Apocalypse? IRS says you still need to pay taxes – explainer
An artistic illustration of a city on fire amid an apocalyptic scenario. But even during doomsday, you’ll still need to pay your taxes. (photo credit: PIXABAY)
Let’s say it’s the end of the world. It doesn’t matter how.
Maybe the Russia-Ukraine War finally went nuclear and the Earth has turned into a radioactive wasteland. Maybe climate change has caused a series of weather disasters that has ended society as we know it. Maybe both happened – the Doomsday Clock certainly indicated both are possible. Or maybe it’s the Christian rapture or the arrival of the Jewish Messiah.
But what matters is that if you thought the apocalypse would exempt you from paying taxes, the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has some bad news for you. Because not even the literal end of the world will stop them from taking your taxes.
Wait, the IRS will tax you after the apocalypse?
Yes, it’s true. The IRS has an apocalypse plan, and they will make sure everyone – assuming they are a US citizen who doesn’t make use of the normal ways of legally avoiding paying taxes – pays in the end.
So does that mean the plot of the next Fallout game will be about an IRS agent in a nuclear wasteland US collecting taxes from everyone left? Maybe (Bethesda, let’s talk).
A sign for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) building is seen in Washington, U.S. September 28, 2020. (credit: REUTERS/ERIN SCOTT)So with US tax season around the corner, let’s talk about how the IRS will keep taxing come doomsday.
Called the Continuity/Cooperations Plan, this was first published in 1980s but has been continuously updated.
This enormous document describes a plan for how, in case of an apocalyptic scenario, the IRS can resume tax collection in just 12 hours.
Yes, it will be that quick.
The plan focuses on three tiers of continuity.
- MEFs (mission essential function, meaning a type of job at the IRS deemed essential) and ESAs (essential supporting activity, which need to happen to support MEFs)
- BPPs (business process priority, which are considered important but not essential)
- DPBs (deferred business priority)
Sound confusing? It should, and it’s only the start of the many acronyms in this document.
MEFs are IRS jobs that are essential and must be up and running within 12 hours of an apocalypse, which includes dealing with tax returns, tax remittances and tax refunds.
ESAs refer to the support network needed for the MEFs, like IT service, physical security, payroll and human resources.
BPPs include functions like taxpayer assistance and compliance activities.
DPBs are things that may be important but aren’t necessarily supporting an MEF or don’t have deadlines, but are rather discretionary. In other words, these might not be up and running for a while.
But who’s going to be in charge?
The current person in charge of the IRS is the acting commissioner, Doug O’Donnell at the time of writing. But will he still be at the helm come doomsday?
This will be a number of local community representatives (LCRs), as part of the continuity community, which will also include with members of the emergency response team.
The LCR will be aided by the senior management team, which will help provide the LCR with logistical, managerial and administrative guidance.
The senior management team itself is something continuously updated with each member’s name, position and full contact information listed in the COOP roster for IRS members.
There will be a bunch of different teams available to be in charge of general leadership, which in turn serve as part of the line of succession should the previous teams be compromised, possibly by whatever apocalyptic disaster has unfolded.
Likewise, there will also be several different relocation facilities, where the leadership team can be located depending on the day.
Now that’s fine and all but what about the actual taxes?
Back in the 1980s, there was a proposed general sales tax that would act as a stand-by tax program to encourage savings and help rebuild the US capital stock.
All of this would be made possible by the established network described in the long document to make sure IRS agents have the support and tools needed to keep collecting taxes.
But what about actual money?
The IRS has actually made plans for this too. As documented in Garret M Graff’s book Raven Rock: The Story of the US Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself – While the Rest of Us Die, the Federal Reserve has around $2 billion stored away at a bunker in Mount Pony, Virginia. This is supposed to last 18 months to keep the economy going, as after 18 months they should have mints printing hard currency again.
Supposedly much of this $2 billion is in the form of $2 bills.
So does this IRS apocalypse plan cover everything?
Surprisingly, no.
As noted by Arizona State University’s Prof. Adam Chodorow, there is an apocalyptic scenario that can pose considerable problems when it comes to taxes.
This refers, naturally, to a zombie apocalypse.
Now, logistically, the IRS’s plan for collecting taxes after the apocalypse would still apply here. The problem is with the very nature of a zombie apocalypse, in that it isn’t clear if zombies would need to be taxed or not.
