GR: "Dateline, 20 September 2010: The Curse of the Stobor."

"For nearly six years the world has pondered the mystery of the marauding creatures dubbed "The Stobor" after Robert Heinlein's fictional bogeyman from his highly acclaimed 1950's SF survival novel, "Tunnel in the Sky." The Stobor first appeared on April 1st, six years ago, in what would soon become one of the bloodiest disasters in human history. "

GR: "The first sightings of the Stobor occurred in the upper Midwest portion of the former United States, days before the destruction of Washington DC. Strange stocky creatures, vaguely resembling koala bears but with a very real appetite for killing and eating people, appeared in hordes over an area covering hundreds of thousands of square miles. The Stobor are known to attack any type of animal. They do prefer, and tend to focus on, prey that have a tall upright profile such as humans and seem instinctively to know that structures, such as homes and other buildings, would contain such prey. Although not very agile, swift or possessing any weapons other than tooth and claw, they can be single-minded stalkers easily capable of dispatching an unarmed human. To make matters worse they always tended to appear in great numbers and together attacked a target such as a home or office building."

GR: "One fortunate aspect of this first appearance was the region in which it occurred. The upper Midwest of the former United States contains a rural population that had historically been rich in firearm ownership and hunting tradition. The first victims of the Stobor attacks had a fairly good chance of defending themselves in the rural areas while the smaller urban population centers did not fair quite as well due to the fact that many did not share the firearm culture of their more rural neighbors. Those in the city instead depended on the police for defense but it soon became apparent that law-enforcement officers had their hands full and could not be everywhere at once. The police did not even have a small chance of responding in time to the many frantic 911 calls, which only ended when the call centers were over-run as well. The largest cities were nearly wiped off the map."

GR: "An unlucky factor that led to much loss of life in the following hours besides the lack of firearms and training amongst the world population was the date of the first appearance of the Stobor. April 1st has traditionally been the holiday of pranksters and practical jokers and the first reports of Stobor attacks were disregarded as a giant media hoax in the tradition of Orson Well's, "The War of the Worlds" broadcast. The people of the world could just not believe such an astounding story could be real and precious hours ticked by before Washington and Baghdad were destroyed and the world was shown the true horror of this monster invasion. Soon afterwards, all the people of the world would have the unfortunate chance to see for themselves the danger of the Stobor. They appeared in hordes out of thin air to attack people at seemingly random parts of the globe. Much of the globe is still infested with Stobor and must be scorched and cleaned by militia operations to rid the area of this dangerous predator before human inhabitants can return."

GR: "Even the former United States suffered millions of deaths in the first few hectic days of the Stobor appearance until those who were still living decided to take things into their own hands. The US Government quickly learned that, although armed with the multitude of military and police personnel it had at its disposal, it could not guarantee the safety of even a small fraction of the population. Armed citizens possessed with the slightest bit of firearm skill, proved more than capable of protection themselves from Stobor unless they were severely outnumbered or ran out of ammunition."

GR: " What was left of the Congress, after their retreat from DC..."

GR: "...soon passed a bill that overturned all firearm restrictions on the spot and even demanded that citizens be under curfew unless they were armed. They strongly suggested that they travel in groups as they went about their business at all times. It is an ironic twist that one of the last acts of that body would be to end the control that allowed it to exist in the first place. Firearm sales and ammunition production instantly became a booming market economy."

GR: "It was quickly discovered that man's best friend, the dog, was a valuable asset in detecting Stobor as they stalked and attacked people. Dogs gave people the extra edge needed to sniff out marauding Stobor in time to allow them to prepare a hasty defense. A rifle, skillfully employed, could dispatch even a large number of Stobor before they could close the distance. At present it is almost impossible to find anyone in the Americas not carrying a rifle or at least a pistol and accompanied by a canine companion. Although there has not been much advancement towards preventing or stopping random Stobor infestations life has returned mostly to business as usual, but society has taken on a surreal frontier atmosphere.

GR: "The appearance of the Stobor initially baffled scientists the world over. Early reports of the Stobor appearing out of thin air were dismissed as the hallucinations of frightened and incoherent attack survivors. Eventually it became apparent through careful observation that the Stobor actually did appear out of thin..."

GR: "...air but scientists were still baffled at this seeming impossibility that defied the laws of physics, as they knew them. It was not until they searched for other mysterious appearances, that they would find a clue."

GR: "Nearly a year before in Jerusalem one hundred children were murdered in what is now called the Passover slayings. Mysteriously a large number of assailants were able to sneak into some of the most well defended homes of prominent Jewish leaders and murdering the firstborn children under the age of 16. Jewish authorities were at a loss to explain the mystery but they wasted no time in determining the blame for these attacks although they could not explain how they were performed. Israel responded by counterattacking Palestinian strongholds and pushing the Palestinians miles away from the boarders of their country and away from Jewish settlements on the Gaza strip creating massive tracts of no-man's zones as protective buffers."

GR: "Recently, while troops scoured the Iraqi wastelands of Stobor monsters -or "Mobs" as they are sometimes called by professional fighters, the answer to the mystery of the Stobor's appearance was discovered."

