Leave the World Behind

The podcast Reviews and Opinions by Val discusses various topics, including movies and current events. The movie "Leave the World Behind" is discussed, along with the possibility of World War III and a potential blackout and internet outage. The podcast also mentions past events like 9/11 and the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the need for preparedness. The movie itself is described as an apocalyptic psychological thriller, produced by Barack and Michelle Obama's company, Higher Ground Productions. It explores the breakdown of technology and the struggle for survival. The podcast suggests learning different languages to communicate in case of a power grid blackout. The movie is available on Netflix and was written and directed by Sam Esmail. Welcome to Reviews and Opinions by Val. We will be talking about movies, celebrities, social events, whatever is going on around the world. Tune in every Wednesday to hear what we're talking about. Today we're going to talk about the movie Leave the World Behind. So how are you with the movie? Did you see the movie? Did you like the movie? Do you believe the movie? Do you think that World War III is possible? Do you think that we are on the brink of a war? We have heard from Kamala Harris, our Vice President, where she spoke to the other countries and she told, well, really, Russia, China, and North Korea, that we were going to continue with NATO and we were going to continue to work with our allies and fight with our allies. However, we have heard from a general, and he stated that we know war, but we don't want war, but if we have to have war, that their children will be orphans. Then we heard from NATO, and NATO said that we would have a blackout because there would be a power grid and that the Internet would go out because of the satellite. Then we heard from the FBI, and the FBI warned us to be prepared for the blackout and for the Internet going out. So how do you feel about that? Do you believe that that's possible, that that can happen? Because in the past we had no idea that anything like 9-11 could happen, and it happened on September the 11th. We were devastated. We saw so many people lose their lives. People ran in to rescue them. They lost their lives. We had no idea we were so vulnerable here in the United States, and we never believed anything could happen because, of course, we're the most powerful nation in the world. Okay. Then we had the COVID. COVID-19 happened. When COVID-19 happened, we thought that was going to be a war. So most of us were prepared. We had food. We had canned goods. We had water because we thought it was going to be a war. It turned out to be COVID. Now we were stuck in the house for a year, couldn't go to the grocery store, couldn't get your nails done, couldn't get your hair done. We couldn't do anything but go to the grocery store, and most of us just called the grocery store, put our order in, and we went and picked it up. Now that's a process that's still going on to this day. Once we decided that we were going to go back and come out of COVID, our world changed. We didn't know what normal was like. We didn't know what normal was going to feel like. Now we are into what we think may be a war, and so the rush on the grocery stores and toilet paper and all of that will happen again when the blackout and the blackout for the Internet occurs. So we have the government saying it's going to happen. We have other people telling us how to prepare for it. So how do you feel? Are you ready? Are you preparing for it? Or are you going to wait and see what happens and see what the end is going to be? We do know that North Korea told America that they were going to invade South Korea and they were going to invade Taiwan and for America to stay out of it. We haven't heard anything else about that. We did hear that they had invaded Taiwan, but we aren't sure. But right now there is a war going on, and the war is being fought overseas. It's not being fought in the United States yet, but supposedly it's coming. We had a couple of weeks ago AT&T, Verizon, and I think T-Mobile had services for a few people that had been stopped. They couldn't get any service or they woke up with an SOS on their phone. We heard that the three rockets that Russia shot up in the sky to the satellite, one of them hit the satellite, knocked a piece out that was big as a bus into the ocean. So they recovered from that, got everything back up. AT&T never came on and apologized. Verizon never came on and said anything, and T-Mobile never came on and said anything. The only people we heard from was the federal government. The federal government said they were watching it, they had a handle on it, and they were taking care of it. So why is the federal government speaking for AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile? Only thing we saw was AT&T said that they would give $5 back to the people that incurred the outage, but the $5 would take two building cycles, so it would take two months for them to pay $5 to everybody. But they're only paying the $5 to the people whose service was interrupted. So as far as Leave the World Behind, it started out as a book, and the book is by Ruman Alam, R-U-M-A-N-A-L-A-M. It was produced by the Obamas. Barack and Michelle Obama were the executive producers, and the cast was Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, and I know I'm cutting up her name, I don't mean to, Mahala Harald, and Mahershala Ali, Kevin Bacon, Farrell McKenzie, Vanessa Espalaga, and the name of Archie, let me see if I can find Archie's name, Alexis Ray Florenza. So this is the cast that was in Leave the World Behind. So Leave the World Behind was informative. It gave us a lot of information. It had a bunch of symbols, like there's a tanker that runs on the beach out of control, and the tanker has the name White Lion on it. Well, White Lion was the name of a slave ship. Rose has on a T-shirt, which is a little girl, she has on a NASA T-shirt, which is space, which is where the satellite is in space. And there's also a connotation regarding blacks and whites surviving together, because the white woman in the movie, Amanda, who is Julia Roberts, she doesn't trust the black man, even the fact that he comes and says that it's his