The Survivalist Pledge:

To help all that can be helped,
To defend all that can be defended,
To save all that can be saved,
To free all that seek freedom,
To stay alive as long as I can and stay free as long as I live.

[While nearly everyone in the West has been joyfully watching the new freedoms being given those in Eastern Europe, many also wonder what the final outcome of the turmoil in the region will be. This article takes a look at some of the possibilities and sorts out what we as a civilization might do to maximize our survival chances of various eventualities.--DL]

Everyone is delighted by the new freedoms and end of one-party rule in the Soviet Satellite States. Many people will hopefully soon be leading much better, richer lives because of these events. But what if these changes are just the result of a ploy that got out of hand? Russia is just as strong militarily as it ever was. We have not deployed our strategic defenses: SDI (the "Start Wars" shield), and the blast and radiation shelters which constitute the US "suit of armor" have been all but forgotten. How should we respond to the events in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the other Eastern Europe countries? How should we in the survivalist community respond as knowledgeable people when it comes to our own families?

First off, it really seems to me that we still need to deploy the "Star Wars" shield and blast shelters. We need these right now as an insurance policy. These devices are moral; they can't be used to kill people. (On a more personal level, you should clean out and restock your shelter as an insurance policy for your family.) That said, let's look at some possible scenarios along with our responses to them as well as the consequences to us and the US if we are correct and if we are wrong.

First of all, what if the reforms are genuine? I'm assuming a 50 percent probability that the reforms are truly genuine. If so, the Soviet Union has given up its long-term goal of world conquest. And what could go wrong? Here're some thoughts (and I'm assuming a 10 percent chance of at least one of the above occurring in each decade):

A) The Soviets could launch one or more missiles by accident ((after all, Chernobyl was not supposed to melt down!). This would likely provoke a response in kind by the US.
B) Gorbachev could fall from power and be replaced by Ligachev or some other super-hawk like him.
C) Terrorists could obtain some of the Soviet's weapons--including nuclear, chemical, or biological agents--as the empire fragments.
D) There is even a one-in-a-million chance of one or more of their nuclear reactors having a "China Syndrome."
E) The Soviet Union disintegrates. One of the products will be an Islamic state--with nuclear weapons.

Now, what should we do to counter some or all of the above? First, we should cut spending on offensive, first-strike weapons and use the money to deploy Brilliant Pebbles (small "smart" missiles capable to knocking down warheads from space). We should then develop particle beam and laser "ray guns" as quickly as possible. These should be alongside the deployment of well-distributed blast and radiation shelters so we have time to get to them whether we're in rural or urban areas. The Soviet Union may well have only temporarily shelved its plans for world conquest until we bail them out and get them back on their feet. Reforms may well be genuine only because things got out of hand. They may well see that to win they must adopt our more efficient methods of production. If we bail them out, sell them factories, food, and technology, we might well allow them to "use the rope we sold them to hang the capitalists" (us)--as Lenin said they would.

We should therefore respond by pulling their teeth and make Russia democratize and sell us their nuclear weapons in exchange for our help. Democracies tend not to attack democracies (in the last 500 years of history at least). We can solve the Soviet's problems. All they have to do is develop free-market economies and political freedom, with honest government officials. (And I figure there's a snowball's chance in hell that they'll agree! Those wishing to explore the basic hypothesis can read Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy.)

This first assumption then has a 10 percent chance that we'll need shelters and/or the SDI. And we'll also need to be ready for a change in the wind blowing from the USSR. A second assumption would be that the reforms are actually a ploy to get us to disarm. There are a number of possibilities to this as well:

A) We do not fall for the ploy. Instead, we continue as we have been going with MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) as a deterrent to war. Given even a 1 percent chance of a war or accidental launch, the time may finally come when we will die as a nation if there is ever an all-out attack upon us. We would suffer needless, horrible casualties if such an event occurs and we're still following our outdated MAD policy. Eventually, the Soviets will get their own shelters and SDI so heavily deployed that they can choose whether to blackmail us into surrender or give us the nuclear version of Pearl Harbor-- with our enemies winning this go around.

B) We deploy SDI and shelters for everyone. A period of peace then ensues in which neither nation has the power to destroy the other. The arms race might next move into space, a la Britain in the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries on the high seas. Mankind moves out into the Solar System, and everyone gets so rich that (hopefully) no one will want to go to war--this is the best possible outcome.

