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Saturday, June 23, 2012

A Story I Wrote


The Death of the Power Grid
A fictional story on how our country collapsed and the dawn of a new era began.

Politics have always been controversial and it is hard not to pay attention to some of it.

  Jake started listening to the news after 9/11 and ended up listening to what was happening in Iraq. It wasn’t long before he ended up listening to the U.S. news.  He became addicted to the soap opera of the day and began to form opinions on who was right and who was wrong.

The news was always negative and it never told the whole story, just the scary parts and a cliff-hanger to get him to watch for the next breaking news on the subject.

As time went on, the economy crashed, jobs were lost and people started to lose their life savings due to inflation and drop in home prices.  To survive the day, they had to rely on credit cards to buy food and it didn’t take long for the cards to be maxed out and couldn’t pay anymore.

In response to the number of people going broke, the credit card companies began raising interest rates to keep their profit margins up and increased the rate of the number of people defaulting on their payments.  Now the survival of the banks was threatened, and many banks failed.  Those that survived did so by getting bailouts from the government.

The government did not get the tax revenue it needed to function at the status quo because of job loss and had to borrow from foreign countries in order to pay its bills.  This caused the value of the dollar to fall which caused the price of oil to increase.  The higher cost of oil impacted the price of everything in the country.  Food prices went up.  Social Security benefits lagged way behind the increased cost of living and more and more people fell into poverty causing the national debt to climb to dangerous heights.  The value of retirement funds fell precipitously in terms of purchasing power.

Meanwhile, the legislators in Washington, insulated from many of the problems faced by their constituents, continued their job of writing new laws which further hampered the ability of job creators to hire people.  This snowball of destruction continued without any stops as the country continued to go deeper in debt without any hope of stopping the train to destruction. Laws started to show up that criminalized such things as sharing surplus squashes from your garden with your neighbor.  The consequence of sharing the squash was $5000.00.  Another revenue source for our government.

Companies tried everything to improve efficiencies and cut corners wherever they could.  They laid off people, reduced the quality or quantity of the products they sold which put their customers deeper in debt.

Jake was watching this happen and felt helpless to stop it.   Politicians lied all the time, twisted facts to gain an unfair advantage and promised the moon to anyone interested in listening to them.  Pandering was rampant and promises were made which could never be implemented.  Special interest groups donated vast sums of money behind their candidate of choice with the expectation of having a better chance of survival than their counterparts. Laws were not enforced uniformly and only enforced for a political advantage.  The normal taxpaying citizen be damned.

Then one day, Jake noticed that his electric meter was changed. No more dials!  Just an LED display that blinked several times a minute.  He didn’t pay attention to it, everything seemed normal until he accidently came across a website that showed the same meter that was installed on his home.  
In big, bold letters, the site said “Say No to the Smart Meter”.   This caught Jake’s attention and read on.  What was presented on the site were videos of dangerous radiation being pulsed from the meters, and complaints on how these meters invade privacy and break privacy laws.  There were people talking about how their health has been impacted the moment their Smart Meters were installed and the lawsuits that were won against the electric companies that installed these meters.

Jake’s curiosity kept him looking at this issue and soon found out that there were many ways this smart meter system could be abused.  Jake knew then why his electric bill came within two days of the reading of it. The bill mailed from the main office, no more meter readers.

During this time, Jake’s financial situation was also getting worse.  He depended on credit cards to manage his finances, but as the interest rates climbed, he found himself in a financial bind.  He tried  everything he could to reduce his expenses and soon this endeavor became an adventure, a passion to reduce as many expenses as he could to see how far he could go without losing the comforts and freedoms he was used to.  He discovered how “Lower Cost” anything raised rates and fees slowly until he paid much more than he should for a service.  Jake also found out that what he believed was necessary to be comfortable was a lie.  His experiments to reduce costs had him place Styrofoam on his south facing windows to keep the heat out, how to manage heat by using a fan and a wet T-Shirt.  He was pleased with the newly found ways to stay comfortable without spending a ton on heating or cooling with almost no effort.  5 minutes a day max.

One day, Jake scraped enough money to pay off his electric bill and used his banking service to pay his electric company through it.  He paid the bank in plenty of time for the bill to get to the electric company, but noticed a day later that the money was going to be delivered to the electric company one day past the due date.  Jake decided to call his electric company to forewarn them of the day late and to not be concerned about his bill being paid… the money was in the mail.

However, what the electric company person told him was that if the bill was not paid on the due date, they would shut off the electricity.  Which they could do immediately from the main office now with the flick of a switch.  That comment sparked a lot of questions in Jake’s mind so he asked, “Do you mean that you will cut off the electricity of people who depend on it for survival like those in his area that depended on iron lungs and oxygen machines?  The answer he got gave him chills down his spine, “If the bill is not paid on time, we cut off the electricity?”  Jake asked again thinking he was misunderstood and he got the same answer!  Then Jake asked to talk with her supervisor to confirm what he was just told.  He got the same answer from the supervisor.  He asked to speak again to her supervisor and when he asked the same question, he got the same answer.  Jake asked, “Do you mean you will turn off electricity to a home knowing that you will kill someone?  The answer he got was “We will turn off the electricity if the bill is not paid on time.”

