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Book Excerpt: "Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse"
In response to a request to Matthew from Indiana, who wanted to know
what my novel was like before ordering it, the following is an excerpt
from the first chapter of the expanded (33 chapter) edition of my novel
"Patriots":
On the last day of October, the Grays found that their phone was still
working, but only for local calls. When they tried making long-distance
calls, they got an “All circuits are busy now” recording,
at all hours of the day or night. The next day, there was message advising
that “All circuits will be restored
shortly.” Two days later, there was no dial tone.
By early November, there was almost continuous rioting and looting
in every major city in the U.S. Due to the financial panic and rioting,
the November election was “postponed” to January, but it
never took place. Rioting grew so commonplace that riot locations were
read off in a list—much
like traffic reports—by news broadcasters. The police could not
even begin to handle the
situation. The National Guard was called out in most States, but less
than half of the Guardsmen reported for duty. With law and order breaking
down, most of them were too busy protecting their own families to respond
to the call-up. An emergency call up of the Army Reserve three days
later had an even smaller response. All over America, entire inner-city
areas burned to the ground, block
after block. No one and nothing could stop it. On the few occasions
that the National Guard was able to respond to the riots, there were
some massacres that made Kent State seem insignificant.
Many factories in proximity to the riots closed “temporarily” in
concern for the safety of their workers, but never reopened. Most others
carried on with their normal operation for several more days, only
to be idled due to lack of transport. Shipping goods in the United
States in most cases meant one thing: 18 wheel
diesel trucks traveling on the interstate highway system. The trucks
stopped rolling for several reasons. First was a fuel shortage. Then
came the flood of refugees from the cities that jammed the highways.
Then people that ran out of gas disrupted traffic. As cars ran out
of gas, they blocked many critical junctions, bridges and overpasses.
Some highway corridors in urban areas turned into gridlocked
parking lots. Traffic came to a stop, motionless cars began to run
out of
gas, and the forward movement of traffic was never resumed. In some
places, cars were able to back up and turn around. In most others,
people were not so lucky. There, the traffic was so densely packed
that drivers were forced to just get out of their cars and walk away.
Every major city in the United States was soon gripped in a continual
orgy of robbery, murder, looting, rape, and arson. Older inner city
areas were among the hardest hit. Unfortunately, the design of the
interstate freeway system put most freeways in close proximity to inner
city areas.
The men who
had planned the interstate highway system in the 1940s and 1950s could
not be blamed. At that time,
downtown areas were still flourishing. They were the heart of industry,
population, commerce, and wealth. Thus, it was only logical that the
highways should be routed as close to them as possible, and preferably
through them. These planners could not then have predicted that in
50 years the term “inner city” would
become synonymous with poverty, squalor, welfare, drugs, disease, and
rampant crime.
America’s once proud and efficient railroad system, long the
victim of government ineptitude, was unable to make any appreciable
difference in the transportation crisis. Most of the factories that
had been built in the past 30 years had been positioned near highways,
not railroad tracks. Also, like the highways, most rail lines passed
through urbanized areas, placing trains at the same risk as trucks.
Gangs of looters found that it did not take large obstructions to cause
train derailments. Within a few hours of each derailment they stripped
the
trains of anything of value.
A few factories managed to stay in operation until early November.
Most had already closed, however, due to failing markets, failing transportation,
failing communications, or the failing dollar. In some instances, workers
were paid through barter, rather than cash. They were paid with the
company’s product.
Chevron Oil paid its workers in gasoline. Winchester-Olin paid its
workers in ammunition.
The last straw was the power grid. When the current stopped flowing,
the few factories and businesses still in operation closed their doors.
Virtually every industry in America was dependent on electric power.
The power outages forced even the oil refineries to shut down. Up
until then, the refineries had been operating around the clock trying
to meet the increased demand for liquid fuels.
Ironically, even though refineries processed fuel containing billions
of BTUs of energy, most of them did not have the ability to produce
enough electric power to supply all of their own needs. Like so many
other industries, oil refiners had made the mistaken assumption that
they
could always depend on the grid. They needed a stable supply of electricity
from the power for their computers and operate the solenoids for their
valves.
The power outages caused a few dramatic
effects. At a Kaiser Aluminum plant near Spokane, Washington, the power
went out during the middle of a production shift. With the plant’s
electric heating elements inactive, the molten aluminum running through
the hot process end of the plant began to cool. Workers scrambled to
clear as much of the system as possible, but the metal hardened in
many places, effectively ruining the factory. If the plant were ever
to be re-opened, the hardened aluminum would have to be removed with
cutting torches or jackhammers. Electricity also proved to be the undoing
of prisons all over America. For a while, officials maintained order
in the prisons. Then the fuel for the backup generators ran out. Prison
officials had never anticipated a power outage
that would last more than two weeks. Without power, security cameras
did not function, lights did not operate, and electrically operated
doors jammed. As the power went out, prison riots soon followed.
Prison officials hastened to secure their institutions. Under “lock
down” conditions, most inmates were confined to their cells,
with only a few let out to cook and deliver meals in the cell blocks.
At many prisons the guard forces could not gain control of the prison
population, and there were mass escapes. At several others, guards
realized that the overall situation was not going to improve, and
they took the initiative to do something about it. They walked from
cell to cell, shooting convicts. Scores of other prisoners died at
the hands of fellow convicts. Many more died in their cells due to
other causes; mainly dehydration, starvation, and smoke inhalation.
Despite the best efforts of prison officials, 80 percent of the country’s
more than 1,500,000 state and federal prisoners escaped. A small fraction
of the escaped prisoners were shot on sight by civilians. Those that
survived quickly shed their prison garb and found their way into the
vicious wolf packs that soon roamed the countryside...
