How Latter Day Saints Save the World - Chapter Two

Chapter 2 - THE BOOK OF PREPARATION

“With the sword and by bloodshed the inhabitants of the earth shall mourn; and with famine, and plague, and earthquake, and the thunder of heaven, and the fierce and vivid lightning also, shall the inhabitants of the earth be made to feel the wrath, and indignation, and chastening hand of an Almighty God, until the consumption decreed hath made a full end of all nations. … Wherefore, stand ye in holy places, and be not moved, until the day of the Lord come; for behold, it cometh quickly” (D&C 87:6, 8).

In his heart Aaron knew most would die. He was being called; not literally by God, but by his place and time. We must live on, we must survive. This was the time when Mormons would inherit the earth, and take a quantum step toward the ultimate destiny of becoming the universe… But Mormonism would metamorphose, along with the human race.

The Council

Heeding the amplifying drumbeat of global disasters, LDS leadership was overall accelerating its already established preparedness. Aaron knew he was an outlier in preparing for a complete apocalypse, however. The general view was - a disaster would occur, most survive it, then start afresh with the same hierarchy and framework, eventually all would return to “normal.” This view, Aaron’s intuition told him, didn’t factor in what would happen in a global transformation.

He knew he could not build the Ark to Zion alone. The first order was to establish a core team, beginning with Mara. He needed her ingenuity, organizational skills, leadership, imagination and energy. Familiar with her father’s world view over thousands of conversations, she’d been a good listener and offered rational, nuanced perspectives. They had their differences, but managed to concur that humankind must prepare immediately and earnestly to withstand an imminent global showdown. Her view was that Aaron was preparing for a very real world-wide cataclysm that they needed to survive, and later, when stability returned, the real end days would come to pass when Christ returned to resurrect all beings -- living and dead. In terms of what had to be done, they were in complete accord. Mara would do whatever was needed of her to help save her people from this, the human-made apocalypse.

The hunt for the rest of the leadership/development team was on. Aaron reached out to his extensive circle of friends, colleagues, former employees, and church members. He plumbed their points of view. How much did they agree, how extensively were they willing to commit to this radical undertaking? Would they help design and construct a super shelter that would become an important resource for the extended community? Aaron was very careful not to share his blasphemous point of view. This was not to be End Times when God celestialized the world, as most Mormons, including Mara, believed. One by one, he engaged resourceful individuals who shared the belief of humankind in danger and were prepared to lend their talents and resources to Aaron’s project of extreme contingency planning.

Aaron, Mara, two skilled developers from STAMP (Bradley and Emily) and three LDS leaders with extensive backgrounds in organizational development of diverse industries (Thomas, Halle and Kathy) completed the leadership group, dubbed the Council. The LDS leaders were carefully identified and courted.

Kathy, a Chief Operating Officer at a consumer goods corporation was the first recruit. She met Aaron 8 years before as a customer of STAMP. Together, they oversaw development of a massive tracking system in her company’s huge, many tentacled supply chain. She was optimistic, and saw her talents being used to help the Bishop and his advanced experimentation with preparation.

Tomas, a retired Army major general was the next recruit. At 62, Tomas was the oldest member, and most cynical. He had a lifetime of experiencing the mechanistic ugliness of human behavior at a macro scale. He’d seen thousands of families wiped out – thrown to the mercies of strangers with only the clothes on their backs simply due to political aggression. While hoping for the best, he’d witnessed the animal nature of people and had no illusions about the limits of their cruelty and destructiveness. Moreover, he had extensive experience in managing the logistics of keeping thousands of people fed and supplied while far away from home. He also knew a bit about how to maintain cohesion and morale. He had an unfortunate habit of scoffing at ideas, and was often impatient. As long as the mission was clear, however, he could hold his opinion until a resolution was achieved. A talented devil’s advocate he challenged the Council to sharper focus. Once a decision was made by the Council, he supported it 100 percent.

Halle was a quiet, intense statistician. She saw everything from a numerical perspective and had a way of quantifying everything. Her view of mankind at this point was along the lines of a pile that kept growing until the angle of repose was so precarious, it threatened to collapse in its entirety. Every disastrous constant, like plastic in the ocean, thousand mile infernos, record setting typhoons, melting icecaps, social unraveling - each all made the pile ever steeper. Looking past all the details and noise specific to herself as a person, she viewed the totality of life on earth as a mathematical model with inputs, processing and outputs. Halle reduced all the activities and events to a simplified formula that would inevitably end in what she called “the great liquefaction.” This view was the basis of her joining the Council, and her viewpoint of the inexorability of collapse was closest to Aaron’s. Her value was validating the many quantitative elements of the overall project.

Mara was in her last year of her BS in biomechanics. She would have been preparing to seek jobs that were in alignment with an academic career, but Aaron asked if she would work with him. He told her it would be an intense effort, but offered tremendous opportunities for growth. Her involvement with the project could only accelerate her career and provide huge exposure to the functioning world, should it continue without disruption.

