Guest Post by The Zman
Over the holidays, this was a topic on one of the e-mail lists I read. Oddly, it is a list about statistics, but the topic got a lot of replies. Apparently, lots of people worry that America is headed toward a civil war of some sort. Perhaps people with an interest in statistical methods worry about civil wars, in addition to methodological wars. It could also be that people fond of math know that society is fragile and it would not take much to topple it over. The distance between us and Somalia is not a big as we like to pretend.
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Anyway, it is a good brain teaser. What would a civil war in America be like this time around? The country is a vastly different place than the last time. The north is still richer than the south, but there’s a Midwest, Southwest, West and Northwest now. More important, nothing is made in the Northeast anymore, other than trouble. The North is also the oldest part of the country, lacking a robust male population. By the standards of the last civil war, the North would be at a demographic, cultural and material disadvantage.
But that was then and this is now. Civil wars tend to be territorial and the regionalism of America is not what it once was. Lots of people from New England have moved south to the Carolinas, for example. Florida is full New Yorkers and is the retirement home to much of the Northeast. Northern Virginia is a region full of strangers, brought together by high paying government work. In event of war, people could move back to their home turf, but it would mean millions of people moving from one part of the country to another.
There’s also the fact that civil wars are almost always between the elites of the host society. The people are dragged into it by the warring factions at the top. In modern America, the elites have never been more unified. In fact, they are so united we now have one political party, the Bipartisan Globalists Fusion Party. In all seriousness, the reason that you can’t tell the difference between the political opinions of Jonah Goldberg and Ezra Klein is that ideologically they are the same guy, with the same paymasters.
If there was to be a civil war in America, it would first have to start as a revolt and gain enough steam to be a genuine threat to the status quo. If a revolt grew into a serious threat to the interests of the ruling classes, then you might see some elements decide to throw in with the rebels. In all likelihood, it would be the younger, lower level members of the elites, looking for an opportunity to leapfrog their superiors. Alternatively, the revolt could quickly grow an elite of its own, like the Marxists did, to challenge the elites of the status quo.
Of course, there is the racial angle. It’s funny in a way, but the two groups convinced of the coming race war are blacks and white nationalists. The trouble with this idea is the time for a race war was fifty years ago in the Civil Rights Movement. There were plenty of young black males thinking they had nothing to lose and plenty of young white males thinking they had everything to lose, Today, the only people thinking race war are mentally unstable black guys and white nationalists. Hispanics have little interest in racial politics.
There’s also the technological issue. The lesson of the two great industrial wars on the early 20th century was that conventional warfare was no longer a plausible option for settling disputes. Putting aside nukes, conventional weapons had simply become too lethal and too destructive. Prior to the great war, winning a war meant gaining useful territory or shaking down the loser for money. Modern warfare means destroyed cities and fractured economies for both sides. Nukes make conventional war even less appealing.
That reality would be even more salient in a civil war. New Englanders would love to re-enact Sherman’s march to the sea, but they would end up killing more allies than enemies and the economic cost to the North would be devastating. The degree of integration in a modern society would work against the instinct to destroy the other guy’s stuff. Throw in the regionalism issue above and conventional warfare with set piece battles and troop formations is not going to serve the interests of anyone in the next American civil war.
There’s also another problem. The US military is about 1.3 million people, but about 80% are in administrative and support roles. We have more people in uniform pushing buttons at a keyboard than carrying a pack in the field. Of that fighting force, about two-thirds are deployed at any one time. It is not an accident that our political class is not a fan of keeping large numbers of combat ready troops on US soil. In a civil war, the US military would probably disintegrate early and be reduced to guerrilla units for all sides.
Now, America has been waging non-lethal war on the world for a long time in the form of financial war and now information war. Economic sanctions are a form of warfare intended to create unrest in the target society. A big motivation for North Korea’s quest for nukes is the economic war we have been waging against them for two decades. The Bush people took steps to cut them off from the banking system and thus starve the regime of hard currency. That’s made the elites of the regime much poorer and weaker as a result.
In a civil war, the tools of finance would come to bear. Assuming the civil war began as a revolt, the ruling class would first attempt to squeeze the rebels financially, by cutting them off from the financial system, making it hard to raise money. In this age, that means shutting down their PayPal accounts and booting them from crowdfunding systems. Credit card processors would be pressured to discontinue service. When that failed, banks would be forced to close accounts and the seize assets of trouble makers.
