In Case of Zombie Attack, Head for Arkansas
This is a true story. I was a reporter assigned to cover a Rosenberg City Council meeting because I was in trouble again. You cannot imagine the amount of trouble I got into as a reporter … well, maybe you can … and was sent to cover city council meetings as punishment.
So, the council was deciding on buying some new equipment for the fire department. The fire chief had prepared a need list and a want list. The things on the need list were the things he absolutely needed to put out fires and protect his fire fighters. The want list was to include things he wanted but didn’t absolutely need. You could, after all, push a fire truck to a fire if it was so old that the motor wouldn’t start.
On the need list was a 60 foot ladder extension for a new firetruck. One of the councilmen asked why the city needed a ladder for a six story building when the tallest building in town is three stories?
The chief honestly and sincerely replied, “Because you never know.”
Think about that one. When he was met with quizzical looks, he dug deeper, “You don’t. You just never know.”
Well, except sometimes you do.
For example, I know for a dead certain fact that the coroner of Sharp County, Arkansas, is highly unlikely to ever get guff from his customers, discounting, of course, a major zombie attack.
Doug Wortham used a Defense Department giveaway program for law enforcement to stock his office with an assault rifle, a handgun and a Humvee – even though the people in his custody are in no condition to put up a fight.
They’re dead.
Wortham is the Sharp County, Arkansas, coroner. He says the Humvee helps him navigate the rugged terrain of the Ozarks foothills, but he struggled to explain why he needs the surplus military weapons he acquired more than two years ago.
“I just wanted to protect myself,” he said.
How about a Jeep and a surgical face mask? I’m tellin’ ya, he should have mentioned the zombie thing.
But that’s just the beginning.
Military-grade weapons have gone to government agencies that enforce gaming laws at Kansas tribal casinos and weigh 18-wheelers in Mississippi, to the Wyoming Livestock Board and the Cumberland County Alcoholic Beverage Control Board in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Other military surplus items have been bestowed on an animal control department in Cullman County, Alabama; a harbormaster in Dartmouth, Massachusetts; and the California Assembly’s Sergeant-at-Arms.
What the hell is the punishment for buying a tasty alcoholic beverage at 2:01 am in Fayetteville, North Carolina? If they need military grade weapons to enforce it, remind me not to bar hop in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
They have unruly tribal casinos in Kansas?
Okay, I totally get the California Assembly’s Sergeant-at-Arms, because you never know.
Y’all, can’t we get the defense contractors to start making something useful to give away? You know, like schools or big ladders?
Thanks to Brian for the heads up.
How about if the feds stop giving away military grade weapons? Law enforcement doesn’t need them and neither does anyone else that is not part of the military. And if the military has excess to give away then they certainly don’t need new weaponry. I’d suggest ‘use it or lose it’ like they do with budgets except that the Pentagon would probably get involved in more wars just to use up the excess, wasting even more of our taxes.
1The California Legislature’s Sergeant-at-Arms has a point: without military-grade weaponry, he’s be a Sergeant without arms…
2I hear there’s a market for scrap metal that would make a whole lot more sense than this giveaway program.
3@Miz JJ and others:
41. Why handgun and surplus rifle? Because the Zombies aren’t going to kill themselves.
2. But, I’d rather turn to the Zombie side than go to or through Arkansas again. I spent 4 years there one night. Not doing that again.
Hd a brother in law who fell in the water at Bull Shoals in Arkansas while fishing. He never went back there, either.
5You folks haven’t been reading the text books. Zombieland always starts with one patient with an exotic virus (think Dallas). Then the government sends in an untested cure (think Dallas). The cure turns everyone into zombies. You best go buy a few thousand rounds of ammo and be ready. Besides that Mexico has decided to join UN peacekeeping forces, so they might send blue helmets across the river to get your guns. I ain’t paranoid, just retired with nothing to do except read free Kindle books.
6What’s the reason we can’t beat these swords into plowshares instead of regifting them to animal control and school districts?