The Council was united to develop a means for a stand-alone habitat to carry a large number of people through a major, world-wide catastrophe. Each of them hoped they were wrong about the advancing menace they could see and feel, or it was an experiment for building capacity in preparation. Most agreed that they were addressing a real threat to their race that they would have to get to the other side to even make it to end times.

Aaron never divulged his belief that with a new ecosystem, humans would have to tailor their own species to be compatible with the greatly altered, and reduced circumstances. Natural selection over millennia to adapt to instantly new conditions was as good an option as it had been for the dinosaurs in the aftermath of the fateful asteroid strike that ended their reign. They would have to bypass natural selection and engineer necessary traits. Aaron was hopeful that the vast store of science and technology would enable genetic editing and artificial reproductive methods necessary. That was for much later, but he would ensure a well outfitted genetic lab in the Ark, along with an up to date store of the information needed to build a genetic practice.

The Council met twice weekly to plan in a large conference room of the AtoZ corporation offices in downtown Provo. The Council wrought an initial roadmap to establish a shelter to survive what was a worst case scenario - nuclear war that wiped out the biosphere. It served as scaffolding for the massive effort. Messaging was the first step. A project of that magnitude needed a public narrative, so the Council set about creating one.

It was easy. A critical component of complete self sufficiency was, of course, producing food, in an environment protected from weather, people, pests, and toxic atmosphere. An indoor farm was the obvious choice. An enterprise around indoor farming made for a brilliant cover story. They could build their super-shelter with its own food generation and protected environment openly as the farm startup.

A new company was launched around an underground vertical farm concept. It would be one of a genre known as deep farming - built in underground caves, tunnels or abandoned mines. This was to be an organization at the fore of developing super-efficient indoor agriculture. They would build a self contained, sustainable indoor farm, along with administrative and residential facilities, and A-to-Z was the name. The true meaning of A-to-Z, of course, was Ark to Zion. The Council was building a lifeboat that could carry people through the apocalypse. On the other side of global die-off would be Zion, home of the Latter Day Saints in continued fulfillment of God’s plan.

Yet A-to-Z signified any number of things. According to the Thesaurus, A-to-Z’s many synonyms included absolute, all-inclusive, comprehensive, intensive and plenty. The official line became “A-to-Z, a comprehensive food generation system. We grow a bounty of food using only sunshine, water and byproducts cycled back into production.”

A-to-Z was incorporated with Aaron as CEO, and Mara as COO. The outsized responsibility for a 21 year old recent university graduate did not faze Mara. Brimming with confidence, she dove into the role.

Next, with consulting architects and engineers, they designed a subsistent settlement that could on its own provide a comprehensive habitat for up to 300 people.

There were varying projected outcomes. If the cataclysm was complete, the Ark could provide a home indefinitely, as inhabitants found ways to expand their habitat. If the event turned out to be massively destructive but spared enough of the environment to recover… having a protected, self subsistent settlement would be a great resource for the broader community as they began rebuilding. If the worst case scenario manifested, the Ark would be the template for outward growth.

Aaron worked on constructing the Ark while continuing overall LDS preparedness of his ward. The development of the much more complex, higher tech Ark, in the guise of A-to-Z would be financed through Aaron’s personal fortune. Indeed, he would ultimately spend 73 million USD of his own money on the project.

Selecting a Site

It was a good time for comprehensive habitat design, with all of humankind’s accumulation of knowledge at the Council’s avail. From space programs to preppers, the ingenuity of millions of people had already devised any manner of survival system. The Council had but to review numerous designs and techniques, then choose, customize, build and test the most appropriate.

The Ark had to be isolated, out of plain view, difficult to access, underground and over an aquifer, with unimpeded access to solar and wind energy. An abandoned mine was a logical choice. One with large spaces sealed off from fire, weather, conventional attack and nuclear fallout would be ideal. Space was needed for storage, habitat and the actual farm. The location would also have to be accessible from Provo, but not so near as to make going there easy.
Most of Utah had aquifers slumbering below. Several in central and southern Utah had been compromised by years of extensive hydraulic fracturing. Geological records showed large aquifers in northern Utah that were still intact. They offered years’ worth of filtered, clean water that could be pumped from their sandstone beds.

Utah was riddled with defunct mines. The state had around 17,000 of them. One in particular held the most promise – an abandoned hard rock silver mine 180 miles North East of Provo in the grand Ashley National Forest, located somewhere between the towns of Dutch John and Vernal. The mine was perched on the Southwestern slope of Dyer Mountain at an elevation of 5,800 feet. Beneath it rested the vast Dakota Glen Canyon Aquifer system.

As a conglomeration of numerous claims, the site had been excavated and exhausted by hordes of miners since the 1870’s until its closing in 1936. The underground workings consisted of numerous tunnels, most of which were passages for a light gauge rail, and many large chambers. Other features that made the mine attractive included the relative lack of toxicity of silver. The last activity was over 80 years before, so the rocks had time to settle, and the surrounding ruins had been reclaimed by the forest. The drive there took about three hours on US-40 and US-191 N, then mostly single lane mountain roads. Difficult to get there, but that was the point. The final mile had to be rebuilt. A primitive road was hewn and smoothed through trees, shrubs and rocks.

