The Last Centurion by Ringo
Ref: John Ringo (2008). The Last Centurion. Oxford University Press.
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Summary
A deadly pandemic (H5N1) and global cooling concurrently strike humanity in 2019.
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Pandemic
"There's a WHO bulletin indicating a possible human-to-human outbreak in Western China," the WO said. "But that's all we've got and it's currently unconfirmed. CDC has not issued a warning."
“You couldn't get people to agree on how to build a playground. Getting them to work together to fight a killer flu bug was so far beyond the pale it wasn't funny.”
The President was dealing with reports that were a day old and during the height of the Plague that was like reading up on Darius the Great.
What caused the pandemic was a switch in one little gene code. That permitted the flu to bind to the proteins in the lungs. Which was a good thing.
Influenza: Possibly the oldest pathogen around. The genetics indicate that it goes all the way back to intestinal flu in dinosaurs.
Flu Virus hooks onto cells with proteins that look remarkably like hooks under an electron microscope. Then it shoots a package of DNA into the cell. The package of DNA first tells the cell to make a shitload more viruses then kills itself (lyse) so they're released.
Flu Immunization: Tells your body's defenses what the flu looks like, sort of like giving the body's policemen a picture of that flu bastard and telling them "Shoot to kill." So, when the flu attacks, your body produces a bunch more policemen (antibodies) which attack the flu. The problem with most flu vaccines is that the "picture" that the antibodies get only describes those hooklike proteins.
Common Seasonal Flus: H3N2 & H1N1. Both have a binding protein that binds to specific proteins in the upper respiratory system.
H5N1: Classic bird flu, bind to receptors in avian intestines (it's an intestinal flu for birds).
Epidemiological Emergency Response Plan (EERP).
1. Emergency Vaccine Distribution Plan: US plan for vaccine distribution; spreads vaccines through the military and emergency civilian channels to all healthcare providers.
2. Mobilize the National Guard and Reserves. Mobilize all active units to full combat status.
3. Zone Quarantine: Close all borders, internationally and internally. Preferably, close it down to county level where possible. International travel shuts down first. Planes coming from other places are turned back. U.S. citizens and residents can enter the country but go into quarantine, not home.
4. Ring Immunization: When, not if, you have outbreaks you start "ring immunization." There are leakers. Always. You find them and do the same thing.
Healthcare
In the U.S. the standard time to wait for a gall bladder operation was 2w. In the UK it was 9m. In the U.S., if you needed a bypass, you'd be out of the surgery less than 14h after emergency admission. In the UK it was emergency admission, minimal support therapy, months wait. Some 35% of persons waiting for a bypass operation died before they got one.
Persons in free-market medical environments live longer, healthier, less pain-filled lives. Despite the evil doctors and HMOs and pharmaceutical companies? No, because of the evil doctors and HMOs and pharmaceutical companies. All three groups had a vested interest in keeping patients alive as long as possible. The longer they lived, the more money the "evil" guys made.
As any health insurance actuary will tell you, geriatrics consumed 90+% of the health budget. Mostly in their last six months of life.
A corollary effect was on the members of the health profession. A doctor in Britain who worked 90h a week got paid exactly the same as a doctor who worked 40h per week. (Often they worked less.) And it was rare that there were any changes for quality. World-renowned surgeons in Germany and France made only a fraction more than less competent doctors.
Pharmaceuticals
The U.S. had been repeatedly castigated for the cost of healthcare and especially pharmaceuticals. Also for over-prescription of the newest and most costly. But. In Europe there was no pressure to use pharmaceuticals. With costs capped by the government, there was no incentive for the pharmaceutical companies. Modern pharmaceuticals are enormously expensive to field. The first problem is the cost of development. Many of them are derived from natural substances, but it takes relentless searching to find a new natural substance. Cancer drugs were derived from rare South African pansies, new antibiotics were derived from fungus found on a stone in a Japanese temple. Then they had to be tested to find out if any benefits could be derived.
Animal (screening) in rats ~1-2y, cost about $500k/year, in monkeys—about 2-5y, cost $2M a year.
Phase I in humans is strictly toxicology: 2y, $10–20M/yr. If it doesn't kill anybody, then move to Phase II.
