Seven years ago, Jose's home nation of Venezuela, a wealthy and developed nation, fell apart suddenly. It failed economically, politically, militarily, agriculturally, socially and culturally. Jose had to move into the mountains just outside the border to survive.
He's writing about the experience because most of us in functioning societies don't know how quickly it can happen, and what a collapse is like.
He says: "Today, where the only law is the fear imposed by AK-toting guys, in unidentified vehicles, crime has increased in the countryside and in the cities. Restrictions on importation were lifted and those using foreign currency made huge fortunes importing from abroad."
"It saddened and alarmed me to learn from a farmer in the Los Andes Mountains that people would come from the town, walking kilometers uphill during the night, even when raining, to steal potatoes. Crops that have not yet matured are being dug out of the ground. Farmers have to sleep in their potato fields to avoid being stolen from. Unarmed, roving bands of four or more thieves have caused the farmers to arm themselves with machetes and pikes."
In 1847 Christian immigrants from Holland founded the town of Pella in Iowa. The name is connected to Christian refugees who fled Jerusalem to Pella, a Greek Hellenistic city.
Just down the road is Ottumwa. Earlier this week a City Council meeting began the proceedings with an invocation to Satan:
“Dear Dark Father,
"Let us stand now, unbowed and unfettered by arcane doctrines born of fearful minds in darkened times. Let us embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat from the tree of knowledge and dissipate our blissful and comforting delusions of old."
It ended with the cry, "Hail Satan."
As plague hysteria begins spreading across headlines around the world, there is one detail almost nobody is talking about: governments and military biodefense programs have already poured major resources into developing dozens of plague vaccines.
More than 21 plague-vaccine candidates are under development, spanning mRNA, self-amplifying RNA, recombinant protein, viral-vector, live-attenuated and other technologies.
--- Nicholas Hulscher