A-to-Z Inc. wrangled a purchase from the Bureau of Land Management, making the case that they could rehabilitate and put to use a dangerous, underutilized site for innovative food production. The purchase was slow and costly, but A-to-Z’s legal team and the help of Aaron’s network of connections managed to accomplish its acquisition in a matter of five months.

Cleanup, and regulatory compliance inspections for permission to build took an additional two years.

Requirements

The Council brainstormed daily in the situation room of the A-to-Z Boardroom in Provo. Since this was a project with no precedent, the ability to capture novel solutions was explicitly built into the cultural design of the group. Together they were creative and pragmatic. Aaron let the team have free reign with ideas, as long as they progressed to fully defensible plans.

Building the Ark was analogous to building a space station. Space travel and the concept of colonizing other planets had concentrated vast resources and stimulated a lot discovery. It had focused the best minds for decades on developing ways to provision all of life’s essentials in a closed system. Considerations included necessities such as breathable air, clean water, energy and food; to everyday comforts, like clean clothes and personal hygiene; to tools and materials needed to build and maintain things. Materials used had to be non toxic, efficient and able to be continuously put back into service. Inhabitants would have to learn how to use, reuse and recycle nearly everything, and figure how to grow, harvest and live off their food. The Ark would also need to become a comprehensive toolshed, with equipment and materials available to fabricate or repair just about anything, and with people having the skills to do it.

But unlike the space program, there would be no intact home with boundless resources. Like early Tuvaluans, what they had would be all that they had. It was critical to choose well.

Initial Construction

With permission to build, construction began with clearing space within the mine, and in the surrounding rocks. Surveys measured the original mine area at around 118,000 square feet. It was a good amount, but only about two thirds of what was needed. Spaces were widened and heightened to standard proportions. Large chambers for storage and farming modules built into shipping containers were also excavated. Arching the ceilings provided additional support. Smooth concrete was poured over the floors. A lattice of passageways ensured easy, direct movement from area to area. Ceilings, wherever feasible, were opened up for skylights, being careful to keep them imperceptible on the surface.

Flow-through ventilation is the main ventilation circuit for the mine. Air enters the mine from surface via a shaft, ventilation raise or adit. The air is distributed through the mine via internal ventilation raises and ramps, and flows are controlled by regulators and permanently mounted ventilation fans. An auxiliary ventilation system takes air from the flow-through system and distributes it to the mine workings via temporarily mounted ventilation fans, Venturi tubes and disposable fabric or steel ducting. Auxiliary fan and duct systems may be either forcing systems, where fresh air is pushed into mine headings, or exhausting systems that draw out contaminated air.[3]

Air supply filters and fans for circulation were installed in vents harvesting the air outside and pushing it through the complex. The air would come in and be heated or cooled based on ambient temperature of the complex. The temperatures there would initially hover around 55 degrees, but it was planned to capture waste heat from lighting and running equipment.

The final usable floor area was 178,000 square feet, just over 4 acres. 46,000 square feet of area was allocated for habitation, the rest, 132,000 square feet was for storage, electronics, hydraulics, HVAC, facility control equipment, administration and the farm.

Engineering contractors set about excavating wells to the aquifer below. They installed a system of hydraulics to draw water from the aquifer to water storage units, all connected by a network of pipes running from source to use, to recycle and reuse.

Electric power was the backbone of the Ark. It was necessary for scores of functions, but survival itself depended on lighting, water pumps and ventilation. Energy specialists erected numerous wind turbines and solar panels higher up the slopes of Dyer Mountain where there was more wind, sun, and isolation. The wind generators were close to the ground, using cylinders instead of blades, greatly increasing stability. The panels and turbines fed the generators to batteries for storing energy. A web of wiring distributed electricity throughout the Ark.

Mara had never been involved with actual design and construction of a large facility. She dove into every aspect. The Ark was like a body being assembled – the HVAC pumps and vents were the respiratory tract, plumbing a combination of circulatory and digestive system, and electrical wiring the nervous system. Finally, the people were the brain. It was a useful concept for keeping each critical component in perspective. In a few months, Mara as a driving force was key to leveraging creativity and maintaining efficient progress.

Deep Farm

The two years of clearing compliance hurdles and pursuing permission to construct were not wasted. A-to-Z developed farm modules that would be placed in containers ready for assembly into the mine once permissions came through. There were 20 containers, each with vertical panels, or horizontal tiers. Each container offered two acres of concentrated growing space, totaling to 40 acres. They were wired for electricity, hydraulics, air filters and grow lights. All was monitored by sensors for air quality, nutrition, hydration, temperature and growth rates. Programs managed ventilation, lighting, feeding and watering. Despite the automation, there was plenty of human work to be done. Planting seeds, moving sprouts, clearing filters, harvesting, not to mention the work of recycling unused plant material, cleaning and maintaining the equipment.