This would also discourage members of the elite from getting any ideas about supporting the rebels against the senior elements of the elite. This would be augmented by the use of information war to undermine the moral authority of the rebels, thus starving them of ability to gain popular support. Humans are social animals and they instinctively seek to distance themselves from those the culture has declared taboo. That would mean using mass media organs to evangelize against the rebels, while cutting them off from media access.
If all of this sounds familiar, it should. America, and the West, is teetering on the verge of civil war, but a modern, technological civil war. On the one side is the globalist elite, who have purged their ranks of anyone skeptical of the project. The brewing revolt is mostly the people willing to question the prevailing orthodoxy. The panic we saw last summer by the tech giants was motivated by a fear that the internet revolt was becoming a revolt in the streets. The financial war on dissidents is a part of this effort to suppress dissent.
This is the face of modern civil war.
Civil War = name given the by victors
War for Southern Independence = true name by any reasonable standard
Author… please stop furthering the misnomers trotted out by Yankee slave traders and historical revisionists. What we are facing today isn’t even necessarily a classic Civil War… more like a complex societal breakdown.
22winmag
“War for Southern Independence = true name by any reasonable standard”
Also, “War of Northern aggression.”
JR
Civil war would not be between states, but between cultures, and/or between government and segments of the population.
Yes, between cultures. I can see states refusing to go along with all the bullshit the Federal Government puts out.
States ending or greatly curtailing welfare / equal rights taken to an extreme / illegal aliens / government indoctrination camps AKA ‘public schools’. This would cause the ‘trash’ to move to the welfare states – putting even more pressure on them.
These more conservative states would attract productive people from the progressive / give away states, who are fed-up with the high taxes.
In the end the progressive states would have to change or collapse under their own weight. But there would be no geographic block of states – just those with the same values.
Serious philosophical changes would need to happen even in the so-called “conservative” states to get back in the right direction. Welfare and progressivism is currently embraced by both useless parties to a great extent. Buying votes with other people’s money is how they both operate in all states. It is only degrees of immorality that truly separate the 50. A significant dissolution of even the state boundaries would be a wise move as well to separate out the parasitic element from those that simply wish to restore freedom and personal responsibility.
And even neighbors on the same block.
The time of the quick and the dead.
Although I doubt casualties would exceed, maybe, a hundred or so million during the first round or two of it.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
It wouldnt be a civil war. Washington DC is 20 trillion in debt and counting. Who in their right mind would want it?
I don’t see a civil war in the traditional(historical) sense, and it won’t be started by “us”. It will be started by the government via some crazy over reach or tyrannical action on their part. The rest of us will react to that in smallish isolated ways at first, unless there is an economic collapse, then it will be urban vs the rural fought in the suburbs. Absent a large scale societal event, it will be a running skirmish across large areas. Many small to medium police departments will either evaporate, get attrition-ed down rapidly or both. You will end up with polite wild west type areas surrounding the smoldering urban no go zones, vast parts of Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and Baltimore are half way there now. The key will be stopping the patrols of marauders/raiders coming out of the inner cities.
There are plenty of my neighbors who I would consider on the “wrong side” of the conflict. It most certainly would NOT be a regional, North-South, ruling elite-common folk, thing. A Host versus Parasite conflict is far more likely. And a civil war implies that both sides are fighting for control of the central power structure. What happened in 1860 was a war of independence, secession, or norther aggression, but NOT a civil war for control. The parasites would definitely like to control the central power structure (for the most part, they already do), while the vast majority of the hosts would likely just want to get as far away from such relics as possible. One thing is for sure, the breakdown is surely coming and it won’t be pretty. Those that benefit from the current host/parasite relationship will definitely do everything they can to maintain control, regardless of how immoral their positions may be.
On another thread (“Q”) I posted this (at the bottom), so I’ll repost it here since I doubt many people paged that far down to read it:
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You want an alternative? OK. (Not that I am advocating this, or anything like it; you asked!)
Last Qtr 2017 – in a last-ditch attempt to save the republic, Trump & co. cut loose. They arrest Bill and Hillary, George Soros, Chuck Schumer and 10,000 other co-conspirators. Most are relocated to Gitmo – a few die resisting arrest, but hardly any can escape. Martial law is declared, and things are tense but quiet going into January.
