“Monsters in movies are us, always us, one way or the other… Monsters are us, the dangerous parts of us. The part that wants to destroy. The part of us with the reptile brain. The part of us that’s vicious and cruel. We express these in our stories as these monsters out there.”—John Carpenter
This time of year, there is no shortage of monsters to frighten us.
Hollywood has given us vampires, zombies, mad scientists, masked killers and creatures that emerge from the darkness to prey upon the unsuspecting.
But perhaps the most frightening monster of all is the government that has become so accustomed to wielding extraordinary power that it cannot imagine a future in which that power is diminished.
Enter the Doomsday Plan.
Imagine it: The power grid goes down. Supply chains collapse. Communications fail. Cities are plunged into darkness. Ordinary Americans are left scrambling for food, water, medicine and shelter.
Not to worry, though. The government has a plan for the coming apocalypse.
Unfortunately, the plan seems to have more to do with keeping the police state operational than keeping the American people alive.
In what sounds like a plot lifted straight out of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, the Pentagon has unveiled an initiative designed to keep the war machine running even if a catastrophic war devastates the country’s civilian infrastructure.
Under an initiative called FORTRESS, the military is preparing major installations across the United States to operate independently for at least 90 days in the event of a catastrophic disruption. The plan includes portable nuclear reactors, independent power grids, stockpiles of fuel and ammunition, backup communications systems and arrangements for civilian factories to switch over to wartime production.
The Pentagon calls this preparedness.
