled the bottom of this
shallow sea. These sediments would eventually form the gypsum-bearing sedimentary
deposit that gave birth to White Sands. 70 million years ago, as the Rocky Mountains
were being formed, this area was uplifted out of the ancient sea and formed a dome.
Beginning 10 million years ago, the center of the dome began to collapse, forming the
Tularosa Basin. The remaining sides of the dome are what we now see as the San An-
dres and Sacramento mountain ranges forming the perimeter of the Tularosa Basin.

Gypsum normally is not found in the form of sand. Gypsum is soluble in water, thus it is
normally dissolved by rain and snow and flushed out to sea. Gypsum in the sedimentary
rock layers in the mountains surrounding the Tularosa Basin was dissolved by rain and
snow and carried into the basin. The Tularosa Basin has no natural drainage. Water
that enters the basin either sinks into the ground or pools in low points within the basin.
Lake Lucero is just such a low spot.

Gypsum-rich waters have collected in Lake Lucero for the past 10 million years. As the
waters have collected and evaporated, gypsum got deposited on the surface of Lake
Lucero in crystalline form, called selenite. In geologic history, there have been cycles
that were very wet, followed by times of evaporation. This allowed the formation of very
long crystals of selenite, some up to three feet long. These crystals eventually get bro-
ken down by wind, freezing and thawing and eventually form sand-size particles that are
carried by the prevailing winds forming the dunes that we know as White Sands. I
thought you might be wondering where the white sand came from, I was curious when
we moved here.

The White Sands National Monument is a US National Monument located about 25km
(15 miles) southwest of Alamogordo. The area is in the mountain-ringed Tularosa Basin
valley area and comprises the southern part of a 710km² (275-square mile) field of white
sand dunes composed of hypsum crystals. From the visitor center at the entrance of the
park, the Dunes Drive leads 8 miles (12 km) into the dunes. Four marked trails allow
you to explore the dunes by foot. During the summer, there used to be Ranger-guided
orientation and nature walks. In areas accessible by car, kids frequently use the dunes
for sledding downhill. The park lies completely within the White Sands Missile Range,
and both the park and the US 54 between the park and Las Cruces may be closed for
safety reasons while tests are conducted on the missile range. On average, this used to
happen about twice a week, with a duration of one to two hours.

155
In the classic rules of war, in particular in many of the Christian theological systems,
asymmetric warfare is completely moral in and of itself, all other rules of war being
obeyed. This entails:

• Noncombatants cannot be attacked

• The war is a properly declared war, with an accountable authority on both sides who
can also put an end to the war.

What it is also called is 4th Generation Warfare. Fourth generation warfare directly at-
tacks the will of the technologically advantaged opponent to prevail in the conflict.

These groups that were attacking farms, ranches and small communities were not fol-
lowing the classical rules of war. It was evident because they weren’t following the rules
outlined above. They’d sneak into a community and begin to remove resistance. When
the principal resistance, mostly law enforcement or National Guard was removed, citi-
zens were attacked, individually or in groups. When they hit a ranch or farm, they
seemed to be depending on raw strength. While our area hadn’t been hit since that at-
tack in spring, other areas weren’t so fortunate. The Saturday after Labor Day, the Sher-
iff called another meeting.

“Listen up, people. I SAID LISTEN UP! We’ve had a good harvest and the groups out
there have left us alone during the summer. Intelligence indicates that their pattern is to
select a small community and go to ground until the weather warms up. We have no
idea of whether or not they’ll try to do that in Otero County. If they do, it would seem
likely that Bent, Three Rivers or one of the other outlying communities could be a likely
target. I want to institute reinforced patrols through the winter. That will mean that those
among you who are Reserve Deputies will be asked put in 3 days a week.”

“Our second step will be to station well-armed groups in the small communities capable
of providing some resistance in the event of an attack. Again, we can use the militia. For
those of you familiar with the old militia, our new organization if far different. We have
removed most of the white supremacists and ultra conservatives and are aligned with
the New Mexico State Guard; a State Defense Force component of the New Mexico
State Military Forces authorized under Chapter 20, New Mexico statutes amended,
1978. The New Mexico State Guard, New Mexico Army National Guard and the New
Mexico Air National Guard form the triad of active elements of the New Mexico Depart-
ment of Military Affairs (NM-DOMA) under the Adjutant General of New Mexico.”

“As you know, the age limits for service in the State Defense Force are 18 to 64. We
need several different skills if we are to defend Otero County. Those of you in the upper
age brackets will assume the duties of observers. Younger men and women, especially
those with recent military experience will be utilized either has officers, non-commission
officers or as members of the Sheriff’s Reserve. I have handouts on the requirement for
the New Mexico State Defense on the table. Please take one on your way out. While
this is rather short notice, we’d like to have everyone’s answer within 10 days. That all I
have at the moment. Barry could Dick and you stop by my office?”

156
Dick and I were sitting in the back with Sue and Mary, making every effort to not be no-
ticed. Crap, he’d seen us and wanted to visit with us. I was thinking about maybe har-
vesting a few trees and building our supply of firewood because Sue said we couldn’t
get coal next year. I knew it was a mistake to wear my $600 cowboy hat.

“Yes, Sheriff, can we help you?”

“I’m primarily interested in visiting with Dick, Barry. Dick how would you feel about turn-
ing in your badge and taking a position with the State Defense Force as a Sergeant
First Class?”