1st Qtr 2018 – to build popular support, the first tribunal of Gitmo (this session) is The People vs. Hillary Clinton. MASSIVE evidence is presented that she is guilty of charity fraud (the Clinton Foundation, Clinton Global Initiative, more), investment fraud (shell companies and taxpayer-supported loans similar to Solyndra), campaign finance fraud, human trafficking (children abducted from Haiti, other locations), bribery and payola, numerous financial and tax irregularities, more. Then it gets ugly: old bones are dug up (everything from Vince Foster and Ron Brown to Seth Rich and lesser-known victims) with conclusive evidence of murder, drug running, foreign payoffs, more. Then the worst is shown: a tape of Hillary and Huma abusing a child (found on Anthony Wiener’s laptop and kept quiet until the trial), Podesta and satanic sex rituals, bodies dug up from remote hiding places … there is no doubt of her guilt on anything and everything, mountains of photographic, documentary and witness evidence is on the TV, day after day for the first week.
That weekend, it all breaks down: the remaining criminals not yet arrested, their helpers and supporters, the FSA and #Never-Trumpers, the DNC and all those dependent on satanic networks for support and employment start the riots. They understand now that they are endangered, if Trump can bring down Hillary and generate popular support their days are numbered, and they have to stop him before he wins. Twenty American cities are shut down and / or go up in flames as the unincarcerated evil ones try to bring down Trump; the rest suffer varying degrees of revolt. The military and National Guard are activated to enclose and isolate the unrest. They are only partly successful; raging crowds destroy downtown districts, block freeways, sabotage power plants and substations, dig up and break water mains. Whole counties go up in flames or down to ashes as first responders, hospitals and police are overwhelmed. Order cannot be maintained as the rioters understand that they will not be able to keep welfare, Soros-payments or payoff money coming. Ethnic neighborhoods either burn or protect themselves. The GITMO trials survive an emergency appeal to the SCOTUS, and continue.
Amidst the uproar it’s each man, woman or household for themselves. Food scarcity drives home invasions and home defenses: bodies in the streets are slow to be collected and buried. Blame needs a home and finds it, whether it’s Trump’s fault, Hillary’s fault or “your group”; in state after state ethnic cleansing, white flight, black revenge or sheer opportunism makes neighbors deadly enemies. The population self-segregates: starvation takes hold in America, since reliable transportation is nearly non-existent.
2nd Qtr 2018: a shaky quiet descends in most places across America. Most communities are either liberal, conservative or ashes. Hate and violence that became murder-your-enemies swept the country, leaving little behind. The liberals were almost entirely out-gunned by the conservatives, who made “liberal hunting” an ugly reality where they could. The police were unable to protect minorities, immigrants, liberal activists, or really anyone else 24 / 7, and after the first three months the surviving police quit trying: “Let God sort them out, all of them” became an LEO mantra, along with the prevalent “no human involved” crime reports. Between the riots, the ethnic and sectarian conflicts, the starvation and the loss of most of the electrical grid in cities, little drinking water, no gasoline distribution and so forth, a new demographic reality emerged: the US became 80% white, 3% black, 3% Asian, 3% Latino, 8% “mixed” and the remainder American Indian, Pacific Islander and so forth. Nearly all Latino non-citizens departed back overseas when the riots lasted past the first month. Almost no illegal immigrants from overseas (Somali, Pakistani, etc) remained alive. In six months, the carnage utterly and totally changed the demographic makeup of America, in a horrible red tide of hate and violence. The GITMO trials continue, having become a kind of sick entertainment in a country with little to enjoy.
Last half 2018: the dazed survivors, sated and sickened by the devastation, mostly began to rebuild. It would take a decade just to clean up the cities and restore reliable services to the last of the wastelands. There is no support for immigration, no support for welfare, no support for hunger relief, no network of NGOs, foundations or alliances beyond your immediate area, as there are no spare resources anywhere. America became wartorn Bosnia for six months of damnation, and what was left is grim, lean and resolutely unwilling to allow anything resembling compassion to return for a long time. Brush-fire conflicts and the occasional settling-of-scores breakouts continue through 2021, but once the new wave of white children reaches elementary school age the new history stresses civic involvement, ethnic pride and xenophobia beyond the Japanese standard.
_and that’s one not the worst alternative I can imagine, either. _
]
So that’s one possibility I see …
Interesting idea, but I don’t see them really mobilizing much support.