7Stupid as this all is, I have a feeling that the DoD alternative would be leaving the very expensive tax-payer-paid-for equipment to rust and rot. Or maybe sell it to the next ISIS who’ll be using it against our troops in another ten years.
How come the anti- “waste, fraud, and abuse” yellers never point fingers at the DoD, which wastes, frauds, and abuses more money than probably the rest of the federal government put together?
8I can answer the city council question, because fire departments get called to help in other towns besides their own. So, you never know.
So, too, the zombie question: C’mon, it’s Arkansas, home of people who unquestioningly follow Mike Huckabee like strays after a hotdog cart, plaintively growling for that which they lack “brains….brains….”
The bad news is, folks, that in real life, the ZOMBIES are armed.
9The scary thing is that this giveaway program is actually slightly less terrifying than the U.S. practice of giving military-grade weapons to any “moderate” insurgents they’ve supported in the past.
The U.S. is a major arms dealer and a lot of U.S. soldiers have been attacked with U.S. weapons.
10As zombies eat brains, perhaps that coroner in Alabama doesn’t view zombies as a threat…
11If we don’t have a war to fight we still have to keep the production lines humming along. We certainly wouldn’t want to find ourselves in a shooting war with nobody ready to crank out the needed weaponry. Why look what happened with the Space Shuttle program after the production line shut down — there was no way to keep the old birds flying because you couldn’t get replacement parts anymore. And I’m sure that coroner will find a good use for those guns. And that Humvee is going to do its part to keep the oil companies in business.
12Pennsyltucky Don: I believe that is exactly what this coroner has in mind. More guns keep HIS production line humming along, especially with a militarized police force in a society where the battle lines between the haves and have-nots are getting starker.
13daChipster, I agree with your point; additionally, along with the disparate wealth distribution, if obtaining food for the middle class becomes truly difficult, the pitchforks are likely to come out. With over 300 mil guns here not including the military, if the shooting starts IMO ISIL will look tame because whichever side prevails, they will have to eliminate the losers and everyone associated with them in order to avoid a future vengeance as has happened so many times in history.
14Is there really any difference in principle between the taliban, isil, and our religious christinist fanatics except for body count?
Didn’t this guy see World War Z?
15If I had my druthers, even the military would not be entitled to most military-grade weaponry. It has NO business anywhere in civilian life, ever, and that includes every police force in every US jurisdiction of whatever size. That tiny towns have SWAT, that troop transports and tanks are being divvied up among city, town, and state police forces is wrong, wrong, wrong. Read Radley Balko’s excellent ‘Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces.’ A SWAT team deployed to serve a drug warrant in Georgia threw a flash-bang grenade into a playpen where a 19 month old baby was sleeping. I just found out the grand jury declined to prosecute, so the feds (whose fault all this hardware is in the first place) are looking into it: http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/07/us/georgia-toddler-stun-grenade-no-indictment/index.html
16Conner, how can you stand the free Kindle books, they are awful! Go ahead and spend $1.98, or better yet get someone at the library to connect you to them, so you can borrow. I know this isn’t on the subject. The whole Zombie vs military grade (whatever that is)weapons is too bizarre to even contemplate.
17The cost of this madness is always someone’s life…the so called collateral damage…so as this infant grows up and goes through life with a prosthetic nose…no sense of smell to help him to orient himself, to enjoy food, to take time to smell the roses (or the napalm in the morning–since rage could send him to become what damaged him/her) and so far there has been no path of recourse…how many “terrible accidents” more do we need to get the crazy “plunderer/rapist/taker” mindset changed to “nurturer/protecter/conservator” so that the people and the land can flourish?!
18I’m so sick of it…
In addition to the threat to human life, the cost of maintenance and insurance will be astronomical and Arkansas is one of the top 3 poorest states. How can they justify the cost to just have that stuff sit around when their people are starving and don’t have health insurance. Mindlessness will destroy them.
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