Norman Lewis

is a writer, speaker and consultant on innovation and technology, was most recently a Director at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, where he set up and led their crowdsourced innovation service. Follow him on Twitter @Norm_Lewis

Founder of World Economic Forum Klaus Schwab speaks during a session at the 50th annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. © Reuters

On the surface, this might appear reasonable. After all, the challenges of the post-Covid world are certainly going to be huge. The economic fallout of the global lockdown, never mind the social consequences of mass unemployment and global poverty, will be unprecedented in world history. 

However, the “Great Reset” is sophistry and dishonesty on an unprecedented level. Who is responsible, it may be asked, for creating yesterday’s problematic ‘normal’ to which we will supposedly never return?  

Of course, these difficulties have nothing to do with the billionaires, political leaders, captains of industry and top regulators who swan around Davos each year, pontificating over oysters and champagne about the world’s problems, from which they benefit most. 

And the idea of a ‘reset’ is at best disingenuous. This implies that the global economy and society was basically functioning OK before Covid-19. That it simply requires a reboot, like switching a computer off and on again.  

This glosses over the reality, which is this: that the world economy and global society were in a sickly state before Covid-19, and now, being even more dependent on unprecedented state bailouts, which will take generations to repay, are in a still more parlous state. ‘Reset’ seriously underestimates the scale of the economic wreckage we face, the overhaul required, and the real barriers to the future. 

The “Great Reset” vision from the WEF, presented as eight projections for 2030, reveals how disconnected these people are from reality. 

Its tone is that of the hectoring schoolmaster who knows what’s best for the children, and tolerates no dissent. This is not a dialogue but a lecture we need to accept without question. Here they are: 

1. ‘You’ll own nothing and be happy’

We’ll rent everything we’ll need, and it will be delivered by drone. Does this mean we won’t even own our ability to sell our labour? If we’re renting this and everything else, who are we renting it from? Presumably from those who own everything, who doubtless will be much happier than we will be. And drone deliveries by 2030? It will take longer than that to get regulatory permission agreed, given how risk averse both industry and governments have become. 

2. The US won’t be the only world’s leading power

A handful of countries will dominate. This is a nice way of avoiding the obvious point that in a bipolar or multipolar world – the USA vs China vs the EU vs Russia – global decision-making is going to be even more elusive and tricky, not less. In the post-Covid world, autarkical tendencies, not cooperation, pose a threat to any notions of harmonious global governance, let alone coordination. That’s a point I’ll return to below. 

3. We won’t die waiting for an organ donor

Transplants will be a thing of the past. New organs will be printed instead. This is a lovely notion and would be very welcome. But there’s the pesky problem of a health system that can hardly cope with seasonal flu and has had to be protected from treating ill people by shutting down the entire economy. Solving this in 10 years will require the printing of more money (which we haven’t got), never mind organs. 

4. We’ll eat less meat

Meat will become an occasional treat, not a staple, and we’ll eat less of it because it's good for the environment and our health. This is like the ‘choice’ offered by state telecommunications monopolies: you can have any phone you like as long as it's black. Goodbye, freedom of choice. 

5. A billion people will be displaced by climate change

In 10 years, we’re going to have to do a better job at welcoming and integrating refugees. Do they mean we should be as welcoming as the EU, with its “Fortress Europe” approach? Or successive American governments’ benevolent border wall with Mexico? Perhaps they’re referring to the Prince of Wales opening up Buckingham Palace to refugees?  

6. Polluters will have to pay to emit CO2

The introduction of a global price on carbon with the aim of making fossil fuels history is the holy grail being held out here. Given the parlous state of all state coffers as a result of Covid-19, and the crisis of innovation, this idea is perhaps the most fanciful of all.  

7. You could be preparing to go to Mars

Scientists will have worked out how to keep us healthy in space, which will herald the start of a journey to find alien life. It might be a good idea to start by trying to keep us healthy on earth, especially dealing with all the post-Covid deaths, not from the virus, but from postponed treatments and operations. This is sheer fantasy. 

8. Western values will have been tested to breaking point

The checks and balances that underpin our democracies must not be forgotten. By this, they are surely not referring to the attempt to overthrow the Brexit vote or Trump’s election in 2016 by an elite who didn’t like these outcomes? They’re not suggesting that global unelected bodies such as the United Nations or the World Health Organization should take precedence over national democracies, even over decisions as important as climate change? Do they want checks and balances on national governments, which should accede to the ‘truths’ of unelected experts and technocrats, rather than relying on their own citizens to make decisions? Perish the thought.

This “Great Reset” is not that great after all. Nor is it offering anything new or, indeed, realisable. Instead, it’s a rehashing of a globalist project that seeks to use the Covid crisis to prioritise the concerns and fantasies of the elite, aiming to cement their positions of wealth and power and usher in a new era of top-down diktat.  

The key point of unreality in all this is that the pandemic has repudiated the globalist assumptions underpinning this new utopia (or, rather, dystopia). Covid has vindicated the validity of the national state. Only nation states have had the authority to impose lockdowns and then provide – or, in some countries, try to provide – emergency financial aid to compensate businesses and families for the impact of the lockdown. 

Contrary to the views of the WEF, everything has not changed as a result of Covid. The changes that have happened have merely accelerated and crystallised earlier tendencies. The true state of affairs is clearer – namely, that the world is still in a state (both literally and figuratively), and that precaution and risk aversion and a sense of vulnerability still dominate the elite’s cultural zeitgeist. 

Albert Einstein once quipped that “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it”. The ‘build back better’ notion at the heart of the “Great Reset” – indeed, all government visions today – is a doomed project for this reason. 

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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Loliad's Vision of The Future of this World

"But I have many other sheep not of this fold, and these words are true not only of this world. These other sheep also hear and know my voice, and I have promised the Father that they shall all be brought into one fold, one brotherhood of the sons of God. And then shall you all know the voice of one shepherd, the true shepherd, and shall all acknowledge the fatherhood of God."

LOLIAD HAS A VISION

The few distant tribes who partially survived the downfall of Atlantis (the legends of the 1st Garden of Eden & Dalmatia) each had their original cultural roots in that civilization. Their progeny, and so Atlantean thinking, still affects the lives of many present day Earth-dwellers. The world floats on a sea of fire which is gradually dying down, and will become extinguished in a few more million years . . . unless in the meantime mankind probes too deeply into Nature. Is such a state of affairs building up on Earth today?

A study of history is the looking backward to events and conditions as they were and comparing them with the present era. Time, in terms of years is important only in the sense that man, unable to visualize very far ahead, can best assess human advancement in retrospect. This does not mean that in any generation man can afford not to envision human progress in the millions of generations yet to come.

Life's purpose can only be for the future. Each generation forms the foundation for the progress of those yet unborn. In terms of the human race, retrogression looms ahead unless the course is altered. Warnings have come from all sides.

^110:4.6 For many thousands of years, so the records of Jerusem show, in each generation there have lived fewer and fewer beings who could function safely with self-acting Adjusters. This is an alarming picture, and the supervising personalities of Satania look with favor upon the proposals of some of your more immediate planetary supervisors who advocate the inauguration of measures designed to foster and conserve the higher spiritual types of the Urantia races.

Yet Ego has prevented this stream of heavenly guidance from having much effect. "Not always shall my spirit strive with man", He has said.

If the life expectancy of the sun is another 48,000,000,000 years it is reasonable to suppose that Earth's life expectancy is at least half of that number of years. However, taking into consideration density, helium content, and rate of usage in comparison to the sun, we might find that the life expectancy Earth is about equal to that of the sun.

The point for questions is; how does the life expectancy of homo-sapiens compare with Earth's life expectancy? At the present rate of deterioration, fostered by illogical breeding habits, mechanization and luxury, led by the lighter skinned races, a further separation of human thought will occur. The dark skinned races will rise to power and shortly afterwards decline when swiftly overtaken by Ego. Through the specialization rule and mass psychology as is still practiced today, the bulk of the human race will degenerate to comfortable slavery status, having all their thinking done for them, and completely dominated by mechanized instruction, to finally lose all power of independent thought or personal drive. They will sink to a low mental level which concentrates only on fleshy comfort and social security.

But for Spirit. Ever and anon, Spiritual Promise is inviolable, He will send messengers, channels for the expression of Divine Wisdom to guide humanity. These will be fully apparent to those with integrity, easily recognizable to the non-egotistical seeker. They will illuminate and lead, helping to maintain the essential balance of nature and spirit. Regardless of nationality, their cities will rise on Earth, first one and then another, to form the nucleus of a new, single Earth-race. Such a city has He shown to me in a vision. The huge structure was formed like a bubble; seamless; having the appearance of plexiglass; of tensile strength beyond anything yet devised on Earth - even impervious to Black Light vibrations.

