by Gene Skellig
Rather than having Marty and Katy help with the nitrogen-flooding, heat-sealing and other steps in preparing the ultra-long-term food supplies, he borrowed the equipment and did the work with Tanya. She caught on quickly, and showed real interest in the process. Despite the fact that it kept them up until late in the evenings for a week, Tanya insisted that they take the time to prepare smaller half-gallon sized mylar bags rather than the one large six gallon Mylar bag, to allow for flexibility when ultimately consuming the supplies.
Casey drove the older canned food to food banks in Nanaimo where they were gratefully received. The families of the unemployed loggers and miners, who received larger than normal food hampers that month, would never know who to thank.
While in Nanaimo on the half-dozen such trips Casey took that February, he made innumerable visits to various big-box stores to buy fittings, accessories, shelving units, hardware and other items needed to outfit and customize the main bunker, the hidden passageways, and the panic rooms. The living areas of the HOTH were long since finished by the subcontractors who had taken the interior of the HOTH from lock-up to completion, as though it were a normal house. The secret spaces, hidden doors, false walls, as well as all the specialty electrical work for security systems had to be installed by Casey himself; it couldn’t be trusted to contractors. With all of this work to do, Casey had fallen behind and many items sat on his “To Do” list for up to a year. But with the increase in global tensions, Casey's motivation to complete these tasks was renewed.
With the rotation of the canned food completed, and having doubled-up the bulk food in the DFR, Casey calculated that the family had perhaps four years of food on hand. He decided that it would be better to make the remaining purchases on a monthly basis so that he could balance the workload and have a simpler routine for rotating-out older cans on a re-occurring basis.
But, first he had to know the desired end-state. If he kept purchasing the same sized order each month for a year, he figured, at the end of two years he would have accumulated 345 Person-Years, PYs, of food. This would be enough for his family of seven to live for 49 years. So it would not be enough. It wouldn’t be enough for the burn rate Casey anticipated.
But Casey had never completed his analysis of consumption versus internal food production. He had no baseline information on the presumed egg, poultry, and swine production that his group would be capable of, nor how long it could be sustained. He also had no idea how successful the hydroponics garden would be, nor how much food could be obtained through trading or bartering locally.
As Casey did not want to create a future problem by buying too much food all at once, he decided to apply the basic rule of operational planning. First, make a list of all the assumptions which are critical to support further planning, and list the key questions that needed to be answered. Then, convert the assumptions to facts through further evaluation, and find the answers to the key questions through research.
With this guidance in mind, Casey made a few reasonable assumptions about the people who would join the Callaghan family. In considering this, he took care of one open task, “Invitation Letters”, and scheduled a family gathering for the next month to take care of another open task, “Family Briefing”. Having the entire family and his friend Manfred Vogel over to see the newly completed HOTH gave Casey an opportunity to reveal the true purpose of the facility. This would ensure that they knew where to go in a crisis. The “invitation letters” would add a few more people and, combined with an estimate for Casey’s local connections, would result in a number that could now be estimated. The average number of people to support over a ten-year worst case scenario turned out to be 50. Casey could now convert this to a fact and continue with plan development based on 500 PYs.
The result was that Casey adjusted the previous food order to include a larger quantity of bulk foods for the next three months to quickly build up the ultra long-term food supplies down in the DFR. Even this fell short of the total requirement of four hundred million calories. However, assumptions regarding animal and garden production in the HOTH, a small input from trading and bartering, and a modest assumption of last-minute stocking operations meant that he would only be about two hundred million calories short by June. After that, he simply had to take delivery of just over eight million calories per month for two years and then begin a three-year cycle of rotating out 1/36th of the food supplies to food banks on a monthly basis.
Simple enough mathematically, Casey thought, but it was going to get very expensive. Some items were becoming scare, and the price was rising rapidly. This only spurred Casey on.
Once the challenge of fully stocking the HOTH had been revealed by the math, Casey set about dealing with the bulk food side of it first, not thinking about the monthly routine for a while. This helped him focus on other important issues.
One of these issues was to wrap-up the procurement of the medical supplies. He had not completed his stockpiling of Potassium Iodide and the three best long-term antibiotics. And even with cold storage the antibiotics would continuously lose their efficacy. So they also needed some basic lab equipment to process natural medicines produced by fungus and medicinal plants. Casey ordered a supply 0.22 micron syringe-mounted filters and the other supplies that Dr. Pizarski had listed for the infirmary, to purify natural-sourced medicines.
Casey also hadn’t finished buying the many small machines, quads, dirt-bikes, bicycles, wagons, trailers, vehicles and other equipment that he wanted to have stowed away in the facility. The family still had not started actually raising any farm animals and Casey had not stockpiled the feed and other hobby farmer’s resources that he would need.
He had so much to do, and it appeared that he would have less time in which to do it.
15
FIRST TANK ON ME
20 March: 10 Weeks Before NEW
“Was there any mail today, Gina?” Major Geoff Neumann asked his wife as he hung his car keys on the hook below the mirror in the entryway to his excessively large 3200 sq ft house. The house had always been a source of annoyance for him. It was much larger than they could afford, but Gina wanted a big house. He had long accepted that it was easier just to give in.