Chodorow’s 2017 paper noted, there is “a glaring gap in the academic literature” regarding how “estate and income tax laws apply to the undead.”
And of course, this wouldn’t just refer to zombies. It could also apply to ghosts or vampires or any other form of the undead. Would it apply to clones? Unclear.
But should we really be taking the idea of a zombie apocalypse seriously?
Yes.
While the IRS may not have plans in place for a zombie apocalypse, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does, with its guidance having been released in 2016. Not only that, but the US military also has contingency plans for a zombie apocalypse.
So if the CDC and military can plan for it, why can’t the IRS?
This raises an interesting question of whether zombies would be counted as people. Besides, if a zombie apocalypse did happen, what if people tried to become a zombie intentionally to avoid paying taxes? Though that would also probably depend on the kind of zombification we’re dealing with.
But do you know what else the IRS contingency plan wasn’t prepared for? COVID.
COVID-19 (illustrative) (credit: TORANGE)Indeed, throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the IRS had a major backlog of tax returns and a high inventory of unprocessed returns.
As noted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the IRS had a backlog of around 10.5 million paper returns and returns stopped for errors at the end of 2021.
This is part of some ongoing issues the IRS had as well as with how just unprepared the US bureaucratic infrastructure was for the COVID pandemic.
And if plans recently pushed by Republicans in Congress ever come to fruition, the IRS itself may face its own personal apocalypse, defunded and eventually abolished as the GOP restructures the US tax system.
The M1 “Garand” rifle is objectively heavier than bolt-action rifles and specifically all those that fought in the war. But when you have the rifle in your hand, that weight translates into sturdiness. That is the feeling it conveys, that of a strong and robust weapon, not a heavy weapon. That perception is accentuated when shooting with it.
Then everything fits, because that weight and that robustness, which is a perception that you have a lot to do with the forceful design of the weapon and especially the shape of its butt/handle, is perfect to prevent recoil from dislodging you. You get the feeling of shooting a very balanced rifle and then the weight factor is diluted. I say all this by stating that I am by no means a regular shooter, nor an expert on the subject.
Regarding breakdowns, the M1 had some during the war. The biggest was in the design of the gas intake cylinder, which caused the firing cycle to be interrupted and forced it to be completely redesigned. In addition to that and others that I described in the article, which were solved very early on, there were others that came to light during the conflict and were solved along the way.
One of them was that the mounting lever, being integral with the piston, could break at a certain point after too much use. It was not serious at all, but it did mean that almost at the end of the war all field workshops received the order to make a small circular cut at the point where the piston rod joins the lever in all rifles. Received for any type of repair, in order to relieve the tension of the lever. This is why rifles where that cut is not present are somewhat rarer to find.
Another “illness” was that the firing cycle would sometimes stop when exposed to long periods in the rain. The solution was to give the soldiers very small bottles of a special oil called “Lubriplate” that had to be poured around the bolt to lubricate it and that completely solved the problem. The canisters were designed to be stored inside the buttplate of the rifle.
Another relatively notable “failure” was in the finish of the gas cylinder, located in the muzzle of the rifle. Being made of stainless steel, it could not be parked, but a special paint had to be applied. With use in combat conditions, the paint would peel off and the shine on the metal could give the soldier away. The solution was to create a new paint mix that was more durable than the old one.
Regarding the last question, the truth is that the feeling that I have after reading a lot of literature on the rifle is that there was never a very enthusiastic attempt to turn the M1 into a sniper rifle. I get the feeling that this position was well filled by the Springfield M1903 and that the Ordnance Department never made much of an effort to make the M1 its replacement.
Keep in mind that the power system of the M1 prevented putting a scope “as God intended”. I imagine that the sight that was placed on the M1C would not be very pleasing to an elite shooter due to its forced position and surely he had to make some additional correction to compensate for such a strange position. Consider that no M1 modified as a sniper rifle was shipped to Europe during the war. On the other hand, the standard M1 rifle was actually pretty accurate overall if it was in the right hands. No soldier complained that it was inaccurate in combat.
Johnson’s rifle was mechanically just as good as Garand’s, and had even more capacity. However, from what I’ve read, it was somewhat more complicated to mass-produce than the M1, which is another reason it was scrapped. It was also unclear whether it would have been reliable enough in the hands of an infantryman, as only elite troops used it in the war. There is no doubt about the behavior of the M1 Garand, which fulfilled perfectly and demonstrated its qualities and quality during two wars.