<i?And again, verily I say unto you, all wholesome herbs God hath ordained for the constitution, nature, and use of man—Every herb in the season thereof, and every fruit in the season thereof; all these to be used with prudence and thanksgiving. (D&C 89:10–11)

Research and experimentation identified plants that would grow successfully, which methods were the most efficient, and had lowest maintenance requirements. The Council had been debating aeroponics vs. aquaponics. Aquaponics won out due mostly to the reciprocal benefit of farming fish to nitrify the water while at the same time providing a rich source of animal protein. Still, several containers would be aeroponic. A diversity of methods was considered wise if one should fail for an as yet undetermined reason.

The research and development team worked on the principle of “If it isn’t tested, it doesn’t work.” They grew plants, fish and mealworms in temperature and altitude conditions expected at the site. Air circulation, water use and management, power, food generation, waste recycling – the variables seemed endless, and all had to function together. Each component of the farm was developed, and tested separately, then as part of the entire system. This activity identified pitfalls their brainstorming did not uncover.

As with every element of the project, the Council and company benefitted from the mountains of knowledge from communities of practice around each area. An additional bonus was the broad based experience of the members. Kathy brought up the issue of vitamin D deficiency in an underground habitat. She worked out a way to include UV in most lighting. Aaron had a flash of anxiety thinking about having missed that preparation – the bone density loss, the depression, all the problems that came with vitamin D deficiency. The necessity of this vitamin was manifold. Without it, calcium couldn’t be metabolized. The source could be hazardous in the wrong quantities. There were 6 kinds of vitamin D to consider. Environment had to be included in the conversation around nutrition.

Food

The choice of what food to produce ... What could be grown, full lifecycle, in the farm to meet all the nutritive needs?
The ambient temperature of the mine was 56 degrees. Chilly, but an immense range of plants could thrive in that temperature.

The selection had to be nutritionally complete. There were 20 amino acids to provide, as well as a host of minerals and vitamins in specific proportions. Produce also had to be easily grown, and quickly, with at least 3 harvests a year. Three foods in combination selected met the requirements:

• Spirulina algae - Spirulina 3.5 billion years old – helped form our breathable atmosphere. Nutrient dense.
• Mealworms, easy to grow, store and distribute.

• Potatoes. High yielding, and super nutritious, was the glorious, delicious, versatile potato.

This grouping could provide the minimum nutrients necessary for survival.

But Food needed diversity. Alternatives had to be at the ready in case of a blight destroying all of one source. And - who knew for certain? – specialized trace nutrients might be missing, the lack of which could make everyone miserable. Thousands of candidates were reviewed. Sturdy plants with good nutritive value that grew easily and kept well became part of the A-to-Z assortment. Numerous types of fungi and yeast were collected and stored, along with a seed bank of thousands of trees and plants, because, one day, they might be put to use.

Experimentation included Moringa Oleifera, the most nutritious plant in the world. The trees didn’t tolerate the cold. Kale served much better, also a “superfood.” Yeast and fungi of many varieties were easy to produce. Grains were too difficult to grow in the farm to be worth the resources. Producing complex carbohydrates was considered too important to bypass, despite challenges, so special effort was applied in growing grains. The plant closest to grain that could be grown successfully in the farm was quinoa. It needed extra warmth for sprouting, but tests showed that, once a small plant, quinoa grew abundantly in 55 degrees ambient temperature. It was high in protein and could even be made into a kind of thin bread. On an experimental basis, Spring wheat was also being grown, initially per the process developed by NASA.

Mammals were not practical to maintain as a food source, with prohibitive feed and maintenance requirements. Mealworms and fish would provide all of the nutrients that a completely plant based diet lacked, like vitamin B12, creatine and carnosine. Fish weren’t in the original plan, but with the adoption of aquaponics, it became available as a nutrient source for both plants and people.

When clearance and preparation of the spaces was finally complete, and A-to-Z was ready to install the farm in the mine. One brilliant Spring morning, a convoy of 20 trucks, each hauling a prefabricated container arrived at the Ark staging area. The next three miles of transport were laboriously accomplished on a narrow, twisted dirt road using smaller 4WD vehicles adapted for hauling. A steel wire pulley system accomplished the final leg of transport, up 120 feet of steep, rocky slopes to the cargo entry. Inside, the container parts were pulleyed to their final locations and reassembled. Once hooked up to plumbing and electricity, the complete containers were tested. Some tweaking of course had to happen, then - celebration.

Designing a Home and the “Law of Health”

Once the interior spaces and configuration were finalized, and the farm was installed, it was time to concentrate on living quarters.

Design of the living spaces was informed by advance research, putting into full consideration social needs. What spaces and their uses would serve for health, comfort, community and hygiene? The essentials were addressed in the work and living areas: bathrooms, food storage and preparation, laundry and dormitories. The council hired a well respected architect, Giles Evert. He was best known for his minimalism and could be trusted to make every square inch of living space functional.

His architecture and design team worked closely with the Council. They explored nuances that turned out to be very important considerations. People needed to sleep, eat, wash and go to the bathroom, take care of personal effects and commune. Community at three levels was important - as a whole, in groups and as individuals. All would gather for church, announcements, meals and events. Groups assembled for work, projects, and social activities.

