What's the Worst

That Can Happen?

By Bruce Pickelheimer

NOTICE

This book is offered as shareware. If you download it, like it, and decide to keep it, please send $3 to the author at:

Bruce Pickelheimer
P.O. Box 15866
Ft. Wayne, IN 46885-5866

If anyone wants to contact the author, you can e-mail me at:

Litz_Out@yahoo.com

This book is one of three nonfiction books which I have written on this subject The other nonfiction books are "Descent Into Darkness", which describes the problems which may occur at the beginning of the year, and "Y2K Conspiracy", which describes the reasons why there will be problems at the beginning of the year. I am currently working on a book detailing the special circumstances and problems which will be faced by women in the event of major problems, including some suggestions on how to minimize the problems and make preparations before the problems occur.

I have already written and posted "Phoenix Project", which is the first of nine books I have planned in a fictional series exploring the potential of the worst case scenario for Y2K. If there is sufficient demand for the remaining books in the fictional series, I will complete them and get them posted as well. If the shareware fees allow me to concentrate on writing instead of getting things set up for my family, all of the books in the series will be completed and posted online by October 15, 1999.

This book has been copyrighted, and all sales, reproductions, and use without permission from the author is prohibited. The author gives permission for the book to be downloaded and read in exchange for the shareware fee. If you do not want to pay the shareware fee, do not keep a copy of the book. The author also gives those who send in their shareware fee the right to make one hard copy for their own use. All copies, electronic or printed, must include this notice.

Introduction

Although I have written about this subject previously, I have intentionally watered down the descriptive narrative of the effects during a worst case scenario. Some of the other descriptions haven't been very vivid, either, but the effect has been most dramatic on the worst case scenario. Unfortunately, some people refuse to listen or take notice unless you hit them up the side of the head with a two by four. Print this manuscript off, roll it up, and consider it to be my two by four.

Some of the descriptions in this book will be very graphic, but I am not writing an adult novel filled with descriptions of sex. If you don't know how certain acts are performed, it is not my intention to educate you with this book. It will contain scenes depicting rape, robbery, violence, and violent death in many forms. If you don't like this, don't read the book. It will contain descriptions of hate crimes, racism, and senseless violence. If you don't like this, or can't separate describing something which exists (without a liberally slanted bias) from supporting or promoting something which most individuals in our society agree is wrong, don't read this book.

All characters are a work of fiction, and do not represent anybody who exists in real life. If you can't separate the fictionalized characters from the realistic possibilities of the situations described, this will be a good fantasy book, and I hope you enjoy it. If you can recognize the true situations built around fictional characters and hypothetical events, then you will be able to use this book to help you realize what can happen if our society breaks down.

This book will describe the events which are possible if the technological failures associated with Y2K are widespread and long lasting. Some think that I have a low opinion of humanity and think the worst of people. I consider myself somewhat pragmatic and something of a dreamer. I face reality in everything I do. The reality is that mankind has so much potential that the greatest dreams are possible to achieve if we put our minds to it and cooperate. Individuals, in times of great stress, are capable of achieving almost miraculous feats and overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles. This is the hope of mankind.

Although people can cooperate and work for the common good, there is the other side of the coin to consider. There are individuals within any society that, even when given every opportunity and assistance, refuse to conform to the rules of that society. Some of the reason for the preponderance of this type of people in our society can, I believe, be traced to several major reasons, most of which are not considered and discussed much in the mainstream.

First, America is the most culterally and ethnically diverse country that I know of in the world. When different cultures clash over values, beliefs, or territory, the historical result is violence and eventually displacement, elimination of the weaker culture, or assimilation. We have violence here in America, as well as in other countries where there are competing cultures. Displacement can't occur because we all live in the same country, and even if those who were competing were willing to segregate themselves to reduce tensions, that is illegal in this country. Elimination of the competing culture is being practiced in Kosovo, Bosnia, and other countries right now. The 'famine' in Ethiopia is a sham. The people have been displaced by their government because they are unwanted. They were herded into the desert to die, and were often massacred by the soldiers of their own government and those of neighboring countries (who also didn't want them) when they weren't dying fast enough. Your generous contributions to feed the starving children ended with probably 10% of the food going to the starving people. The rest rotted on the ships in the harbors or was sold to Russia to buy more guns and ammunition to kill the people you sent the food to save.

That is the reality of human rights in this world, and your government didn't tell you because their own track record, even in recent years, has not been much better. In fact, instead of promoting assimilation into the mainstream American culture, which has worked to make America great in the past, the government has made assimilation more difficult. Although the government passes many laws designed to promote human rights, racial equality, and so forth, they also pass conflicting laws which are designed to maintain some separation of the American people into groups which will compete with each other.

The reason for this is simple. If the people are well fed, and most are fed well enough to be overweight in this country, they will be more content. But there are always those who are discontented or want to do more than sit on their couch and be entertained and pacified by the media. Because of this, the social problems are maintained. Those who are not content can focus on the social problem of their own choice, whether they want to change things to make things better for themselves, or are 'humanitarians' who want to cure the ills of the world and make the world one big happy family. The reason is simple. The government does not want anyone to be focused on them as the cause for the problem. They want to stay in power, and as long as people believe that they are just trying to solve almost insurmountable problems, they don't focus on the other activities being carried out by the government.

The dumbing down of our children can be attributed to two things, both of which are direct results of the Federal government's actions. First, the government worked to break up the American family because conservative values would provide strong opposition to many of the programs and agendas necessary for the liberals to control the lives of the citizens from cradle to grave. With the dissolution of the family unit, morality, ethics, and a strong support system were all eliminated. These needs were now to be met by the government. Second, the government worked to force public schools to teach according to their social agenda and promote the open tolerance of anything supported by the liberals and intolerance of anything which the liberals opposed.

The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, and the government has now kidnapped your children and forced you to allow them to be brainwashed during their formative years. I say kidnapped because your children must attend school, and most people can't afford private schools after being forced to pay higher taxes to support 'public education'. Instead of paying the money locally, where you would have some influence on how it is spent, they make you pay it to the Federal government so they can impose uniform standards on everyone. This continues even though the government itself has proven that the programs they force us to endure do not work, and 40% of high school graduates are functionally illiterate. The new phonics craze that is being introduced in an attempt to make sure that all graduates can at least read and write well enough to follow simple orders is not new. It was known as phonetics when I was in grade school, and was the method used to teach children for decades, if not longer. It was the system which worked, and which the government forced the school systems to replace with the liberal claptrap that has been used to 'educate' our children and turn out a generation of young people who have no way to teach themselves and learn for themselves. They are dependent upon the media, the new government's propaganda machine, for their information. And make no mistake about this. The mainstream media is decidedly liberal, and they are in collusion with the government to promote the liberal agenda. Of course this is all for the good of the American people, even if the majority of them don't know what is going on or would oppose it if they did know the facts.

This means that you are forced to support the government's efforts to create a class system in which those in the lower class (illiterates) are a permanent source of cheap labor and a permanent source of violence and discontent because they know they have no hope of earning enough to improve their position in life. The last two generations are the seeds, and they have been sown and allowed to grow. If this goes on for even two more generations, the harvest will be bitter indeed, for we will have created a large, permanent underclass. And this is what the government wants. It is also why the government is trying to disarm you now. They don't want to have to fight their new worker class because they know that even if the workers are only armed with small arms, they can destroy the government and their high-tech military if enough of them revolt and refuse to surrender.

So the problems exist, and while solutions are possible, no solution you can come up with will change things significantly (at least not for the better) before the end of the year. When this year ends, we will actually find out what happens with our technology, and how long it will take to repair the damage. Unfortunately, many of those in the government are only considering the problems with our technology. In their attempts to avoid panic, they are watering down what the media tells you and then contradicting themselves. If you don't believe me, go to the library and read your newspapers. Last summer, the government was saying that nothing would happen when Y2K arrived and there was no need to worry about anything. Those who said different were nuts who didn't know what they were talking about because everything would be ready long before the deadline. This year, the media reports that everything won't be ready, but all CRITICAL systems will be, so any problems will be minor and will be temporary in nature. The government is saying that citizens should stock up and prepare like they would if there was a big storm coming so they don't have much problems while their power is out if the outages occur in their area.

That is nice, and it seems safe on the surface, but there are two problems. First, if you lied to us a year ago, how do we know you got your facts straight now, and that things aren't going to get as bad as some people say? Second, what type of storm are we supposed to prepare for? A tornado strikes without warning, but only damages a small area. Help from neighboring areas, which are almost totally unaffected, is available almost immediately. A blizzard strikes with a few days warning, and can completely stop normal activities for days or even a few weeks. It affects a large area, and outside help is longer in arriving when it is needed, and transportation is difficult or impossible. A hurricane can strike with about a week or so to prepare, but a major hurricane can devastate several states completely, or even entire countries. Outside help is slow in arriving unless major efforts and organization occur. Transportation is difficult or impossible, relief supplies are further delayed, and there are no utilities in the affected areas. In many cases, there is no food, water, shelter, or electricity, and even with massive external aid, it can take months or years for the area to recover and return to normal. My question to the esteemed senators on the government's Y2K committee is, 'Exactly what type of storm are we looking at preparing for? How big an area is it going to affect, and to what extent? Should we be prepared to survive on our own for at least a few days, a few weeks, a few months, or a few years?'

If you get the answer to that question, consider the source, and remember that one year ago, the answer from the 'experts' with access to all the information available, including classified information, was that you would be overprepared if you had a few days supplies stockpiled and some kind of radical extremist or survivalist if you had a few weeks worth of supplies stockpiled. Of course, the government has large stockpiles of food, enough to last the designated politicians, their families, and their support troops for years or decades, but they don't consider that to be extreme planning.

My belief is that the failure of technology, at least to some extent, is inevitable. The exact extent and duration is unpredictable, even by the experts with access to all available information. Hell, even in those systems which have been thoroughly examined, modified, and considered to be ready for Y2K by the experts, there have been failures during Y2K testing. I don't need to know exactly where, when, what systems will be affected, and for how long, to predict what will happen when the Y2K failures occur. Technological failures will only be the match that lights the fuse. If the match is there and the fuse catches, it will probably set the bomb off before anyone can do anything to prevent it.

The people, and our society, are the bomb. Human actions, and reactions, will be the real problem during the start of the next year, and they will be the things that are written about in the history books when they discuss the last year of this millenium. The problems with technology, if of sufficient magnitude or duration, can make the problems worse by aggravating the situation. The simple fact is that if the problems are minor, the technological problems, and the time required to repair them, could be greatly increased by the effects of human actions and reactions during the crisis period.

This book will focus on the possible human actions and reactions, and how they interact with the technology, and how they may actually increase the technological problems which we will have to overcome if we want to live in a society with our current level of technological assistance. Some people may decide, after this is all over, that technology isn't all that it's cracked up to be.

For those who believe this is a sign from God concerning the coming End Times, or a sign of his displeasure, my personal belief is that you don't need to blame God for those things which are not His doing. He gave mankind the gift of free will, which means that we get to make our own decisions and be responsible for the consequences. This is one problem which we made ourselves, and must accept responsibility for. During your preparations, if you choose to make them, please consider two things. First, I plan to keep a Bible handy, for prayer, worship, and comfort when things get bad. Second, for those of you who have problems with using force to protect your own life, there is this FACT. Although the King James version says, 'Thou shalt not kill', the Old Testament is the Jewish Bible, and was written in Hebrew. The word of God, given to Moses on the mount, is much more specific. The commandment in question originally stated, 'Thou shalt not commit murder'. Although this is a minor difference in translation, it does mean that there is no commandment from God which says that it is wrong to kill in defense of your own life, or someone else's, in the proper situation or circumstance.

Also, the laws in this country still have not been modified enough to make it illegal to kill in self defense under any circumstances. If your life is in danger, especially if there is no way for you to call the authorities for help, or if the authorities are no longer functioning to perform their job, it is not illegal for you to kill in self defense.

Although some authorities may question this statement without me going into the entire set of complicated legal arguments and precedents which prove that it is correct, and may try to prosecute you for your actions after things return to normal, you need to remember several things. If you are prosecuted, you will be tried by a jury of your peers, and they will have just survived the same ordeal you did and have an opinion very similar to your own of those who attempt to kill you and steal the things you and your family require for survival. Also, if you are being prosecuted, you are alive to tell your side of the story. Also, if things become as violent as I believe they may, not only will there be too many cases of self defense to prosecute, but any prosecutor who wanted to put someone in jail without pretty good evidence that the killing was not in self defense could find himself looking for new work if the local citizens decided that they had had enough of the rule by legal precedent instead of the rule by laws supported by the people they were intended to protect.

When a criminal, who does nothing to support a society, and everything to destroy it, has more rights than the law abiding citizen who supports the society and pays the taxes required to run its government, the laws which give him superior rights to the normal citizen need to be removed. In fact, if you are really interested in the good of the people, the safety of the society, and the will of the people, you would make sure that any politicians who passed or supported those laws was removed from power and forced to go into a new line of work which would not allow him the chance to abuse the privileges and powers that he previously enjoyed. The rights of the law abiding citizen have already been infringed and violated by the criminal. Justice demands that the criminal not be given the government as an accomplice to further violate the rights of his victims.

Chapter 1

Birmingham is one of the largest cities in Alabama, with a population of just over one million in the city itself. The largest employer is the university, which employs over 10,000 people. In the past six years, Birmingham has had the dubious honor of being ranked in the top ten cities in the nation for per capita murder rate several times.

Gangs and violence are recognized as problems, but there is no move to disarm the citizens and make them easier prey for those who would like nothing better than to be able to vicitimize and prey upon the law-abiding segment of society with relative impunity. A large percentage of the murders in Birmingham are gang and drug related, and as long as the perpetrators and the victims are both socially undesirable, there is no real public outcry to do something to fix the situation. After all, if one drug dealer kills another drug dealer, there is one less drug dealer, and it didn't cost the taxpayers half a million dollars to try him in our court system, and it won't cost them another $30,000 a year to keep him in prison if they are lucky enough to convict him of his crimes.

The sheriff of Jefferson county issues over 200,000 permits each year for people to legally carry a concealed pistol for self defense and personal protection. These permits are good for one year, and cost $20 each. The money raised by gun permits is controlled by the sheriff, and allows him to do whatever is required to keep his department running without having to worry about the county commissioners telling him how it must be spent. Many more people carry pistols who either would not pass the screening or who do not want to go through the process.

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Fort Wayne is a city of about 200,000 people. It has some industry, and is a crossroads for shipping in the local region. The major highways in northeast Indiana all cross at Fort Wayne, and there are several railroads which pass through the city. The area is flat, but the city is built on some of the highest ground in the area, which is why it is called the Summit City. There are three rivers which flow through the city - the St. Joseph, the St. Marys, and the Maumee. Summers can be short, but are hot and muggy. Winters can be long, and can be very cold and windy. The city is too far from the Great Lakes to get much lake effect snow, but snowfall can still be significant, and blowing and drifting snow are a real hazard during the winter. Roads which were plowed an hour ago can be completely drifted over during windy weather, especially when there is still more snow falling.

Fort Wayne has a somewhat diverse population in the region, with Amish and Mennonites both farming and building locally. The population also includes 10 to 15% black. Yes, I am aware that the word "black" is not politically correct, but it is more acceptable to most people than Negro. I am not going to call the blacks in Fort Wayne African-Americans because I know many of them, and none of them came from Africa. They were born in this country, so they are Americans. African-American is not a culture. Africa is a continent, and contains many different countries. Most of those countries have several different cultures within their borders, and those cultures are diverse, somtimes even being different between individual tribes. I'm not going to mix a bunch of diverse cultures that can't even get along in their own countries, and which spend most of their time fighting, either politically or militarily, to get what they think is their just dues from the government of their own country, and say that this blended concoction is representative of the cultural heritage of blacks in America. If I cut a bunch of vegetables up and cook them, I have vegetable soup. The flavors are blended, but still distinct. If I stick them in a blender, I have V-8 juice. The flavors are still there, but they are so mixed up that you can't identify them and you have no way of knowing where they originally came from.

That would be like saying that all Irish-Americans have a cultural heritage of eating sour kraut and bratwurst because all whites are really European-Americans and Germany is in Europe, and that is part of the German cultural heritage. I don't do Politically Correct, and all the liberals who object to this can kiss my ass. If I have no right to force them to conform to my beliefs and views, they have even less right to force me, and the remaining 70% of this country who classify themselves as conservatives, to conform to their beliefs and views. This country was set up to represent the majority of the people, not the minority that happened to think they knew what was best for everyone and decided that they would make sure they let us know what was now acceptable or unacceptable in behavior, thinking, etc.

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Portsmouth is a small town, but is the county seat for Scioto county. It has the Ohio River on one side. The Scioto River empties into the Ohio on one side of the town, and the Little Scioto River empties into the Ohio on the other side of the town. There is a large concrete levee and floodwall near the Ohio River to prevent flooding of the town. The Scioto river valley is very hilly and wooded. Since the steel mill closed down, there is some small industry and small businesses, and a small community college. The population is about 35,000 people, and there are a lot of small family farms in the area. The nearst large town is Huntington, West Virginia, which is about 50 miles east on the Ohio River.

