Could the Hunger Games Really Happen?

     Like most teenage girls and their mothers, I too read the Hunger Games trilogy. When I started writing my own young adult title, Lincoln Nabb and the Bully's Father, too many of my friends told me I needed to read Hunger Games in order to compete with what's out there in the genre. My other books are darker and much less (meaning: not at all) young adult fiction, so they probably thought I needed all the help I can get toning it down. I think I'm pretty smart when it comes to this sort of thing, so I took the advice and really enjoyed it until about 2/3 of the way through MockingJay (but that's a blog post for another time). I'm still not 100% certain I didn't take the advice to prove to myself I didn't need the advice. But any advice is good if it can help you on your journey (also a blog for another time).
     One of the things I liked about it is how dark the story is, which may very well be why some of those friends suggested it. I liked the sense of hopelessness the story has while dangling that carrot of possibility in front of you. I mean, let's face it, teenagers fighting to the dead? That's like something I'd write. Like something I did write. I wrote about kinder-fights back in the 90s in Neo-Fascist Romeo (free to read on WattPad), and I took my shot at a dystopian future in the 2000's with Rise of an American Emperor (also free to read on WattPad)
     But what Hunger Games really got me thinking about was how we, as a country, could find ourselves in a similar dystopian future if things don't change in our country soon. With the current political climate and all the strange weather and natural disasters that are occurring lately, what would have to happen to get us to that point?

Here are a few things that could get us there:

The massive solar flare that's expected in 2012/2013 - Michio Kaku, my favorite physicists, believes it's very likely that within 2012 or 2013, based on two solar cycles of a big solar flare and a really big solar flare, that just happen coincide sometime within that time, a massive solar flare could his our planet (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPdqr2v1rTQ). According to Mr. Kaku, the last time the really big solar flare cycle occurred in the 1800's it knocked out telegraph capabilities all over the country. A solar flare of the size, called a coronal mass ejection, that even NASA is predicting has a 20% change of occurring within the next 10 years, could potentially knock out the power grids all over the world...permanently. If electricity ceased that suddenly, as it could if a coronal mass ejection of that size hit the Earth just right, planes would fall out of the sky, people on life support would not be able to survive, medicine could not be produced, automotive transportation would not be possible and food would become very difficult to acquire. All of this has the grand makings of a dystopian future that could make Suzanne Collins proud. If this should ever happen, we could potentially find ourselves back in the dark ages. But something to think about as you're falling asleep tonight: NASA's been trying to convince the government to invest a measly $100 Million in reinforcing our national power grid to protect against this and the government has thus far said, "Nah."

Economic collapse - It's pretty obvious that if the economy keeps spiraling downward the way it has been for the past several year, things could certainly get out of control. The government keeps printing money that has nothing to back it up, devaluing the America dollar with every stamp of the printing presses. Compound this reality with one of my least favorite things about society, the mass media, and it could become very difficult to buy the things we need to survive. Money only has value because people assign value to it and believe that it's worth something. The dollar is only worth the amount society says it is. If things get bad enough and the news starts telling people their money isn't worth anything, most people will believe it and stop accepting it. We'll be back to a barter system where the most important things, like food, will worth more than trivialities, like books and toys. How will we purchase fuel for our cars? How much will a meal for your family cost? What will you have to give up to feed yourself? Will trucks still transport food to stores in your neighborhood?

Global pandemic - In 1918, the Spanish flu killed 25 million people in 25 weeks and 50 million people by 1920. It spread that fast without all of the luxuries we enjoy today, like immediate global accessibility and traveling to other countries within a few short hours. A deadly disease that ravages society would spread even faster today. While technology has advanced enough that we are able to synthesize vaccines much faster than we could in 1920, it would still take time to develop a vaccine for a new virus and even more time to get to everyone who needs it. If this lapse in timing were only 6 months, that would still allow a killer virus to ravage a large portion of society. Under these circumstances, society as we know it could drastically change.

