"FEMA, The Shadow Government?" Topic

I am starting to write some Conspiracy X scenarios and I don't really use Aegis or the Black Book as organizations. I want to have something more overt than Majestic as the antagonist. I was thinking of FEMA.

I worked as a FEMA volunteer once and was impressed by its mobility and capabilities. I know of at least one other TMP'er with FEMA experience, but what should FEMA really be able to do? What does that big budget really buy? What are FEMA's real powers and what is FEMA's role in the grand conspiracy to control, obfuscate, and manipulate?

Thoughts?

It's popcorn time.

Wasn't FEMA taking over one of the underlying conspiracy theories in the X-Files?

FEMA a shadow government? Could be. The REAL shadow government, though, is TSA.

What's FEMA?

What is FEMA?

And if you are playing a conspiracy game, then you really do not want an overt antagonist.. I had my players in a paranoid loop the last time I GMd something like that.

Having Majestic working through cover organisations, with senior officials working for shadowy managers doing their day job and a little extra would be the correct order of things. So the FBI, CIA, and the local DMV, all have contacts who might report to one organisation (NSA) and the cut out doing the mid level work there feeds important stuff to a congressional aide who in turn passes it to a man in black…

And thats how my version kind of worked. – of course I had a cyberpunk undercurrent in mine with an AI member, and with the internet and few really secure computers.. if you needed a person removed you added them to the no fly list, tagged them as PNG, added a few convictions to the police database and flagged car as stolen and belonging to someone else, hacked their personal computer to download something illegal, (bombmaking info for example) allow the good guys to find it, and let them get killed in the crossfire without having to get any of your agents involved directly.

I now have googled FEMA – no I do not think they make a better front for a shadowy organisation, they are too visible. Of course they make a good distraction whilst various organisations go about doing just what they do to make you safe from "THEM".

Woah, some one has been listening to a little too much Alex Jones I see.

It all goes back to the Globalist bankers.

You really want to mess with their heads, have FEMA be a pawn of all of the secret organizations simultaneously and with no (broad) cross-over awareness. Maybe one cagey guy was recruited by every secret group and is aware, but the low level field agent ranks have plants from every agency who are, as low level pawns, unaware of the other agencies or the extent to which FEMA has been compromised.

Of course, its all pretty low level, as they are just too visible, but a piece of data routed *there* or delivery dropped *there*, or a few hours delay dealing with *them* all plays into the desires of which ever group they double for, and even their competing double agents may not recognize what is going on. Because, of course, the other groups don't exist…

Well, we have a really cool Cold War underground bunker in Denton TX, where we work for our Grey overlords. We used to have a lot of cattle in the farms in the area but no longer. Very odd.

They can be quite cranky at times and, when they do get upset, they change shades. That's how we know when to clear the hallways! Those who take too long to run into their offices are never seen again.

When they venture out of the bunker, the Greys prefer to ride around in vehicles that keep them in constant contact with their homeworld:

I've brought reporters into such units but, if the visit takes place around lunchtime, they are often never seen again. Very odd.

Everyone seems to think that we are supposed to be first responders and that we all work fulltime for the Agency. In fact, they think we are poised to take over the running of the government in the event of an emergency. The reality is that we are a decoy, creating to draw attention away from the real agencies that will step in when the you-know-what hits the fan. You should have heard how hard the Greys laughed when X-Files came out and made the Agency out to be so powerful. They have a very strange little laugh, almost musical, but with a wicked tone under the surface.

Even if we wanted to take over the daily operations of the country, most of us (around 90%) are not even permanent employees. We have no access to any bureaucratic government-running training whatsoever. And about three fourths of those reservists are in their 60s and 70s, with their own health issues and seriously uncomfortable with computers.

They are great with people though. I've seen those old timers comfort and lift the spirits of those who have lost loved ones and/or have lost everything they ever owned. And they don't mind doing that 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for weeks on end.

I guess our Grey overlords like to be surrounded by nice people with gray hair.

Dan

I am sure glad you guys are on my side……aren't you?

FEMA = Federal Emergency Management Agency (US)

Their role is to respond and provide support during disasters.

Some think they are a disaster of their own, going back to Hurricane Katrina.

Alex Jones?

