When The Music Stops – How America’s Cities May Explode In Violence

In response to recent articles in mainstream military journals discussing the use of the U.S. Army to quell insurrections on American soil, I offer an alternate vision of the future. Instead of a small town in the South as the flash point, picture instead a score of U.S. cities in the thrall of riots greater than those experienced in Los Angeles in 1965 (Watts), multiple cities in 1968 (MLK assassination), and Los Angeles again in 1992 (Rodney King). New Yorkers can imagine the 1977 blackout looting or the 1991 Crown Heights disturbance. In fact, the proximate spark of the next round of major riots in America could be any from a long list cribbed from our history.

We have seen them all before, and we shall see them all again as history rhymes along regardless of the century or the generation of humankind nominally in control of events. But the next time we are visited by widespread, large-scale urban riots, a dangerous new escalation may be triggered by a new vulnerability: It’s estimated that the average American home has less than two weeks of food on hand. In poor minority areas, it may be much less. What if a cascading economic crisis, even a temporary one, leads to millions of EBT (electronic benefit transfer) cards flashing nothing but zeroes? Or if the government’s refusal to reimburse them causes supermarket chains to stop accepting them for payment? The government can order the supermarkets to honor the cards, but history’s verdict is clear: If suppliers are paid only with worthless scrip or blinking digits, the food will stop.

In my scenario, the initial riots begin spontaneously across affected urban areas, as SNAP (supplemental nutrition assistance program) and other government welfare recipients learn that their EBT cards no longer function. This sudden revelation will cause widespread anger, which will quickly lead to the flash-mob looting of local supermarkets and other businesses. The media will initially portray these “food riots” as at least partly justifiable. Sadly, millions of Americans have been made largely, or even entirely, dependent on government wealth transfer payments to put food on their tables.

A new social contract has been created, where bread and circuses buy a measure of peace in our minority-populated urban zones. In the era of ubiquitous big-screen cable television, the internet and smart phones, the circus part of the equation is never in doubt as long as the electricity flows. But the bread is highly problematic. Food must be delivered the old-fashioned way: physically. Any disruption in the normal functioning of the EBT system will lead to food riots with a speed that is astonishing. This will inevitably happen when our unsustainable, debt-fueled binge party finally stops, and the music is over. Now that the delivery of free or heavily subsidized food is perceived by tens of millions of Americans to be a basic human right, the cutoff of “their” food money will cause an immediate explosion of rage. When the hunger begins to bite, supermarkets, shops and restaurants will be looted, and initially the media will not condemn the looting. Unfortunately, this initial violence will only be the start of a dangerous escalation.

The ransacked supermarkets, convenience stores, ATMs and gas stations will not be restocked during this period due to the precarious security situation. A single truck loaded with food or gasoline would be perceived to be a Fort Knox on wheels and subject to immediate attack unless heavily protected by powerfully armed security forces, but such forces will not be available during this chaotic period. Under those conditions, resupply to the urban areas cannot and will not take place. The downward spiral of social and economic dysfunction will therefore both accelerate and spread from city to city. These delays, in turn, will lead to more riots with the constant underlying demand that hungry people be fed, one way or another.

Catch-22, anyone? When these demands do not bring the desired outcome, the participants will ratchet up the violence, hoping to force action by the feckless state and national governments.

The “food riots” will be a grass-roots movement of the moment born out of hunger and desperation. It will not be dependent upon leaders or an underlying organization, although they could certainly add to the sauce. Existing cell phone technology provides all the organization a flash mob needs. Most of the mobs will consist of minority urban youths, termed MUYs in the rest of this essay. Which minority doesn’t matter; each urban locale will come with its own unique multi-ethnic dynamic.

Some locales will divide upon religious or political lines, but they will not be the dominant factors contributing to conflict. In the American context, the divisions will primarily have an ethnic or racial context, largely because that makes it easy to sort out the sides at a safe distance. No need to check religious or political affiliation at a hundred yards when The Other is of a different color.

We Americans are all about doing things the easy way, so, sadly, visible racial and ethnic features will form the predominant lines of division.