house. She doesn't really believe him, that it's his house, because, you know, why would an African American have a house like that? So basically, the story is about a family that decides to leave the city and go into the suburbs, which is they live in New York, and they decide to go to Long Beach so that they can get away from the madness in the city, and she was starting to lose her family. So as they attempt to make sense of the sequential rapid breakdown in phones, television, and other regularly used technology, which points to a potential cataclysm, and it was, because can you imagine not being able to just pick up your phone or go on the line and go on the Internet and find out whatever it is you're looking for? We have gotten so used to that. One of the things that G.H., who is the black guy in the movie, one of the things that he says is he wished we could go back to the days where we didn't have Internet, where we just had the phone, and you had to talk to each other over the phone. So it was an unknown enemy and shocking certainty that the city succumbs to chaos. G.H. is a sharp-dressed stranger and his daughter. They disrupt Amanda and Clay's family vacation. The information the unwanted couple brings is inconceivable because they're talking about a blackout that happened in New York as they were coming back from an event, and instead of going home, instead of going to his apartment in New York, they decided to go to the house that they had just rented out to Amanda and Clay and their family. The movie was done by Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, and their production is called Higher Ground Productions. So I wanted to get that in there and make sure that you knew the name of their production company. So the movie has three parts, four parts to it, really five. Part one is called The House, part two is called The Curve, part three is called The Noise, and part four is called The Flood, and part five is The End. So basically the movie talks about how things can happen when the grid goes out and it shows that nobody has power, they don't have access to the Internet, and they're trying to figure out how to survive. So Clay goes out and he's going out to see if he can find what's going on, and he runs into a Spanish woman while he's out, and when he runs into the Spanish woman, she's looking at him, she's frantic, she's desperate, and she's speaking Spanish. And so for those of you that don't know what she said when she was speaking Spanish, she said, Thank God I found someone. I'm trying to get back to my home. I'm lost. I've been walking for a while. I need to use your phone. You're the first person I've seen all day. We have to get out of here. I just saw a plane that was spraying red gas in the vicinity. I saw some deer, more than 50. They were coming out of the woods. Please, I need to go home, sir. A military plane appeared and fled. There's no one around. Is it a chemical attack? But he didn't know what she was talking about, and so he kept trying to explain to her that he didn't know what she was saying, he didn't know what she was saying, and then he just drove off and left her. Didn't ask her any questions, didn't offer her a ride. He just ran off and left her. So my suggestion is relearn a different language so that when the grid, power grid does happen, at least we can communicate with each other and we can talk to each other, especially the southern states, Texas, California, the places that have Spanish-speaking people. We really understand, you know, certain languages, certain things that they're going to say. So that was a bummer with that one. We really felt like he could have done more than he did do with her. But he does tell the daughter, Ruth, what's going on. Ruth is a black girl. G.H. is her dad. So he does tell her what's going on. The movie is on Netflix. It is an apocalyptic psychological thriller. The film was written and directed by Sam Esmail. So basically they're telling us what we should do, how we can survive this blackout that they believe is coming, how we're going to survive. And the movie kind of gives you some ideas what we have. Like at one point Julia Roberts has this rant that she does, and she's talking about what we're supposed to do and are we supposed to get drinking straws and run water in the bathtub. And the straws are so that we could turn dirty water into water that we could drink water for our bodies. So she talks about sitting ducks. Are we sitting here like sitting ducks because we don't know what's going on out there. And they don't have a way to find out what's going on out there. And so the television goes off, but on the television you see a sign that says that the White House has been attacked and that everyone should take for cover and be protected. And also Rose talks about a few things in the movie. So you see the deer gathering and you see birds flying in an opposite direction. And on the radio when Clay got out of the car, he didn't hear this, but the radio said that the animals, the environment for the animals was messed up and they didn't know where they were supposed to go or what they were doing, so they were starting to gather and doing unlikely things. And so everybody's thinking that the animals are trying to tell us something, but the animals don't know anything. The animals are thrown off because of the sound, and the sound had radiation in it which made Archie's teeth fall out. And so when they go to Kevin Bacon to try and get some assistance, then he tells them about in Cuba a few years ago they had some radioactive sound and the radioactive sound knocked out some people's teeth. And so they're trying to figure out how to get him some help. So G.H. goes to see Kevin Bacon because he believes Kevin Bacon has something that would help the boy, and he does, but he pulls a gun on them and says, you know, get away from my door, stand on the ground. And so they're saying that you can't have any friends during this time because if you're a prepper and you have food and you have canned goods, then other people that know that you're a prepper will be knocking on your door because they aren't prepared. The other thing that was discussed, not in the movie, but people talking were they would have a shelter, and the United States has bomb shelters, and if that