COVID 19, The Draconian Legacy, and the fragility of society.

Our society is too fragile. People have become weaker, mentally and physically. Our infrastructure, economy, world trade and commerce, are so finely balanced that a small perturbation will bring the whole lot crashing down.

There is little resilience in western society.

In Britain, we could not face a scenario such as WW2 in this present age and survive, emotionally or economically. People are too comfortable now, they have too much to loose, their willingness to give it all up and die for their country has gone. For too long, parents have asked why their children have come back in body bags, the combatants are asking ‘what are we fighting for?’ For sure, it is not the defence of the nation. It is for oil, money, power, to make the rich richer, and to enrich the military-industrial corporations. Perhaps it has always been so? Maybe. But in the case of WW2, it was primarily the threat of Hitler. It was good v evil. We couldn’t do it again. We are incapable of that level of sacrifice.

With the COVID 19 pandemic, we have seen massive damage to the world economy. Businesses have folded under the pressure. Sure, governments have poured billions into trying to shore them up, for example the furlough scheme in the UK. But it can’t save them all. And where is all the money coming from?

As in ‘quantitative easing’ the cash is simply being printed out of thin air. This further weakens currency, it is based on nothing, neither services nor reserves. It will be for the next generation to pay it all back

Food supply chain wobbles have seen increases in starving people running into tens of millions. Even in Western nations, food bank queues have grown to staggering sizes, a recent one in the UK extended to 2 kilometres.

Yet this is a virus with a survival rate of about 99.3%. It is NOT a killer disease, it is a disease of public health concern. The world has gone mad, the number of batshit crazy ideas spewed out over the past months is mind blowing.  The pandemic of irrational thought goes way beyond COVID. Critical thinking is a rarity amongst the masses of brainwashed sheeple. Governments have lied and are working towards more authoritarian rule. Normality will never return. Stand by for the ‘new normal’ being a far cry from that.

Plans are afoot to vaccinate under 18’s, the risk to them is so small they don’t even need it! Now, vaccine trials are planned for babies from 6 months old up to 11 year olds. Sheer insanity and outright child abuse! 70 year old’s in the UK will be offered their third vaccination in a year this autumn, to ‘protect them against COVID variants’. Cancer, heart disease, severely diabetic patients etc. are not being seen. Dental health appointments are being missed.  Ireland has stated that their cancer treatment should get back to normal at the end of 2021 or early 2022. So what is happening now? Cancer patients are dying in their thousands.

Posit – what would happen if a true killer virus hit the western world? Pick a figure of a 75% survival rate. This is reasonable and is well within the range of fatality from Dengue fever, Ebola, SARS, MERS etc. So, in the UK, it kills not the official COVID mortality currently stated as 126,000, but 15 million people across all age groups, in America 70 million. Our society would not survive, especially if governments pursued the current course of attempted disease mitigation.

This level of death would impact all levels of society, all jobs. Some power stations would go off-line due to lack of staff; mass blackouts, no heat or light. Supermarket shelves would empty due to supply chain problems, some grass roots food suppliers would disappear with farm owners and workers dying. Health service staffing levels would reduce, further exacerbating the situation. Mortuaries and undertakers? It doesn’t bear thinking about.

This could happen in the near future, the ‘virus x’ scientists have warned of. If that happens in the next few years we are screwed. We’ll still be paying for COVID 19, a relatively benign disease. There will be nothing left in the coffers to pay for the fight against a true killer virus. But we’d be screwed anyway; if this is the response to COVID, God help us if we get a real pandemic.

The Draconian Legacy is based on the premise of a true and deadly pandemic involving billions of deaths. With such a level of mortality, the economy collapses, it is impossible for it to survive, there is nothing that can be done. Society as we know it is finished.

With total financial collapse, there are three possible scenarios.

  1. Total authoritarian government – an Orwellian 1984-like future
  2. The collapse of society, every man for himself – a Mad Max future
  3. A New World, born out of a shift in human consciousness. Not a New World Order, but a new Golden Age.

Scenario 3 is the basis of The Draconian Legacy. The next level of human evolution, an evolution in consciousness.

