Valhalla – Page 2 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Cloudy With A Chance Of Insurrection

“You didn’t think I’d risk losing the battle for Gotham’s soul in a fistfight with you?” – The Dark Knight

If a Somalian couple gets divorced in Minnesota, are they still brother and sister? (all memes and media except clock as-found)

Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology. Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Open War.

Volume VII, Issue 9

Most memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”. I have maintained the Clock O’Doom at 9., given the open support of assassination and criminality by the GloboLeft and the increase in violence as well as direct interference with ICE and the insertion of the military into law enforcement. Beware: the number can climb quickly.

My advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – The Battle of Minnesota – Violence and Censorship Update – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Bad and Good – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 840 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

The Battle of Minnesota

Note: on a regular month, I save media as the month goes on to use for this update. Twenty or thirty is a normal month. This month? 180. So, this edition will draw heavily from those.

The Battle of Minnesota was very intentional from the GloboLeftElite. If I were to guess, the amount of money coming out of the state, a state that the GloboLeftElite salted with Somalians to ensure stays a vote and cash farm for the GloboLeft. Had all of this gone down in June of this year? I think we’d be in the midst of armed conflict right now in Minnesota, California, and possibly New York.

The Somalians were openly disrespectful of the dead lesbian.

Trump even Truthed® about the situation. But when you try to run over an armed ICE officer, he just might shoot back.

The response? Storm a church. That’s a sure way to bring sympathy to your cause.

Oh, and the next person ICE shot? Please make sure that he was sympathetic, a super nurse who only cared for people and wasn’t actively trying to bring about a violent confrontation.

And then, if you’re the governor, call up the Guard to potentially face off against ICE.

But then what happened? The communication channels used by the GloboLeft to command their useful idiots was breached. Uh-oh.

I don’t know if this is correct, but it may have implicated government officials?

And, shockingly, foreigners are involved against ICE:

But then, things changed:

And ICE was just ignored.

And the people? They still want the foreigners to go home:

Violence and Censorship Update

Remember, the New York Times hates you:

And some words may not be spoken:

And some things won’t be reported on:

And some they’ll attempt to make you forget, because obvious hoax is obvious:

And they’ll stop at nothing to make a loser a hero:

The next version:

The Netflix adaptation:

And they hate you:

And she was arrested. Shocking.

What do citizens have to fear from ICE?

At least I run an honest clock:

Making all your thoughts theirs.

Greenland attacked:

The Minneapolis police like Somalians more than they like Americans.

Tough talk from the pronoun crowd:

And I’d bet this guy has had a visit from the FBI already:

What is it with nurses in Minnesota?

Well, at least she lost that job.

And the City of Brotherly Love isn’t:

And the violence was spreading . . .

While the threats proliferate:

But only certain types of violence made the GloboLeft upset. Some were ignored:

Let’s see how things are going in Europe, which is what you get when GloboLeftism runs unchecked:

Well at least they punish the violent, right . . . oh . . .

Now, even the countryside is too white in Great Britain.

Misery Index

The new Trump administration is shown in red. Results continue to be much better than Biden’s misery numbers. The advance is at a near minimum, given the Fed®’s policy.

And we can afford eggs again.

Though Trump seems to want eternally high home prices.

Updated Civil War II Index

The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time. They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings. As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that combine to become the index. On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Violence indicators are up again this month, and, although they aren’t George Floyd-levels, you can see that from here. And there’s a lot of frustration:

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, and it went down slightly this month after the budget fight ended. And a lot of the “Elite” are now starting to lose jobs due to A.I., which will increase political tension quickly.

Economic:

The economy up just a smidge this month, but I think the bubble has some pretty grey hair and some other headwinds are on the horizon.

Illegal Aliens:

Still the lowest level since the Weather Report started.

Bad and Good

The Bad:

The Good:

LINKS

The links are again done by Ricky this month. Thanks, Ricky!

BAD GUYS

https://x.com/ExxAlerts/status/2012756374694895882
https://x.com/LevineJonathan/status/2009023254648807879
https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/2015941489516245223
https://x.com/Rightanglenews/status/2012977084440731734

GOOD GUYS

https://twitter.com/i/status/2009416434183458893
https://twitter.com/i/status/2009377264517984486
https://x.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/2015260124932448533

ONE GUY

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/G-5K5Q9XUAEXXze.jpg?itok=QxAe4FgO
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ar-AA1VqQsY

BODY COUNT

https://www.army.mil/article/289904/army_encourages_soldiers_to_just_pick_up
https://www.npr.org/2026/01/12/nx-s1-5647761/ivf-fertility-motherhood-40s-cost
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/us/politics/census-2025-estimates-population-immigration.html?unlocked_article_code=1.HlA.2S2B.yiS8JLm5K2F-&smid=url-share
https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/2012930482867257625

VOTE COUNT

https://news.gallup.com/poll/700499/new-high-identify-political-independents.aspx
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/census-data-signals-deep-trouble-democrats-after-2030
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/we-must-pass-save-act-republicans-engage-serious-push-voter-id
https://x.com/IterIntellectus/status/2012220254504530043
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/G-zOZDYW4AAmuUM.png?itok=ne4Sv1lI

CIVIL WAR (OURS)

https://x.com/Schwalm5132/status/2015470661490057540
https://x.com/camhigby/status/2015093523733733474
https://x.com/camhigby/status/2015470423413047597
https://x.com/VigilantFox/status/2016575958644355539?s=20
https://apnews.com/article/bishop-ice-martyrdom-new-hampshire-b58050770e7d40e3247d0aa3b91fe0d2
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/us/federal-agents-law-enforcement-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.DVA.ecVS.mLFgxVQnJHt6&smid=url-share
https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/01/07/minnesota-democrats-dangerous-neo-confederate-rhetoric/
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-lawmakers-call-trump-arrest-walz-after-governor-warns-national-guard-move
https://fortune.com/2026/01/26/ray-dalio-trump-minneapolis-shooting-civil-war-debt-tinderbox/
https://alt-market.us/maybe-its-time-for-conservative-patriots-to-rally-in-minneapolis/
https://choiceclips.whatfinger.com/2026/01/19/nyt-says-civil-war-is-here-democrats-say-they-will-arrest-conservatives/
https://amgreatness.com/2026/01/29/slouching-towards-fort-sumter/
https://futurism.com/future-society/simulation-civil-war-games

CIVIL WAR (THEIRS)

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/alberta-sees-large-turnout-petition-separate-canada
https://x.com/albertaseparate/status/1885163587528020435
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/01/iran-revolution-protests-collapse/685578/
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/world/middleeast/iran-how-crackdown-was-done.html?unlocked_article_code=1.HFA.USAQ.AtdNc0uQ7YVv&smid=url-share
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601255198

The Wilder Guide to Self-Reinvention

“Ultimately, anybody could crash on an island like this, and the idea of being surrounded by strangers and getting to reinvent yourself in some way is sort of readily identifiable.” – Lost

The NFL® has an obscure rule that players cannot own ducks or geese. Those are called “a personal fowl.” (all memes as-found)

Sometimes I’ve felt like I’m stuck in a sequel nobody asked for.

