One can see, with each passing moment, with each inevitable confrontation, the makings of a new human tribal culture.  I am attempting to be an outside observer, but strangely part of me has begun to adopt the figuration of the self that makes up the remaining factions of Santa Cruz.  The mountain folk, however, remain an enigma.  What has driven them to cannibalism and extremist insanity?  They seemed to have no purpose.  No note was given during the recent attacks, no indication that they had any demands.  What do they want, if anything?

I recall, here, a movie, one not too far removed from the world of today, but somehow relevant here.  It was called The Dark Knight—by no means a perfect film, nor, at the time, conceived as one of the most important films of recent decades.  Based on the Batman comic books, probably now burned to ashes or buried somewhere in some long-dead social introvert’s closet, this film introduced us to the ultimate of terrifying enemies:  the human who wishes only to create chaos, and for no other purpose.  If the people here remembered that film, and some of them must have seen it, then perhaps they have already made the connection I see now.  The Joker, that seminal, wicked version of man, has been multiplied by harsh circumstances.  They roam the mountains, streams, and what remains of the forests, with no logical direction except the most basic of impulses:  the drives to create havoc and sustenance.

Or maybe they are zombies.  Would that seem more fitting?  I am not an anthropologist and can only consider the mountain folk from an uneducated position.  In doing so, I think we come closer to an understanding of humanity in chaos.  We can see what we are already so close to becoming–nostalgia for a past we can hardly remember.

Only a few nights from the first incident and the people here, the ones who live off the land and refuse to resort to the unethical means of survival, are considering whether the lives they have fashioned for themselves in former-Santa Cruz are worth fighting for, worth saving.

“We can only save so much of our humanity,” one woman told me, “before whatever is left is not worth much at all.”  The mountain folk have lost that—their humanity.  The question seems to be:  how much of our humanity can we lose before we descend into chaos?  A philosophical question, for sure, but one we have to consider as we fight off this end of the world time.

I will see that loss of humanity face to face soon.  The mountain folk are coming again.  This time, the people here will be ready.

The dominance of anarchic subcultures is remarkable.  How swift we have de-evolved culturally.  We’ve shed our comforts in exchange for brute force and emotionless survival.  By we, I mean them, the mountain folk, the regular citizens of the Santa Cruz area—never mind that I am already talking in the guise of nationalist ideals.  Citizens?  “Inhabitants” is more appropriate.

Unfortunate as all this has become, the work I am doing is necessary.  We must understand this to grasp the worldwide situation.  To say so much of the environment, but to ignore these people, is to warrant the continued collapse of what little remains of order in the last vestiges of Western civilization.  The dream is all but dead, clinging to the last thread of flesh; it has already died here.

Philosophy aside, there will be a burial tonight.  Thirty-seven are dead, more than I had reported the other night.  The numbers are dwindling and already the locals on what used to be beach front property are gearing for a civil war.  With half their stores gone, it is hardly unfair for them to take to the most violent of ways.  Some are suggesting a counterattack.

To think that I had intended to report these people as a different kind of social de-evolution, a quasi-violent mob of likeminded individuals quite literally operating on a stiff hierarchy.  That hierarchy is collapsing, because, of the thirty-seven, twelve were in the upper echelons.  You might call them lords, if such a title could ever exist.  Their voices commanded a respect that I was only beginning to understand.  Now they are gone.  I feel nothing, because I had no connection to them.  Arriving here felt so much like what Columbus must have experienced when he ad his crew first met the Native Americans.  They are curious, but disconnected from the world that I know—a privileged world that only knows the old ways and yet must move beyond the destitution of mere survival.

I expect when this civil war erupts, I will have much to say.  But, for now, it is a waiting game.  Above me lingers the future shrouded in darkness.  Poetics serve only to dampen the sensation created here.

Some years ago, a nameless man once said:  “In action we forget who we are, but in sleep we remember the old as if it were forever present; we remember ourselves when dreams know no bounds.”  Think of it what you will.  I know that in my waking days I see mankind remembering a past we had only recently forgotten.  It makes savages of honorable men.  This is the world we live in.