“I was only an E-5 Sergeant in the Army, Sheriff.”

“Your experience is the most current of anyone available. You’ve only been out a few
months and according to your records, you completed the NCO Academy, or whatever
they call it these days. The Adjutant General approved the promotion. Can we count on
you?”

“Sheriff, I’ve attended a few of your meetings and I must say you’re a man of few words.
How soon do you have to know?”

“I can give you 15 minutes.”

“Excuse us then, I’ll be back.”

“Mary, what do you say?”

“It’s up to you, honey.”

“Barry, can you spare me?”

“What’s left to do?”

“Feed the livestock, milk the cow and clean up the manure.”

“Darn, I knew it. Sure why not, I love smelling like the barn.”

“Barry, it will give you an excuse to drink up the Bud,” Sue chuckled.

“In case you haven’t notice the only time I had any beer was on the 4th of July. I didn’t
even get a chance on Labor Day, we were so busy.”

“I’ll tell the Sheriff yes, and get the details,” Dick suggested.

157
Man, was it cold that night. The forecast said mainly clear skies. Low 26°F. Winds light
and variable. Feels like 21°. And when it felt like 21°, it was still up at 28°. That was go-
ing to put the frost on the pumpkins and I added extra scoops of coal to the furnace. I
was thinking that we’d better get those hogs and steer butchered before Dick took off for
the Defense Force. We had only wanted to wait until November because of cold weath-
er and if this didn’t qualify, I can’t tell you what would. The expected high on Sunday
was going to be in the mid-50s. This was about the only time I missed California and
considering that LA had been blown to hell and kingdom come, I’d live with the cold.

Of course the living room window where we had the Ma Deuce set up didn’t have a
storm window and that side of the living room tended to be drafty. I tried to keep a fat
log on the fireplace to compensate. Wait a minute, if Dick is off playing soldier, how are
we going to cut wood? And if we kill and skin the beef and hogs, I wonder who is going
to end up cutting the meat up?

“Sue, would you check with the grocery store in Alamogordo tomorrow and see if you
can find someone to cut and wrap our meat?”

“I thought Dick and you were going to do that.”

“We were, but he’s going to be gone by the time the meat is ready to cut up. Tell them
we have 2 sides of beef and 3 hogs. We want the hams, picnics and bacon cut out so I
can cure and smoke them and the remainder of the meat cut and wrapped.”

“Do you know how to cure and smoke the meat?”

“I don’t have a clue, but the Internet is back up. You could ask if they do that, but I think
they get their smoked and cured products from the packing plant.”

She found a guy who would cut and wrap the meat. She asked me what bacon cuts I
wanted and I told her I didn’t have a clue, whatever it was we bought in the store. I took
the meat in the following Wednesday and went back on Thursday to get the meat I had
to cure. I concluded that the easiest thing to do was brine cure the meat and then
smoke it. Sue suggest that I add a little honey and it would produce honey cured, or
sweet bacon and ham. Sounded good to me, I always wondered what a honey cured
ham was anyway. After soaking the meat the prescribed time in the brine, I started a
smoldering fire in the smoke house with hickory chips and smoked it as recommended.
The proof would come on Christmas when we tried the first ham.

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 The Asian Question – Chapter 29

In early October, Three Rivers got hit. The only thing in Three Rivers was that burned
out of a shell of a building. That was probably where the militia unit was. I was in the OP
monitoring the radio out of one ear and listening to Fox News with the other. Fox didn’t
give a clue where they were broadcasting from, probably a local station’s extra studio. I
didn’t recognize the new announcer either. He was talking about the cleanup in Dallas,
very uninteresting.

“Dispatch, Unit 1.”

“Dispatch.”

“Mayday. Unit 1 is being overrun by an unfriendly force, Mayday.”

“Roger Unit 1, forces being dispatched from Tularosa and Alamogordo. You’ll have half
in 15 minutes and the remainder in 25.”

“Dispatch, we don’t hav…”

The remainder of the transmission ended with the sound of gunfire.

“Unit 1, Dispatch. Unit 1, Dispatch. Aw, crap.”

I kicked my awareness level up a notch, dumped Fox and turned the radio a little louder,
hoping against hope that Three Rivers hadn’t been overrun. About the only thing a radio
is good for is to transmit your message of despair. I listened as units of the militia were
dispatched to back up the cars in route to Three Rivers. Three Rivers is about 17 miles
north of Tularosa on US 54 and it’s not a town. It was once a part of a ranch owned by
Susan Barber, known as the "Cattle Queen of New Mexico". It isn’t even listed as one of
the communities in Otero County on Wikipedia.

Dispatch kept trying to reach Unit 1 but Three Rivers was off the air. One of these days
Dispatch is going to call us and if we haven’t been overrun, we’ll be too busy shooting to
answer. It looks like those poplars might make it through the winter and by this time next
year, could be 7-8’ tall. One, if we live that long, they’ll reach 50-70’ and put a solid bar-
rier between the house and the road. By the way, Dick’s unit was assigned to Tularosa
so he made it home most nights.

The call finally came in from the units dispatched to Three Rivers. Nada. There wasn’t a
single soul to be found, on either side. Whoever it was even took the SINCGARS radio
and antenna. Within an hour, everyone received a message to change the TSK setting
on the radios. That brought to mind and interesting question, the SINCGARS had to be
set to the correct time within 4 seconds and that was accomplished with the GPS func-
tion. Was the government still putting up GPS satellites? There are at least 24 GPS sat-

159
ellites and the military replaces 2 per year, the failure rate. I didn’t really know the an-
swer, but the SINCGARS still worked and it depended on the GPS data.