The population of Scioto county, and for the entire surrounding region, is at least 95% white, with the remaining 5% being split between blacks and other minorities. The area is still somewhat racist, especially outside the cities, but it is mostly limited to a small percentage of the population. Much of the population would probably be called separatist, including the minorities in the region, if it were not for the fact that they do not like outsiders or newcomers to the area because they are still somewhat clannish and, like most rural or hill folk, do not automatically trust everyone who moves into their neighborhood. It's not that they are unfriendly, it's just that they aren't friendly to everyone they meet. However, there are individuals who are worse than others, and there are areas in the county where a black family can count on having a cross burning on their front yard within a week if they move there.

The main local hospitals are Mercy and Scioto Memorial. They are small, but fairly modern. They do lack the large, expensive, highly specialized equipment that is more common to large city hospitals, but the county has an extensive network of volunteer EMS units, which are run, supported, and staffed by part-time volunteers. There are also several independent search and rescue units in the county, whose volunteers are all certified for first aid or advanced first aid. Some of the SAR members are EMTs or paramedics.

Portsmouth is notable for a few reasons. There are several important features in the region. The Norfolk and Western Railroad switching yards used to be located at Portsmouth, and there are still six or eight sets of railroad tracks with switches running right through the center of the town. There are two automobile bridges and two railroad bridges over the Ohio River, connecting the area to Kentucky. The two railroad bridges are actually located outside of Sciotoville, which is about 5 miles east of Portsmouth. About 100 yards from Sciotoville, between the highway and the river, is a storage facility for Sohio Oil. The facility consists of about six large storage tanks, each of which is about 150 feet in diameter and about 80 feet high. The Goodyear Atomic Enrichment Plant is located near Portsmouth. Also, just north of Portsmouth, outside of the small town of Lucasville, is the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, Ohio's maximum security prison. The prison houses over 1000 convicted felons, and was state of the art when it was built about twenty-five years ago. Although it was originally constructed as a minimum security facility, it was converted into a maximum security facility when the state had to shut down some of their prisons which had been constructed in the 1800s.

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Day One
Friday, December 31, 1999. One minute to midnight. Birmingham, AL.
All of the New Year's parties are in full swing, and are even larger and more boisterous than ever due to the media hype about the beginning of the new millenium. Even those who know that the millenium won't start until the end of the year 2000 are joining in on the festivities. Why waste a good party when we can always explain it to those who didn't know about it later and have an even bigger party and better time next year? Besides, the media is always coming up with some angle to help boost sales and advertising.

Just as the countdown for the new year starts, everyone holds their breath, because they also know that there is some chance that those nuts who think that all of our computer technology will fail at midnight are right. And even if everything doesn't fail, there could still be some problems, right? As they watch the clocks tick down, they are reassured because there wasn't any problem at 11:00 when the ball went down in Times Square and New York started their new year, was there? As midnight passes, everybody cheers, then breathe a sigh of collective relief. All of the millenium doom and gloom nuts were wrong, and nothing happened.

Ten minutes later, just as the parties are going into full swing again to celebrate, the lights suddenly go out, and everyone is plunged into total darkness. There is momentary panic, then nervous laughter as everyone tries to convince themselves, and others, that there really is no reason to worry and this is some kind of prank or silly coincidence. Then they try the phones, and find that all lines are busy. Those with cell phones find that some of them won't work, and others can't connect with their server to place their calls. The tension begins to slowly build, and panic is hovering nearby.

In one ten block area, the lights go out, then come back on as the emergency generators for the hospitals kick in. There are eight hospitals in this area. The Veterans Administration Hospital, HealthSouth, Cooper Green, The Children's Hospital of Alabama, The Eye Foundation Hospital, The Diabetes Hospital, St. Vincent's Hospital, and the University of Alabama Hospital. Most of them are on or adjacent to the campus of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The university has a fairly large and efficient police force, with over 150 officers to patrol the dorms and campus facilities, which, including the five hospitals that are a part of the campus, encompass about 100 city blocks.

After a few minutes, the lights go off at Cooper Green and the Diabetes Hospital. There is controlled chaos as nurses and doctors scramble to find out what is going on and try to keep patients who are on life support from dying. Several people die in the chaos because the machines they needed to keep them alive had no power. It is only a few minutes later before the chaos reaches the other hospitals. Ambulances coming into the emergency rooms tell the staff that all of the traffic signals in town are down, and the drunks and others on the roads are beginning to pile up all over the place.

It only takes a few more minutes to discover that their computers are not functioning correctly, and they are giving garbled files when they work at all. The electronic monitors for blood pressure and pulse are giving erratic readings, and some refuse to work at all. The nurses are forced to take temperatures with old oral thermometers, use old mercury BP cuffs, and get the pulse manually.Things begin to slow down in the ER just as the volume begins to pick up. People are beginning to arrive from the accidents, some driving in themselves or being driven by a witness when they can't get a call in to an ambulance. An ambulance crew reports that 20th street across Red Mountain is completely blocked by several accidents at the intersections at the bottom of the mountain in both Homewood and Birmingham. Any responses to Homewood will have to go around the mountain, either down Greensprings Avenue, the Red Mountain Expressway, or I-65.

Meanwhile, other departments in the hospital are finding out that they have problems as well. A respirator malfunctions, killing the patient. An IV pump malfunctions, administering the entire contents in a matter of minutes. The overdose isn't discovered until 15 minutes later. By then, the patient is dead. The cardiac unit is a madhouse, as the radio telemetry is off line, and they don't know which patients are doing fine and which ones are in distress. The call lights, while working, are no help because the confusion has distressed the patients, and they are calling the nurses to find out what is going on.

Slowly, as the staff realizes which systems are noticably affected, the computers, monitors, and equipment are shut down to prevent them from causing more problems. One of the most modern hospitals in the world, with the best equipment available, and some of the most competent doctors in the world, is now operating at the same level as a hospital in a third world country.

During the night, at least 50 patients die in the hospitals of Birmingham. Another 50 people die in the operating rooms during emergency surgery. The staff knows that things will get worse before they get better, but they aren't sure how bad it will get or when it will get better.

Elsewhere, the criminals were disappointed when nothing happened at midnight. They had planned, mostly independently, although some had become organized, to capitalize on the power failures and computer glitches. If the phones were messed up, no security would respond even when the burglar alarms went off because their back-up batteries still had the power to run them for a few hours or days.

The appliance stores were burglarized, and the thieves didn't even worry about the fact that they were stealing computers, TVs, VCRs, and stereos when there wasn't even any power to run them. Houses in the rich neighborhoods were broken into and vandalized. Here, the thieves got liquor, guns, drugs, money, jewelry, and more fancy electronics. The drug stores and drug warehouses were broken into, with several security guards and several punks killed or wounded in the crossfire. When it was over, there was a sudden surge in the amount of drugs available on the streets of Birmingham.

Those at the all-night grocery stores and gas stations were suddenly plunged into darkness. The pumps didn't work, and there was no way to get gas out of the underground storage tanks. The registers and lights didn't work at the stores, and neither did the scanners. No sales could be conducted. Employees rushed to get perishable merchandise into large storage freezers or to insulate them so the food would not spoil. The managers worked as quickly as possible to get all of the customers out of the stores to limit damages, shoplifting, and any liabilities from accidents.

Some of the radio stations managed to stay on the air, but they were broadcasting at reduced power levels. The TV stations were also on the air, but they were broadcasting an emergency news format. Then their computers began to fail and they lost their satellite links. Gradually, over the next several days, they would be reduced to using the oldest equipment they could find in storage and running their controls manually with a direct feed from the camera to the transmitter. For the first time in decades, they were actually broadcasting live with no remote cutouts or delays to allow editing if something happened that wasn't supposed to be broadcast. So much for the FCC's vaunted guidelines.

The radio DJs reported what news they could verify, and often any news they got that hadn't been verified as long as it wouldn't start a panic. They played a lot of music and talked a lot about anything they could think of because there was no reliable news to report. A lot of them knew that the only listeners they had were in their cars or using portable radios run on batteries.

The water plant had their own problems. The emergency power would run the plant, but they knew that some of their systems still weren't fully tested. The chief engineer shut down all of the suspect systems that he could, and used his people to make manual inspections to make sure everything was running correctly. He was less worried about the waste treatment, because dumping raw sewage into the waterways would be less of an immediate problem than pumping improperly treated water into the residential systems.

I-65 was packed within 30 minutes of the lights failing. The onramps were clogged, and traffic was moving so slowly that most accidents were fender benders, so the motorists ignored them and kept driving. The news over their radios was not reassuring, so the people who were worried enough to prepare for Y2K, but not worried enough to take it seriously enough to get out of the cities beforehand in case it actually happened, all found themselves hopelessly snarled in traffic.

Although it was slow going, the cool night air kept the cars from overheating. It had just gone to winter weather in Birmingham about a week and a half ago. So far, it was the start of a mild winter. Daytime highs were in the lower 50s, and overnight lows were in the upper 30s and lower 40s. Those who left the first night got as far as they could on the gas they had in their tanks. Those with reserve tanks or spare gas cans got farther, and those who found a gas station with the power to operate, or willing to pump the gas out of the storage tanks manually, found that they had to pay $5 to $10 per gallon for what they could get. Several shootings occurred when people tried to force owners to sell them gas at lower prices or to accept a credit card for payment.

Gangs roamed the streets, getting into fights with other gangs over their turf, robbing those they could find who were easy targets, and raping any women they could find. When they couldn't find women, some of the gangs grabbed any little girl or boy they could find and raped them until they tired of the sport or the child died. At least one little girl choked to death that night while being forced to perform oral sex. She was six years old, and would never see her seventh birthday. Police found her body in the morning. She was naked, with her nightgown ripped from her body, and was still clutching the teddy bear she had been sleeping with before the intruders broke into her house and took her from her bed. The babysitter had run out the back door when the gang broke down the front door. After hiding behind a shed for a half hour, listening to the little girl's screams, she was finally able to leave when she saw the gang leave the house, dragging the little girl with them. She had no coat or shoes, and walked ten blocks to the police station to report the incident. The dispatcher told her that there was nothing they could do until morning because all of the police communications, except for short range walkie talkies, were malfunctioning and unreliable. Every available officer was already out on patrol, and they had their hands full just trying to maintain order and prevent crimes where they were.

Several fires were started, but they were contained once the fire department figured out where they were and were able to respond. By morning, two or three of the fires were still burning, but would be out in several hours if the water pressure held. Nobody in the press asked the firefighters how likely they thought that possibility was. Not that they didn't think to, but most of them didn't want to know, and the rest didn't want to report the information if they did find out.

WDJC, the local christian station, remained on the air, playing inspirational music interspersed with calls for listeners to remain calm, help their neighbors whenever possible, and to pray for a quick end to the madness which seemed to have seized the town. They also had a list of local churches which had set up soup kitchens to feed those who had no food or had no way to cook food because their house was all electric. They did ask that those who had food, but no way to cook it, please bring some with them when they came so that supplies would last through the duration of the emergency. Nobody knew how long that would be. And nobody bothered to ask why so many churches had already set up emergency plans and had soup kitchens ready to run before the disaster was even 12 hours old.

When the sun finally rose, its light was reflected off of the green-tinted windows of the Southtrust Tower, the tallest building in Alabama. It was Saturday morning, January 1, 2000, and the new year had started with a bang. Now, with the light of day to help them contain things and evaluate the previous night's damage, those in charge prayed that the worst was over and that this was not just the pre-shock that warned of the bigger earthquake that was on its way.

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Friday, December 31, 1999. One minute to midnight. Portsmouth, Ohio.
Nothing much was happening in Portsmouth tonight. Some of the college students were having parties, but the town was relatively quiet. A large portion of the population was elderly, as had been the case since the steel mill shut down and many of the younger people left to find jobs elsewhere. Unemployment or underemployment had been a big problem in the area for over 15 years. The statistics didn't look as bad as things had been in the eighties, when unemployment was over 50% for a few years. The state had come up with the solution to make things look better by taking one person off of their unemployment statistics every time a teenager joined the military or the wife of one of the unemployed steel workers got a part-time job at the local K-Mart or WalMart.

The statistics had quickly fallen because the military had recruited heavily there for years. The climate was hot and muggy in the summer because of the rivers, and very cold and snowy in the winter because of the water and the hills that formed the valley. People who grew up there were very adaptable to climatic extremes, and they were eager to join the military because there were no jobs locally.

It was a cold night in Portsmouth, as it usually was in December and January. There was some snow on the ground, and a few more inches were due to fall in the next day or two. Not enough to worry about yet, but there was the possibility that a storm that could be moving in within the next week would be a real blizzard, with cold, arctic temperatures and significant snowfall.

When the lights went out, there was no panic. The weather and the smaller number of criminals combined to make the night about normal as far as crime went. There were a lot of traffic accidents, but most were minor. The hospitals lost a few patients, but they were mainly set up for accident victims, pregnancies, and surgical recovery. They didn't do transplants and extensive life support for trauma or long-term intensive care patients. Patients with extensive injuries they could not handle were shipped to Columbus, or to Huntington, WV.

Except for a few wrecks, there wasn't much that most of the people noticed. Almost nothing is open all night in Portsmouth. The people went to bed after the power went out, if they weren't already asleep when it happened. The police had some communications problems, but they didn't notice that the phones were only working for local calls for several hours. Then the local switching became erratic and went out, leaving the area with no phone service.

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Friday, December 31, 1999. One minute to midnight. Fort Wayne, IN.
A lot of parties were going on tonight. It was Friday night, and there was no reason not to have a good time. The countdown was about to begin, and then the new year would start. It was cold, there was snow on the ground, and there was more snow on the way. The wind wasn't too bad, and the snowplows were out for both the county and city to make sure that the worst spots were plowed, salted, and sanded. Another normal night, except tonight was THE party, since the media had dubbed this the end of the millenium.

At the stroke of midnight, just as the ball fell at Times Square, the lights in all the bars went out. People started pulling out matches and lighters, joking about how the management was really lame to try to pull a joke like that to convince everybody that all those nuts who said everything would break down at the stroke of midnight when Y2K arrived had been right after all. Hell, hadn't the government said just last week that they had made sure everything was up and tested and there would be no real problems to speak of unless, of course, you had some old computer that used old microchips.

Nobody bothered to think that the computers that ran their power plants were installed 20 years ago, and that although some things had been upgraded, many of the subsystems were still controlled by old computers, or had been built using parts that contained old microchips. Who needed to install upgraded microchips on built in parts? The reason the chips were embedded was that they were capable of handling as much as the equipment could already, so why replace them before the equipment wore out? That would cut into profits unnecessarily.

After about five minutes, most of the people had become aware that this was no joke being pulled by the management, and that there were no lights anywhere outside. No street lights, no traffic lights, no lights in houses or stores. Some of the people began to leave quietly, while others were not so calm about the situation. The numbers of those who were reacting out of panic increased when they found out that none of the phone systems were working at all, including the 911 emergency number.

There were hundreds of traffic accidents during the night, many of them involving drunk drivers. The I-69 and I-469 ramps were clogged with traffic as some people became panicked and remembered that those who said that Y2K would happen had also said that the cities were the worst place to be. They didn't remember anything about preparing, or about making sure that you had someplace to go so that you would have a chance to survive. They just drove, most of them heading nowhere in particular, but many heading to someplace where they had family, certain that this was a localized thing and that they could escape to a normal, unaffected area if they just left now. They didn't stop to think that their relatives might be headed for them to make sure they were safe, or that they had gotten out safely, or anything else.

Criminals reacted here as they had in Birmingham. There was an increase in robberies, rapes, murders, vandalism, and looting throughout the night as those doing what they wanted gradually realized that unless a cop came by and caught them in the act, there was almost no chance of being caught and prosecuted.

Parkview, Lutheran, and St. Joseph hospitals all had their own problems before the first traffic accident victims even arrived. The emergency generator wouldn't stay on at St. Joe, and they had no lights at all. When they managed to contact the other hospitals and found out that things weren't much better there, they kept their patients in bed and let them sleep through the problems. Between them, there were several deaths during the night. One machine malfunctioned at Parkview, and the warning sensors didn't work. The patient died.

At Lutheran, the monitor on an IV drip malfunctioned, and a large air bubble was pumped into the patient. She died of a pulmonary embolism. To say that her death was painful would be an understatement. In the few minutes it took her to die, her screams woke up every patient on the floor, and several on the adjacent floors.

At one of the railroad crossings on Anthony Boulevard, the signal fails. A minivan full of people returning from a party is hit by a train, causing the van to burst into flames. The few people who manage to escape lie in the snow, horribly burned and in excruciating pain. Forty-five minutes later, when the first ambulance arrives, the cop who reported the accident tells the EMTs not to hurry. The last survivor just died of exposure five minutes ago. He didn't have enough equipment in his car to prevent hypothermia and shock under these conditions, and was unable to move the victim because of the severity of his burns. Ten people died, including two small children who had just been picked up from the babysitter's house.

