Undiscovered Country #4

[history79]

"It's kind of fun. There's this guy that we both know who lives near Scott, so Scott knew him first, but he introduced me and we all got along. He's a retired associate with the CIA -- not an agent or operative -- but he's someone that's worked with the CIA for a long time. And I'm going to put "retired" in air quotes because he still seems to be pretty involved with those folks. So we got to talking to him and he's a super, super interesting guy and had an incredibly interesting career and we told him about the premise that we had for the story and he was like "Hey, you know that's something that we're actually doing!" and we were like "whaaat?" and he was like "There's a concept called Fortress America."

[It's] the idea that if the United States did have to seal itself off from the rest of the world -- no trade, no travel -- how would it do it? And it's not really a war plan but a logistical plan for what would we need to stockpile, how would we operate, how long can we do it before we had to open the borders again. What a resource he is; that led to a kind of real world versus the concept. And then Scott and I kind of spun out into crazy fish monsters and things like that which is very cool.

And, as part of it, he was like "Would you like to go and see CIA headquarters?" which was an incredible day; Scott and I got to go to Langley in Virginia. It was beautiful and inspiring just to see all the things that the agency had accomplished. And, at the same time, we got to go talk to DARPA -- the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency -- which is kind of like the American mega genius think tank where they speak of the technologies America will need in the next 30, 50, 100 years and then they start making those things. So it was a hugely eye-opening couple of days and our friend has still been a massive resource to us. But that's kind of how it all came out: Lucky connections and people being interested in the content we're working on; we're just really fortunate."

- Charles Soule




11 pages of 33

Comments

[plastefuchs]

No idea why, but I think it is funny that in this version of the world either the Rhineland-Palatinate seceded from the German federation of the author found it important to emphasis where Rammstein is located in Germany.

Also, an author going "yay, CIA is doing just good things" is a bad look in my eyes.