What the Hell? It wasn’t a lot of people, but there was a militia unit there. It didn’t bode
well if we lost the Three Rivers OP and that SINCGARS radio. It seemed obvious to me
that things in the County weren’t good when they changed the SINCGARS frequency
hopping codes. Dick could explain when he got home this evening.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“What’s the story up in Three Rivers?”

“You tell me. The place was a ghost town”

“All I heard was they’re response getting cut off in what I took to be a hail of gunfire,
Dick.”

“Barry, that means that you know as much as the rest of us do. I’m not holding anything
back.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that you were.”

“The hell you weren’t.”

“Now you hold your horses, Richard. We had to change the Transmission Security
Keys.”

“That’s SOP whenever we lose a SINCGARS radio. You know that. You also know that
we lost the militia unit and their equipment. We haven’t gotten any instructions from the
Sheriff that he’s going to replace that unit. Is that what you’re asking?”

“To tell you the truth, my, friend, I don’t have a clue what I’m asking. I suppose what I
wanted to know was if it was reasonable to conclude that we have a problem here in
Otero County?”

“That, sir, is a reasonable presumption. Anytime you lose an armed militia unit and all of
their equipment, it is fair to presume that the crap is getting deep. I’m not telling you that
I’m sleeping with my lights on tonight. But let me ask you if Rex is a really good watch
dog.”

“If our previous experience is any guide, I have to answer that in the affirmative.”

“If he is, we might not have to maintain a watch tonight. That being said, if you’re not
100% sure, it might be a good idea.”

160
“You going to take care of the livestock in the morning?”

“I am.”

“Then I’m staying up.”

“I was really hoping that you’d say that.”

“Then is it fair for me to presume that you’re concerned?”

“Anytime you lose a unit of trained, armed people and their equipment, there’s room for
concern.”

“Do you believe that we’re going to have visitors?”

“If they come on down from Three Rivers, probably not because we’re off to the east
here on US 54. And, there is Salinas between Three Rivers and here. That being said,
keeping an extra watch is not a bad idea. I don’t like it when one of our forward Obser-
vation Posts just disappears. If they followed the railroad tracks, they’d bypass our post
at the junction because the railroad goes straight while the road curves. I’ll give the post
a call on the radio before I turn in and suggest that they keep one eye on the railroad
tracks.”

“In your absence, I figured out how to let you know at your trailer if we have a problem. I
put in an old-fashioned doorbell ringer that you have to get up to shut off. If it rings, we
have trouble.”

++++

”When you go to bed tonight, leave the coffee on.”

“Are you staying up?”

“I think that I will. Dick seemed to think it might be a good idea what with the OP up in
Three Rivers disappearing.”

“Did you check the weather?”

“No, why?”

“It’s supposed to snow.”

“Again? Darn. I may not stay up all night. If I see it start snowing, I’ll give it up because
no one would be out in weather like that.”

161
“Isn’t the Sheriff going to replace the missing unit?”

“Haven’t heard. If I were he, I would. That attack and disappearance simply highlights
the need. However, the group in Tularosa should be large enough to stop anyone com-
ing through.”

“Can’t they bypass Tularosa by staying on the railroad tracks or a little further west?”

“Dick and I considered that. He was going to advise Unit 4 (Tularosa) to keep an eye on
the tracks.”

“Good night. Let me know if anything happens.”

I got a Coke and my favorite snack, a handful of dry roasted peanuts mixed with original
Fritos. The TV was on, they were showing Strategic Air Command with James Stewart
and Frank Lovejoy. It was more than obvious that Lovejoy was playing the role of Curtis
E. LeMay (General Hawks in the film). The latest aircraft was the B-47. As Dutch Hol-
land was retiring because of his shoulder, I looked up and saw the snow. I turned on the
outside lights and it was coming down by the bucket load. Even an idiot would know
better to be out in that storm, and I went to bed.

“Unit 4, Unit 1. I’m shutting down for the night.”

“Unit 1, Unit 4. Roger.”

The militia was an all-volunteer unit that typically put in 8 on and 24 off. Most of these
people had regular jobs and to ensure the area was safe, employers adjusted their
methods of doing business. With 168 hours in a full week, a person never repeated the
same shift. If you were on 1st shift on Monday (8am-4pm), your next shift would be 2nd
shift (4pm-12pm) Tuesday, followed by 3rd shift Wednesday (12pm-8am) and 1st shift
Friday. Since most Sheriff’s units used a staggered shift and coverage was always
available. By contrast we usually ran a shift from 10am up to midnight with time out to
do chores.

When Sue wasn’t occupied with something, she covered me to let me get lunch, shovel
coal, use the john or whatever. Dick and Mary had their SINCGARS and other radios on
a small desk in their living room where anyone in the house could hear them. Some of
the quilting was purely handwork and she did that in the OP instead of watching TV. A
quilt was a tremendous amount of work and involved selecting a pattern, the material,
cutting the pieces and assembly. Once it was assembled, she add the batting and back-
ing and quilted it all together. The last step was adding the binding to seal the edges.
She had a small label of her own that went in a back corner and if the customer wanted,
a larger gift label could be added. While she averaged 4 quilts a year, a baby quit took
very little time while the king sized quilt might take 4 months or longer, depending on the
pattern. It was a nice hobby that generated about $4,000 and up a year, net of the ma-
terials.

