Anthony Marr's reluctant warning to the Animal Rights Community
Warning: Not for faint-hearted!
Not even cat-loving and dog-revering Americans are above eating cats and dogs when the requisite conditions arise. One of the revered American heroes - Captain Meriwether Lewis of the great Lewis and Clark Expedition - habitually ate dogs, as provided by the native tribes en route, during the latter part of their strenuous journey.
Not to mention eating their horses and dogs, they might even turn cannibalistic in dire straights, as per the heroic Donner Party.
Another historical account has it that: "It happened in the winter of 1874. Five prospectors hired a man to guide them across the San Juan Mountains. Weather was severe that winter; the men fought huge snowdrifts and extreme low temperatures. Progress was very slow. No game for hunting was to be found, and the party ran out of food. Up at the Slumgullion Pass, they had already boiled and eaten their moccasins. Six weeks later, only the guide showed up at Los Pinos, claiming he had lost the others in a snowstorm. Reality was different. A search party of natives revealed that Alfred Packer had probably killed his companions while they were sleeping and partially eaten them..."
Another example is the Uruguayan rugby team stranded in the Andes Mountains after a plane crash in 1972, resorting to cannibalism as portrayed in the book and film [Alive]. Yet another is Easter Island, where the inhabitants ended their culture in cannibalism after cutting down every last tree for sleds to transport their colossal statues, trees with which they also used for making cutout-canoes for their then pelagic fishery, which then of course collapsed.
It is said that under starvation conditions, food is all one can think about, and morality evaporates into thin air, however principled one used to be under normal conditions. In the last stage of starvation, the starving often resort to ingesting stones, fully knowing that this will kill them agonizingly in short order. It is all in the moment. So, under desperate circumstances, it is not impossible that people may look upon cats and dogs, the predominant urban non-human animals, as food, especially given the large populations of all three in deep urban environments. To put it bluntly, America, urban America at least, may become a cat/dog-eating nation after all other food types have been exhausted.
And what would such desperate circumstances be that could drive normally cat/dog-loving Americans to take such a plunge?
Assuming that the economic theory predicting an imminent Dollar Crash is correct, and I believe it is, America will suffer HYPERINFLATION, resulting in social disintegration and chaos, by 2015 if not before, which would make the 2008 housing crash look like a prelude to a full-blooded symphony. The scenario in the title is very much the logical conclusion.
About HYPERINFLATION, just how hyper an inflation makes it "hyperinflation"?
Let me present the top 6 of the 57 that have struck human civilization in history, so far:
#6. 1944 - Greece - peaked in October with a DAILY inflation rate of 17.84% - prices doubled every 4.3 days.
#5. 1923 - the Weimar Republic in Germany - peaked in October with a daily inflation rate of 20.87% - prices doubled every 3.7 days.
#4. 1994 - the Sprpska Republic - peaked in January with a daily inflation rate of 64.30% - prices doubled every 1.4 days.
#3. 1994 - Yugoslavia - peaked in January with a daily inflation rate of 64.63% - prices doubled every 1.4 days.
#2. 2008 - Zimbabwe - peaked in November with a daily inflation rate of 98.01% - prices doubled every 24.7 hours.
#1. 1946 - Hungary - peaked in July with a daily inflation rate of 207.19% - prices doubled every 15.0 hours.
And let me caution:
1. some societies did not survive their hyperinflation;
2. #5 led to the rise of Hitler, Nazism, the Jewish persecution, the Second World War and the Holocaust; and
3. if/when it hits the U.S. it will be like Hurricane Sandy compared to a mild noreaster. The rate may not be quite as steep, but the scale will be astronomical.
Ignore at our peril.
In this scenario, the following background condition will prevail:
1. There will likely be bank runs accompanied by stock-market plunges. The Dollar will be worth mere cents, or downright the proverbial "not worth the paper it is printed on". Even the rich, if all they have is paper money, will become the poor overnight. People will turn to bartering to get what they need.
2. As the Dollar plummets, the prices of all commodities will skyrocket; both mean the same thing. Gasoline, for example, will cost $30 per gallon upward, likewise for a loaf of bread, that is, if they have not all been gobbled up in the initial days already.
3. The transportation system will grind to a halt - land, air and sea. Private vehicles may run until their tanks are dry, then abandoned where they stop. Government vehicles will keep on running for a period, but they likely will not be used for the transportation of food.
4. All imported food will disappear from grocery shelves. All still available will be local produce and very limited in quantity, and these will be priced so high as to be beyond the means of perhaps even the "Middle Class".
5. People on fixed income may continue to receive their checks, or not, and even if they do, the amount will be the same as before, rendering it all but worthless. Even if there is food on the shelf, a single serving may cost their entire check.