We should be positive about the future, but we must fight excessive government and attacks by them on our fundamental freedoms. The change in consciousness is happening right now, climate awareness, the truth and lies about COVID 19, animal welfare, anti-war sentiment, the awakening to freedom etc.

Human beings are waking up at an exponentially increasing rate. Faith in government is reducing. We need a shock that destroys the current status quo. Financial collapse is already on the table, ‘virus x’ is likely, climate change will soon reach a tipping point causing mass displacement of populations and famine, or the Earth herself may instigate a cull to rid herself of the scourge of mankind, keeping just enough of our magnificent culture to enrich the planet.

Only when the House of Cards falls can we take back this world for everyone and herald the dawning of a new Golden Age of humanity. It will be hard for some, many will not survive, but it has to come. Only then will humanity achieve its full potential.

Perhaps the beginnings will come this autumn/winter. The full hit from COVID 19, I believe, will happen then. That is assuming we are out of lock downs. If not, then add mass riots and civil disobedience to the mix.

People’s immune systems will be depleted by:

  1. Social distancing/lockdown – no exposure to common colds, flu, etc for more than 18 months
  2. Social distancing/lockdown – lack of close exposure to others, no opportunity for our learned immune system to stay strong from exposure to a wide range of pathogens.
  3. Lockdown/house arrest – reduced level of exposure to sunlight, essential for production of vitamin D, which in turn, is essential for a strong immune system.
  4. Covid vaccine – will further compromise immune systems.

Then we can factor in vaccine immune variants of COVID. You can’t play catch up with a virus which can mutate in 10 hours.

Untold thousands will probably die.

Perhaps this is what governments are aiming for, a simple solution to reduce carbon emissions and the cost of supporting too many people, pensions, healthcare etc. Doubt this? Wake up to what is happening! The ones who pull the strings have made no secret of their belief that there are too many people. Do you think they are not looking for a way to orchestrate a mass cull? How about the thousands of old people being transferred from hospital to nursing homes last year with DNR notices slapped on them? That is under investigation, but where did those instructions come from?

As regards the COVID vaccination, there are at least 2 mechanisms by which it could  possibly go horribly wrong. ‘Virus immune escape’ and ‘immune super priming’. They are not conjecture, but are based on science and past experience. Unfortunately, the likely outcome of such a disaster would be to see the deaths as being caused by COVID, not as being caused indirectly by the vaccine. Result – more vaccines leading to more death, a vicious circle

I will be declining the Experimental COVID vaccine, as I do the annual flu vaccine offered in my workplace. I’m already ‘vaccinated’, it is called my immune system, and I take considerable care in maintaining that in full working order – exercise, a healthy plant based diet with specific immune boosting foods, Qi Gong, and consistent daily consumption of Master Tonic, aka Fire Cider or Four Thieves Tonic. Plus a positive mental attitude.

Winter 2021/2022 is going to be very interesting!

Gone over to KDP Select

All my books are now available on Kindle Unlimited.

Check out my Amazon Author pages;

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

When I began to publish last May, I  made the decision to go wide via Draft 2 Digital. An excellent platform, but the only sales or downloads since have been from Amazon with the two books I had originally on KDP Select. So, all in with Amazon for the time being!

Look out for price promotions on my entire catalogue in the coming months.

Happy reading!

The Mercedes 280SL Pagoda

The Mercedes 280SL Pagoda

 

 

The 1963 Merceds 280SL Pagoda, the car of choice for villain Jason Harrington in Waters of Salvation.

An extremely beautiful and desirable classic car, the value of one could cost the price of a house, depending on where you live.

Sir Stirling Moss in a letter to the racing director Alfred Neubauer  “In all the years I have been driving, I cannot remember ever driving a car that I would have liked to own more (except for racing cars!)”.

It would be my car of choice too, I would love to own one but guess that will have to wait!

K7 heavy bomber, an amazing plane.

K7 heavy bomber, an amazing plane. Stalin had the designer shot!

 

At the start of The Ice Remembers, Vasily and Nikita embark on a Kalinin K5 aeroplane for their journey to Kolguyev island.

The K5 was a rather unremarkable aircraft but hang in here and learn more about the bizarre beast which came after it!
The Kalinin K-5 was an airliner designed by Konstantin Kalinin and produced in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, more were built than any other Soviet airliner of its time, about 260 aircraft constructed. It was a high-wing, strut-braced monoplane with an enclosed cabin and cockpit.