In order to highlight their grievances and escalate their demands for an immediate resumption of government benefits, the MUY flash mobs will next move their activities to the borders of their ethnic enclaves. They will concentrate on major intersections and highway interchanges where non-MUY suburban commuters must make daily passage to and from what forms of employment still exist. People making a living will still be using those roads to get to where they earn their daily bread.

The results of these clashes will frequently resemble the intersection of Florence and Normandie during the Rodney King riots in 1992, where Reginald Denny was pulled out of his truck’s cab and beaten nearly to death with a cinder block. If you don’t remember it, watch it on Youtube. Then imagine that scene with the mob-making accelerant of texting and other social media technology added to stoke the fires. Instead of a few dozen thugs terrorizing the ambushed intersections, in minutes there will be hundreds.

Rioters will throw debris such as shopping carts and trash cans into the intersection, causing the more timid drivers to pause. The mobs will swarm the lines of trapped cars once they have stopped. Traffic will be forced into gridlock for blocks in all directions. Drivers and passengers of the wrong ethnic persuasions will be pulled from their vehicles to be beaten, robbed, and in some cases raped and/or killed. It will be hyper-violent and overtly racial mob behavior, on a massive and undeniable basis.

Some of those trapped in their cars will try to drive out of the area, inevitably knocking down MUY pedestrians and being trapped by even more outraged MUYs. The commuters will be dragged out of their cars and kicked or beaten to death. Other suburban commuters will try to shoot their way out of the lines of stopped cars, and they will meet the same grim fate once they run out of bullets and room to escape.

The mob will be armed with everything from knives, clubs and pistols to AK-47s. A bloodbath will result. These unlucky drivers and their passengers will suffer horribly, and some of their deaths will be captured on traffic web cameras. Later, these terrible scenes will be released or leaked by sympathetic government insiders and shown by the alternative media, which continue to expand as the traditional media become increasingly irrelevant.

This grim tableau is my analysis of age-old human behavior patterns, adding flash mobs and 2012 levels of racial anger to the old recipe. Early-teenage MUYs today are frequently playing “The Knockout Game” on full bellies, just for kicks, and proudly uploading the videos. They and their older peers can be expected to do far worse when hunger and the fear of starvation enter their physical, mental, and emotional equations. The blame for their hunger will be turned outward against the greater society, and will be vented at first hand against any non-MUY who falls into their grasp while they are in the thrall of mob hysteria. These episodes of mass psychology we will refer to as “flash mob riots”, “wilding”, or some other new name.

To gear up for even a single “Florence and Normandie on steroids” flash mob street riot, city police departments will require an hour or longer to stage their SWAT teams and riot squads in position to react. Ordinary patrol cars in small numbers will not venture anywhere near such roiling masses of hysterical rioters, not even to perform rescues. Those citizens trapped in their cars cannot expect timely assistance from local or state authorities.

Even in the first days of widespread riots, when the police forces are well rested, it might take several hours to mount a response sufficient to quell the disturbance and restore order to even one major street intersection riot. In the meantime, scores of innocent commuters will have been attacked, with many of them injured or killed and left at the scene. It will be a law enforcement nightmare to quell the disturbance, mop up lingering rioters, restore security, and bring medical attention to the living and get medical examiners to the dead. And each jurisdiction will face potentially dozens of such scenes, thanks to the ability for MUYs to cross-communicate at will using their wireless devices.

The far more difficult challenge for the police is that by the time they are suited in riot gear, armed and geared up to sweep the intersection, it will probably be empty of rioters. The police, with their major riot squad reaction times measured in hours, will be fighting flash mobs that materialize, cause mayhem, and evaporate in only fractions of hours. This rapid cycle time is a clear lesson taken from massive riots by immigrant French Muslim MUYs in their own religious enclaves and bordering areas.

The American flash mob riot will exist almost entirely inside the law enforcement OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) loop. In other words, the rioters will have a much quicker reaction time than the police. Until fairly recently, superior police communications meant that they could use their radio networks as a force multiplier. With their networking advantage and cohesive reactions both within a department and among cooperating local agencies, police could act as shepherds guiding or dispersing a wayward stampeding flock.

Today, the mob has the greater advantage, immediately spreading word of every police preparation by text and Tweet, even in advance of the police movement. Attempts by the authorities to stop the flash mobs by blocking and jamming wireless transmissions will have limited success.