were to happen, they would go into neighborhoods and pick up people and take people to the shelters and take people to the bomb shelters. But my thing is if they do do that and put people on buses and take them, will it be like Katrina in the dome? You know, will people run out of medicine? If they take their medicine with them, will they run out of food? If the place that they're in runs out of food, then what do they do? Because if there is a war, we don't know how long the war is going to last, so we don't know how long to prep for food or how long to hold on to food. When does it become chaotic? Because one of the things that he says in the movie is nobody is in charge. And if the grid goes out and things happen the way that they say they're going to happen, there will not be anybody in charge. The police won't be in charge. The Army's not in charge. You know, people are doing what they want to do because you're going to call 911. Of course not. You can call 911. You're going to run to the hospital emergency room and do what? The equipment in the hospitals don't work. The people that are in the hospitals that are in critical conditions, they will be the first ones to go because they don't have any power, you know, and so we hear, well, they have a generator. Well, how long do you think that generator is going to last? Is it going to last like years? We saw that with Israel and with Gaza, how the hospitals fell apart when they didn't have power or when they blew up the hospitals. So we've already seen that part of it. So we know that that's possible in real life. But in the end, the black guy looks to the white man and he says, I need to know that we're on the same page and that we are going to work together because he said there's a three-stage maneuver that could topple the government and the county from the world. The first stage is isolation. Disable communication and transportation. Make the target deaf and dumb and paralyze them as much as possible. The second stage is synchronized chaos. Terrorize them with covert attack and misinformation, overwhelming their defense capabilities. Even their weapons and systems are vulnerable to the extremists over their own military. Without a clear enemy, people start turning on each other. And if it's done successfully, the third stage would happen on its own. And he called it the coup de chaos. And he said civil war, it would collapse the nation, and the most effect is it would destabilize the country because if the target notices the dysfunction enough, then they're able to invade us. And so he just wanted to know if the white guy would go along with him because, as you know, in this country, racism is pretty big. And if they aren't going to work together because they're trying to get to this bunker and Rose has already found the bunker, but he wants to make sure that there won't be any confrontation or any issues with them trying to survive together. But isn't that ironic that it will be a black man and a white man? I mean, that's the division of this country. That's the whole issue with this country, the racism, the systemic racism. And so now when the end of the world is about to happen, those are the two that need to work together in order for them to survive. So the outcome of that would be interesting. Now, most people didn't like the end of the movie. The end of the movie, Rose is looking at friends and she found the bunker, and so she's happy. But if you pay attention to the movie, earlier in the movie, she's talking to her brother, and she's talking about the movie. Do you think Rachel and, oh, I can't think of his name, if they're going to get back together? And so the brother says, Are you still thinking about that? You still talking about this story? And she says, I'm never going to find out, am I? And he said, Probably not, but why do you care? And she says, Because it makes me happy. Because in this fucked up world, everything that's going on, that's what makes me happy. So at the end of the movie, she's sitting in front of friends. She's watching the final episode of Friends, which is the end, the final episode of the world, supposedly. And as she's watching Friends, she has a smile on her face, and she's finally happy. So with everything that's going on around her, she's finally happy. And so we're supposed to make the assumption that her mother, Amanda, is right outside the house calling Rose's name, so we know she's going to go inside and see Rose. She's going to find the bunker. She's going to go back and tell the men, because they're on their way back to the house. And so the assumption is they all wind up in the thorns' bunker. But here's the question. Where are the thorns? How come the thorns aren't in the thorns' bunker? So planes are falling out of the sky. Tankers are rolling up on the beach. We don't know how to communicate. We communicate with each other. Teslas are all running, brand-new Teslas with nobody in them, are all running into each other. And they said that's because of a feature that you could call the car to you. I'm not sure how that worked. Elon Musk wasn't happy about that. And then right on the other side, you see other cars that are stacked together because the cars had a chip in them. So does that mean if you have a chip in your car, because that goes to the Internet, that you won't be able to use your car? So what have we really done? Have we turned the world over to the Internet? Have we put everything in the Internet? And so what happens? If we don't win the war, do we become part of China, part of Russia? Does our money change? What happens? What happens if the world changes and we aren't really the greatest country in the world? What if we aren't number one anymore? How do we survive that? And if everything is in the Internet and it's on a satellite, do I still have to pay my mortgage or has that information disappeared? Because I do it online. Credit cards, do we still have credit cards? Do they know how much money we owe on a credit card or has all that information been erased? Our government, will we have an election in November? Is our government falling apart? How will we survive? What will the end look like? Will it be beneficial, everybody starting off on the same keel, on the same playing field? How will that work out? It's a question. Those are all questions that we should be asking ourselves and we should be looking at and trying to make decisions on because we're in limbo and the government's only going to tell us so much because they don't want us to panic. And I get that because COVID-19, we panicked. 