The Doomsday Government: Preparing for the End of the World, Not the End of Power

The Doomsday Government: Preparing for the End of the World, Not the End of Power

John W. Whitehead

This time of year, there is no shortage of monsters to frighten us.

Hollywood has given us vampires, zombies, mad scientists, masked killers and creatures that emerge from the darkness to prey upon the unsuspecting.

But perhaps the most frightening monster of all is the government that has become so accustomed to wielding extraordinary power that it cannot imagine a future in which that power is diminished

Enter the Doomsday Plan.

Imagine it: The power grid goes down. Supply chains collapse. Communications fail. Cities are plunged into darkness. Ordinary Americans are left scrambling for food, water, medicine and shelter.

Not to worry, though. The government has a plan for the coming apocalypse.

Unfortunately, the plan seems to have more to do with keeping the police state operational than keeping the American people alive.

In what sounds like a plot lifted straight out of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, the Pentagon has unveiled an initiative designed to keep the war machine running even if a catastrophic war devastates the country’s civilian infrastructure.

Under an initiative called FORTRESS, the military is preparing major installations across the United States to operate independently for at least 90 days in the event of a catastrophic disruption. The plan includes portable nuclear reactors, independent power grids, stockpiles of fuel and ammunition, backup communications systems and arrangements for civilian factories to switch over to wartime production.

The Pentagon calls this preparedness.

The rest of us might reasonably wonder: what good is a government that can survive the end of the world if the people it was created to serve cannot?

This is the dark absurdity at the heart of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Kubrick’s 1964 satire about a collection of military commanders, politicians and bureaucrats who bring the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation while congratulating themselves on their strategic brilliance.

As civilization faces extinction, the men in charge begin discussing how a select portion of the population might survive underground in mineshafts, eventually emerging to rebuild civilization.

Naturally, the planners envision themselves among the survivors.

The resemblance to the present day is difficult to ignore.

Indeed, it sometimes seems as though the Trump administration has been watching every dystopian film and Cold War nightmare ever made and mistaking the villains for role models

George Orwell’s 1984 gave us a surveillance state that watches everything and everyone. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New Worldimagined a population conditioned into compliance. John Carpenter’s They Live exposed a society manipulated by hidden powers, while Escape from New York envisioned an America where whole populations could be abandoned to incarceration and decay.

These works were supposed to serve as warnings.

Yet the machinery of government increasingly resembles the very dystopias they cautioned against: mass surveillance, militarized policing, automated systems of control, a presidency claiming ever-expanding authority, and now elaborate preparations to keep the military functioning in the event of societal collapse.

Of course, governments have a responsibility to prepare for emergencies. No reasonable person would argue otherwise. But there is a world of difference between preparing to protect the nation and preparing to preserve the power of those who govern it.

That distinction matters, especially when the same government that prepares for catastrophic war also helps create the conditions in which such wars become not only likely but imminent.

For decades, presidents of both political parties have pursued policies of military expansion, foreign intervention, escalating confrontation and permanent national emergency. The result has been an increasingly militarized national-security state that operates with fewer meaningful restraints and demands ever greater sacrifices from the American people.

We have been told that these extraordinary powers are necessary to keep us safe.

Yet the government’s answer to nearly every crisis—war, terrorism, civil unrest, economic instability, public health emergencies—has been more government power, more military involvement, more surveillance and fewer constitutional protections.

Now the Pentagon is planning for a world in which the civilian infrastructure that sustains ordinary Americans may no longer function.

What happens then?

The government’s answer, at least in the newly announced FORTRESS initiative, is to make sure the military can continue fighting.

But what about the rest of us?

If the electric grid collapses, who will restore power to civilian communities? If hospitals lose electricity, who will keep patients alive? If food and medicine stop moving through the country, who will feed the population? If communications fail, how will families find one another? And if civil institutions cease functioning, who will ensure that emergency military authority does not become a permanent substitute for constitutional government?

This is precisely the kind of future the Pentagon is anticipating.

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European Leaders Pick Up the Phone and Call Putin

European Leaders Pick Up the Phone and Call Putin

Martin Armstrong

Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre have finally done something that should have been happening throughout this entire war. They picked up the telephone and spoke directly with Vladimir Putin. 

On October 27, the two leaders initiated a conversation with the Russian president to discuss ending the war in Ukraine and restoring some degree of stability to Europe. What makes this development particularly significant is that Finland and Norway stated explicitly that they were acting as leaders of their own nations, rather than claiming to represent Europe as a whole. 

