Survivors – A Novel of the Coming Collapse

L. Roy continued, “But here’s my point: those teeming millions will not just starve and go away. I believe that any family who thinks they can defend a working farm against raiders just by themselves is delusional. Humans are dangerous. The fact is, they are the most dangerous animals on earth. We must never lose sight of that. We’re now surrounded by starving predators that are much more dangerous than tigers. It won’t be like that earthquake in Haiti, where the bad guys had machetes. Here in the U.S. of A., the vast majority will be armed with firearms. The ones currently without firearms will obtain them by any means necessary, including looting government armories. These are thinking and highly motivated enemies. They know how to read maps. Some of them have a grasp of hydrology and can appreciate the difference between solely gravity-fed water systems and those that need grid power. They can put two and two together. Secondly, consider that raiders-the ‘outlaw looting groups’ that they call them now in the newspapers-may be a threat for a very short period, but I really don’t see permanent groups of more than a dozen ever forming. They will be quickly replaced by much larger groups of ‘citizens’ doing essentially the same things, but much better armed and organized.”

Laine interjected, “It may just be a matter of semantics-just what they call themselves, or the flag they fly. But they’ll still be looters by any other name.”

Martin gave Lars a thumbs-up and continued: “One of my overseas stints in stratcom was in, of all places, Albania in 1998. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time! A few hours after Albania’s political crisis started-which was caused by a huge national lottery pyramid scam-almost every adult male in the country procured an AKM from government stocks. Armories were the first targets looted. As the crisis started, I flew from Brussels back into Tirana packing a pistol and a sack of money, naively thinking I would be able to move around the country and defend myself, getting our in-place assets out of ‘jams.’ What a laugh. Everyone had me outgunned, and the vast majority of these yahoos had military training of some sort. I never got out of the capital city. Every road seemed to have roadblocks every few miles, blocked by armed local citizens.”

Martin carried on: “Without central authority, people don’t just starve and go away. They form their own polities-their own governments. These polities are often organized around town or city government or local churches. They may call it a city council or a committee or a senate. The bottom line is, ‘We the People’ will do whatever ‘we’ have to do to survive. That’s your ‘we/they paradigm’ in its essence, all the way to the point of xenophobia. And that specifically includes taking away NAPI’s grain or even just stored food that was prudently set aside by the more forward-thinking individual families. When things started to unravel, I realized that when-not if-a polity formed, I’d better be part of that process. If not, my refinery and my employees would be looked upon as ‘resources’ instead of part of-members of-the community.”

Laine jumped in: “You’ve nailed it at its essence. The local polity will pass a resolution-or ‘emergency order’ or whatever-and ‘legally’ confiscate anyone’s goods if they’re deemed to be ‘they’ instead of ‘we.’ If you resist, you’ll be crushed. They will have the resources of a whole community to draw upon including weapons, vehicles, manpower, electronics, tear gas, the whole works. Every scrap of government-owned equipment and weaponry will likely be used-by someone. Anyone who plans to hold out against that kind of threat is kidding themselves.”

L. Roy again gave a thumbs-up and continued. “That is why I pushed as hard as I could to get the county sheriff to set up roadblocks. I planted the seed and laid out the details, and now he thinks it was all his idea. Hey, whatever works! My fear is that the local polity that is now coalescing is almost certainly going to make mistakes. Some of these could be lethal blunders. I frankly don’t think the locals, except for a few of us, have given a lot of serious thought to facing long-term survival. They’ll squander resources and they’ll delay implementing necessary actions-like planting more food, or converting irrigation water systems into also handling domestic water, or working together to defend a harvest. Even worse, they may even decide to take in thousands of refugees from the big cities. That will almost ensure longer-term starvation.”