The problem with libtardz is they’re primarily against things, while conservative patriots are primarily fighting FOR something. Libtardz aren’t fighting for family and mom and apple pie, they’re fighting against that. I guess you could argue they’re fighting for Bruce/Caitlyn and their non-binary companions and apple lattes and Marx, but it’s not quite the same thing. Seems like they’re not really that united, either. They’re merely deeply divided special interests who are teamed up to attack the majority. They schism fast when left to their own devices.
And the problem for many of them is when they riot and destroy their own neighborhoods, they’re not really hurting their opponents who primarily live in the suburban and rural regions. Let them burn their own homes down.
BTW- JTDW, I like youre scenario. Wayyy more detailed than most.
Agreed. The coming conflict will probably resemble Bosnia, or maybe Spain if things hold together a little more, but I doubt it. Once the chaos begins, it will be just that – – chaotic, and beyond horrible for many. The trigger could be one or more of many variables, but I’d lay money on economic/stock market crash, EBT system failure, electric grid failure, government/judicial overreach, Soros group anarchists, or something along those line that will light the spark. Big cities & metro areas will be imploded ash-heaps within weeks, as will many mid-sized cities that are too dependent on the government tit to survive on their own. Those areas will turn into Mad Max barbarian zones, and will have to be quarantined for years to come. But I would give it good odds that many towns and little cities all across the countryside will survive partially to mostly intact. These are the communities that always come together in disasters and crises, and I would predict that many will maintain some sort of order, and probably create their own forms of barter/ economy, defense, etc.
It won’t be a civil war. There will be nothing civil about it. It might be a revolution, but you don’t need to fight in a revolution. Sometimes there is fighting and sometimes there is just everybody standing up to the ptb and telling them to fuck off. I personally am most impressed by the latter but your results might differ. So in the end, who is to say who is correct? Is the resistance correct or is the first order correct? Things are bound to run better under the first order. Hell, the damned resistance couldn’t even fly a fleet of spaceships at light speed to a secret base. What a bunch of LOSERS.
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I doubt it will be a war in the typical sense. I certainly hope not. It’s insane to hope for armed conflict. Gov’t is good at 2 things-stealing money and killing/caging people. Playing their game would be disastrous. Like Atlas, we simply shrug. Democracy is the art and science of the few ruling the many. That means the many, like any good parasitical host, have to voluntarily submit to the few. That’s what all the pregame militaristic displays and usa! usa! bullshit is about. Their easy street existence depends on keeping the rabble engaged and believing. If some organic uprising of ‘the many’ (or a sizable portion) simply stop paying attention to them they might simply go away. What happened to the old ussr? They collapsed of their own weight. I don’t suggest for a moment that we have an easy trek ahead of us, only that it may not depend on force of arms but simple noncompliance. Remember ‘consent of the governed’? It’s time for those fucks in dc to come to terms with that concept.
BTW, that means the winners in that scenario would be the most independent minded, fiercely independent and self sufficient; us.
There is one big problem – no uniforms to determine which humans to eliminate. I’d like to see
Trump mandate a red blinking spot on every liberal forehead (attempt at removal causes it to explode); this would be really effective a night-time hunting.
“Hispanics have little interest in racial politics.”
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I beg to differ.
Yeah, that line, “Hispanics have little interest in racial politics,” was adorable.
Maybe it was sarcasm?
can wehave a few cites about yhe Civil War threads that the author was reading over the weekend?
Free your mind!
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This one was great also:
I haven’t been hanging around here that long, so if this book is old news just chalk it up to me being a Nicky New Guy.
“Civil War 2” subtitled: “The Coming Breakup of America” by Thomas W. Chittum, published in 1996 is a fascinating read as he was on target on about…hmmm…70% of his predictions.
He predicted full blown Civil War starting in 2020. He could be right about that.
However, I think he gave way – way too much weight to the racial component of the coming divide/collapse/Civil War/4th Turning and to blacks and their ability to coalesce let alone survive in mass and carve out the area he thinks they will, the Deep South. If he is right I will die in the northeast half of NC. Some urban blue bubbles will turn black during the bloody chaos (Durham, Raleigh, Charlotte) but over time they will collapse and the black masses will stay with their long term urban M.O. of devouring one another. Most will starve or flee or kill one another because of their generational (Great Society) hand fed dependence.
I don’t think he spent any time in my area. The surrounding flyover country are still fierce (and well armed) Scott’s-Irish people either by blood or nature…including all the self sorted outsiders like me.
I read it in two sittings.
It is priced at a paperback copy of $47.99 for a reason…glad I bought my copy many years ago!
