This bitch, though, was about a hundred pounds overweight. She was bitching up a storm, too. She had on some sort of ID hanging on a lanyard, didn't see what it was. She was sure bitching, though. By God, where was the government! She'd been in her apartment for two days waiting for help and no help done come! Where the hell was the help! Nobody was helping us! We's got nothing and nobody doan care!
Did the cameras tune her out and go back to the good Samaritan up to his hips in water that was probably eating away his fucking legs?
No, they followed her. They caught every bitch and complaint. She just kept walking and they just kept following until the segment ended.
Let's be clear, here. This is a digression about the media. They had a fucking hero right in their fucking sights and they chose to follow a fucking complainer. Here is a guy killing himself to help others and they follow the overweight bitch that wants to know "why's nobody heppin us?"
But it's also about grasshoppers and ants. I don't care if the guy in the water was a heroin addict who lived by stealing purses. He was a fucking ant. When the shit hit the fan he helped others and didn't wait for the King to tell him what to do. He jumped into the fucking breach.
The fat bitch? Grasshopper. I don't give a shit if that ID was for some job somewhere and the guy in the water was a street person. She was a grasshopper, he was an ant. "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.
(Ran into Shepard in Iran one time and was forced by higher to give him an interview. He tried like hell to be charming. I admit I was less so. I suppose some day I've got to explain why, but it's one of those things from your childhood you just remember, you know? You're trying to figure out how to be an adult and you look at that and go; "Well, I'm not going to be like that bastard Shepard Smith, giving the limelight to a bitching grasshopper while a hero toils away behind his back." Addendum: Turns out it was his producer's fault, not his. Okay, so I'm not perfect, I should have realized he was just the ventriloquist's dummy. In that case, his producer is an idiot. Sorry, Shepard.)
Me. It's all about me. Okay, they were called the Me generation. Yes, the vast majority of Lamoille County were baby boomers. "If it feels good do it" was the mantra. "It's all about me."
Well, you know 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.
And even in a sufficiently awful disaster situation "It's all about me" works. If you can get out of the disaster area and stealing a car will get you out, you can go far using that technique.
But beyond a certain point, you need help. You can try to shoot your way to what you want, but eventually you're going to be outnumbered and outgunned. (That happened a few times in the U.S. Not many, but it happened. Very common in other countries, but I'll get to that.)
The wolf only ever gets to the door because it hasn't hit some blocking force before it gets there. Normally, that's people like me. "People rest safe in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence in their name." I'm one of those "rough men" and proud of it. But when things come apart, hard, like an exploding turbine, well it helps to have a group gathered for mutual support. Lone wolves found themselves increasingly challenged in many areas (mostly red areas) by "voluntary random associations."
So what happened in Lamoille?
Foodstuffs down to seed were confiscated for "community benefit" kitchens. There were soup lines. (Well, they were all over for the next few years. Remember?) There was rationing. Remember the ten percent that have to do something? They were the first to leave, looking for somewhere less screwed up. Many of them were the natives of the area who were having their supplies stripped for the grasshoppers. They packed up and ran. Many of them to New Hampshire. Many of those counties weren't taking refugees, but a true Yankee accent could generally talk its way through. Especially if it was carrying supplies or had a sob story from somewhere like Lamoille.
Eventually things were getting bad and worse. There were starting to be some food shipments at that point. Things were starting to derandomize in the U.S. by May or so. Not anywhere near pre-Plague and there were still people getting sick, but it was starting to derandomize.
But it still wasn't great. And then there were the evil farmers who many were sure were still hoarding food. So many of the grasshoppers were moved out, or moved out voluntarily, to the farms.
This is called the Cambodia Syndrome. Also The Zimbabwe Method. In a situation where food is short, send people out to farms. There they can produce food for themselves and for the cities. More about that later as well. It's the explanation for 2020 and 2021.
In Cambodia it led to a 20% drop in the population. The farms were and are called The Killing Fields. In Zimbabwe it led to the "grain basket of Africa" entering a long-term famine.
Look, farming is hard. It's not only hard physical work, it's hard mental work. Farm boy, remember? Degree in Agronomy. I know whereof I speak. Sending a bunch of tofu-eaters out to rebuild the local farm economy, or even the semiretired stock market traders, or lawyers or power traders or whatever, was like asking a two-year-old to program your stock trading computer.
Especially the way they did it. And the weather didn't help much a-tall.
Most of the seed had been seized and eaten. But there was some left, at least for vegetables and beans. Little packets that had basic instructions on how and when to plant the crops. There was a county agent, a, you guessed it, expert on natural farming methods.
So people were sent out to farms and given the packets and told to read and follow the directions. How hard could it be. Put the seed in the ground and wait for the food to come rolling in.
Most of the packets had planting zone instructions. There were generally five, ranging north to south. Vermont (and Minnesota) were Zone One, meaning the last zone to be planted.
The seeds would give a time frame for planting in the zone you were in. Most of the seeds passed out that April and May were in the zone for planting. Corn, peas, even in Vermont they would normally be ready to go into the ground. Corn "knee high by the Fourth of July."
Big Chill, remember? Actual planting time, what you plant and when you plant it, depends on two things: soil temperature and projected growing season. (Wow, real farming information.) 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. Or the harvest will be lousy.
My dad used to start pacing around March. He'd watch the weather reports like a hawk. He'd surf the Internet. He'd listen to the radio. He'd take soil temperatures. He was gathering all the information he could about how things were warming up, what they might be like that summer. He'd look, I don't joke, at things like the flight of birds. When they were migrating. How fast they were moving. It all went into that organic and extremely experienced computer in his head. And then he'd make a decision on just when we were going to plant and what.