Holocaust Education and Avoidance Pod
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HEAP is an acronym for a "Holocaust Education and Avoidance Pod", a concept created by author Neal Stephenson in his book Cryptonomicon. The HEAP is basically an instruction manual on guerilla warfare, designed to be distributed among peoples at risk of becoming the victims of genocide or ethnic cleansing.
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[edit] Background
The fictional creator of the HEAP is Avi Halaby, a Jewish-American descendent of Holocaust survivors. Avi is obsessed with studying and recording instances of genocidal acts, and ultimately, with trying to prevent such acts from occurring in the future. To this end, Avi seeks to develop and distribute HEAPs to peoples who are potential victims of these acts.
[edit] Components
- Guerilla Warfare: The stated goal of the HEAP is to create and dissemenate a manual on guerilla warfare that would enable a population to fight back and prevent a genocidal attack by another group. Military or paramilitary training is seen by Avi as the only realistic prevention of future Holocausts.
- HEAP Gun: Although the bulk of the HEAP seems to be dedicated to guerilla warfare tactics, it also deals with the creation of the "HEAP gun", an inexpensive, rugged assault rifle designed with durability and reliability as higher priorities than ergonomics and pin-point accuracy. The HEAP gun is designed to be assembled covertly with common tools and materials (with the exception of a rifled barrel, which is to be cached in case the weapon needs to be contructed), like a more advanced zip gun. Two ideas seem to be touched on in regards to the HEAP gun. The first is that state of the art, precision-machined weapons are unrealistic and unnecessary when considering asymmetric warfare, historically evidenced in the Vietnam War, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the Second Iraq War where a smaller force armed with inferior weapons have resisted defeat at the hands of a technologically advanced foe[1]. The second is that the weapon itself might need to be constructed on the spot rather than merely acquired and stored due to the implementation of strict gun control or banning firearms on the targets of genocide prior to the attack- an idea associated with the actions of Nazi Germany, and Stalinist Russia.[2]
- Crypt: Additionally, the concept of the HEAP in Cryptonomicon is married to that of "the Crypt": an ultrasecure data haven safe from government, economic, and/or geographical interference or influence. The Crypt insures that the HEAP cannot be suppressed or destroyed as long as access to the internet exists. Therefore it seems though the Crypt is technically a separate project, the HEAP's existence and dissemenination is dependent on a Crypt-like network.
[edit] Historical Precedents
The idea of a resistance movement/guerilla warfare manual has its roots in the writings of well-known resistance/revolutionary figures such as Che Guevera, Michael Collins, Mao Zedong, and many others.
The HEAP may also be somewhat inspired by the infamous The Anarchist Cookbook given Cryptonomicon's portayal of a desperate, paranoid, power-hungry American government towards the end of the book.
[edit] HEAPs outside Cryptonomicon
Although a true HEAP has yet to be assembled in real life, some primitive attempts have been made, via hyperlinking to source materials, to enable a person who so desired to assemble their own HEAP [3]. The ultimate goal of the HEAP dovetails with that of disaster-preparedness enthusisats: preparation for, avoidance of, and ultimately surviving a worst-case-scenario. Thus, many survival sites have become electronic HEAPs of a sort, even though Holocaust prevention did not play an explicit role in their creation, and guerilla warfare is not the means used to achieve survival.
