Chapter 2: Life as it is Today

"Memories of the past hundred years"
June 20, 2059

Genesis 8:22 As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.

Well, I see that God in His mercy, has decided to bless me with another new day! It’s amazing how much I value the gift of each new morning! I sure wish I’d have known earlier in my life how much I’d treasure each new day. I wouldn’t have wasted so many of them!!! And as a very old joke goes, “If I would have known how long I was going to live, I’d have taken better care of myself!”

Let’s see, of everything that I’ve lost over the years, I miss my mind the most! That’s another really old joke. Well, it seems that my ol’ brain still functions--sort of. My short term memory is about gone. What was I saying?-----heeheee. It does seem like my long term memory is still intact. But then again, how would I know how much I forgot if I have forgotten it??? And how would you know, my dear reader, if I’m remembering these past hundred years accurately or if it’s just a product of breathing all those petroleum fumes and other nasty chemicals that saturated every aspect of life before the Great Crash?

Well, you can cross reference these rambling memories with other first person accounts of this time period to check. But then again, how much was their accounts colored by their own preconceived notions or there own exposure to toxic ‘chemicals??? Ask me about ’Woodstock’ some day if I’m still alive then. I’ll just write it as I remember it and you can decide its validity.

As I said, my mind still works--sort of-- but my hearing is just about gone, as are my teeth, my hair, my ability to walk more than across the room, my balance, my muscle tone, my sense of taste and sense of smell. My eyesight still works close up but anything over 10 feet away is just a fuzzy blur. I’m so glad that I still have my driver’s license------just kidding. There hasn’t been any motor fuels for private vehicles since that ‘terrible winter’ and no need for licenses. I can still type on this old typewriter if I find the keys one at a time but I have a hard time changing the paper and lining it up.

I’ve just about lost everything and everyone that I valued in my life but I still have my trust in my loving God and the gift of his Son as my personal savior. And I can still laugh with the best of them. My life has been filled with joy! I have been blessed in spite of all that I've seen in my life.

My four children lived like most families, in communities scattered across the country. They all disappeared into the void of history after answering the mandatory ’civil defense services’ orders in Twenty-eleven. This mandatory mobilization turned into a 'forced labor' program by our military rulers in a 'knee jerk' response to the chaos of the day. All young men between age 18 and 35 and young women with ‘essential’ skills were ordered to report to the nearest military base for mandatory service. A portion of these young adults were trained for the military services and Homeland Security but most were pressed into whatever tasks the rulers deemed necessary at the moment.

Both of my daughters were in the medical field and were drafted in the first wave of call ups. My sons followed a few days later--for what good it did. Yes, I’m bitter about that and so is everyone else when an entire generation in the life of this country is just swept away!! A few of our children have straggled back over the years with stories of unspeakable horror.

I lost track of my seven grandchildren as well. They were supposed to have been staying with other relatives around the country. When the communication went down, they and everyone else, just disappeared from our lives. Incredibly--thanks be to God, my third grandson, Seth Thomas Andrews, found me in the year, Twenty-twenty-one. He has welcomed me into his home ever since---or maybe it was the other way around. That was ten years after my entire family disappeared. He didn’t know anything about what happened to the rest of our family either and spent a number of years searching for them. I’ll tell more about Seth in another chapter.

I don’t know whether my children and other grandchildren are alive or dead. I don’t know whether they were left on foreign shores when the transportation fuels dried up or whether they were left to fend for themselves in the terror ravaged cities of this country. For my own peace of mind, I imagine that they found life again in the small surviving communities that I've heard about located in remote areas around the world. But I don’t know.

Life right now, closely resembles the close knit farming community that I was born into back in 1959 except for their reliance on all those petro-powered machines. Who could have imagined how much we’d come full circle in these hundred years. Today, it’s hard to imagine how absolutely crazy our so called ‘modern society’ had become.

Ours is an agricultural and pastoral society made up of extended families living together on family farms or in small villages made up of several groups of families. Faith, family and fellowship are once again, the central tenants of our community structure. The ‘household economy’ of the past multi-thousand years of human civilization has once again been reinvented. Each household or village produces most of what is needed to sustain each other. Surpluses are traded with other communities for goods or services that are in rare supply. A ‘gift economy’ has also been re-invented. People with an abundance, share with those who are in need. The young care for those who are old or infirm including me! The old are the teachers for the young, passing down skills, knowledge and wisdom learned thru years of struggle.

Farms and communities are by necessity, located by good sources of water. Most are located near rivers or lakes but outside of the floodplains. Large gardens and small grain fields are located along the bottomlands. On the uplands, where the the maze of barbwire fences have fallen to disrepair or been scavenged for use as security fencing during the Dark Years, herds of cattle, sheep and horses roam the open plains. They are carefully watched over by young herdsmen on their beautiful horses--the new ‘cowboys’!

Our technologies are starting to find a life of their own these 40 years after the Dark Times. For years after the crash we tried to keep some of the old machines alive for as long as possible. But after 50 years, even with creative fixes, few are still functioning. The first to go down was anything electronic. They were just too sensitive and we had no way to manufacture new computer chips or circuit boards. Many creative ways were invented to eliminate the computer controls and reinvent manual controls to keep the machines functioning. Without transportation fuels, most of the vehicles and farm machinery wouldn’t run anyway. If we would have known, there was so much that we could have done before the GREAT CRASH that would have mitigated some of the worst effects of the chaos but that's a subject for a different chapter.