Civil uprising over loss of freedoms - A lot of people believe this is already happening; that we're losing too many of the freedoms that Americans have enjoyed for over 200 years. A large part of our nation would be willing to fight to keep those freedoms. After all, it's what our nation is founded on. If that were to happen, the government would certainly have no choice but to declare martial law to try to keep control. Once we have martial law...well, we can paint that picture many different ways. I heard a historian say, not long ago, that not since the Civil War have people been so divided and tempers been so ignited over political issues. Are we already closing in on this possibility? And would an uprising between such divergent philosophies result in the division of a nation?

The eruption of the super volcano in Yellowstone National Park - Scientists say that the super volcano that we know as Old Faithful is on a 600,000 year cycle. To make matters worse, the last time it erupted was 640,000 years ago. According to math I can easily do in my head, that means that the eruption of the super volcano in Yellowstone National park is about 40,000 years past due. According to those same scientists, if the Yellowstone super volcano does erupt, it could immediately destroy over half of the United States and send massive clouds of ash as far as New York City. The same distance in the other direction doesn't really matter, since all of that area would be destroyed in the initial blast. It could also create a cloud layer of ash in the atmosphere so dense that it could cause a nuclear winter, the climatic effects of which could change the course of life on Earth.

Nuclear attack or an EMP - Another potential dark ages scenario, an EMP could destroy all electronics and possibility of generating electricity for generations to come, but the nuclear fallout could do much worse. As a matter of fact, most nuclear weapons are specifically designed to send out an EMP - all the way to the horizon - that is so powerful there is no way to protect against it. Even with a coronal mass ejection from the sun, a sturdy enough faraday cage could possibly protect some electronics and power generating equipment. The EM pulse from a nuclear bomb would go through a faraday cage like wind through a butterfly net. If the blast or the fallout doesn't get you...

Meteor or asteroid hitting the Earth - Without questions, the least likely of the possibilities, so this will probably be the one that does it. Hundreds of new asteroids are found each year. NASA and the UK media even accuse as many of 47,000 large asteroids of being on possible collision courses with Earth. In 2013, one known asteroid is expected to pass closer to Earth than our moon. And because of budgets and technology and a dozen other reasons that all sound like excuses to me, the vast majority of our sky hasn't even been studied, yet.

     Despite the air of conspiracy theory, I can easily see that if things don't settle down and people don't start getting the satisfaction that they need from the government that's supposed to serve them, we might be headed for some kind of difficulty. It may not be so extreme that we'll be living in the Hunger Games, but it's not unrealistic to think that there may be some trials ahead.
     While I'm not the join hands and sing Kum Ba Yah kind of guy, I do think we need to pay attention to what we're doing and where we're headed. I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who said, "When people fear their government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty." I often find myself wondering what the balance of that scale is these days.

To check out my 4.8 star Young Adult fiction novel, Lincoln Nabb and the Bully's Father, visit the Amazon's Kindle store.

The Winner of the Amazon Gift Card Contest...

Congratulations to Ron Ellis. The winner of the Amazon Gift Card Contest. Ron posted a very nice review on the Amazon page for Lincoln Nabb and the Bully's Father.

I was recommended to get this book by a friend. This book really kept my interest all the way through it is a quick read and leaves you ready for the next book to come out. I am a huge fan of books with mystery and action, and this book has it. Can't beat it for the price, it is a great book to have. I can't wait to find out what happens next to Lincoln.

Thanks, Ron. You'll be receiving your Amazon $50 Gift card within the next week. And thanks to everyone who entered our contest and to everyone who posted a review.

On a totally unrelated note, a great Christmas gift idea for the people you love is the Kindle book Lincoln Nabb and the Bully's Father, available on Amazon.com.

Thanks For All the Kind Words...

I've been amazed at the feedback I've received on my book, "Lincoln Nabb and the Bully's Father," as to how it's spoken to people who have been victims of bullying or have others in their lives who have been victimized. In truth, freeing people from the persecution of bullying is something I'm very passionate about, but that aspect of the story was primarily a mechanism to demonstrate why Lincoln responds the way he does to his new found gifts and to show why he becomes the man of character that he eventual becomes. I'm so thankful that that part of the book has been able to touch so many lives. I'm hoping, as the story progresses in the coming volumes, that I can touch even more lives with the trials and triumphs of Lincoln Nabb.