Well, we leave the politics to the few FEMA PFTs (Permanent Full-Time Employees) that work in the 10 small regional facilities and the headquarters in DC. Those are the Greys. They usually rotate in and out of office, depending on which planet is on the ascendancy.

Regardless which party of Greys is in office, our mission (for us, the human reservists) is still the same: give the human disaster victims a starting point on the long road to recovery.

We try to keep the Greys confined to their underground lairs. There was a time when we encouraged them to come with us on disaster deployments but started getting lots of complaints from ranchers and farmers who claimed their cattle went missing.

What can I say? They like their beef.

Dan
LONG PS. Media did a job on us during Katrina. Despite the fact that, by law, we aren't allowed to set up and start work in a state if we haven't been officially requested by the local Governor, and that we rely on local officials being there on-site to point out to us their high-risk populations (nursing homes, etc.), close to 960 of us met up in Shreveport and took a convoy of staff and equipment through Alexandria to Baton Rouge, where we refueled, ate and continued on to New Orleans, arriving right before the water began to rise in the underpass at Airline Hwy. And we began rescue and equipment installing missions that same evening, just hours after the storm.

However, somehow, all the major media in the country kept saying that we weren't there. If I wasn't there, then I'm gonna have to do some serious explaining to my wife.

Media hates the Greys in DC (whichever group of Greys are in power that year), but we are somehow always the ones to get attacked. I guess they know we are used to it and don't care about anything but our mission.

I over this link to primary source material only for its gaming potential and make no comments on any possible connection to reality.

link

OTOH, every agency has disaster procedures. The military, of course (one of my additional duties as an AF lieutenant was to provide food service and billeting support for the ICBM force regeneration team--get the cots and MREs across the glowing, smoking craters to the launch complexes); but even Social Security when I worked there had procedures for delivering local services after a disaster. So . . . the secret government is actually a matrix organization _across_ agency lines so no one ever sees the whole picture--it's those disaster response plans that can be combined.

With one single exception, where two imprudent MPs were exhibiting a body to foreign media in New Orleans East (I never turned in the original pics), I can't say enough good things about the military during disaster operations.

Not only did they install generators and restored communications in record time, but they also provided us the appropriate water craft for urban flooding and the armed escort and protection we needed when we were shot at by looters and kids alike.

They are my heroes!

Dan

Makes me shed a tear Dan….I mean about how kind the Greys are.

Seriously, my short time with FEMA was well spent. However, my time training in Atlanta made me realize just how disorganized FEMA appeared, and then wondering, just where does FEMA's budget really go? Was Dr. Kurzweil right after all?

Oh, Atlanta. Sorry to hear that. Too many DC Greys there wanting to be the leads.

Regardless which Planet is in power on any given year, some regions will experience such moments of hesitation and arm-wrestling. They want us to rush on site, then waste our time and make the disaster victims wait unnecessarily when they need it the least.

Dan

Can you share any more vehicle shots Dan? Or would you have to kill us?

Here are a few more:

link

Dan

I better say this up front. I don't consider this part of reality. FEMA is the organisation building concentration camps for U.S. loyalists after the U.N. takeover. rightpundits.com/?p=7689 The link is provided for gaming purposes only, I don't endorse the political underpinnings behind it.

Well, speaking personally, if I was hit by a disaster, natural or otherwise, I'd be damned happy to see FEMA personnel offering to help, or anyone else, for that matter.

Thanks Dan. I only remember white vehicles in 2004. I had no idea FEMA markings had become so stylish.

Flooglestreet,

I love that scenario!

But don't forget to throw in some alien bodies in the mix. Two burly bikers stopped me once and asked me how I could possibly feel proud to work for an agency that had sold us out to extraterrestrials. I thought they were joking or, at the very least intoxicated, but they were dead serious!

So you've got to include some aliens in your concentration camp scenario. Maybe have a camp for prison inmates set aside for experimentations.

Dan

Pyrate Captain,

Atlanta 2004!

Is that when they flew everybody out of Orlando, right before hurricane Frances?

Our team disobeyed orders and continued working out of a few of our satellite vehicles, which we had driven away from the direct path of the storm.

Atlanta staff wanted to dismiss us for not following orders, but everyone else pressured for us to be commended for "dedication and resourcefulness ".

If orders don't make sense, follow your conscience.