Here’s a freebie for all you TBP fuckers!
CIVIL WAR II by Thomas W. Chittum.
https://archive.org/details/CivilWarIITheComingBreakupOfAmerica1996-ThomasW.Chittum
This is a scan of the original book. It looks like it is original and intact and free of charge online and potentially available for free download.
Don’t say I never did nuthin’ for you!
GilbertS,
Outstanding!
I believe there is an available on line version or at least a rather detailed summary. Unfortunately, I have lost track of the site. If I am correct, he believes there will be a western redoubt in Montana and such and a northeastern holdout centered in upstate New York. If I remember, he planned to set up in Northern NYS and believed a self-sufficient defensive enclave could be established. I grew up in that area and would agree with him about the resourcefulness of the folks. However, that would be true 60 years ago and the spirit has degenerated and everything depends on government. Cuomo instituted gun-control with small resistance fror people who have always had multiple guns in the family. The few remaining farms and agricultural activities produce for niche markets: home cured bacon, ham and sauge too expensive for ordinary daily consumption, gormet pickels and saurkraut, speciality cheeses. and such delicious products but high in price and of limited amounts suitable for feeding many people. Anyone who has anything either works at some level of government or is employeed by a government dependent entity. Then there is a substantial portion existing on EITC, child care credits, SNAP, HUD, heating assistance and the successor to food stamps. This does not include Syracuse, Utica, Rome or Rochester which compound the non-economically active consummer population. There is one group that will survive, if not thrive, in a SHTF scenario. The same group who gets by happily today: the Amish.
TPTB have been Chem-spraying the sky to block the dimming sun to bring on an Ice Age ASAP to cause crop failures, famine, war and plague (Rev 6:1-8 The Four Horsemen) especially destroying the working class. Global Cooling and Famine will be the catalyst for the Global Chaos the Communist Oligarchs desire and have been working so hard to create. American Elite expect their 450 well stocked DUMBs and their UN troops will win but I hope and pray that Jesus’ word in Matt 5:5 (the meek shall inherit the earth) is fulfilled.
rhs…..I disagree and here’s why:
The Globalists have been pushing CAGW then GloBull Warming then Climate Change for almost 30 years. If anything, they want to show the world temps heating up in order to implement Carbon Taxes, Carbon Trading, contracts for undependable Solar and Wind to their Corporation buddies, etc.
So, if anything, they would eliminate clouds.
Issue with the OP- What you call Civil War was, in fact, the War of Northern Aggression. You will please note, sah, the USA invaded the legitimately sovereign CSA to force them back into the USA, flying in the face of everything the Founders had said about founding their own nation. That unpleasant episode is pretty much where the original rot set in that leads us to this day and age. That being said, this new conflict will be a true Civil War. The War of Northern Aggression saw 2 sovereign state’s armies face off with limited militia and paramilitary involvement around the fringes. This war will be a real civil war with the citizens (and illegals) fighting each other. As such, the conflict will be completely different. For one, there will be nobody to declare war, nor to negotiate peace. Also, there will probably be no mutual interest in peace, but more like a struggle to the death.
I believe the Civil War will be unique in that it will be a general breakdown with multiple issues all in play at the same time. Race war, communist insurrection, regionalism, sexual preference, Big Govt statists vs independents, states rights, and secessionist types, religious groups, and who knows what else. Sports teams?
I believe it could break out over anything, really, but it will ultimately be a Right vs Left thing representing all those issues I mentioned above as the struggle spreads and violence flares. I believe behind the entire war will be race. If a white guy kills a black guy for any reason, say, he’s a violent radical communist, it’s a cop on crook, self defense, black guys will just see it as a race thing and react accordingly. Once blacks are seen doing stuff to whites, whites will do stuff to blacks.
I figure once the race thing gets good and hot, your skin will choose your ultimate membership and class, religion, who you bone, and where your mom is from will fade in importance. The interesting aspect of this, as an aside, is whether the other minority groups will all be lumped together, i.e. Sikhs, Persians, Pacific Islanders, etc as browns, or if they’ll side with the whites? I think a lot of Indians would more rather side with whites than blacks, as well as Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese. Any self-hating white libtards who support minorities will have an unpleasant surprise as when they’re beaten and raped into oblivion by their oppressed “friends.”
–Was typing this off and on all day. Mark New Guy beat me to it….–
Read Civil War II. The author predicted a US civil war 20 years ago. He was a merc in Yugoslavia and believed the exact same problems were coming here. His predictions are horrifying.