You can read a few of these positive comments in the reviews section of Lincoln's Amazon page --> http://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Lincoln-Volume-ebook/dp/B0087XOTK4

A Way With Cats - By Tim Hall

When Lewis went in to barter for the guitar, the music store owner wouldn’t budge. He told him in no uncertain terms that the price was a non-negotiable: $350. This was a disappointment to Lewis, as he barely had $240 and had no means – at least in the foreseeable future – of coming up with any more. He was too young to get a proper job. His little brother had all of the mowing gigs in the neighborhood locked up and was raking in a small fortune. So there weren’t a whole lot of options for a 14 year old in a suburb like his.

Feeling a bit dejected, but nonetheless undeterred, he set out to walk back home. He’d heard his teacher say once that necessity was the mother of something or other. He’d never been big on all that school stuff, but in this case he thought that lesson might be useful, so he set his mind on finding a solution.

As he walked he thought of things he was good at, but none of those things would result in a reasonable amount of income. He’d heard about plenty of get rich quick schemes, but was smart enough to know that those rarely worked as advertised.

Before long he got bored – as 14 year old boys sometimes do – and skipped some rocks across the sidewalk. Then he fumbled through a storm drain and found a couple of army men that had most likely washed away from someone’s yard during the previous weeks’ rains. He detoured through the park and bounced a little rubber ball he found near the basketball hoops. Then he set up the army men and tried to hit them by bouncing the ball as high as he could and landing it on top of them. After ten or twelve unsuccessful tries, he gathered his two army men and began just bouncing the ball as high as he could and chasing after it.

The last time he bounced it was probably his highest bounce, but it shot off into the woods on its second or third bounce. He ran after it at full sprint, but wasn’t quite sure where it had ended up. He stopped looking for it when he heard the meowing.

A few feet away, in some tall grass, was a gray and black kitten trying to paw its way out of the long stems. It lifted its feet and swatted at the blades in funny ways that made Lewis stand and watch for a couple of minutes before stooping down and picking the little fella up and rubbing his head.

“Hey there, buddy,” he told the snuggling cat, “joo getcherself stuck in the weeds?”

The cat did not reply.

He carried him out of the woods and back to the street, continuing toward home. It never occurred to him the kitten might have an owner.

Along the way he petted and chatted with the cat. The cat meowed and tried to climb his arms and shoulders. They walked and played and Lewis named him Frito. As they passed the retirement home he laughed and tried to keep Frito from climbing around the back of his shirt.

Ms. Moles heard the laughter and called out to him. “What do you got there? A kitty?”

“Yeah,” Lewis told her, “I like animals and stuff alright, but not as much as guitars and music and stuff like that.”

Ms. Moles smiled and they petted Frito and laughed. When he tried to climb into her arms her giggles brought other retirees over to fawn over the kitty.

They isn’t he addorabled and aren’t you a pretty kittied and come here and let me give you kissesed him, while Lewis watched in awe at how easily this silly little cat brought so much joy to their hearts.

“You guys want him?” Lewis asked.

“Oh, no,” Ms. Moles replied. “We couldn’t take your cat.”

“You shush up,” Mrs. Keller told Ms. Moles. “If this young man wants to give us his cat you just leave him be.”

“It ain’t my cat,” Lewis explained. “Some dumb body left him in the woods. Besides, my momma’d throw me out with him if I came home with a cat.”

This seemed to make almost all of them giddy, so Lewis went on his way feeling pretty darn good about himself. He liked feeling good about himself. It made him feel like doing more stuff to make people happy.

At the drug store on the corner he bought a newspaper, a magic marker and a poster board. From there he made sure not to allow himself to get distracted and headed straight home.

At home Lewis took the markers and poster board and put them to good use, while he thumbed through the classifieds and circled the appropriate ads. When he circled all that applied, he picked up the phone.

“Hi, I’m calling about the kittens you’re giving away,” he told the lady who answered. “I’m trying to find kittens to donate to the retirement home for the people there to enjoy and I was wondering if you’d mind if I came by and got some of your kittens.” Short pause. “Awesome. Thank you. I’ll come by this afternoon and pick them up. What’s the address?”