Dan
PS. I found face for you to laugh at a little:
link
link

I was assigned to Frances but got redirected to Ivan. Too bad. I wanted to go to Florida but ended up in Mississippi. My badge carried a Francis number though.

I like the pic. We had similar tastes in wardrobe. I still have my khaki boonie hat. I had a ball cap marked FEMA made in underground Atlanta.

A good story goes with that hat. My team leader and I were walking into a Walmart in rural Mississippi just as a shoplifter was running out with a VCR or something similar. He ran into us while I was wearing the FEMA shirt, the hat I had made and my wire-frame sunglasses left over from my Air Force days. He stopped in his tracks and turned around to return the VCR to the greeter and then ran away.

I think folks are confused about Greys running the secret FEMA government. George Wallace had it right back in the late 1960's when he kept referring to the pointy-headed bureaucrats in DC. The Grays are actually the Coneheads. Now if you start thinking about the Coneheads running FEMA, lots of things fall intro place.

@ Agent Brown

Alex Jones
prisonplanet.com

You've seen him in the movie A Scanner Darkly standing along the street yelling something and then getting tasered by some security goons that drive up in a dark van.

That Alex Jones, conspiracy guru.
Lots of game source material right there.

So is FEMA only pretending to be just another incompetent bureaucracy? While they're screwing up disaster relief, behind the scenes they are planning on taking over the world.

Its Greenpeace you want to watch out for. It's a front for the CIA, at least according to one of our local mining magnates. link Offered purely for Plot development purposes.

OTOH I think someone just failed their SANITY roll….

YouTube link

Love Mulder's comment "And they call me paranoid"

Its Greenpeace you want to watch out for. It's a front for the CIA, at least according to one of our local mining magnates. link Offered purely for Plot development purposes.

Lol. Can't be! The French have labeled them terrorists and sunk one of their ships with a limpet mine! : link

Also, on the very serious side, which can add greatly to a gaming scenario, FEMA's budget has become a little bloated and run away. They seem to be lacking actual emergency supplies. ( Ala "But if we give you supplies for your emergency then we won't have any if you have an emergency!" and they have been known to purchase firearms, potentially way more than their security guards would ever actually require. So! Maybe those conspiracy nuts are onto something after all? Or maybe they just need a change of leader and some staff at FEMA so they actually do their job properly from now on.

Mr. Davies,

For your questions on "What's FEMA?"
Well, when the flood hit back in 96, my family was asking that very same thing. Lack of action had us asking that alot.

Grimm

Elcid1099,

Amen, brother!

Dan

Worked for WSI (security contractor) during Katrina.

Went from protecting Red Cross personnel to having to babysit FEMA morons. A more useless bunch of bottom-feeding idiots you never did see. If you are a merely incompetent Federal worker, you get promoted…if you are a completely incompetent , you get transfered over to FEMA.

After 2 days of protecting these imbeciles from (justifiably) enraged locals, I wanted to shoot them myself.

Also, Alex Jones is a treasonous, war-profiteering scumbag. FYI.

I like Agent Brown's Alex Jones much better.

I for one, welcome whatever it is she's selling.

Black helicopters.

And we *are* who you think.

The Deus Ex computer game series had FEMA involvement

link

Although a bit more what you could use it for rather than it being the big bad.

As a person whose contract has been paid by FEMA for years, FEMA as a shadow government…LOL!

With the FEMA merger with DHS (Homeland Security). DHS would be a better candidate.

I admit it. Even if all of us put our mind to it, we would never be able to administer day-to-day operations of a State, much less the Nation.

Like I said, 90% of us are not bureaucrats. Most are retired citizens, many of them WWII veterans who went on to work civilian jobs for decades until the opportunity to help out during disasters became available to them. Most of them make themselves available for FEMA deployment 3 months out of the year to supplement their small Social Security checks.

Of course, whenever DHS decides to temporarily "augment" our numbers during very large disasters with staff from other agencies, you never know what you're gonna get. On several occasions we have even had ICE officers assigned to us by DHS to help us give out information and support to victims at disaster assistance centers, but who think they can still single out and prosecute displaced undocumented immigrants!!! Can you imagine the panic and distress that has caused people who have already lost everything? And, since we often get those who can't play well with others, their agency of origin was more than happy to share them with us.