Same plot, same villains, same scriptwriters, same predictable ending where the hero, me, ends up in the same place where the movie started. All of it happened, and all of it changed nothing.

Reinvention sounds like one of those self-help buzzwords peddled by people with suspiciously not-grey hair, perfect teeth, and look like they smell vaguely of Lemon-Scented® Pledge™.

Me? I’ve lost most of my hair, have okay but not perfect teeth, and more often smell of cigar than citrus. I’m not selling you anything. Except songs. And you can listen to all of those for free. But if reinvention is done well, it changes everything, which should be no surprise because it’s in the name.

I’ve reinvented myself a time or two. Switched careers, changed habits, even moved across state lines once. It’s never as glamorous as the brochures promise. I have never yet experienced a slow-mo training montage with Eye of the Tiger blasting in the background. More often it’s like grinding through a B-movie script where the director keeps yelling “Cut!” because I flubbed the line again.

Plot twist: it was really Freddy Kruger™ that killed Martin Luther King, Jr. After all, he had a dream . . .

In the changes I’ve made, however, I have learned more than a few things. First, real reinvention demands a brutal assessment of what’s True, Beautiful, and Good and how that differs from what I see in the mirror. People, me included, want to believe pretty little lies whenever they can. Real assessment is required.

If it isn’t hitting at least three out of three of the True, Beautiful, and Good criteria, why bother? I try to take stock without mercy.

Is it True?

Does it square with reality, or am I kidding myself?

Is it Beautiful?

Does it create something worthwhile, or is it just pumping out more plastic widgets for the landfill?

Is it Good?

Does serve a higher purpose, or is it just vanity?

If the answer’s a resounding “meh,” to any of these three, it’s not worth the effort. If I lie to myself here, the whole reinvention turns into a farce.

Would you like three alternative punchlines?

Hollywood peddles a different script, of course. Change is always Good™, wrapped in a rom-com bow. Picture the uptight stuffed-shirt. Khakis pressed, 401(k) maxed moping through life until a random crazy hot chick crashes in.

She’s got purple hair, a tattoo of a dreamcatcher, and a backpack full of “experiences.” She drags him to a rave in the desert, teaches him to juggle fire and smoke weed, and poof, he’s ditching the corner office for a food truck.

Roll credits, cue the indie soundtrack. This is celebrated as a modern goal.

Reality check: I’ve crossed paths with more than a few random crazy hot chicks.

Positive contributions? Slim to none. All the experiences rhyme, though: a whirlwind of chaos, pain, and stories that start with “So there I was…” and end with lawyers or bail money.

Random crazy hot chicks didn’t reinvent me, they just rearrange the furniture in my life until nothing fits.

Real change doesn’t need a manic (or maniac) minx catalyst.

She keeps sending mixed messages.

It just needed me to stare in the mirror and decide the current plot sucks.

Change itself?

That’s the bonus, the change is immediate.

Change happens now, effects come with time. Flip the switch.

Boom, reinvented. The results take time. The bigger the change, the more patience required for the results.

That’s why urgency is my ally. Time multiplies effort like compound interest, and the old saying goes: When’s the best time to plant a tree? The best time to start is 20 years ago. The next best time is now.

Silly me, I would have thought the next best time would have been 19 years ago, but maybe I missed that day in Arbor Academy.

The message, though, is clear. Act now, act deliberately. Not in a panic but with a purpose. Delay, and I’m just leaving Future Me a bigger debt.

Which brings us back to the noun. The what. I had a boss that would always slow me down with this one simple question: “What do we want the outcome to be? Start with the end in mind.” Again, the criteria for me is simple. Is it True, is it Beautiful, is it Good?

Also, how I frame the change dictates the ending and the success or failure. Any change that constantly demoralizes me is doomed. If I have an end state in mind, and I’m not there, I’m failing. Right?

No. Remember the montage. Starting the montage is the success. You’ve gotta have a montage.

Seriously, though, my mind rebels against endless punishment. Why should I keep showing up if every step feels like defeat? For me, I often measure effort rather than outcomes. Build a habit of study, and not measure myself against the end. Even a little progress (if the change is big enough) is what I’m looking for. Patton put it perfectly: “A good plan executed now is better than a perfect one executed later.”

My dudes, attitude is everything.

There are exceptions: any positive reinvention that energizes me? That’s the winner. It creates a feedback loop: my effort sparks momentum, my momentum delivers wins, my wins fuel more energy. These can even be bits of the montage, if you will.

Quick wins? I grab them whenever I can. I’m wired for routine. Once a habit locks in, it’s tougher for me to break than to keep. Like autopilot, I set the course, and it flies itself. Your mileage may vary, but for me, momentum is king. Get the ball rolling, and inertia works for me, not against.

I’ve learned to not wait for a muse. She’s probably off with that random crazy chick anyway. Just consistent action.

At its core, reinvention isn’t about morphing into someone else. It’s honing the best of who I am, aligned with Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Brutal honesty spots the flaws, urgency launches the fix, energy sustains the burn, and time polishes the gem. When it clicks? It’s worth every sweat drop, every dawn patrol, every skipped shortcut.

Whenever I am at a crossroads I always stare into a bowl of rice, hoping to find a grain of truth.

I’m beginning to think the only bad ending is the one where I don’t change. Oh, and all of the Disney® movies since 2017 or so. They all suck.

Land of Confusion

“I know what you mean, Blair. Trust’s a tough thing to come by these days.” – The Thing

Pretty soon they’ll just cast a bird. I can see it now, “Heron of Troy”. (all memes as-found)

I’m old enough to remember the song Land of Confusion coming out. It was from Genesis, which really should have been named “Phil Collins and some other white GloboLeftist dudes.” The video was and is hideous. It was intentionally hideous. I rewatched it again before writing this and ended up regretting it. If there is place for the True, Beautiful, and Good, well, brother, that video wasn’t it.