Inside the outer dome was a second, similar "bubble", with about ten feet of space in between the two shells. Those walking in the intervening space between the shells are able to observe all that goes on beyond the outer shell. But they cannot see into the inner shell, the structural molecules being so balanced that they shift to adjust to light rays either from within or without. A warm hand placed on any part of this shell will immediately feel cold. Showered with any cold substance, the shell will cause that substance to react as though to heat. No air, sunlight, rain, dust, germs or radiation can pierce the outer "bubble". High above and in between the two shells is a form of manufactured daylight, sunlight, and even clouds to fill any psychological requirements of the inhabitants. The air is constantly purified.

Inside the second shell, the dwellings compare with those of the twentieth century, but are built in softer, more curved lines, and are all of the same glass-like material. Gardens bloom in profusion. Flowers, shrubs, trees and individual vegetable gardens are far more in evidence than today. The foliage is far more prominent to the eye of the observer than the actual homes of the people who live there.

Entrance to the City is made through an outer door of the same plexiglass-like material. This door leads onto a ten-foot driveway between the two shells. However, at the entrance a tunnel-like arrangement with three doors greets a visitor. By taking the door to the left of the entrance it would be possible to drive around the entire city and emerge where you started, coming out of the door on the right hand side of the entrance. The centre door gives access to the City proper. But before entering from the outer atmosphere, all are subjected to extensive scrutiny. Possessions, including conveyance, are tested with metal detection and radioactive devices. If the people wishing to enter the city are non-resident, all possessions are left at the entrance, and the visitor is supplied with every requirement for the duration of his visit.

Permanent residents wishing to leave (a rare circumstance) may only do so with a special permit. These people are specially outfitted for the trip into the outerworld, including their "conveyance"; a one piece, completely plastic-like vehicle with no visible working parts.

Nothing but the de-contaminated human body may enter through the inner door, and nothing but a person and their conveyance may leave.

Permission is frequently given for those from the outside world to take a grand circular tour around the driveway which circles the city. At this time none of the previously mentioned precautions apply.

About one mile in a geometrically straight line from the entrance, we find the Administration Building, known locally as The House. From the City's gateway, the main centre driveway is uncluttered by any buildings. It is landscaped to some depth with a glorious array of multi-coloured flora, so artistically designed that it never becomes overbearing or distracting to the senses.

The House, like all others, is of the same material as the shell. It shows only one storey above ground level, and is almost half a mile square, though not actually square in shape.

A long wide terrace, reached by five wide, stone-like steps, dominates the front elevation of the building. Much of this terrace is landscaped with exotically beautiful gardens, with subdued aquariums here and there, glittering from the rays of rare, tropical-like fish. A central fountain of crystal clear water plays its way high into the air.

The terrace is usually occupied by a quiet female figure, who dispenses the colony's needs with exact impartiality. High up, and out of sight to all but the initiated, are a number of instruments similar to today's television sets. They are indeed a form of television which may be tuned into the required channel by pressure on a small button close to the woman's hand. When the image of the required person appeared on the screen, a whispered instruction to that technician could tune in both the image and words of any person living in the world. When required this machine could also relay the image and speech of certain persons from other occupied planets in the Universe. Beneath the main structure of this building are fifteen lower floors which constitute the heart and pulse of the entire city. Here is machinery, refineries, air and water pumps purifiers, smelters, offices . . . everything that is required to sustain life. The whole place is illuminated by an everlasting daylight that creates no shadow and is without visible source

Surprisingly enough from the fifth sub-floor downwards there is no light. Total blackness greets the eye. The workers here, who are not native Earthlings are ebony in colour. They are shaped along somewhat different lines to those of the human form, the main difference being in the head and extremities. These people have developed far beyond man's meager mental capabilities. They are particularly adept at reading magnetic vibrations and keep records of the sayings, schemings and doings of the now decadent outside world. All thought vibrations are monitored within a radius of 300 square miles.

Another innovation is a tubular-type launching pad situated some distance from The House (as the main building is called). This double rocket launching site can be reached by twin tunnels from the fifteenth sub floor and connects to the fifth sub-floor by a chute made up of an endless chain belt conveyance with seats large enough for two passengers. These travel at such a speed that one and a half seconds is all the time required to travel the 165 feet downwards.

From the fifth sub-floor downwards is the domain of the "Ebonites". The temperature in this working area is necessarily maintained at a constant 80° Fahrenheit; one route to the launching site likewise.

Native earthlings rarely visit this area of heat and total darkness, in spite of ample connections between all floors.

The second launching tube is cool and brightly lit, manned by deeply bronzed human operators. The space-ships coming and going from the dual launch site are however, identical. Only the functional interiors differ for the convenience of Passengers.

Space Ships leave and arrive regularly. The "Ebonites" to return to their home planet, the earthlings to tour the accessible parts of the Universe. Interplanetary exchange has long since been established, whereby an Earth-ship might reach a planet carrying a visitor for a further destination whose journey would then be completed by stages, utilizing craft from other worlds.

Visitors would stay at earth-conditioned accommodations through their trip.

But such traveling would be rare, for any human in this period who ventured on such a voyage would have to spend whole lifetime away from his home planet.

To better understand the population of the colony a closer description of its inhabitants might be in order. The earthlings, by intermarriage, had all achieved various bronze skin shading with medium hair colouring.

Interplanetary technician exchange, which insofar as earth was concerned applied only to these "Bubble-Colonies", supplied the "Ebonite" technicians whose skill was foreign to earthlings. In return selected earthlings went to other planets to develop skills peculiar to earthlings. This system was largely responsible for the rapid progress in either place.

The "Ebonites" had quite a large head in comparison with their body. The ears were set high; the eyes were five to six times larger than human eyes with a feline translucence. The nose, as a protuberance did not show, but the mouth was quite large and prominent - similar to the mouths of vegetarian animals on earth, for these people were strict vegetarians. They had no chin. Being accustomed to a home planet where three earth years was as one of their own, each "Ebonite" contracted to spend three years on Earth. This arrangement was absolutely essential, as among this race both the male and female experienced a "heat" period only once every three earth-years. At this time it was necessary that mating take place or the health of the "Ebonite" would be seriously impaired. Very strict records were kept for this purpose; the mating season could be predicted to almost the minute of its commencement and took several hours for completion. Although both male and female workers came to Earth no mating ever took place away from the home planet. No genital organs were normally in evidence. The female breast enlarged only during the nine to ten weeks of her gestation period, and weaning became automatic as they shortly retracted to the normal size of any well developed male. Earthlings found it almost impossible to differentiate between the sexes of the "Ebonites", but between themselves the odour vibrations emitted by the body were quite distinguishable. The "Ebonites" were also very conscious of human odour vibrations and found them not only most distasteful but very loud, so that they would politely contrive to cover both the nose and ears if an earthling was nearby. A great deal of thought and preparation had gone in the foundation of this enclosed city. Conceived by a handful of early pioneers, it is now peopled by a relatively small percentage of the human race, who, through spiritual guidance have elected to live in seclusion.

The state of the outside world has deteriorated to the point where 90% of the population live in an abject state of servitude, dominated by one hundredth of one percent of their total. The remainder live on a somewhat higher plane of thought, but are completely restricted as to freedom of choice These are the essential intellects required by the rulers for scientific knowledge.

Vast amounts of time and energy are spent in bickering between the rulers. This argument is usually termed "Conferences" and "Committees". Territorial zones are set and reset as each group strives for supremacy.

Those within the enclosure, metaphysically minded, and heedful of the future of the whole human race, had tired of such wastage of time, talent and human potential. Having seen the writing on the wall they had chosen to build impregnable cities to which all sincerely peaceful and humble people were welcome. Here alone was it possible to survive the onslaught of mass psychology and warfare. Herein the nucleus of humanity which would survive to Father A GLORIOUS RACE.

Here they waited out the seemingly interminable years. Although the "outsiders" bred in droves they suffered strange new diseases and once in a while held mass war drives to cut down on their numbers. Suicide was also common, both on individual and mass scales. Often after such outbreaks thousands would approach the "Bubble Cities" seeking entrance.

I see this picture in far greater detail than herein described. The characters in my vision actually live, talk and act. Their days are spent in concentrated effort to teach the 'outsiders" peace and love. As their adherents grow in number new cities are formed all over the Earth to accommodate all who wish to participate. Their wisdom is such that any error among themselves is instantly apparent and is given immediate attention.

110:4.6 For many thousands of years, so the records of Jerusem show, in each generation there have lived fewer and fewer beings who could function safely with self-acting Adjusters. This is an alarming picture, and the supervising personalities of Satania look with favor upon the proposals of some of your more immediate planetary supervisors who advocate the inauguration of measures designed to foster and conserve the higher spiritual types of the Urantia races.