6. Food riots will erupt, complete with looting and pillaging, and the associated raping and killing. The government will not be able to provide food for the people. What it can do is to impose martial law; good bye constitutional rights. The federal government has recently placed an order for nearly 2 Billion rounds of hollow-point bullets and thousands of bullet-proof kiosks. It will be civil war between the army and a well-armed but anarchic public.
7. Those with some foresight and who take this economic forecast seriously may have stockpiled several weeks' or months' worth of water and food, while those not having done any preparation will begin to starve within days. Food-wise, it will be the Haves and the Have-Nots, and the latter will take drastic measures they wouldn't in civil society. There will be home invasions from house to house in quest for water and food, especially in the depths of major metropolises like New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Boston and Los Angeles.
8. Global-warming-induced-droughts may itself trigger the collapse, and will worsen the already desperate situation so that not even people in the agricultural regions, e.g. the Mid-West, are immune to starvation. In Chinese history, for example, there are cases of mass starvation impacting hundreds of thousands or even millions due to droughts right there in the Central Plain, the Chinese equivalent of the American "Bread Basket". Countries like Ethiopia and Somalia are recent or current examples. While previously when America felt the pinch, she could always count on food importation, this time, she will be out of purchasing power, plus, other countries will likely have food shortages of their own.
9. Those living near ranches, farms and factory farms will raid them for their produce, chickens, pigs and cows. Those living in the country will hunt and fish for subsistence, until the deer, bears, fowl, fish... are hunted and fished out of existence. Those who are trapped in the depths of metropolises, without access to water, crops, orchards and "food animals", will raid each other of whatever food they can get, including household cat and dogs.
10. Finally, cat/dog guardians, who will have trouble feeding themselves, will have trouble feeding their cats and dogs.
When I say that America may turn into a cat/dog-eating nation, I am not talking about cat/dog guardians eating their own "pets". I am talking about the general population eating other people's dogs and cats. Bearing in mind that over 95% of Americans eat meat, it will be an easy transition for them to include cats and dogs in their "diet".
But this may be only a transitional phase. These same people, after the cats and dogs have been eaten out, and when starvation really sets in, may go one logical step further, as the Donner Party, the Uruguayan rugby players and the Easter Islanders did, but it will be the last resort.
And what will urban vegans do if all plant-based food in major cities have been exhausted, and they have no resources with which to leave the city? I dread to imagine. If I am still stuck in the city "when the shit hits the fan", I will be one of them.
Can we prevent this from happening? Yes and No.
The "No" will be an outright rejection and refusal of any lowering of the standard of living today, imposed by the government or otherwise, causing the government to borrow more and more, and the Federal Reserve to print billions of paper dollars more every month, leading the inflation to further steepen, when the country is already caving under the crushing $17 Trillion national debt and teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
The "Yes" will have to be a nation-wide austerity measure BEFORE the collapse arrives, voluntary or otherwise, which will have to include the drastic lowering of living standards, the cutting of many social programs, and a significant reduction of the military expenditure. It will be a choice between half-a-cup which can still marginally sustain and an empty cup if the collapse does occur.
We all know which alternative Americans at large will take. Of course the causes are far more complex, including the decline and fall of the Dollar as the World Reserve Currency, the rise of other currencies in the world market, taxation, business closures, unemployment, housing crash, stock-market crash, bank runs, etc., but all in all, there does not appear to be a third alternative.
I asked Shannon Wright whether I should publish this blog to the AR community. She quipped, "People may think that Anthony Marr has lost his mind." I then asked her to find holes in my reasoning, and she could find none, assuming that the Economic Collapse theory is correct, which is not the point in question here. Finally, she added that people need to think or at least hear about it, if only for the animals under their care. So, I have decided to go for it.
In this context, my advice to all is to move out of large metropolises ASAP if at all feasible, to a place with water and food potential - not particularly an isolated farm house which could be highly vulnerable to home-invasions, but a small community that could communally feed and defend itself, and provide itself with renewable energy should the power grid fail and conventional fuel stops to flow.
I issued the above caution to a personal friend of mine living in the depths of a large city whose personal safety and that of his/her cats/dogs I cared about, but received insult and scorn in return. So when I issue this seemingly outlandish warning to the entire AR community, albeit reluctantly, I stand to be mob-lynched. So here is a personal plea to all:
Kindly do not lynch me. I am only the well-meaning messenger.
Anthony Marr, Founder and President
Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
Global Anti-Hunting Coalition (GAHC)
Anthony-Marr@HOPE-CARE.org
www.HOPE-CARE.org
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www.facebook.com/Global_Anti-Hunting_Coalition
www.myspace.com/AnthonyMarr
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www.HomoSapiensSaveYourEarth.blogspot.com
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