9-11, we panicked. So I understand, but don't leave us in the dark. If something is going on, we need to be prepared for it, at least prepare us. You know, don't leave us hanging. Credit cards, we're paying credit cards off, paying our bills off. Do we need to stop paying our credit cards off? Do we have any idea when any of this is going to happen? No, we don't. So if we're all on the same playing field, what happens to rich people? What happens to the money? Because a week ago China, Russia, and Japan took their money out of the stock market. They told us that on the news on a Friday. We didn't hear anything else about that. We know a year ago they said that we wouldn't be using money from the United States, that we would be using digital money. Now, we don't know what digital money is, but if digital money is credit cards, then what are we supposed to do? Because the credit cards, we won't have access to them. We don't have a machine to use them with. So what does that really mean? Also, cash. We're going to have to have cash, and cash is small bills. Because as I said earlier, a bottle of water was $5. So if somebody's charging $5 for a bottle of water and all you have is $20, you just paid $20 for a bottle of water. Of course, we're paying $3 for water now. So that probably wouldn't be that big of a deal. But we need to have cash because what are we bartering with? We don't want to barter with food because we don't want anybody to know that we have food. So if we need something, we should be able to pay cash for it. But if you don't have small bills so that whatever the price is, you could pay the exact change for it or pay the exact price for it, what will you do? So we have all of these questions. We aren't sure if we should go out and buy food and water. We aren't sure if we should go out and buy guns. We aren't sure if we should buy headsets so we won't hear the noise. We aren't sure if we should buy straws so that we can have good water. We aren't sure if we should buy sleeping bags, if we should buy tents, if we should set a kit up to put in our car so that when the bombing starts we can start. But where are we going to go? What other country are we going to go to? Because we have pissed off so many other countries. What are we going to do with that? And the other thing is that if this does happen and we do get sick, do we save medications? Where do we go and get penicillin or whatever it is we need? How can you stock up on medication that you're supposed to be taking every day? There are just so many questions out here, and the government is not sharing anything with us. So with this podcast, I just gave you food for thought, and I'm hoping you watch the movie and after you watch the movie, make some decisions about whether you want to be a prepper or not or whether you believe that God is going to save you and God is in control. That's part of the movie as well because Ruth, which is the daughter, talks about a scene that was in West Wing, Westwood, West something. I think it's West Wing. And it's a story that we've all heard. It's about the man that was sitting on the roof that said God was going to save him. And so she tells her mom the story. She talks about the flood report came out, and the man said God's going to take care of him. And the flood gets higher. He goes up on the roof. A man comes by with a boat and says, Get in the boat. I'll save you. He says, No, God's going to save me. A helicopter comes, drops down the ladder for him to get on board. He says, No, God's going to save me. Then he dies. Then when he gets to heaven, he's upset with God and said, I depended on you. I trusted you. Why did you let me die? God said, I sent a flood. I sent a boat. I sent a ship. What did you think was going to happen? And so that's why he died. So all the people that don't want to prepare, that think that God is in control, and he is, I'm not saying that he's not, because a lot of what's going on is in the Bible. It's in Revelations. And so if you're actually going through that and you believe God is going to help you and God is going to save you, what happens if you wind up in a shelter with a million other people with, you know, food rations and not enough water? Are you dependent on God because you didn't prepare? What happens if you're dependent on God and you're waiting on God and 30 days you don't have water? Well, really, two weeks you don't have water and you don't have food, but you're still waiting on God. I don't know how practical that would be and if that's something you should do, but you do hear people say, Well, I'm waiting on God. Well, God is in control. But God gave you six senses, and God will have his people prepared. He did that all through the Bible with famines, you know, Noah and the ark. They thought Noah was crazy because he was building an ark, but when the flood came, everybody wanted to knock on the door and get in the ark, but God had already sealed the doors for the ark. So I'm not sure if not doing anything is the best thing to do, but we don't have control over that. So this broadcast is brought to you by African American Specials, a design company for T-shirts, coffee mugs, hats, tank tops, and totes. They can customize any garment you want as well as designing the artwork for it. They can be reached at https://africanamericanspecials.com slash products slash. They can also be reached by email at aaspecials at currently.com. You can also go to the website, Google. There's a store out there, a Shopify store that you can also go to to purchase the garments or order the garments. I hope you enjoyed this podcast, and I will see you again next Wednesday. Stay safe, stay woke, and stay alert. Bye. I have a few corrections I'd like to make. One is in the movie they went to Long Island and not Long Beach. That's in California, but the name of the city they went to was called Point Comfort. The story about West Wing was done by Rose, the daughter, and not Ruth because Ruth was the black girl. Okay, that's all I've got. Bye, y'all.