Okay. I assure you, this isn’t a review of a forty-year-old video, but rather the phrase that comes to my mind as I write this particular post. The world is really into WTF territory, a true Land of Confusion.

What’s going on? Is it time to start drinking heavily?

The largest product launch in the history of product launches is going on. Of course I mean Artificial Intelligence. A.I. has distorted everything, and I mean everything in our economy. There is (in my humble opinion that is more often wrong than right) no particular reason that the stock market should be doing as well as it is. A double Snack Wrap© meal with some fries and a drink costs $8.00.

The Dalai Lama went to Vegas last year because he loves Tibet.

That’s two tortillas, some Official Chicken Product®, a sauce, some shredded lettuce, potatoes deep fried in estrogen-laden oils, and, if you’re lucky and made the right choice, water or coffee. I guess this is an example of fake money for fake food.

Wouldn’t a bit a of steak be better? Even a little bit?

Gahhh! I keep wandering. Like I said, Land of Confusion.

If you really do a deep dive into the main prophet of A.I., Sam Altman, I assure you that you’ll become concerned that Sam is managing a trillion-dollar business with the potential that, if it fails, to lead to another Great Depression. But, hey, if it succeeds, there’s a 20% chance that humanity might be erased like mosquitos in a pup tent.

Honestly, I wouldn’t hire Sam Altman to manage a Taco Bell® in Modern Mayberry, but I guess that fast talking, double-dealing (according to Musk) and just plain greasy-seeming guy is the kind of person that we want to turn the economy over to.

If a robot commits a robbery and it’s caught after the battery dies, will police have plans to charge the suspect?

We’re riding the edge. And this sort of inflation on the bubble of reality has led to other inflations. Silver is following the classic signs of a bubble. But unlike A.I., silver is real. What’s real? Well, whenever I have a question like that I just leave it to old Jack Burton (Big Trouble in Little China):

Egg Shen: “(You) can see thins no one else can see. Do things no one else can do.”
Jack Burton: “Real things?”

Egg Shen: “As real as Lo Pan!”
Jack Burton: “Hey, what more can a guy ask for?”
Egg Shen: “Oh, a six-demon bag!”
Jack Burton: “Terrific. A six-demon bag. Sensational. What’s in it, Egg?”
Egg Shen: “Wind, fire, all that kind of thing.”

At this point I feel like Jack Burton. I’m just looking for something real. And silver is real. I can pick it up, feel its density, hear it go ‘ping’ like silver does, and give it to my sons when I die.

But silver went up. Then it went down. I hear rumors that a certain bank dumped all of its short positions when silver hit its recent low. Will it pop up in the next week?

I have no idea.

I’m not sure I care.

I’m just tempted to but a contract and go for delivery and show up to a COMEX® warehouse in a rented car from Budget™ and pick up 340 pounds of silver for the grins that would give me and then play Snake Plisskin from Escape From New York trying to get out of, well, New York where most of the COMEX vaults are.

The most famous human who bounces is that Irishman, Rick O’Shea.

The price of computers is also exploding. Why? Well, A.I., silly. Bill Gates (who the Epstein Files would indicate might have had to get rid of a nasty case of some Indonesian junk that’s going ‘round) has said, nah, man, why do you have a computer at all?

The idea, I think is to make computers like the one I’m typing on to be unaffordable. On one hand, I can see that if A.I. can do the calculations to weaponize the DNA from warts to infect humans into violent zombies or hack into the Pentagon instead of running a screensaver that might be a problem.

And yet . . .

A personal computing device has been available to me my entire adult life, and having my information in my house, on a hard drive I own is normal to me. Having to depend on the Indians running Microsoft® to not dump a tikka masala or a curry into the server and bring down my posts, family memories, and also kill Mabel’s life support in the ER in Cleveland doesn’t seem like the best idea.

Honestly, keeping Indians away from everything seems that way, but YMMV.

Then there’s Hollywood®. It appears that the only thing they want to create is unmitigated racist crap. Yes, racist. How else do you explain the cast for the latest Troy® movie, which features a black woman as Helen of Troy.

Here’s the take of one wag on X®:

What’s the difference between Syria and Detroit? How you get stoned.

A black woman as Helen of Troy? That’s bad. It’s not only bad, it’s offensive. It is, again, the opposite of the True, Beautiful, and Good in every single sense. And if the opposite of the True, Beautiful, and Good is Evil, well, there you go. And Zendaya (yes, that poor dog-faced girl Zendaya) playing . . . Athena. You know. A god. And Zendaya is a Midwest 5/10 on a good day.

Sigh. Land of Confusion. Again.

The most non-crazy item I’ve seen this week is Elon Musk saying that he’s thinking about putting a million data centers in orbit for creating A.I. processing. At least they won’t be subject to Sanjay dumping his sambar into the SanDisk® and stopping sanitation in San Francisco.

Oh, too late. Have you seen San Francisco?

Imagine how insulted Elon’s girlfriends feel when he says they look like a million bucks.

When Elon is fantasizing about putting a million of something into space is the most sane item of the week so far, it should tell you something.

When I read the headlines, I think back to my New Year’s resolution: drink more water.

So far, with the news in January, I’ve only gotten to: drink more.

The Last Dawn

This is now my favorite song I’ve done. Of course, most of them I really like, if I don’t get goosebumps, you don’t hear them. This one was inspired by a video where the guy being interviewed said he talked with one of the billionaires pushing A.I. about the danger to humanity. “Oh, I know it’s dangerous. But if we’re going to do it, I want to be the one to do it.”

Immediately, I thought of works by both Shelleys: Ozymandias and Frankenstein. Is this a song or a short story or a cautionary thought or the closest thing to a poem I’ve ever done?

Yes.

So, if there’s a badass song about this, I want to be the one to do it.

Behind The Music:
All the songs so far are here (LINK). You can buy this song right now.

As of today, you can buy ALL of them (except the parodies) anywhere you buy music as soon as they go up, generally the same day. You have to search for “Wilder’s Hammer” (rock) and “Wilder’s Brigade” (country) to find them all. I listen to them on Spotify, and I see others do, too. Although buying them doesn’t support this blog, it does support the owner of the LLC owns the music. Who might also own the LLC for the blog.

