The collapse isn’t going to look like Cormac McCarthy or the American Civil War or Nazi Germany. It’s going to look like Nicaragua or El Salvador. The government won’t disappear, but it’ll become ineffective against the gang/militias that run regional commerce.
City governments are already widely variable in terms of how much control they have over anything, and they are largely stymied by incompetence. You think your city’s gov is going to be able to take on a pair of warring syndicates? NY maybe can. Maybe SF and LA. But not mine.
Rural hospitals will close en masse. Rural public schools will follow. The gutted education department isn’t going to be enforcing anyone’s right to an education, who are we kidding? Town-by-town, school districts will destabilize.
I’m not talking about gangs of roving marauders eating babies, but smaller, even mafia-like syndicates running all the gas stations in your city. You’re gonna leave if it gets too bad? How do you do that with no gas?
The national guard is going to be destabilized when the government can’t guarantee their paychecks, but what’s left of them will be used for keeping the peace in major population centers and guarding the ports. Can your local police force handle instability? (Mine 100% can’t.)
You think “it can’t happen here” because your imagination leads you to massive high-drama situations, but look at unstable countries that exist now. Most of their residents can mostly kind of live in them, but it’s hard to come by clean water and healthcare and schools.
Example: My city marshal is literally in jail right now for dipping into the pot, and they can’t replace him because elected officials can’t be fired, and there’s an interim guy but no one actually knows if he has any power because the rules for this don’t exist.
You think this same system that can’t handle a basic corrupt politician is going to be able to deal when the militia from the Southside and the gangs from the Northside start fighting over who controls the highway where the oil passes?
It’s not Armageddon; it’s not a massive, overwhelming dystopia. It’s falling dominoes of corruption and localized gang violence and the collapse of basic systems like water and gas and education.
It’s not nuclear death, it’s forking over a few hundred bucks a year to Gang X so they’ll protect your neighborhood gas station from Militia Y coming to light it on fire.
The small, definitely-corrupt local police force will be summarily executing anyone “suspected of being a Gang X or Militia Y member” (wink, nudge). The systems are already well-established for this and those specific systems are the ones that won’t go anywhere.
You will probably mostly be pretty okay. You might be much more broke than you’ve ever been and your selection at the grocery store won’t be great and you might get stuck homeschooling, but you’ll be bodily okay. A lot of marginalized people won’t.
The vulnerable already know this and have been fighting back against this specific collapse for years. This is why they fight to codify rights. This is why they fight for solutions to systemic violence. This is the “why” for everything from taking knees to punching Nazis.
It might not be too late to stop it. I don’t know. But this is what it looks like and that’s why it’s so possible and so terrifying.
And remember that there are already plenty of Americans living under conditions that are barely different from these. This just brings it to all the neighborhoods, even yours, and dials it up a bit.
A good strategy is to know some people who’ve lived under these conditions. Go meet your neighbors. Today! Go! Bake some cookies and take them around, or plan a BBQ, or...? That’s it, that’s what saves us. You don’t have to like them, even. Just know them.
Because you know who’s organized as hell? The militias and gangs who are going to decide whether or not your grocery store gets bread or your kid’s school is left standing.
Also, y’know. At some point the bombs are going to work. Probably not full-throttle Handmaid’s Tale-style, but one or two that scare off a whole lot of good and otherwise brave people from running for office are all they need.
Not that electoral politics were going to save us anyway. They weren’t. They won’t. Stop putting your faith in the system. Yes, it’s WAY easier to fight when you have good politicians in office. Vote for the best you can get. But they’re your first line of defense, not your last.
The really fascinating thing will be seeing how arms dealers manage to survive once they don’t have a strong central gov’t to make their deals for them. Will they just straight-up run things on their own? Move offshore entirely to more prosperous places? I guess we’ll find out.