At the other end of Fort Wayne, the signal doesn't warn an oncoming freight train hauling tanker cars full of chemicals that the previous freight had to stop on the tracks because of the accident. The engineer has frantically called repeatedly to stop the next train or switch it, but has been unable to get through. The brakeman has put out signal flares and torpedoes to warn the oncoming train, but it is unable to stop in time. The trains collide, causing the moving freight to jump the tracks, spilling cars and chemicals into the Maumee River. Other cars spill open, and the reactions cause a chemical fire to start, releasing deadly fumes into the air, and threatening to set other cars full of gasoline on fire.

As the cloud approaches, and he sees the EMTs being overcome, the last act of the cop is to warn everyone who can hear his radio distress call that they need masks and oxygen to approach the scene. When the scene is cleared by firefighters, they find him inside his police cruiser with the microphone still in his hand. Downwind, 500 people will get sick or die from inhaling the fumes from the chemical fire. When they start trickling into the ER at Parkview, they soon exceed the capacity of the staff to treat them effectively. It is even worse for those who make their way to St. Joe, because the staff is working with flashlights and lanterns. The orderlies are doing their best to care for the injured while still having to run down to the supply rooms in the basement to get more drugs, bandages, and supplies. They have to use the stairs because the elevators don't work.

One of the Samaritan helicopters tries to land at the scene of a very nasty traffic accident where several of the cars have caught on fire. The smoke is thick, but the pilot believes he can land safely. Due to a combination of failures in his altimeter, his GPS system, and a freak gust of wind, which the pilot was unaware of because the communications with the airport are spotty, the chopper is driven into a power line, crashes, and explodes into a ball of flames. There are no survivors.

On Pontiac street, a little girl is pulled from her home and raped repeatedly, then left in the snow. She survives, but the doctors are forced to amputate her lower legs and forearms because of frostbite. The little boy who was kidnapped from his house on Creighton, just two blocks from the police station, is not so lucky. After being repeatedly sodomized, he is tied, naked to a tree. Police will find his frozen body when the morning shift reports in to work.

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The Birmingham city council was in emergency session, and the news was not looking good. They knew that if they did not get control of the situation, it would escalate rapidly, and would soon exceed their ability to control it, if it hadn'tt already done so. The death toll from the previous night was astounding, but they all knew that things could have been much worse. They had all seen the long lines of cars attempting to flee the city. People didn't know what was going on, and they were scared.

While the council was trying to determine how to handle the situation, they heard a warning siren from one of the radios manned by a worker in the room. He explained that someone had just set off the newly reworked Emergency Alert System. The message which followed was short. "The President has declared martial law, and empowered FEMA to take control of the situation. The governors of each state are directed to call out the National Guard, and to place all available units under FEMA control for the duration of the emergency. The Constitution has been formally suspended, and Congress has been dissolved for the duration of the emergency."

The following announcements over the next few hours did nothing to calm the council. There were announcements of federal directives, and descriptions of the various executive orders which were now in effect. The governor ordered the National Guard out, but less than 5% of most units had shown up in the first four hours. This meant that there would be no Guard units to deploy to help the police tonight.

The council knew that everyone would know that the Guard had been activated, and when no Guard units showed up, the police would be overwhelmed with the violence. They gave the orders that all of them would regret having to give for the rest of their lives, but which were necessary according to the best emergency response study they had. All police, EMS, and fire units were to remain in residential areas of the city. They were not to respond to any fire or activity in the downtown or industrial areas, and under no circumstances were they to approach any of the Federal housing projects in Ensley, the West End, the North Side, or even the small project in Southside between UAB and St. Vincent's hospital by the Red Mountain Expressway.

Thus began the day which would forever be known as Savage Saturday. Instead of organizing the people and getting them together, the politicians had decided to cut their losses and run for cover. This left the citizens exactly where the politicians had always left them: alone, unorganized, largely unarmed, and defenseless. Only with more than 200,000 legally armed adults living in Jefferson county, the citizens were not exactly as defenseless as the politicians thought.

When WDJC heard of the council's decision, they broadcast the news along with a plea for the law-abiding christians to rise up, band together, and keep the peace during this time of tribulation. In some areas, this happened. In others, the peacekeepers were a definite minority, and paid the price for their actions.

Several Northside communities banded together, and managed to catch several dozen felons during the commission of crimes. Some of the felons resisted arrest, and ten citizens and fourteen felons died in the ensuing gun battles.

A group of skinheads from the American Nazi Party joined a group from the KKK and began a path of destruction. After fire-bombing the 20th Street Baptist Church, they began drive-by shootings on the perimeters of the projects. The residents responded in kind, killing several Klansmen before driving off the attack. There were dead and injured on both sides. Since they were cut off from the residential sections, those in the projects had no way to call for police or ambulances. Some of the wounded bled to death, despite the best efforts of their neighbors to treat their wounds.

WDJC broadcast a strong criticism of the attack, calling on the Nazis and KKK to lay aside their hatreds and rise above the situation. The response was that a group of Nazis fire-bombed the radio station. They killed all the men and kidnapped the female employees. After repeatedly raping and sodomizing them, the Nazis released the women without any clothing at all. They made the women stand naked in front of them as their clothes were tossed into the burning building. Before leaving, they spray painted the walls that remained with swastikas and the phrase 'NIGGER LOVING RACE TRAITORS'.

During the day, some religious zealots firebombed the two abortion clinics closest to UAB. The New Woman's Health Clinic, at the corner of 10th Avenue South and 17th Street South was the first to go up in flames. It was the same clinic which had been bombed in January of 1998. Twenty minutes later, the Summit Medical Clinic, on the corner of 11th Avenue South and 18th Street South was put to the torch.

The fire department tried to respond, but was helpless. There was no water pressure anywhere in the city. Just one hour earlier, the engineers at the water treatment plant had noticed that there was not as much fluoride as there should be in the dispensers. A quick check had shown that several other chemicals used in the process had also been automatically dispensed in amounts far exceeding safe levels. With no way to remove the treated water from the system, they were forced to open the valves and turn off the pumps to drop water pressure in the city. The alternative would be to let thousands die from drinking the water because there was no way to warn them in time to prevent them from drinking water that had been made toxic by the chemical treatment process.

The fires raged, and others soon joined them. Downtown Birmingham, including a few of the projects in the area, was consumed by a firestorm. Thousands died in the flames. Thousands more were horribly burned and disfigured in the fires. Those that made it to the hospitals found that there was no relief. The hospitals had no water pressure, and the small amount of water that they had remaining in their systems wasn't enough to treat the number of people they had.

Morphine, sterile saline solution, sterile water, and various pain medications were exhausted in the first hour. The antibiotics were not enough to begin treating the patients. The hospital administrators ordered the doctors to withhold antibiotics from all burn patients. What they had would have to last, because they didn't know when their next shipment of medical supplies might arrive. After the pain medications wore off, the patients began to feel the pain of their injuries. The screaming could be heard for blocks, but there was nothing that could be done to relieve the pain.

Hundreds died in the first hours as shock set in from the loss of fluids. Hundreds more would linger on, in pain, waiting to die. Eventually, all of the serious burn patients would die, either from their injuries or from infections. The hospitals are the worst breeding ground in the world for infectious agents, especially if that hospital suddenly runs out of the chemicals they use to sterilize surfaces, the water they use for cleaning, the electricity they use for autoclaving and sterilizing instruments, and the drugs they use to keep infections from getting established. The simultaneous loss of all of these basic necessities made it impossible for the hospitals to function effectively.

Mercifully, only a few dozen burn patients survived in Birmingham's hospitals long enough to contract serious infections and die from them. All of the victims of the Birmingham inferno were dead within a week.

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Portsmouth got their first major disaster when someone decided to see if the Sohio storage tanks were really empty, since the rumor was that they had been drained years ago. Unfortunately, the tank they chose to examine was one that was empty - almost. The fumes ignited from a spark, and the resulting explosion completely collapsed the face of the cliffs nearest the roads on both sides of the river. The highways on both sides were buried under thousands of tons of rock and debris.

The blast also managed to level half of the town of Sciotoville, killing about 200 people and injuring several hundred others. The shock wave from the blast also damaged the remaining storage tanks, causing them to rupture and igniting the contents. Two more blasts quickly followed, and a river of flaming petroleum flowed into the Ohio River and began to flow downstream towards Portsmouth. The blasts damaged the supports for the railroad bridges located a quarter of a mile upstream, but nobody realized that until later in the day, when the locomotive pulling 100 coal cars went across the bridge and it collapsed. The locomotive and twenty cars loaded with coal were dumped into sixty feet of water, along with the entire structure of the bridge.

It took rescue workers the rest of the day to go through the debris looking for survivors.

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The amount of traffic on I-69 was unimaginable. The entire interstate was packed with slow moving traffic. Those headed north thought that those headed south were nuts, and vice versa. After hearing about the train wreck and toxic cloud in Fort Wayne on their car radios, none of the traffic got off of the interstate. They weren't sure what they were running from, but they were really sure that Fort Wayne had something that they didn't want to be running to.

Most of the traffic headed onto I-469 and went east, hoping to get away from the problems by leaving the state. They had no way of knowing that most of Ohio was probably in worse shape than Indiana.

Inside the city, things had calmed down during the day, although there was still some concern that more people might be injured or dying from the effects of the toxic fumes. The police had been mobilized, and one of the Guard units had responded with about 35% of its roster. They had been pressed into service to help round up gasoline and fuel stores to keep the hospital generators running. The generator at St. Joe hospital had finally been started, and they had lights running, although their computers and technical equipment were still down. They could perform surgery if they had to, but had no equipment to monitor pulse, respiration, and blood pressure, and the anaesthesiologist had to pass the gas manually without a digital mixer and regulator.

With the coming of daylight, the criminals had left the streets, believing that it was safer to keep a low profile during hours of high visibility. After the declaration of martial law, things got even quieter for a few hours. Once everyone got over the shock, and they realized that there were not thousands of National Guard and other troops in the streets to keep order, the criminals began to come out. They started looting some of the targets that had been missed during the night. When nobody responded to their immediate actions, they began looting and starting fires whereever they wanted. It didn't take too long before the residents in the area began shooting at large groups of people who didn't look like they belonged in the area. Once the shooting began, sniping started occurring throughout the day.

Before dusk, the criminals living near the police station began taking potshots at the police cruisers, the station house, and any officers in uniform that they could see. Within an hour, police sharpshooters were posted on the roof with orders to kill anyone who started shooting at them or the other police personnel. By dark, the score was one police sniper wounded and four criminals killed. After dark, the odds turned in favor of the police because they had the high ground and night vision scopes. By midnight, the sniping had tapered off to occasional harrassing fire.

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Across America, it was much the same. Some cities fared better, and some fared worse. There were communities where there was little crime or violence, and where everyone lived much the same today as they had yesterday. These havens were very diverse in their philosophies. Some were very tolerant of others, some wanted only to be left alone, and some preached a philosophy of hate. Those with a core of hatred were also diverse in who or what they hated, but they shared, at the core of their being, a common bond of hatred. This festering sore was recognized by many, and they had tried to erase it in the past, yet like some weed in a fertile patch of soil, it reared its ugly head time after time because the roots were never entirely removed.

So ended the first day of the year 2K.

Chapter 2

Day Two
Sunday, January 2, 2000. Just over 24 hours ago, the electrical grid had failed in many parts of the US. In some ways, it was even worse in the parts of the US that still had electricity. They had heat and power, but their TV would only play local channels because the cable systems and satellite systems had failed. Their phone service, when it worked at all, was limited to local listings. The banks were still closed for the holidays, but people who went out to the grocery stores soon found out that even though they had power, many of them weren't open because the registers and bar code scanners were malfunctioning.

Nobody had figured out yet that all of the ATMs were out of service because the computer links with the banks were down. If they had known that the computers at the banks were also down, and that there was no way to check account balances, withdraw funds, cash checks, or do any other transactions except deposits, many people would have begun to panic sooner. As it was, there was little to spend any cash on, and few places that were open would take a check or a credit card for any reason.

The hospitals in the areas that still had power were only slightly better off than those that were operating on emergency generators. Most of their computer system was malfunctioning, and much of their high-tech specialized machinery and equipment was only performing under certain conditions or not at all. Patients were treated, but administrators looked at their dwindling supplies with growing concern as they realized that all of their shipments of medical supplies would probably arrive late if they arrived at all.

Even though it was Sunday, many city councils held emergency sessions to discuss the situation and try to work out some plan to cope with problems which would probably start to occur in the near future. The police departments made plans of their own, spurred on by reports coming in over their radios from areas which had no power and which were experiencing a lot of crime and violence. All of the officers knew that if the violence spread to their area, it would be a losing battle to try to contain it, but it was their job to try. Every one of them knew that even with the huge force that L.A. had, they had been unable to do more than try to contain the rioters in one portion of the city. They had not even been able to provide enough protection to allow the firefighters to try to contain the blazes that had been started during the looting.

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The residents of Washington, DC, sat in darkness. Their city was so far behind most others of comparable size in the nation that nothing worked. Congress was not in session, and the politicians and government workers who lived in the city were all conveniently out of town. The departments had worked out that their need for trained employees to keep the government running when they got the problems fixed outweighed their mandate not to keep secrets from the taxpayers who paid their salaries. Six weeks ago, the employees had been told that they would be required to relocate for a while. The government had already set up facilities with generators, fuel, food, water, and all the necessary items for survival. All government employees in Washington over a GS-9 were quietly relocated to locations that the government could control.

The mayor and city council were not so lucky. Angry mobs from the projects and slums which surround the well maintained national parks and monuments in the downtown tourist strip vented their frustrations on whoever they could find. After a long fight with the company of marines that was left to guard the White House, they took control of the building and grounds. The President, his staff, and all of the workers were gone, and all of the files had been removed or destroyed.

It didn't take long for those in the crowd to work out the fact that the government had known that this was probably going to happen. Instead of warning the American people, and getting them to prepare as well as they could, the government had decided to save themselves and leave the citizens to their own resources. It wasn't the threat of starting a panic that had kept the people in the dark. It was the real fear that when the people found out that the government had known about this for years, had done nothing to prevent it when it was still possible to do so, and then had lied to the people to protect their own asses, the people might decide that it was a good time for a violent, bloody revolt in the hopes of catching and killing as many of those responsible for this tragedy as possible.

The politicians had condemned many of their 'constituents' simply because they were afraid of losing power. Because they had become so accustomed to the political games and intrigue, it colored all of their thinking and influenced all of their decisions. They never even considered the possibility that informing the people, while it might cause some panic, would allow more people to be prepared and limit the problems which were being caused by human reactions to the situation. Fear of the unknown would have been eliminated because the people would have known what was going on and would have had some idea of what to expect. They also never considered the fact that, had the panic occurred while all of the technology was still working, they would have had all the resources in place to calm the people down. In the few places where reason failed, they would have been able to send in troops to restore order.

This response from the politicians was exactly what I expected from someone of their caliber of intellect. If a person can keep a straight face, and tell me with total conviction that criminals are not to be held accountable for their own actions because they are not to blame, I begin to worry. If he can tell me that he actually believes that criminals behave the way they do because society forced them to become deviant by withholding some privilege or not providing for every desire or whim that entered their spoiled little mind, I get nervous. If he tells me that all the violence is the fault of those people who won't let the government get all the nasty guns off the streets just because of some misguided belief that they have the right to own a gun because they misinterpret the intention of the second amendment, I get scared. If he tells me that it isn't the fault of the criminals because people don't kill people, guns kill people, I know that he is not dealing with a full deck, and there is no way to convince him that he is wrong because, like most radical liberals, he has already made up his mind on the subject and has no intention of clouding the issue with truth or facts.

I realize that some people do not understand this statement, so I will digress long enough to explain. Radical liberals believe that they have the right to force you and everyone else to conform to their beliefs, and that they have the right to run your life from the cradle to the grave because their philosophy states that people should do what is right, and they know what is right for everybody. It follows that, since they know what is right, they should run things so that everybody leads their lives correctly, whether they want to or not.

The second amendment guarantees the individual the right to keep and bear arms. It is not a right given to the states or reserved to the states, and is a right, which means that the federal government does not have the authority to infringe upon that right unless there is a constitutional amendment which alters, amends, or negates the second amendment.

If the government had the right to regulate or confiscate something just because it was dangerous, then we would all be walking instead of driving, and anyone caught driving drunk who caused an accident that killed someone would be convicted of murder and sentenced to death. I mean, really, if the politicians had only our best interests at heart, would they be more concerned with guns, which do not kill or injure that many people each year, or automobiles, which kill as many Americans each year as all the troops who died during the entire Vietnam war? This does not even include the hundreds of thousands of people injured each year by cars.

The reason that cars are not going to be confiscated is that they are not a threat to the control the politicians exert over your lives every day. The reason that alcohol is not going to be confiscated is that it is easier to control people who are happy (or drunk) than it is someone who is discontented with the way you are interfering with his life. The reason that liberals fear guns is because they are a minority, and they realize that the only way they can force the majority of the people in this country to obey all of their rules and regulations is to take away the one means they would have of forcibly resisting when the government failed to live up to its end of the contract.