Imagine the country broken into at least 3 major racial enclaves, a black US South, a white Northwest/midwest, and a hispanic Southwest with various racial enclaves scattered within each. Imagine each major zone being separated by a 50+ mile wide No Mans Land corridor of blown-up dead zone, 50 miles being roughly 2x the standard US arty range. You can assume all sides will arm themselves from the Nasty Guard and active duty armories. Worse, imagine the violence that will be unleashed when all the tanks, MGs, armor, sniper rifle, drones, etc the DOD gave the cops nationwide get dusted off and used by whomever grabs them first. The bloodbath will be astounding. Also, no nation in the history of the world has fallen apart with as many weapons as this one. One pop statistic I saw claimed there are enough guns out there, just on the civilian side, to arm every man, woman, child, dog, and cat. Imagine what all the military stuff would add to that? Every city will look like Blackhawk Down with vast piles of arms for sale of every make, model, and vintage of weapon available.
Anyone ever read the 255 Days book series? One of the aspects of the story, which chronicles the breakup of the country, is how the government suddenly loses faith in their own troops, not knowing who is a Patriot and who is a Big Govt Statist Loyalist. The entire military starts to crack up from the President down as platoons, companies, battalions, brigades, divisions, entire bases, and the Joint Chiefs don’t know who they can trust and what weapons they can leave in their subordinates’ hands. Can you imagine commanders during this racial civil war eyeing their troops and figuring out what to do about the XXXX in the unit? Can you trust the XXXX guys with guns now? Or cooking the food? Or the fuel? Will they follow orders next time you bawl them out? Who has the armory keys? Who has the fuel keys? Motor pool keys? Who is down in the silo next rotation? Who is watching the supply room? Who is guarding the helos? Who has access to the computers and the crypto? Even the guys who stay loyal are going to have a tough time both avoiding conflict with other racial groups and their own co-racialists.
Another thought-what happens to Americans overseas when this kicks off? US forces overseas are going to be in a very peculiar situation. The ones deployed to AFG and other warzones will be in a real pickle-do we fight each other, continue with the mission, or go home to fight there? It might take a really long time to get those guys home. Meanwhile, their homes are being torn to bits. Whose side do they stay on? I bet the military contractor situation will just go crazy. Can you imagine the wealth to be made if you can provide arms, equipment, logistics, guards, etc on short notice to anyone with cash?
Ultimately, I think things could stabilize with the ethnic enclaves and some form of East European-style Population Exchanges. One of the interesting aspects of Eastern Europe, with it’s plywood-style of ethnic group layering, is how Population Exchange and Ethnic Cleansing have been so popular over the centuries. Stalin moved his borders West and forced the Ukrainans, Poles, Byelorussians West with them. The Germans did their share of ethnic sifting and liquidation in WWII, after which the Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, and others did their part to eject the ethnic Germans from their own regions. The Poles and Ukrainians fought to separate from each other, as well. The Romanians and Bulgarians took turns purging each other in Transylvania. And we all know about Yugoslavia, our best and most recent example in mass chaos.
If you ever read Selco or sprung for his Year in Hell SHTF course, you know what his experience was like. One day, everything was nice. Then, it started to get tense. Then, before you know it, there are dead bodies in the street and nobody seems to care. He said when he saw the cops, stuck in the middle of a shootout, breaking into a newspaper kiosk to steal the smokes, he knew shit was really hitting the fan.
If things get really out of hand, I assume the economy would take a hit. Were it bad enough, we could see a collapse in the flow of credit upon which food and fuel are shipped, leading to breakdowns in the flow of goods, leading in turn to more chaos. Urban chaos and anarchy on the roads might lead to regional stoppages in the flow of goods, again leading to further chaos. It’s good to know many of our interstate highways pass near our least popular urban shitholes. During the BLM protests, blacks tried to shut down some of these highways. I imagine in troubled times, they would only be more troublesome.