He made eight more similar calls and jotted down the information he needed on a single sheet of paper. Then he went to his sister’s room and knocked on the door. She told him to go away, so he offered her $20.

“Just give me a ride around the neighborhood to pick up a few things and then I need to go to a store.”

“That’s it?” Stacy asked.

“That’s it. An easy twenty bucks.”

“Seems easy enough.” Then she slammed the door and yelled, “Gimme thirty minutes.”

Stacy was less than happy to drive him around, but he knew she needed the twenty bucks. She was even less happy by the time they got to the ninth house and Lewis walked up with his cardboard box and knocked on the door. When the lady answered he said, “Hi, I’m Lewis I called about the cats for the retirement home.”

“Yes,” the lady said. “I think it’s so sweet that you’re doing this,” she added, just like the others had. She put 3 kittens in his box and waved as he walked away.

“Thanks,” he shouted back. “My friends at the retirement home will be very happy.”

He put the box in the back seat and got in the passenger side.

“Where to, now?” Stacy asked.

“Toys R Us,” he told her, crossing his arms.

“Why Toys R Us?” she asked, looking confused. “And seriously, what the heck are you doing with all these cats?”

“Just trust me,” he said thinking.

They pulled into the parking lot and found a spot as close to the front door as possible. They had to drive around the lot a while because it was fairly busy.

He got out of the car and opened the trunk. The meowing of a few dozen cats rang out of boxes upon boxes, and he tossed in a few more toys to keep them occupied. They seemed happy to have so many friends to play with and the small light he had put in there allowed them to see one another clearly. He slid the poster board out from under them and closed the trunk softly.

He taped the poster board to the tripod he’d borrowed from his Dad. Next to the sign he set up a TV tray and put the box from the back seat on top of it, then opened up two folding chairs – also taken from the back seat – and offered one to Stacy. She stared at the sign for a few minutes, and then sat down.

“This is appalling and ingenious all at the same time,” she told him, opening a book and leaning back to read. “I’m embarrassed to be impressed.”

A little girl was walking past with her mother. She heard the cats myewing from within the box and stopped. ”Can I see,” the girl asked Lewis.

“Sure,” he said, pulling a gray and white out and handing it to her.

“Mommy, I want one,” she whined, holding the kitten up against her cheek.

 The mother looked at the sign. “$5.00?” she asked.

“Yep.”

The mother scrunched her face. “I don’t know, Missy.”

Lewis sat there smiling at the girl who was laughing and letting the cat climb on her. “It’s okay,” he added, reaching for the cat, “I’m pretty sure I can sell them all, so they don’t have to go to the pound. And even if I can’t, I think it’ll be about three or four days before the pound puts them to sleep, so there should be enough time for someone to adopt them.”

The little girl pulled away from him, hugging the cat. “Mommy, please?” She drew out the please, making it sound too cute.

“Well,” the mother said, “I guess so.”

“We should get Tippy one, too,” the girl added, making the mother groan.

“Alright,” said mommy. “Two I guess.”

Lewis took the ten and handed the second cat to the little girl who was yaying and excited. When they were out of ear shot, Lewis opened the trunk again.

“My brother, the idiot genius,” Stacy laughed.

Lewis took out two more cats and put them in the box. “The key is,” he told her, “to make sure you have three in the box at the same time, because it makes them look playful and cute.” He closed the trunk lightly. “Two, and they don’t play as much, but four or more can be complete chaos.”

Stacy laughed, and then laughed harder when she saw he was serious.

For the next several hours, passersby stopped and played with Lewis’s cats, Stacy finished her book, and children walked away gleefully with new little friends. When there were only two cats left, Lewis put them in the box and the box in the back seat. “Let’s go,” he said to Stacy.

“You still have cats.” She was surprisingly more patient about the whole thing after watching her brother in action. Almost like a psychologist observing a social experience.

“These are spoken for. One more stop.”

They drove out of the parking lot and Lewis pulled out twenty dollars and set it on the seat next to Stacy. Before long, they pulled up to the retirement home. No one was outside, now, as the sun was setting and it was starting to get dark. Lewis got out and walked to the front door. He opened it gingerly, careful with the box he was carrying under his other arm.