Not being able to manufacture spare parts for breakdowns have now killed most of the old ‘modern’ machines. Old tools and machines from community museums were a Godsend. What was even more valuable was the ‘Old Timers’ that could teach us how to use them!

The oil wells didn’t produce long without the ongoing maintenance of a skilled crew, spare parts and the specialty products used by the industry. When the dollar crashed and life became scary, most of those skilled people just took off to provide for and protect their own families. The same happened to the Mandan Oil Refinery. Skilled employees just stopped coming to work. The military rulers of that time, forced some back to work--those that they could find but it was a case of "too little, too late" like everything else!! Oh, part of the refinery is still functioning but only on a tiny fraction of its former output. Its most valuable products are lubricating oils, grease and tar!! The little transportation fuel produced is reserved exclusively for the so called ‘essential services’ of the government.

The electric power from Garrison Dam was kept alive for close to twenty years before the lack of spare parts stopped the last turbine. Now the spillways stand frozen half open, a huge monument to a bygone age. Coal fired generating plants limped along for five or ten years. Wind turbines were just too sensitive. They needed repairs almost immediately. Only a few continued to function after ten years by cannibalizing spare parts from others.

Trade is developing but it is slow and limited by our lack of transportation. River traffic is once again dominant all the way down the Missouri River to St. Lewis. Steam locomotives and rail lines have been extended from Billings to Bemidji recently by repairing old tracks but security is still a major limiting factor. Gangs of bandits still hide out in the woods in either direction but few have functioning guns anymore. We primarily trade grain for lumber in either direction. Additional rail lines have been repaired heading south all the way to Dallas, Texas.

Communications everywhere came down after the start of THE WAR. Some people used to call it ‘World War III’ but what’s the point. It was just THE WAR!!! And it changed everything everywhere! The few functioning radio and TV stations were completely taken over by the military government. To call what they fed us 'Propaganda' would have been polite. The 'happy talk' fed us was worse than useless. Mostly, they just read us the latest regulations and controls forced upon us. Registered ham radio operators were rounded up and their equipment was confiscated. This time was just called 'the Dark Years' because life was such a struggle, being in the dark as to what was happening in the world made it feel so much worse!

Unauthorized or 'gorilla' radio broadcasting, mostly on shortwave, sprang up to a limited extent. Possession of shortwave radios was banned but almost universally ignored. We were incredibly hungry for news as to what was happening around the country and world!!! We heard a little news about what was happening in other countries but I’ll save that for another chapter.

After the Dark Years, telegraph lines started to return between towns and then between regions in an attempt to improve communication. Good radio communication is still limited due to our limited manufacturing capabilities. In these past ten years, radio communication between the governments of the different territories has improved greatly but still extremely limited to private citizens. Telegraph communication has opened up to civilians but have far to little capacity to handle the heavy demand.

A regional postal system attempted to start after the collapse of the U.S. Mail but suffered greatly from lack of transportation fuel, damaged roads and the explosion of bandits. After the Dark Years, the postal system has improved greatly within the Dakota Territory but was still limited between territories. Recently, that has begun to change as well!

With the loss of transportation fuels, we didn’t just crash into an 1800s lifestyle, that would have been a treat!!! Everything just stopped! Nobody in our so called ‘modern culture’ knew what to do or how to do it. We couldn't even claim to be knocked back into the 'Stone Age' because we didn't even know how to work with stone!!!! We had to relearn and reinvent everything!!! Fortunately, to this area, there were a few ol' timers left that were able to teach those that were willing!!! PRAISE GOD!

Our system of global production, transportation and ‘just in time’ deliveries was so incredibly fragile. Who knew? We sure didn’t realize just how misguided our government’s policies were at the time; how they were based on unworkable economic models and self-deluded political agendas. Then all of what we trusted in our life ran into the inflexible wall of reality. We believed that abundant energy was always there free or almost free for the taking. Money was created out of thin air at the whim of those in control with no connection to the means of production of real wealth---food, shelter, warmth.

Life quickly distilled into a ‘SALVAGE ECONOMY’ where we used the refined metals like steel, copper, aluminum etc. from the refuse of our past to help us survive into the present. Lumber, insulation and glass were carefully salvaged from the thousands of abandoned houses scattered around the plains. At least we were able to salvage those that weren't wrecked or burned down in the chaos of those dark years. What quickly became a struggle was reinventing ‘shingles’ for roofs. The art of splitting the old style wooden shingles had to be relearned. Petroleum based shingles were no longer made and were near impossible to salvage. Now, fifty years later, the availability of easily salvaged items have been depleted. We are now transitioning into a more stable form of sustainable economy where we are either able to manufacture all that we need or we do without.

When it all came down, we had forgotten how to produce our own food or preserve it when it was produced. We didn’t know how to keep ourselves warm or sheltered. We even forgot how to work with our own neighbors for our own mutual support and protection. We were all spoon fed from the big box stores, mesmerized by mass media, driven insane by our own pridefulness and arrogance . How insane we were to believe that our country and our ‘modern society’ were somehow different and exempt from that which has happened to every other culture in all of history.

I remember an observation made before the Great Crash by my old friend, John Michael Greer. He stated that: "The one Great Lesson of History that I learned was that the consensus view of the future that permeated our entire culture from top to bottom was consistently WRONG!"

How prophecic his words turned out to be!!!

ZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz bed time. God willing, I’ll continue this chapter tomorrow.