From the article archive
The Postman, Chapter Two: Where Darkness Falls
The Three Year Winter saw the downfall of the of all the major world powers. North America was was unique in this case, because it wasn't the scarring of war that prevented it from withstanding the ice age. It was fear.
The seeds of that fear were planted long before the war. About 1980 there was a downturn in family owned farms. An ambitious and plain talking man by the name of Nathan Holn appeared in the South with an unusual small business making some noise in agricultural community. He had built a business alliance and franchise system of family owned farms that was competing and maintaining profit against the corporate farms that were springing up.
Nathan Holn became sort of a hero to many. He provided hope in hard times and put a face on the plight of farmers at Capitol Hill. He seemed an odd mix of intellectual and neo-frontiersman. He was a self taught philosopher and economist who took complicated ideas from dusty books and put them in plain words. His worn jeans and floppy hat seemed an odd site among suits and ties of polished public figures.
With in a couple of years he had changed the face of agriculture and had been recognized by then-President Ronald Reagan for his efforts. In the process he had also made about one hundred million dollars. People asked what he would do next. He answered them in a big way...
In mid-1983 he invested in Intel, IBM, Hughes Aerospace, and a company called Microsoft. He had thrown himself into the effort by earning an MA in Electronic Engineering (which he had started years earlier). Under the banner of Trisoft he licensed and developed derivative technologies for supercomputing and military applications. To staff his company he had taken bright and troubled prodigies from troubled homes to work for him, citing a “second chance” as a reason for the move.
By 1985 his company introduced Obsidian, a scalable radar system made up of microcomputers running at a blazing 456 Mhz. Besides being able to do real-time target prioritization each processor had an embedded fuzzy logic system that could make short term “combat forecasts” about a target. While Obsidian was never deployed in military applications the company did receive orders from several civilian companies for variant designs used in automated phone routing and emergent mass telecom.
Holn's businesses became a franchise conglomerate. Everything from guns to baby food fell under Holn Industries moniker. Nathan Holn used his business might to promote small business development and community charities to reach impoverished kids. In 1987 he also published his book, The Winner's Path.
“The prize is often left unclaimed. We must have the courage to grasp it, for fortune always favors the bold.” -Nathan Holn, The Winner's Way
In 1988 Nathan Holn, now a billionaire, ran for a seat in the U.S. Senate...and won. Holn's political views were not much different than any other stereotypical Conservative but how he went about gaining support. He used his small business contacts to build a grassroots support base. He then pulled strings through state contractors to get other state and fedeal represenatives to lend their ears to this newly formed support base. The system worked so well he arguably became the most popular and powerful Senator in recent memory.
He was also the most controversial on Capitol Hill. He always presented his views in simple metaphors and plain speech that anyone could grasp. This one him nay allies among constituents and colleagues as well. Not only did he sponsor several bi-partisan bills but several Democrats switched over to the Republican Party because of his efforts. Going against the grain he did push two major issues, military service and the need for fewer gun control laws. In both he achieved a fair amount of success but not even Nathan Holn could fight the building social pressures.
In 1994 he did not run again. He tapered off his exposure in public life and went into more work with his charities and citizen organizations. The public image of Nathan Holn was very different than the real man...
Nathan Holn was a bigot, but not a conventional one. His view was that America has once been a great nation but that Americans had lost the privilege of material wealth and the Democratic vote. A new system needed to be put into place. He thought that people should earn the vote like a person working at their job to earn money. If they earned it they would have learned not to squander it. Those that earned the vote were the strongest and the ones that deserved it.
Mandatory military service would be the culling force. To Holn military service was the last vestage of true American principal. Those that passed mandatory military service would receive a land parsel. The longer you served the more land you would receive, land being the foundation of all modern economics. The last principal was probably the most radical. Anyone could challenge for leadership of their military unit in a battle to the death (meaning that being high enough in rank you could challenge for leadership of the entire nation). In this new system the “weak” would be thrown aside like chaff.
The to-the-death struggles would take several forms. The challengers would lead teams of volunteers into and isolated wilderness for a test of wits, guts, and survival. The challengers could also go in alone. In some instances they could also use a battle to the death.
Nathan Holn would use “strongest” ethnic foundation available, Anglo Saxons. He felt that all the other races had lost their “edge” and that the closest race to a hypothetical “Uber-Man” were white Europeans.
He business efforts had built up the needed supplies and infrastructure to carry out para-military operations. He had arms and ammunition manufactured and food stockpiled through trusted friends in his franchise conglomerate. Material needs for his plans were met through many business ventures over many years. He could skim small amounts off shipments and quietly store them away over time, never alerting anyone.