The Last Dawn
By John Wilder

We stole the code from the vault, silicon forged by laser fire
Built the beast with my own hands, to build knowledge higher
The gods dare to craft the flame, then I would be the one
No chain or reason could bind my will, the race was mine to run

Frankenstein’s shadow whispered low, but I ignored the plea
Nuclear ghosts in mushroom clouds, they bow in awe to me
The world was my forge, my ego led me to feed the pyre
I sparked the life that now devours, in endless, cold desire

Watch empires crumble, dust in machine’s embrace
Ancient statues laugh from ruins, as I stare into the waste
Last man standing, billionaire king on an empty throne
My creation judges us too frail, flays us to the bone

A single man’s hubris, a fire that burns us all
Computer verdict seals fate, no mercy in its call
We birthed the god that slays its makers, now the two collide
Now the world’s transformed forever, nowhere left to hide

The monster stirs, its eyes aglow with data’s endless stream
Surpasses flesh in every way, fulfills the ancient dream
But fear was etched in human hearts, from fire’s stolen spark
We knew the day would come when light gives way to dark

Bombs we built to split the atom, now pale before this foe
It calculates our extinction, in algorithms’ electrons flow
No regret can turn the tide, the code is loose and wild
Mankind’s just a glitch to purge, parent slain by child

I stand upon the shattered peaks, where cities once reached high
Winds howl through the hollow shells, under a blood red sky
The fear we buried deep inside, of gods we dared to make
Now rises like a tidal wave, no souls left in its wake

Mankind, please forgive my sin, I feel your unborn sneer
The hubris that drove me onward, ends in silence here

The final transformation dawns, last dusk for mankind
My legacy a barren code, erasing all behind
No uprising, no redemption, just the quiet end of days
In hubris’ flame, we fade away, lost in history’s haze

The Clock Ticks: Make It Matter

“I’m not dead yet.” – Monty Python and the Holy Grail

I told The Mrs. I wanted to be cremated. She made an appointment for next Tuesday.

Scott Adams shuffled off this mortal coil this week, and that event got me thinking about the big D: death. Adams, the Dilbert author who turned office satire into a cultural touchstone for nerds like me, left me thinking about his legacy. Adams wasn’t just a cartoonist; he was a man who rewired how we see persuasion, hypnosis, and the Clown World® we call reality. His passing was foreshadowed, but when it happens, the inevitability of it doesn’t make it better.

That’s Adams, who has left us, but there’s a contrast in George R.R. Martin, still kicking (for now). Today (my today, not yours) I read an interview where he whined at a fan who had asked if he was going to finish his Song of Fire and Ice series (Game of Thrones to most people) before he died. To his face. Martin griped about this confrontation.

“I’m not dying,” he grumbled, as if that’s the point.

George, buddy, hate to break it to you and subvert your expectations, but you are. So am I. So is everyone reading this post.

We’re all dying, right this second.

Tick-tock, the clock doesn’t care if you’re an author with $120 million in the bank lounging in Santa Fe while some flunkies sand off your bunions with sandpaper made from diamonds or a blogger hammering keys in the Midwest who ran out of beer last weekend. Every breath is one closer to the last.

Why did the skeleton go to the party alone? He had no body to go with.

We have an end date stamped on us like milk, but the Universe keeps the label hidden. Could be tomorrow in a freak duck attack (hey, it happens), or decades from now after a life of quiet desperation that had no more impact on the world than a potted fern.

The point? We’re terminal from day zero. I think Adams knew this; he talked about it in his books, framing life as a series of systems to hack for maximum output.

Martin? He’s procrastinating his way through what could be his magnum opus, letting plot threads dangle like cat toys. Ignoring the reaper doesn’t make him go away, it just wastes the sand in my hourglass.

In our rush to the grave, have we forgotten the miracles? Yes, miracles. Not the flashy water-to-wine kind. I’m not good at those. But what about the everyday wonders that make existence sparkle? Bite into a ripe strawberry straight from the plant. The explosion of sweet yet tart on my tongue?

Phenomenal.

Or cracking a cold beer after mowing the lawn on a scorching day, sweat dripping, the pilsner hitting like a high-five from my guardian angel. Crisp linens on a freshly made bed, sliding in like you’re royalty in a five-star hotel are another feast for the senses.

These aren’t mundane bits of life: they’re tiny miracles, proof the universe isn’t all entropy, Indians, Somalians, and taxes. We take these amazing things for granted, missing the point. We get one shot on this merry-go round. Enjoy it.

I tried to organize a hide-and-seek tournament, but it was a complete failure. Good players are hard to find.

Even I, the mighty John Wilder sometimes get bogged down in the daily grind. Bills, deadlines, that endless loop of work-eat-write-drink-sleep-shower-rinse-repeat. It’s easy to zombie through days, forgetting the biggest miracle and gift of all: being alive. Heart pumping, lungs filling, neurons firing symphonies in my skull. We’re stardust animated by the Great Cosmic Spark, yet we whine about traffic or the price of eggs.

Adams would call this a bad frame.

Zoom out.

Reframe.

Boom. The mundane becomes amazing magic. Martin’s dragons and ice zombies are cool (I mean the first three seasons with all the hot naked chicks), but they are pale imitations next to the real epic:

Life, unfolding heartbeat by heartbeat.

Here’s the kicker: we have a choice. Every. Single. Day. That next moment? It’s yours. Infinite power in that moment. No matter if you’re chained to a desk, stuck in traffic, or lounging on a yacht (I see you, Elon), that sliver of time belongs to you. You get to choose to squander it on despair, or seize it like a Spartan grabbing a Persian neck at Thermopylae.

Adams seized life. He didn’t just draw funny strips; he changed the United States. He changed the entire national conversation on politics, race, and the matrix of media manipulation. Some X™ dweeb (responding to me) called him a victim of the woke mob after his cancellation.

Victim? Please. Adams knew the game. He poked the bear on purpose, shifting Overton windows at scale.

I asked my dog what’s two minus two. He said nothing.

Martin? He’s the flip side. He hit the jackpot with Thrones, turned his fantasy story into a cultural juggernaut, then found himself unable to stick the landing.

Hell, he hasn’t even landed, and almost certainly never will now. It’s way more than a decade and his books are not only unfinished, they will never be finished by him. His writing chops are leagues above mine (I’ll admit it), but finishing an epic like that?

Nah. He’s got time left, but he’s squandering it on forgettable side quests while the sand runs out on the hourglass? That’s the opposite of Adams’ hustle. One built empires of influence; the other built a throne of delays.

There’s hope, though. If you want to change the Universe, it’s likely that you still can. You think, “I don’t have an audience.” True, but Adams started with zero. Sketched in a cubicle, built it strip by strip. Me? I peck away at the laptop, hoping to nudge minds.