As Jesus and the twelve visited with the messengers of the kingdom at Gerasa, one of the Pharisees who believed in him asked this question: "Lord, will there be few or many really saved?" And Jesus, answering, said:

"You have been taught that only the children of Abraham will be saved; that only the gentiles of adoption can hope for salvation. Some of you have reasoned that, since the Scriptures record that only Caleb and Joshua from among all the hosts that went out of Egypt lived to enter the promised land, only a comparatively few of those who seek the kingdom of heaven shall find entrance thereto.

"You also have another saying among you, and one that contains much truth: That the way which leads to eternal life is straight and narrow, that the door which leads thereto is likewise narrow so that, of those who seek salvation, few can find entrance through this door. You also have a teaching that the way which leads to destruction is broad, that the entrance thereto is wide, and that there are many who choose to go this way. And this proverb is not without its meaning. But I declare that salvation is first a matter of your personal choosing. Even if the door to the way of life is narrow, it is wide enough to admit all who sincerely seek to enter, for I am that door. And the Son will never refuse entrance to any child of the universe who, by faith, seeks to find the Father through the Son.

"But herein is the danger to all who would postpone their entrance into the kingdom while they continue to pursue the pleasures of immaturity and indulge the satisfactions of selfishness: Having refused to enter the kingdom as a spiritual experience, they may subsequently seek entrance thereto when the glory of the better way becomes revealed in the age to come. (See Loliad's Vision above) And when, therefore, those who spurned the kingdom when I came in the likeness of humanity seek to find an entrance when it is revealed in the likeness of divinity, then will I say to all such selfish ones: I know not whence you are. You had your chance to prepare for this heavenly citizenship, but you refused all such proffers of mercy; you rejected all invitations to come while the door was open. Now, to you who have refused salvation, the door is shut. This door is not open to those who would enter the kingdom for selfish glory. Salvation is not for those who are unwilling to pay the price of wholehearted dedication to doing my Father's will.

When in and  you have turned your backs upon the Father's kingdom, it is useless in  and  to stand before this door and knock, saying, 'Lord, open to us; we would also be great in the kingdom.' Then will I declare that you are not of my fold. I will not receive you to be among those who have fought the good fight of faith and won the reward of unselfish service in the kingdom on earth.

And when you say, 'Did we not eat and drink with you, and did you not teach in our streets?' then shall I again declare that you are spiritual strangers; that we were not fellow servants in the Father's ministry of mercy on earth; that I do not know you; and then shall the Judge of all the earth say to you: 'Depart from us, all you who have taken delight in the works of iniquity.'

"But fear not; every one who sincerely desires to find eternal life by entrance into the kingdom of God shall certainly find such everlasting salvation. But you who refuse this salvation will some day see the prophets of the seed of Abraham sit down with the believers of the gentile nations in this glorified kingdom to partake of the bread of life and to refresh themselves with the water thereof. And they who shall thus take the kingdom in spiritual power and by the persistent assaults of living faith will come from the north and the south and from the east and the west. And, behold, many who are first will be last, and those who are last will many times be first."

This was indeed a new and strange version of the old and familiar proverb of the straight and narrow way.

 151:4.1 The next day Jesus again taught the people from the boat, saying: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while he slept, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and hastened away. And so when the young blades sprang up and later were about to bring forth fruit, there appeared also the weeds. Then the servants of this householder came and said to him: `Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? Whence then come these weeds?' And he replied to his servants, `An enemy has done this.' The servants then asked their master, `Would you have us go out and pluck up these weeds?' But he answered them and said: `No, lest while you are gathering them up, you uproot the wheat also. Rather let them both grow together until the time of the harvest, when I will say to the reapers, Gather up first the weeds and bind them in bundles to burn and then gather up the wheat to be stored in my barn.'"

151:4.2 After the people had asked a few questions, Jesus spoke another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man sowed in his field. Now a mustard seed is the least of seeds, but when it is full grown, it becomes the greatest of all herbs and is like a tree so that the birds of heaven are able to come and rest in the branches thereof."

 151:4.3 "The kingdom of heaven is also like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, and in this way it came about that all of the meal was leavened."

 151:4.4 "The kingdom of heaven is also like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man discovered. In his joy he went forth to sell all he had that he might have the money to buy the field."

 151:4.5 "The kingdom of heaven is also like a merchant seeking goodly pearls; and having found one pearl of great price, he went out and sold everything he possessed that he might be able to buy the extraordinary pearl."

 151:4.6 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a sweep net which was cast into the sea, and it gathered up every kind of fish. Now, when the net was filled, the fishermen drew it up on the beach, where they sat down and sorted out the fish, gathering the good into vessels while the bad they threw away."

 151:4.7 Many other parables spoke Jesus to the multitudes. In fact, from this time forward he seldom taught the masses except by this means. After speaking to a public audience in parables, he would, during the evening classes, more fully and explicitly expound his teachings to the apostles and the evangelists.

THE FALL OF THE CABAL
On this page exists a 10 part docu-series called The End of The World As We Know It (also known as: The Fall of The Cabal) by Janet Ossebaard, a Dutch researcher and author. 

What you're about to learn are not only the viewpoints of the author in her own words about what is happening in these turbulent times, but also what a vast and growing number of people all around the world have been learning about for years. People just like you, waking up to the truth...

The following series does not exist here to promote fear or instill panic, as it reveals some disturbing information about the world we live in. By continuing you accept that fact and that you will make up your own mind about what you learn here.

Additionally, for as bad as things are there is light at the end of the tunnel. There are good people who are winning and conquering evil, as you will come to see.

PART 1
Things That Make You Go Hmmmmm

PART 2
Down The Rabbit Hole

PART 3
The Alien Invasion

PART 4
Child Lovers Everywhere

PART 5
Children Art & Pizza

PART 6
Major Media Manipulation

PART 7
Witches & Warlocks

PART 8
Beyond Kings & Queens

PART 9
The Dawn Of A New World

PART 10
Return Of The King

Continue Down The Rabbit Hole...
CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE

Beijing Believes COVID-19 Is a Biological Weapon

 

From conspiracy theory to geopolitical realism, the possibility to treat COVID-19 as a biological weapon has been finally accepted in the public sphere. The recent statement by the Chinese spokesman Zhao Lijian, formally accusing the US of bringing coronavirus to China, has highlighted a series of new opinions about the pandemic.

The hypothesis of biological warfare behind the global pandemic had already been raised by Russian experts some weeks ago. Like any opinion that is slightly different from the official version of Western governments and their media agencies, the thesis was ridiculed and accused of being a “conspiracy theory”. However, as soon as the official spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the second largest economic power on the planet publishes a note attesting to this possibility, it leaves the sphere of “conspiracy theories” to enter the scene of public opinion and official government versions.

In addition to making the explanation of biological warfare official, Zhao Lijian raised important questions about the pandemic data in the USA: “When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!”

The supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, ordered on the same day of the declaration of the Chinese Ministry the creation of a unified center of scientific research specialized in the fight against the coronavirus. The motivation, according to the Iranian spiritual and political leader, was motivated by evidence that the pandemic is a biological attack. These are his words:

“The establishment of a headquarters to fight the outbreak [of COVID-19] occurs due to the presence of evidence that indicates the possibility of a biological attack, signaling that it is necessary that all coping services [to the coronavirus] be under the command of a unified headquarters”.

In fact, what the mainstream Western media has called a “conspiracy” has been manifested in US defense programs for a long time. We must briefly recall the official document named “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”, published by the conservative think tank “Project for a new American Century”, where we can clearly read: “(…) advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool “.

 

Taking into account that the document was published in 2000, we can see that the possibility of biological warfare has been carefully considered and worked on by American strategists for at least two decades. However, the projects are even older. This article published in Global Research tells a brief history of biological warfare technology, tracing the remote origins of this practice by the American armed forces. In this genealogy of biological warfare, we find reports of the use of bio-weapons in wars in great conflicts of the last century, such as the Second World War, the Korea War and the conflicts with Cuba. Even so, until last Thursday, the mere fact of mentioning this hypothesis for the new coronavirus was rejected as conspiracy.

We must attain to concrete data: Pentagon has 400 military laboratories around the world, whose activities are still obscure; the USA has not yet made a clear statement about the COVID-19 data in its territory, having not yet informed the identity of its patient zero and maintaining uncertain information about the number of infected; Chinese scientists conducted a complex study in which they concluded that the virus did not originate in China, but that it had multiple and diverse sources from the Huanan marine seafood market from where the virus subsequently spread.

In February, the Japanese media agency Ashi TV reported that the virus originated in the U.S., not China, and that Washington would be omitting its actual numbers, with some cases of death attributed to influenza being, in fact, camouflaged cases of coronavirus; on February 27, a Taiwanese virologist presented a series of flowcharts on a TV program, corroborating the thesis that the virus has an American origin, providing a scientific explanation to the flow of the virus sources devoid of any geopolitical purpose.

