“Armageddon”

You’ll need help getting to your compound in New Zealand, and your helpers will want to come too.

For many years I flew airplanes out of the Santa Monica Airport, 2 miles from my home. I told a fellow pilot that one benefit of the license and the plane was the ability to extract my family from a societal breakdown. He agreed but noted that the difficulty would be the last hundred yards before the airport.

Now comes news that American billionaires have prepared compounds in New Zealand in case of apocalypse. Thoughtfully stocked with all that the group would require—air, water, food, entertainment—they stand ready to receive the ultraprivileged. Well and good, but their fantasy, like mine, is flawed. For what is the size of the group for which they foresee transportation, protection and perpetual care?

In a week in which former allies in a redividing globe separately commemorated the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war, the sense of a runaway descent towards a third world war draws ever closer.

The implosion of Pax Americana, the interconnectedness of conflicts, the new willingness to resort to unbridled state-sponsored violence and the irrelevance of the institutions of the rules-based order have all been on brutal display this week. From Kashmir to Khan Younis, Hodeidah, Port Sudan and Kursk, the only sound is of explosions, and the only lesson is that the old rules no longer apply.

Indeed Fiona Hill, the policy analyst and adviser to the UK government on its imminent strategic defence review, argues the third world war has already started, if only we would recognise it.

Every home in Europe should have a three-day crisis survival kit, including bottled water, canned food, a torch and supplies of toilet paper, the European Union has said.

As well as stockpiling, citizens across Europe are being told to draw up a “household emergency plan” of how to get through the first 72 hours of a crisis, “including the possibility of armed aggression against member states”.

Meanwhile in the USA …

There is no plan to feed Britain in a crisis

In the dystopian drama The Last of Us, a fungal virus has spread through foodstuffs turning infected humans into zombies. The survivors live in ghettos, among the ruins, armed to avoid a gruesome living death. They grow their own food to avoid the infected produce. Preppers and survivalist whackos find that their hour has come. Clean food has become a precious thing.

That’s where my interest in the show kicked in, because the future of our food system is something that I’m a little obsessed with. I am haunted by the memory of those empty supermarket shelves during the Covid pandemic, which didn’t quite lead to a food panic, but sent chills through anyone thinking about food security. We learned then that our just-in-time food system wasn’t very resilient and seemed vulnerable to collapse if given a major shock. (Spoiler Alert: Covid is nowhere near the grim end of the scale for disaster planning.)

CEO of Drone manufacturing company that has government contracts, gives interesting take on what’s happening in NJ. pic.twitter.com/tAbMdMETQC

— Kory Yeshua (@KoryYeshua) December 15, 2024

h/t XC

The emerging axis of China, Russia and North Korea has created “the most serious and dangerous challenge” for the West since the Second World War, a former top US military chief has told The Times.

General Jack Keane, a retired four-star general and former vice-chief of the US Army, is one of the most influential military figures in Washington. Everyone seeks his advice, including the man who is to be the 47th president.

The volatile world political order currently reflects a clash between an axis of hegemonic dictatorships flexing their increasing military prowess, and an alliance of Western nations, including Israel, the West’s sole democratic partner in the Middle East.

Driven by disparate ideologies, the axis includes Russia, with imperialist aims over vast regions, Slavic and otherwise; China, with a desire for world domination; Iran, striving for a global Islamist Caliphate; and, to a lesser degree, North Korea, apparently intent on seizing the Korean peninsula, for a start.

Retired four-star General Jack Keane has said “World War III is in the future” while discussing the U.S. election’s impact on global stability.

Donald Trump won last week’s election at a time when the western world is grappling with a war in the Middle East, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and tensions with North Korea and China.

General Keane has said that while Trump’s victory will force U.S. adversaries to “reassess,” the world is headed for “global war.”

“… Adolf Hitler was born in 1889. That same year, the German artist Franz von Stuck produced a painting of Wotan leading his wild hunt. Astride a black beast, wielding a sword, and trailed by what looks for all the world like a legion of mutilated corpses, the Germanic berserker rages across the sky. When we look at the painting now, we find that the god’s face looks strangely … familiar …”

On 13 September, Vladimir Putin issued a sobering threat. If Ukraine used Nato-supplied missiles against targets deep inside Russia, the president warned, the alliance would be “directly participating in the conflict” — and the US and its allies would be “fighting with Russia”. Putin’s comments echoed another threat, two years ago, when he drew several ”red lines” for Nato, adding that he was prepared to use nuclear weapons if they were crossed.

It was a good film.

If there is a Third World War, historians will note that — like the First — it began with weak and unimaginative leadership and in the unlikeliest of places. No one could have known that an assassin’s bullets in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, would begin a monthslong march to a global war from which Europe has not (and never will) culturally recover. If we’re sliding into another global war, historians will write that the years-long march began in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 15, 2021.

The survival bunkers of the elites are a sign that they are suffering from the same fears that grip so many ordinary people in a world coming apart at the seams.

Several years ago, actress Aubrey Plaza informed Conan O’Brien that she had purchased helicopter lessons for her boyfriend. “He never showed an interest in flying,” she deadpanned, “But I just gave them to him in case the world has gone to sh*t and we need to fly away. I need to be with someone that can operate the helicopter.” The audience laughed, and Conan did a double take. “First of all, why don’t you take the helicopter lessons?” he asked. “Because I’m in charge of guns and ammo,” she answered smoothly.