Imagine that. Two national leaders recognizing that they have a responsibility to protect their own people rather than waiting for Brussels to tell them whether they are permitted to speak to Moscow.

Stubb described the conversation as “frank and substantive” and acknowledged that Finland and Norway share borders with Russia and will be directly affected by the outcome of this war. 

He stated that ending the conflict requires direct discussions. That should be obvious to anyone who understands diplomacy. How can Europe possibly negotiate an end to a war when so many of its leaders have refused to speak with one of the principal parties? The European political establishment has spent years announcing sanctions, military aid packages, and increasingly ambitious security commitments. Yet the basic act of maintaining communication with Moscow has become so controversial that a telephone call between heads of state is now treated as a remarkable diplomatic breakthrough.

What makes Stubb’s decision especially interesting is his own record. When he was elected president in February 2024, he declared that Finland would not restore high-level political relations with Russia until the war ended. In February 2025, he delivered a speech in Kyiv in which he argued that Putin could not be trusted and called for continued sanctions, military assistance, and pressure upon Moscow. He has been an outspoken supporter of Ukraine, Finland’s NATO membership, and stronger European security arrangements. This is hardly a politician who has spent the past several years defending the Kremlin. Yet he now recognizes that direct communication is necessary if the war is ever going to end. That change in diplomatic approach deserves attention because it acknowledges the practical limits of trying to isolate a major military power indefinitely.

Norwegian Prime Minister Støre has been more consistent on this particular issue. As far back as October 2022, he warned the Norwegian parliament that the lack of direct communication with Russia was dangerous because it reduced the prospects of a negotiated settlement and increased the risk of further escalation. Norway shares a 198 km land border with Russia, along with a much longer maritime boundary in the Arctic. These countries cannot simply relocate themselves because politicians in Brussels dislike their neighbor. In May 2026, Støre again emphasized that Norway’s relationship with Russia must balance national security with the geographical reality that the two countries will remain neighbors. His government has supported Ukraine and maintained sanctions, but it has also recognized that certain practical contacts with Moscow remain necessary.

This is the fundamental problem with the European Union’s approach to foreign policy. The European Commission is not a sovereign nation. Its president is selected through the EU’s institutional process rather than directly elected by the population of Europe. 

The Commission nevertheless exercises considerable influence over sanctions, economic policy, and the political positions advanced in Brussels. National governments retain important foreign-policy powers, particularly in security matters, but European leaders have increasingly attempted to present a unified position on Russia. 

Unity can be useful when countries genuinely share the same interests. It becomes far more complicated when governments are discouraged from pursuing diplomatic contacts necessary to protect their own populations.

Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen immediately criticized the Finnish and Norwegian initiative, complaining that the two countries had acted independently rather than coordinating with the rest of Europe. She questioned what they expected to accomplish and argued that Europe should speak with one voice. 

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How Debt-Free Families Still Pay a Price for Washington’s Debt

How Debt-Free Families Still Pay a Price for Washington’s Debt

Peter Reagan

There’s a special satisfaction that comes with paying off your mortgage, isn’t there?

For most Americans, it’s one of the biggest financial milestones of their lives. No more monthly house payments. No more worrying about mortgage interest rates. The house is finally yours, free and clear.

Maybe you’ve paid off your vehicles, too. And maybe you pay your credit card balance in full every month.

Congratulations! You’ve achieved a degree of financial independence that a lot of Americans spend their entire lives working toward.

But here’s something you may not have considered…

You can pay off every dollar of your own debt and still suffer the consequences of somebody else’s borrowing.

Especially when that somebody happens to be the federal government.

See, Washington doesn’t borrow from some separate financial universe. It competes for financing in the same economy as the rest of us.

And when Washington borrows money on the scale we’re talking about today, the consequences can reach much further than most Americans realize.

Even those who don’t owe anybody a dime.

According to an October 17 report from Fortune, the federal government spent a staggering $1.05 trillion on net interest payments during the fiscal year 2026.

That’s approximately $2.9 billion every single day.

Now, I want to make an important distinction here.

That $2.9 billion a day isn’t how much Washington is borrowing. It’s how much Washington is paying in interest on money it hasalready borrowed. And already spent (or wasted, or lost).

To put those numbers in perspective, interest on the federal debt is now the third-largest category of federal spending, behind Social Security and Medicare.

Interest payments consumed 14% of the entire federal budget in fiscal 2026.