Phase II: Testing for Effectiveness; up to 10y, cost $100M+/yr. If statistics suggest a beneficial effect, then on to Phase III.
Phase III: Determine effective dosage, side effects, other benefits and "off-label" uses; 5–10y, $100M+/yr.
A (large) Pharma company will start with 10,000 compounds in screening, take about 200 into animal testing, then possibly get ten into Phase I to maybe get one into Phase II. In the last 10–20y, about 95% of Alzheimer's disease drugs that got to Phase II on the basis of rodent testing were sent back because they had no effect in humans—hence the necessity for the added expense of monkey testing.
Easily a billion dollars invested in one drug.
In Europe, it was considered cheaper to just operate. Much more unpleasant for the patient but the doctors filled their quotas and the government wasn't forced to pay for the development of pharmaceuticals. Which was why most of the modern wonder drugs were coming out of America or from European businesses that were making most of their profits in America.
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Global Cooling
Cosmic Rays: Produced from the explosion of large stars. Earth is constantly bombarded by them. Cosmic rays hit water droplets in the upper atmosphere and form clouds, cooling the Earth.
Less Cosmic Rays, less clouds, warming Earth. More cosmic Rays, more clouds, things cool down.
Solar Winds: The particles that fly out of the sun headed for deep space. When there’s a lot of “solar wind,” it blows back the cosmic rays so less get to Earth.
Decreased solar activity equals decreased solar wind. Decreased solar wind equals more cosmic rays impacting the earth. More cosmic rays impacting the earth equals more clouds. More clouds equal cooler temperatures.
"But CO2 tracks with temperature!" Sort of. CO2 increases lag behind temperature increases. CO2 increases in the atmosphere are a result of temperature increases not the cause of temperature increases. They track 800y later. Less solar output equals colder temperatures. (In 800y, less CO2. In the meantime, it's going to keep increasing.)
Sunspot activity has been found to be a stellar indicator of solar activity.
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Societal Trust
The U.S. is, by and large a general trust society. In most segments of American society, you could loan your lawn mower to your neighbor with a fair expectation of getting it back. If you didn't, you could take him to small claims court and the judge wasn't going to care about you or your neighbor, mostly, just about the merits of the case. Trust is vital in a society. If societal trust is too low, people trust no one.
Studies find that the more multicultural a society, the lower the societal trust.
The only way to get generalized trust is to blend the societies and erase the differences.
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Science
The way that good science works is that the scientist looks at something and says "What if?" He then develops a statement from that (a hypothesis) then tries to disprove his hypothesis. "The sky is yellow." He first defines yellow. He then tests to see if the sky is yellow. If it turns out that the sky is actually blue, his hypothesis gets disproved. But he still publishes the paper and comes up with another hypothesis. Say that the world is really round. If he cannot disprove his hypothesis, it then and only then becomes a theory. This is Science 101.
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Disaster Response
Disaster professionals leave a certain number of blank spots in their response group because they know that there are going to be people who simply cannot sit on their ass and not help out.
In every major disaster studied, response of random individuals in first moments was a key factor in initial recovery.
If you treat the people who are doing the majority of the work exactly the same as those who would not or could not contribute as much to the community, the workers eventually decide to work less hard. Feed local emergency services personnel first. Feed kids and elderly next. Feed random associators next. Feed the grasshoppers last.
We needed emergency distribution rations that: A. Would keep for a long time. B. Contained a tremendous amount of energy so that people could use body energy to stave off the cold. C. Were nutritionally complete. Preferably one "packet" was enough for one person for an entire 24-hour period. D. Could be easily stored and transported. E. Were in a smaller packet than MREs. Preferably "energy bar" sized. F. Were as easy to produce from readily available materials as possible.
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Farming
Here's how the majority of the beef in the U.S. is produced:
Cattle produce males (bulls) and females (cows).
Cows have a long-term economic benefit; they provide more cattle.
In the dairy industry, you get milk from cows.
The majority of bulls are useless for providing more cattle. One bull and ten cows is a decent ratio. The rest are deballed at six months (steers), generally, and spend the next few years, three normally, eating grass on big spreads.