There would be a Meetinghouse that included a large Cultural Hall for full assembly gatherings, and a Chapel for worship services. The Meetinghouse also held several smaller spaces for classes, special ceremonies, baptisms and ordaining or sealing events, crafts, presentations and special projects. A simple scheduling system would coordinate all.
Individuals needed a little time and space for sleep and privacy to be used in as diverse ways as they wanted. 20 8’x8’ rooms would be available for a daily private hour per person per day, and other uses as they arose.

Giles argued that the personal rooms were unnecessary and a waste of precious area. Tomas took his side, arguing that “If this situation happens, there will be no privacy for any one and the sooner everyone understands that the better.”
But Halle strongly advocated for the rooms with most of the Council in agreement. She was a little testy when she told Giles “The space requirements have been well thought out and are not subject to revision based on uninformed opinion.”
“It will already be a nightmare. We should give people an opportunity to gather their thoughts and decompress. An hour alone to take care of oneself in peace isn’t too much to ask and would be so precious. If we have the space, we should do it.”

Aaron was, as usual, pragmatic and compromising. “From what we know at this point, we will need those spaces. If a more important use for them arises, they can be used for them, but for now, let’s build them.”

For 300 people, the residential area came to 19,020 square feet in the form of sleeping rooms with 8 x 8 feet per person for beds and a small amount of personal effects. The remaining habitation area was allocated for the Meetinghouse, including the chapel, functional rooms and Gym – 6300; privacy rooms – 1600; bathrooms and hygiene areas – 2000; food inventory, preparation and cleanup – 2500; health center - 1000. The final total was 32520 square feet. The balance of the habitation space was used for passageways.

Recruitment and Selection

Finding the right people for the Ark was as important as the technical, methodological decisions.
As a data devotee, Aaron at first attempted to outsource selection of Ark inhabitants to AI. Simulation was helpful, but still depended on the ability of the developers to identify every critical contingency. It would be impossible to know what would work without actual implementation. In selecting for the ark, they had to consider multi-level fitness. Everyone had to function well as an individual, group participant, and member of the broader community.

Agent-based virtual laboratory approach focused on developing and testing social interactions of groups of people going through models based on environment and resources. Various algorithms provided a list of traits possessed of people with the greatest chance of survival under projected circumstances of the Ark: close quarters, limited options for individual activities and rigorous duties. Models yielded insights as to the composition of the entire population, not simply characteristics of individuals. Cooperation and adaptiveness were critical; much more so than simple strength, physical endurance and even intelligence.

That recruits would be of one gender was a matter of long term success or failure according to thousands of scenarios playing themselves out in the agent based modeling. In terms of multi-generational survival of the group, the gender could not be other than female.

Individually, women were just as capable as men of being creative, strong and adaptive; as well as toxic and problematic, but collectively they differed in three very important ways.

First, physical dominance, sperm competition, and behavioral choices driven by testosterone and other androgens were biosocial liabilities of maleness. They served humanity well in times of scarcity - when resources and territory went to the most aggressive and strong. Now, however, even a ratio of one male to every four females would perpetuate vestigial, but no longer beneficial behavioral dynamics. Women lived more through supportive domestic cooperation, and had always played a critical role in suppressing themselves.

Second, women in general needed less resources. They were on average smaller and more resistant to disease.
Third, female was the gender of the uterus. A population of only men could not generate following generations, but women, and a sperm bank, could. Aaron, three of the Council and eight males on the subject matter expert team with unique skills comprised the small number of men. They could serve as sources of sperm without immediate threat of inbreeding. Eventually, asexual reproduction would displace the need for sperm altogether.

All candidates would be Mormon. That eliminated numerous liabilities. According to the Laws of Health:

• “Strong drinks (meaning alcoholic or other harmful beverages) are not for the belly.” (Doctrine and Covenants 89:7)
• “Tobacco is not for the body…and is not good for man.” (Doctrine and Covenants 89:8)
• “Hot drinks [meaning black tea and coffee] are not for the body.” (Doctrine and Covenants 89:9)

There would be no smoking, drugs or alcohol. Besides it being difficult to procure these non-essential substances, the associated behavioral and health issues would not be a burden. “Even the fact that Mormons don’t consume caffeine is useful,” Aaron thought, smiling, “Coffee and tea are too resource intensive to produce.”

Modeling was helpful for simulating scenarios, and offering general characteristics for populations. Further brainstorming, and a gaming program that played out various personality types in settings that would be similar in the Ark, demonstrated the types of people best for the situation. Aaron put a lot of store in the predictions, but Mara was skeptical.