While a Senator he made many political connections and made good friends with like minded military officials. He gave ex-Special Forces, Army, and Marines jobs and they in turn would train his tightly knit cells. He recruited ex-cons in his “work charities” for extra man power but his most elite people came from graduating high school seniors who had been introduced to Holn's views by a conveniently placed teacher. He would then foot the bill for their college education through his charities. This gave him an expert pool to draw from for technical expertise.
He also had his loyalists enlist in the military and get government jobs, which was mad easier through his Capitol Hill connections. The sad irony is that all of this looked like social activism to the general public, which only made him more popular.
The Holnists struck after the beginning of the Death-rains. They used a two stage plan to of mobilizing every fringe group they could find to throw the government off and then they would seize infrastructure centers like telecom centers, internet backbones, and power stations. Holn had been working with ILA forces the entire time and had helped warheaded loaded ship get to its location in the North Pole. The shift into the Three Year Winter took only a matter of weeks as snow, hail, and freezing rain fell. That and the radioactive dust starting causing deaths and food shortages. This overtaxed government had downgraded its readiness after the war and was taken by surprise. The Holnists struck then. Food shortage riots accured as crowds were whipped into a frenzy by Holnist sympathizers. With in days the Holnists had captured and executed the officals in the Capitols of thirteen states in three days. News was wildly erractic as most of the media deliverly systems (radio, T.V., internet) had been simply shut down because their contol systems had been captured by Holnists. It was a downward sprial that couldn't be stopped...
How is this scenario possible? Well, entire sections of our nation's phone system can be shut down from centralized stations. Large numbers of internet subscribers (broadband and dial-up) subscribe to a small number of large ISPs. Even smaller local ISPs lease their resources from larger regional phone companies. Local T.V. stations receive their national news from larger national news organizations that own them. This leaves only radio. This system is far more decentralized than the others, but they still all share a common resource. They all share the same power grid. Consequently, most radio stations are located near major metropolitan centers. I have personal knowledge that, at least in Los Angeles, is very centralized. I could cut most of the power to the city by just cutting a single power conduit underneath an overpass (a guy actually did that to L.A.s power grid and it caused anarchy). So, it seems that the possible seizure of public assets isn't so far off. Next time, Chapter 3: Aftermath.
The seeds of that fear were planted long before the war. About 1980 there was a downturn in family owned farms. An ambitious and plain talking man by the name of Nathan Holn appeared in the South with an unusual small business making some noise in agricultural community. He had built a business alliance and franchise system of family owned farms that was competing and maintaining profit against the corporate farms that were springing up.
Nathan Holn became sort of a hero to many. He provided hope in hard times and put a face on the plight of farmers at Capitol Hill. He seemed an odd mix of intellectual and neo-frontiersman. He was a self taught philosopher and economist who took complicated ideas from dusty books and put them in plain words. His worn jeans and floppy hat seemed an odd site among suits and ties of polished public figures.
With in a couple of years he had changed the face of agriculture and had been recognized by then-President Ronald Reagan for his efforts. In the process he had also made about one hundred million dollars. People asked what he would do next. He answered them in a big way...
In mid-1983 he invested in Intel, IBM, Hughes Aerospace, and a company called Microsoft. He had thrown himself into the effort by earning an MA in Electronic Engineering (which he had started years earlier). Under the banner of Trisoft he licensed and developed derivative technologies for supercomputing and military applications. To staff his company he had taken bright and troubled prodigies from troubled homes to work for him, citing a “second chance” as a reason for the move.
By 1985 his company introduced Obsidian, a scalable radar system made up of microcomputers running at a blazing 456 Mhz. Besides being able to do real-time target prioritization each processor had an embedded fuzzy logic system that could make short term “combat forecasts” about a target. While Obsidian was never deployed in military applications the company did receive orders from several civilian companies for variant designs used in automated phone routing and emergent mass telecom.
Holn's businesses became a franchise conglomerate. Everything from guns to baby food fell under Holn Industries moniker. Nathan Holn used his business might to promote small business development and community charities to reach impoverished kids. In 1987 he also published his book, The Winner's Path.
“The prize is often left unclaimed. We must have the courage to grasp it, for fortune always favors the bold.” -Nathan Holn, The Winner's Way
In 1988 Nathan Holn, now a billionaire, ran for a seat in the U.S. Senate...and won. Holn's political views were not much different than any other stereotypical Conservative but how he went about gaining support. He used his small business contacts to build a grassroots support base. He then pulled strings through state contractors to get other state and fedeal represenatives to lend their ears to this newly formed support base. The system worked so well he arguably became the most popular and powerful Senator in recent memory.