None of my men were killed, but one was shot and the other kidnapped.  I suspect he won’t live long, not if the raiders were cannibals.  They’ve become bold as of late, apparently.  A short food supply might have forced them into entering the city, or maybe they aren’t satisfied scrounging along the edges and want to test the strength of the locals here.  The city folk failed that test and some of them believe the raiders will be back again soon.  I’m not waiting for them.  We’re building up some defensive structures and sending armed men on patrol.  When I say we, I mean the people in charge.  I have nothing to do with their decisions.  I’m an outsider, destined to observe like a weird museum creature.

I’ll have more to say soon.  Right now communications are limited and this is the first time I’ve been able to access the networks.  I suspect there will be much more to say soon.

To all those out there struggling to survive in this God forsaken world:  stay safe.

The incidents in Fresh Kills New York are frightening, and I am grateful to the survivors of the incidents there for the safety of our reporter, Lori Kim, while at the same time, I express my sincerest condolences to the survivors for their fallen. I am going to send Lori to a safer expedition while I attempt to negotiate a resolution with Conrad Blankenship. I’m certain something can be arranged. There is no need for these kinds of actions in our world. We all need to rebuild. Lori, I’ll send you someplace as safe as I can make it for your next assignments.

We are able to receive word from AJ Green of what had been the Coast Guard, but unfortunately, I have no network in that part of the world. The Caribbean and Haiti did not have enough of a market to justify an entry to cover it. At the time of the trouble, Nordlander Telecommunications had only a small foothold in New England. We are receiving his broadcasts via satellite, but have no boats or resources in place for rescue. We will monitor the situation and look to provide resources as we can.

Ithius Sinclair continues to find stories in the Bay area in California. This area in particular has fallen on desperate times. Food and resources are scarce, and the competition for survival has divided the survivors into clans. The area is one of the most anarchic, violent and dangerous I have current reports on, and there are many rumors of cannibalism. Large wildfires still burn unchecked in the hills, while other places are flooded with glacial melt. Still, there are patches of survivors clinging on and rebuilding, and order has some hope of returning to the area.

In the Phoenix area, Michaela Blackhorse is just coming on-line. The area struggles for water, and the populations from Central America and Mexico heading to more hospitable climates to the north can lead to significant clashes. At the same time, there is a new strain of West Nile Virus that is finding a foothold in the area that appears to be exceptionally strong and has new dangerous symptoms. There is little ability to develop medicines or vaccines anywhere, and so this could spread to the rest of the continent if it isn’t contained there soon.

The End of the World Times continues to provide coverage of survival niches in our post-apocalypse world. Our reporters are independent agents who work on your donations. Please help us support their coverage.

I’m not alone here, thankfully.  It would be suicide to be here alone.  I’ve had to call up a few favors through my father’s old business.  You could say I have an entourage, but these people only have my safety in mind.  There are two:  Erin and Bruce.  The latter has been here before.  He told me the other day that he fled the area after the big quake in January, the one that split the mountains right through where Highway 17 wound its way from San Jose to Santa Cruz.  You’d have to see the split to believe it.  It cannot compete with the Grand Canyon, but it has a demonic look to it:  gnarled brambles, spiked rock, and ash run-offs from the fires.  Fires still rage out in the deep mountains–old brush and overdue forests torn down by the heat, poor weather, and lightning storms.  Those are parts of the mountains where most people never go; it’s too dangerous.  If Mother Nature doesn’t get you, the mountain folk will.  I’d rather Mother Nature took my life, if I were to die out here.

In any case, Nex tells me that there have been rumors of the mountain folk moving downhill into what is left of the city.  I haven’t seen them, but Nex knew they had been about when a few farmers stumbled into Mission Quarter yesterday in rough shape.  The farmers had been raided by an enormous party of cannibals–at least fifty men and women, but probably more.  What was once a farming community of a hundred people had been reduced to a dozen or so people.  The rest?  Nex didn’t ask.  But you can guess where most of them have ended up.

I’ll end this with a word of advice given to me by Nex’s son, Vita:  ”When the trees shift and you hear unfamiliar voices in the dark; run.  An unfamiliar voice is a demon in the night.”  Poetic, sure, but out here and in these times, it couldn’t be any more true.  Santa Cruz is no place to be when the sun sets.