So, of course, the people were left to suffer and die, while the politicians made sure that they would survive in comfort and have some type of power base left to help them rebuild their little empire after things had settled down. Those who weren't influential enough to be taken with the government were left behind as sacrificial lambs in the hopes that they would be able to control the crowds. If not, their deaths would not hamper the government, and might serve to appease the masses who were presently pissed, with good reason, and blamed the government for the situation, also with good reason.

By the end of the day, our nation's capitol was in flames, and many of the historic monuments and landmarks had been vandalized or destroyed. The last time there had been this much destruction in the city was during the War of 1812, when the British had sacked the city. The glow from the fires could be seen for fifty miles.

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In Chicago, which still had power, a small group of men and women met in a small room. The person who had called the meeting was, like them, from a small middle eastern country and had, like many of the room's occupants, been a naturalized American citizen for years. He handed out backpacks, briefcases, and small notebooks. The notebooks contained targets which were to be attacked or destroyed. The backpacks contained explosives, submachine guns, and ammunition for those who had been assigned targets to destroy. The briefcases contained handguns, ammunition, and grenades for those who had been given specific targets to assassinate. The reign of terror was to begin. Although they had received no orders from those who controlled them, their standing orders were to take action if America declared war on their homeland or if there was a situation such as this in which martial law was declared and the Constitution was suspended.

The same scenario was being repeated across the country in many cities by many groups from various countries. The basic reasons didn't change. Almost every country was willing to accept money and food from America, but don't expect them to thank you for helping them out. Instead, most of the countries in the world, including many of our 'allies', hate America and Americans. Even those in the meetings who had lost their ideological drive or hatred of America were willing to do what they had come here for so many years ago. After all, America wasn't their homeland, and they did still have family members in their native country who could be punished if they refused to serve and obey their orders. And so the reign of terrorism began.

Jewish temples were bombed, and swastikas were painted on them along with anti-semitic messages such as 'Dirty Jew Bastards' and 'Hitler had the right idea, but he didn't think big enough'. The result was as expected. Everyone blamed the Nazis, and the Nazis didn't even know for sure that they were not responsible. After all, extreme intelligence was not a requirement for membership, and some of their members were somewhat unpredictable and violent, to put it mildly.

Crosses were burned, and blacks were beaten or hanged by groups dressed in white sheets. Some of the bodies had signs attached which said, 'The only good nigger', or simply, 'Nigger'. Everyone assumed that the KKK was to blame.

Federal buildings and courthouses were bombed, and copies of the Constitution were left at the scene, so everyone blamed the Patriots or the Constitutionalists.

Young women and girls, all with blonde hair and blue eyes, were raped or gang raped and sodomized before being released. All they could say was that their attackers had worn masks, had black hair, and dark skin. Everyone blamed the blacks, thinking that the militant black groups were retaliating for the activities of the Klan and the Nazis. In some cases, they were right. In others, the rapists were dark-skinned arabs or from some African nation that had a grudge against America.

In short, every cultural or social problem which the government had used for decades to keep the American people divided, to keep them focused on problems other than the government and the corrupt politicians and political parties, to keep them scared enough to control more easily, was exploited by the foreign terrorists to stir up anger, violence, destruction, and confusion. The results were more successful than any of the groups had dared to hope. Unfortunately, they did not live long to celebrate their success. At least 80% of them died within the next two days when the majority of the citizens who had weapons began to keep them handy and shoot anyone who looked hostile on sight.

One small group of three terrorist walked into a McDonald's, intent on killing as many as possible with their guns before planting bombs to blow the place up in about half an hour when it would be filled with police and rescue workers. As soon as they pulled their weapons and began to shoot, at least half a dozen of the people in the building, including the manager, pulled guns and began shooting. Most of the people took head shots, and their heads were so mangled that an identification could not have been made even if their dental records were available. Two customers were injured, and one was killed when he was mistaken for one of the terrorists. The police who responded had nothing to say to any of the armed citizens. They weren't about to try to arrest any of them, whether they had a gun permit or not. These people were pissed, and the cops were not stupid, and they didn't have a death wish.

Across the country, more and more people went openly armed, and the escalating violence only made it more sensible to go openly armed than to risk becoming a more appealing target. As the violence and tensions rose, the prospect of a race war became more imminent and more probable by the hour.

During this time, the militias and those who had been branded as survivalists and survival nuts by the media were nowhere to be found. They had hunted a hole and hunkered down. They knew what was coming, and had no intention of being caught up in the mess. They intended to survive, and the easiest and safest way to do that was to keep their heads down and not draw attention to themselves. When those who were fleeing the cities came their way, they were politely but firmly pointed in some other direction. When those who came had the idea to kill or steal what they wanted, they were shown another direction. They were sent straight to Hell, and nobody bothered to mark their graves, if they bothered to bury them at all.

As the punks fled the cities, the gang members learned several hard, cold lessons. A pistol, submachine gun, or sawed-off shotgun may be an awesome weapon at close range, but at 200 yards, a large caliber rifle will do a significant amount of damage to you and your vehicle. They also learned that when ammunition is at a premium, you can not afford the luxury of firing an entire magazine to kill one person. Gun control is being able to hit your target. First time, every time, if possible.

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Portsmouth was not a good place to be if you were black. The Klan is still fairly strong in the region, and they responded to the reports of violence against the blacks in various cities with enthusiasm. When they heard about the white women and girls being raped, and about black militants attacking Klan sites, they responded with rage. There were several arson fires, drive-by shootings, and beatings before the police figured out that there was a problem in Bucktown, which was the derogatory term for the region that most of the blacks lived in. Their arrival in force slowed things down for a while, but the fuse had been lit. There had been people killed and wounded on both sides during the fightling, and old hatreds had been rekindled.

Some of the people had left town, but most figured that they had no place better to go, and no assurance of being safer once they got there. A lot of the people had grown up here, for there was not much to attract outsiders to move here unless they liked living in the middle of nowhere and having nothing to do but work, stay home, and go to church. Portsmouth was a typical small, midwestern town. Most of the cops were OK, but there were a few who were corrupt or bullies, and they kept their jobs because they had family connections in the area.

The police knew that if the power continued to be a problem, they would soon have to deal with trouble at the penitentiary. Cable and power were both out in the area, so the convicts would have nothing to do with their time except to complain and plot escape attempts. In fact, it was probable that there would be a riot within the next three days if there was no improvement in the ability of the prison kitchens to cook and get food to the inmates. The prison, almost always understaffed, was even more short-handed with the holiday weekend and the power problems causing some employees to refuse to report for work. And since the phones were out, they couldn't even call in sick or try to get someone to cover their shifts for them if they didn't show up for work.

The local farmers, old hands at handling their own security during times when there was a prison break, oiled and loaded their shotguns, keeping them handy around the house, and especially when they went out to work in their fields. They also cut down on the amount of food they gave their dogs so they would be more alert and more aggressive.

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Fort Wayne was large enough and important enough to be a primary target for some of the terrorists. Unfortunately, their work was much more clandestine than many of the other groups, and they were rarely discovered, and even less frequently killed while committing their acts of terrorism. They put chemical and biological agents into the local water supplies, and released biological agents in the more densely populated parts of the cities. It would take days for their efforts to bear fruit, but it would be more devastating than all of the bombings combined.

One of the groups visited all three of the local hospitals, making sure that the areas where most people would go were contaminated. As an added bonus for their hatred for America and Americans, they went to the VA hospital and made sure that they had several sources of contamination there as well, including in the hospital's emergency water supply.

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Birmingham was still burning and hot in places, and the race war was flaring up more by the hour as the survivors from the devastated areas tried to leave and find safer areas to stay. The residents didn't want them, and there were shots exchanged. Some groups stormed houses and killed the residents, taking what they wanted. News of this spread, and soon the residents were banding into small groups to defend themselves from the invasion.

On I-65, traffic was at a standstill. Several major wrecks at malfunction junction, where I-65 crosses I-59 / I-20, had completely blocked the highway. Tempers were flaring, and it wasn't long before several small firefights had broken out between groups of stranded motorists. As the gunfire increased in volume, more and more people abandoned their cars and tried to find shelter. Looting began when some people realized that there were some survival supplies in some of the cars. The more enterprising individuals even found gas cans and started siphoning gasoline from the stranded or abandoned vehicles.

The police were too busy to notice anything but openly hostile or violent activity. Several lakes and ponds were contaminated by terrorists. Other water sources soon became polluted simply from the number of people who were fleeing the cities who had no concept of how to use the bathroom safely in the woods. Oak Mountain State Park soon had a population of almost 50,000 people. Most of them had little or no equipment, and had no idea on how to live in the woods or survive off of the land. They thought that all they had to do was go into the woods, wait a few minutes, shoot the first deer they saw, cook it, and eat to their heart's content. They had no hunting skills, no idea of how to bleed or butcher a deer, how to preserve any of the meat so it would keep for more than two or three days, or even how to start or build a fire properly.

Although these hunters were not very efficient, their sheer numbers made certain that they soon had scared off or killed most of the local deer population. In the meantime, they had also accounted for another 150 hunters killed "by mistake" and another 500 injured. There were also several hunters who had gotten a deer who were killed while skinning and gutting it. There were people in the forest who weren't very good at hunting deer, and couldn't shoot very well. Of course, it is hard to hunt deer with a handgun instead of a rifle or shotgun. But they were not too concerned with skill and accuracy. It didn't take much skill to walk up behind another man and shoot him in the back of the head at three feet. Then they had another set of boots, clothes, jacket, another gun with ammunition, and, of course, the deer that had just been killed.

Remember one rule of the jungle: Jackals can hunt and bring down their own game, but they prefer to let someone else do the work and then steal the kill. One good rule of survival in a tough situation is not to hunt alone. That way, while one person is taking care of the kill, the other can make sure that they are not killed and hopefully, that they don't lose the meat they worked so hard to acquire. These rules were quickly relearned by those who had forgotten them, unless they were unlucky enough to be killed before they could learn the lesson.

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New York City, the Big Apple, was the most famous American city. It was more famous than Washington, because it had the big lights, the big stars, the stages on Broadway, the fabulous shops, the Statue of Liberty, the tallest skyscrapers, and, of course, the United Nations building.

One of the teams from one country made more impact than any other single group of terrorists. After sabotaging one of the local water works and adding various chemical and biological contaminants, they left to release airborne spores from the top of several of the taller skyscrapers. When their work was done, they proceeded with the mission that would be their ultimate statement in terror. They detonated several backpack nukes at several selected sites. The bombs were not supposed to be large enough to destroy all of the structures. The bombs were dirty, and ground bursts. Within hours, most of New York was under a radioactive cloud, and contamination only got worse as the cloud settled and slowly turned most of the city into a radioactive hazard.

The terrorists knew that the cleanup wouldn't be as difficult because most of the radiation would be washed away from the steel and concrete. But it was winter, and it wasn't raining. Except for the contaminated water supply from the city's reservoir, the only sources for drinking water for those in the city was from the polluted rivers or from the newly contaminated snow. For those on the island, things became much grimmer as confusion and panic gradually closed all of the bridges and tunnels. They were clogged with stalled or crashed cars. Some of them had been blocked by those on the other side when they realized that everyone in Manhattan and Long Island had been dosed by the blasts. They didn't want the refugees bringing the radioactive contamination across with them, and didn't care that the contamination was already across the river because it was being carried on the wind.

Over the next few weeks, New York City, the great, shining bastion of American life and American influence in the world, would slowly die. In the process, more than three million people would lose their lives due to radiation, chemical poisoning, or disease. Another million would be killed violently or would simply disappear and never be accounted for.

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As in most disasters, the elderly, handicapped, and young children paid the highest price. Children were abandoned or separated from their families, and became easy victims for any adult who came along. They were tortured, abused, raped, and traded for drugs, food, ammunition, or whatever other items of value could be found. Some of the older children would eventually arm themselves, but in the first days and weeks, most of them ran, hid, or suffered the consequences whenever they ran into scum and punks. They quickly learned that survival meant that you could not trust anyone, for some of the children who were captured were used as Judas goats to help find new victims.

The elderly, those too infirm to get away or do anything to defend themselves, huddled in their increasingly cold homes, waiting for help that would never come in time. They would eventually die from dehydration, the cold, starvation, or the human vermin roaming the land. Most did not survive long enough to starve to death. Some lasted less than three days as their oxygen ran out and they slowly suffocated. Others had heart attacks, strokes, or seizures as their medications ran out and they had no way to get more. Many simply gave up and committed suicide.

The handicapped were targets of opportunity, as they had been throughout their lives for those who derived pleasure from stealing, intimidating, or torturing those who were unable to defend themselves well. It is hard to flee by running away from trouble when you are on crutches and have leg braces, or if you are in a wheelchair. And in many cases, those who were victimized knew that even their inability to take normal steps to escape or evade violence was no guarantee that they would not be prosecuted if they chose to defend themselves from criminals and punks. Years of conditioning is a hard thing to break overnight.

Quadraplegics in electric wheelchairs knew that once their batteries ran down, they might not be able to move at all. Many of them knew that once their batteries ran down, their ventilator would fail, and they would suffocate a few minutes later. The mentally handicapped knew that things had changed, but many of them were unable to understand the reasons why they were now in more danger than they had been a few days ago.

Those who believed in nonviolence soon had to face the world where there was nobody present to protect them from harm. They either had to live or die on their own, and many of those who practiced that lifestyle died. Years of brainwashing from the extreme liberals had conditioned many people to the point that they were unable to kill another person, even if their own life depended on it. Many of those who were able to overcome this conditioning did so only after their own life had almost been taken, or after some punk had killed or severely wounded their spouse, or one of their children. Many of the wounded died slow, painful deaths from the resulting infections. It didn't take long for some of the gangs to turn the deaths of their victims into a sport in which they placed bets on how long their victims would take to die and how loudly they could be made to scream before they passed out from the pain.

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The doctors at the hospitals in Fort Wayne knew that they were fighting a losing battle when the first few victims turned into a slow, continuous tide of victims. They exhibited all the symptoms of some type of poisoning or chemical toxicity, and the only thing that all of them had in common was that they had drunk some water that hadn't been bought in sealed containers at a store. It took the rest of the day for all of the hospitals to compare notes and figure out that there were several contaminated water sources, and that there was not much they could do to even make the victims comfortable while they died of their chemical exposure or slowly died because there was no safe source of water and food to keep them alive.

The hospitals had already started rationing many types of pain relievers, trying to save as much of them as possible for the dark times that the doctors and administrators knew were going to come. They all knew that things would get much worse before they got better. Of course, many of them were facing the realization that things might not ever get better for many of the people in this country. The number of people being treated, and the conditions they had to survive in during treatment, made them realize that many of those who were already patients had very little chance of survival unless things returned to normal almost immediately, and even the most optimistic among them didn't hold much hope for that occurring.

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In Charleston, West Virginia, the FEMA emergency response command center was up and running. The director for this part of the region knew that he would need more food than what was on hand to meet the goals that were listed in the emergency action plan, so he decided to use his powers to requisition the required supplies from the surrounding areas. It was a decision that would have far reaching consequences, and would far exceed the projected responses in the government's case studies and scenarios designed to cover the situation.

James Dunlevy, the FEMA worker who was put in charge of the convoy of National Guard trucks and hummers sent to some of the small towns off of I-64, just to the east of Beckley. He had about two platoons of troops in the back of the hummers in addition to the drivers. They had been issued a full load of ammunition and grenades. They had food and water for two days in the supply truck, and had extra gasoline in case there were any problems with the local roads.

Dunlevy decided that he would go to the town farthest from base to start his sweep and then work his way back to Charleston. He didn't see many people, or any signs of life to speak of during the first several hours of the trip. He wasn't from the area, or he would have known that the mountain folk didn't have to be seen in order to keep an eye on those who traveled through their territory. Just past the signs advertising the Lost World Caverns, they turned off onto US 219, and headed up to Marlinton. They stopped at a roadblock located about a mile outside of town.

Dunlevy approached the roadblock and demanded to know what was going on. A tall, dark, lanky man stepped forward and told him that they had blocked the road to make sure that there weren't any problems with outsiders coming into their area and causing trouble during the current problems. Dunlevy identified himself, and ordered them to dismantle the roadblock so his convoy could proceed with their business.

The leader identified himself as Vancil Hatfield, and asked exactly what business the government had out in the middle of nowhere. He didn't exactly think that they were bringing in food and water to provide disaster relief since the trucks were just about empty.

Dunlevy quickly became irate, and threatened to bring in troops to arrest the men at the roadblock and then take the things they had decided to requisition by force. Hatfield asked what right they had to take the things that his people needed to survive, and was told that the government said that he had no rights because the Constitution had been suspended, and FEMA had been put in charge of running the country during the emergency. The men refused to budge, and Dunlevy ordered the captain in charge of the troops to take the roadblock and take these rebels into custody.

