A Different Kind Of Armageddon

Being woken by a robot voice on your cellphone saying "Ballistic missile threat detected seek shelter immediately" is perhaps the most terrifying way to start one's day. I laid there for a moment and considered just turning-over and going back to sleep. It's not like there was much I could do, for weeks the tension with North Korea had been discussed by us denizens of Maui and we all knew it only took 15-20 minutes for a missile to arrive. Not a lot of time to prepare, especially in a place where there are no basements and everyone is obsessed with having maximum airflow in their houses.

But I decided to leap into action, grabbed some camping essentials, warned Hazel (she told me to get a cup of coffee, at 80 I can't blame her fatalism) and jumped into the neighbor's car as they rolled out of the driveway. We headed for the grocery-store to get a jump on supplies before the looting began. During the seven minute drive cars were flying by us doing 90 on the curvy coastal roads, fast even by Hawaiian standards. No one could get through to anyone on their phone as the network had jammed with frantic calls to say farewell to loved-ones. There was nothing for it but to stroll the aisles, drinking coffee and waiting for our doom. 

It didn't last a long time, but it was enough time to process what was happening and to define the contours of my new Mad Max life. I wasn't too worried about the actual missile, it would almost certainly hit the ocean harmlessly. It was the geopolitical consequences that looked dire. A nuclear strike would mean a major war, and China could very well get involved. I knew from my previous anti-GMO activism that Maui only had enough food for a month to six weeks. The government didn't consider a reserve necessary because they figured they could just grow it easily enough, I don't think their calculations included the chaos though. There is a lot of fruit growing naturally and plenty of goats and mini-deer, but much of it is seasonal and hard to catch. Who was going to organize this major farming effort on the wasted and toxic cane-fields while everyone was fighting for themselves? Would the old practice of cannibalism make a come-back in this apocalyptic breakdown of the food supply?

The scenario brought to mind my panicked flight to Seattle during the Fukushima nuclear meltdown years before. Watching videos of the massive hydrogen explosions rocking the reactors had made me quite aware of the tenuous position I would be in should the planes and container-ships stop coming due to radioactive fallout blanketing the ocean. The meltdown was bad enough, but what was truly disturbing was the years and years of spent fuel-rods that the Japanese had stored on the roofs of the reactors. They were close-enough together to destabilize each-other and generate heat passively (as all fuel-rod storage tanks are by now) and the water had to circulate. If the hydrogen explosions knocked-out the water supply or generators and the radiation got too bad to fix it, the rods would boil-off the water and ignite into a devastating nuclear bonfire many orders of magnitude worse than Chernobyl. We escaped an almost certain doom that time, but maybe this time I wouldn't be so lucky!

With all my mental powers focused on the mission ahead of gathering supplies and making it out to the Hana-side before the racial-purging of the island began I barely even noticed that people around me were getting reception on their phones again. Tulsi had tweeted it was a false alarm, we were saved! Hearing the good news, all I felt was a wave of disappointment pass over me. All the cares and concerns of my normal life, which had been pushed into total abeyance, flooded back in. Back to the meaningless grind, back to the wondering what I was doing with my life, back to my addictions and dependencies, back to normal with all it's accumulated baggage. I was saved from a savage fight for survival, what a bummer!

So it occurred to me today, as I went around trying to push my fliers denouncing the "New-Normal"on the masked New-Normies in line for ice-cream, that people are probably feeling a little bit of that disappointment.  As they are forced to conclude that the sky is not actually falling, as the streets become more and more full of gatherings and the sweet Spring air soothes their fears, there is a powerful hesitancy still. In their absurd masks and the staggered lines I can see people clinging to the props and the pantomime of the pandemic. Even though a vicious plague is a terrible thing, psychologically it may be preferable to the myriad stresses and insecurities that we are free from while in panic-mode. I can only speak for myself and from my own experiences with certainty.  However, I do observe that it is the petite-bourgeoisie that are embracing New-Normal Utopian idealism, as if what is being done to us could be a blessing in disguise. It's beyond ridiculous to think that such gifts will be handed to us by the powerful; I suspect that, deeper in the brain, certain crossed-wires are manifesting this cognitive-dissonance. It is the class notorious for their precarious gripping to every rung on the ladder they can get, while simultaneously feeling guilty about their position. The New-Normies are exactly the type of people who are glad to escape the dichotomy of their existence, no matter where the escape hatch leads to. Just like I was.  

Yet there is also something else in the air. We should reject and resist the "New-Normal" as it is being imposed on us from above, but I don't think we want to go back to the old normal either. This is a time for manifesting the world as we want it. There are great things afoot and if we take part in the currents of history without giving in to fear almost anything is possible. I am reconsidering my old habits and relationships, trying to establish alliances that were not possible before. Those who see that we must make a stand have the benefit of finally knowing who our allies really are. I pray to God that there are enough of us!