The enraged mobs in urban America will soon recognize that their spontaneous street riots cannot be stopped by the police, and then they will grow truly fearsome. For the police, it will be a losing game of Whack-a-Mole, with riots breaking out and dispersing at a speed they cannot hope to match. The violence will spread to previously unaffected cities as an awareness of law enforcement impotence is spread by television and social media. After a few days, the police forces will be exhausted and demoralized. As the violence intensifies and spreads, and in the absence of any viable security arrangements, supermarkets and other stores will not be restocked, leaving the MUYs even more desperate and angry than before. The increasing desperation born of worsening hunger will refuel the escalating spiral of violence.

Nor will violent conflict be only between the inhabitants of the urban areas and the suburbs. The international record of conflict in tri-ethnic cities is grim, making the old bi-racial dichotomy formerly seen in America seem stable by comparison. In tri-ethnic cities the perceived balance of power is constantly shifting, with each side in turn feeling outnumbered and outmuscled. Temporary truces, betrayals and new alliances follow in rapid succession, removing any lingering sense of social cohesion.

The former Yugoslavia, with its Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim divisions, comes starkly to mind. The Lebanese Civil War between the Christians, Sunnis, Shiites and Druze raged across Beirut (at one time known as “The Paris of the Middle East”) for fifteen brutal years. Once a city turns on itself and becomes a runaway engine of self-destruction, it can be difficult to impossible to switch off the process and return to normal pre-conflict life. It’s not inconceivable that the United States could produce a dozen Sarajevos or Beiruts, primarily across racial instead of religious divides.

Vehicle traffic by non-minority suburban commuters through adjoining minority areas will virtually halt, wrecking what is left of the local economy. Businesses will not open because employees will not be able to travel to work safely. Businesses in minority areas, needless to say, will be looted. “Gentrified” enclaves of affluent suburbanites within or near the urban zones will suffer repeated attacks, until their inhabitants flee.

Radically disaffected minorities will hold critical infrastructure corridors through their areas hostage against the greater society. Highways, railroad tracks, pipe and power lines will all be under constant threat, or may be cut in planned or unplanned acts of raging against “the system.” As long as security in the urban areas cannot be restored, these corridors will be under threat. Even airports will not be immune. Many of them have been absorbed into urban areas, and aircraft will come under sporadic fire while taking off and landing.

In the absence of fresh targets of value blundering into their areas, and still out of food, MUYs will begin to forage beyond their desolated home neighborhoods and into suburban borderlands. “Safe” supermarkets and other stores will be robbed in brazen commando-like gang attacks. Carjackings and home invasions will proliferate madly. As I have discussed in my essay “The Civil War Two Cube,” so-called “transitional” and mixed-ethnic areas will suffer the worst violence. These neighborhoods will become utterly chaotic killing zones, with little or no help coming from the overstretched police, who will be trying to rest up for their next shift on riot squad duty, if they have not already deserted their posts to take care of their own families.

In the absence of an effective official police response to the exploding levels of violence, suburbanites will first hastily form self-defense forces to guard their neighborhoods—especially ones located near ethnic borders. These ubiquitous neighborhood armed defense teams will often have a deep and talented bench from which to select members, and they will not lack for volunteers.

Since 9-11, hundreds of thousands of young men (and more than a few women) have acquired graduate-level educations in various aspects of urban warfare. In the Middle East these troops were frequently tasked with restoring order to urban areas exploding in internecine strife. Today these former military men and women understand better than anyone the life-or-death difference between being armed and organized versus unarmed and disorganized.

Hundreds of thousands if not millions of veterans currently own rifles strikingly similar to those they carried in the armed forces, lacking only the full-automatic selector switch. Their brothers, sisters, parents, friends, and neighbors who did not serve in the military are often just as familiar with the weapons, if not the tactics. Today the AR-pattern rifle (the semi-automatic civilian version of the familiar full-auto-capable M-16 or M-4) is the most popular model of rifle in America, with millions sold in the past decade. Virtually all of them produced in the past decade have abandoned the old M-16′s signature “carrying handle” rear iron sight for a standardized sight mounting rail, meaning that virtually every AR sold today can be easily equipped with an efficient optical sight. Firing the high-velocity 5.56×45 mm cartridge and mounted with a four-power tactical sight, a typical AR rifle can shoot two-inch groups at one hundred yards when fired from a steady bench rest. That translates to shooting eight- to ten-inch groups at four hundred yards.