More rain equals more grass equals more steers you can run on an acre. Average in FL was three head of cattle per acre.
In the winter you've got to lay out hay (cut grass) for the cattle so they can make it through the winter. To get hay, you have to cut it, let it dry and then harvest. If it gets rained on after it's cut, or if it's still wet from the rain when you cut it, it "sours" and gets fungal infections. Even cows can get sick from it. (Horses will die.) Ever heard the term "hay-making weather."
At a certain age they're then moved to feed lots, eating piles of corn and mixed foods, to better the taste (Cattle that eat nothing but grass are tough meat and taste ‘gamey’). Various additives are given to speed up the fattening process.
They are moved to slaughter houses and turned into steaks, hamburger and all the rest. Bits that American humans wouldn't eat become pet-food.
Okay, here is lesson one. 'A man he works from sun to sun but a woman's work is never done.' That's not a complaint. That's reality. Your husband, in case you hadn't noticed, is now going out all day just about every day working his tail off. It's hard, brutal, necessary work. He's probably losing weight. He'll gain it back as he gets better at things and if there's food. But he will always be expending more calories in a day than you do. He will be working harder physically. You will be working constantly physically but at a lower level.
Farmers Breakfast: Carbo-load but add any available protein; bacon, eggs, hash browns and toast.
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Agriculture
Actual planting time, what you plant and when you plant it, depends on soil temperature and projected growing season.
Seeds need the soil to be a certain temperature before they'll sprout. Plant them too soon and they're mostly going to go bad. By the same token, the plants need a certain amount of time to mature. Plant them too late and they'll get caught by an early frost or a cold front and be unharvestable.
The Population Bomb that was based on Malthusian Equations. Basically, according to Malthus, people reproduce a lot faster than food production can be increased. (Geometric vs. arithmetic.) Thus every so often you're going to get a massive famine since the amount of mouths outstrip the production. Malthus did his study and wrote his treatise just as the industrial revolution was getting into gear. And for his knowledge of the day, organic farming by human and animal labor, he was absolutely right. There was a regular cycle of population growth stopped by famine throughout the world prior to the industrial revolution.
Organic Farming
The Amish farmed organically. They had been doing it for a long time and they were not stupid. They paid attention to what worked within the constraints of their culture. They used every trick in the book that wasn't a violation of their faith. They were, hands down, the best truly organic farmers in the United States. Their harvests averaged half of non-organic farms. The only reason they were able to stay in business at all was that they had so few needs and everyone worked for, essentially, no pay. They ate what they harvested and anything left over went to buy the very few things they couldn't make themselves.
"All organic farming" requires 3x the amount of land compared to organic farming.
Environmental damage from a total switch to organic farming would have been 10x that of the current conditions of mass industrial farming.
The best organic farming in the world is hugely inefficient compared to industrial farming.
Farming
Spray herbicide during the with winter fallow field, let Let sink in for 2w for roundup to degrade.
Spray with NH4NO3 to "seal" the soil. Wait a short period of time for ammonia to do its magic.
Check soil temperature (if you're good you've guessed the day perfectly).
Start plowing and planting simultaneously with a John Deere combination planter.
At specified intervals spray with insecticide and herbicide chemically targeted to miss your crops.
Depending on what you're growing, you might have to do pollination (usually except for the low-grains like rye, wheat and barley.)
Pollinate, the one thing that is hugely manpower intense.
Harvest when it's ready and get ready to either do a second crop or let the field lie fallow for winter.
Repeat.
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Politics
Prior to the Great Depression, the Democrats were a minority party. The Grand Old Party (GOP: Republicans) had dominated every Federal office since the Civil War. Hoover killed that. His response to the Great Depression was to tell people to pull up their socks and quit complaining. Not a functional response. People couldn't afford socks. It went over as well as "let them eat cake."
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Media
Two sources of any news, print, video, etc:
Primary Source: Information received from a known person standing in front of a news camera or a known "byline" reporting in paper or a known voice doing radio.
Secondary Source: The majority of media produced.
News from distant lands came in by film and then video tape. It was edited at the national studio, script was written and then broadcast. Local news followed the same pattern. They got that from their parent network. What got cut was anything related to context, the networks never saw any of it, just clips of dramatic shots.