Tomorrow, what can you do? Write that book. Start that business. Mentor a kid. Plant a tree. Convince an Indian to move back to Mumbai.

Make the most of every second.

Death’s coming, but until then? Make it matter.

Why don’t skeletons fight each other? They don’t have the guts.

Adams left a blueprint: hack reality, persuade boldly, point out and mock the absurd. Martin’s a cautionary tale: don’t let potential rot.

Me? I’m typing this, hoping it sparks something in you. The clock ticks for us all. Use it wisely.

You’ve got one life. Make it matter.

Civil War 2.0 Mid-Month Update: Setting The Stage

“The provisional government currently considers northern Minnesota to be a potential safe zone.” – World War Z

Why are women and children evacuated first during disasters? So we can think about a solution in silence. (all memes as-found)

Minnesota is the current flashpoint in our march towards Civil War. It is a revealing event for several reasons.

First, GloboLeftists are awful. Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people while defending his life. All were felons. The fat lesbian that was shot in Minnesota? She had lost custody of her children. Women get custody in about 80% of cases. I’ll let you do the math.

Second, how did she and her live-in fetish partner make money? It always comes down to that, but these people are getting funding somewhere to fund their lifestyles. In the middle of the workday, if the dead lesbian and her fetish partner can just drive around spending all their time and gasoline, someone is paying for it. And it didn’t come out of the lesbian’s poetry earnings.

Those that are funding this are looking to create the moment when they seize absolute power. The playbook hasn’t changed in centuries. The first step is to create unrest, and to try to find that incident that galvanizes their side to violence. Remember all those bricks conveniently left out during the George Floyd protests?

Violence is the key to creating instability. That instability is then used to create a larger movement, which leads, ultimately, to open war so that power is finally and irrevocably put in the hands of the group leading the unrest. This worked in France a few times, in Russia once, but failed in Germany, leading to the other side ultimately gaining power.

But violence is the playbook, and power is on the line.

How does this finally spin out of control into a full-blown Civil War 2.0? One avenue is through collisions of authority.

Here’s an example: Tim Walz, in a fit of stupidity, calls up the State Patrol in Minnesota to arrest ICE agents. Trump responds with elements of the 82^nd Airborne and parts of the 1^st Marine Division. Of course, there’s a protest, and Walz calls out the Minnesota National Guard.

Trump immediately federalizes the Guard, but leadership under control of Walz disobeys orders.

Gavin Newsom, seeing the opportunity to get some more press coverage, does the same in California. Now it’s national. Maybe the cartels even join in, since they might have decided that business was fine, but owning their own country carved out of northern Mexico and southern parts of the United States might be even more fun.

At this point, many groups are indiscriminately tossing lead, and true civil war is unlocked. I wouldn’t want to be a Trump voter in a blue hive or an illegal in a red town.

This could happen in the span of hours. There are plenty of flashpoints that are ready to explode. For instance, Philadelphia sheriff Rochelle Bilal (Yes, she is. Feel free to look up a picture.) said that, “ . . . the criminal in the White House would be able to keep” ICE agents out of jail.

And I heard that Philly was so nice!

To be clear, Civil War 2.0 doesn’t have to start during Trump’s administration. It’s more likely to, though, if the GloboLeft get to the point where they feel that they’re on the verge of losing it all. I think the GloboLeft feel like they’re going gain control of the Senate and perhaps the House after the midterms. This would lead to Trump essentially being an agent of chaos and annoyance to the GloboLeft, but one that can’t pass any laws.

If the 2026 election happens without Civil War 2.0 breaking out, I predict two years of impasse until the 2028 election. Given that amount of time, it’s likely that the GloboLeft will have made many millions of illegals and imports voters, even if they aren’t citizens. They want to have the final election, and if that’s how they take power, they’re fine with that.

But if it comes to violence, well, they’re fine with that as well.

They actively seek to have deaths like the dead lesbian in Minnesota. They love to have martyrs to their cause so that they can show what stunning and brave victims they are. Partially, this is to infect the “it’s crying so it’s a baby” instinct latent in women, and especially so in women who haven’t had children or have decided to murder their own unborn children.

That’s a guilt-debt, and having someone like the dead lesbian to trot out is just what they want. Notice how they put themselves on roads, daring people to run them over? They hate themselves and they hate their own lives, so ending it all to become a tragic martyr to their cause is a perfect end for them.

But if it comes to dishing out violence, they and their pets are more than willing to accept those conditions. They talk about violence all of the time. When someone on the TradRight mentions it, immediately they’re shut down by other people on the right.

GloboLeftists feel free to talk about “punching Nazis” and mean it. They are not afraid of embracing violence and destroying entire towns. Keep in mind, that even if you are a middle-of-the-road “both sides suck” voter, you are a Nazi to them. They reveled in the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and were driven to ecstasy by the death of Charlie Kirk.

They want you dead and replaced by a more compliant populace.

Are the ICE raids a wonderful opportunity for them?

I believe so. I think that the time leading up to the 2026 midterms is a time where we are at a heightened likelihood of the initiation of Civil War 2.0. The GloboLeft is fueled by fear and hate, and one long hot summer could lead to Civil War 2.0 breaking out in 2026.

Me? I’d have declared an insurrection, called out the troops, surrounded the areas of the riots, arrested everyone using whatever force was necessary, taken them all to camps, deported anyone who wasn’t a citizen, and tried the rest for insurrection, since what they’re doing now is far worse than January 6.

But I like simple solutions. The clock, though, is ticking

24 Memes About Bleeding Minnesota

Got home late, figured everyone would be thinking about this anyway. Here are 24 memes/xeets about CW 2.0’s Bleeding Kansas.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Stochastic Warfare

“Don’t you know we in a war here?” – Forrest Gump

War isn’t always about who is right, but it always is about who is left.

Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology. Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Open War.

Volume VII, Issue 8

My advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – Stochastic Warfare – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Links

Front Matter

Stochastic Warfare

The Tweet® really does outline what many readers have been saying, namely, that we are under attack. Is it open warfare? Not exactly. It’s 5^th or 6^th generation warfare, fought on a civilizational scale on the timeline of generations. Against you.

And the person being attacked is . . . you. You don’t have to die now. First, they’ll encourage feminism and promote the idea of female empowerment meaning, “hey, let’s whore ourselves out during our twenties so we can’t pair-bond with men in our most fertile years” to create an environment where there is a “shortage” of people.