Four hundred yards is a long walk. Pace it off on a straight road, and observe how tiny somebody appears at that distance. Yet a typical AR rifle, like those currently owned by millions of American citizens, can hit a man-sized target at that range very easily, given a stable firing platform and a moderate level of shooting ability.

And there are a far greater number of scoped bolt-action hunting rifles in private hands in the United States. Keep this number in mind: based on deer stamps sold, approximately twenty million Americans venture into the woods every fall armed with such rifles, fully intending to shoot and kill a two-hundred-pound mammal. Millions of these scoped bolt-action deer rifles are quite capable of hitting a man-sized target at ranges out to and even beyond a thousand yards, or nearly three-fifths of a mile. In that context, the 500-yard effective range of the average semi-auto AR-pattern rifle is not at all remarkable.

So, we have millions of men and women with military training, owning rifles similar to the ones they used in combat operations overseas from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Many of these Soldiers and Marines have special operations training. They are former warriors with experience at conducting irregular warfare and counter-terrorism operations in dangerous urban environments. They are the opposite of unthinking robots: their greatest military talent is looking outside the box for new solutions. They always seek to “over-match” their enemies, using their own advantages as force multipliers while diminishing or concealing their weaknesses. These military veterans are also ready, willing and able to pass on their experience and training to interested students in their civilian circles.

Let’s return to our hypothetical Florence and Normandie intersection, but this time with hundreds of rioters per city block, instead of mere dozens. Among the mobs are thugs armed with pistols and perhaps even AK-47s equipped with standard iron sights, and except in rare cases, these rifles have never been “zeroed in” on a target range. In other words, past a medium distance of fifty to a hundred yards, these MUY shooters will have little idea where their fired bullets will strike—nor will they care. Typically, most of the rioters armed with a pistol, shotgun or an iron-sighted rifle could not hit a mailbox at a hundred yards unless by luck. Inside that distance, any non-MUY could be at immediate risk of brutal death at the hands of an enraged mob, but beyond that range, the mob will pose much less danger.

Taking this imbalance in effective ranges of the firearms most likely to be available to both sides, certain tactical responses are sure to arise, and ranking near the top will be the one described next.

The sniper ambush will predictably be used as a counter to rampaging mobs armed only with short- to medium-range weapons. This extremely deadly trick was developed by our war fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan, taking advantage of the significant effective range and firepower of our scoped 5.56mm rifles. Tactics such as the sniper ambush may not be seen early in the civil disorder, but they will surely arise after a steady progression of atrocities attributed to rampaging MUYs.

Street intersection flash mob riots will not be the only type of violence exploding during periods of civil disorder. As mentioned earlier, the number and ferocity of home invasions will skyrocket, and they will be very hard to defend against. Neighborhood self-defense forces will be able to protect a group of homes if they are located on cul-de-sacs or in defensible subdivisions with limited entrances, turning them overnight into fortified gated communities. Individual homes and apartment buildings located in open grid-pattern neighborhoods with outside access from many directions will be much more difficult to defend, and the home invasions will continue.

Carjacking and other forms of armed robbery will proliferate to previously unimagined levels, leading to a total loss of confidence in the government’s ability to provide security across all social lines. Stray bullets striking pedestrians or penetrating houses will take a frightening toll, even in areas previously considered to be safe. The police will be exhausted by constant riot-squad duty, and will not even respond to reports of mere individual acts of violent criminality. They will simply be overwhelmed, and will be forced to triage their responses. The wealthy, powerful and politically well-connected will demand the lion’s share of remaining police resources, further diminishing the safety of average Americans.

In that context, neighborhood self-defense forces will form the nucleus of the armed vigilante direct action groups which will spring up next in the progression. Suburban anger will continue to build against the MUYs, who are perceived to be the originators of the home invasions and gang-level armed looting raids. Survivors of street ambushes, carjackings and home invasions will tell blood-curdling tales and show horrific scars.