Nothing spectacular and probably not of much interest except to an aircraft enthusiast. But look at this –

The K7!

The wings were so thick, 2.3, metres that they contained seats in the passenger version

 

It was an experimental heavy aircraft designed and built in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s, with the unusual design of twin tail booms and large under-wing pods containing the landing gear and machine gun turrets.
As an indication of its weight, over 24 tonnes empty, the air frame was constructed from chrome-molybdenum steel! The original design had six engines on the leading edge of the wings but the loaded weight so exceeded that projected, two more were added to the trailing edges of the wings.
With a wingspan close to that of a B-52 and a much greater wing area, the K-7 was one of the biggest aircraft built before the jet age.
In civil transport configuration, it would have had a capacity for 120 passengers and 7,000 kg (15,000 lb) of mail. As a troop transport it would have had capacity for 112 fully equipped paratroopers. In bomber configuration it would have been armed with 8 x 20mm auto cannons, 8 x 7.62mm machine guns and up to 9,600 kg (21,200 lb) of bombs.

Designed by World War I and civil war pilot Konstantin Kalinin at the aviation design bureau he headed in Kharkov, with a wingspan close to that of a B-52 and a much greater wing area, the K-7 was one of the biggest aircraft built before the jet age. It had an unusual arrangement of six tractor engines on the wing leading edge and a single engine in pusher configuration at the rear.

The K-7 first flew on 11 August 1933. The brief first flight showed instability and serious vibration caused by the air frame resonating with the engine frequency. The solution to this was to shorten and strengthen the tail booms, little was known then about the natural frequencies of structures and their response to vibration. The aircraft completed seven test flights before a crash due to structural failure of one of the tail booms on 21 November 1933.

The existence of the aircraft had only recently been announced by Pravda which declared it was “victory of the utmost political importance” since it had been built with steel produced in the USSR rather than imported. The accident killed 14 people aboard and one on the ground. Sabotage was suspected, possibly from the competing design office of Andrei Tupolev. Although two more prototypes were ordered in 1933, the project was cancelled in 1935 before they could be completed.
In the Stalinist purges, Konstantin Kalinin was executed as an enemy of the state.
Specifications (K-7)
Data from Shavrov (1985)
General characteristics
• Crew: minimum 11
• Capacity: 120 passengers in civilian configuration
• Length: 28 m (91 ft 10 in)
• Wingspan: 53 m (173 ft 11 in)
• Height: 12.4m (estimated to top of engine shell)
• Wing area: 454 m² (4,886.8 ft²)
• Empty weight: 24,400 kg (53,793 lb)
• Loaded weight: 38,000 kg (83,776 lb)
• Powerplant: 7 × Mikulin AM-34F V-12 piston engines, 560 kW (750 hp) each
Performance
• Maximum speed: 225 km/h (121 knots, 140 mph)
• Service ceiling: 4,000 m (13,123 ft)
• Wing loading: 84 kg/m² (17 lb/ft²)
• Power/mass: 103 W/kg (0.06 hp/lb)

The Western Isles of Scotland

Sailing the Hebridean Islands of Scotland

In Waters of Salvation, Mike takes a sabbatical as he tries to control his PTSD. He embarks on a solo voyage with his yacht to the Western Isles of Scotland.

This piece of writing comes from my life experience as a sailor. Few sailing grounds in the world rank as high as this area for scenery, and for challenging and rewarding sailing.

It is my joy to sail my yacht in these waters, usually twice a year. You can be sure the descriptions in the book are written with authenticity!

Here is the link to my old blog where there is a write-up of one of my voyages in 2014. Vivid descriptions, photographs, and some of my poetry too! I hope you enjoy reading it.

2014 voyage to the Western isles

This post is taken from  ‘The World Around My Books’ section of my site.

 

The Manx Cat – Quirky Facts

The Manx Cat

Take a look at a Manx cat, at first glance a normal cat, then . . . . hey! Where’s the tail!

