You’ve always wanted to write a blockbuster novel, and you came up with a great premise how a superpower country could be conquered without the citizens being aware it was happening.
I’ve previously suggested this idea, with China as the focus, but I think this notion can expand even more based upon the limitless amount of material provided each day.
To start with, you could call this blockbuster novel “Conspiracy.” For the strategy to work effectively, the conspiracy has to be a slow cooking process, like the frog in the boiling pot. You begin by embedding the dark forces into positions of power and allow them to become accepted, slowly making changes to undermine the foundation of the country but not enough for anyone to really notice.
If they do, in your novel, you make sure any negative “misinformation” or “disinformation” is quickly buried by a friendly complicit media.
The initial phase of the takeover is to impose thousands of new regulations every year to hinder economic growth; from growing food to producing energy to making it more difficult for small businesses to operate. This part of the overthrow is easy because it happens incrementally. People might complain, but most will shrug their shoulders and move on, learning to adapt with the new burdens.
However, after a while, your made-up country starts to slowly suffocate under the myriad of rules. It begins to slow down and take a toll on business profits and the ability to survive. Businesses begin to choke on the restraints.
Your novel will demonstrate how regulations will undermine the energy sector. The damage will hide on the pretext on how the world is in crisis because the weather keeps changing. Those regulations will tug and tug on developing and improving the power sources for the country to provide its requirements of electricity to maintain a first world status. Without advancing and improving the power grid, electric cars can’t be charged, you can’t switch on the lights. Attacking the coal and gas industry will reach a life-threatening state, and the dark forces will appease the masses by promising false alternatives.
In your novel the “dark force” will continue to use the weather to slow and even halt oil production. This is perhaps their most powerful weapon, fear. A shift in political power, as a new leader takes over, planted by these dark forces, will make certain oil production is quickly reduced, if not halted. The oil reserves, needed as a safety valve in case of war are depleted, placing your country in even more danger.
The dark side suddenly realizes time may be against it and accelerates its goals while it’s still in power. The dark side no longer remains in the shadows but steps out and reveals its agenda.
Your book will have the new leader be the front man who dismantles as much of the country’s foundations as rapidly as possible. Your story will show how he will allow millions of people to enter your country so quickly that it will be impossible to stop the human tide and the altering complexion of the human landscape. It is the hope of the dark side to use the millions of new bodies from foreign lands to vote in their allies and thereby make certain they stay in power indefinitely.
An even darker force emerges from overseas and unleashes a sickness that circles the world. In your novel, the dark forces take advantage of this gift.
Your prose has the evil militias use the medical world, doctors and politicians to assert a power over the people beyond anything the world has ever seen. Businesses are destroyed, lives are devastated, crime soars. In your novel, the plan to destroy the country is beginning to reach its climax. Your “new” government takes guns from the citizenry but allows criminals to roam the streets and burn down the cities.
You augment how the dark side aids and abets the criminals by reducing, if not doing entirely away with, law enforcement. However, criminals are permitted to keep their weapons. The population twitches in fear and cowers to the new world order. Chaos is growing, and your plan is working.
The caveat of the takeover is to reduce and hinder the production of the most critical element of all, food.
Unbeknownst to the populace, the darker forces from overseas have gained control of large swaths of your imaginary country’s farmlands, ultimately to be used for their own people. Home-grown farmers have been nearly overregulated out of existence or to the point where profits are marginal at best.
Your make-believe country has become reliant on other nations for food when at one time it was entirely self-sufficient. In order to speed up the takeover and frighten the population even more, food processing plants are being destroyed under the guise of coincidental accidents. When the public takes notice, shelves in grocery stores thin out, and the price of food soars even higher. You couple that with an enormous rise in energy costs, and the ultimate goal of creating panic and controlling the country has nearly been reached.
The leaders of the dark force attempt to assuage the nervous nation to keep them under control. You come up with a plan to have them print trillions of dollars and offer free money and the promise of more stuff and better things to come. This, however, creates runaway inflation.
But you have that base covered as well. You place the blame of all their ills on events thousands of miles away and the people buy it.
In your novel, the populace settles down a bit on the reassurances from its leaders that brighter days are just around the corner. Your novel clearly conveys that the public needs to be patient. The government is there to protect them.
In reality the government in your imaginary apocalyptic novel is cloaked in sheep’s clothing and concealing a Cheshire grin, poised to take that final chomp down on your neck.
Henry Schulte welcomes questions or comments at hschulteopinions@gmail.com.
