Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

not talked much about the enemy, have we? And yet he was there, from the start. It

was his atom bombs which reduced you to living off the country and performing your

own amputations and accouchements. If you have laid your plans carefully, you won’t

see much of him for quite a while; this is a very, very big country. Where you are

hidden out

there never were very many people~at any time; the chances of occupation forces

combing all of the valleys, canyons, and hills of our back country in less than

several years is negligible. It is entirely conceivable that an enemy could conquer

or destroy our country, as a state, in twenty minutes, with atom bomb and rocket.

Yet, when his occupation forces move in, they will be almost lost in this great

continent. He may not find you for years.

There is your chance. It has been proved time and again, by the Fighting

French, the recalcitrant Irish, the deathless Poles, yes and by our own Apache and

Yaqui Indians, that you cannot conquer a free man; you can only kill him.

After the immediate problems of the belly, comes the Underground!

You’ll need your rifle. You will need knives. You will need dynamite and

fuses. You will need to know how to turn them into grenades. You must learn how to

harry the enemy in the dark, how to turn his conquest into a mockery, too expensive

to exploit. Oh, it can be done, it can be done! Once he occupies, his temporary

advantage of the surprise attack with the atom bomb is over, for once his troops are

scattered among you, he cannot use the atom bomb.

Then is your day. Then is the time for the neighborhood cell, the mountain

hideout, the blow in the night. Yes, and then is the time for the martyr to freedom,

the men and women who die painfully, with sealed lips.

Can we then win our freedom back? There is no way of telling. History has

some strange quirks. It was a conflict between England and France that gave us our

freedom in the first place. A quarrel in enemy high places, a young hopeful feeling

his oats and anxious to displace the original dictator, might give us unexpected

opportunity, opportunity we could exploit if we were ready.

There are ways to study for that day, too. There are

books, many of them, which you may read to learn how other people have done it. One

such book is Tom Wintringham’s New Ways of War. It is almost a blueprint of what to

do to make an invader wish he had stayed at home. It is available in a 25 cent

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PenguinInfantry Journal edition. You can study up and become quite deadly, even

though 4-F, or fifty.

If you plan for it, you can survive. If you study and plan and are ready to

organize when the time comes, you can hope not only to survive but to play a part in

winning back lost freedoms. General George Washington once quoted Scripture to

describe what we were fighting for then-a time when “everyone shall sit in safety

under his own vine and figtree, and none shall make him afraid!”

It is worth planning for.

“A person who won’t be blackmailed,

can’t be blackmailed.”

-L. Long

PIE FROM THE SKY

Since we have every reason to expect a sudden rain of death from the sky

sometime in the next few years, as a result of a happy combination of the science of

atomics and the art of rocketry, it behooves the Pollyanna Philosopher to add up the

advantages to be derived from the blasting of your apartment, row house, or suburban

cottage.

It ain’t all bad, chum. While you are squatting in front of your cave,

trying to roast a rabbit with one hand while scratching your lice-infested hide with

the other, there will be many cheerful things to think about, the assets of

destruction, rather than tortu1ring your mind with thoughts of the good old, easy

days of taxis and tabloids and Charlie’s Bar Grill.

There are so many, many things in this so-termed civilization of ours which