Ten Years After September 11, 2001

So, a decade ago some murderous shits perpetrated an atrocity.


A little over two thousand people died in the course of this atrocity.

And thanks to yearly goddamned reminders, I am all but numb to the actual gravity of the horror.


Every year we get plastered with "never forget." Unless we know someone who died that day, we've ALREADY forgotten. What we're keeping alive is a mere shadow of what we felt.


The highjackers have achieved immortality. Most of us know their names, or at least a couple.

The planners are likewise memorialized every time this sad damned mess is brought up.

A few of the passengers (especially those on Flight 93) and crew murdered by the aforementioned scumbags are known to us.


But who are we really remembering?

When I write the names of Mohamed Atta, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or Osama bin Laden, most, if not all of us, can call up not only a photograph we've seen, but a brief biography.

Now, quick. Name one person who died as a victim of the attacks. Go on. Look up the guy (Todd Beamer) who said "Let's roll." Or maybe John P. O'Neill. Perhaps Sirius the bomb-sniffing dog is recalled by some of you?



With over two thousand dead, it's easy to wrap them all up in "those who were lost" on September 11, 2001.



But that's reductionist bullshit. No one was "lost." People were murdered. And we continue to fixate upon the murderers.



I didn't know anyone who died that day.

I now know the bastards responsible better than I have any reason to.



And I'm about done venerating their gigantic goddamned crime.

On Libya. (And Iraq. And Afghanistan. And so on.)

"There is a Great Beast loose in the world of men.

It awoke in dark times, to fight a terrible enemy. It stormed through Europe, across the far Pacific, and crushed the evil that it found there underfoot.

But when it was victorious, when the crooked cross and the rising sun were done with, the Great Beast’s keepers found that it would not go back to sleep.

The Beast has many heads, and on its heads are written names: Lockheed. Bell. Monsanto. Dow. Grumman. Colt. And many more.

And they are very, very hungry.

So the Great Beast must be fed: and every generation, our country goes to war to do just that. A war for war’s sake, usually. And one that could have been avoided. But there must be blood in extraordinary quantities, and whether it is foreign or American is of no consequence at all."

- Garth Ennis, Punisher: Born, Issue #4- The Last Day

Rifles and the Single Survivalist

So, despite having a job that pays infinitely more than I was earning this time last year, I've found the urge to upgrade my primary rifle pretty much snuffed.

For one thing, in my current location, I honestly do not need a better weapon- With its ten-round capacity, my old Yugo SKS is capable of wiping out ten percent of the entire local population, assuming I hit everything I aim at- and the range of engagement out here is either incredibly far or dangerously close. Factor in my .45, and there's... really little reason to spend the money on trading up.

Which isn't to say that, over the summer, as I bop from populated zone to populated zone, I won't shop around- but the goal there will be to get my Yugo into the hands of someone else in the organization who hasn't got a 7.62 x 39 mm weapon. For where I'm likely to be for the forseeable future, the clunky but reliable (and forgiving) SKS is plenty of gun, at least from a survival point of view.

Which reassures me on one point- I may be a collector of melee weapons, but I'm definitely no gun collector.

Just give me something that works, and I'm content.

On the Death of Prep

So, as may or may not be known by the 0.5 people who read this, I am a survivalist. I firmly believe that sooner or later, something's going to give, and by "something," I mean "everything."

While down in Indiana, I had a group of like-minded hombres, and we spent our non-gaming, non-debauched time working on prep.

Yeah, we have our share of mall ninja-ry, but we know it for what it is, and for the most part, our plans are actually better than many.

Or in my case, were.

Because a strange thing happened when I took my current job-

I got pre-bugged out.

I live in a community so tiny and so far from major population centers that even a full-scale riot could be suppressed by one man with a ten-round magazine.

We are very much the end of the line- there is nowhere to bug out TOO.

Which is not to say that the community is fully self-sufficient and sustainable- far from it, we rely on fuel oil from outside, if the power goes out, we all bitch about it, and none of the kids have paid enough attention to their grandparents to know what to do in a survival situation.

BUT.

When the power goes out here- sometimes for days- the biggest hitch is in bathing.
There is no panic, just mild annoyance. Some houses didn't have electrical power until about three years ago.

Everyone out here has a water filter- not because the water will kill you, but because it has a very real chance of being.... unpleasant (read: Mexican-style burning liquid shits).

Everyone stockpiles dietary staples, not because we can't buy them, but because shipping them out here is an utter bitch. I haven't restocked basic dry goods since August, and I still have forty pounds of rice, fifty pounds of flour, and about five large packs of spaghetti.

I also have a freezer full of caribou meat, and that brings up another advantage this place has-

Hunting and fishing are a way of life. And I don't mean, "you and your dad go duck hunting on the weekends.."

I have several gallons of blueberry preserves at my disposal. There is dried fish all over.

In short, I am, while here in the village, better prepared than my own skill level should really justify.

Which brings me to a sad side-note- I am semi-prepared out here.

But in the summer months, I am now completely unprepared. My bug-out bag (what remains of it) is in a basement in Utah. My hometown is, while better set up than some, incapable of feeding its population from the surrounding countryside. And my water filtration system is out here, not there.

Which means for the next few years, until I can establish myself, I will swing from unconcern to worry I can do nothing about as I migrate.

It's.... vexing, to say the least.