“There’s something from Casey Callaghan,” she said.
Major Neumann had been Captain Callaghan’s boss for just two years, and they hadn’t developed any particular friendship. Callaghan had turned down every opportunity to socialize with his boss, so Geoff stopped inviting him. But he had come to know Casey as a very serious and resourceful officer, although not really suited to military life. Major Neumann had been concerned when his subordinate decided to take such an enormous risk by leaving the military in the middle of the economic crisis. Why would a man with five children quit a high paying government job? Just to move to the West Coast?
Geoff sat down with the package in hand. He could feel an odd imbalance in its weight. He used a letter opener, and slid the contents out onto his desk. There was a sheet of paper wrapped around a plastic bag containing a folded map, five small yellow packets labeled “ThyroLock”, and one small item he instantly recognized.
Shining magnificently in the band of sunlight that cut across Geoff’s desk was a 1/25th oz Maple-Leaf gold coin from the Royal Canadian Mint. The yellow radiance emanating from the coin triggered a bit of gold madness in Geoff. As he reached for it, he whispered: “Come to me, my Precioussss!”
The coin was issued just before Canada suspended the sale of gold coins. The mint was shuttered temporarily in response to American pressure to cut off the supply of gold and silver coins of the realm during the US attempt at gold confiscation. Canada did not take things quite as far as the US.
Without notice, the US Government had declared the three weeks from January 7 to January 28 as a bank holiday. The sale of gold bullion, gold coins, gold certificates and any other form of physical gold other than jewelry was made illegal in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Citizens were given 30 days
to turn in any and all gold and silver money, from any country, in exchange for new US or United Kingdom paper currencies. Citizens were “permitted” to retain up to two ounces of gold coins. It was part of a coordinated US – UK effort to introduce the new US dollar and new Pound Sterling, which were to be partially backed by gold - for the settlement of international trade but not for domestic transactions.
The US Treasury, Federal Reserve, and the White House had tried to save the US dollar by re-issuing it as yet another fiat currency with only a tenuous link to physical gold.
After the President issued Executive Order 4138 on January 7, the Senate and Congress swiftly passed enabling legislation. Citizens were ordered to exchange their gold coins for new US Federal Reserve Notes, at $4,000 New USD per ounce of gold. The objective was to swell the gold reserves of the US Treasury, as operated by the Federal Reserve banking cartel, to make it impossible for citizens to use gold and silver coins as money, and to force the acceptance of the new paper currency.
The confiscation of gold and the float of the new currency was an unmitigated disaster. American citizens had been through that before when President Roosevelt confiscated all privately held gold in the United States, under the Trading With the Enemy Act of 1917 amended March, 1933. This made it treasonous to hold gold coins or to use them as money on pain of a fine of up to $10,000 or up to ten years imprisonment, or both.
Partly because of the trust that Americans had in their government back in 1933, and partly for fear of consequences, the gold confiscation worked in 1933. It enabled a return to the gold standard and the stabilization of the economy for almost four decades of stability and prosperity. But in 1971 France began exchanging their massive pile of US Federal Reserve Notes for physical gold. President Nixon was forced to close the gold window to preserve the ever diminishing reserves of gold. From that point on, 1971 until the present day, the US dollar was a fiat paper currency - an IOU which was not actually backed by anything at all. It was, as are all fiat currencies, a giant Ponzi scheme doomed to failure.
This time around people refused to trust Uncle Sam. They saw the re-issued currency as a fraud and they hoarded their gold and silver coins that much more vigorously. The black market in gold and silver coins thrived. The new US currency never gained mainstream acceptance. Those hapless few who obeyed the law soon learned that they had been fleeced.
Economists had warned that confiscation would not work a second time because there simply was not enough gold and silver in circulation available for confiscation. In contrast, there had been a great deal of gold and silver coinage in circulation in 1933 which, once confiscated, gave the US Treasury sufficient gold to back-up the new currency.
The citizenry of 1933 learned a hard lesson about the dishonesty of Government when Roosevelt later revalued the currency, changing the valuation from some $20.67 per ounce to $35.00 per ounce, once the gold had been exchanged for fiat currency. This betrayal taught the citizens a valuable lesson about how the Government’s true goal was the actual confiscation of their savings. It was a lesson that the citizenry of the United State never forgot.
With the failed launch of the new currency, the financial emergency brought about by high inflation and currency weakness soon became run-away hyperinflation and a currency collapse.
In Canada, reflected Major Neumann, the Government had been more cautious. While Canada agreed to temporarily halt the sale of precious metals they did not attempt confiscation. With the Canadian dollar backed by Canada’s oil wealth and more conservative banking system, inflation in Canada was not as extreme as in the US. Also, the wage and price controls attempted in the United States were not attempted in Canada. Ironically, Canada remained a free-market economy with Government subsidies only for the most vulnerable while the United States had somehow become a command economy that only favored the most privileged elites and had become dysfunctional.
So Casey’s gift of a gold coin, even just 1/25th of an ounce, caught Geoff Neumann’s attention. The price of gold was now at $3,200 Canadian dollars per ounce, $45,000 New US Dollars, or “Nudies”, but nobody considered Nudies to be worth anything at all. The little coin had real value.