She plugged in her own characteristics, and the AI program showed she was not a good prospect. She wrote several more profiles of people she knew well, and trusted. They also failed. AI was good at predicting macro behaviors, but questionable when it came to individuals. Situations were too variable at the granular level. Mara was a strong alpha. They were competitive and tended to take over teams or groups and were thus screened out. Groups of people needed all kinds of diversity, so, with the proper distribution, an alpha could be good for a group, but not more than a very few. All followers and no leaders meant paralysis at best, as did all leaders and no followers. A group of only creative right brained people in profusion would bring an organization to a grinding halt. Left brained, industrious types would work hard and get nothing done. Any AI would have to screen individuals in the context of groups.

Aaron finally conceded that they could not predict all of the potential human behaviors, and all of the traits in combination that would be perfect. It was a good exercise, but alas, the developers could not trust their own bias and conceptual limitations. Searching for people with specific characteristics would be futile – the ability to get along couldn’t be identified by traits, since some got on well in specific groups, and not in others. The search was for a group of individuals that would function well together under the circumstances.

Ultimately, Mara became responsible for finding inhabitants who would also operate the farm and facilities. Her leadership and instincts, Aaron finally concluded, were more reliable than modeling with incomplete data. There was also the challenge of finding candidates who initially would be staff for the farm.

Mara and her closest friend, Bethany, founded a young woman’s prayer group in the Singles Ward to attract a pool of potential employees for A-to-Z and possible members of the Ark. From the time they had met in Calculus class their junior year of high school, Bethany and Mara were especially close. Tall, thin, and pale with grey eyes and ash blond hair, the image of Bethany contrasted strikingly with Mara’s black hair, beige skin tone, deep green eyes, and large boned, muscular body. Like Mara, she was an excellent speaker and knew Mormon scripture inside out.

The stated mission of the group was to express gratitude and pray for guidance on how to be better and help humankind. The prayer group called itself The Elect; a reference to, according to LDS scripture, those who God elects or chooses to fulfill certain obligations and in return gain eternal salvation. Mara organized and lead, and Bethany conducted prayers. She was especially good at giving sermons.

The Elect grew to a robust 350 young women. Mara and Bethany prospected candidates for the Ark among them, ostensibly looking to hire many of them for A-to-Z. Mara had to carefully recruit using job descriptions that wouldn’t raise too many questions about the extended purpose of A-to-Z. She did confide in Bethany, however, and a new friend, Amelia.

Amelia was one of the first to join. 26 and still not married. She was medium height, stocky, with brown hair and eyes. She was curious, energetic and funny. She dove into all aspects of the group, taking on a lot of responsibility. Mara told Amelia that the prayer group was a great opportunity to staff her father’s new venture. Amelia was an HR specialist at a large firm in Salt Lake City. She resigned and became A-to-Z’s HR director. Essentially, she was the entire HR staff at the time. Mara alluded to the possibility of the farm becoming a super-shelter if an extreme disaster like nuclear war ever happened. Amelia was attracted to the concept and never showed any suspicion of any ulterior motives to the prayer group. It had been a happy coincidence that the group could also be a source of employees. Amelia took on the responsibility of recruiting for both the prayer group and the Ark. She had the advantage of observing prayer group interactions in helping her make selections for hire. Once identified as a good prospect, Amelia researched her online. A lot could be found, like where one grew up, went to school, and who she was related to, as well as a host of other details. Ultimately, it was Aaron and Mara who made the final decision, but it was only with people brought to them through Amelia.

The Elect’s many activities included discussions, community service, and field trips for learning and just for fun. They even conducted a retreat at the A-to-Z site. The retreat was a simple weekend trip. Visitors were introduced to the Ark as a zero waste, self sufficient deep farm and living quarters. One of the first employees gave them a comprehensive tour of the farm; how it functioned, and the tasks performed. Over the next two days, the women conducted their retreat activities in various chambers and the Meetinghouse and slept in the dormitory. They also prepared meals of vegetables, fish and herbs that they retrieved themselves from the farm. It was their most popular event thus far.

Many competed for employment at A-to-Z. Eventually 80 of the Elect, well over the number of employees needed, were hired. Mara. Bethany and Amelia started the screening process with brainstorming characteristics that would make someone ineligible, like Psychiatric meds, or treatment, histories of family violence, Diabetes, anger issues, and lying. They also didn’t want Narcissists or drama queens, and of course sociopaths, although that could be hard to identify. This didn’t assure perfect selection, but it did dodge guaranteed problems.

The remainder of A-to-Z employees was an administrative and technical staff of 23 specialists. A few came from STAMP, the rest were acquired out of the broader community of Silicon Slopes.

The commute from Provo was three hours, so most worked Monday through Friday and went home on weekends. Staff was staying in the dormitories and had full use of living spaces with a capacity to house 300 people.

Social Engineering

Once the prayer group was fully established, Bethany and Amelia became an adjunct consult to the Council. They observed, participated, and helped make decisions. The women were especially valuable in messaging. The Elect were more spiritual than scientific, more feelers than thinkers. Information had to make sense vis a vis their world view. It would be critical in sustaining a stable, progressive community once the Ark was populated and sealed off.

