book review and muddling through

BOOK REVIEW AND MUDDLING THROUGH


“What So Proudly We Hailed” is, purportedly, a post-apocalypse book wherein a EMP strike takes out the nations electric grid and a dude escapes with family aboard a boat. This looked promising, covering grid vulnerability and boat bug out. While the first half of the book was great, which I’ll cover in a moment, the second half had almost nothing to do with either but instead degenerated into a emotional screed of a shameless religious fanatical nature. The author was an engineer type involved in power grids, who also worked with nukes in the Navy, so I would have expected a more level headed amount of rational thinking. Which is notably lacking after page 175 or thereabouts. The author acknowledges the help of someone in a Christian Fiction Writers Group, so one can imagine without too much difficulty the following scene. “Dude, this is all about surviving. Guns and food and such. Where is more mention of His Most Holey Savior Who Died For Our Sins?” “Oh my Baby Lord Jesus, you’re right. I only mentioned long passages from the King James Bible 5% of the time. Let’s bow our heads and pray for guidance. Yep, as I suspected. We need to ramp that bad boy up to 15%, AND let everyone know how evil and sneaky those Muslim dudes are.” “Amen, my bother. Remember, unofficial church doctrine frowns on us stripping the Earth of its remaining trees unless it is for a good cause such as scaring the un-Born Again into fighting the new commie Evil Empire, right now being the Muslims because they are rudely occupying our oil fields in the middle east, which, under divine intervention of His Most Beloved Creator And Lord will become the 51st state soon.” “Can I get an Amen?”

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Look, I don’t care if you worship Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha or Zeus ( I lean towards old Norse Gods but only because they have some really cool war deities-Go Odin! ). I don’t care if you are religious, or not. What I care about is if you turn fanatical and try to get my ass involved in your delusions under coercion. This book ACTED all proper and pious. It preached love and understanding. The Muslim dudes were the ones cutting off heads. But it was all rather cartoonish. ALL Muslims were evil and bad. All Muslim leaders wanted to kill westerners. Christianity was ALL about loving your fellow man. I call BS. Both religions think nothing of killing the unbelievers. And Christians just love to invade the middle east, time and time again. How many holy crusades were there? Four? More? Who invaded who several years ago? Which country has been invaded by western powers twice in forty years? While I don’t paint Muslims or Arabs as total innocents, neither do I strive to make them out to be the Next Big Menace. I know the masses need simplistic crap like this to support our wars. I don’t like being one of those idiots. Which I felt like after reading this crap. First half, a decent survivalist/prepper cautionary tale. Second half, intelligence insulting McCarthyism ( and WAY over-simplification as in “if only we all believed in God our country would be great again” which is precisely where the danger lies in otherwise good Christian folk- they will kill you for your own good ).

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The decent part of the book was a great description of the vulnerabilities of the power grid. Not the individual power generation stations themselves but the connected lines. That was easily overloaded by a few Gulf Coast sub launched missiles. Limited nuke strikes that smashed the electric grid. Then, he focused on the basic premise of a regular middle class family who was totally unprepared and must suddenly survive. It had a few iffy parts, like the likelihood they were the only ones able to shop at Big Box Store before everyone else panicked. But the general feel of the book was “look how realistic the danger is, and let’s walk through the things you need to do to prepare”. It could easily be a gift to fence sitters that was a prep road map. BUT. If you give this to Jesus Freaks, soon your neighbor will be burning you at the stake for blaspheme. If you give it to a more rational person, they might get disgusted with the end book religious hypocrisy and discard the whole message. I’d say one thumb up, one down. Not so bad as to unequivocally shun but with huge danger flags raised if you do read it.

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One minion asked what if I was wrong? What if I’m overreacting? Should I still be prepping so hard core, putting up with cold and hard work as I age and become frail and weak? This is always a good question and I’ve talked about it before. I’d be a damn fool if I was so dogmatic I couldn’t admit I could as wrong as they come. Look at the 70’s energy crash. Plenty of edumicated folks were totally convinced we were all doomed. All indicators pointed to total economic collapse. They couldn’t possibly have seen that we would go from pay as you go government to twenty years of income borrowing. That we would go from manufacturing to paper pushing. That the Saudi’s would ever agree to backing our dollar with their oil. So, yes, as low as the possibility of nothing earth shattering changing, it could still happen. We could actually muddle through without death in the streets. I honestly don’t think we will be that lucky. But you notice I haven’t fled town. I plan on the Web to crash and my writing income to tank before I engage in firefights at the Bison Compound, but I’m acting like the writing will continue forever. Just in case. As far as stopping prepping, why? I’m barely hurting myself as it is. I’ve been getting ready on a serious money basis for about fifteen years now. It is second nature and barely noticeable. And I feel no compulsion to go back to a more “luxurious” lifestyle. Cars and well water and 24/7 heat are just shiny toys. You don’t need them to be comfortable, you just need them to be lazy. Plus, it also boils down to the stubborn cuss lives the longest. I wish to laugh on all your graves. Nothing personal.

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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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