Another curious fact is that China has been unexpectedly affected by epidemic phenomena, particularly during the period of the trade war between Beijing and Washington. Only between 2018 and the beginning of 2020, the country recorded epidemic episodes of H7N4, H7N9 (two variations of bird flu) and African swine flu. Also, the US has not officially responded to any of these notes, remaining silent about the coronavirus situation in its territory.

Not proposing a concrete answer, but only speculations, we can consider that the circumstances of the case present us a very extensive list of possibilities about what in fact the coronavirus is. Obviously, it is possible that it is not a biological weapon – and this is the official version of most of the media agencies and governments – however, once this hypothesis has been raised and no concrete evidence to the contrary is presented, it is also possible that it is a biological weapon.

The most important thing to do is to dispel the myth that biological wars are conspiracy theories. We must begin to take this possibility seriously and analyze the evidences in search of real solutions. Biological weapons are methods that have long been used and that form a fundamental part of modern warfare, whose costs are less than the methods of direct confrontation of the old wars of mobilization – and whose benefits are greater.

*

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, Global Research, 2020

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'Charlottesville': A Government-Commissioned Story About Nuclear War
A fictional 1979 account of how the town in Virginia would weather an all-out nuclear exchange between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.

“Charlottesville” is a short story that was commissioned by the Office of Technology Assessment in 1979 as an appendix to the report The Effects of Nuclear War. The story was written by Nan Randall, a young journalist who had previously worked on nuclear stories with the executive director of the Arms Control Association. It had a remarkable life for a governmental report appendix, as recounted in Alexis Madrigal’s story about the impact of the piece, and became a key source for the biggest made-for-TV movie of all time, The Day After. As it is in the public domain, the story is presented here in its entirety with its original introduction in bold.

In an effort to provide a more concrete understanding of the situation that survivors of a nuclear war would face, OTA commissioned the following work of fiction. It presents one among many possibilities, and in particular it does not consider the situation if martial law were imposed or if the social fabric disintegrated into anarchy. It does provide detail that adds a dimension to the more abstract analysis presented in the body of the report.

At first, it seemed like a miracle. No fireball had seared the city, no blast wave had crumbled buildings and buried the inhabitants, no dark mushroom cloud had spread over the sky. Much of the country had been devastated by massive nuclear attack, but the small, gracious city of Charlottesville, Virginia, had escaped unharmed.

The nuclear attack on the nation did not come as a complete surprise. For some weeks, there had been a mounting anxiety as the media reported deteriorating relations between the superpowers. The threat of possible nuclear war hung heavy in the world’s consciousness. As evidence reached the U.S. president’s desk that a sizable number of Americans were deserting the major cities for what they perceived to be safety in the rural areas, he considered ordering a general evacuation. But, with the concurrence of his advisors, he decided that an evacuation call from the federal government would be premature, and possibly provocative. There was no hard evidence that the Soviets were evacuating and there was a good chance that the crisis would pass.

Spontaneous evacuation, without official sanction or direction, grew and spread. A week before the attack, Charlottesville had no free hotel or motel rooms. A few evacuees found lodgings with private families, at great expense, but most were forced to camp by their cars in their trailers next to the fast-food chains on Route 29. The governing bodies of Charlottesville and surrounding Albemarle County were rumored to be concerned about the drain on the area resources, without really having any way of turning back newcomers. “If this keeps up,” remarked a member of the Albemarle Board of Supervisors, “we’re going to be overrun without any war.”

A few of the students at the University of Virginia left Charlottesville to join their families. But the majority of the students stayed, believing that they could go home easily if it were necessary.

Refugees came from Washington, 130 miles to the north, and they came from Richmond, 70 miles to the east. A few of the hardier types continued on into the mountains and caverns near Skyline Drive; the majority sought the reassurances of civilization that the small city could provide.

The population of Charlottesville normally stood a little above 40,000, while Albemarle County, which surrounds the city like a donut, boasted an additional 40,000 to 50,000. With the arrival of the city evacuees, the combined population was well over 120,000.

In the week before the nuclear attack, much of the population familiarized itself with the location of fallout shelters. Little hoarding took place as retailers limited sales of food and other necessities. Transistor radios accompanied both adults and children when they were away from home. However, most of the residents of Charlottesville continued to live as they always had, although they were particularly alert for sirens or bulletin broadcasts on the radio. Many children stayed out of school.

At the sound of the sirens and the emergency radio alerts, most of Charlottesville and Albemarle County hurried to shelter. Fortunately, Charlottesville had a surplus of shelter space for its own population, though the refugees easily took up the slack. Many headed for the university grounds and the basements of the old neoclassical buildings designed by Thomas Jefferson; others headed downtown for the office-building parking garages. Carrying a few personal effects, blankets, cans and bottles of food, and transistor radios, they converged in a quiet if unordered mass, For most people, the obvious emotional crises—grief at leaving behind a pet, anxiety at being unable to locate a family member or relative—were suppressed by the overwhelming fear of the impending attack.

Some residents chose not to join the group shelters. Many suburbanites had ample, sturdy basements and food stocks. They preferred not to crowd themselves. In the event, those who had taken the precaution of piling dirt against the windows and doors of their basements found that they provided adequate shelter. Among the rural poor, there was a reluctance to desert the small farms that represented the sum of their Iife’s work. They wondered whether, if they left, they would return to find their means of livelihood gone. Further, many lived far from an adequate public shelter. So they stayed.

Most did not see the attacks on Richmond and on Washington as they huddled in their shelters. But the sky to the east and north of Charlottesville glowed brilliant in the noonday sun. At first no one knew how extensive the damage was.

Communication nationwide was interrupted as the Earth’s atmosphere shivered with the assault of the explosions. Each town, city, village, or farm was an island, forced to suffer its selected fate of death or salvation alone. (Some time later it was learned that more than 4,000 megatons (Mt) had destroyed military and industrial targets, killing close to 100 million people in the United States. The U.S. counterattack on the Soviet Union had had a similar, devastating effect. Destruction ranged from the large industrial centers on the coasts and Great Lakes to small farming communities that had the misfortune to be close to the great missile silos and military bases.)

Areas of the country such as the northeast corridor were reduced to a swath of burning rubble from north of Boston to south of Norfolk. Still, there were some sections of the nation that were spared the direct effects of blast and fire. Inland in Virginia, only the town of Radford, west of Roanoke, received a direct hit. The farming and orchard land of the rural counties were not targets.

Charlottesville, the small but elegant center of learning, culture, and trade in central Virginia, was not hit either. This monument to the mind and manner of Jefferson retained its status as a kind of genteel sanctuary, momentarily immune to the disaster that had leveled the cities of the nation.

An hour after nothing fell on Charlottesville, rescue squads and police were dispatched to scour the countryside for stragglers to get them to shelters. Because, even if the population was safe from the direct effects of the nuclear warheads, another danger was imminent. Fallout, the deadly cloud of radioactive particles sucked up by the nuclear fireballs, could easily blanket the town of Charlottesville in a matter of hours. And no one could predict how much, and where it would go. Fallout could poison many of those idyllic rural towns and villages that seemed light-years away from the problems of international power and politics. While a few places, such as Roseberg, Oregon, would receive no fallout at all, the rest of the nation would have to constantly monitor to know the level of radiation and where it was located. Fortunately for Charlottesville, the university and the hospitals had sophisticated radiological monitoring equipment, and the training to use it. Many other towns were not so lucky.

Two-and-one-half hours after the warnings had sounded, the nuclear-engineering staff from the university picked up the first fallout. Starting at a moderate level of about 40 rems an hour—a cumulative dose of 450 rems received in a one-week period would be fatal to one-half of those exposed—the intensity rose to 50 rems before starting the decline to a level of about four-tenths of a rem an hour after 2 weeks. (The total dose in the first 4 days was 2,000 rems, which killed those who refused to believe shelter was necessary, and increased the risk of eventually dying of cancer for those who were properly sheltered.) For the immediate period, it was essential to stay as protected as possible.

For several days, Charlottesville remained immobile, suspended in time. It was unclear just what had happened or would happen. The president had been able to deliver a message of encouragement, which was carried by those emergency radio stations that could broadcast. As the atmosphere had cleared, radio station WCHV was able to transmit sporadically on its backup transmitter and emergency generator in the basement. However, the message from the president posed more questions than it answered—the damage assessment was incomplete. Nevertheless, he said that there was a tentative cease-fire.

In the first days of sheltering, only those with some particular expertise had much to do. Nuclear engineers and technicians from the university were able to monitor radiation in the shelters they occupied, and CB radios broadcast results to other shelters. The doctors were busy attempting to treat physical and psychological ailments—the symptoms of radiation sickness, flu, and acute anxiety being unnervingly similar—while the police and government officials attempted to keep order. The rest waited.

For the time being, the food stocks brought to the shelter were adequate if not appetizing. The only problem was the water supply, which, though it kept running because of its gravity system, was contaminated with iodine-131. Potassium-iodide pills, which were available in some shelters, provided protection; elsewhere people drank bottled water, or as little water as possible.