It is curious that, like other weapons of its time, the old M1 has continued in the gap, hitting shots to this day, as if it refused to die. That says a lot about its robustness and reliability. As an example, this photo of an M1 captured in Iraq, in the last war.
If you had every dollar America spent on defense from the end of WW2 to the end of the Cold War you could raze and rebuild every manmade structure in the United States. Spinoff technologies brought us such stuff as duct tape, GPS, digital photography, and many common feminine hygiene products (first improvised out of cellulose bandages by British and American Army nurses in World War 1).
The Cold War raged from 1947 until the fall of the Soviet Union on Christmas Day 1991. This protracted period of geopolitical tension was characterized by a tit-for-tat arms race that saw each side responding to advances of the other. Military Intelligence was and still remains an inexact science. Sometimes the various thrusts and parries resulted in truly astronomical monetary expenditures.
In few other areas did the arms race achieve more rarefied heights than in the competition over warplanes. Between 1903 and 1943 aviation technology went from the Wright Flier to the B-29 Superfortress. From 1943 until 1956 the state of the art advanced from the lumbering B-29 to the supersonic B-58 Hustler. With each advance in bomber technology came corresponding bounds in fighter tech to counter it. Then came the XB-70 Valkyrie.
The B-58 had a maximum speed of 1,319 mph (roughly Mach 2) and a service ceiling of 63,400 feet. By contrast, the XB-70 topped out at 2,020 mph (Mach 3.08) and could reach 74,000 feet. This put it out of reach of Soviet interceptors. For the Russians this was a world-class crisis.
Paranoia ruled the day. Loss of parity could result in a first strike weapon that would become an existential threat. When faced with a supersonic bomber of unprecedented capabilities, Soviet fighter designers got busy. The end result was the MiG-25 Foxbat.
Developed emergently by the Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau using radical applications of existing technology, the MiG-25 was Russia’s answer to the XB-70 Valkyrie. First flown in 1964, the type saw its first operational deployment in 1970. On the surface, the MiG-25 was terrifying.
At 78 feet long the MiG-25 was an absolutely massive fighter plane. Additionally, its wings were enormous, intimating a highly maneuverable airframe. The two Turmansky R-15B-300 afterburning turbofan engines on the MiG-25 had originally been designed to power drones and were not intended to have a lengthy service life. The first examples were only good for about 150 hours between engine changes. The final package, however, was the fastest fighter interceptor ever created.
One Disgruntled Pilot Changes Everything
Viktor Belenko was born in Nalchik, Russia, on February 15, 1947. By his 29th birthday, LT Belenko was at the top of his game. He had a wife and a young son and was posted to Chuguyevka Air Base flying the most advanced fighter aircraft his nation fielded. LT Belenko was the poster child for 1970’s-era communism. Under the surface, however, all was not well with the Soviet Air Defense Force’s fair-haired boy.
The CIA and the USAF had an illustrious history of trying to coax communist pilots into defecting with their combat aircraft. Operation Moolah was an unsuccessful effort at bribing North Korean pilots to defect with a then-state of the art MiG-15. North Korean LT No Kum-Sok did land his MiG-15 at Kimpo Air Base in South Korea in 1953, but he had been unaware of the program.
Operation Fast Buck was a similar effort aimed at North Vietnamese pilots. Operation Diamond was an Israeli enterprise that did actually bag them an Iraqi MiG-21. In 1976, however, Belenko’s motivations were a bit closer to home.
Corruption in the System
Communism is based upon a few flawed premises. The most glaring is that Communists presume that people are innately good. Communism asserts that if left to their own devices human beings will sacrifice for the collective. By and large, that’s just not true.
The second orbits around propaganda. Totalitarian regimes must control the flow of information to survive. That goal gets ever more difficult in the Information Age, but Kim Jong Un stands in portly testimony that it can yet still be done.
There is a common thread in every communist sympathizer in the West. That is an assumption that the only reason that communism has failed to improve people’s lives every single time it has ever been attempted is that it was always just done wrong. The reality is that the communist leadership, like most government leaders, eventually evolve to believe that the rules do not apply to them. Vladimir Putin is a product of that defunct system, and he is currently worth some $70 billion.