He was also the most controversial on Capitol Hill. He always presented his views in simple metaphors and plain speech that anyone could grasp. This one him nay allies among constituents and colleagues as well. Not only did he sponsor several bi-partisan bills but several Democrats switched over to the Republican Party because of his efforts. Going against the grain he did push two major issues, military service and the need for fewer gun control laws. In both he achieved a fair amount of success but not even Nathan Holn could fight the building social pressures.
In 1994 he did not run again. He tapered off his exposure in public life and went into more work with his charities and citizen organizations. The public image of Nathan Holn was very different than the real man...
Nathan Holn was a bigot, but not a conventional one. His view was that America has once been a great nation but that Americans had lost the privilege of material wealth and the Democratic vote. A new system needed to be put into place. He thought that people should earn the vote like a person working at their job to earn money. If they earned it they would have learned not to squander it. Those that earned the vote were the strongest and the ones that deserved it.
Mandatory military service would be the culling force. To Holn military service was the last vestage of true American principal. Those that passed mandatory military service would receive a land parsel. The longer you served the more land you would receive, land being the foundation of all modern economics. The last principal was probably the most radical. Anyone could challenge for leadership of their military unit in a battle to the death (meaning that being high enough in rank you could challenge for leadership of the entire nation). In this new system the “weak” would be thrown aside like chaff.
The to-the-death struggles would take several forms. The challengers would lead teams of volunteers into and isolated wilderness for a test of wits, guts, and survival. The challengers could also go in alone. In some instances they could also use a battle to the death.
Nathan Holn would use “strongest” ethnic foundation available, Anglo Saxons. He felt that all the other races had lost their “edge” and that the closest race to a hypothetical “Uber-Man” were white Europeans.
He business efforts had built up the needed supplies and infrastructure to carry out para-military operations. He had arms and ammunition manufactured and food stockpiled through trusted friends in his franchise conglomerate. Material needs for his plans were met through many business ventures over many years. He could skim small amounts off shipments and quietly store them away over time, never alerting anyone.
While a Senator he made many political connections and made good friends with like minded military officials. He gave ex-Special Forces, Army, and Marines jobs and they in turn would train his tightly knit cells. He recruited ex-cons in his “work charities” for extra man power but his most elite people came from graduating high school seniors who had been introduced to Holn's views by a conveniently placed teacher. He would then foot the bill for their college education through his charities. This gave him an expert pool to draw from for technical expertise.
He also had his loyalists enlist in the military and get government jobs, which was mad easier through his Capitol Hill connections. The sad irony is that all of this looked like social activism to the general public, which only made him more popular.
The Holnists struck after the beginning of the Death-rains. They used a two stage plan to of mobilizing every fringe group they could find to throw the government off and then they would seize infrastructure centers like telecom centers, internet backbones, and power stations. Holn had been working with ILA forces the entire time and had helped warheaded loaded ship get to its location in the North Pole. The shift into the Three Year Winter took only a matter of weeks as snow, hail, and freezing rain fell. That and the radioactive dust starting causing deaths and food shortages. This overtaxed government had downgraded its readiness after the war and was taken by surprise. The Holnists struck then. Food shortage riots accured as crowds were whipped into a frenzy by Holnist sympathizers. With in days the Holnists had captured and executed the officals in the Capitols of thirteen states in three days. News was wildly erractic as most of the media deliverly systems (radio, T.V., internet) had been simply shut down because their contol systems had been captured by Holnists. It was a downward sprial that couldn't be stopped...
How is this scenario possible? Well, entire sections of our nation's phone system can be shut down from centralized stations. Large numbers of internet subscribers (broadband and dial-up) subscribe to a small number of large ISPs. Even smaller local ISPs lease their resources from larger regional phone companies. Local T.V. stations receive their national news from larger national news organizations that own them. This leaves only radio. This system is far more decentralized than the others, but they still all share a common resource. They all share the same power grid. Consequently, most radio stations are located near major metropolitan centers. I have personal knowledge that, at least in Los Angeles, is very centralized. I could cut most of the power to the city by just cutting a single power conduit underneath an overpass (a guy actually did that to L.A.s power grid and it caused anarchy). So, it seems that the possible seizure of public assets isn't so far off. Next time, Chapter 3: Aftermath.
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