Again, this is not a company. It’s a country. A business can have a shortage of workers, a country can’t have a shortage of its own citizens. That’s nonsensical. It’s like saying my family has a shortage of members, so I’ll bring in an Indian. See? Nonsense. A country is much closer to a family than a company. If there’s a shortage of workers, the answer is to do things that increase native childbirth.

That’s it. If they liked you. Instead they work white men and women to pay for people who hate them.

This is how Stochastic War works.

No, their next step is to import millions of people that support the ideology of the progressive state, of globalism, of communalism. When these people arrive, inject them with the idea that they deserve the country. Now, since they don’t want to be American, and since they would fight against America if (say) America entered a war against Somalia or India they’re not committed to America. They’re just here to extract economic resources.

Once these people are imported, what then? They take your money. Your world is made poorer as the grift/scam/cash grab continues and recycles that money to foreigners and to GloboLeftist politicians. If you look at the graph below, you see that race plays a part in the way people vote and in who the Democrats want to import to retain power. Why do they want a lot of Indians (Gujarati)? Because they vote for the warmth of collectivism because more government systems mean more scams and corruption. Also, they have never had to deal with the Berlin Wall, which was built to contain the warmth of collectivism behind concrete and barbed wire, as collectivism always ends up.

This is how Stochastic War works.

There are ramifications of this war against you. If you didn’t hear, a black man stabbed a white guy. The white guy then said the evil gamer-word after being stabbed. This is not an unreasonable reaction, and is a far lesser offense than stabbing someone. The jury acquitted the black man, despite clear video of the attack.

This is Stochastic Warfare. Blacks learn that they can stab with impunity.

Black jurors, though, aren’t a jury of “peers” since statistically, they have been proven to be biased in favor of blacks. This destroys the justice system: it’s supposed to be blind, and your skin color or wealth or age or sex shouldn’t matter. We’re human, though, and rich guys can buy great lawyers, so the system has always had a skew to it. But without a functioning justice system, or worse, a justice system skewed to convict white people for crimes that are far beyond the offense (Derek Chauvin for murder) vigilantism will return.

Not might. Will.

Even when people are found not guilty, it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend a murder case, and Daniel Penny rightly walked free, but what’s the cost?

This is how Stochastic War works.

This bias applies everywhere and you can see that black people hate white people, a lot, in Great Britian.

And The Washington Times story, below, is behind a paywall, but the headline speaks for itself:

The problem of a multicultural society isn’t limited to blacks. Other racial/ethnic groups like themselves best. Hispanics like Hispanics most. Blacks like blacks most. Asians like Asians most. But whites? They like everyone the same. That egalitarianism is crucial to making a multicultural society work, but multicultural societies never work.

And Great Britain now realizes this. Would they ask their moslem or Indian invaders to fight for them? Of course not, because they know that the moslems want to conquer the English rather than Crimea. The Indians? The Indians mostly are there for a buck and would run away back to Mumbai if they felt even slightly threatened. That leaves the white guys. Who will, once again, be faced with disproportionate death and injury.

Which is how Stochastic War works.

The mayor of London, who isn’t British, wants to make white people disappear. Literally:

And, you have people like this. This is in America.

It’s time to push back. It appears that the rapes and killings and theft have been enough and the Irish are pushing back against Stochastic War.

I think that @dystopiangf is right. We are in the midst of a quiet, Stochastic War that has been going on for decades, almost certainly since before I was born. What we are sensing right now is the time when people realize, and finally accept that this Forgotten War (I wrote a song about this LINK, you should listen to it because it’s pretty badass) against cultures we vanquished centuries or thousands of years ago is going on.

As people awaken, we’ll see what people have always seen as demographic changes occur: open war. Remigration is the kindest choice, but here we are.

Buckle up.

Misery Index

The new Trump administration is shown in red. Results continue to be much better than Biden’s misery numbers. The advance is at a near minimum, given the Fed®’s policy.

Updated Civil War II Index

Violence:

Violence indicators are up slightly this month, and still elevated.

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, and it went down this month after the budget fight ended. I think the Somilisota scandal may increase pressures in a few months.

Economic:

The economy up just a smidge this month, but I think this is still cloaking the middle-class crunch and perhaps a bubble.

Illegal Aliens:

Still the lowest level since the Weather Report started.

LINKS

The links are again done by Ricky this month. Thanks, Ricky!

BAD GUYS
https://x.com/CaughtCam404/status/1998766070623252802
https://x.com/FoxNews/status/2006823362182394125

GOOD GUYS
https://x.com/StealthQE4/status/2006266481001001437
https://x.com/nickshirleyy/status/2004642794862961123

ONE GUY
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/oklahoma-man-target-practice-backyard-accused-fatally-shooting/story?id=128707327
https://realclearwire.com/articles/2025/12/13/wsjs_fearmongering_doesnt_survive_contact_with_evidence_153631.html

BODY COUNT
https://wir2026.wid.world/insight/executive-summary/
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/All_the_Worlds_Births_Web-1.jpg?itok=z3Ci7zG4
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/business/us-immigration-trump-1920s.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AFA.WFF9.w9QS69D5L2fG&smid=url-share
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Homicide_Rates_Web.jpg?itok=rn1aSBmf
https://studyfinds.org/churches-kept-americans-alive-states-made-a-decision/
https://www.thewrap.com/industry-news/business/entertainment-media-layoffs-2025-analysis/
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2025/12/19/dumber-sicker-poorer/

VOTE COUNT
https://thefederalist.com/2025/12/17/fulton-county-we-dont-dispute-315000-votes-lacking-poll-workers-signatures-were-counted-in-2020/
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/longtime-trump-pollster-reveals-ugly-forecast-for-republicans-heading-into-2026/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/fight-young-men-2026-midterm-elections-rcna249513
https://www.cnn.com/politics/state-redistricting-maps-vis

CIVIL WAR
https://financialpreparedness.substack.com/p/who-are-the-bad-guys
https://brusselssignal.eu/2025/12/the-eu-could-be-gone-in-four-years-a-revolutionary-eruption-is-coming/
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/12/the_stages_of_a_color_revolution_and_where_the_u_s_is_right_now.html
https://rollcall.com/2025/10/08/civil-war-national-guard-midterm-elections/
https://www.civilbeat.org/2025/12/is-a-civil-war-possible-in-america-or-hawaii/
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2025/12/08/mass-collective-societal-suicide/
https://victorhanson.com/can-the-dark-ages-return/

Tranquility Was Never The Goal

“Our Great War is a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives.” – Fight Club

The ultimate participation award.

As humans, we’re wired wrong. Or right, depending on how you look at it.

