The Stage Is Set

So why am I special?  Why am I here? Frankly, I don't know.  All I know is that I was resourceful enough, and, more importantly, lucky enough, to still be here.  For I have seen things and done things that you would not believe—nor would I—had I not seen them and done them.  That's why I’m writing this as witness to what I saw and did, not what happened to others.  That I don't know.  I'll let you know what happened to me and all those around me.  Those precious family and friends that are long gone.  Where do I begin to tell you?  Where do I begin?  I guess I'll begin when it started to unravel.

There had always been wealthy and there had always been poor.  Wealth was primarily the result of good luck or strength, or both.  Poverty was a result of bad luck, lack of strength, ignorance, or resolve.  The wealthy provided progress, shelter, and security in trade for hard labor by the poor.  This system worked from prehistory through history until the end of the industrial age when the information age took hold and it became more what you knew that gave wealth than what you possessed.  In other words, wealth was not defined as what you owned, but rather a sum in electronic currency that could be spent anywhere in the world to get whatever you wanted.  Since this manipulation of money resulted in no real productivity and forced more and more people into poverty where they could not grow, gather or earn enough to live, we were finally at a point of crisis.

A few generous, very rich, offered to help the masses come out of poverty, but that backfired because when provided with more food and better health, these poor populations continued to grow exponentially, further stressing resources until there was a tipping point where no amount of charity could stem the tide of growing poor humanity.  As in all nature, the die off began.  The first place it struck was Africa.  While diseases like AIDS and malaria had been held off and even made to retreat, the growing population and overcrowding brought back smallpox, diphtheria, whooping cough, tuberculosis, bubonic plague and other diseases, all mutated into more virulent strains that spread at lightning speed and devastated whole tribes, villages, towns, and cities.  In the countryside, the droughts and over cutting of trees for making charcoal reduced the ability of the wild to produce enough food and shelter for its animals and their hunters, while over-farming had weakened and poisoned the soil, making each crop less productive each year.

The three swords of famine, pestilence, and war hacked the very life out of the African population, one machete at a time.  Before long, the only rule on the entire continent was the rule of force.  Millions were dying and they were left to die.  The strong and the wealthy held out in their enclaves, but without the poor working people, there was no source for their prosperity and power.  Those that escaped to whatever other places would have them, found themselves trapped in ghettos of other refugees still in poverty and still struggling to survive, even in some of the richest countries in the world.

The tremendous imbalance between the starving and dying from the insulated rich affected the economies of every country in the world.  Of course, some countries were better off than others, especially if they had natural resources, lower population, and the ability to sustain.  Still, even these countries were intertwined in a global network of corporations, banking, alliances, trade and other activities creating a giant web—a giant domino game if you will—with some dominoes further from others and less likely to be knocked over.  I lived in what was called the United States of America.  Our country was not one of those places that were insulated and self-sustaining.  We had a tremendous dependence on goods produced in other countries.  We had a tremendous dependence on energy supplied from other countries.  And we had an inability to stop the hungry masses from entering the country and seeking the American dream.  

I was one of those who could trace my lineage back to the 1600s; an immigrant that was also one of the poor starving that came at that time to what seemed like an endless, empty continent. Endless and empty no more.  There came a point where the United States of America could no longer take in immigrants generously as it always had done before.  But still they came.  There was no stopping them.  They called it the Golden Door, and they opened it.

The flow of goods and services in the United States was made possible by cheap gasoline and fuel oil.  When the sources of these fuels began to dry up and the commodity exchanges hoarded them for profit, the price of gasoline and fuel oil skyrocketed.  Everything that was produced in the country depended upon these fuels. Everything increased in price until the United States was experiencing shortages and inflation not seen since World War II.  No matter how far or how deep the oil companies drilled, they came up drier and drier until even everyone's food budget begin to take a lion's share of income.  And speaking of drier and drier, clean water had run out in much of the country as the price of water was already skyrocketing, compounding the problem of food production, dependent on irrigation.  Globally, the weather became quite unpredictable, leading to large areas of the Southwest, Midwest, and Southeastern United States in a drought that continued to get worse, punctuated with regular hurricanes of great destruction and outbreaks of tornadoes whenever thunderstorms erupted.  Much of the Midwest turned into a dust bowl that hadn't been seen since the 1930s.

But everyone knows that, so there's no use dwelling on it.  I was insulated anyway.  As a young professor of chemistry at the University of Minnesota, I was able to pay my bills and dream, unlike most of the population at the time.  Taking a lead from a professor of mine in my undergraduate days, I decided to spend the summer in the Canadian wilderness, alone.  That professor, several years before, had gone into the wilderness every year with a student until he found out that students no longer appreciated the wilderness and found that having a student with him only dragged down his joy of being there.  The peace and solitude alone outweighed their miserable company.  By the time I was his student, he shared his adventures with us, but did not offer to take me, his best student, with him on his last journey.  I still remember well, all these years since, the fact that he never returned that fall to resume classes.  I had scheduled an advanced undergraduate chemistry class with him, but he never showed up to teach the class, and as far as I know, no one ever found his body.