The captain had been watching the exchange, and had already evaluated his options. The civilians at the roadblock all were armed with high powered rifles, shotguns, and .30 caliber military style rifles in semi-automatic. He had been raised in this area, and he had no doubts that there were more men in the high ground to both sides of the road than there were at the roadblock. He took Dunlevy aside and explained the situation to him, telling him that the troops that were here were not enough to do as he had just been ordered. Dunlevy agreed to pull back while he radioed for additional troops.

The men at the roadblock stood their ground while Dunlevy and most of the convoy pulled back down the road for several miles. Captain Johnson remained to try to talk to Hatfield and the others, attempting to convince them to back down before it was too late. As he approached, Hatfield came across the roadblock and came out to meet him.

Johnson said, 'Mr. Hatfield, you know that he is calling for more troops? There is no way that you can win. All that will happen is that you will die trying to stop him from getting what he wants.'

Hatfield smiled, and said, 'Call me Vancil, boy. Mr. Hatfield is my father, and I ain't so old that I deserve that much respect from someone your age. Hell, my hair ain't gone all gray yet.'

Captain Johnson laughed softly, and said, 'OK, sir, I'll call you Vancil. Don't want to go and get my ass whupped for showing disrespect to my elders, do I?'

Vancil said, 'No, I guess you don't. So what are you doing with that sorry excuse for a government official, captain?'

Johnson said, 'Sir, FEMA has been put in charge, and the whole country is under martial law. They run the show, and we just follow their orders. We only know what they tell us.'

Vancil said, 'So, what gives them the right to try to take what is rightfully ours and leave us here to starve and die? If I remember correctly, that isn't exactly in the Constitution, is it? I don't seem to see any attempt to even look like they are going through due process or eminent domain to justify their actions.'

'Vancil, there is no Constitution for the duration of this emergency. The government is in charge, and they will use the military to do what they want. They will use force, if necessary.'

'Well, captain, we may or may not win, but we won't tuck our tails and run just because some fool who works for the government sticks his big nose in our business and says 'Boo'. That wouln't be smart, cause then we'd never be able to look ourselves in the mirror, or even face each other. No man in these here parts cottons much to being considered a coward.'

'But, sir, you can't win. It's not being cowardly to admit when you can't win a fight and to walk away from it.'

'Captain, we ain't going to walk away from our homes, and that is what this fight is over. We bought and paid for everything that fed wants to 'requisition', which is just another fancy word for stealing. Bandits is bandits, whether their guns were issued to them by the government or not. We have the right to keep what is ours. We done give the government half of what we earned to do their job. They got no right to take what we done with our half of our own money.'

'Sir, you don't understand. There is no Constitution, so you have no rights.'

'Captain, you don't understand. When the government suspended the Constitution, they gave up all of THEIR rights. We did not lose all of our rights. The Constitution was the contract between the people and the government that spelled out exactly what rights we chose to give up to allow them to do the job that we wanted them to do. When they broke the contract, all rights automatically reverted to the original owner. WE have ALL of the rights, now. All they have is an army of bandits who want to steal our property from us by force, and we don't intend to allow that to happen while we can do anything to stop it.'

'Sir, I don't believe that they will see things your way, even if they decide to listen to your arguments.'

'Son, you have it all backwards. If things are done according to the law, they have to listen to our arguments because they work for us. If they control us against our wishes, then there is no legally established government in this country, and we have the right to do whatever we deem fit to establish a legal government that represents us and responds to our wishes. If they resist and start a war, then we will just have to defend ourselves. It may take time, but do you really think that your men will fight their own kin just to serve some corrupt politician?'

'Sir, I don't think I'm qualified to debate the issue with you, but you should know that the reinforcements will be regular Army, and they won't sit here and debate things with you. Do you have any idea what even light armor will do to this roadblock and you town if you continue to resist?'

'Captain, most of the men in these parts know this land better than you know the block you live on in the city. They grew up here. Many of us have gone and served our country, and some of us have served in the armored cavalry and airborne, so we know what can happen. Most of those who served from this area are combat veterans, and we know what it means to kill to protect those you love. We have no intention of letting that man take what is ours by both the laws of God and the laws of man.'

Captain Johnson drew himself up to full attention and slowly saluted the man standing in front of him. He said, 'Sir, I can sympathize with your position, and I truly wish you well, but I have my duty to do.'

Vancil smiled sadly at him, and said, 'A word of advice, boy. Don't let that duty get you killed for no reason. And if the Army tries to start a war here, don't be in such an all-fired hurry to get into the fight that you get yourself killed before you even understand what is happening.'

'Thanks for the advice, sir. I really will keep that in mind.' With that, Captain Johnson turned and walked slowly back to his hummer to rejoin the rest of his command.

When Captain Johnson reported his conversation to Mr. Dunlevy, he was shocked by the response from the representative of the federal government. 'Thinks that the government has to listen to some stupid backwoods hick, eh? Well, when the troops get here, I'll show that ignorant hillbilly exactly who is in charge. Thinks he doesn't have to do what the government tells him to unless we can prove in court that we have the right to do it. What planet has he been living on? Guess it just goes to show that if you spend all your time drinking moonshine and screwing your sisters, you do end up inbred and ignorant.'

The captain noticed that he was not the only one who was disgusted with both the attitude and the behavior of his commanding officer. He had to talk to two of his senior sergeants, and both expressed the same concerns as he felt himself. He began to wonder exactly which side he would find himself on if the shooting started in earnest.

Over the next few hours, Captain Johnson realized that almost every man in his command had approached him or one of the platoon sergeants to tell them that if they wanted to object to any orders which would put them in the position of firing on citizens, the troops would follow the lead of their commander. Even the senior NCO from the pool of drivers had approached him and expressed his concern over what was going on, and how it conflicted with his duty to defend the country and uphold the Constitution.

They didn't realize that this scene was being repeated all over the country, and that many of the troops had refused to have anything to do with any actions which would violate either the letter or the spirit of the Constitution. They would fire on American citizens to protect themselves, and they would hunt down and shoot looters, but they would not become bully boys to intimidate the citizens so the government could force them to fall into line with whatever decrees they decided to make.

By the time the reinforcements had arrived, Captain Johnson thought he had made his decision. Their arrival changed his mind. The reinforcements were from an armored cavalry unit, and consisted of two companies of LAVs and two platoons of Bradleys. This was much more firepower than would be required to give a show of force or blow up a roadblock. He had a sudden sinking feeling in his gut that things were about to get out of hand, and that there was nothing that he could do about it.

Dunlevy got into the lead vehicle, which was an LAV, and ordered the National Guard unit to take the rear of the column. Then the convoy once again started out for the roadblock. Just over three miles down the road, while they were still over a mile away from the roadblock, the convoy halted abruptly. The vehicles were not maintaining proper distance, and there were a few minor collisions. There was a huge dump truck used for hauling coal from the mines parked across the road.

Dunlevy ordered some men forward to move the obstruction, but a voice echoing off the canyon walls stopped them in their tracks. 'Don't move! You are ordered to turn around and go back. We will not allow you to take what is ours. We will not blindly follow the orders of an illegal government, and we will fight, if necessary.'

Dunlevy ordered all vehicles to button up and ordered a Bradley to put a missile into the truck and blow it off the road. The missile hit, lifting the truck with the force of the explosion, and opening a space for the convoy to proceed. Dunlevy's LAV had barely begun to move forward again when there was a long, rumbling explosion. The entire side of the cliff above his vehicle slid down, burying him in a rockslide. There was a similar rockslide at the other end of the pass which buried another LAV and completely blocked the road at that end as well.

Captain Johnson realized what was happening as soon as he saw the dust rising and heard the rockslides. He knew that their armor and weapons were almost useless in the terrain they were trapped in at the moment. Two platoons of LAVs and one platoon of Bradleys were on the near side of the rock slide with him. The rest of the force was trapped in the canyon.

Some of the trapped crews began firing at anything that moved. Suddenly, there was a huge fireball at the front of the column. A 55-gallon drum of gasoline had been rolled down the hill onto the lead LAV, turning it into a flaming wreck when it had hit and exploded. The gunfire from the vehicles died down as the crews quickly realized that they were trapped, and that had been a warning.

The voice came over the loudspeaker again. 'We don't want to have to kill you, but we will if you make us defend ourselves. Step from your vehicles, drop your weapons, and put your hands above your heads. Do it now, or we are going to have the biggest barbecue in the history of West Virginia.'

The soldiers slowly dismounted, disarmed themselves, and raised their hands. They knew that there was no other way to prevent themselves from being slaughtered. The voice said, 'Now, walk around the end of the rock slide and join your buddies on the other side. Leave, and don't come back. If you return, we will not stop fighting until we are all dead, or all of our enemy is dead.'

The troops left as they had been told. When they told their commander what had happened, Captain Johnson and his men left their vehicles and started walking into the pass. The Army captain, in charge of the armored troops now that his major had been killed with Dunlevy, asked him what he thought he was doing.

Johnson said, 'I'm going to fight for the right side. I ain't going to follow some bureaucrat's orders just because the country is under martial law. If they'll have us, my men and I are going to continue to serve the people of this country instead of some corrupt government that has convinced even themselves that they have the right to violate the Constitution and oppress the people of this country whenever it suits their needs. If someone has the right to take something away from you, it is a privilege granted at their leisure, and not a right. I won't fire on law-abiding Americans, and I damned sure won't steal their supplies from them so some politician can control them easier.'

The major considered ordering Johnson shot. His men were in armor, and Johnson's men had only small arms. But he knew enough about the locals to know that if they took offense to his action, his head would probably explode like a ripe melon shortly after he had the satisfaction of seeing Johnson die.

Johnson and his men entered the pass only to find that the damage at the far end had already been almost completely cleared. When he explained why he and his men were there, Vancil greeted him warmly. Within half an hour, they had the road cleared on this end and had driven all of the vehicles out of the ravine and into town.

Johnson told Vancil that the military would probably retaliate. Vancil smiled, patted one of the vehicles, and told him that they were a lot more prepared for military action than they had been this morning. Then he left to infuse some kind of order into the mass of confused activity taking place in the town.

The women and children were moved into some deep caves and mines in the sides of the mountain. They also took most of the supplies, the livestock, and some men to protect them if some troops managed to bypass the town.

The Nightstalkers were called in to teach the rebels a lesson. They were proud of their reputation, even though some of it came from firing into civilian crowds in Somalia, which resulted in the downing of one of their aircraft from ground fire the next day. They knew that some rebels had stopped a convoy of light armor in a pass, and that they were defying military authority. They had no idea that they had more than light small arms to defend themselves.

Vancil, expecting some sort of airborne retaliation for his defiance of the illegal activities being carried out by the representatives of a government that was trying to run the country without the rules and regulations guaranteed to the people by the Constitution, had hidden all of the vehicles and set them up so that most of them had some sort of field of fire. About half of them were on the sides of the mountains so that they could use their cannons to fire on helicopters better than if they were on the ground. They were completely set up and ready before they even heard the first helicopter approaching.

The Nightstalkers came in low and fast. They had a dozen Apache gunships and a dozen Blackhawks with troops on board. The valley was only half a mile wide at one point, and that is where the vehicles had been concentrated. After the first chopper opened up with a rocket pod, all hell broke loose. The men in the LAVs opened up with their cannons from complete concealment. Inside of the first sixty seconds, there were eight Apaches and five Blackhawks hit. Two Apaches and three Blackhawks managed to limp away to safety. The others either exploded in midair or spun into the side of the mountain and exploded. As the remaining Apaches started to target the vehicles that they could see, someone brought one of them down with a Stinger. All of the remaining helicopters got the hell out of Dodge as fast as they could.

The toll was nine Apaches hit, with seven downed, five Blackhawks hit, with two downed, four LAVs hit, with two destroyed, and one Bradley destroyed. Several buildings in the town had been damaged or destroyed. There were eighteen dead and thirty-seven wounded among the residents and soldiers who had joined them.

Thus was fought the first battle of the second civil war in America. It began in West Virginia, which was only fitting, since West Virginia was formed as a state, in direct violation of Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution. Now the one state in the Union which had been illegally formed, was the site of the start of a bloody revolution because the citizens did not want to give up their Constitutional rights and allow the government to force them to live in a police state which guaranteed them no rights at all.

There were similar incidents in seven other states during the next twenty-four hours as citizens decided that they were tired of being told what they could or could not do by people who were supposed to be working for them. Within a week, the politicians would realize that they had crossed the line, and that their days were numbered. They couldn't win a guerrilla war because they didn't have the troops, and about sixty to seventy percent of the troops they did have were either refusing to fire on the citizens or had gone over and sided with the rebels. The politicians forgot that their army was made up of citizens who had relatives and loved ones who were taking sides against the government. The troops also realized that they had to live here, and siding with the government was a good way to make yourself a big target for assassination.

The major deciding factor was that about seventy or eighty percent of the population was actively working to fight against any government forces that tried to enforce the martial law decrees or requisition or confiscate private property. The politicians had overlooked one thing when they did their studies, which had concluded that only about ten percent of the population would do anything to resist government activities. They forgot to take into account that while many people would do without or take less from the government if they had to, nobody was going to sit and let you steal the means of their survival off of their supper table if they could do anything about it.

There were three million troops, many of whom were not wholly supportive of the government. There were almost three hundred million citizens trying to survive, and almost all of them blamed the government, to some extent, for their current difficulties. Even if all of the troops were armed, they weren't all enthusiastic about fighting. A vast majority of the citizens were or could be armed, and they were fighting to survive.

Chapter 3

Day Three
The government announced in a news bulletin that all banks and financial institutions would be closed for the duration of martial law or until further notice. This did not cause any problems where the electricity was already out. The people had more important things, such as survival, on their minds. They had no place to spend their money even if they could get it. In areas that had been functioning more or less normally, the news lit a slow fuse. In most areas, people had no military presence to enforce the martial law, and things had been going on more or less as normal, or at least as normal as they could with limited communications and concern over what news they did have from other parts of the country.

Ham radio operators were still broadcasting from all over the world. The stock markets had crashed in Japan, Asia, and Europe. There was an economic depression crashing down on the entire world, as money became no good because nobody had any way to access account information and determine how much money individuals had. There was rioting in the streets of every major city as people realized that they had lost everything and there was nothing to insure their own survival. Much of the industrialized world was without power, and other utilities were spotty at best. For the first time in decades, much of Europe was forced to live under third world conditions, and they were neither accustomed nor prepared for the sudden change.

In America, the depression was also happening, but many people had not realized it yet because they didn't know that the banks were closed because they couldn't open. Their computers were totally malfunctioning, and nobody knew exactly how much money they had, who their custormers were, or how much money was supposed to be in each account. With the advent of the computer era, banks had gradually switched more and more of their transactions, operations, and records over to electronic storage. They had uncorrupted backup disks with the data on it, but they had never planned on something happening which would make all of their computer systems totally unreliable. Without a functioning computer, they could not access their backup data. In effect, the banks had no records of account information.

What the banks did have on paper, hard copy, were contracts for loans on houses, property, etc. They knew that they would get their money, one way or the other, but nobody would know if they would ever be able to get their own funds out of the banks in return. The only papers that many people had which were of any immediate value in proving ownership were stock certificates, bonds, titles, and deeds. While these were some form of hard proof of ownership, they were actually worthless until the banking system was reestablished so that they could be converted into the cash that they represented. Only the titles and deeds had actual value because they gave the holder legal ownership of real property. The house of cards which contained our entire banking and financial network had finally been tested by a gust of wind, and it had shown itself to be nothing more than a paper shell holding smoke and mirrors.

Economists who had no vested interest in the system had warned for years that many things were not really isolated or independent from other parts of the system, and that there were not enough safeguards, and no real insurance or regulation. The FDIC, which was supposed to insure the deposits of the citizens in case of a bank failure, had never had enough money to do the job of insuring deposits properly. In the case of a large failure, many people would be lucky to receive a few cents on the dollar, and that was only on the amount that didn't exceed the insurance cap. The insurance on savings and loans and credit unions was in even worse shape overall. The government couldn't even try to pay off the losses in a disaster this big because they didn't even own their own money. For years, they had been ripping the American people off by paying the Federal Reserve to lend them money on paper, and the citizens had been forced to pay the interest out of their taxes. This was a complete rip-off because the Federal Reserve didn't even have any money of its own. The Treasury Department, supported by our taxes, used our tax money to buy the materials, pay the employees, support the buildings, and print the money. Then they gave the money to the Federal Reserve, which then sold it to the government for the interest on the loan. Over the years, billions or trillions of taxpayer dollars had been skimmed off in this manner to repay the few wealthy individuals who controlled the Federal Reserve and made campaign contributions and job offers to politicians.

It was only a few hours before the rumors started to spread that the banks weren't open because they didn't have any way to give you your money. The money was there, but they didn't know who had how much, or even who their customers were. It didn't even take another hour before people realized that the banks may have lost their money in their checking and savings accounts, but they still had files with the mortgages and loan papers, and they would want their money even if they couldn't pay the people they owed money to themselves.

By the end of the day, many banks had been broken into and destroyed. The money in the vaults was still safe, but all of the papers that people could find had been burned and destroyed. There may have been other paper records somewhere, but it would take the banks time to try to foreclose if they couldn't even produce a deed or some form of proof of ownership. The people didn't even realize that if things got back to normal enough for the banks to sue them in court, their computer records would be available to provide all the proof they needed.