GR: "In an abandoned research laboratory it was found that Iraqi theoretical physicists had discovered the wormhole effect. Reverse engineering the mostly-destroyed wormhole apparatus allowed western scientist to piece together the mystery and subsequently the mystery of the Passover Massacre as well. Sadism Hussein had poured millions into an effort to create a weapon of mass destruction but lacked a delivery vehicle capable to transporting such a weapon to his many distant enemies. He found his delivery vehicle in the wormhole effect and tested it that April on the infamous Passover Massacre. He dispatched 100 assassins through wormholes to turn Jewish Biblical History on its head and to test the wormhole's workability. He found that there were limitations to the wormholes. They were unstable and could only transport living tissue one-way over longer distances. All of his assassins were killed in the attempt to travel back though the wormhole."

GR: "The targeting equipment made the 2-way transfer imprecise, unlike earlier tests that were shorter-ranged, contained within Iraq, and consisted of two sets of wormhole machines. Dual machinery set up on both sides of the wormhole was the only way travel could be safe without causing the wormhole walls to weaken. This weakening opened rifts to a parallel reality and allowed the inhabitants of that reality to "leak" into our earth. The reason for the timing of the Stobor invasion, it is believed, was that the Iraqis had planned an assault on Washington DC. This suicidal one-way raid stretched the capability of the wormhole and caused it to break apart and create multiple drifting channels from the Stobor-world to ours. These rifts have been drifting randomly over large distances, spilling out enraged monsters ever since."

GR: "Scientists believe the Stobor were inhabitants of a brutish reality where mankind ceased to exist and instead another dominant race roamed the earth. Speculations as to why the Stobor were so aggressive when they encountered a human in our reality were many. Some have postulated theories of competition between primitive humanoids and Stobor for dominance in that reality. The fact that so many millions of Stobor mobs have penetrated the one-way wormhole while no human-like creatures have indicates that human life was eradicated or severely diminished there."

GR: "At the same time it is assumed the Stobor have achieved near-Malthusian population density allowing so many monsters to fall through the rifts into ours. As the wormhole distortions began to spread and drift throughout the world, many millions of the Stobor found their way through from their world to ours. This most certainly explains why Iraq was one of the first countries to perish entirely from the massive Stobor onslaught. It has been one of the most difficult areas to clear since monster re-emergence has been so insipid. The former city of Washington, DC and the surrounding area is also victim to huge influxes of Stobor and provides an excellent training ground for instructing people how to fight them. The DC instruction zone is visited by thousands of combat students every day. There seems to be no end to the "spawning" of Mobs in this target-rich zone.

GR: "Although the Stobor invasion can be seen as the single-greatest destructive plague to ever strike the human race it contains at least one silver lining. ZAP philosophers have credited the calamity towards ending the global deathgrip that governments had on the world's populations. After the ban on personal weapons was lifted in the United States, and Washington DC was wiped out before the army could be positioned to protect it, the Federal government was severely weakened. The survivors of the first waves of Stobor attacks were very angry that there was such loss of life and destruction and vowed to never again submit to be unarmed and weakened by a government. They understood first-hand the reasons why the casualties were so high. Ownership of weapons had been steadily eroded over the years in the U.S. and those that still hung on to them at the time of the first Stobor attacks were the only ones who were able to survive. Anger was directed at the still-reeling Federal Government and blame was laid squarely on the shoulders of the State where it surely rested. It was as if a spell had been lifted from the surviving populace. The government, once thought of as a doting uncle, exposed itself as the evil stepmother it was."

GR: "The transition was fairly quick. ZAP philosophers are still stunned by how quickly government was brushed aside and anarchy ensued. They had theorized before the Stobor that a transition to government-less society would take generations. The general public was amazed at how well anarchy actually worked and after the people fought together to protect themselves from the Mobs they realized that they did not need government to make society work -especially when it was already missing in action. This point alone drove home that lesson. ZAP philosophy spread and the Zero Aggression Principle was put to the test."

GR: "Everyone alive today understands the ZAP, and its use is universal. Noted author, media darling and international speaker L. Neil Smith has been widely quoted as saying, "A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim." This is the philosophy that has been called the ZAP and has allowed a renaissance in human achievement to ensue in the years following the Stobor Phenomenon."

GR: "It is ironic that the vehicle for such an advance in the human condition and general Freedom of the race was brought about by the evil scheming of men who sought to use technology to further their goals of genocidal religious and state control. They were fighting to destroy Freedom and their efforts backfired and instead freed the world from oppression, organized religion, and governments. The peace and achievements of the past six years seem almost impossible when viewed from the oppressive police state that was coalescing after the destruction of the NY World Trade Center..."

GR: "...and the ensuing collapse of the world economy."

GR: "Today's affluence and wealth has almost universally spread through the Stobor-free globe and has lead to such great advancements in technology, science and the arts. The voluntary armies of Stobor-eliminators who are reclaiming the barren lands that had been lost in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia only attest to the wealth of individuals who have the leisure to form Free Companies to reclaim valuable land in these areas. These are the new frontiers and share the same adventure and intrigue as the asteroid belts or the Mars colony. We truly live in a new golden age and we have the Stobor to thank for reminding us what it really takes to survive as Free People. We will fight if we have to but we will not take what is not ours. Freedom and Responsibility are what gives us our power and our Liberty is what makes us so strong. It allows us to accumulate so much wealth and happiness and pass it down to our children.

GR: "Goodnight world. Until tomorrow, this is Geraldo Rivera for Dateline."