Photo Mary Workman holds a jar of undrinkable water from her well in 1973. (Erik Calonius / EPA)

Not all of the shelters had enough food and other necessities. Most shelters had no toilets. The use of trash cans for human waste was an imperfect system, and several days into the shelter period, the atmosphere was often oppressive. As many suffered from diarrhea—the result either of anxiety, flu, or radiation sickness—the lack of toilet facilities was especially difficult. Shelter life was bearable in the beginning. Communications by CB radio allowed some shelters to communicate with one another, to locate missing family members and friends. A genuine altruism or community spirit of cooperation was present in almost all the shelters—though some of them were fairly primitive. Even those refugees who were crowded into halls and basements with the local residents were welcomed. Parents watched out for one another’s children or shared scarce baby food. Most people willingly accepted direction from whomever took charge. Among the majority of the shelter residents, the out-of-town refugees being an exception, there was a sense of relief, a sense that they had been among the lucky ones of this world. They had survived.

Within a few days, the emergency radio was able to broadcast quite regularly. (As the ionosphere does not clear all at once, occasional interruptions were expected.) The station had had no protection from the electromagnetic pulse that can travel down the antenna and shatter the inner workings of electronic equipment during a nuclear explosion. However, by detaching the back-up transmitter at the sound of the warning, the station engineer had protected equipment. Intermittent communications from Emergency Operations Centers got through to Charlottesville officials, though the main communications center at Olney, Maryland, was silent. Telephone switching facilities were almost entirely out, although the small, independent phone company could expect to be operational fairly quickly. The complex, coast-to-coast trunk lines of Ma Bell might take a year or more to reconnect.

Lifeline of the sheltered community was the CB radio. Rural Virginians had been CB fans long before it became a national craze, and they put their equipment to imaginative use. Prodded by anxious refugees, as well as by local residents who had relatives and friends in other parts of the world, CBers tried to set up a relay system on the lines of an electronic pony express. Though less than perfect, the CB relay was able to bring limited news from outside, most of that news being acutely distressing. From the limited reports, it was clear that there was little left in the coastal cities; those who had abandoned family or friends to come to Charlottesville understood that probably they would never see them again.

The first surge of grief swept over the refugees and those Charlottesville residents who were affected. In time, the sorrow of loss would affect almost everyone. Although they had survived themselves, still they had lost.

Three days after the attacks, the next large influx of refugees poured into Charlottesville, many of them suffering with the early symptoms of radiation sickness. They had been caught poorly sheltered or too close to the nuclear targets themselves. A few showed the effects of blast and fire, bringing home to Charlottesville the tangible evidence of the war’s destruction. Some refugees had driven, while others had hitchhiked or even walked to reach what they hoped was safety and medical help. On the way, many were forced to abandon those who were too weak to continue.

The hospitals were completely overwhelmed. Up to now, the hospitals had managed to treat the ill with some modicum of order. The hospitals themselves were fallout shelters of a kind; patients’ beds had been moved to interior corridors for fallout protection; emergency surgery was feasible with the emergency generators; hospital staff slept in the most protected areas. Some borderline cases in intensive care were released to nature’s devices while any elective medical procedures were eliminated. Still, hospitals were able to cope, even with the increasing number of common ailments caused by the shelter crowding.

Suddenly, this changed. Fallout levels were too high for anyone to be out in the open for any length of time, but the people came anyway. The carefully laid plans of the University of Virginia emergency room, devised for the possibility of peacetime accidents, were hurriedly modified. No longer was the careful showering and decontaminating of victims possible with the single shower and uncertain water pressure. Instead, patients were stripped of their clothes and issued hospital gowns. With no time for studied decision, doctors segregated the very sick from the moderately sick—the latter to be treated, the former given medication and allowed to die.

Nevertheless, the day came when the hospitals were full. The university hospital, Martha Jefferson Hospital, the Blue Ridge Sanatorium, and the others were forced to lock their doors to protect those patients they had already accepted.

After being turned away, the sick had no specific destination. Many still clustered around the middle of town near the two major hospitals, taking up residence in the houses abandoned by local residents several days before. With minimal protection from fallout and no medical treatment for other trauma, many died, their bodies left unburied for several weeks.

The combined populations of Charlottesville and Albemarle County rose to 150,000 in the seven days after the nuclear attack. Slowly, hostility and resentment wedged a gap between residents and refugees who attempted to join the group shelters. The refugees, still in a daze from their experience, believed that they had priority rights after all they had suffered. The local residents viewed the outsiders as a threat to their own survival, particularly as the extent of the war damage was becoming evident.

In fact, the supply of food was not a problem in the short run. Like most other towns and cities, Charlottesville and Albemarle had some three weeks’ worth of food on hand, on home shelves, in supermarkets and wholesale outlets. The Morton Frozen Food plant could be expected to supply a rich diet of convenience foods for a short time, even after the refrigeration was off. The problem was, after the local supplies were exhausted, where could they get more?

Nerves, already frayed by the stresses of the past days, threatened to snap. Older people were irritated by the noise and commotion of children; children resented the lack of freedom. The friction between differing groups became increasingly evident, and vocal. An experiment in communal living was clearly not to the taste of many, and the discomforts, both physical and psychological, had the effect of pushing local residents out of the shelters. (There was some effort to stop them as the radiation levels still posed some hazards; they were urged at least to stay inside most of the time.) Left in the shelters, now, were mostly those out-of-town refugees who had no homes to go to.

Not all the residents of Charlottesville and Albemarle found their homes intact. In some cases they returned to find the house looted or occupied by refugees who were unwilling to give up squatters’ rights. Sometimes claims were backed with guns; in a few cases, squatter and owner worked out a modus vivendi of sharing the property.

Some animals had survived, in varying states of health. Unprotected farm animals were dead, while those that had been confined to fairly solid barns with uncontaminated feed had a fair chance of surviving. Many of these farm animals, however, were missing, apparently eaten by hungry refugees and residents. Some pets had remained indoors in good de facto shelters so that, if they had found water, they needed only to be fed to regain health. Worried about the amount of food pets could consume, many families simply put them out to fend for themselves.

For the first week or so after the nuclear attacks, authorities had few options. Simple survival was the priority, the elements of which included food and water distribution, fallout protection, and retention of some civil order. Government was ad hoc, with the leadership of the city and county naturally cooperating, along with the different police forces. As the population left the shelters, however, officials felt that some more formalized system was desirable. After several long meetings—in the basement of the courthouse where the government officials had stayed to avoid fallout—an emergency government, led by the city manager of Charlottesville, was agreed on. The combined city council and the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors also elected the chairman of the board of supervisors as deputy, and the sheriff of the county as chief of public safety to oversee the combined police forces and provide liaison with those military units that were still in the area.

The powers given to the city manager were sweeping in scope, certainly far beyond any powers he had held before, and ran “for the duration of the emergency.” While some considered the new form of local government close to martial law, great care was exercised to be sure that the offensive term was not used. In effect, however, Charlottesville and Albemarle were under a highly centralized, almost totalitarian rule.

Whatever it might be called, under the new system, the city manager was able to take over all resources and their allocation. Following to some extent the paper plan that the area had developed, the new government attempted to set out priorities. It was greatly aided by the experts from the university, who volunteered time and expertise to analyzing the needs of the area. (In this respect, Charlottesville was particularly fortunate in having an extensive pool of talent on which to draw.)

However, if Charlottesville was lucky to have reasonably functioning government and a number of experienced planners and managers, and to have suffered comparatively modest disruption from refugees and fallout, the city and county authorities were becoming painfully aware that they were not set up to “go it alone” without any outside help. Even were the weather suitable for planting, Charlottesville was no longer an agricultural center. There wasn’t enough energy to process any food that might be grown. Where would people get clothes and building materials and medicines and spare parts for the cars and buses? The very complexity of American society—its technological marvels and high standard of living—could well prove to be a barrier to the reconstruction of any one part.

Photo A woman in a bomb shelter, 1961 (Marion S. Trikosko)

During the third week after the attacks, the new rationing system came into force. Individual identification cards were issued to every man, woman, and child. Food was distributed at centralized points. Those without ID cards were unable to get their ration of flour, powdered milk, and lard—and the processing of cards could take three or more days. Some desperate refugees resorted to stealing ID cards in order to get food, while an enterprising printer started turning out forgeries within two days after the government had first issued cards. Rumors of hoarding and black marketeering abounded. Some of the missing supermarket food turned up in black-market centers, accompanied by exorbitant prices.

Fuel supplies were dropping more rapidly than the government had hoped. Most families were heating their homes with wood, either in fireplaces or in recycled oil drums for stoves. As the winter was waning, the most desperate need was for fuel for driving motors and generators. Even the drinking water was dependent on the emergency generator that ran a single purifying system for the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority. (Water for other uses could simply be drawn from the gravity-powered reservoir system, bypassing the filtration system entirely.) The hospital and radio stations all ran on small generators. The university could luxuriate in its coal-powered steam heat, but there was no way, save generators or candles and lanterns, to get lights.