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 The Asian Question – Chapter 30

That night before I went to bed, I was on the Internet, trying for the 100th time to find the
lyric to a song that had been bouncing around in my head since probably before I was
born. The title of the song was ‘More’. Well, guess what:

More – Theme from “Mondo Cane”

More than the greatest love the world has known,

This is the love I’ll give to you alone,
More than the simple words I try to say,
I only live to love you more each day.
More than you’ll ever know,
My arms long to hold you so,
My life will be in your keeping,
Waking, sleeping, laughing, weeping.
Longer than always is a long, long time,
But far beyond forever you'll be mine.
I know I never lived before,
and my heart is very sure,
No one else could love you more.

I was searching for the wrong thing, I searched for More. This time I searched for the
greatest love the world has known. Darn. The movie Mondo Cane was rated R and was
a perverse look at some of the savage/bizarre parts of our existence. No way could I
recommend it. When you read the lyric, you can see why I couldn’t get the song out of
my mind. Kind of put me in a frisky mood, which I’m sure Sue didn’t appreciate.

++++

I’m more interested in the snow; it was snowing when I went to bed and still snowing
when I got up. What is going on? 2004 was a record year for natural disasters at $145
billion in losses, and then came 2005 with losses exceeding $200 billion. The year 2005
stood out not only for losses, but several firsts on the weather front. Hurricane Wilma
was the strongest hurricane ever, while Hurricane Vince was the first-ever hurricane to
approach Europe, making landfall in Spain in October. In 2004, the southernmost hurri-
cane was recorded in Brazil.

The record-breaking losses were announced on the sidelines of the United Nations con-
ference to tackle global warming, which many scientists blame for the destructive
weather patterns of recent years. "There is a powerful indication from these figures that
we are moving from predictions of the likely impacts of climate change to proof that is
already underway," said foundation head Thomas Loster.

You don’t suppose that WW III had triggered a climate change, do you? Something was
going on. Dick had to put chains on his truck to get to Tularosa the following day. He

163
was back in 3 hours; they decided that no one could move in this weather. He driven to
town, talked for 5 minutes and headed home. That’s how bad it was, 3 hours round trip
to go a short couple of miles each way.

“Dispatch, Unit 12.”

“Dispatch.”

“Unit 12. We’re shutting down and so is Unit 4. Have you ever heard of the 9’ Indian?
We have 24” of snow and it’s still coming down. Nothing is moving in this weather.”

“Roger Unit 12.”

“Dispatch, any news on Unit 1?”

“Negative, they called the search on account of the weather.”

I can’t say that Sue agreed, not after I’d wakened her the night before. And then, around
10am, the generator kicked in. I was guessing ice on the power lines. It really wasn’t
that cold and the diesel had PRI-Flow. I added extra coal to the furnace and built a fire
in the fireplace. Sue had planned on baking bread and the house wasn’t warm enough
for it to rise. Susan and Ron were out playing in that stuff.

“Dick, what do you want, coffee or a beer?”

“In this kind of weather? Coffee, please.”

“Global Climate change?”

“More like a winter snow storm. We can’t have a global climate change, George Bush
would never approve.”

“I know, but it isn’t even the first of October. As this time last year, we were just out of
the shelter and worried about radiation.”

“True and some of us were joking that Bush would be President for life.”

“I think he had a belly full. He was barely in his first term when 9/11 happened. Then
there was the War on Terror. Who won that war anyway? Finally, 3 months before the
election, he started the war with China.”

“Can’t say as I agree with your characterization, Barry. The Republic of China started it
with their Declaration of Independence. The People’s Republic acted as predicted and
Bush just answered the call for help. It could have been worse, you know. What if all of
their weapons had gotten through?”

164
“Slim consolation for the people living in those metropolitan areas.”

“Used to live, you mean.”

“Did they ever get a final death count?”

“I don’t believe they did. The estimates were in the 30-35 million range and with as
many illegals as we have in this country, we may never know.”

“Did you feed the stock?”

“Yes and I added more chips to the smokehouse. I pulled the bacon because it was
done. December 7th will be the 68th Anniversary of Pearl Harbor.”

“Huh? What brought that up?”

“I was reading an old article out of the Washington Times. I was unpacking a box and
found some of my gun stuff wrapped in paper. Anyway, the article said:

“This week is a reminder of the power of surprise as a tactic and the folly of complacen-
cy as a strategy. Sixty-four years ago today, imperial Japan launched the first of two
surprise attacks, striking an unsuspecting United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.
Incredibly, the very next day Japan's air attack caught US forces in the Philippines nap-
ping. Forty-four months later, Japan capitulated ending World War II.

“On Monday, the September 11 commission issued its final report on that attack.

“In blunt terms, the commissioners warned that America was still unprepared for disas-
ter. The failed response to Hurricane Katrina was dramatic evidence for that conclusion.

“Today, Iraq is a sorcerer's hotbed of danger, and no one can predict al Qaeda's plans.
So, are future December 7th and September 11th lurking ahead? Gov. Tom Kean,
chairman of the September 11 commission says the answer is “when” not “whether”.
What is surprising about Iraq is how often we have been surprised.