You can’t stay out at night here, though. It turns into a bad post-apocalyptic movie, a mixture of Rhona Mitra and George Romero. Cannibals and territorial “natives,” if that’s what you can call them. But who am I to judge? Who are we all to judge the ways humans cope with disaster? These people have been through things I cannot imagine. Flash floods, raging fires, earthquakes, massive landslides, cruel winters, the list can go on.

I’m from the Northern Block, where Montana used to be. We had storms, sure, but these people, folks we used to know as hippies and Santa Cruzians, have seen some of the worst conditions imaginable. And they have largely been incapable of leaving, not with the blockades along the San Jose Front or the swampy sinkhole that is now San Francisco to the north.

This whole area made up Santa Cruz County and used to be part of California, back when States and Unions meant something. Now? I don’t know what it is. They call this place Reverb City, after the constant fluctuations of earthquakes, and Fleshtown, for various reasons. Before long, the Santa Cruz Mountains may succumb to fires and logging. But that may be some years from now.

There’s a lot to be learned here about how things have turned out—the rules, the culture, the people. We’ll see how long I can last before the locals and the conditions force me to skip town.

–Ithius Sinclair

If you are reading this, you are one of the lucky ones who have restored internet connections. Currently, you are in the vast minority, but we are working to restore service to more pockets of survivors as they are discovered. This is no small task, but rest assured, I and what is left of Nordland Telecommunications are working as hard as we can to repair lines, restore power to the main hubs of the internet and reestablish the network links. Oftentimes, our technicians must dig out rubble and dedicate their lives to a location, food and supplies must be airlifted in to maintain them, and the work is slow and tedious, but it must be done. It must be done.

You are probably aware of what has happened locally wherever you are, but as communications networks fell in the catastrophe, news lost the ability to travel. Let me try to give you a brief overview of what has happened in the various places of the Earth.
There were some things that affected us all. When global warming caused the water levels to rise, Tuvala was the first to fall below sea level, but the oceans crept up on every coastal town. Venice, Florida and New Orleans were inundated. The refugees this created moved inland, to other cities, but so many died. We still have Disneyworld, but thanks to the wealth of the corporation, it is Disney Island.

But they were followed by the giant hurricanes of ‘10 and ‘11. Eighteen hurricanes of cat 4 in the first year, and twenty-three the next. We’ll see what 2012 brings, but it looks to be similar.

Then there were the flus. H1N1 met with H5N1, and the strains kept mutating, and people kept dying. The CDC kept up for a while, but the spread was too far too fast, and they soon ran out of resources. The 1918 flu seemed small in comparison.

When the United States Midwest, and Europe’s plains dried out, the food aid to other hungry nations ended. Food and water shortages led to hunger in even the most prosperous nations, and wars in the less prosperous. In the U.S., there was a large migration to the cities, and the overcrowding made life expensive. Many cities had riots for resources and housing.

This instability led to other disasters, mostly due to human actions. When Iran fired it’s nuclear weapons at Israel, and Israel responded in kind, it led to fallout spreading across much of the Middle East. North Korea followed in kind against China. It doesn’t exist anymore, and those that survived the fallout in South Korea spread throughout the world.
After all that we hardly had a chance, but it kept coming. Three large volcanoes went in ‘10. The big one hit in California in ‘11, resulting in a tidal wave that hit Japan hard. And when the asteroid hit Montana, the blast carried for hundreds of miles. The dust has cooled the atmosphere some, but getting plants to grow in some places requires artificial sunlight, and solar power is less efficient than it could be.

This brings us more or less up to date. As far as more details, our reporters will put the rest together through the course of their investigations.

Before I move on to introductions, it’s only fair to mention that our reporters are paid based on donations from you, the reader, so if you have anything to give, we take all currencies.

To start off the journal, we have Lori Kim heading towards Boston to investigate Conrad Blankenship’s community. Conrad took over a complex of buildings that started off as a green building project. Conrad’s project is now seeking self-sufficiency.

We’ll be catching up with more reporters and more locations as we go.

Thank you for reading. Good luck out there.

Editor,
Soren Ragnvald