No one was exactly certain how much fuel there was in the area. Both jurisdictions had once surveyed, for emergency planning purposes, the fuel-storage capacity, and they hoped they could count on having about half of that on hand. Armed guards were assigned to those larger facilities that had not already been raided by the desperate. All private use of cars or tractors was outlawed, and the government threatened to confiscate any moving vehicles.

Electricity was restored, partially, some two weeks after the attack. Workers from the small Bremo Bluff generating plant, about 15 miles away from Charlottesville, succeeded in starting the plant with the coal reserves that were on hand. From then on, limited electricity use was permitted for a few hours a day. This was particularly pleasant for those families whose water came from electrically powered well pumps. Well water was issued to children for drinking, as it had escaped the iodine-131 contamination that was still elevated in the reservoirs.

The radioactivity level continued to drop (after two weeks it was 0.4 rem per hour) and it was “safe” to go outdoors. However, the resulting doses, though too low to cause immediate illness or death, posed a long-term health hazard. The authorities, while recognizing that everybody would receive many times the prewar “safe dose,” tried to reduce the hazards by urging people to stay inside as much as possible when not picking up food rations at the distribution centers. Life for the residents of Charlottesville revolved around those trips and figuring out ways to make do without the normal supplies and services. Some chanced outings to forage for a greater variety of food, but most were resigned to waiting. There wasn’t much else they could do.

Three weeks after the nuclear attack, almost all the Charlottesville and Albemarle County residents had returned to their homes. Those few whose homes had either been occupied by squatters, or been destroyed by fire, easily found some alternate housing with the government’s help.

This left the refugees. Though the drop in fallout intensity allowed the refugees to move out of basements and interior halls, they still were forced to live a version of camp life. They spent their endless, empty hours waiting in lines for food, for a chance to use the bathrooms—which at least functioned now—for a chance to talk to authorities. Information from the outside was still sketchy, and for the refugees, this uncertainty added to their already high level of anxiety.

The city manager and the emergency government attempted to solve the refugee housing problem by billeting refugees in private homes. At first they asked for volunteers, but got few. The authorities then announced that any house with fewer than two people per room would be assigned a refugee family. Resistance to this order was strong, and, particularly in the outlying areas where it was hard to check, outright defiance was common. Families would pretend to comply and then simply force the refugees out as soon as the authorities had left. The refugees would struggle back to town, or take up residence in barns or garages.

And still the refugees came to Charlottesville, bringing with them stories of the horrors they had experienced. They camped in schools, in banks, in warehouses. By night the neoclassical architecture of the university was packed with the residents of Arlington and Alexandria. By day, the new downtown mall was awash with a floating mass of men, women, and children, who, with nothing to do, milled around the unopened stores. A retired ambassador was overheard comparing the scene to that of downtown Calcutta.

By now, the emergency government recognized that the need for food was going to be acute. Without power for refrigeration, much food had spoiled; stocks of nonperishable foods were mostly exhausted. As the shortages became clear, the price of food skyrocketed. Many people refused money for food, preferring to barter. Food and fuel were the most valuable commodities, with shoes and coats high on the list as well.

Since shortly after the attack, the city manager had been in contact both with the federal government and with the relocated state government in Roanoke. He had repeatedly asked for emergency rations, only to be met with vague promises and explanations about the problems of transportation. He was generally urged to cut rations further and hang on. Help would arrive when it could.

For some time, the relatively few surviving farm animals had been gradually and mysteriously disappearing. The farmers concluded that “those damned city folks” were stealing them for food, although some of the local residents were also making midnight forays on the livestock. Farmers themselves slaughtered animals they had planned to fatten up for the future. They couldn’t spare the feed grain, and they needed food now.

Finally the emergency authorities announced that they would take a percentage of every farmer’s livestock to help feed residents and refugees. Farmers were outraged, considering the action simple theft. There were rumors that angry farmers had shot several agents who had tried to confiscate the animals. Though they were offered promissory notes from the city authorities, the farmers thought such payment worthless.

(The radiological experts at the university had been questioned on the advisability of eating the meat of animals with radiation sickness. Many of those beasts which had remained outside during the high fallout period were showing clear signs of illness. The experts decided that the meat would be edible if cooked sufficiently to kill any bacterial invasion—the result of the deterioration of the animal’s digestive tract. Strontium-90 would be concentrated in the bones or the milk, not the muscle tissue.)

Although the city government had relatively frequent contact, mostly by radio, with the federal and state governments, the citizens had to rely on the occasional presidential message that was broadcast on WCHV. Three weeks after the attacks, the president made a major address to reassure the people. He announced that the cease-fire was still holding and he saw no reason why that would change. He described the damage that the U.S. retaliatory strike had done to the Soviet Union. He also noted that the United States still retained enough nuclear weapons, most of them at sea on submarines, to inflict considerable damage on any nation that attempted to take advantage of the recent past. He did not mention that he suspected that the Soviets also held reserve weapons.

Describing the damage that the country had suffered, the president noted that, even with the loss of over 100 million lives, “We still have reserves, both material and spiritual, unlike any nation on earth. ” He asked for patience and for prayers.

There had been broadcasts earlier by the lieutenant governor of Virginia—the governor was killed in Richmond—from his shelter in Roanoke. However, as fallout in the Roanoke area was quite high (Radford just to the west had been struck), he was effectively immobilized for some time. The state government appeared less organized than the federal.

Charlottesville was still on its own. Residents hunted game as the last of the food stocks disappeared, but the fallout had killed most animals that were in the open. Refugees were reduced to stealing. A number of people managed to fill their gas tanks with contraband gasoline and set out to forage in the mountains to the west.

Three-and-one-half weeks after the attack, an old propeller-driven cargo plane landed at the Charlottesville Airport with a supply of flour, powdered milk, and vegetable oil. The pilot assured the few policemen who guarded the airstrip that more would be on the way by truck as soon as temporary bridges could be built over the major rivers.

The emergency airlift was supposed to supply Charlottesville with food for a week or two. However, the officials who had calculated the allotment had overlooked the refugees. Charlottesville’s population was some three times the normal. (No one was absolutely sure because the refugees moved around a good deal, from camp to camp.)

The first of the deaths from radiation had occurred 10 days after the attacks, and the number grew steadily. By now, it was not uncommon to see mass funerals several times a day. The terminally ill were not cared for by the hospitals—there were too many, and there was nothing that could be done for them anyway—so it was up to their families to do what they could. Fortunately there were still ample supplies of morphia, and it was rumored that college students had donated marijuana. The city set aside several locations on the outskirts of town for mass graves.

In addition to those with terminal radiation sickness, there were those with nonfatal cases and those who showed some symptoms. Often it was impossible for doctors to quickly identify those with flu or psychosomatic radiation symptoms. The number of patients crowding the emergency rooms did not slacken off. The refugees, crowded together, passed a variety of common disorders, from colds to diarrhea, back and forth. Several public-health experts worried that an outbreak of measles or even polio could come in the late spring. “So far, we have been lucky not to have a major epidemic of typhus or cholera,” a doctor observed to his colleagues.

The supply of drugs on hand at the hospitals was dwindling fast. Although penicillin could be manufactured fairly easily in the laboratories at the university, many other drugs were not so simple, even with talent and ingenuity. (The penicillin had to be administered with large veterinary hypodermics as the homemade mix was too coarse for the small disposable hypes that most doctors stocked. There was a considerable shortage of needles.) Other medications were in such short supply that many patients with chronic illnesses such as heart disease, kidney failure, respiratory problems, hypertension, and diabetes died within a few weeks.

Food riots broke out four-and-a-half weeks after the attacks—precipitated by the first large shipment of grain. Three large tractor-trailers had pulled into the parking lot of the Citizens Commonwealth Building quite unexpectedly, the word of their arrival somehow misplaced between the Agriculture Department dispatchers and the local authorities. The trucks were greeted with cheers until the residents of Charlottesville discovered that they had been shipped raw grain rather than flour. The drivers were taken unawares when empty cans and bottles showered them and one driver jumped in his cab and departed. (The official explanation, delivered some time later, was that processed food was going to those areas where the bulk of the population was sick or injured. It was also assumed that Charlottesville had some livestock reserves.)

With only a fraction of the population knowing what to do with raw grain, a number of angry citizens broke open the sacks and scattered wheat through the parking lot. They in turn were set upon by those who wanted to conserve as much as possible. The local public safety forces waded into the melee with night sticks and tear gas.

Everyone blamed everyone else for the incident, but the fragile glue that had held public order together began to unstick.