But the damage was done. With the burning of the banks, many people realized that they had no way to survive unless they got the things they needed to survive. Gun stores and sporting goods stores were looted. People went crazy in a frenzy to arm themselves so they could protect themselves and their family. Many individuals got guns and didn't even know how to use them. Some didn't even get the right type of ammunition for their gun, and couldn't figure out why it was so hard to get the stupid gun loaded. There were lots of accidents, and some deaths. People who had always tried to get the government to confiscate all those big, nasty guns were the most eager to steal them for their own self protection once they realized that they would no longer be able to count on the police or the government to protect them from the criminals they had created in such vast numbers with their idealistic beliefs and unrealistic laws.

Their fear of anyone else being able to disagree with them had led them to support measures which would allow them, through the laws they passed, to control every facet of everyone else's life. The laws didn't infringe on their beliefs, because they wanted everyone to live the way they wanted to live. The liberals had never paid any attention to the argument that once all the guns were confiscated, what was to keep those in power from changing how things were run and doing things that the liberals didn't like. Now, when things weren't under their control, the first thing the liberals did was to steal guns to protect themselves.

Unfortunately, many of the liberals were totally ignorant when it came to guns, and there was nobody around to protect them from themselves. Within a few days, they would come to hate the slogan they had once proudly spouted in defiance of all logic and common sense. They found out that guns do kill people, but that it takes a person to load the gun or pull the trigger before that can happen. Guns don't kill people by themselves. People kill people, and they will use any weapon that they can.

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Los Angeles was a war zone. The gangs had gone wild, looting and shooting at anything that drew their attention. The police were trying to do what they could, but even with all of the mayhem, there were still incidents where police were mobbed by a crowd of angry citizens because the punk they had shot in self defense happened to be the wrong color. By evening, the police were traveling only in small groups, and had begun firing into any crowd that attempted to approach them in a hostile manner.

There were about 15,000 troops in the Los Angeles area, trying to do what they could to keep the peace. They were a mixture of National Guard and regular military, but they knew that there were not enough of them to handle the situation properly. They had to remain almost at platoon levels just to have enough firepower to stay alive. There were some situations where the crowds turned ugly, and there had been several ambushes reported, and several units were missing and presumed dead.

They were not combat infantry, yet they were now in the nightmare that haunted all combat infantry troops. They were in an urban situation, fighting an undeclared guerrilla war, and had to hold their fire until they knew that some criminal activity was being committed or they were fired upon. Even the curfew was no help, because there were so many people on the streets who were injured and trying to get to medical attention. The troops no longer tried to give medical aid. They simply checked to see if the wound was real and directed the individuals to the nearest hospital or medical aid station that they knew of.

At 9:13 p.m., local time, a mushroom cloud began to rise over Los Angeles. A missile had been fired from a Russian submarine lying about 100 miles offshore. The cause of the launch, whether it had been a deliberate strike, a mutinous crew, or a malfunction, was never determined. Immediately after the first launch was detected, the US fast attack sub that had been shadowing the Soviet sub sank it with a full spread of torpedoes.

The entire missile payload had a yield of about one megaton. It was not enough to destroy the entire city, for Los Angeles is a large, sprawling metropolis. However, it was enough to spread radioactive debris over a large portion of the southern California desert, including many of the military bases located to the east and northeast of Los Angeles. It was also enough to destroy a large portion of the town, kill over 250,000 people immediately, and lethally irradiate many more.

The blast was a ground burst, and the seismic impact was felt across California and the southwestern US. There was a major shift in the stresses on several different fault lines. Over the next few days, earthquakes ranging between 7.0 and 9.3 on the Richter scale would devastate portions of California. The largest quake hit San Francisco and Oakland. The devastation from the quake was impressive, causing almost all of the larger buildings to collapse or weakening them enough to make them structurally unstable. The aftershocks, some of which were above 7.0 themselves, brought down many of the weakened structures over the next few days.

The cities were on fire, and there was no water pressure to fight the flames. People were unable to get medical help because the hospitals were destroyed, and there was no way for outside assistance to arrive. The death toll was later estimated to be over 100,000 from the quake itself, and another several hundred thousand from the fires, disease, and violence following the disaster. The Golden Gate Bridge was completely destroyed, crashing down into the bay and sinking in sections of twisted metal. Alcatraz Island, the Rock, was pushed upward 100 feet during the spasms, completely destroying the prison. The same major shift in the earth caused some of the areas surrounding the bay to be flooded by the tidal wave created inside the bay by the sudden movements. When it was over, some regions that had been dry land were now 50 feet below the surface of San Francisco Bay.

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Problems with the equipment had plagued many of the nuclear power plants that were still functioning. The control rooms had been overworked for the last three days getting ready for whatever might happen to force them to shut the reactors down and then trying to keep things going. Everyone knew that the people needed the power to keep their homes heated, especially in the north, where the winter had started to get really cold.

The storm that had been building had now started across the US. Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming had been buried under about five feet of snow, and strong winds continued to drift the snow on the ground. After the blizzard moved throught, colder air followed, turning the land into a huge freezer. Temperatures of -50 degrees were recorded in many places as the high for the day. Today, the storm was working its way across the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas, and it would be into Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, and northern Arkansas before the night was over. The midwest did everything they could to prepare for the storm that was coming, but conditions hampered their efforts. Everyone knew that things were about to become much worse for those still in the areas that were most affected by violence and disturbances.

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The doctors in Fort Wayne breathed a sigh of relief when they realized that their patients who had come in with signs of chemical toxicity were recovering on their own with minimal care. They had no way of knowing that the chemicals had been intended only to get as many people as possible into the hospital to be exposed to the biological agents which had been planted there. They would find this out in a few days, but by then, most of the medical staffs at the hospitals would become the first victims, and they would be unable to help those they had unintentionally exposed. One of the agents used was anthrax, and another was a form of Yersinia which was particularly good at causing pneumonic plague. Without intensive treatment, either would have a mortality rate approaching 90% in those infected.

While the anthrax used had a high mortality rate, it was relatively difficult to spread from person to person. Unfortunately, it started out with symptoms similar to a cold, and then the patient seemed to start to get better. Once this stage was past, it was too late to save the patient even with intensive antibiotic treatment. The disease would then enter the pneumonia stage, where the patient would rapidly deteriorate from the respiratory infection and would eventually die by drowning in his own fluids.

Yersinia pestis, the organism responsible for bubonic plague, could also cause a more dangerous form of infection in which the lungs and respiratory system were invaded and a pneumonia set in. The pneumonic form of the plague was more dangerous because it was spread easily from one person to another by droplets sprayed from the victim when he coughed. While the white, European populations have some resistance to the bubonic plague due to genetic selection, the mortality rate for those not properly treated can still reach 40%. Unfortunately, many of the minorities in this country lack even this partial protection because their ancestors lived in regions which were not subjected to the Black Death, as the bubonic plague was called when it began the Dark Ages by plunging Europe into a period of isolation and fear.

One third to one half of the population of Europe died during the last major pandemic. The death toll would have been higher, but many communities isolated themselves and even killed any stranger who tried to enter in their attempts to prevent the spread of the disease. This worked in some cases, but in others it did not, and sometimes entire villages died. The disease was carried by rats, and transmitted by fleas, so keeping infected people outside your village walls was less effective because the rats would go out and eat the infected body and bring their fleas back into the village with them to spread the disease.

With the pneumonic form of the plague, the need for rats and fleas to spread the disease is eliminated, and the disease is more easily transmitted to a large population. With the involvement of the respiratory system, and the resulting pneumonia, the infected individuals are more readily weakened, and they die more frequently. Within the next one to two weeks, the plagues would kill almost 25,000 people in Fort Wayne. Those in the nearby towns, upon learning that the plague was in Fort Wayne, soon isolated themselves and made sure that they had no contact with any strangers. It didn't always work, but the storm that was coming did have one good effect. It made travel almost impossible, and limited the spread of the plague. Unfortunately, there was a trade-off, because those who survived the plague did not, in many cases, survive the effects of the storm.

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Portsmouth was still functioning, but there were some signs that the stress and tension were building. People did not trust anyone who was not a local resident, and they began to keep their distance. Those who were trying to get out of the big cities and got stranded in Portsmouth were not welcomed. Many were unable to find food or shelter, and resorted to theft to try to survive. Many of them were shot by the local residents for their trouble. If the stranded person happened to be a minority, especially black, he or she was in for some trouble because they were highly targeted by the Klan.

Some people wanted to help out, but they quickly realized that their own survival was at stake, and that there was only so much food and water to go around. Water was a problem because the water treatment plant gets its water from the Ohio River. While there was plenty of raw, untreated water, the plant could only process so much using emergency power while they had to keep manually checking every stage of the water treatment process to make sure the water was not contaminated or unfit for consumption. They also knew that they had to continually test the water before starting treatment because they had no way of knowing if the chemical plants located upstream in West Virginia and the oil processing facilities in Kentucky had released any chemical toxins into the rivers that flowed into the Ohio River. They couldn't afford to waste time treating water that could not be made safe for human consumption with their facilities.

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Birmingham had deteriorated from a city in chaos into a war zone. There was a full-fledged race war going on, with constant gunfire within the city limits. The hospitals had everything they could do to try to keep up with the influx of patients. They were also starting to see patients who were sick from drinking contaminated water or eating contaminated food. Vomiting and diarrhea were common complaints, and they were more serious symptoms now that there was not a constant influx of fresh medical supplies to replace those being used at unprecedented rates in every medical facility still able to operate. With the water still cut off, it was becoming impossible to replace the fluids lost by the sick and injured, and people were beginning to die from dehydration while they were still in the hospital being treated.

UAB was a large treatment and research center. They performed heart surgery, heart transplants, kidney transplants, and AIDS vaccine testing and research. By now, the number of patients still alive was dwindling. Kidney patients died because they were already weakened, and the dialysis units that could be run continuously on emergency power were unable to keep up with the demand indefinitely. Transplant patients began to die because they began to run out of medications to keep them from getting an infection. Their immune system, which had been suppressed to allow them to use the transplanted organ without the risk of rejection, was unable to handle the sudden proliferation of infectious diseases. Those who survived the infections had one grim future foremost in their minds. Once their anti-rejection drugs ran out, their body would begin to reject the transplanted organs, the organs would fail, and they would begin to die a slow, painful death. Those who were HIV positive, especially those who had progressed to AIDS, knew that their life expectancy had just been drastically reduced. Without the intensive medical treatment and extensive drug regimen, they would succumb to one infection or another and die. And the worst thing for many of them was knowing that they could die from opportunistic infections caused by the microflora that was already living inside their body.

I-65 was a junkyard, filled with stalled cars and those that had been unable to get off of the road or turn around once the wrecks had blocked traffic. Many of the cars contained bodies. Some were still warm and breathing, but others were not. The line of cars stretched for miles, with occasional twisted piles of metal where some car had caught on fire and exploded, usually causing a chain reaction in those cars that were too near when the explosion and fire occurred. Many of them still had gas in the tanks, so people would risk the exposure to try to siphon gas from any car that still had some. They needed gas to run their generators in some cases. In others, they needed it to burn as fuel or to soak some wet or green wood so it would burn well enough to cook with and keep them warm for another night.

The entire section of I-59 / I-20 going through downtown Birmingham near the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center and Memorial Coliseum had collapsed during the firestorm that had swept through the downtown and northern section of the city. It would have qualified as one of the worst disasters in US history, and made the city eligible for huge amounts of federal aid and disaster relief a month ago. Today, it was just one more line on the register, and wasn't even large enough in terms of damage, either to property or human lives lost or injured, to rate that much concern even if anyone had been able to keep track of all that was happening and catalog it.

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The seismic activity set off the ring of fire, at least on the west coast of America. Mt. Ranier was the first to go. It blew even more spectacularly than Mt. St. Helens had, and then proceeded to spew forth a river of molten lava. The explosion was heard clear over in Spokane and Walla Walla. The winds blew the ash over much of the area east of the now active volcano, adding volcanic ash to the snow that covered that part of Washington.

Oregon escaped, for the moment, but California was not so lucky. Mt. Shasta, in northern California, and Mt. Whitney, in southern California, both erupted as well. The vulcanologists would have had a field day, but they were too busy trying to stay alive to figure out how to get to the sites to make recordings. Many of them were completely unaware of the eruptions because the seismologists were so busy with the major earthquakes that were occurring that they did not have time to locate anyone with something as minor as a volcanic eruption or two.

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The Hanford site in Washington, operated by the Department of Energy, had problems with some of its controls because of a small earthquake nearby. They were unable to shut down the reactor in time, and the pressure built up in the containment vessel until it finally blew. Radioactive debris began to spew from the site, drifting over the southern part of Washington and the northern part of Oregon. People who lived downwind would have a higher incidence of cancer and more birth defects in the long term. Right now, they had no idea that some of them were about to die from the radioactive death slowly drifting their way as the wind blew the cloud slowly to the east.

For those who were able to hear about what had happened, efforts to escape the area of probable contamination were severely hampered by the road conditions. There had been very little progress in clearing the roads after the winter storm that had just gone through, and many places, especially at higher elevations, were impassable.

Some of the people who were trying to escape from the radioactive cloud headed their way got stuck in the snow. Many of them froze to death before they were found. Others had been shot and killed. Their cars had been stripped of survival supplies, warm clothes, and gasoline. It was the law of the jungle, with survival of the fittest.

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Rodney was ecstatic. He had never had it so good. He was traveling across southern California in a 1994 chevrolet sedan. It wasn't memorable in any respect. It looked neither too old nor too new, too fancy nor too plain, too nice nor too broken down. It ran well, but nobody remembered it five minutes after they had seen it. It was perfect in Rodney's eyes, because Rodney depended on anonymity for his continued life and pleasure. Rodney was a serial killer. He was white, in his middle thirties, and liked to rape and torture. Rodney didn't care who or what he raped and tortured, as long as he got off and they screamed a lot.

Rodney had a sixteen year old cheerleader, tied and gagged, in his trunk. He intended to have fun with her as soon as he found a secluded spot where he could take his time and listen to her scream. He saw a huge flash in his rearview mirror as he was traveling down 136 toward Death Valley. A few seconds later, he heard a large explosion. Rodney stopped his car and got out to see what had happened. As he looked back toward Mt. Whitney, he saw what appeared to be a river of fire flowing down the side of the mountain. Before he could get back into his car, Rodney felt the ground begin to shake violently beneath his feet. The earth tilted, and Rodney fell to the ground. He tried to get up, but couldn't because of the shaking. He watched in horror as his perfect car slid into the sinking section of ground he was on, crushing his legs and pinning him in place. It would take three days for him to die, and the last thing Rodney would hear would be screaming, but it was his own. The cheerleader died without making a sound, her gag keeping her from even screaming for help.

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While America was in chaos, the President and government officials remained in their secure locations so they could 'run the country' and supervise things 'for the good of the people and the welfare of the nation as a whole'. In plain English, they sat and hid in their comfortable holes while most of America suffered due to their lack of action to prevent or plan for a problem they had known about for years. They felt no urgent need to spend money to solve a problem that would not affect their lives that greatly because they already had a safe place to retreat to if things got really bad.

Besides, if they came in and 'rescued' the survivors after things settled down, they would be heroes and nobody would complain much about their new powers and their liberal agenda if the Constitution wasn't exactly the same when Constitutional rule was restored to America. It isn't as if the citizens of this country had ever had any good indications that those in Washington considered themselves more important, or better than the people they 'represented'. And it isn't as if there was ever any indication whatsoever that some politicians considered the Constitution anything more than a hindrance to their own personal and political ambitions.

Never mind the fact that the president openly bragged that he intentionally misled the grand jury when he was questioned, and that was the intent of the answers he gave. Never mind the fact that this is the exact legal definition of perjury. Never mind the fact that the only reason there was even an impeachment was because there were enough Republicans to swing the vote, because not one Democrat in the House of Representatives voted to impeach their fellow Democrat. They only made excuses for his illegal activities and immoral behavior. Never mind the fact that half of the senators in the US Senate ignored the facts and found the president innocent of both perjury and obstruction of justice, even though he admitted to the perjury later and said that the reason he lied was to cause the effect which brought about the obstruction of justice charge. There was no reason to worry about our rights or our lives, because Big Brother knew what was best for you and would take care of you from cradle to grave.

The only problem was that Big Brother was hiding in a nice, safe, comfortable hole with lots of food and water. He left you sitting totally unprepared after calming you down by knowingly lying to you and telling you that there was nothing to worry about. While the government tried to run its 'emergency operations' in the same efficient manner that it had run things while refusing to prevent this disaster, the rest of America suffered.

At the end of the first seventy-two hours, the face of America had been changed forever. The disaster had happened, despite all of the government's assurances. There were power outages, despite all of the power industry's assurances. There was confusion, hysteria, panic, and violence, despite all of the government's careful preparations to maintain calm and order.