“Liberation turned into occupation. An insurgency in its last throes now seems impervi-
ous to countermeasure. Treatment of enemy combatants at Abu Ghraib and other de-
tention sites has become a national disgrace. Now, two huge potential surprises have
been inadvertently sown in the strategy for victory in Iraq announced last week by Pres-
ident Bush at the Naval Academy. One lies in the transfer of responsibility for security to
Iraqis. The second rests in allowing conditions on the ground to dictate policy.

“Success in Iraq depends on the capability of the new government, elected next week,
and its military, police and security forces to quell the insurgency. That means under-
standing that deficiencies in Iraqi security forces regarding training, leadership and lo-

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gistical and fire support, even if corrected, can lead to severe unintended consequenc-
es.

“Training can move only so quickly. To date, the pace has been painfully slow. To close
the gap in leadership, junior officers in Saddam Hussein's former army are being re-
cruited and, one hopes, shorn of old, bad habits. Training must indoctrinate both new
and old recruits in the ways of democracy, liberty and the sanctity of human rights.

“All of this will take additional time, possibly more than events on the ground will permit,
and will require booster shots to ensure the training holds. If allegations of Iraqi security
forces' brutal treatment of prisoners are correct, this indoctrination will not be easy.

“Logistical support is being put in place to allow Iraqi forces to operate independently.
But the American military does not want to create a future Iraqi army that can threaten
its neighbors. So, fire support in the form of Iraqi artillery, tactical aircraft and heavy ar-
mor is likely to be modest.

“Absent the necessary military capacity, and even with it, the new Iraqi government
could too easily fall back on its former way of doing business – through brutality and tor-
ture. Hatred and revenge are slow to cool. And while an insurgent may be prepared to
die for the cause, if that person knows that a wide circle of friends and acquaintances
beyond his or her immediate family will be killed, tortured or imprisoned, behavior modi-
fication is possible. Iraq's history in this regard is far from reassuring, and the temptation
to repeat it will be powerful.

“Second, if the president is taken literally and events on the ground determine future
American policy, the White House has turned the great Prussian military philosopher
Karl Von Clausewitz on his head. That reversal could be the grounds for another bad
surprise.

“Policy must drive the use of force to achieve required aims. The aim in Iraq must be to
assure that events on the ground achieve the goals we set and not random outcomes.
Otherwise, security and an effective transfer of responsibility can never occur.

“Finally, it is time to heed the September 11 commission. Complacency is not an option.

Yet, who has been held accountable for the failure to deliver on even the most basic of
the panel's recommendations, such as information sharing and interoperable communi-
cations among first responders? The answer is no one.

“As Mr. Bush addresses the nation on Iraq and the war on terror, it is essential that he
respond to these and other ticking time bombs.

“First, brutality and torture are unacceptable in dealing with the insurgency. America's
record has been counterproductive and must be rectified as well. Second, the president
must show how the United States is positively affecting events on the ground to assure
a credible transfer of responsibility in keeping with our aims and objectives.

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“Finally, urgency is needed in protecting the United States against future attack. After
four years, there must be accountability and remedial action. Without these steps, other
surprises, and bad ones at that, loom large.”

“When was that published?”

“December 7th 2005.”

“They must have done something right; we didn’t have a repeat of 9/11.”

“Yeah right, we had 20Aug08 at 2125 Zulu. That’s when we lost power, remember?”

“How could I forget, I wrote it down? I’d like to believe that the country has recovered.
We had elections but have they cleaned the cities up? According to CNN, it could be
another 9 years. You get 3,000 Rems up to a distance of 30 miles. About 10 years will
need to pass before levels of radioactivity in those areas drop low enough to be consid-
ered safe, by US peacetime standards. I’d say that puts those metropolitan areas off
limits for quite a while.”

“They were sending out cleanup crews when I got out.”

“So, you think it will be sooner?”

“Absolutely. The only problem I can see is where they’re going to dispose of the radio-
active materials. If you recall the Yucca Mountain Affair, Nevada didn’t want the dispos-
al site and most of the states were opposed to moving the radioactive material through
their states. That was still tied up in the courts last year when the war came. How many
tons of radioactive waste must there be now to dispose of?”

“Dick there isn’t a choice any longer. The environmentalists are just going to have to
shut up. The needs of the many must prevail, ask Spook.”

“Unfortunately, Spook is a character in a TV series and some movies, not a real person,
Barry. Some scriptwriter came up with the line logic clearly dictates that the needs of the
many outweigh the needs of the few.”

“Logic be damned. They have to clean up the country and they can’t dump the material
into the ocean. This country has gotten soft with people crying over trees and spotted
owls. We have oil off the California coast and a second field in Alaska. People want to
drive cars but they don’t want their beach messed up by the view of an oil platform.
They don’t want the radiation in their backyard and when the government finds a place
to put it, they object. It’s been a lose-lose situation for a long time.”

Note: the concept in Spock’s statement can be found in the New Testament. The actual
words from the movie were the first time it was stated in that manner.

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 The Asian Question – Chapter 31

Dick and I ended breaking out the beer later that day. I hadn’t drunk a six-pack beer
since I could remember. You know, I hadn’t dared get a buzz on in over a year. I’m not
all that good of shot to begin with but man, was it snowing. In fact, it appeared it might
set records.

“The aspirin is in the cupboard.”

“Why would I need aspirin?”

“For your head, the two of you sort tied one on last night.”