The neighborhood defense teams will evolve into proactive suburban armed vigilante groups (SAVs) out of a desire to preemptively take the violence to their perceived enemies, instead of passively waiting for the next home invasion or carjacking. The SAV teams will consist of the more aggressive and gung-ho members of the self-defense forces, who met and compared notes. Often they will be young men with recent combat experience in the armed forces, who will apply their military training to the new situation. Major intersections and highway interchanges where ambush riots have previously occurred will be among the SAV targets. The SAV reaction times will be measured in minutes, compared to the hours required by major police department SWAT teams and riot squads.

When word is received that a flash mob is forming at one of their pre-reconnoitered intersections or highway interchanges, the SAV team will assemble. Sometimes cooperating police will pass tactical intel to their civilian friends on the outside. Some clever individuals will have exploited their technical know-how and military experience to build real-time intel collection tools, such as private UAVs. Police will have access to urban security camera footage showing MUYs moving barricade materials into position—a normal prerequisite to a flash mob riot intended to stop traffic. Tip-offs to the vigilantes will be common, and where the networks are still functioning, citizens may still be able to access some video feeds. Sometimes, police will even join the SAV teams, incognito and off-duty, blurring the teams into so-called “death squads.”

The operation I will describe (and it’s only one of dozens that will be tried) uses two ordinary pickup trucks and eight fighters. Two riflemen are lying prone in the back of each truck, facing rearward, with removable canvas covers concealing their presence. Their semi-automatic, scoped rifles are supported at their front ends on bipods for very accurate shooting. A row of protective sandbags a foot high is between them and the raised tailgate.

In the cab are a driver and a spotter in the passenger seat who also serves as the vehicle’s 360-degree security. The two trucks don’t ever appear on the same stretch of road, but coordinate their movements using one-word brevity codes over small FRS walkie-talkie radios. Each truck has a series of predetermined elevated locations where the intersection in question will lie between 200 and 500 yards away. Each truck is totally nondescript and forgettable, the only detail perhaps being the non-MUY ethnicity of the suburbanite driver and spotter driving relatively near to a riot in progress.

By the time the two SAV pickup trucks arrive at their firing positions on different streets and oriented ninety degrees to one another, the flash mob riot is in full swing. A hundred or more of the rampaging youths are posturing and throwing debris into traffic in order to intimidate some cars into stopping. The riflemen in the backs of the pickups are waiting for this moment and know what to expect, trusting their spotters and drivers to give them a good firing lane. The spotters in each truck issue a code word on their radios when they are in final position. The tailgates are swung down, and the leader among the riflemen initiates the firing. All-around security is provided by the driver and spotter.

Lying prone and using their bipods for support, the shooters have five to ten degrees of pan or traverse across the entire intersection. Individual rioters are clearly visible in the shooters’ magnified optical scopes. Each of the four snipers has a plan to shoot from the outside of the mob toward the middle, driving participants into a panicked mass. The left-side shooters start on the left side and work to the middle, engaging targets with rapid fire, about one aimed shot per two seconds. Since the two trucks are set at ninety degrees to one another, very complete coverage will be obtained, even among and between the stopped vehicles.

The result is a turkey shoot. One magazine of thirty aimed shots per rifle is expended in under a minute, a coded cease-fire is called on the walkie-talkies, and the trucks drive away at the speed limit. The canvas covering the truck beds contains the shooters’ spent brass. If the trucks are attacked from medium or close range, the canvas can be thrown back and the two snipers with their semi-automatic rifles or carbines will add their firepower to that of the driver and spotter.

Back at the intersection, complete panic breaks out among the rioters as a great number of bullets have landed in human flesh. Over a score have been killed outright, and many more scream in pain for medical attention they will not receive in time. The sniper ambush stops the flash mob cold in its tracks as the uninjured flee in terror, leaving their erstwhile comrades back on the ground bleeding. The commuters trapped in their vehicles may have an opportunity to escape.

This type of sniper ambush and a hundred variations on the theme will finally accomplish what the police could not: put an end to mobs of violent rioters making the cities through-streets and highways impassible killing zones. Would-be rioters will soon understand it to be suicidal to cluster in easily visible groups and engage in mob violence, as the immediate response could come at any time in the form of aimed fire from hundreds of yards away. Even one rifleman with a scoped semi-auto can break up a medium-sized riot.