The A-to-Z technical team designed a wristband device with a small computer that was a cross between iWatch and iPad. It had a slightly larger display than the iWatch and housed sensors that captured locations, heartbeat, and metabolic rates. It also provided a continuous feed of data run against algorithms that detected trends, anomalies, and violations. Each also relayed information, announcements, and schedules to the wearer. The devices could be selectively programmed based on profiles. Electronic management of entries enforced who could be where, when. Access to areas was coded into each wristband. Energy for the batteries was provided kinetically by the movement of the wearer.

Structured time, discussion groups, daily briefings and activities; all would help maintain a shared reality and common contexts. They could not afford to splinter off into separate mindsets.

Support systems would be key. Each member needed routines and outlets: one hour alone to do what she wanted, and hour of exercise daily, meetups with various circles weekly, and impromptu times for music, poetry, singing, dancing, and crafts. This was the original framework for meeting personal needs.

Aaron began thinking about how to repair and renew highly technical equipment as they inevitably must. He thought wryly that they would have to completely invent their way through the future, grabbing parts of technology that had functioned together as one system, that would be simply floating unmoored and fragmented in a post-post modern soup. It was essential that technologic capacity was maintained. The Ark would have vast stores of educational materials and research data to start. Eventually, he hoped, they would figure out how to ensure that intellectual capacity grew.
How to encourage creative problem solving, healthy communication, yet disallow obstruction. This was an especially tricky challenge. Autocracy wielded by an iron fist, Aaron feared, would end progress. Harmony required a certain amount of individual and group freedom, but with clear boundaries. Discussions around solving a problem were welcome, if done with intent of helping. They should not degenerate into arguments, or a tug of war. Daily learning circles, social circles, family circles for free flowing but guided interaction were set up. These were similar to already existing activities used by the Mormons, thus easily adopted and maintained.

This brought up the issue of nuclear family. Humans were social, but were not prepared to be emotionally tied to more than a couple dozen people at one time. Motivation, purpose, self esteem, altruism – all these and more depended on intimate group identity. How to establish nuclear units that were harmonious with other units was a tricky challenge, but one that was necessary to meet. They would begin with assigned partners, encouraged to be buddies. The pairs would belong to a service. A service was a unit of 20 Elect who lived together and shared communications. The services would be part of the overall family. It was a rough outline of the initial structure. There would likely be several modifications based on ongoing results.

One fact gave major pause: if there was to be a degree of freedom and empowerment, there was still no choice but to comply. How was this to be addressed within the Ark? Corporal punishment was out of the question. The fact that all activity was a matter of record captured by the wristbands helped keep people mindful of their behavior.
The Council knew conflicts were a regular part of life and each resolution became a matter of learning, growth and building community resilience. The Mormons themselves served as a model for this. They had their fringe groups, both fundamentalist and liberal, but managed to move forward as a whole.

Still, outright refusal to cooperate would necessarily be answered with expulsion, and expulsion meant death. Before reaching that point, recalcitrant members would go through a series of “educational” events escalating from a lecture to a period of isolation. A-to-Z would be far from Utopian, but it could be a high functioning family if done carefully with vigilance and adaptation built in. Within specific boundaries, interaction would always be welcome. When all else failed, there would be the physical enforcers. This was a proposed small team of “Safeties” whose responsibilities would include ensuring safety, security and peace.

Sadly, there was a final consideration – defense. Their biggest defense asset would be inaccessibility. The Ark was designed to be a true fortress. There was an arsenal of explosives and drones. Hopefully most hostilities could be avoided with their remote location and relative inaccessibility. Drones would patrol and serve as an early warning system. If danger was discovered, lockdown would be their only real defense. All entries were barred by steel doors as impenetrable as the rocks in which they were embedded.

They couldn’t think of everything in this brave new world. It would take a lot of adaptation and luck make it through.
All this for a premonition. What were the chances a worldwide holocaust, the likes of which necessitated the Ark, would soon descend on the world?

Regime Change

Things were further complicated by the national coup.

Geopolitically, humanity was drunkenly reeling on a tightrope. Nowhere more evident than in Aaron’s very own country. Social benefits were throttled, while incoherent military and economic doctrines were diverting public funds to absurdly glutted extra-national coffers. Instead of recognizing what was happening and uniting to repair the broken systems, people in every sphere and on every side were instead exacerbating the waste and confusion by operating on emotion and seeking information in line with their sentiments.

In the US, the disunited and confused populace couldn’t protect itself. Commercial and governmental systems progressively established a surveillance state with profound controls that subconsciously terrified. The terror came with the sense that criminality only existed at the “common” level. After 30 years of unbridled incompetence and outright unanswered fraud and malfeasance at the highest levels of business and government, while the vigor of policing intensified and prison populations grew, people had to realize they were weak and exploited. Those at fault were well out of sight of the public, so the public blamed each other. Well financed propaganda proactively fueled the frustration and anger.

Those in real control sought an overarching worldview that would unify and galvanize enough of the people, which could then be used to establish and enforce a grip on the rest. They found it in a combination of religion and chauvinism, specifically a form of capitalist theocracy driven by a core of zealots, and opportunists reaping power from the polarization. Followers were people predisposed to dogmatic belief, and those disenfranchised, vulnerable and angry. They were unified and, like the proletariat of the Bolshevik revolution, would destroy the past order and become slaves of the new.

