Two days after Hurricane Katrina slammed the city of New Orleans, it’s still hard to get a picture of the extent of damage and loss of life it left in its wake.

That fact alone should arrest our attention.

Had Katrina struck a city in a Third World country, we may not have expected much intelligence on its impact for days after. Yet New Orleans is a sophisticated city located in the most technically progressive nation in the world. Why are we hearing so few details from the authorities in charge of monitoring the situation? The answer is as startling as it is most educational about the utter helplessness of the most progressive of societies in the face of devastation wrought by one thing they cannot control: the weather!

On the fact that a First World society can be reduced back to pre-Industrial Revolution status by such phenomena as Katrina, analysts at Stratfor concluded, “In fact, Louisiana—and parts of Mississippi as well—had returned to a pre-industrial stage. There were few to zero electromagnetic communications. Under those conditions, information normally would spread by physical transport—humans moving around. But humans were not moving around in the hurricane zone Monday. Roads were impassable. Boats were dangerous. Walking was slow, if possible at all. Information, in other words, was locked down” (August 31).

In effect, the city of New Orleans was as helpless at that moment as any Third World hamlet that had been washed away by an equatorial monsoon.

It challenges our thinking to conceive that such a state of things can occur within our modern, electronically dependent, high-tech world. So it comes as much more of a shock when it actually does occur.

Herein lies the problem.

Few of our political leaders, let alone their constituents, dare to think about the prospect of such catastrophes occurring—not just as isolated instances, but as regular phenomena. Yet it cannot be denied that, as records show, natural disasters have accelerated dramatically over the past 15 years.

What must be added to this trend is the fact of terrorism becoming part and parcel of our daily lives in the 21st century.

Even if our leaders and the public begin to wake up to, recognize and commence preparing to weather this storm of increasing natural disasters, the prospects that any acceleration in terrorist attacks in Western societies conjures up is too much for most to even begin thinking seriously about.

Recently, one brave voice did attempt to picture the horror of multiple terrorist attacks on Western cities. Commentator Peggy Noonan postulated the following in a recent column in the Wall Street Journal:

“In the rough future our country faces, bad things will happen. We all know this. … It’s hard to imagine some of those things on a beautiful day with the sun shining and the markets full, but let’s imagine anyway.

“Among the things we may face over the next decade, as we all know, is another terrorist attack on American soil. But let’s imagine the next one has many targets, is brilliantly planned and coordinated. Imagine that there are already 100 serious terror cells in the U.S., two per state. … Imagine they’re planning that on the same day in the not-so-distant future, they will set off nuclear suitcase bombs in six American cities, including Washington, which will take the heaviest hit. Hundreds of thousands may die; millions will be endangered. Lines will go down, and to make it worse the terrorists will at the same time execute the cyberattack of all cyberattacks, causing massive communications failure and confusion. There will be no electricity; switching and generating stations will also have been targeted …. [T]he extent of the national damage will be as unknown as the extent of local damage is clear” (August 25).

It was not extremist Islamic terrorists that silenced communications in New Orleans. It was weather. But the result of Katrina’s terror was exactly as Noonan theorized could happen as a result of human terrorist action. “[M]ore than 24 hours after the worst of the hurricane had passed,” Stratfor reported, “intelligence could not answer the key questions: 1. Was the Mississippi still fully navigable? 2. What was the condition of the port facilities? 3. Was the LOOP, the off-loading point for super tankers, functional? 4. What was the condition of the oil platforms in the Gulf? The inability to really begin to answer these questions is the most alarming aspect of the situation. The fact that information is not flowing from the affected areas at all is an indicator of how disrupted the situation is” (op. cit.).

It could be so-called natural disaster, or it could be instigated by human terror. Whatever the catalyst, we have been witness to the results of each over the past five years. The terror of 9/11 was concentrated on two cities—New York and Washington. Katrina’s wrath was reserved largely for one city, New Orleans. The question is, are we even game to begin to imagine such occurrences happening either at the same time, or in rapid succession, to a multiplicity of heavily populated American cities?

“Think dark and you’re prepared for darkness, and preparation will be half the battle. … Because if it can go wrong it will go wrong, because man has never invented a weapon he did not ultimately use, and because the beginning of wisdom is to expect the unexpected” (Noonan, op. cit.).

At the Trumpet, we think light and hope! But we do face facts. Before the wonder of that Light and Hope of the intervention of Almighty God in the affairs of man, at Jesus Christ’s soon-coming return to Earth (Isaiah 9:6-7), a terrible period of darkness is prophesied to occur. And it will involve both “natural” disaster and human-instigated terror. It will produce the type of communications silence that has gagged New Orleans these past 48 hours. There is nothing worse than being caught in disaster and not being able to communicate from within or without! Millions will be caught in such nightmare scenarios in the not too distant future.

That is the darkness which it is our lot to declare to this sin-sick and war-weary, increasingly terrorized world!

But beyond that darkness is that glow of eternal hope.

Request your own free copy of our book The Wonderful World Tomorrow, or read it on this website. It will not only help you prepare for the darkness ahead. It will show you the only way to realize the eternal hope of mankind for great inner personal peace, and the ultimate time of peace among all peoples of all nations—forever.