Many citizens will take to carrying rifles and carbines in their vehicles, along with their pistols, so that if their cars are trapped in an ambush they will have a chance to fight their way out. If their vehicle is stopped outside the immediate area of the flash mob, they will be able to direct accurate fire at the rioters from a few hundred yards away. Inside the fatal hundred-yard radius, unlucky suburbanite drivers and passengers pulled from their cars will still be brutally violated, but the occurrences of large mob-driven street ambushes will be much less frequent once long-range retaliation becomes a frequent expectation.

Where they will be unable to respond swiftly or effectively to the outbreaks of street riots by MUY flash mobs, the police and federal agents will respond vigorously to the deadly but smaller vigilante attacks. These sniper ambushes and other SAV attacks will be called acts of domestic terrorism and mass murder by government officials and the mainstream media. A nearly seamless web of urban and suburban street cameras will reveal some of the SAV teams by their vehicles, facial recognition programs, and other technical means. Some early arrests will be made, but the vigilantes will adapt to increasing law enforcement pressure against them by becoming cleverer about their camouflage, most often using stolen cars and false uniforms and masks during their direct-action missions. Observe Mexico today for ideas on how this type of dirty war is fought.

Eventually, the U.S. Army itself might be called upon to put out all the social firestorms in our cities, restore order and security, pacify the angry masses, feed the starving millions, get vital infrastructure operating again, and do it all at once in a dozen American Beiruts, Sarajevos and Mogadishus.

A few hundred “Active IRA” tied down thousands of British troops in one corner of a small island for decades. The same ratios have served the Taliban well over the past decade while fighting against the combined might of NATO. Set aside for a moment the angry starving millions trapped in the urban areas, and the dire security issues arising thereof. Just to consider the official reaction to vigilantism separately, it’s unlikely that any conceivable combinations of local and state police, federal law enforcement, National Guard or active-duty Army actions could neutralize or eliminate tens of thousands of former special operations troops intent on providing their own form of security. Millions of Americans are already far better armed and trained than a few hundred IRA or Taliban ever were. And the police and Army would not be operating from secure fire bases, their families living in total safety thousands of miles away in a secure rear area. In this scenario, there is no rear area, and every family member, anywhere, would be at perpetual risk of reprisal actions by any of the warring sides.

In this hyper-dangerous environment, new laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in vehicles would be ignored as the illegitimate diktat of dictatorship, just when the Second Amendment is needed more than ever. Police or military conducting searches for firearms at checkpoints would themselves become targets of vigilante snipers. Serving on anti-firearms duty would be seen as nothing but pure treason by millions of Americans who took the oath to defend the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. Politicians who did not act in the security interest of their local constituents as a result of political correctness or other reasons would also be targeted.

A festering race war with police and the military in the middle taking fire from both sides could last for many years, turning many American cities into a living hell. Remember history: when the British Army landed in Northern Ireland in 1969, they were greeted with flowers and applause from the Catholics. The Tommys were welcomed as peacekeepers who would protect them from Protestant violence. That soon changed. Likewise with our tragic misadventure in Lebanon back in 1982 and 1983. Well-intended referees often find themselves taking fire from all sides. It’s as predictable as tomorrow’s sunrise. Why would it be any different when the U.S. Army is sent to Los Angeles, Chicago or Philadelphia to break apart warring ethnic factions?

For a long time after these events, it will be impossible for the warring ethnic groups to live together or even to mingle peacefully. Too much rage and hatred will have been built up on all sides of our many American multi-ethnic fault lines. The new wounds will be raw and painful for many years to come, as they were in the South for long after the Civil War. The fracturing of the urban areas, divided by no-man’s-lands, will also hinder economic redevelopment for many years because the critical infrastructure corridors will remain insecure.

Eventually, high concrete “Peace Walls” like those in Belfast, Northern Ireland, will be installed where the different ethnic groups live in close proximity. That is, if recovery to sane and civilized norms of behavior are ever regained in our lifetimes and we don’t slide into a new Dark Age, a stern and permanent tyranny, warlordism, anarchy, or any other dire outcome.