LT Belenko’s wife Lyudmila had grown unhappy with military life and announced her intent to file for divorce and move back to her parents in Magadan with their three-year-old son. The infrastructure and support facilities at Belenko’s base were also badly lacking. Whenever Belenko would voice his concerns to his political officer he was derided for complaining. All these influences synergistically drove the young Soviet pilot to take some fairly drastic action.
The Event
On the morning of September 6, 1976, LT Belenko launched in his single-seat MiG-25P Foxbat on a training mission alongside several of his mates. When over open water Belenko claimed engine trouble and fell out of formation. He then dropped the massive fighter down to thirty meters and made a beeline for Japan.
Belenko’s maps were sketchy concerning Japanese airfields. His intended destination was a military field at Chitose. However, thick cloud cover, his crummy maps, and a critical lack of fuel drove him to a smaller civilian field at Hakodate.
Belenko circled the field three times, nearly colliding with a civilian Boeing 727 on climb out. The runway was markedly shorter than what the MiG-25 typically required. Despite deploying his drogue chute and standing on his brakes hard enough to blow out the front tire the heavy fighter still overran the runway by 240 meters. Belenko shut down his engines with thirty seconds of fuel remaining. When civilians began to gather around the plane and take pictures Belenko dissuaded them by firing his pistol into the air.
The Gun
LT Belenko almost assuredly packed a Makarov service pistol when he landed in Japan. This compact little handgun is called the PM in Russian parlance. PM stands for Pistolét Makárova or “Makarov’s Pistol.” The PM is a fairly uninspired unlocked blowback handgun designed by Nikolay Fyodorovich Makarov and first adopted in 1951. The PM fires the stubby little 9x18mm Makarov cartridge.
The PM feeds from an 8-round single-stack box magazine retained via a heel-mounted catch. The overall layout and function of the gun strongly favor that of the Walther PPK. Unlike the PPK, the slide-mounted safety is pressed up for safe and down for fire. More than five million copies have been produced.
The Rest of the Story
Belenko was arrested by Japanese police upon his exit from his warplane. He immediately requested asylum in the United States. The Soviets for their part announced that Belenko had gotten lost and had subsequently been drugged by the Japanese. When granted an interview with the young pilot, Russian officials were predictably unable to persuade him to return home.
American and Japanese aviation experts tore Belenko’s MiG apart to learn its secrets only to find that it was a pretty lousy airplane. The Soviets had not yet perfected the capacity to work with titanium for high-temperature applications, so much of the plane was actually formed from stainless steel.
This made the aircraft incredibly heavy with a max gross weight of 80,954 pounds. Additionally, the big wings were not designed to enhance maneuverability. The MiG-25 needed these large wings simply to stay aloft given its portly weight. The Russians eventually got their plane back…in forty different boxes after Western intelligence personnel had picked it literally to pieces.
George Bush was director of the CIA at the time and declared the defection of LT Belenko to be an “intelligence bonanza.” In 1980 the US Congress passed S.2961, a specific act that granted LT Belenko citizenship in the United States. Jimmy Carter signed the act into law on October 14 of that year.
Viktor Belenko married a music teacher from North Dakota and fathered two sons. They later divorced. Belenko never divorced his first wife, though he did visit Moscow once on business in 1995 after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The Soviets alternately claimed that Belenko had been killed in a car wreck, repatriated to Russia to be arrested and executed, or otherwise brought to justice. In reality, Belenko served as a consultant to the US government and an aerospace engineer. By all accounts, he still loves it here.
Belenko seldom grants interviews, but he purportedly said this in 2000 during a conversation in a bar, “Americans have tolerance regarding other people’s opinion. In certain cultures, if you do not accept the mainstream, you would be booted out or might disappear. Here we have people — you know who hug trees, and people who want to cut them down — and they live side by side!”
Belenko said he once ate a can of American cat food by mistake. He later claimed, “It was delicious. Better than canned food in the Soviet Union today!”
The XB-70 that drove the whole MiG-25 project was a big nothing burger. Only two prototypes ever flew, one of which was destroyed in a horrible accident. You can see the video of the event here.