Geoff knew that what makes gold coins valuable is their purity, such as the international standard of “four nines”, or 99.99% purity. They also have to be “coins of the realm”, such as the Chinese Panda, the Canadian Maple Leaf, the Australian Kangaroo, and the American “liberty” series. These coins were now illegal in the United States. Their purity, however, made them just as valuable for trade as any other gold coins. Gold coins can always be melted down and therefore they retain their value. Simply making them illegal would not make them less desirable.
In the context of the international currency crisis, now raging across the world, the use of gold for international transactions was becoming standard. Everybody seemed to have realized the world’s fiat currencies had no actual value. The only sound money was gold. Those countries, such as Canada and the United Kingdom, who foolishly followed the advice of the United States and sold most of their gold reserves in the 1980’s and 90’s, were now faced with the urgent requirement to rebuild their gold reserves at record high gold prices.
Major Neumann, as a serving member of the Canadian Air Force, was largely protected by the runaway inflation as his pay and pension entitlements were continually being adjusted to keep pace with the rampant inflation. However, his pay check still purchased less in terms of actual goods like food, energy and consumer goods every month, no matter how often the pay office applied “economic adjustments” to his monthly pay. His pay had nominally increased from $7,500 CDN per month about a year ago, to $17,000 per month now. And yet the cost of groceries had increased from around $1,300 per month for his family of four to over $5,000 per month now. A can of pop now costs $3.50; four litres of milk $18.00; and a loaf of bread costs $15.00. Geoff wished he was paid in gold. As he thought about it, he realized that that’s what the package was all about. After all, Casey was a gold bug. He had even introduced his boss to that gold mine up in Yellowknife.
I should have listened to my gut and bought a few hundred thousand shares when it was going for ten cents. But oh no, she wouldn’t go for it! Neumann thought to himself bitterly. His wife had allowed him to buy just 40,000 shares at $0.15, which she promptly had him sell when the share price went through $1.00 a few years ago. He had made a handy profit, but where would he be today if he had held on longer, or had accumulated more shares? With that thought, he clicked on his web browser and checked the stock price of the now producing gold mine. “Yup, there it is, available for just $42.00 Cdn per share. Man I wish I had some now!” he muttered.
Now, with the price of gold so high, any producing gold mine was quite literally pulling money out of the ground. He did a quick calculation, knowing that Casey had at least 600,000 shares when he left the military. If Casey sold even half of his shares on their way up, Callaghan still had at least $12 million or so in gains. “WOW! I guess he’ll get over not having the pension, then,” Geoff commented to himself.
Geoff then turned his attention to the second item from the package. It was a map of Western Canada with a couple of routes marked out in different colors. Being a trained Navigator, Neumann could read a map. He quickly noticed that the routes bypassed the cities of Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary and Edmonton, and went nowhere near the Canadian military bases at Moose Jaw, Cold Lake, or any others. All three routes started at Winnipeg.
He noticed a circle around Winnipeg. Then he realized that it was a blast radius centered on the Canadian NORAD Region Headquarters, where he worked. The 11 Km radius around the air base at the Winnipeg International airport was marked off as “Probable Mass Fires - 750 Kiloton”. This circle matched fairly well with the foot-print of the perimeter highway around the city. So 750 Kilotons would basically destroy the city, he noted. He understood that most structures other than concrete or steel within that radius would be destroyed and set afire.
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There was also a 6 Km radius circle representing the “Certain Mass Fires” where everything that could burn would be destroyed. The majority of casualties in this zone, Geoff well knew, would be from the effects of radiation and from the blast injuries produced by flying glass fragments and debris of anything weaker than reinforced concrete. Only a modest number of people in this zone would survive. Those who survived the effects of the initial blast would then be in dire need of medical attention. It gave Geoff a cold chill to visualize his city experiencing such horrors.
The most likely weapon would be a 750 kiloton MIRV from Topol-M missile, or perhaps the more common R-36 Missile with warheads anywhere from 550 kilotons to 3 Megatons, depending on the variant. So, if anything, Casey’s map could be understating the yield. However, Geoff Neumann did not believe that Winnipeg rated one of the heavy warheads that some analysts believed Russia had been reconditioning, with bunker-busting yields up to 20 to 25 megatons. If Russia had any of these monsters, they would surely be used on more important targets in the US.
The blood ran from his face when he saw the route highlighted in yellow which ran directly from his home in St Andrews to the Yellowhead Highway. The hairs on his neck began to tingle as he began to intuit the true meaning of the map.
Geoff then focused his attention on a circle to the west of Winnipeg. There was a distance indication of 17 Km showing the closest path of approach to a Military Base west of Winnipeg, at Portage La Prairie right on the Trans Canada Highway. He noted that other east-west routes south of the Base were all crossed off with X’s across their path, and some annotations.
Then he played a hunch, and turned the map over. Yes, there it was on the back, and quite cleverly done. If the map were folded accordion-style to focus on a particular segment, flipping up the bottom third revealed comments and notes which corresponded to that segment of the map.