Dark Ages can last for centuries, after sinking civilizations in a vicious, downward vortex. “When the music’s over, turn out the lights,” to quote Jim Morrison of The Doors. Sometimes the lights stay out for a long time. Sometimes civilization itself is lost. Millions of EBT cards flashing zeroes might be the signal event of a terrible transformation.

It is a frightening thing to crystallize the possible outbreak of mass starvation and racial warfare into words, so that the mind is forced to confront agonizingly painful scenarios. It is much easier to avert one’s eyes and mind from the ugliness with politically correct Kumbaya bromides. In this grim essay, I am describing a brutal situation of ethnic civil war not differing much from the worst scenes from recent history in Rwanda, South Africa, Mexico, Bosnia, Iraq, and many other places that have experienced varying types and degrees of societal collapse. We all deplore the conditions that might drive us toward such a hellish outcome, and we should work unceasingly to return America to the path of true brotherhood, peace and prosperity. Race hustlers of every stripe should be condemned.

Most of us wish we could turn back the calendar to Norman Rockwell’s America. But we cannot, for that America is water long over the dam and gone from our sight, if not from our memories. John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” If that is true, judging by current and even accelerating cultural shifts, we might already have passed the point of no return.

Matt Bracken is the author of the Enemies Foreign And Domestic trilogy, along with his latest novel, Castigo Cay.

430 posted on Thu Sep 06 2012 08:29:43 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by ctdonath2: “BTW: In the essay, Matt never said ‘black’.”

I noted that, and it's important. In modern America, our inner city poverty is not limited to blacks but includes large parts of the Hispanic community.

Bracken described the issues of tri-racial rather than bi-racial cities, with important parallels to the collapse of Yugoslavia and Beirut. He also drew parallels to Northern Ireland where both sides are white but are divided primarily by religion rather than race. He also pointed out the very important differences between urban, suburban, and rural residents, and between rich and poor income levels, which transcend racial lines.

I do not see Bracken attacking blacks or other minorities. There is a big difference between attacking a racial group for its alleged deficiencies and saying that if the economy falls apart, pre-existing racial tensions are likely to explode. Bracken is doing the latter, not the former.

The bottom line is that regardless of whether we think Bracken is right or wrong, our economy cannot sustain the current welfare state much longer, and we need to figure out what will happen when (not if, but when) it falls apart.

I have a longer post. After spending a lot of time reading this thread (and reading prior discussions of Bracken's books for a long time) I'm still debating whether to hit “send.”

Regardless of whether I hit “send” or not, when I say Bracken has a point about what could happen in a worst-case scenario — and I believe he does — I won't tolerate an accusation that I'm racist. I have an interracial marriage and have lived in inner-city communities, both black and Hispanic. That dog won't hunt with me.

Let's just say I share a lot more of Louis Foxwell’s optimism about the possibility of repairing the collapse of the black family, and hopefully preventing the impending collapse of the Hispanic family, much of which is due to federal welfare policies.

The question is what will happen if we run out of time and the welfare system falls apart along with a general economic collapse. Something like what happened with the Weimar Republic is unlikely today, but not impossible if we don't turn things around soon. Germany had no significant black population, but demagogues sure figured out how to exploit ethnic tensions against a different group of people. That specific example, which has little to do with the American racial experience and almost certainly will not be repeated here, does show us that pre-existing racial and ethnic tensions can be and often are exploited in times of keen competition for scarce jobs. Bracken is not doing that -- I think he'd love to see more black residents get jobs -- but it's pretty obvious that some inner-city thugs make a point of trying to stoke resentment against the perceived evils of "rich white people."

We ignore history at our peril.

12 posted on Tue Sep 04 2012 07:54:53 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by sf4dubya: “One thing I would recommend adding is the show of strength tactic the Korean store owners used during the LA riots.”

30 posted on Tue Sep 04 2012 08:15:16 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by reasonisfaith: “I think it’s important to remember things don’t happen in real life like they do in the movies.” (Post 33) “Hollywood movies completely ignore the influence of God. But the Spirit of God lives in us. This is why the real world, and the way real people behave, is so different from the behavior of characters in movies about disaster and apocalypse.”

You are both right. When the “SHTF,” things happen which nobody had expected.