“Sue we each drank a six-pack over the course of several hours. I realize that’s more
than normal, but it was snowing.”

“Still is.”

“Really? That means it’s been snowing for over 32 hours.”

With a state as large as New Mexico, though, climate varies considerably from one
place to the next. Snowfall ranges from less than 2 inches annually in the lower Rio
Grande Valley to as much as 300 inches in the mountains of north-central New Mexico.
Measuring roughly 400 × 400 miles, it is the fourth-largest state in the nation. This
weather wasn’t normal. The mountains get snow, but the basin? Couldn’t find my copy
of Johnny Cash’s song, 5’ high and rising.

Our old tractor had a 3-point hitch and came with a blade. Towards noon, Dick made it
to the machine shed and mounted the blade. He spent most of the afternoon clearing
the area around the buildings, but I can’t see why he bothered, it was still coming down.
After he had enough clear you could walk around, Mary and the kids came over. Sue
had put pinto beans on to soak the night before and was planning on making chili. Sue’s
chili was what I’d call medium hot, just enough to make you break into a slight sweat.
Good for what ails you.

“How are you getting along with the new rifle, Ron?”

“Why do I have to learn to dismantle, clean and assemble all of the different rifles?”

“I think you dad must assume that a situation may arise when you might have a weapon
you don’t usually shoot and be placed in a situation where you have to take care of it.”

“Do you think we’re going to have more criminals show up?”

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“Probably not in this weather, young man. But, come spring, we could have trouble. If
this storm is any indication of the kind of winter we’re going to have, people will be out
early foraging for food.”

“I didn’t think food was a problem. Dad and you killed those chickens in the summer and
the hogs and beef in the fall. He said our freezer if completely full. Mom was mad at
Dad when he got home last night. She said she didn’t want to married to a drunk.”

“It’s cold out there, is there coffee on?”

“Fresh pot.”

“I got most of the snow moved, but it was still coming down. I may have to do that again
tomorrow.”

“Dick, I didn’t mean to get you in trouble with the wife.”

“No trouble, as long as it doesn’t happen again. What smells good?”

“Sue is making a large pot of chili.”

“Did anyone get a weather report?”

“I listened to the radio and they said the front was stalled. I haven’t seen a storm like
this in the 10 years we have lived here.”

“It’s unusual. It will depend on the remainder of the winter.”

“It is late September, not December. We’re only a few days into fall; winter doesn’t
come until December 21st.”

++++

An experimental test of the nuclear winter hypothesis nearly happened in 1971. At a

diplomatic reception in Moscow, a Soviet diplomat approached an American diplomat
and asked him Would the United States stand by if we launch a nuclear attack on Chi-
na? The American immediately said, No, we most certainly would not stand by! The
Russian was a little taken aback by this immediate and emphatic reply, and said Per-
haps you should check with your superiors on this. The American said, I will, but I know
what their answer will be!

The purpose of the Russian's question was to remove the ambiguity that arose after the
split between the Soviet Union and the Peoples' Republic of China as to whether the US
nuclear umbrella, which protected all countries not in the Soviet camp, now extended to
protect China. By his reply, the American said that it did. The Soviet Union was then in
an advanced stage of preparation for a nuclear attack on China's military and industrial

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facilities, which would also have caused the death of at least 300 million Chinese. A few
weeks later, a higher-level Russian official asked the same question of a higher-level
American official and got the same answer. Finally, Leonid Brezhnev asked the same
question of Henry Kissinger. He got the same answer, and decided not to go through
with it. Shortly thereafter, the Chinese found out how the US saved them from nuclear
attack, and on April 6, 1971, they invited the US Ping-Pong team to Peking. The rest is
history.

This was probably the closest the world has come to a nuclear war since 1945, and it
would not have involved nuclear detonations on the territory of the US or its allies. The
yield of the detonations would likely have exceeded 300 megatons, which would have
been sufficient to cause at least a mild nuclear winter. However, we would not have
been prepared at that time to study it properly.

That is, until August 20, 2008…

The issue of the weather got me back up in the OP where I sorted through my printouts
until I found a copy of the TTAPS Study. The US hadn’t received the required 300mT in
the exchange and we didn’t have massive amounts of smoke in the air. Come to think of
it, China probably hadn’t either. The math suggested 400 times .475mt plus 368 times
0.1mT or a total of 227mT if all of our weapons got through. We didn’t have exact fig-
ures on the size of the weapons that had gotten by our ABM system but it had to be well
under 300mT. Perhaps the most disquieting finding of the TTAPS study was that Rela-
tively large climatic effects could result even from relatively small nuclear exchanges
(100 to 1000mT) if urban areas were heavily targeted, because as little as 100mT is suf-
ficient to devastate and burn several hundred of the world¹s major urban centers. Such
a low threshold yield for massive smoke emissions, although scenario dependent, im-
plies that even limited nuclear exchanges could trigger severe aftereffects.