The subsequent B1 Lancer was actually designed for low altitude deep penetration missions for which the MiG-25 was utterly unsuited. Spoofing the Soviets into building what was at the time one of the most expensive and strategically worthless warplanes in history yet remains one of the greatest Western intelligence coups of the Cold War.
I read Viktor Belenko’s autobiography MiG Pilot: The Final Escape of Lieutenant Belenko back in the 1980s and loved it.
Categories
A Sears Model 200 in 12GA
Coyotes will eat just about anything. This makes them a bit
unpredictable at close quarters.
Image: Public domain, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
You never really know how you will respond until you get there. Most of us grizzled gun-toting types fancy ourselves amateur heroes. We imagine that should we find ourselves in the midst of some unexpected life-threatening peril, we might rise to the occasion and do something epically manly. And then there was this guy.
Now before you get all judgy, appreciate that this is everyman. He is both a patient and a friend. He looks like us, and he acts like us. His genus is Redneckopithecus Sapiens, as is mine. He likes guns, and he lives for the outdoors. His experience could have happened to any one of us.
Field Philosophy
I don’t hunt anymore. I used to a great deal and certainly do not harbor ill will toward those who enjoy the sport. It is simply that I don’t much care for venison. Additionally, as I get older, it gets harder and harder to strike out in the predawn darkness for anything less than a house fire. However, back when I was a kid, my dad and I hunted together constantly.
My lifelong tally is a pair of deer and 13 wild turkeys, along with squirrels, doves and rabbits uncounted. I shot a yellow-hued coyote when I was about 12, whose pelt produced $15. Those were 1978 dollars, mind you.
I have accounted for 61 water moccasins from my backyard lake. I’ve kept a record, but that’s hardly hunting. My war against venomous reptiles is more of a lifelong existential fight for survival. I’ve had some bad experiences with poisonous snakes.
Of the lot, turkey hunting comes closest to tripping my trigger. Our Easter and Christmas dinners were never without a wild turkey when I was a kid. It was always a bit of a game to see who first discovered a piece of lead shot in their entrée.
Deer hunting always felt a bit too random. It always seemed bitterly cold when we trudged out in pursuit of deer. Success or failure also seemed to be driven more by whether the beast happened to wander by than any skill on my part. By contrast, chasing wild turkey was an art.
Siting your blind was important, but you conversed with the bird. The mission was to convince him to drop by for a visit. As a guy, your tools that involved mimicking his fairer sex always seemed to be drenched in pathos. The poor randy gobbler just wanted a date, and he got a face full of number fours for his trouble. Back in my prime, when I chased girls myself, I suppose something similar could have happened to me.
What made it hard was the quarry. Wild turkeys are either too smart or too stupid to be terribly predictable. However, the inimitable satisfaction of cajoling a bird close enough to make him dinner was indeed unparalleled.
A coyote about the size of a fairly large dog. However, they are
tenacious in close quarters.
Image: Public domain, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture
The Clinical Presentation
Our hero came to see me for an animal bite to his upper arm. I work in an urgent care clinic. Animal parts are background clutter. There was a bit of torn flesh, but it was mostly bruising. He earned the equivalent of a battle dressing, a tetanus shot and some antibiotics. Along the way, I got the story.
This is a big guy. He had been sitting at the base of a tree during the spring turkey season. He was chatting up a gobbler who was now within sight and moseying his way. The man’s heart rate went up commensurate with the moment as he shifted his shotgun behind the cover of his blind. At that very moment, a robust coyote grabbed him unexpectedly from behind and clamped down vise-like onto his left upper arm.
The man said the visceral shock was indescribable. He was utterly fixated on the approaching bird and had apparently exposed part of his shoulder to the predator as he shifted position. The coyote presumably was also on the stalk and simply lunged at the movement.
The hunter reflexively leaped to his feet. The coyote, for his part, clung on dogmatically. The man said the thing was shockingly heavy as it dangled from his injured limb. As I sat mesmerized by his story, I asked the obvious question, “Did you shoot the coyote?”
He responded, “Heck, no. I screamed like a little girl. My turkey call flew in one direction and my shotgun in another. I just ran around in circles trying to get that blasted thing off of me.”
The bird was gone in an instant. Once the coyote realized his mistake, he let loose and beat feet as well. The man was ultimately none the worse for wear save his sore shoulder and a bit of wounded pride. He indeed lost the turkey, but he gained an epic story.