Several of the folks were milling around in the open area off to the side, so he walked into the midst of them and set the box on a table. Ms. Moles saw him and came over, holding the cat from earlier. She was followed by several others who were reaching over trying to pet Frito.

Ms. Moles started to speak, but Lewis took the two kittens out and handed them to ladies standing with her. They gasped and awed.

A younger woman in what looked like a nurses uniform walked over and tsk-tsked him. “You can’t bring animals in here, young man.”

“Like heck he can’t,” said a crotchety old man from across the room.

“Mr. Samples, there are rules to be followed.”

Mr. Samples stood up and caned his way toward them. “Most of the rules here stink. All this boy’s trying to do is bring some joy into our lives.”

“Mr. Samples,” the nurse said as if she were speaking to a child. “I’ve let you keep this cat. Don’t look a gift horse…”

“A gift cat,” Ms. Moles said and the others laughed.

“Okay, don’t look a gift cat,” the nurse corrected with a thin smile, “in the mouth.”

“It’s just a few cats,” another lady said, “and there’s nothing on cable.”

“Yeah,” a man next to Mr. Samples said, “first you block the good stuff on cable, now you block the cats,” and there was more laughter.

“Okay, okay,” the nurse agreed. Then she looked down at Lewis. “But no more, okay?”

“Okay,” Lewis said with a grin. He petted Frito and turned to leave as the gathering retired thanked and goodbyed him.

Lewis walked into the music store and set the money on the counter in front of the owner who took the guitar off the wall and cased it.

“And throw in a new set of string,” Lewis smiled. “And a strap and some picks.”

“Yesterday, you said you couldn’t afford it,” the owner said. “Were you just trying to talk me down?”

“Nope. I just started my own business,” he told him.

“And made that much in one day? If it’s legal, maybe I should get you to come to work for me.” The man was laughing as he counted out the stack of fives and tens.

“Nah, I think I’ll milk this for a while. You know anyone who’s giving away puppies?”

--The End

To read more by Tim Hall, check out his new book, Lincoln Nabb and the Bully's Father at http://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Lincoln-Volume-ebook/dp/B0087XOTK4.

Who is Lincoln Nabb - Bullies and Heroes

It was 2000 when I picked up my seven year old son, Josh, from summer child care and heard multiple accounts from teachers of how, while on a field trip, he'd hit a child in the leg with a golf club, and yet another child in the chest. Like any responsible parent, I was pretty concerned and determined to set this situation right. He and I marched out to the car and I buckled him in. I waited until I started driving to start the conversation, not on purpose necessarily, but I could tell it was making him anxious. He hadn't said a word since we walked out of the school.

I watched him in the rearview mirror for a minute and then asked him, “Did you hit a kid in school today?” Very meekly he said, “Yeah.” This was not in his nature at all. First, he wasn’t big for his age and second, he was a sincerely sensitive, big-hearted kid. At the same time, I realized that kids will be kids and there are times when tempers flair and these things happen. For that reason alone I wanted to find out exactly what happened before I doled out one of my world famously humiliating punishment-fits-the crime penances. The most recent of which had been when another child had dared Josh to pull the head off of a Barbie doll that belonged to the school and he’d done it. That night, during the 30 minutes that was allotted for video games, he had to take his allowance to the toy store and buy a replacement Barbie. He had to go through the line all by himself while I waited for him where I could see what was happening. If he was asked if he was buying the doll for a sister or a friend or whatever the clerk was destined to ask him, he had to say, “no.” He could only tell them he was buying it for his school and why, if he told them anything. He had to be honest. He was embarrassed, but he told me years later that he was always conscious of how he was treating other people’s things after that.

“Who did you hit?” I asked, beginning to feel a bit frustrated.

“Ronald,” he said, sounding ashamed.

I had heard that name several times since he’d started at that school. Was that one of his little friends? “Who was the other kid?”

“Just him.”

“Your teacher said you hit two kids.”

“I hit him twice,” he said in a voice that was so phenomenally adorable I almost laughed. The two fingers he was holding up didn’t make it any easier not to.