Anger rose up inside Jake that changed his life forever!!!

He now had a civic duty to let as many people as he could know what he heard.  He called his lawyer to see if there were any laws that would protect people from being murdered by their electric company and she dutifully and professionally perused the law and tried to find any prior cases related to this new SMART METER.   She found only two instances where the courts ruled in favor of the citizens and only two laws that provided any control over this new Smart Meter technology.  There were many legal reviews on the situation by law professors at various universities, but the fact of the matter was there were no laws that made the citizen safe from all of the dangers of the Smart Meter and or any valid studies that showed the radiation coming from the Smart Meter was safe.

One woman in Maine was told she had to get rid of her refrigerator and buy a new one because her old refrigerator did not have a chip in it for the Smart Meter to read. 

One day Jake decided to put in any keyword he could think of and decided to put in the part number listed on the meter as a search term.  He didn’t expect to find anything, but he did!  It was a Security and Exchange Commission Form 8-K dated June 3, 2010 which gave approval to the company that has installed 100’s of millions of these meters around the world to present at a Credit Suisse “Future of Energy Conference” June 23, 2010 to prospective investors about the capabilities of the new Smart Meter.  The Powerpoint presentation was attached for reference.
  
In that presentation, Jake found out that this new Smart Meter technology has been installed in 7 million homes in the U.S. and had 100’s of millions of these meters installed around the world. They had meters for electricity, natural gas, and water.  Each capable of being turned on or off with the flick of a switch from a main office or the companies main office.  In other words, the whole world’s electric, water, and natural gas could be shut off from one place!

This system could control thermostats, water heaters, air conditioners, and on the company’s main website there were other items that could be controlled by their “technology”.  Cars could be shut off, toasters, the new florescent light bulbs, almost any device that uses electricity.  Data can be collected about when you watch TV, when you go to bed, when you get up, what devices you use during the day, and when you are not home.  Jake hated the idea that his every move was monitored… for ANY REASON.

Plans were presented showing the expected and planned installation of the Smart Grid all over the world to get the people at the Credit Suisse conference in Washington, DC to invest in the construction of the Smart Grid with promises of excellent returns.

Jake didn’t stop, he continually searched for any hope of a backup plan to get himself and his loved ones out from under this controlling and threatening situation.

Then one day, he had an idea that could bring this whole system down.  And that was to get off the grid.  He knew he could stay cool with a wet T-shirt and a fan, and he knew he could stay warm in the winter with a simple infra-red heat lamp, and stay warm in bed with a 5 watt heating pad.  He also knew he could keep his pipes from freezing with simple pipe heating cable available at any hardware store, and knew he could change out his lightbulbs to a twelve volt system that was already available at camper retailers.

Jake also knew that he could live without hot water, but could heat it with a simple solar water heater or camp fire. Jake could cook outside with wood picket up from his yard  using a modified 55 gallon drum.  Jake also knew he could get enough electrical power from a charged up car battery to run his well long enough to get a day’s supply of water.  Jake also knew that, once done, he could live pretty much the same lifestyle he was used to with little expense or effort.

Jake knew that if he passed on what he knew on how to get off the grid, he could share this information. If he passed his knowledge to enough people who would go off the grid immediately, he could affect an immediate and devastating impact on the bottom line of the electric companies equipped with this technology to the point where they would have to increase rates in order to satisfy investors.  This cannot last for long, because as they lose customers because of increasing rates, their source of money would disappear.   Investors would drop them like a rock as a bad risk and the company would go down.  In other words, he could manifest the same problems the big banks have with their consumer killing interest rates, he could stop this insidious technology in its tracks.

Jake managed to get enough people to share what he learned.  Thousands of people had a new way to live and they started inventing even more efficient ways to get the comforts they wanted. 

People learned that what they thought was important to them was not important at all.  Money was no longer a symbol of success.  Nor were big homes with all the expense and work involved with keeping them up. 

More people could live in their own home and not be at the mercy of their landlords.  More people realized that the only thing left that gave the government dictatorial control over them were property taxes and eminent domain laws.  They found their total freedom after they voted in those “politicians” who got rid of these tyrannical laws. School systems were no longer needed and home schooling courses were selling like hot cakes.  No longer could the government decide what your children are taught.  You had control over the destiny of your child who would one day take  care of you.

And, these newly efficient technologies sold like hotcakes all over the world which raised the standard of living of every person on the planet.

Life was good.

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