DHS and Congress need to stop helping us that way. If they want to flood our ranks with staff from other agencies, those people need to be trained ahead of time and not when the rest of us are trying to help victims. The middle of a disaster is not the time for on-the-job training. And, more importantly, while we babysit those "helpers" they need to forget the jobs they have back at their agency of origin and focus on helping the victims.

The sad thing is that most (not all) of those government augmentees can't understand that we have all been deployed "to work ourselves out of a job, so we can return to our regular lives and our families and loved ones"!!! They think we are joking about that and always try to turn a two week operation into a six month ordeal. And every day we spend unnecessarily in the field is an added expense to the tax payer. Sad to say, the 10% of our workforce that happens to work for FEMA full time (most of those are political appointees) have exactly the same mindset as those government augmentees that we get on loan from the other agencies.

The media just loves to focus on those disasters-within-disasters, just like they love to perpetuate ridiculous rumors and create the perception that we are there to make people whole again*. And the public in general takes all that as gospel.

Dan
* Though we wish to do more, we are resticted by the Stafford Act to only "get people started on the road to recovery". If the complainers are really serious about wanting the American public to pay them in full for what they should have insured in the first place, or to fully rebuild in an area that person should not have built in the first place, they need to ask their legislators to change FEMA's mission.

Ok guys, I think my blood pressure has hit a new high, so I'm going to walk away from this topic.

I get the feeling a lot of people suffer from an entitlement syndrome:

And they almost make it impossible for those who really need the help to get that help in a timely basis.

Anyhow, you guys feel free to continue the discussion without me. A lot of the hypothetical "X-File"-ish situations could be fun to game. I even plan to take a couple of these packs and paint their windbreakers blue and write FEMA on their back in big yellow letters:

rebelminis.com/15goty.html

This is the look I'm after, with the pre-DHS yellow letters:

link

Dan

So you've got to include some aliens in your concentration camp scenario. Maybe have a camp for prison inmates set aside for experimentations.

Dan

Sorry Dan, they don't cast greys with monocles.

Or maybe I can ask What The?! miniatures to cross Lilith link with one of these Reaper Honies. link

Just make sure you use the right FEMA logo, the new one DHS commissioned, and only in the colors they have approved!!!

PDF link

Dan

As long as you keep focused on FEMA and ignore CDC as it continues to roam the country in multiple tractor trailer units which monitor the zombie threat in the US we will all be safe from being picked up by the black vans for "re-education" at the camps. And continue to think that the shackle railroad cars are FEMA owned. Trust me, you are better off thinking that. CDC has people all over the world. Trust me, we, I mean they, have a file on you from birth to death and they can find you no matter where you run.

Please continue with your conspiracy rants now.

In support of Dan, there are many, many professionals in FEMA who rock!

The problem with FEMA, as I witnessed it, was that the leadership had to reinvent the wheel every disaster, at least as far as the community relations field officers (like me) went. However, the people that run the MERS vehicles were not recruited yesterday.

Running essentially, a provisional government of services takes skilled professionals (like Dan).

However, it is this capability, that makes a shadow government scenario so appealing……. there, that ought to get me a job in the concentration camp library and perhaps a blanket when I am locked up for civil disobedience in the trying times ahead.

FEMA has been working closely with the CDC on the Pan-edemic bird flu scenarios.
And do not forget the Strategic stockpiles of medicne that FEMA has deployed around the country. I have worked on a few workshops involving them too.

Keep it simple, let the players imaginations run with the tiny clues you give 'em.

In real life FEMA once requisitioned 14 million body bags.
It was a clerical error, but say it wasn't?
What do they know that we don't?
Creepy.

It's a single sentence, but instantly gives you a feeling of shadow organizations operating at nefarious levels beyond our knowledge.

I don't know why everyone keeps badmouthing FEMA,
I think the Federal Extraterrestrial Management Agency is doing a fine job.

Heck, I can hardly remember the last time I was probed!
(those rigellian twins at last year's Christmas party don't count, that was consensual… not the best idea, but consensual)

Still, some folks don't trust FEMA.

campfema.com

link

YouTube link

link

link

I will definitely need a few of the 99%ers.

link

And also stalwart defenders of the American way and the home project who debunk such notions:

link

Of course we can authenticate as the truth anything that is presented by FOX NEWS, Right?

So how about incorporating FEMA into my Conspiracy X game? Still not a good idea? Maybe it should be DoD?