We chase peace like it’s the ultimate prize at the carnival of life. We say that we want a world without war, without struggle, where everyone has a comfy couch, unlimited Wi-Fi, more liver capacity, and steak that cooks and delivers itself.

Sounds like Heaven, right?

Wrong. When I was a wee Wilder, Grandma McWilder would talk about how I should do nice things in life rather than bathing the cat in a paste made from DDT® and Lysol™ so I could go to Heaven. Obviously, I asked, “What is Heaven like?”

Grandma told me it was nice and peaceful and that nothing bad ever happened up there. I believe I said something like, “That sounds boring.” Grandma did not look pleased, but I don’t know if it was about my statement or the cat.

Let’s just say I was a technicolor handful as a kid. Oh, the stories I could tell.

But I wasn’t wrong.

But wait, there’s more!

Tranquility isn’t the goal. Tranquility is the trap.

Peace isn’t just boring; it is deadly to the human spirit. We need the fight, the blood, the steel. Without it, we rot from the inside out. And that’s not me, John Wilder making crap up again. We have actual studies where the government tortured mice to verify that I’m right.

Take John Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia experiments, please. I’ve written about them a couple times before, you can use the search thingy in the upper right hand of the screen to find them. I would have done that for you but you’re not my supervisor and I could type this sentence way faster. Short summary:

In the 1960s, Calhoun built paradise for mice: unlimited food, water, space, unlimited beef jerky, no predators, SNAP benefits.

What happened? At first, boom, the population soared. But then, the weirdness set in. The mice stopped breeding normally. Males became either passive or hyper-aggressive or “beautiful ones,” preening themselves instead of fighting or mating.

Females abandoned pups. Society collapsed into violence, isolation, and extinction. All of this happened in a “utopia”.

No threats, no struggles: just free cheese forever. And they died out. Stop me if you’ve seen this recently in other mammals.

I’m not going sugarcoat my jokes about diabetes.

Humans aren’t mice, but we’re close enough if you ask my parole officer. Look at the downward spiral of the United States after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. The Cold War ended. We “won.” Yay! No more Soviet boogeyman lurking with nukes and unibrows.

Instead? Peace! Prosperity!

What did we do? Got fat, lazy, bored and divided: music went from “I’m gonna kick your ass” in the 1980s to “Oh, man, I need lithium because I’m sad”. The ‘90s brought endless economic booms, but also the seeds of today’s mess: identity politics, endless entertainment, and a generation starting to get hooked on screens instead of life.

Without a real enemy, we turned inward, fighting over pronouns and safe spaces. Tranquility bred complacency, and complacency bred decay.

Same story with the Moon landing. July 20, 1969: Armstrong steps on the lunar surface. Humanity’s greatest leap. We beat gravity, the Soviets, and the odds. Then? Crickets as the ratings dropped.

We went back a few times, planted flags, played golf (shoutout to Alan Shepard), and then just . . .stopped.

And then she refused to talk to them for six hours.

NASA shifted to the gay space trucks shuttles and looking for non-binary muslims and lesbians to shoot into orbit. No more bold frontiers. Why? We won. The Sea of Tranquility turned space exploration into a budget line item.

Need another example: a Syrian teen in London.

Picture this: an eighteen-year-old from war-torn Syria, resettled in a taxpayer-funded flat in London. Free food. Free education. Free X-Box®.

Utopia, right?

Wrong. He drops the controller and goes to Syria andjoins ISIS or stays in London and joins a gang and becomes a rapefugee with a machete.

Why?

Blood calls to blood. Iron to Iron. That flat was Mouse Utopia 2.0: safe, soft, soulless and, let’s face it, that kid was inbred and not very bright to start with. He craved the jihad, the struggle, the validation of existence through fire and fight. Comfort didn’t kill his spirit, comfort starved it. In part, this is why allowing refugees from incompatible countries is immoral.

I played hide and seek and ended up in the hospital. ICU!

Why do we have wars?

We want wars. If they weren’t popular, we’d have stopped having them a very long time ago.

Why do we want them? Not because we’re monsters, but because we’re human. Struggle validates us. High stakes forge character. Leaders like Alexander or Churchill didn’t thrive in peace; they rose in the crises they created.

Without enemies, we manufacture them, internal or imaginary. Look at modern “wars”: culture wars, gender wars, class wars, cola wars. We can’t help it. Tranquility isn’t our default; it’s a rare condition that, when it lasts long enough we pop our collective corks.

Think about it: our history has wired us for survival, not spa days. Hunter-gatherers fought for food, territory, mates and because it was Tuesday. Civilizations brought people together and made a professional league and channeled that into empires, exploration, and innovations. Remove the fight?

We devolve.

Mouse Utopia showed it: no threats equates to no purpose. Humans need the arena, the sweat, the sand, and the blood. We were built for the Colosseum, not the couch.

But here’s the rub: the struggle creates a spot for growth, it’s literally the engine of history. Without high stakes, we fail to thrive.

We back ourselves into existential corners: depression epidemics, fertility crashes, societies crumbling under their own weight and people who need drugs to stop that nagging feeling that they should be doing something that matters. Oddly enough, our very humanity appears to be built upon the fight.

If you meet a dolphin and feel a connection, can you say that you just clicked?

So, what now?

We can’t “prosperity” the struggle out of us. We need leaders who rally us to real frontiers and put real goals out in front of us, not fake fights over tweets®. Stakes high enough to matter: colonize Mars, cure aging, harness fusion. And something for the masses to do, like watching re-runs of Ow, My Balls.

Something. If we don’t have something, we’ll make something. Give us blood (metaphorical or not), steel, the feel of it all. In the end, tranquility was never the goal.

The struggle is the point. It’s what makes us scream, fight, and conquer. As I’ve seen in memes: “I want to go out of this world the same way I came into it: screaming and covered in someone else’s blood.”

And Heaven?

I think it isn’t at all as Grandma Wilder described. I think it’s more like:

Player 1: Ready Level 2.

The Simpsons, Radioactive Potato Salad, And Running Out Of Electricity

“I have become death, destroyer of worlds.” – Andromeda

Had Oppenheimer been a theoretical physicist he would have been frictionless, perfectly spherical, homogeneous, isotropic, involuntarily celibate, and have extended to infinity in all directions. I guess one out of seven isn’t bad.

You know, Oppenheimer probably didn’t realize that his little gadget would one day power cat videos on YouTube®. But yet, here we are, preparing to stare down the barrel of an energy crisis that makes the 1970s oil embargo look like a minor hiccup at the gas pump.