Finally, such a widespread conflict would inevitably lead to failures in the flow of goods and services, especially food. Can you imagine the No Mans Land concept shutting down farmland across the country? Were war to disrupt the midwest, a whole lot of people worldwide would be in trouble. Controlling food and food production is going to be a big deal in the future. Control of port facilities, airfields, railroads, and highway infrastructure will be vital, too. Just imagine the free-for-all that will develop when foreign nations decide to get involved. What you want to bet China and Russia won’t be interested in “aiding” us if they can get access to our remaining sensitive facilities? England and NATO coming to help out in exchange for our gold? Mexico crossing the border to support the Reconquista? Wouldn’t North Korea love to reap the propaganda boost from supplying food aid to starving Americans? Or Iran? Wouldn’t they love to make some money supplying additional arms to various factions to make the blood flow more? Who knows, perhaps we could ultimately see NATO, the UN, Russia, China, and England, etc partitioning the US like Russia, Austria, and Prussia did with Poland?
Another note- regardless of what your personal beliefs, if this thing devolves into a race war, it won’t matter what you believe. You’re going to either be a part of, or beholden to, racial or ethnic militias. Look up Arkan’s Tigers. That’s probably your future. [img
[/img] Even if you choose not to support this stuff, you will either benefit from your team’s success, or you’ll suffer for your team’s failure. Expect to see a whole lot of people moving to their team’s safe zone. Expect to move, yourself, or expect to be purged. Expect a whole lot of checkpoints and house-to-house searches.
Oh, and kiss the internet goodbye.
Just what occurs to me on this subject.
BTW- I was in Croatia right after Dayton. The place was a mess. The Serbs had sat on the ridges above Dubrovnik and shelled everything below them. The opposite side of the valley was completely denuded of all life. Every tree was blown off down to bare rock. The only wooded areas were pretty much right under the Serb positions. Every building in Dubrovnik was either roofed with fresh ceramic tiles or roofless. The buildings all sported bullet holes and the streets were littered with the distinctive SPLAT! marks from mortar hits. The bridges all had fresh concrete patches over impact craters. The locals used herds of goats to find unexploded ordnance. The country was beautiful, but the scars of the recent fighting were everywhere. People didn’t really want to talk about it. 20 years later, and now it’s funny to see those same places cast as King’s Landing on GOT.
GilbertS
Another “Outstanding!”
I have to leave but I’ll comment later as I have planned/prepped for this possibility having spent some time fighting in the Vietnam Civil War myself.
Can’t find reference to 255 days series or Selco, I want to see these works.
I sincerely apologize to you and everyone else who was led down the bunny path. The correct name is 299 Days. Here’s the sauce: http://www.299days.com/ If you aren’t pleased with your 255 days, we’ll send you 44 more days free of charge!
from the site:
About the Story
The 299 Days series, published by Prepper Press and written by Glen Tate, is a ten-book novel about the collapse of the United States. In it, the main character, Grant Matson, has a job that allows him to see what’s wrong with government. He realizes he needs to prepare for what’s coming and he does so. His wife, Lisa, is reluctant to prepare because she thinks things are just fine. When the civil unrest and political collapse hit in a dramatic way, it is undeniable that they need to leave their Olympia, Washington home and head to their cabin. But, Lisa is still reluctant; she desperately wants things to remain “normal.”
Out at the cabin, a collection of amazing–yet real–people assemble. They create their own community because the government isn’t functioning in their area. They have to work together and, as a community, they manage to achieve some impressive results. Unlike most prepper stories, in 299 Days America suffers a partial collapse. The utilities stay one (due to a spell-binding plot twist) and the government functions in larger cities. People in rural areas still get some food and services from the government, but must increasingly rely on themselves. There are no zombies or cannibalism; 299 Days describes a much more likely partial collapse scenario.
Grant’s friends, who work in government, describe how things continue to go down hill in the city and how the government is trying to maintain control. They describe exactly why the government, as big and powerful as it once was, cannot control things. Many in the military and law enforcement step in to stop the bad things; others in the military and law enforcement perpetuate the bad things.
After a while out at the cabin, some important visitors arrive and present Grant with a difficult choice. Eventually, the Patriots–the side Grant is on–are forced to take on what’s left of the former government. There is a huge battle. In the end, Grant has an important job at the beginning of the rebuilding.
As there are some references to the coming civil war and many references to how the near future is beginning to take shape, I’m wondering how many who can see the writing on the wall are 1. prior military and/or 2. traveled internationally for a time.
The above mentioned experiences seem to be invaluable in learning to be flexible in a soon to be changing fluid environment. Those who have seen shit get ugly fast, or have seen what other countries can devolve to in a short amount of time, prepare and realize that to stay one step ahead of the game is the only way to survive in a rapidly changing environment.
There’s really only one solution and it’s spelled .223.