Manx cats can be found all over the world, they were one of the first international show cats. In fact, there are now far more Manx cats in North America than on the island where they originated. But they all owe their origins to the Isle of Man, a small island set in the Irish sea between Britain an Ireland.

Quirky Facts

1. Origin by folklore – there are numerous fanciful accounts of how Manxies came to lose their tails.

Some examples;

They are the result of a cross between a cat and a rabbit.

Another imaginative story tells how Irish invaders stole the cat’s tails to make plumes for their helmets.

Other say that the Manx was running late for Noah’s Ark, and Noah slammed the door and severed its tail.

2. The reality – their tailless state is the result of a genetic mutation.

Four possible mutations of a single gene can lead to a Manx cat. In 2013, one gene was shown to have four possible mutations that can lead to a tailless Manx cat. All four mutations are specific to the Manx – other tailless or bob-tailed cats carry different mutations responsible for the trait. The study’s co-author Leslie Lyons, a cat expert and geneticist at the University of Missouri – Columbia, went to the Isle of Man herself to collect samples from Manx cats. The mutations were present there, meaning all Manx cats must have come from tailless cats on the island, which have lived there for hundreds of years.

Isle of Man resident Sara Goodwins, author of the book A De-tailed Account of Manx Cats, notes that the first linguistic reference to tailless cats on the Isle of Man appears in the mid-18th Century. Before that, since there was no special word for them, Goodwins says that it was unlikely they were present in any significant number.

The gene that carries these mutations is dominant, making it easy enough to pass on,. There is an interesting quirk: if an unborn cat inherits the gene from both parents rather than just one, it will likely die in the womb. That is why the gene has been nicknamed, “the lethal gene”. Even when the gene is inherited from just one parent, it is not necessarily benign. Manx cats can suffer from health issues related to having too few vertebrae in the lower or lower-middle part of their spines.

3. Manx owners say the cats have lost feline characteristics aside from their tails

— a Manx will even go for a walk with you!

– most cats hate water but Manx cats like swimming.

It is not known why they behave like this.

4. Manxies can give birth to kittens with or without tails.

Manx cats carry one gene for a full tail, and one for taillessness. This means that two Manx cats can mate and produce a kitten that’s a typical long-tailed feline.

5. But . . . their tails may be of different lengths.

The Manx gene is an incomplete dominant gene, so kittens that inherit it can be born with full- length tails, stubby tails, or no tails at all—and all of these tail lengths can appear in a single litter.

Due to this variability, Manx cats are classified according to tail lengths. Completely tailless felines are called “rumpy,” whereas cats with short tail stumps that are often curved, knotted, or kinked are known as “stumpy,” and kitties with nearly normal-length tails are called “longy.” Only “rumpies,” or cats called “rumpy risers” that have a slight rise of bone where their tails would start, are eligible to compete in the championship classes in CFA cat shows.

7. Koko the gorilla loved a Manx kitten

Koko, the famous research gorilla that knows more than 1000 words of modified American Sign Language, once owned a Manx cat. In 1984, Koko was allowed to choose a pet kitten from a litter for her 12th birthday present. Koko selected a tailless grey-and-white cat, which she named “All Ball.”

Koko loved All Ball, and cuddled and played with her on a regular basis. Sadly, All Ball was struck by a car later that year and died. A devastated Koko was given a new pet, a red kitty named Lips Lipstick. She later owned a third cat, a gray feline named Smoky; the two animals were companions for nearly 20 years until Smoky died of natural causes.

 Click here to watch a brief but delightful and moving video of Koko and All Ball

8. The Manx cat can balance without a tail.

Since a cat’s tail is instrumental for balance, how do Manx cats manage to walk without wobbling? Experts think they have an especially sensitive vestibular apparatus inside their ears to compensate.

As cats use their tails for balance when running and jumping, and to communicate body language, it seems odd that some should lack them. There seems to be no natural advantage to being without a tail. Instead, the gene likely has been passed on mainly through selective breeding by humans, a process called “novelty selection”.

The breed has, against all the odds, survived and thrived, even far from its original shores.

The Manx has – if nothing else – certainly travelled well. So, the next time you come across a Manxie, you’ll appreciate better its humble nature.

Please comment and share below.

 

This post is taken from ‘The World Around My Books‘ section of the site.