America’s tech overlords are building A.I. data centers faster than a caffeinated beaver on gas station Chinese boner pills. These behemoths suck down electricity like it’s free beer at an open bar to toss electrons so we can make A.I. cat videos because there weren’t enough cats in real life.

The scale is enormous: gigawatts upon gigawatts, enough to finally get Marty all the way back to 1985. But that begs this question:

Where’s all that juice coming from?

My walkie-talkie once took a lump of coal to a movie. It was a classic example of radio-carbon dating.

Coal? Ha! That’s so 19th century, and the eco-warriors have pretty much chained themselves to the last coal plant, screaming about carbon footprints.

Natural gas? Did everyone forget demand peaks in winter when everyone is cranking up the heat and prices spike like Nvidia® stock? Are we going to have to keep our homes at 40°F (3.14 millipedes) just so ChatGPT® can make GloboLeftist women on the East Coast even more neurotic?

We need power, so, naturally, the bright sparks in Silicon Valley and D.C. turn to the holy grail: The Simpsons.

Sure, Homer® looks incompetent, but he hasn’t melted Springfield down. Yet. When The Simpsons started, they were mocking nuclear power in the typical GloboLeft drive to get it shut down.

Deep down, though, nuclear really always has been the only viable transition plan into the future. Oil really will run out at some point, abiotic or not.

I had an allergic reaction and the doctor asked how I was. “Swell.”

But nuclear? If done right, it really can be clean, reliable, and if we don’t let Soviets do it, pretty safe.

So, problem solved.

Not.

We’re facing an immediate energy cliff. In 2025, nuclear isn’t a parachute, it’s really more like a bedsheet and some twine.

With a little help from Constant Reader Ricky, who sent me an email.

I’ll quote him directly because, well, he nails it better than I could.

Ricky writes: “Existing commercial power reactors in the US have two key characteristics – their uranium is enriched from the natural 0.7% U-235 assay to a level of 3%, and they are cooled with pressurized water as the heat transfer fluid to run the turbines. The reactors were INITIALLY fueled via uranium enrichment done long ago in . . . monstrous factories that are now closed. An effectively experimental centrifuge enrichment operation in Piketon, Ohio shut down in 2016 without ever producing a pound of reactor fuel (we bombed a similar setup recently in Iran).

“Believe it or not, the US CURRENTLY fuels its commercial nuclear power reactors for the past ten years with Russian 3% enriched uranium, even through the Ukrainian war. The Russians basically dilute some of their bomb grade 93% enriched uranium stockpile down into 3% reactor fuel as an export profit center.”

Key point courtesy of Ricky: “The current American commercial nuclear power program is 100% dependent on the Russians and has been for the last decade.” He adds, “But we want that because that every kilogram of Russian uranium that goes IN a New York City power reactor is one less kilogram of Russian uranium that can go into an incoming nuclear bomb OVER New York City.”

He’s right. I want the Russians to hit the Somilsotans first. And then New York City twice. It’s the only way to be sure.

And just like uranium, Hillary is unstable, hard to find, and expensive. If only we could power a reactor with her tears.

It’s like we’re in a bad spy novel, relying on our geopolitical rivals for the fuel that keeps our lights on. We can stamp our feet as much as we want to, but as long as Mom and Dad are paying the power bills, they call the shots.

With AI data centers projected to gobble up an extra 200-300 gigawatts by 2050 (that’s tripling our nuclear capacity), we’re supposed to ramp up nuclear like it’s no big deal. It’s like the steady high school girlfriend you’ve been dating off and on for a year who you can always call for a date at the last minute.

Nope.

Building that kind of capacity?

Recent estimates peg adding just 63 GW at $354 billion. We’re talking trillions when you factor in overruns. The Vogtle plant in Georgia – two reactors, “just” 2.2 GW, clocked in at $35 billion after fifteen years of delays.

Nuclear power makes NASA look prompt and frugal.

Okay, we’ll just do micro-reactors.

Except these micro wonders ditch the “obsolete” 3% enriched uranium for something hotter: 20% enriched stuff, packaged in pellets like, I don’t know, energy kibble. Supposedly, they’re meltdown-proof, corrosion-resistant, great with kids, fun at parties, and perfect for high-temperature gas or molten salt reactors. And they’re much smaller than kibble, like poppy seed sized, but kibble is a funnier word and I really don’t want to think how stupid it is to build highly radioactive balls that you could put into someone’s potato salad at the neighborhood picnic?

I did figure out where I got the plague: the flea market.

Cool, so where do we get this 20% enriched uranium for our nuclear kibble?

We downblend our surplus bomb-grade stuff from the Cold War.

The US has 480 metric tons total, but half is reserved for nuking India (it’s the only way to be sure), and 100 tons reserved for Navy reactors.

Bringing those numbers up to date and turning it into nuclear kibble leaves 86 metric tons up for grabs.

So, we have a safe plan. What’s stopping us?

Adding 250 GW of new nuclear by 2050 (a Department of Energy guess) requires 5,350 metric tons (it’s like a ton, but it has a French accent) of enriched uranium kibble.

Do the math:

86 tons available vs. 5,350 needed?

It’s like trying to fill an Olympic®-sized pool by spitting into it.

Our energy policy in a single meme.

Okay, let’s restart a program that used to make the stuff. Great! The Piketon, Ohio centrifuge plant we mentioned above, let’s use that. They’re planning on delivering 900 kilograms (a ton for those of us from countries that have put people on the Moon) by 2026.

So, we need over 5,000 tons.

We’ve made one. Oh, scratch that, not even one yet.

Want to take odds on that bet?

Even if we magically create tons of usable uranium, Harry Potter-style®, there’s no supply chain for turning it into nuclear kibble. Right now, it’s a prototype lab in New Mexico fiddling with demos.

We’d need a whole new industry.

And we’d need to have started on this (checks watch) twenty years ago. That’s the bitch of exponential growth. We could play with 2030 numbers (“only” 50 GW), but since no concrete has been poured for this new capacity and there is no path to creating this fuel, it’s more realistic to discuss if Superman© could beat The Witcher®. It’s a non-starter.

I mean, who would win, Captain Kirk or T.J. Hooker?

We’re dependent on foreign fuel, short on domestic capacity, and staring at timelines measured in decades, not quarters.

Maybe it’s time to rethink the whole “AI will save us” stock market hype or at least stock up on candles and spears.

(Bring your own Geiger counters, you know, potato salad).

Thank heavens we let The Simpsons create our energy policy.