Think about that for a moment. More than one dollar out of every seven spent by the federal government went toward servicing its existing debt.

Not building roads. Not maintaining bridges. Not providing medical care or Social Security payments. Not building Tomahawk missiles or paying disabled veterans’ benefits.

Just paying interest.

And according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s estimate cited by Fortune, those interest costs reached consume the largest share GDP ever – surpassing the previous record set in 1991.

The problem is what happens when enormous, persistent deficits require enormous, persistent borrowing – year after year after year.

And here’s where the consequences become personal.

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How Will The Results Of The Election In Israel Affect The War In The Middle East?

How Will The Shocking Results Of The Election In Israel Affect The War In The Middle East?

Michael Snyder

The polls were wrong again. So were the prediction markets. Just two days after the results of the election in Brazil stunned the world, Israel delivered another shocker. All of the experts were assuring us that the Yashar party led by Gadi Eisenkot would get the most votes, but that isn’t what happened. Instead, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud received the most votes by a pretty wide margin. Unfortunately for both Eisenkot and Netanyahu, neither of their coalitions have won enough seats to form a new government. So what will happen next, and how will this affect the war in the Middle East?

With more than 85 percent of the vote counted, it was being projected that Netanyahu’s coalition will win 53 seats and Eisenkot’s coalition will win just 48 seats…

The Central Election Committee (CEC) said Wednesday afternoon that with 85.6 percent of ballots counted, the bloc led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was poised to win 53 seats in the 120-member Knesset, and the bloc led by Yashar party chair Gadi Eisenkot would win 48 seats, leaving both blocs far from a 61-seat majority.

These results are a crushing disappointment for supporters of Eisenkot.

His coalition was supposed to win the most seats by a comfortable margin.

Now we are potentially facing a deadlock, because the other 19 seats were all won by Arab parties…

The Arab-led parties — the Joint List and Ra’am — held between them the remaining 19 seats, an all-time high and almost double their current 10 seats. This would be more than enough to tip the anti-Netanyahu bloc into a comfortable majority, if all Zionist bloc members except The Democrats hadn’t ruled out cooperating with Ra’am or the Joint List.

There is no way that Netanyahu would ever form a government with the Arab parties.

If Eisenkot broke his word and tried to do so, two of his most important allies would immediately bolt and his coalition would crumble.

So it appears that we will either see a unity government or there will be another election.

There are thousands of votes that still need to be counted, but they are not expected to significantly alter the results…

In its update just after 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, the CEC said 85.6% of total votes had been counted, representing the results from 92.9% of ballot boxes.

While the results were not final, they weren’t expected to change dramatically, and it was expected that the figures, which had been updated regularly since early Wednesday morning, would not be updated again until Thursday.

Needless to say, this is considered to be a victory for Netanyahu.

It is likely that he will either continue to serve as prime minister in a unity government or as a “caretaker prime minister” until a new election can be held.

The voter turnout percentage for this election was 77.7 percent according to the country’s Central Elections Committee.

That is the highest level of voter turnout since 1999.

Israeli voters flocked to the polls in huge numbers because they realized that so much was at stake.

The U.S. and Israel have both been making extensive preparations for a new campaign of airstrikes in Iran, and it appears that the war in the Middle East is about to go to an entirely new level.

During the campaign, Netanyahu repeatedly stated that regime change in Iran is his goal, while Eisenkot assured voters that he would not seek to topple the Iranian regime…

Netanyahu has long pushed to topple mullahs in the Islamic Republic. Eisenkot agrees that Iran must never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, but has said regime change is unrealistic.

“Eisenkot has stated that he would not seek to bring about the fall of the regime in Iran,” said Yossi Mansharof, an expert on Iran for The Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy.

That was one of the starkest differences between the two candidates.

If Eisenkot had been victorious, he would have sought to make some sort of a bargain with Iran…

Observers believe that if Eisenkot takes power — which would likely require an alliance with Arab parties — he could push to make a deal that would enrich Iran in exchange of nuclear concessions.

“Netanyahu would not agree to such an arrangement, understanding that a nuclear deal would prolong the regime’s lifespan,” Mansharof said.

Iran was never going to make any significant nuclear concessions, so Eisenkot probably would have ended up fighting Iran anyway.

On election night, Netanyahu made it exceedingly clear that he intends to finish the job in Iran once and for all…

Netanyahu carried that theme into his post-election address early Wednesday, telling supporters that Israel and the United States now had a historic, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to eliminate the Iranian threat.

