killing time 1 of 5

KILLING TIME

Back in the Cold War when the government actually used persuasion rather than threats to get the public to cooperate, fallout shelters were used as a ploy to trick the population into thinking they wouldn’t all become radioactive particles in the atmosphere.  The attitude seemed to be, hey, you go die in our colonial wars after we draft you, and you hurt any outsider of the group showing dissent, so we might as well throw you a bone and save some of your women and children in the urban areas in case the Soviets attack us.  And if you can’t build your own private properly constructed and equipped shelter in the suburbs we can provide you with some expedient no cost shelter plans.  All us White Bread workers are in this together!  Of course, now the attitude is more like, hey, screw you!  You haven’t sacrificed enough with flat to declining living standards for the last nearly fifty years.  If you question your rich superiors we will leave you in a cell you die of rectally inserted AIDS so you had better smile harder ( the beating will continue until morale improves ) and work longer and pay more in taxes.  You will nod obsequiously as we import Muslims to your neighborhood where they will live on Section Eight Housing while you work three jobs to pay your underwater mortgage, you will scrape and bow and postulate yourself while buying more crap on credit you can’t pay back.  And if the Muslims dirty-bomb the city upwind, well screw you.  We didn’t save the thousands of Darkies during Katrina and if you are poor we think of you as just another Wigger, so figure your odds of getting an assist from us.

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And yes, while it is refreshing to see the government show its true oligarchy colors, it is also true that it was nice when they screwed us but also tried to hide it.  Damn, show some class and put some effort into it, dudes!  Anyway, even if the fallout shelters weren’t nearly enough for everyone ( I could be misremembering but I seem to recall that the Interstate Highway overpasses were constructed in such a way as to be used as expedient shelters, also.  After the homeless took them over, now they build them without the habitable lip ), with rations usually consisting of crackers and hard candy, and enforced disarmament, the living conditions were sure to be horrid.  There were government studies on the psychological effects of cramped dark crowded shelter living.  I’m sure this was just a manual for the big cheese Civil Defense Warden to become aware of discipline problems rather than a wake-up call to fix the issues because the whole CD program was never a budget priority and as soon as Uncle Sugar started running out of money the whole thing was mothballed ( if the choice was more spending on space missile defense systems that would enrich a contractor or trying to save taxpayers, well, you know who always wins there ).

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Of course, we all know about a far more familiar concept, “cabin fever”.  If the feds needed to elaborate on that concept, the shelters must really have been forecasted to be pretty bad.  Perhaps like taking the SuperDome crowd and stuffing them into a regular size school gym?  I can tell you from very limited experience that cabin fever sucks, and sucks hard, and not in a good way.  Back in my B-POD ( Bison Pit Of Doom ) days I always went upstairs to the solar heated RV during the day.  In the winter, it was rare on a sunny day no matter how cold that it didn’t get to fifty in the trailer ( extra insulation tacked to the inside walls-squishy foam and foil faced bubble wrap-plus skirting plus southern exposure ), which while that might sound sad to you central air using pukes was plenty warm enough dressed in wool and cotton layers and made my heating bill about zero, as just perking coffee in the morning and cooking dinner at night kept the underground place also about fifty.  And that was without a second layer of insulation on the roof and no solar heat.  Imagine how comfy it would have been then.

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However, as sunny as the high desert is, it isn’t sunny every day.  In fact, all the cloudy days seem to want to cluster around winter time.  When it was simply too cold to go upstairs and sit in my recliner comfortably, I was stuck down in the underground cabin which measured six by twelve.  And which has no recliner.  And which has limited watts to burn.  Even with 70 watts in panels ( bought in the days of $6 then $3 a watt panels, unlike today’s $1.39 ) I couldn’t burn my bright overhead lamp all day long ( the cabin has two very small windows, each something like 9 inches by twelve-just enough for gloom rather than pitch darkness ).  You couldn’t much move around or do anything electronic.  My choices were basically to read by small clip on book lamp or sit and twiddle my thumbs.  And that was never more than two days in a row, as I’d then go back to work.  How would you like to live like that for a longer period?  It is more than just lack of heat in the winter or a nuclear war that will force you into this situation. 

More tomorrow.

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