You’ll have to understand that the so-called TTAPS Study was an article from Science
Magazine, vol. 222, entitled Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear
Explosions and it wasn’t nearly as long as the consequences of it being published. A
follow-up study called SCOPE 28 – The Environmental Consequences of Nuclear Win-
ter, 2 volumes. It concluded:

The most serious detrimental effects a nuclear war would have on the environment are
radioactive fallout, depletion of the ozone layer, and the possibility of nuclear winter.
The extent of the damage is hard to predict, since there are so many variables involved.
For example, the range and severity of fallout from multiple nuclear explosions depends
on how many warheads are exploded, whether they explode on the ground or in the air,
whether there is rain soon after the explosion, which direction and how strongly the wind
is blowing, what the warheads fall on, and how many megatons each warhead has.
Even with the results of nuclear weapons testing, it's still difficult to predict what will
happen if multiple bombs are set off in urban areas, instead of single bombs, as was the

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case in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or single bombs set off in remote and/or non-forested
areas, as has been the case with the nuclear tests performed so far. The creation of a
nuclear winter is even more uncertain. The original study that caused so much uproar
remains controversial, but the possibility of a nuclear winter remains. While there is un-
certainty in the extent and severity of long-term consequences, the short-term environ-
mental damage can be predicted.

Nuclear winter, at its most extreme, predicts the injection of soot into the stratosphere,
obscuring the sun and plunging the earth into unseasonably cold temperatures. As mul-
tiple nuclear bombs are detonated the waves of heat and pressure, and the initial fire-
balls, would cause conflagrations (fires covering a large area) and firestorms (smaller
fires that burn intensely). The smoke and soot from these fires would blanket the strato-
sphere, deflecting sunlight while allowing thermal radiation from the earth to escape.
Temperatures would fall as much as 10 to 20°C in the northern mid-latitudes, and as
much as 35°C in some areas of this region (Turco, et al. 1990). The effect is compara-
ble to the dust thrown up by the asteroid that is believed to have killed the dinosaurs.
With a reduction of as much of 99% of sunlight (Harwell, 1984) in some places, and
general overcast conditions lasting from days to over a year in the most severe simula-
tions, most life forms on earth would suffer. On the upside of things, global warming
would no longer be a concern. (Written by Ali Jones)

At this point my journal starts to get sparse because I basically stopped taking notes. I
decided to put it all down now while I still have time. I developed some sort of health is-
sue that the Doc says is going to kill me one of these days. Let’s see, it’s 2019, early
spring. The snowstorm we had back in 2009 was just the beginning of a terrible winter.
The following year was warm and wet, something to do with a depletion of the ozone
layer according to the news.

Because of the severe winter, we didn’t have a single attack the entire winter of 2009-
2010. It turned out to be a good thing we had as much diesel stored as we did; the
power lines were down more than they were up. Sue and I discussed what we were go-
ing to do when it came time and eventually decided to give the property to Dick and
Mary. We had a lawyer draw up a Living Trust of some kind and when we were both
gone, they got it. They got the whole shooting match.

The price of gold finally settled somewhere around $2,400 an ounce, but that wasn’t un-
til around ‘15. We kept taking my retirement and pension out in gold and saved it. With
silver worth as much as it was, around $20 an ounce, what little we needed came from
spending the silver, sale of quilts and later, sales of extra livestock. We ended up farm-
ing the better part of a section of ground.

Over time, they got the supply of fuel restored and reduced and then eliminated ration-
ing. It was probably just plain foolish, we always kept the tanks full up, using the fuel in

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the small 1,000-gallon tank and refilling it. Dick figured out how to infuse more PRI
products into the tanks and keep it mixed. Anyway, the fuel was still good.

On the issue of trouble on the home front, we didn’t have a lot; the tough winter must
have killed most of the bad guys off, most, but not all, unfortunately. We had one more
run in there at the property with people coming in on US 54 from the direction of Salinis.
We shot the crap out of them and those who got by ran smack dab into the militia unit
there in Tularosa. We’d put out a Mayday and everyone headed in our direction.

I like to be able to say that after that incident, we didn’t need guns. Well, maybe we
didn’t but we wore them anyway. I picked up some new leather in El Paso at El Paso
Saddlery, one of their 1890 "Original" Holsters. Sue and I down shifted and she carried
the short-barreled 4¾” and I went with the 5½”. I gave my 7½” barrel revolver to Dick to
wear and we bought Ron an original Ruger Vaquero with a 5½” barrel and a John
Wayne rig. El Paso made the leather the Duke wore in The Shootist. Mary and Susan
preferred to remain with pistols in their purses. These days, they carried compact .40
S&W.

They took all of that radioactive waste and buried it in an open pit mine that was about
played out. Covered it over with 100’ or more of earth. That was just the beginning of
the end for those environmentalists, they lost a succession of battles in court and in the
case of the Alaskan oil fields the US Supreme Court quoted Leonard Nimoy from the
movie. The Democratic President and Congress tried to reinstitute the AWB and more.
God bless the NRA, they challenged the new law and in view of the state of the nation,
those conservatives Bush had packed the court with agreed and finally overturned Mil-
ler. You still needed a CCW to carry concealed, but a lot of laws bit the dust when that
ruling came down.

In essence, the court said that a Remington .308 bolt action rifle could kill someone just
as dead as a so-called Assault Weapon and that either guns were totally outlawed or
unregulated. Writing for the Court, the Chief Justice said, guns couldn’t be totally out-
lawed because that violated the spirit of the 2nd Amendment. You remember when the
Senate rubber-stamped the appointment of John Roberts, right? The focus of the court
was on, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” It seems
that the Congress screwed the pooch when they created State Defense Forces, or mili-
tias. The only concession in the decision was the CCWs, but they became a ‘shall issue’
type of permit.