“Oh.” How do I respond to that? “Why’d you hit him?”

“I don’t know,” he told me, mumbling the words together.

“So you just hit him for no reason?”

“No,” he said, becoming even more quiet.

“So why’d you hit him, Josh? You know that’s not how you’re supposed to act.”

“Um,” he said a few times and then miraculously became a very energetic participant in the conversation. “So, we were playing putt-putt at Adventure Golf and Ronald kept not letting us play. And he kept kicking our balls away and pushing us down and then when I was trying to go he stepped on my golf ball and wouldn’t let me go and Miss Amy told me to go because I was holding up the line so I went and Ronald started crying and said I hit him.”

Well, this was quite a bit of information, but I was pretty sure after hearing it that I remembered why I’d heard Ronald’s name so many times before. He was the class bully.

“Did Miss Amy see Ronald standing on your golf ball?” I asked him.

“Yeah.”

“Did she tell him to stop?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Miss Carol told Miss Amy they aren’t supposed tell Ronald no anymore because his dad yells at them.”

Well, this was suddenly making complete sense. “And why’d you hit him the second time?”

“I was trying to go again and I he pushed Katie into me and she started crying and then he stood in front of me so I couldn’t go.”

“So you hit him?”

“No, Miss Carol yelled at me to go because everyone was waiting, so I had to go.”

“So you hit him?”

“No. I hit the ball and it hit him and he started crying.”

I smiled a smile that he couldn’t see from his seat behind me. Another moment came to mind, years earlier when he was a much smaller child and faced with a bully almost twice his size. He stood up for himself then, too, refusing to back down. “Is Ronald the kid that bullies you all the time in school?”

“Yeah,” he said, sounding somewhat ashamed to admit it.

“Why does he pick on you?” I wanted to know.

“He picks on everybody.”

“And the teachers don’t stop him?”

“Not anymore,” he said, looking out the window.

We drove the rest of the way home in silence. I was thinking about how much of an advantage this kid was going to have in life if he continued to refuse to submit to the bullies of the world and he, I was certain, was thinking about how horribly creative his punishment was going to be for this most recent transgression.

We got home and climbed out of the car. Josh rushed ahead of me toward the house, then stopped and walked back. “Am I going to get in trouble?”

“Do you think you should get in trouble?”

“No,” he said earnestly.

“Why not?” I asked just as earnestly.

“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging.

“Well,” I said legitimately concerned about stunting my child’s will to stand up for himself, “I don’t either.”

His eyes turned into golf balls and his mouth dropped open. “You don’t?” he asked.

“No, I don’t,” I told him. “You shouldn’t hit people, Josh, but I like that you stand up for yourself when someone bullies you or your friends. And it sounds like your teachers have just left you and the other kids out to dangle in front of this kid with no support. If you start a fight,” I added, just as my father had told me many years before, “you’ll will be in a lot of trouble, you know that, right?”

“Yeah,” he said looking at the driveway.

“But I want you to stand up for yourself, so no, I’m not going to punish you.”

His sense of relief was more than obvious when he ran into the garage and grabbed his skateboard. I’d been chuckling to myself all week about how his stories of his amazing skateboarding abilities did not quite match up with his actual participation in the sport. He had been bragging for weeks about the tricks he was performing, but when it was “show time” he tended to fall down a bit more than he completed any of them. I chalked this up to his very active imagination and his desire to be more than just a typical kid. I grew up feeling this way and I took that hope with me into adulthood. That hope to be more than typical is in big part responsible for many of my successes. So while I cautioned him to be careful not to let his exaggerations progress into lying, another part of me believed that the “hotshot kid” in his exaggerations was how he saw himself and I wanted to encourage him to grow that visualization into reality.

And that was the moment the spark lit the match.  Standing there watching my son try his hardest and imagine himself greater I realized he was already a kind of hero. The little kid who never backed down from a bully, and was willing to work hard enough to become the action star he dreamed of being.

And then I wondered, what would happen if this kid suddenly developed superpowers?

To read the adventures that were inspired by this young man, visit Amazon: Lincoln Nabb and the Bully's Father