The government had suspended the Constitution, which was the contract giving it the legal authority to represent the people. After years of constant violations and infringements of the Constitution and the rights of the citizens, the government had eliminated the one thing which stood between how they wanted to run the country and how they could legally run the country. In response, a portion of the people had taken up arms against their oppressors. And the government was the oppressor, for they had discarded the rights of the citizens in order to enable themselves to decide what would happen, even to the disposition of private property in violation of the owner's wishes. The chain reaction had begun, and things were getting worse by the hour as more and more people began to react to events instead of acting to control them.

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In a secret location on a tract of federal land, a small committee met to draw up plans for responding to the situation. The members were the best of the resources in one of the government think tanks. Unfortunately, they had only what information they were given to base their recommendations on, and those who were in power had a vested interest in staying in power. After careful review of the facts given to them, the committee recommended that the government concentrate all of the troops that were loyal to them in one section of the country and then begin enforcing martial law. Once the area was pacified and things were back to normal, the troops could be moved to surrounding areas or trouble spots. If the people could see that the government was working to restore order, they would ask the government to help them and much of the chaos would be eliminated without having to use force.

Had they known that the 'insurrection' had been in direct response to government troops coming into an area and trying to strip the citizens of their guns, food, and water during a time of crisis, the group would have had a different recommendation. But even they would have been hard pressed to state their recommendation in terms that those in power would have found acceptable. With the provocation providing enough resentment against the government, and support and sympathy for those who were resisting the government's forces, to support not only a guerrilla war, but a civil war, the recommendation would have been clear. You have gone too far. Apologize to the people, ask for their forgiveness, and beg for mercy, and they may allow some of you to stay in power. Some of you will be punished for your crimes, but not all will suffer. If you try to force the people to give up their rights and property, they will consider you to be a tyrant, and you can kiss your ass goodbye. Americans have an inbred loathing of tyranny, and of living under the rule of a tyrant.

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Day Four
The winter storm swung into a northeasterly track during the night. It was still being fed by warm, moist air from the south running into one of the strongest Arctic systems to enter the US in years. It made a lot of snow and then it got colder than hell as soon as the storm front passed. The front passed through western Kentucky, Illinois, and Minnesota early in the day, dumping about two feet of snow in most areas, but up to five feet in the center of the track.

Chicago got hit hard with lake effect snow, and got a total of seven feet of snow. Nothing moved on the streets. High winds caused blowing and drifting so that whiteout conditions were the norm throughout the day.

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The storm front passed into Indiana and Michigan during the afternoon. Fort Wayne got four feet of snow, with a lot of drifting. Some drifts were deep enough to bury a house. Some did, causing some houses to collapse from the weight of the snow.

The Amish and many of the Mennonites had not been affected much by the loss of power, since they had little or no use for it. However, their farms were old targets for those who liked to make trouble and bully others. Bullies felt safe harassing the Amish because they knew that the Amish did not fight back because they were nonviolent. The Amish had no phones, and disdained calling the police for most attacks because they disliked having to do any more with 'the world' than was absolutely necessary.

Even when some of their women or teenage girls were raped, prosecution was rare. They believed that it was the will of God, that it was some sort of test of faith, or even that it was God's way of providing outside genes into the community. The Amish might not be rocket scientists, but even they know what effects inbreeding can have. They use horses to plow their land, so they know how to raise and breed livestock. They know that their gene pool was started over 100 years ago in America by six families, and they know that almost 50% of their children are slow to some degree. The woman might be shunned for a period of time, but the child would be raised and brought up in the Amish faith.

The Amish had not been totally forgotten in the chaos, and some of the bullies had spent some of their time terrorizing them, but the storm brought them at least a temporary reprieve. They sat inside their houses around their fireplaces, and ate the simple meals prepared by the women. The children huddled in their beds for warmth, pulling their bright, colorful quilts around them to keep out the intense winter chill.

As night came on, the temperature continued to plummet, and the temperature eventually reached -65 degrees. People who had been without heat in their homes for days, who had thought things couldn't get much worse, were proven wrong. Many people froze to death that night. People who thought that they had enough blankets and sleeping bags found out that they were wrong. The lucky ones shivered through the night in misery and tried to find some way to produce heat. The unlucky ones froze to death in their sleeping bags and were discovered by others who went into the houses looking for food, water, or anything that could be used for survival.

There were those who were learning how to survive. They had either set up tents inside their homes, or had built makeshift tents out of furniture, blankets, drapes, and mattresses for thermal flooring. With a few people in a small space, the body heat was trapped and made things bearable, if not comfortable. Most of these people didn't even suffer from frostbite.

During the night, the Town House retirement community burned to the ground. One of the residents, either senile or depressed, had become so cold that he had set his room on fire just to get warm for a few minutes. Sixty people who had managed to survive so far were killed in the blaze.

Throughout Fort Wayne, people who were infected and had pneumonia were trapped inside. Sometimes they were alone, and sometimes their loved ones stayed to take care of them. Many of the compassionate soon joined their loved ones in death. The closed houses made transmission of the disease almost certain. Few people who were infected recovered once they began to show symptoms. Their general nutrition and overall health were too fragile to let them recover. The mortality rate for those infected in Fort Wayne soon began to approach 100%, especially for the hospital staff, who had suffered a prolonged and repeated exposure to the biowarfare agents.

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The storm entered Ohio in the early evening, and was into West Virginia and Pennsylvania before the night was over. Portsmouth got about two and a half to three feet of heavy, wet snow. After the front passed through, the temperature plummeted to about -45 degrees. The next day, it would warm up to a balmy -20 degrees as the high for the day. Many of the elderly would die of thirst while surrounded by water because they had no way to heat it up and melt it. Those who tried eating the snow soon found that they would lose more heat than they could afford. Many succumbed to hypothermia and drifted off into a warm, dreamless sleep from which they would never awaken.

The storm did manage to almost eliminate the fighting in the area. It was so cold that many trees froze and cracked. People who had been trying to cut down trees to burn green wood soon found that they had no source of fuel. The trees were frozen solid, and were impossible to cut.

The Ohio River began to freeze over. In three days, it would be covered with ice three feet thick, and you could drive a small truck across the river safely. The inmates at the prison revolted, and a few dozen managed to escape. Most of them froze to death before morning. The guards shot many others before order was restored. Another fifty inmates froze to death in their cells during the night. By the end of the week, there would be less than 100 inmates left to die in their cells when the last of the guards finally quit coming to work and left them locked in to die.

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The snowfall covered central Pennsylvania, and the cold forced many people who had thought that they could live off the land to find a real shelter. The people who were still in Philadelphia had been very nervous about the radiation which might come their way from New York City if the wind was right, but they calmed down as the storm buried them under a blanket of snow. During the night, they would get four feet of snow, making travel impossible even in four wheel drive vehicles. The temperature would also plummet to -50 degrees, making it deadly cold outside.

At Three Mile Island, on a sandbar in the Susquehanna River about ten miles downstream from Harrisburg, lightning did strike twice. Sensor failures, combined with operator exhaustion, helped to set up a nuclear meltdown. For the second time this century, a nuclear reactor failed at Three Mile Island and a core meltdown occurred. Unfortunately, this time, the pressure did build up in the containment vessel, and there was an explosion. As the core melted down, it created a China Syndrome, spewing a cloud of radioactive material into the air. Before it was finished, there would be more than thirty tons of radioactive debris floating downwind toward the unsuspecting residents of Philadelphia. They would wake up in the morning to find themselves snowed in. It would be days before the doctors would realize that the snow outside was radioactive, and that everyone had been receiving high doses of radiation.

Over one million people would end up dying from radiation sickness. They would vomit and be unable to eat. Their hair would fall out in clumps. Their gums would bleed and their teeth would fall out. For some children who had played in the snow, their hands were dosed even more heavily. The radiation burns caused the skin to peel and slough from their hands, and they rapidly became infected and died from the infections. Other people would also die from the infections over the next week or so, as their weakened immune systems failed.

The residents of New York City who had managed to survive the backpack nukes soon found that they had been dosed again, and even more of them began to come down with the symptoms of radiation sickness. More of them would die, and there would be more cases of cancer and birth defects if the survivors lived long enough.
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Throughout the US, the storm slowed human actions down, but could not stop them. Many of the drug addicts were in severe withdrawal, and would kill for even the chance of getting drugs to satisfy their cravings. Many of them died from taking tainted substances in an attempt to get any high they could. Several people were killed merely because they had a cigarette that someone else wanted. Some young girls were so desperate that they would sell their bodies to anyone who wanted to use it for just one cigarette.

Across the country, babies were starving to death. Their mothers did not have any more formula to give them, or were drying up and unable to produce enough breast milk. Many of them were unable to keep their babies or small children warm enough and hydrated enough to prevent fevers or death. Some women were openly offering their children to strangers in the hopes that they might be better able to keep the children alive. Other women were abandoning their children in the snow. They figured that freezing to death would be quicker and less painful than dying of thirst and hunger.

As they watched their children die, many adults had one thought left to keep them alive. That thought was that someone was going to pay. When their grief lifted enough to allow them to think, the logical target for their anger was those in Washington who had repeatedly reassured them that everything was completely under control and there was nothing to worry about. Grief and guilt soon turned to anger and resentment. As they began to plan their revenge, their hot anger turned into a cold, dull hatred. Human psychology is not hard to predict in general. It is the specifics that get complicated. If many of them had been able to get around and do something, they might have worked off their anger in physical tasks before they did anything rash. Since many of them were snowed in and unable to do anything, they sat, cold and alone, and let their anger fester. By the time they could move around again, their anger was set in stone, and their purpose for living was to make someone pay for the suffering their children were forced to endure.

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Birmingham did not get the snow or the cold. The temperature was in the lower 40's in the day, and the upper to middle 30's at night. There was some rain, which helped to make everyone even more miserable, and did help to make things more difficult to burn. People had adapted, making some type of heater or cooking device to keep warm and fed. Those who could, went out scavenging for food and water. Many more people were getting sick each day as bad water and lack of sanitation made the spread of diseases more certain.

The news of the earthquakes, volcanoes, and nuclear explosion in California had a sobering effect on some people. The churches began to fill with those who wanted to sit and pray. Many believed that it was the end times, and that they had somehow missed the rapture. Others preached that it was not yet time, but the end was near, and you had better get your life in order fast if you wanted to be saved.

The pragmatists encouraged the people to find comfort in prayer, but told them not to blame God, because everything so far was entirely on mankind's own shoulders. God had not had to do anything because man, in his ignorance and arrogance, had caused all of the problems that we were now experiencing.

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The people of Marlinton welcomed the storm. They didn't want to get away from the town, since they were fighting to keep it. The storm would prevent any ground troop movements against them, and they were pretty sure that they wouldn't have much to worry about from an air assault for a few days more. It would take that long for the army intelligence to come up with a plan, especially since the satellites were probably not working, and the storm would keep everything grounded for one or two days.

They used the time to camouflage their vehicles, set up traps for airborne assault teams, reload ammunition, clean their weapons, and to prepare to kick some ass and to take as many of their enemy with them as they could if they lost this battle. They might lose the battle, but they were determined that they would not lose the war.

Chapter 4

Day Five
The winter storm moved off through the northeast and headed out into the Atlantic Ocean. The huge amounts of snowfall had brought things to a halt in the northern half of the nation, but had only made things even more desperate for those who had been lacking sufficient heat and food before. It did provide a source of relatively clean water for those who had a way to melt it and purify it, but it made travel almost impossible.

In the southern half of the nation, things were decidedly different. In the southeast, there was more rainfall than normal, and that helped to keep the woods from being totally destroyed by inexperienced campers who had decided to head into the woods for their survival. The lack of game soon convinced many of the great hunters that they were ill equipped for hunting, but they had little alternative now that they were stuck out in the woods.

There was a fair amount of violence because the population in the eastern half of the nation was fairly dense. A lot of people had left the cities and headed for the countryside when they figured out that there really was going to be trouble, and that all of those 'kooks and nuts' who had been warning them about this all along might not have been totally insane after all.

Of course, the city was the stronghold for the liberals, and they had no problem with infringing upon the rights of others. Instead of heading for public lands, many of them headed for private property and began to squat wherever they pleased. They couldn't conceive of why someone should get so bent out of shape just because they wanted to take a leak by the stream or had to take a dump near the water source they used for their livestock and themselves. And they could not believe that someone would object to them 'borrowing' a few eggs or taking a chicken to feed their family when there was nothing else to eat. Of course, the liberals just muttered about Republicans, conservatives, and stupid people who thought they were too good to share with their fellow man in his time of need. Never mind the fact that the brainless fools had wasted, over strong and repeated objections, trillions of taxpayer dollars on social programs that were so ineffective that even their supporters and originators admitted that they did not work. Instead of stopping them, though, the liberals always wanted to expand them and increase the budget because they were sure that the problem wasn't in their approach, but in their limited approach to solving it.

One of the major problems at the root of many social conflicts in this country was the liberal philosophy. If they had ever bothered to listen to facts instead of ignoring everything that they had already decided to do when they started, they would have found out that if you give a million dollars to someone who wastes money, they will waste it and have nothing to show for it. If, instead, you teach them to be responsible, they will have more to show for it after being given just twenty dollars. The big problem with this approach is the word responsible, because personal responsibility for your actions is anathema to liberals. If they accepted that idea, they would have to accept responsibility for all of the damage they have done to the family unit, moral standards, discipline, the educational system, and the Constitutional rights of the individual citizens of this country. They seem to think that when they blame society for the criminal actions of individuals that they are blameless, even though they are not only a part of society, but also the part of society that was supporting the programs that encouraged the deviant and criminal behavior that they took so much delight in pointing out. Without the problems they created, they would have no problems to solve in their endless fight to save the world and make it over the way they want it to be.

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In the southwestern desert regions, things were beginning to get really tough. There was a lot more room, and a lot less people, but the cities had no way to support their current population without importing water. Not only was the water not coming in from outside sources, but many of the local sources were deep wells, and the water had to be pumped from the ground. The electricity was off in many places, and even if they had set up emergency generators to operate the pumps, there was still the problem of treating the water so that it was fit for consumption. A lot of people were getting very thirsty. A lot more had packed up and got out of Dodge while the getting was good.

Most people take many of the modern conveniences so much for granted that they even forget that they exist. The problem is that in a society that is so specialized that most of the population lacks even the basic principles or idea behind how some things work, let alone understand how it actually works, that when things break down, almost nobody can get them working again without a support system.

The real problem was that with the high rate of functional illiteracy in this country, about half of the adult population of working age was unqualified to go to a library or bookstore and pick up a book so they could teach themselves how to do the things that were necessary to fix things they knew nothing about. They had been trained to be totally dependent upon someone else except when it came to the job they were qualified to do, and many of them weren't really qualified to do any kind of meaningful work. Survival depends on being able to do things for yourself. In any group, there are those who are more capable than the others at any particular job, but the survival of the group depends on each member being able to count on the other members to contribute necessary skills and support.

The people who live in the country in the southwest, with the possible exception of some of the newcomers who moved from the city and reshaped the land to their image instead of finding what works in the environment, are more independent and resourceful on average than those in the cities. When you live where there are few people around, you have to be able to do more things for yourself than if you have hundreds of others who live within fifty yards of your front door. Many of those who live in the country in other parts of the nation are also independent and self-sufficient, but those in the desert southwest have had less time to be indoctrinated into the civilized liberal mentality of depending on the government to do things for them, tell them what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. They don't sit around waiting for the government to come along and tell them what to do or to do it for them whenever they encounter a problem.

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At a remote site in Louisiana, there was a facility registered to private owners which had signs stating that it was a federal facility and trespassers would be prosecuted in federal court. The facility was a field, surrounded by fences and barbed wire. There was one small building with a large communications antenna tower similar to those used at all FEMA facilities. On the field were 500 chemical warfare trucks which had been brought from the Soviet Union. Despite repeated complaints from concerned citizens, who were always reassured that the trucks were there simply to be decommissioned and refurbished for use by the UN or the WHO, all of the trucks had been maintained in fully functional status for use in chemical warfare.

When troops arrived to take control of the trucks, under the leadership of a FEMA official, they found the site untouched. It wasn't until they started to check out some of the trucks that the problems started. Every single truck had a potato in the exhaust pipe, and all of the gas tanks had been sugared. Neither of these things kept any of the trucks from being started. They were merely intended to make sure that the trucks didn't get far if they got off the field, and to provide insurance. Several of the trucks had been booby-trapped with explosives. When they were started, the explosion destroyed them and caught the surrounding trucks on fire. The trucks were parked so close together that there were secondary explosions, and the fires spread to engulf every truck on the field.

About twenty troops died in the explosions, and fifty to sixty more were wounded. The remaining troops found themselves in a firefight with an enemy that was concealed in the surrounding trees and well dug in. After about fifteen minutes, the troops surrendered. They were not equipped for a sustained firefight, and they were outnumbered and surrounded.

The military prisoners were disarmed, searched for information, and put into the back of their transport trucks with their wounded and dead. The FEMA official was tarred and feathered, then put in with the troops. Before being released and told to drive back to their base, both the FEMA official and the military troops were given a simple message to relay to their superiors.

