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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