“Iran is weaker than ever, Israel is stronger than ever,” Netanyahu said, portraying the moment as an opportunity to finish the confrontation alongside Trump.

Of course the Iranians will do whatever they feel is necessary to survive.

So the stage has been set for an apocalyptic showdown.

On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal was reporting that the U.S. has informed our allies in the Gulf that “a short, intense military campaign” is coming following the midterm elections…

The U.S. has told several Gulf Arab countries to be prepared for a short, intense military campaign after the U.S. midterm elections, people briefed on the conversations said.

The communications through diplomatic and military channels are among a growing number of indications that the U.S. and Israel are readying to launch a new round of heavy combat operations against Iran, risking a major escalation in hopes of degrading Tehran’s strength and pushing it toward negotiations.

The midterm elections in the United States are in less than a week.

So the clock is ticking.

Apparently officials from Qatar presented one last peace proposal from the Trump administration to the Iranians, but the Iranians were not impressed with it at all…

The Iranians are never going to agree to the nuclear concessions that the Trump administration is seeking.

They can present the same proposals to the Iranians 100 different times, and 100 different times they will fail.

There isn’t going to be peace.

Netanyahu is absolutely determined to end the regime in Iran, and Iran is absolutely determined to wipe Israel from the map.

So any pause in the fighting will only be temporary.

Iran is pledging to strike very sensitive targets in Israel and all over the Middle East.

If the Iranians push things too far, they could reach a point no return, and then we will have all-out war on our hands.

Perfect Storm For Banks... And The World

"A Lot Of Bad Things Happening All At Once": Rubino Warns Of Perfect Storm For Banks... And The World

 Greg Hunter 

Analyst and financial writer John Rubino has a new warning about the financial health of the global economy, and it's not good. 

Look no further than the most recent revelations of money problems at some of the biggest banks in the world. Rubino calls what we are facing is the "Perfect Storm" for banks. Rubino explains, "There are a lot of bad things happening in the banking sector right now kind of all at once..."

" So, you do have the potential for a perfect storm. I'll just go through a few of them. First of all, banks in the US own $4 trillion to $5 trillion in US government paper . . .. They use Treasury bonds as their safe asset. When interest rates go up, the price (or value) of the bonds goes down. This means there are a lot of unreported losses on bank balance sheets...

If those things find their way into earnings reports, which they will, then you have to count the losses. That is scary for the banks because they will have to report losses, and that spooks the depositors and you get bank runs. That is just there waiting to happen. Then, there are the subprime auto loans that are going bust at an accelerating rate... That's $1.7 trillion or so the banks have to worry about. Then, there are office buildings, and it's kind of the same thing. Office buildings are losing value. . .. 

So, banks are looking at more unreported losses there. . .. The really big one is the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. It needs massive amounts of new capital in order to build the new data centers. Private credit companies have financed this . . . and the big banks financed the private credit companies. 

So, if the AI bubble bursts, the big banks will be on the hook for a lot of that debt. Wherever you look, the banks have a lot of unreported losses sitting out there waiting for them to become reported."

But it's not just the banks facing a 'perfect storm.' It is countries like France, where communism and Islam have joined forces in the so-called "Islamo-Leftist Green-Red" movement. These Green-Red "protests" are in their second month. Do you think this destructive violence is good for the France banks or their economy? France has just had a credit downgrade, and if France fails, it could take down the Eurozone and maybe the global economy. Rubino says:

 "They are illustrating the validity of the saying 'import the third world and become the third world.' They are just not France anymore. Most of Europe has varying degrees of the same problems. Europe is not that far away from becoming a nuclear armed caliphate, which creates all kinds of problems for the US."

Meanwhile, the problems in France have already spread to the rest of Europe, and Rubino points out:

 "Europe was a bigger economy than the US, or at least it was. When you have trouble in an entity that is that big, nobody escapes the fallout. The European crisis is a global crisis."

Rubino contends, "The only way they can survive as a culture is to have a civil war and round up people who are never going to assimilate and deport them."

They want to do the same "Islamo-Leftist Green-Red" movement in the US after the midterm elections that is currently happening in France.

Rubino also does not worry about the recent sell off in gold and silver prices. He thinks this is just a price pullback in a much larger precious metals bull market. Nobody is going to be able to pay back any of the huge global debt accumulated by almost every country on the planet. Gold and silver cannot default, but bonds surely can.

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