On the other side were people with disparate and granular interests, and general ideas of freedom and equality for all: humanists, liberals or simple progressives. They were fragmented and could not form a viable united opposition. Empirical, egalitarian people were not good candidates for the role of blind follower. It did not help that they made untested assumptions about why people so different from them thought the way they did, and completely underestimated their collective strength. They enjoyed their moral superiority and broadmindedness while accomplishing nothing in the way of protecting the integrity and strength of governance outside of scattered moral victories.

The coup de grace came on election year. The incumbent was an autocratic sociopath with no goal beyond personal power. Weather that year reached the point where everyone was affected by flooding, fires, locusts, melting, hurricanes and typhoons, heat records. Then there was the pandemic which served to separate the country from the last bastions of common reality – mingling, public gatherings, sports events, theater, restaurants, and general decay of kind, civil behavior.
Widespread unrest reached the boiling point when several small land cruise missiles flew into the Capitol Building and detonated on impact. The attack left a large portion of the building in rubble. Congress was in session at the time and a third of the legislature was killed or wounded. Martial law immediately followed, enforced by a high tech military and mercenary lockdown.

A new regime took the reins of power. It was not, however, a regime change per se. The sponsors of the takeover were not of the US. The US was now like a nouveau banana republic with a dictatorship with puppet leadership. In the past the US capitalist empire sponsored the ascendancy of dictators. In this case, the global financial hegemon was the sponsor, and benefactor. It was almost completely the case before the change, with freely elected officials acting on behalf of their financiers, just using the constituents for legitimacy. This would end all semblance of Constitutional Freedoms, in particular those of the First Amendment – speech, religion, press, assemble and the right to petition the government.

The suspension of the Constitution and concurrent coup came as no surprise to Aaron. Years before, he’d been courted by the Department of Defense to join their effort at using IoT for broad scale surveillance. The idea was to develop applications that mapped peoples’ real-time locations through their mobile phones and form information maps that could be run against mass surveillance data from programs like PRISM and MYSTIC. Aaron had declined after much consideration. The lucrative project promised to be a great networking opportunity with a lot of follow on work from connections made. Aaron, however, didn’t really want to be a part of corralling people. It was unnerving to see the trajectory government was on as they progressively devised ways to lock down the people. There would also be a lengthy period of implementation. 5G was needed to ensure the infrastructure had the bandwidth required for massive real-time surveillance, but its rollout would take at least four more years. He had decided instead to stay his current course, innovating for commercial success.

The new regime reached into all aspects of society, in particular religion and education. By establishing a Christian theocracy, it could depend on the rigorous participation of at least 20% of society, more than enough to smother most attempts at resistance. What few knew was that the ideology was customized for control, and to legitimize the wresting of any vestigial sense of freedom from the population at large. They’d been wage, consumer slaves for decades, but had been able to retain a belief they were living in a “democratic” country. No longer able to bribe, provide welfare, feed and house everyone in the remnants of an economic system eating itself, the power elite dropped all pretense to caring for the people.

Colonial countries were taken over by dictators sponsored by various countries. This time the US itself was taken over by a dictatorship sponsored by the one financial hegemon that had no borders.

Social indoctrination was widely imposed. Schoolchildren were soon wearing uniforms and learning a specialized curriculum that continuously reinforced the regime’s doctrine. It was being forced into the Mormon catechism. Adaptive as they’d always been, the Mormon community made a good pretense of complying. Their traditions and dense social structures helped keep their beliefs on a solid foundation.

All communication on unencrypted public lines was already harvested and filtered by various commercial enterprises and government agencies. Surveillance was a part of everyday existence. All pretense of respecting privacy vanished. now comprehensive programs designed to detect subversive activities among the citizenry threatened to uncover the real activities of A-to-Z.

Surveillance crept into all aspects of human intercourse, especially online activity, as well as religious gatherings, social, non-profit activities – all was being intensely and openly monitored.

Additional information came from satellite imagery, electronic intelligence emissions capture and analysis, individual’s activity, social profiles, infrastructure data on energy and water usage, transportation use, etc. AI programs that analyzed, sorted and associated the massive raw data, looking for any patterns indicating diversion from established norms would eventually trigger an alert. A-to-Z’s purpose, if discovered, would end its work. But the economic machinery still needed to run, thus there were ways to stay under the radar by being seemingly inconsequential and very careful.

Operational security was heightened to protect A-to-Z from its own country. A disciplined system of communicating only in the context of A-to-Z business was established. The organization rigorously maintained the image of a deep farm start-up. In this way the Elect was able to fulfill most of Aaron’s plans unobstructed, at least for a while.

Eventually, suspicions about A-to-Z surfaced. Programs made the link between the prayer group and employment at the farm, putting both activities in the “needs a closer look” category. Now they were targeted, it wouldn’t be long before a direct investigation. If deemed subversive, as surely they would be, the operation would be shut down.

Then it began.