The Reluctant Doomsayer-11

Time began to run out. I used the remaining time to square away my own situation; there was no running now, so when it hit I had to be certain that I had everything I required to handle myself in all things for an indefinite period of time, probably several years, before any viable recovery got to me. Redundant parts. Years upon years of food and medicine. More clothes. Generators, purifiers, a still, storage for fuel of varying sorts, and everything I'd need to make my own food and clothing- including the curing of leather. More guns and ammo. More components for reloading ammo. You name it, I stocked it.

I documented all of this for my audience. I implored my audience to follow my example, especially the whole "get out of the cities" thing, and I'd back that up with regular analysis of the fast-deteriorating global political and economic system. The West began targeting the East with economic sanctions and proxy wars, who in turn began economic organizing amongst themselves to cut out the U.S. Dollar. It became clear that the targets of my prophecy's flashpoint would be the primary cities in the East and South, and I soon received--and verified--intelligence from my audience that the West had an intention to break this resistance to their hegemony by means of proxy nuclear terrorism.

Prophets got to profess, so I put together the most likely scenario given the information that I had to work with and put it out online. I talked about this near to exclusivity, both on my own sites and in interviews. I laid out that the plan was for the West, using proxies, to detonate the nuclear weapons--stolen from the Russians to enhance deniability--in these ten most populated cities. The West would have the resources on hand to go in, no questions asked, to rescue and clean up the mess because these detonations would cripple the East and the South, decapitating the threat by exterminating the leadership class to a man. Nuclear war, in theory, would be prevented due to inquiries revealing the Russian origin of the weapons used and pressure to focus on global unity against terrorism would suppress any remaining dissent against Western domination of the world.

Billions would die, and billions more would die later, all so that one group of high-functioning psychopaths could stop a rival group of the same from ruining their scam and stopping their gangster (in favor of another gang's version). I knew that I could not stop it, so I implored everyone near the targeted cities to flee far from those doomed metroplexes right now and get squared away in their bug-out locations. Then I said that all of us should do that, since I already had, and I heard plenty of people contact me to say that they followed my advice.

I kept myself sane by doing the chores around the homestead, and then hunting deer and fowl to supplement my food stocks--which, thankfully, were quite full. I quickly taught myself how to process the old way what I took, and carefully conserved the casings and shells so I could reload them. I picked up a ham radio and learned how to use it, and encouraged my listeners to do the same if they could, because the odds of the Internet being able to take the incoming nuclear strikes were slim to none. Backup everything locally, shield what you can, get print versions of references you want around- all of that.

The seasons turned, Winter arrived, and the lake froze over. I soon had an ice fishing shack in place. It was there, as the sun sank below the trees, that I felt a terrible feeling run through me. I hurried back inside, locked everything down, and prepared to switch over to backup power; a quick check of my computer confirmed that more and more of the Internet came down as each hour passed. The radio waves had nothing but static outside of government chatter, and they talked only about confirmed nuclear detonations and a great wall of blue-white flame going ground-to-sky seeming to incinerate anything caught outside.

When that wave hit here, I lost all contact with the outside world. All of it. I saw the flames through the windows burn for three days straight, yet not incinerating the woods outside, or even touching my shack. The end had come. My mission was over, but it wasn't concluded just yet.