jan 21, 2025
my boyfriend and i were on a 6-day road trip recently and we were listening to this book on a recommendation:
RAVEN ROCK: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself–While the Rest of Us Die
and OMG is it FASCINATING! We're only halfway through but a few things that have particularly stood out to me so far are:
- the histopical context totally explains why so many gen x/boomers are bootlickers AND fericiously "libertarian"--during the cold war and atomic panic, the US was afraid of looking "too communist" in putting together its emergency response. so they put the weight on individual citizens to become preppers. the orders to be self-sufficient and prep for disaster were coming FROM the us government, creating a sort of "follow the rules and be independent!" contradiction.
- "gun thy neighbor" was a huuuge cultural debate: do you help your neighbor if you're prepared? or do you shoot them? there were newsletters and advice about how to "deal with" (AKA kill) fleeing civilians from more populated areas. Can you guess where they always used as an example? CALIFORNIA! truly nothing has changed.
- similarly, the push for people to move to suburbs was partially because of atomic fearmongering. housing developments would advertise them as "outside the blast radius" of nearby major cities. omfg. this coinciding with the civil rights movement and and integration totally explains how suburbs became white nationalist prepper hotspots.
The book is SO fascinating, we are so stoked to read more. It does such a great job detailing the plans the US government made, and then breaking down exactly how they failed. The audiobook is free if you have spotify premium!