From this time on, it was almost impossible for the local authorities, not to mention the state and federal governments, to convince everyone they were getting a fair share. People in one section of town would watch suspiciously as delivery trucks passed them by and headed somewhere else. Blacks distrusted whites, the poor distrusted the rich, and everyone distrusted the refugees as “outsiders.”

The refugees were convinced that the local authorities were favoring the residents and tried repeatedly to get state intervention, with little success. Still billeted in dormitories, schools, and motels, the refugee camps were a breeding ground for discontent and even rebellion.

The presence of the federal government was not entirely confined to the occasional delivery of food or radio broadcast. Some time before, the National Guard and the reserve unit were moved to North Carolina, partly to give the impression of military readiness, and perhaps to be assigned to dig out cities and start reconstruction. The government had put out calls for volunteers to help in the reconstruction, but found that most workers, young and old, wanted to stay with their families. A system of national conscription for young men and women with no children was in the planning stage.

The federal government attempted to urge refugees back to where they had come from, first to assist in the rebuilding of the damaged cities which were rich in resources, and ultimately to redistribute the population to a more normal pattern. Some refugees were happy to attempt to return, particularly those whose houses were more or less intact. However, those who found their homes destroyed preferred to return to the refugee camps inland. There was nothing to hold them to their former lives. Fearful memories of the past made any time spent in the cities painful.

One day, quite without warning, the city manager was informed that one-half of his fuel stores were to be confiscated by the federal government, for the military and for the reconstruction effort. (Earth-moving equipment was gathering on the outskirts of the devastated cities and needed fuel.) After it was clear that there was no way to stop the government from taking the fuel, the city manager suggested that unmarked tank trucks, well guarded, pick up the stocks at night. He was aware of the effect this action would have on the morale of the population.

Already transportation was difficult for the elderly and those who lived in the rural areas. A sporadic bus service ran from one end of town to the other once a day and an occasional school bus made a sortie out into the suburbs. Bicycles were prized, and sometimes fought over. Those gentlemen farmers whose thoroughbred horses had been protected from fallout could use these animals for transportation, but it was risky to let the animals stand unprotected. Horse thievery had made an anachronistic reappearance.

With even less fuel, the bus service would be cut in half.

By now, barter was clearly established as the preferred means of trade. For a time, the government had paid for commandeered foodstuff and resources with checks and promissory notes, but no one wanted them anymore. The local banks had opened for a few days, only to find all their savers lined up to withdraw everything. They closed down. Stores either never opened, or shut down quickly when they were overrun. (Many stores had been looted in the second week after the attack, when the fallout intensity had dropped.) A few people hoarded money, but most thought money worthless.

Workers in the small industries in the Charlottesville area saw no point in turning up for work if all they could get was paper money. They preferred to spend the time hunting for food and fuel. If barter was a highly inefficient way to do business—it’s hard to make change for a side of beef—still, it was preferable to using worthless currency.

Psychologically, the population seemed to be in a quiet holding pattern. The refugees, many of them, had survived experiences that would mark them for years. The memories of fire, collapsing buildings, and screaming, trapped people were still vivid, and some would tremble at loud noises. However, the profound grief over what they had lost—family members, possessions, or friends—underlay emotions and made many apathetic and passive victims of the nuclear attacks; they appeared willing to be victims afterward too. Still shunned as outsiders by the resident population, most refugees appeared to accept the exclusion just as the surviving population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had 30-odd years before.

The effect on the Charlottesville and Albemarle residents was less pronounced. They were disoriented. For each lucky one who had a specific job to do, there were many more who were in effect unemployed. They turned inward to their families or else friends and relatives. Their worries about the future—would there be another attack, would they go back to their old jobs, etc.—made most days rather anxious, unproductive ones. Children particularly reflected a continuous nervousness, picked up from their elders, and had difficulty sleeping at night. Though many parents hoped for a return to normalcy once the schools reopened, others quietly decided not to send their children for fear of a second outbreak of war.

Photo Monticello in Charlottesville (Library of Congress)

Spring changed a lot of things. A new optimism surfaced as everyone looked forward to planting, to good weather and warmth. The residents of Charlottesville had survived the first hurdle; they felt confident they could survive the next.

At the university, agronomists studied the best crops to plant in the Charlottesville area. No one was certain what effect the nuclear explosions had had on the ozone layer. If indeed the ozone was severely damaged, more ultraviolet rays could reach the crops and perhaps burn them. This effect would be more pronounced on delicate crops such as peas and beans. Instead it was suggested that potatoes and soybeans be encouraged and whatever limited fertilizer became available go to farmers who followed the government guidelines.

The emergency government announced that two-thirds of the former pasture land was to be cultivated. Feed grains were to be used for humans, not livestock. Dairy cattle and chickens were the only exceptions.

The next few months in Charlottesville and Albemarle County had a slow, almost dreamlike quality. Fears of new attacks had abated. It was a time of settling into a new lifestyle, a severely simplified way of being, of making do. Children ate meat, cheese, or eggs rarely, adults practically never. A good pair of shoes was guarded—and worn only on special occasions. (With warmer weather, most children and adults went barefoot, bringing concern to doctors that there would be an increase in parasitic diseases such as hookworm.)

Many people were unable to return to their former jobs. In some cases, their employers never reopened for business, their goods and services being irrelevant in the postattack society. College teachers, for example, had no students to teach; computer programmers had no computers to program.

For some, it was relatively easy to adapt. Electronics experts set up CB and short-wave radio repair shops. Cottage industries—sandal and clothing manufacturing from recycled materials, soap and candle making—sprang up in many homes. Some workers were able to acquire new, relevant skills quickly.

Others had to make do with menial jobs—burying the dead, cleaning the streets, assisting carpenters and bricklayers—that took little skill.

And then there were those who could not fit in anywhere. Many found it difficult to adapt to the idleness. Disruption of the nine-to-five work ethic was a disruption of basic psychological props, of a sense of identity. In the immediate period after the attacks, parents concentrated on protection of their families. Once their families were no longer directly affected, adults were robbed of their traditional roles.

By now, a few of the refugees had melted into the general population. But the vast majority were no further along than in the late winter. The drag on the area resources was significant, and many in the leadership wanted to force them out.

Charlottesville was fortunate in many respects, however. Being located on two easily repairable rail lines—with a major storage yard for cars only two counties away—there was some access to the outside world. Travel was only permitted with a special pass, naturally, and so the younger members of the community resorted to the hallowed art of riding the rods.

Government officials, many of whom had visited Charlottesville and the university frequently in the past, kept in closer contact with the city than with many other locales. Doubtless the area residents benefited with more federal assistance. As a result, Charlottesville became the unofficial “capital” of the area, economically and politically.

But as autumn approached, a universal depression settled on the residents and refugees. Starvation had been held at bay by the planting—but crop yields were smaller than expected. No one was cold, but the weather was still fine. There seemed to be no appreciable progress toward pre-attack conditions. Those young men and women who had been conscripted to build housing for the nation’s refugees returned with gloomy reports of the devastation to the nation’s commerce. The East Coast was effectively leveled. Where factories were rebuildable, the shortage of materials precluded their operation.

Recognizing that many families would have to make do without heating oil or gas, the Agriculture Extension Service issued pamphlets on how to make your own woodburning stove. Fortunately for Charlottesville and the surrounding area, trees were plentiful. However, the momentum that had started with the spring planting slowed.

Winter was harder than anyone had expected. There were few additional deaths that could be directly attributed to the nuclear blast effects or the radiation; however, a large percentage of the surviving population was weakened. Lack of medicines, lack of adequate food and reasonable shelter, plus the lingering physical and psychological effects, meant that many were unable to work effectively, even if there were work available. An epidemic of flu raged through the cities of the East where refugees were huddled in camps. Many died, especially children and old people. Although vaccine for this particular, common strain of flu had been developed, the stocks had been destroyed in the attacks

In the northern sections of the country, food supplies were inadequate and poorly distributed. The average diet—day in, day out—consisted of unleavened bread and potatoes, where there was enough of those. As animal herds, both domestic and wild, had been decimated by fallout and indiscriminate hunting, the only available meat came from dogs, cats, and rats—those animals whose living habits protected them from fallout. Dietary-deficiency diseases appeared.

Growing children were the first to notice the lack of replacement clothes—particularly leather shoes. Coats and blankets were highly prized in the cold climates.

Next to food, the most severe shortage was housing. Even with the temporary barracks that had been erected in a cluster around the damaged cities, refugees were crowded two or three to a room. Kitchens were shared by four and five families; bathrooms by as many as 12 people.

Although there was relatively little work to occupy time, and schooling was strictly curtailed, if indeed it existed, there was also very little available recreation. The entertainment industry located in California and New York had been particularly hard hit. Local TV stations could broadcast and rebroadcast those old films and cartoons they had in stock, but little was fed nationwide. In the small towns, public libraries were overwhelmed. In the large cities, the libraries had been destroyed. There were no movie houses to speak of; there were no professional sports. The lack of recreation, perhaps a minor problem, still served to underscore the bleakness of the winter.