Or...

We might fall for the Soviet ploy, disarm, and fail to deploy SDI or shelters for everyone. This would likely lead to the worst possible outcome. At a time of Soviet choosing, all the democracies of the world go the way of Carthage. This scenario could lead to survivalists with shelters surviving to later die fighting, facing a firing squad, or possibly living as slaves--if the Soviets are generous.

Another possible outcome of this scenario would be for the Soviet Union to fall apart after a partial victory. We would then become warriors like the Sioux or Afghans; we'd then find ourselves fighting off repeated, half-hearted attacks by foreign powers. Now if you add the assumed accidental dangers in the above two possible outcomes of things, then my horseback estimate is that we have a 60 percent danger of needing shelters some time in the next ten years. (If we need them and don't have them, some bureaucrats will be in danger of being lynched by mobs of survivors.)

Proper defenses reduce this danger to 10 percent (leaving only the accidental component); better yet, the casualties due to an accident will be cut to 10 percent or less of what they would be without defenses. If the Soviet reforms are a ploy and we fall for it, then I predict either a nuclear Peal Harbor in a few years or our surrender in the face of overwhelming military might. If we surrender, I predict the complete execution of all our educated classes and no potential leaders will survive the purges.

Concerning Global Warming: The burning of fossil fuels pumps huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and is likely responsible for the "Greenhouse Effect." One way to reverse this dangerous trend is to support our space program. Solar power from geo-synchronous satellites can beam to Earth as microwaves (to antenna "farms" in place within twenty years) would make nuclear and fossil fuel power-generating plants obsolete. Power would be produced at two thirds the current costs. Princeton physicist Gerard O'Neill and his students calculated, in the late 1970s, that a massive program of lunar mining would cut the costs of gigawatt electric generating plants to less than comparable nuclear plants on earth. Of course there are no fuel costs and the life expectancy of such a plant would be in excess of 150 years!

Think of what cheap electricity would permit: A green revolution in agriculture, especially in the under-developed countries. It takes a lot of energy to produce nitrate fertilizers; electricity works very well for this purpose. And economical power would permit cheap refrigeration; in rural areas, refrigeration would cut down on the spoilage of food. These two things would temporarily eliminate starvation, give contraception a chance to stop the population explosion in under-developed countries. Cheap electricity would also cut down on the use of fossil fuels. Automobiles can be run on hydrogen produced by electrolysis of water--no more smog!

Such a program will also produce economical space travel. This will make deployment of space defenses inevitable. The SDI shield plus blast and radiation shelters (of at least Soviet quality) for everyone, will assure us that no Russian Pearl

Harbor attack on us will take place. Then the USSR might really give up hope of world conquest, if there were no hope of success in the foreseeable future. The nation which controls space in the 21st Century will control the earth, just as the nation (the UK) which controlled the seas in the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries controlled the earth. (By the same manner, the USA controlled the air and much of the earth during the 20th Century.)

Thus, for one about what we spend on one year's Pentagon budget, we could 1) deploy the SDI shield, 2) solve the greenhouse effect and smog problem, 3) end world huger and the population explosion (saving the rain forests in the process), 4) gain undisputed mastery of the moon and space travel, and 5) finally gain access to the riches of the asteroid belt (with many asteroids seeming to be mountains of nickel-iron alloy, just waiting to be made into useful things).

Editor's note: David Lobdell is one of the first of our writers to tackle the job of analyzing the new world situation and defining the role of survivalism for the 90s. Some of our other writers are also working on this subject, but may well have other viewpoints and proposals. As we face the tasks ahead, we must keep in mind that with our limited resources and virtually no access to political power or the communications media (both of which are really the same), we are not going to sell preparedness, shelters, personal arms, etc., to the public. Let's face it, the most energetic promotions of FEMA, TACTA, Fighting Chance, and Live Free combined have not sold as many people on personal preparedness and self-reliance as bought Nintendo games last month. Dave Lobdell ties his ideas to more popular and positive concerns (clean air, low cost power, food for the poor, etc.) which is the key to the future of survivalist ideas. Survivalist concepts can be the solution to most of today's social/economic problems. BUT we must be able to make the connection and prove this to the public.--J.C.Jones

 

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