My wife leaves for work at 5:15am. Before she leaves I wake up and
make her a lunch and coffee. During the summer I would go right back to sleep
and wait until one of the young ones would wake me with their little footsteps
creeping towards the cereal cabinet; however, now that school is back in
full swing I just stay up.
This morning I was browsing Netflix to see what was new
on there to entertain myself while I waited for the 6am hour to roll around. While browsing I saw "Red Dawn", and got kind of excited
because I have not seen that movie in quite some time, plus who doesn’t love
seeing the crew from "The Outsiders" taking to the screen again?
But it was not the acting that got me thinking! What got me
thinking was the quickness of the attack. Don't get me wrong, I am not in fear
of being attacked by Cuba and Russia! What I am in fear of is the fact that
these things happen without warning.
Even on Red Dawn it was a buildup of events that were seen by the
public as it would be for us, for the most part. We would know that if we had a
major dispute with lets say China that there is the possibility of an
attack.
Lets change the game a little, let’s say there was an outbreak of
a new flu virus like in the movie Contagion or like the outbreak in one of my
favorite movies 28 Days Later. You might have a few warnings telling you to be
prepared for the worse, but how long before it gets to you do you have to
prepare?
Or worse case scenario. You wake up in the middle of the night
because your ceiling fan kicked off. You realize the power is out and guess it
must be some issue with the power line since it is not storming. You look at
your cell phone to see what time it is and find that you have no bars and no 4G
coverage. You get out of bed and look out the window to see nothing but black.
You guess that all the power is out and want to call a close family member to
see if they have power. You make your way to your land-line phone to
call. When you lift up the phone there is not a dial tone. With no way to know
what is going on you go back to bed and hope that the power will be on in
the morning.
When you wake up in the morning there is still no power. You begin
to get the kids up for school and turn on your battery powered radio to hear
the weather for the day. When you get to your station on the radio you hear the
Emergency Broadcast Signal. As the news breaks you hear of mass chaos breaking
out in the streets of major cities. The news informs you that as of 12:01 last
night America's power grid was disrupted and there was a collapse
of governmental power. According to the news broadcast, there will be no
immediate relief in sight but people should remain in their homes or
away from major cities for the time being.
That scenario is similar to the Y2K scare, but most people were
skeptical about that due to the media hype behind it. Imagine this scenario as
having absolutely NO Warning!
That is what crossed my mind this morning while watching
Red Dawn. These events usually don’t give us the luxury of a
warning.
You have to ask yourself: What is the next step when both regular
and cellular service will not work, when the power will not turn on, when there
are no televised broadcasts, when radio broadcasts inform the listener they
will have to go off the air due to lack of power, and when Google is no longer
available to you?
Would you be prepared for something like this?
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