A media crew consists of the reporter ("the dummy" in news-speak), a sound-man, the cameraman, and the producer.
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Military
Weapons
Javelin: 2000m Max Range.
RPG: 300m Max Range against a moving target.
Shock infantry goes back to the Greeks again and their hoplites. Every other fighter in the world, back then, were essentially "raid" infantry or cavalry or whatever. They'd charge and poke then run away. Charge, poke, run away. Do that until one side backs up from too many (low) casualties.
People may rant and march and burn effigies about the U.S. when things are good, but as soon as the shit hits the fan they turn to American troops.
A side that uses "irregulars" has three days to give them all some identifying mark saying "this is our side." If they don't, they are known as "illegal combatants" and have exactly no rights under the Geneva Convention or any other law of war. They are legally the equivalent of spies with guns and the Convention is clear that you can shoot spies.
It's hard to be in the military for any time and not become to an extent color blind. They may look at cultural factors, but they tend to look past color per se. The two are not equal.
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People
Husayn ibn Ali ibn Abi Talib (626-680): Founder of Shia Islam (Iran, S. Iraq into Saudi Arabia); Grandson of Mohammed by one of his numerous wives.
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Misc Quotes
"Do one thing every day that you don't have to do immediately and you don't want to do."
"If I had my choice, I would kill every reporter in the world but I am sure we would be getting reports from hell before breakfast."-Sherman.
"Most men are good for naught more than turning good food into shit."-Da Vinci.
"From everyone according to their abilities to everyone according to their needs.”-Marx.
"Never interrupt an enemy in the process of making a grievous error."-Nelson.
"I have never lost a battle. But I cannot but think that the only thing worse than a battle won must be a battle lost."-Wellington.
"The secret to this shop is to find the one or two guys who are not complete incompetents and work them to death."-Staff Officer Saying.
Rape is a technique of power. You teach a bitch, be that a guy in prison or a female under your control, who is boss by raping them. It is very nearly the ultimate loss of control over one's body.
“The ultimate butt-fuck, being promoted to major, the shittiest rank in the Army.”
“If your OERs don't make you seem like the reincarnation of Scipio Fucking Africanus it's a death knell to your career.”
“Weekly staff meetings, are, by and large, ritual dick-beating exercises. Everyone stands up and presents their action items for the previous week, completion function thereof and action items for the upcoming week, schedule thereof. They're actually necessary but God damn they're a pain.”
Back when I was a kid, you'd watch the Olympics and it'd be about sports. By the time I was a teenager it was all about "poor Bobby was born with a heart defect but he managed to overcome it and become an expert male synchronized swimmer!" The fucking Olympics are about who wins and who loses. Period fucking dot. I don't give a shit if Bobby has a heart murmur. Did he get a gold? No. Fucking loser.
Treating like an adult: You're fucking up. Here's how to fix it. Now fix it. Treating like a child: You're trying really hard! Good job! It's not the result that matters, it's just that you try!
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand: The basic premise; a guy who built a widget that was very important to everything decides to quit. The guys who took over building the widget didn't build it as well and society fell apart.
Everything depends on productivity, which is higher per man hour in the U.S. than anywhere in the world.
"Americans, contrary to every other society I have studied, form voluntary random social alliances."-Alex de Touqueville.
People can't comprehend big complicated reasons so they cling to the simple answers.
The French agricultural economy had reached its carrying capacity just as there was a turn-down in the thermostat. One bad harvest and people were starving. The king ordered that the price of bread in Paris and other cities be fixed at a certain level so that people could afford to eat. The only problem being the farmers, who had limited supplies from the bad harvest, weren't willing to sell it to the bakers at the cost necessary for bread to be that cost. So the supply of wheat ran out for bread. The king had also decreed that if there was no bread flour, then cake, which was from much more expensive (less supply) flour, was to be substituted. So she was making, within the "command economy" mindset, a perfectly plausible statement. If the bakers aren't making bread, then the poor get to eat cake. The only problem being, there wasn't enough flour for cake, either. And either way the bakers were going to go out of business.