'The American people will no longer tolerate the illegal activities that the government has, in recent years, increasingly become accustomed to using to force those who object to how things are run to shut up. You work for the people, they do not exist to serve you. There will be no more abuses and infringements of our Constitutional rights. Those who do so in the service of the government will be held accountable for their actions. Those in the government and the courts who turn a blind eye and protect the offenders, will be held equally accountable. We will not tolerate our government using chemical warfare against its own citizens when they have already signed agreements banning the use of those same chemicals on our enemies in time of war. If you violate the rules of war, we can and will respond in kind.'

'Remind those who would be kings of one thing. We know where their bunkers are, and we don't have to defeat all of their defenses and break in to render them harmless. We can always just bury them inside their holes and leave them there to live in peace where they can't violate anybody else's rights. And if they threaten to nuke us, we will make sure that they do not outlive us. We will live free, or someone will pay a terrible price. There will be no more lip service to the Constitution, and they will obey the laws. The states will also obey the laws. All laws which infringe upon the Constitution will be struck from the books by both the state and federal governments. The Constitution says that all state laws which contradict it are invalid. The right to keep and bear arms is a right of the people, not of the states. Those laws which were intended to disarm or infringe upon those individual rights will also be stricken from the books, and the citizens will be allowed to defend themselves from criminals without fear of persecution.'

The FEMA official sneered and said, 'Don't you mean 'prosecution'?'

The spokesman said, 'No, we mean persecution. Prosecution is the legal trial for supposed crimes to determine guilt or innocence, as judged by a jury of your peers. Persecution is the harassment, prosecution, and impoverishment through legal fees and lost wages, of people who the prosecutor knows are guilty of nothing more than defending their lives or property from the activities of some criminal.'

A soldier said, 'But the criminal has rights, too, and they have to be protected. The police are there to protect you, so you don't need to take the law into your own hands.'

The noncoms in the group winced. The spokesman smiled, and said, 'The police are there to protect society, not the individual. Even if the cops are told by the guy, in front of you, that he is going to break into your house and steal your stuff, they will tell you that they can do nothing until he actually commits a crime. Then they will leave because they are busy and have other people to protect. The criminal gives up some of his rights when he decides to break the law by violating your rights. He chose to break the law, knowing that he would have to risk certain consequences. We are merely making sure that the criminals realize that those consequences will once again include the right of the homeowner to kill them for their actions.'

The soldier said, 'But that's barbaric. You're going back to the way things were done in the frontier days.'

The spokesman said, 'We tried it your way, and things not only didn't work, but your solutions to solve the problems you created only made things worse. Now we intend to go back to the ways that were proven to work better than anything you came up with. Look around you. The world is in chaos, and our government is trying to use chemical warfare on its own citizens to keep us in line and under control.'

The soldier said, 'But the government is supposed to be in control, so they can maintain order. Besides, those trucks are going to be used for other purposes. They aren't going to use chemical warfare on the people.'

The spokesman's reply was grim. 'The government was in control, and they created this disaster. They suspended the Constitution, and expect us to believe that they will give up their powers once they have things under control, when history has shown that they have never willingly relinquished any of those powers that they have gained. Those trucks were only designed for one purpose, and they were maintained to serve that purpose. Those trucks were designed to deliver chemical warfare agents. This is in direct violation of the conventions of war, signed and agreed to by our government. There will be no more Wacos, where chemical agents are used on children by troops who know that instead of incapacitating them, those chemicals will kill the children, especially in an enclosed space.'

The officer in charge of the troops ordered the soldier to shut up, and said, 'What will happen if they choose to ignore your demands?'

The spokesman said, 'We will replace those who cannot do their jobs with someone who is willing to do the job we put him there to do, and who is willing to do it properly. If we have to do this by force, there will be war crimes trials, and those found guilty of war crimes will be punished. The people of this country will no longer tolerate the presence of those who feel that they are entitled to more rights and privileges because they are of the ruling elite class.'

On the way back to their base, many of the troops had a lot of time to think over what was being done, and why. Those with combat experience knew that unless the politicians backed down, there was going to be a bloody civil war in this country. It was not necessarily going to be a long war. The government did not have the troops and resources to drag it out for years, and any attempts to use nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction would only turn those who were undecided, and many of those who supported the government right now, against the government. Many of the troops were not even supportive of the government's actions, and that was before they were being ordered to take the items necessary for survival from the citizens and to fire on those who resisted.

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California was not a good place to be. The earthquakes continued, and set off more volcanic eruptions. There were now five active volcanoes in California, and the smoke and ash was spreading over an increasingly larger area. The volcanic eruptions also triggered more earthquakes, although none of the same magnitude as those that spawned the upheavals. Although the volcanic ash may have made the area more fertile in the future, it would also take more fresh water than the region contained naturally to grow much in the way of crops. That problem was of no immediate concern to those who were there right now. They were trying to find someplace safe to stay and survive long enough to find enough food and water to keep themselves alive for a longer time frame than today.

The snow in northern California was slowing down the spread of the forest fires, but it could not stop them completely. Molten lava has a way of turning the nearby snow into steam and then heating the trees enough to cause them to spontaneously burst into flames. The fires spread, but the amount of timber destroyed was limited.

The cities throughout the state were not faring so well. The repeated, continuous, strong shocks and tremors of so many earthquakes had made every large building unstable, and it was dangerous to be anywhere near them. Sometimes pieces fell off, and sometimes entire buildings collapsed. In the case of skyscrapers, there was always the possibility of the domino effect, where one falling building would bring down another, and a chain reaction would ensue. There was also the possibility that parts of a tall building would fall into the street blocks from the building itself as it fell into the open space of the streets like a giant tree being cut down by loggers.

Those who had left the cities were still not safe from the effects of the earthquakes, but they were generally better off than those who had not left the cities. Those who were survivalists, who had prepared for the disturbances, were better off than most, but even they did not come through unscathed.

The passes through the mountains had been blocked by avalanches of snow and rock, so those who now attempted to flee the state had to find ways across the desert or take to the sea. Few wanted to go south through Baja, as that particular region was not the safest place to be even in the best of times. They knew that things were bad in America, but they also knew that the rest of the world was not unaffected by the same disturbances and problems.

The people had no concept of what was happening in other parts of the country, and they had not had to take any actions of their own against FEMA or the government. Most of the FEMA and government forces that had been called out to deal with the situation had been caught in the cities. Those that survived were no better organized and in no better shape than the rest of the survivors. They couldn't even count on being able to return to their bases, as many of them had been ordered abandoned and the equipment moved to safer locations once the commanders realized that the earthquakes and volcanoes were not short term problems.

With the evacuation of the bases, all sense of order disappeared from southern California. Refugees from the cities clogged the highways, and violence was rampant as they were preyed upon by those who wanted whatever they had. Some small towns survived intact, while others were overrun by panic stricken people and criminals. The death toll in California went well into the millions before the day was out.

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Throughout America, charismatic people began to spring up, each claiming to have the answers to the problems the people in their region faced. Some were, or claimed to be, religious, while others did not. Some even claimed to be the chosen disciple of God sent to prepare the people for whatever their particular message espoused. Many of these small cults would fade almost overnight, but others would hang on tenaciously and continue to slowly grow in numbers and influence. Some worshipped God, some worshipped other deities, and some worshipped a darker master, whose influence often went unnoticed during the worst of times, when everything seemed to go wrong for everybody.

By now, many of the people were over the worst of their initial shock and panic, and had begun to accept the situation and deal with the present problems associated with daily survival and living. If they had not already started working out some method of getting water to drink and cook with, and a method of cooking whatever food they did manage to get, they were less likely to survive. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you just let the water sit until all of the particles had settled, then boiled the clear water, you had less chance of getting sick from drinking it.

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Winter was not a good time to try to learn how to live off the land, so many people would either have to find food or starve. While there is plenty of game out in the woods, it is not enough to support the populations of the cities indefinitely, even if they are skilled enough to catch it, clean it, and cook it. Those who learned not to waste anything were able to survive, while those who thought that all they had to do was shoot a deer, cut off a few steaks, cook them, and then look for another deer tomorrow soon started to go hungry. Nature is not built around a disposable economy to generate false demand for products and generate more profits. Nature is built on cycles, where everything gets reduced, reused, and recycled. Man did not forget that lesson. He just became so arrogant that he convinced himself that it no longer applied to him.

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Day Six
The arctic front that had followed the blizzard finally began to move off to the east, allowing temperatures in the northwestern states to slowly begin to climb back toward normal levels for that time of year. Within a few days, the temperature across the entire northern half of the US would climb over thirty degrees. The cold had killed many people, but the numbers would never be determined. The only thing that could eventually be determined would be the number of people who survived when things finally calmed down enough to allow an accurate census.

The cold weather and snow had stopped the rapid spread of the pneumonia caused by the biowarfare agents, but there would be sporadic outbreaks during the months to come as one person or another came across an infection site in their hunt for food or other essentials. While it had helped Fort Wayne and other contaminated areas contain the spread of contagion, the cold and snow had actually held the radioactive fallout from the nuclear plants so that those who were trapped downwind received higher doses. Radiation sickness was beginning to become noticeable in the Philadelphia region, and exposure levels just went up for those who were out in the snow trying to get food. Those who drank the contaminated water made from melted snow soon began to lose their hair, vomit, and have bleeding gums. They only made things worse when they tried to push fluids to keep from dehydrating. Many of the sick soon had taken a lethal dose of radiation, and those with no symptoms soon began to panic and flee the area, fearing that the symptoms were some kind of disease that was readily transmissible. They would, in many cases, survive because of their actions, but their children would, in many cases, bear the mark of their exposure. The incidence of cancers and birth defects would rise dramatically in many regions of the country.

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Many of the people in Washington and Idaho who lived in the area contaminated from the fallout from the Hanford facility were isolated. They had no idea what was happening, but they died or got sick from their radiation exposure just the same. Some recovered, but others wasted away with nobody to even comfort them in their last hours. It took days for many of them to die, although the weaker ones who had no help died sooner from dehydration and freezing as the fires in their fireplaces and wood stoves died out when they were unable to maintain them.

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The government received the news of the rebellions, and had organized as much information as they could from every site that was able to report in. When they heard the messages that various groups had sent, many of the politicians became so angry that they wanted to order military strikes immediately. Calmer heads prevailed, and they decided to see what their think tanks could come up with to deal with the rapidly deteriorating situation.

Several of the more conservative senators made sure that all the information was sent to the group for their consideration this time. There was a lot of information, even if much of it was sketchy, so the group told them that it would take about six or eight hours to go over it and make a preliminary evaluation.

After four hours, the group asked for an immediate hearing with the leaders of the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the President. While they were waiting, they finished their recommendations.

When the meeting began, they made a summary statement, given by their leader. He said, 'Gentlemen, the best advice we can give to you at this time is to listen to your constituents and meet their demands. Do not try to tell them what you think they want to hear. Do what they tell you to do.'

Several senators started to object, but he cut them off. 'All of these groups, operating in relative isolation, have issued similar demands. They have defeated all forces you have sent against them in many cases, and inflicted heavy casualties in the cases where you did win. You do not have the troops, the organization, or the support to win a war against guerrilla forces. You have no credibility with the people, and many blame you for the deaths of their friends and loved ones.'

One senator said, 'But we are not responsible.'

'Yes, senator, you are. When you were elected, you assumed responsibility for those you were chosen to represent. If something happens, you are the one who makes the decisions on how to deal with it. If you don't give them the information they need to make an informed decision so they can tell you what they want you to do, then you assume responsibility for the decisions you make in their stead.'

A senior senator, known for his conservative stance, said, 'You said that we don't have the troops or support to win a war against them. Could you explain what you meant by that?'

'We don't know how much of our armed forces are alive, and what percentage of those are even willing to follow any orders you issue. Declaring martial law, while allowing you to implement the measures you deemed necessary, was a waste of time. You didn't have the troops to enforce martial law, and it enraged the citizens that you were doing nothing to help while other officials confiscated their property, which they sorely needed for their own survival, for use by the government. At least 80% of the people out there are ready to take up arms, if necessary, to ensure their own survival. Most of the organized groups have the same, or very similar, demands. This tells us that although you were able to ignore dissenting opinions and do what you wanted, or what your campaign contributors or political action committees paid you to do, before this disaster occurred, there are enough people who are ready to fight for what they believe is necessary for their immediate and future survival that they would win.'

The President said, 'What would happen if we ignored them, or if we tried to use the troops to force them to comply with what we know is in the best interests of the nation? Would we be able to hold out long enough to bring them around, or to make them tired enough to give up the fight and accept some sort of compromise?'

'If you ignore them, they will run their lives as they see fit. Eventually you will want them to do something, and they will respond violently because the longer you ignore them, the more they find that they really don't need you, and that they can do better at running their own lives than someone who doesn't even know what it means to work for a living.'

'As far as the best interests of the nation, my best estimate would be that the people are of the opinion that since the politicians caused this with their actions, and they always had the 'best interests of the nation' in mind while doing the very things that caused this much chaos and confusion, the first politician to use that phrase in front of a crowd is very likely to be lynched on the spot.'

'The groups are very adamant about not compromising, since allowing some compromise led to the situation in the first place. We believe that they are fed up, have no trust left for any politician, and are deadly serious about the idea of war crimes tribunals. Any action against them will only engender more support from those that are undecided, and will incite them to retaliate. They have a lot of anger bottled up inside them, gentlemen, and it is directed at you because you ignored their wishes and made the situation even worse by lying to them so they had no chance to prepare ahead of time and minimize the damage, the loss of life, and the confusion and lawlessness. In short, they blame you for the complete and utter failure to do your jobs properly and serve the best interests of the American people.'

One liberal female senator objected. 'We did the best we could. If the conservatives had been more cooperative, some of our measures would have passed and we could have stopped some of the senseless violence.'

'Senator, you had years to prevent the problem, and you did nothing until after it was too late to prevent it. You had years to decrease the scope of the problem by preparing the people, and you did nothing to get them to prepare for what might happen. You had years to educate the people, and you did nothing but try to support the educational directives which even your own party, which created and nurtured it, admits was a dismal failure which did not work at all. You had years to work out ways to punish the criminals while protecting society, and all you did was work to pass more restrictions on the guns the law abiding citizens relied upon for their self protection from the same criminals you released back into society with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.'

She screamed, 'How dare you? Do you know who you are talking to?'

'Senator, if you are still here after the next election, I will apologize and kiss your ass in front of the whole world. But if there are enough people left in your district who will vote for you, out of the survivors who have seen exactly how well your idealistic ideas work, to manage the majority required to get you reelected, then it will be a small price to pay for the knowledge that there are that many people who could survive something like this and learn nothing at all from the experience.'

The President said, 'What about their demands for the repeal of certain laws, both state and federal? Will they remain committed to that goal?'

'Sir, most of the groups are using an old Revolutionary War slogan, and they are quoting not only the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, but there is heavy emphasis on the ideas of Thomas Jefferson, who believed in a true democracy for government. One recurring slogan is "Don't Tread On Me", and the other used most frequently is "He that governs best, governs least". The only conclusion we can draw is that the people want the government to get out of their personal and daily lives, and leave them alone. They are also willing to fight if their wishes are ignored. They want the government to take a small amount of taxes, protect their borders, and deliver the mail. And they do not intend to take "NO" for an answer.'

The group of analysts left the room, leaving the politicians to discuss their findings and decide what they wanted to do. The analysts took no chances that the politicians would listen to reason. They packed their bags, got some food, water, and other supplies, including some rifles and ammunition, and left the compound. They had done all they could to inform the ruling elite that their day of lording it over the people was over, and they had no intention of going down with them if they let their egos and vanity override their common sense in making the decision of how to respond to this challenge to their authority. They knew that the politicians were aware that they had the authority, but that most of them had long since forgotten that their authority was derived from the will of the people, and could also be removed from them by the will of the people.

The politicians were still arguing when they left the compound. The analysts had not gone 500 yards beyond the last perimeter before they saw the first sentry standing by the side of the road. Although he wore cammies and carried a military style assault rifle, the group was certain that he was not part of the base personnel. For one thing, he was watching for traffic coming up the road from the base. For another, his rifle was an AK-47. Since he allowed them to pass with no hostile moves, they all breathed a sigh of relief and continued on. None of them had any desire to look back, for they knew that they had left nothing of value behind.

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Day Seven
The politicians had finally reached a decision, although it took them most of the night to make it, and there was still a lot of argument and discontent with the agreement they had reached. They deliberated for a few more hours, then sent the orders, with the agreed upon wording, out to all bases and armed forces personnel in the US. They had discovered by now that most of their forces in Europe had been killed or captured in the violence and chaos that was engulfing the rest of the world.

Their decision, and the orders they sent, would have consequences felt throughout the nation and the world for the rest of the year. For it was the actions taken during this last year of the millenium that would determine how the world entered the new millenium. This was the foundation upon which the new structure would begin.

As the world tried to recover, survive, and prayed for an end to the madness, the Jewish temples began their first Sabbath service of the new year at sundown. One week down, and fifty-one more to go before the end of the millenium.

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