Speaking of the government, they upgraded the THAAD system and included small nu-
clear warheads. Kinetic kill vehicles hadn’t worked out. It seems that the Russian ABM
system used small nukes and the government final wised up. The Russians had the V-
75 SA-2 GUIDELINE, a medium to high altitude surface-to-air missile system. The 295
kg nuclear warhead used only on the SA-2E variant was believed to have a yield of
15kT. Sauce for the goose, what could they say when we equipped THAAD II with a
warhead made from the B-61 bombs?

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I never heard whom they got to produce pits for the new W88 warheads, but all of the
D-5s were replaced. Maybe Los Alamos, they had delivered a W-88 pit back in 2003.
Anyway, all of the D-5s were replaced and every warhead on the 14 SSBNs was re-
ported to be the 475kT W-88. You knew that they took the warheads off the Peace-
keepers and put them on the Minuteman III missiles, right? In the 10 years following the
war, White Sands Missile Test Range and the other ranges in the area were working
overtime-testing new systems.

We were wrong on the cleanup; it only took them 9 years, not 10. Cleaning up was one
thing, rebuilding was quite another. Not every city was rebuilt for one of several rea-
sons. The previous population was mostly long gone, either dead or moved far away.
The road system was repaired, especially any Interstate Highways, but much of the re-
building emphasis was on Washington, DC. It was the first area cleaned up and rebuild-
ing started there even while they were still trying to clean up other areas. The Dems got
a second term, too. As I said, I was a little surprised when they won in May 2009, but in
November of 2012, they only improved their position in Congress.

Yes sir, a lot of things have changed. They’re going almost exclusively to nuclear ener-
gy for electricity these days. Congress found a place to dispose of the wastes, one of
those Pacific Atolls. All of the cars these days are hybrids of some kind, most frequently
diesel electrics. You know how long it takes to build a new reactor, right? Five years
minimum! Westinghouse and General Electric got together and they came up with a
new design that is very safe and incorporates a SCRAM function like the reactors on the
submarines. I don’t know they hadn’t had that feature before. SCRAM rapidly (less than
four seconds, by test) inserts all the control rods into the reactor core, thus halting the
nuclear reaction as rapidly as possible. Sue says the earlier reactors had a SCRAM but-
ton.

About the only cars you see these days with gasoline engines are police cars. You can’t
outrun these babies, no way. They have big engines and by big I mean really big, 500hp
or better. It’s even more dangerous to be a cop in 2019, because of the Supreme Court.
When they say stop, you stop, or they’ll stop you DEAD in your tracks. The Constitution
guaranteed everyone to a quick and speedy trial, 6th Amendment. Lawyer’s ruined the
system and you saw that farce they called a trial with Simpson, right? It’s all been
changed, if you get 5 years, you serve 5 years. The trial is usually held within 2 weeks
of your arrest. That is an improvement because immediately after the war, most of the
bad guys ended up getting shot.

There were a whole lot of changes in the last 10 years dealing with illegal aliens. The
government rounded them all up and hauled them back to wherever they came from.
They were told that if they came back, likely as not, they’d be shot. That cofounder of
the Minuteman Organization ran for office in 2005, but was defeated. He turned his tal-
ents to something more productive, guarding the border. The war made a big difference,

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very few people wanted to come to a nuclear wasteland. It wasn’t, but apparently for-
eign reporters could say that because they were the first people we exported.

In another of its decisions, the Supreme Court ruled that certain types of reporting were
disallowed because it was akin to shouting fire in a theatre. The Court said that with the
resources available to reporters, there was no excuse for them reporting anything other
than the exact truth. And they could do that once the censors told them that the infor-
mation wasn’t a risk to the national security. Censors? Yes, censors. They didn’t pre-
vent you from reporting the truth, provided it was true and you were free to express an
opinion, as long as it was labeled as such and ‘signed’ e.g., identified by the author.

Some newspapers never recovered after the war, the NY Times, LA times and certain
others being most notable. I can’t imagine what it would have been like if we’d have had
a Republican Administration; gives me shivers to think about it. Do you suppose the
Chinese were targeting the newspapers instead of the cities?

Schools these days actually educate our children, go figure. George had his ‘No Child
Left Behind’ program and the Dems had compulsory education and graduation exams. I
don’t get that, I thought the Dems were always so busy protecting peoples’ rights to be
jerks and education was secondary to the process. Isn’t that where they got the term,
secondary education?

Doc has me on Plavix and all kinds of heart drugs these days. I never had a problem
with my heart that I knew of but after the war, I developed high blood pressure and the
diabetes. That advanced until I ended up on insulin. Then my hands and feet got numb
and he called it neuropathy. I looked that up and it means dead/sick nerves. It’s some
sort of circulation problem, thus the blood thinner. Well, I’m going to live until I die, but
that pretty much summarizes the past 10 years. Nice place to live these days, the Unit-
ed States of America. Lots of people going to church these days.

You know that General Richard B. Myers was succeeded as Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff by a Marine, don’t you? On 10Oct05, General Peter Pace, a Marine, be-
came the new Chairman. His term was supposed to end on 30Sep09, but the Dem in
charge of the country kept him on. Man has about 7 rows of ribbons; he’s a warrior’s
warrior. Started his Career in Vietnam and finished it at the top of the heap. Can’t do
much better than that.

I think I’ll stop now and get some sleep. If I think of anything else to add, I’ll do that to-
morrow. Mighty strange dream, I’m having…

© 2011, Gary D. Ott

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