Scavenging is a person coming out of a Winn-Dixie or Meijers with a shopping cart filled with canned goods and bottled water. Looting is a person coming out of Walmart with five TVs.
Counties in Georgia are tiny, it has to do with their charter, which was written right after the Revolutionary War. Basically, the county seat has to be "one half day's ride" from any point in the county. That was so voters (who at the time of the charter had to be middle class to wealthy white males) could ride into town, vote and ride home in one day.
If there was ever a race destined for greatness who just ended up at the wrong place and the wrong time, it's the fucking Nepalese.
See, here's the fucked-up thing. Give me a problem, one that's damned near insoluble, and I start solving it. I hate that trait. Especially since the ideas are never straightforward and always have a huge number of consequences. They solve the problem but they make more problems. And then there's the whole "the reward for a job well done is a harder job."
The purpose of a free press is so that people can make rational decisions in a democracy.
Remember Troy? Forget all that shit about it being about Helen. Troy was one of the first major cities to control Bosporus trade. It got really rich on it, and the Hellenes decided they wanted the money. Simple as that.
I wasn't a prophet but you only had to be reasonably keyed in to see where we were heading. You only had to have the sort of head that could put five or ten variables, not complicated ones, together, plug in the known constants and get an answer.
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Terminology
Apache: The Hopi name for the Apache tribes, meaning enemy.
Autoimmune Disorder: Your antibodies attack you.
Churchills Burp: There's a bit of an otherwise straight border between Saudi Arabia and Iraq which dips upwards, giving a bit more completely empty desert to Saudi Arabia and a bit less to Iraq. (At the time, the oil issue was little known.) No fucking reason in the world for it. People call this "Churchill's Burp" because they say he drew the line in after lunch and burped while he was drawing the line.
Debiologicaled Shit: Shit heated to the point that the germs should be dead.
Drought: Less food from an acre.
Ghurkas (‘Ghorkas’): Nepalese recruited from four tribes in Nepal; the position has become larghely hereditary.
Grasshoppers: I waited for somebody to help me. Why didn't somebody help me? You should help me. The government should help me." Me. Me. Me. Me. Fucking Me. in peace and plenty (brought to you in great degree by us ants) "It's all about me" works. It doesn't work for anyone with honor and dignity, but the "It's all about me" people don't care about that. They just care about themselves.
Haj: The annual pilgrimage to Mecca.
Heavy Equipment Recovery Combat Utility Lift and Evacuation System (HERCULES).
Industrial Management: How to get very disparate parts of a complicated system to start working together.
Kurds: A people residing in the mountainous triangle of Iraq, Turkey and Iran.
Lost Legion: A legion of Roman soldiers ordered by Emperor Trajan to "march east until you come to the end of the world." They're believed to have been destroyed in battle by Iranians somewhere not too far from Abadan.
Parthian Shot: Getting the last word in as you leave the room.
Parthians (Persians) were the guys who gave us the term "Parthian Shot." That is, hit somebody, run away and keep shooting at them as you run away.
Patient Zero: The first detected case of a disease.
Plenipotentiary: An ambassador to a foreign country who speaks with ‘full power’ (plenipotentiary) of the government they represent.
Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Unit (ROWPU).
Slamming the Wall (Suicide, Porkchop Hill, the Somme, Coldwater Harbor): The basic concept is that if you take your enemy's strongest position, it will break him.
Sunni Triangle: Line elongated north and comprised of Baghdad and Al Ramadi, which are more or less on the same line in the south, and Tikrit, which is a few hundred miles north of that line.
Temporary Marriage: In Shia Islam, a mullah can "temporarily marry" a Shia female to a guy and for the time that the temporary marriage lasts, she is legally married and thus does not suffer "dishonor."
Throughput: The amount of relief supplies that actually gets to the people in need.
Triage (trier- to pick or sort, French): Originated in the Napoleonic Wars; came down to 1) those that don't need help right now, 2) those that can survive if they get help right now and 3) those that are probably going to die whether they get help or not.
Uncle Sam: One of the main suppliers of Union Forces during the Civil War was owned by a guy named Sam. The stuff was stamped "US” (We got another food delivery from Uncle Sam).
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