By Major Van Harl USAF Ret
Wisconsin –-(Ammoland.com)- Hurricanes and unrelenting rain storms with high winds have assaulted the Gulf Coast of America for over two years.
Massive concrete and steel structures such as the casinos of Biloxi, formidable buildings that should stand for a hundred years, are weakening and crumbling in the never-ending rain and destructive winds of the Mississippi coast line.
The US Government can no longer control, support or protect the southern end of Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Texas and the entire state of Florida.
Because of the unending destructive weather and the inability to govern the affected area, the Federal government has drawn what becomes known as “the line” across the bottom of theses States.
The line is approximately one hundred miles north of the Mississippi coast, at a point on a map a line was established that runs from the Georgia coast, west across Texas. Below that line there is no effective US control. The Government has done what they can to evacuate the citizens of those states and provide some limited assistance north of “the line,” but not everyone chooses to leave their home below “the line,”
The above scenario is the basis of the story told in Dr. Michael Farris Smith’s new book “Rivers” ( https://tiny.cc/8yw6ex ). (www.michaelfarrissmith.com).
As I was playing telephone tag with Dr. Smith this week to speak with him about Rivers he was having trouble taking my calls. The problem was he and his young family were sheltering in Columbus, Mississippi from the dangers of a new round of tornados. I have lived in Mississippi and went through a number of tornados while there.
The difference was after the real tornados were over everyone kicked in to clean up the damage, bury the dead and get on with “normal” life. In Dr. Smith’s Rivers “normal” never comes to the southland. The rain and wind never ends and the destruction of the long established infrastructure only continues to crumble as do the lives of the few who have remained below “the line.” Nothing is produced, nothing is grown, nothing is improved, with only the constant literal washing away of a small hold-out society who refuse to give up their past.
The main character is living a life of self-imposed isolation due to grief and personal loss with no sign of hope or chance for the better. Because society has broken down, the lawless elements rise up to suppress and oppress the weak. There is death, murder, rape, strong armed robbery, human trafficking, and animal abuse.
I cannot abide those who abuse dogs in real life or books.
Dr. Smith has seen the damage and efforts to rebuild his state after the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. Taking from the real world and asking the “what if” questions of what happens if the destruction does not stop, but keeps up a never-ending bounding, delivered onto the land, how does normal life survive? The short answer is, normal life does not continue.
We live in a 9-1-1 society. We truly expect to be able to pick up our cell phone, always have a signal and are able to call for help. We expect to have any and all or our fire, police and emergency medical needs met in a matter of minutes.
In previous columns I have discussed the idea of a Katrina type disaster that does not stop with a localized area, but takes out half of the US. How does our society react and try to help? I would suggest there will be little official help.
Dr. Smith’s book gives you a very good fictional overview of just what you may endure if unending destruction arrives and the “government” we so mindlessly expect to always be there to fix it does not respond in time or ever. As of this morning, thirty-five real people have died in the south because of tornados. But this will not last. Society will pick up the pieces, fix the damage and get on with day-to-day regular life.
What if the damage and destruction does not stop and no one can fix it? Would you leave your ancestral home in Dallas or Biloxi and as real American refugees load your family and meager belonging into your truck for the long drive to South Dakota just to find safety? Would you make that life changing decision in time to provide that safety or would you hold on to a rapidly crumbling past that may just kill you and your loved ones?
“Rivers” is fiction but in the future is may not be just fiction. You have to prepare, it will come. Maybe not two years of hurricanes but “it” will come. Your family’s survival is the only important issue, not the two hundred year old family farm that is washing down stream as you hesitate to act.
Act, don’t react.
Major Van Harl USAF Ret. / [email protected]
About Major Van Harl USAF Ret.:Major Van E. Harl USAF Ret., a career Police Officer in the U.S. Air Force was born in Burlington, Iowa, USA, in 1955. He was the Deputy Chief of police at two Air Force Bases and the Commander of Law Enforcement Operations at another. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army Infantry School. A retired Colorado Ranger and currently is an Auxiliary Police Officer with the Cudahy PD in Milwaukee County, WI. His efforts now are directed at church campus safely and security training. He believes “evil hates organization.” [email protected]
Preparedness and responsibility for ones own safety are something I really support, and I’d never count on ” the government,” but it sounds like this book panders to the environmentalist wackos and their climate change hoax.
There are plenty of good, factually based novels about TEOTWAWKI for me to consider wasting my time on a book based on a premise that’s rooted in a leftist scam.
Try “One Second After ” or the series of books by JW Rawles and the series by Matt Bracken for starters if something about surviving the collapse of society interests you.