In Charlottesville alone, several thousand people died in the first winter after the nuclear attack.

A year almost to the day after the nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union, Charlottesville was host to a blue-ribbon panel of experts on reconstruction planning. The university had not returned to normal—there were no undergraduate classes as the students had been conscripted for reconstruction work in the cities—but it was a natural meeting place since so many centers of learning had been destroyed.

The questions before the group centered on setting priorities: What were the goals and how could the country reach them?

The U.S. government still existed, if in a slightly reordered form. The president, now permanently located in the Midwest along with the surviving members of Congress and the Cabinet, retained the emergency powers he had taken just after the attacks. (Congress had had no choice but to ratify his assumption of these extraordinary powers at the time. However, there was growing resentment that he showed few signs of relinquishing them. Congress was reduced to a kind of advisory body, its members spending most of their time on helping constituents relocate or obtain a ID.)

The state governments had, by and large, reestablished themselves, often in new locations. Virginia’s government was located in Roanoke, for example, under the lieutenant governor. State governments were not as well respected as before; citizens tended to blame them for the mix-ups in aid distribution. Only the refugees looked to the states for assistance against the local governments, which they distrusted. The residents of an area such as Charlottesville were most loyal to their local government, particularly when that government had a reputation of basic evenhandedness.

Everyone, however, was growing hostile to the imposition of strict governmental controls over their lives—what they could or could not buy, or eat, where they could travel, etc. In certain rural sections, such as Nelson County, south of Charlottesville, farmers had barricaded themselves off, ignored government orders, and occasionally, it was rumored, took potshots at the government agents.

Attempts to conscript the able-bodied to rebuild the damaged areas often failed miserably. Many simply walked off the job and returned to their families. Since there were no adequate records remaining of the prewar population, and no records at all of war deaths, the government found it an impossible task to track down offenders. (Criminals in medium- and light-security detention facilities had simply evaporated into the population.)

Charlottesville, like the rest of the undamaged parts of the country, still had a huge refugee population that was unwilling or unable to return to former homes. The majority were in camps such as the large facility in the old Lane School, and children were in day care or orphanages, depending on the status of their surviving families. If anything, the refugees were both more apathetic and more rebellious when faced with simple assignments. Lawless bands of teenaged refugees roamed the countryside, hijacking supply trucks and raiding farms and villages. Partly it was simple bravado, partly a way to feed themselves. Most refugees simply sat and waited for the next meal.

Yet even now, the flow of refugees continued. The winter had driven out those who could not find enough to eat or enough shelter. Stories of Vermont families subsisting on maple syrup and wild rabbits might have proven entertaining in the retelling, but those who had survived did not want to repeat the performance.

The medical problems were still acute. Drug supplies were almost exhausted, but the weakened population remained more susceptible to disease. The birth rate had fallen drastically nine months after the attacks, partly because of the radiation, which produced temporary sterilization—but there had also been a rise in miscarriages, stillbirths, and abnormalities. Infant mortality soared. Experts worried that an unprecedented increase in cancer, particularly in children, could be expected in several years. And there was still the possibility of some devastating epidemic as cholera running unchecked through the population. The Blue Ridge Sanatorium in Charlottesville, which had seen few tuberculosis patients in the last years before the attacks, was making plans to convert back to specializing in the disease. TB was making a comeback.

The nation’s economy was in shambles. The bulk of the oil-refining capacity had been knocked out, and only a few facilities were functioning again. The small oil wells around the country that were situated away from target areas produced more oil than the refineries could handle—and it was only a fraction of the need. Coal mining, mostly by the time-honored pick-and-shovel method as strip mining took heavy equipment, was the only industry that could be called booming. (There was a major migration to the mining areas by the unemployed.) Agriculture, of course, was a major undertaking for much of the population. However, yields from the farms were considerably below what had been hoped for. The lack of pesticides and fertilizer cut heavily into the crops and there was concern about a major insect invasion next summer. Food processing—wheat and corn milling particularly—showed encouraging signs of recovery.

Most major industries, however, were in disarray as a result of lack of energy, lack of raw materials, and lack of managerial expertise. The world economy was staggering from the effect of losing both the United States and the Soviet Union as suppliers and markets. (If the Latin Americans were able to make small fortunes on selling the U.S. refined petroleum, political pressures were building in those countries to raise the prices to double the current rates.)

An efficient system of money still had not been reestablished. The federal government paid the military and other federal employees with dollars and tried to preserve purchasing power through a series of price controls. However, most people were reluctant to accept dollars in exchange for essentials such as food or clothing. As a result, a barter system continued to flourish and the black market, with its highly inflated prices, continued to encourage defiance of the law.

Most experts believed that the experience of post–World War II in Europe and Japan could provide the model for currency reform, including replacement of the dollar, that was necessary to restore an economy based on the division of labor. However, the resolution of two policy issues stood in the way. First, should the market, on one hand, or government control, on the other, determine the distribution of scarce resources? Second, should the new money go to those with legitimate claims, pensions, promissory notes for goods confiscated during the postattack period, etc., or to those who held productive jobs, or even to the entire population even if many were more drag than help to the recovery? Politically, the government was unable to deny any one of the groups; practically, it was obvious the government could not satisfy all three.

It was clear that if the economy did not get moving again soon, it might never. Already there were indications that manufacturing was not reestablishing itself with anywhere near the speed the planners had hoped. The amount of shipping, by rail and by truck, was actually down from the midsummer high.

“We are in the classic race,” remarked one of the participants who had written a major study of postattack recovery some years before. “We have to be able to produce new goods and materials before we exhaust our stored supplies. We can continue to eat the wheat that is in the grain elevators of the Midwest for another year, perhaps. But after that, we have to have the capacity to grow new wheat. When our winter coats wear through, we have to have the capacity to weave the cloth for new ones. When our railroad cars break down, we have to be able to make new ones, or replacement parts. Right now we are a long way from that capacity.” Privately, he and a group of conferees agreed that heavy controls on the economy, and ultimately on the population, would be the only way to get things going. Resources, both material and human, were severely limited.

One of the major problems, it was obvious to everyone, was the drag the huge refugee population had on the recovery effort. While numbers of workers were actively engaged in the rebuilding of the cities as well as the factories and services that powered the economy, there were as many more who were unemployed and unemployable for the time being. Their skills were not suited to the priority tasks. Several participants had prepared a statement on what should be done with these nonproductive members of society. “We cannot let this mass of people drain our resources while they do nothing to contribute,” it was rumored to say. “If we cannot let them starve outright, we suggest that they be issued only that amount of food which is minimally necessary to sustain life. They should be moved to camps away from the center of activity for reason of public morale. ” The report was suppressed but several copies were leaked to the press anyway.

The most basic disagreement among the participants in the conference was over the level of reconstruction that might actually be feasible. Optimists cited the phenomenal recovery of Japan and West Germany after World War II and insisted that these be the models for the United States in the next five to 10 years.

Pessimists, noting the major differences between the post–World War II era and the situation of Japan and Germany, felt these examples were irrelevant, or worse, misleading. “Everyone forgets the amount of aid that came in from outside in the late ’40s and early ’50s. We don’t have the United States’ wealth to turn to. Such a goal is unrealistic and unreachable, even with absolute controls on the economy. ”

The pessimists were divided. Some saw the nation building itself along the line of some of the Asian nations, which boasted a small technologically advanced segment in the midst of a large agrarian or unskilled worker population, on the model of India or Indonesia. Some thought technology itself would eventually disappear from American society. “If you don’t have computers to run, you don’t train computer programmers,” one expert was overheard to say. “After a while, in a few generations, no one remembers how the machines worked at all. They remember the important things: how to plant crops, how to train draft horses and oxen, how to make a simple pump. We will have survived biologically, but our way of life is going to be unrecognizable. In several generations, the United States is going to resemble a late medieval society.”

Because the conferees could not agree on what was a reasonable goal, much less how to get there, the conference report straddled all fences and concluded nothing. Follow-up task forces were appointed and the conferees agreed to meet again in the summer. Perhaps by then they would have a better idea of whether or not they were winning the race.

Lee discusses the blackouts in Venezuela and the evidence that the US considered sabotaging Venezuela’s electricity grid in order to destabilize the government before it happened. Lee also discusses the congressional war powers resolution to end support for Saudi Arabia’s genocide in Yemen, the bleak developments in Brexit, a controversy involving investigators at the International Criminal Court, the school strike for climate, and more news from the notorious pharmaceutical industry profiteers. Natalie McGill brings you a new report from Demand Justice which finds that a majority of Senate Democrats have been voting in favor of Trump’s picks for federal courts since 2017. Naomi Karavani looks into the “other” college scandal receiving less attention in mainstream media right now.

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