And Matt, thank you for this post:

42 posted on Tue Sep 04 2012 08:37:47 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by Travis McGee: “Watch the outstanding documentary on the Rodney King riots linked on Youtube on the original WRSA posting. This is part 2/5, and the Koreans get plenty of coverage. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRgaRtTURdY&feature=youtu.be “

Reality is far more complicated than what any of us can expect in advance because most of us don't know how we will react in crisis because we've never been tested. (To his credit, Matt Bracken is an exception due to his training. I'm not talking about him, but rather about how the ordinary civilian will respond.)

Some of those responses will be worse than ever could have been imagined; others will be better.

We have examples in the recent past, both in the New Orleans hurricane and the Los Angeles riots, of how people have responded better than expected in situations of urban breakdown. Some of them have been surprising.

As sf4dubya points out, few were more surprising than the response of Korean store owners in Los Angeles, many of whom had moved into inner-city minority areas and opened stores in places where they saw economic opportunity while others saw no chance.

If anyone thinks I'm overestimating the role of Koreans, as Kartographer posted at 137 on Tue Sep 04 2012 10:42:57 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time): “There aren’t that many inter-city food stores now. Most large chains pulled out years ago.”

Koreans probably aren't going to be a major factor in a New Madrid earthquake scenario in St. Louis or Memphis, but were in urban disturbances in Los Angeles, and will be in any similar disturbances in New York, Chicago, or other inner-city communities with a significant presence of Korean store owners.

Inner-city Korean stores often sell two primary products, food and alcohol, and in both cases at a steep price. That makes them targets of minority anger. It also makes Korean businesses likely to be targeted by those who want to get things be breaking windows instead of paying.

Major cultural differences in social interaction don't help. At the risk of stereotyping, let's just say Koreans too often think blacks and Hispanics are rude boors who talk too much, too loudly, and about too many immoral subjects, while Hispanics and blacks often view Koreans as bigoted cheapskates who don't like to socialize with others.

In any case, the Korean stereotype of being quiet and reserved led to the Korean response of fighting back rather than fleeing not being at all expected. Fighting back didn't fit the stereotype of Asians that existed in the American mindset before the riots. While those who have spent time dealing with ROK combat troops might have been able to anticipate how the quiet and patient Koreans would respond when forced into a corner, back then most Americans didn't understand what “kimchi temper” means, and most still don't.

How can we explain it?

Generally these Korean store owners were people who actually lived in the same areas as their businesses, sometimes in the upper floors of two-story storefronts which were originally built a hundred or more years ago for a shopkeeper to live above his business. Many people are willing to let their business burn to the ground and collect the insurance or just accept the loss, but people are much less willing to give up when their wife and kids are cowering in the bathroom upstairs while a mob tries to break in the front door of the business. Furthermore, when someone has moved to the other side of the ocean and invested their entire life savings into a business which may not have insurance, there is a strong motive to defend it even if their family doesn't live in the building. Investing sweat and tears into a business may mean more than dollars when it comes to deciding whether to risk one’s life by going up on the rooftop to start shooting at rioters in the street below.

On the other hand, just living in a neighborhood doesn't necessarily mean having the skills to defend it or expecting that a defense will be needed. Owners of retail businesses are used to dealing with shoplifters and the risk of an armed robbery. Bracken points out — correctly — that “gentrified” neighborhoods of upper-class and upper-middle-class people who have moved into poor communities and rehabbed beautiful but run-down older neighborhoods will become targets.

Virtually every Korean man living in South Korea has served in the military and therefore has at least some familiarity with firearms. While South Korea does not have a Second Amendment, Koreans who move to the United States and live in inner-city learn quickly why they need a firearm for self-defense. That cannot be said of most people who move into relatively safe “gentrified” neighborhoods.

None of this means I'm naive about what will happen to those Korean business owners in a long-term scenario of inner-city rioting. After the Rodney King riots, the Korean storekeepers only had to hold out for a few days and the police were able to get control of the situation relatively quickly. While Koreans have lots of family ties, unlike traditional Chinese and Vietnamese immigrant communities, modern Korean immigrants don't usually live in ethnic neighborhoods. That's especially true of inner-city Korean business owners who don't live anywhere close to each other’s businesses; they have isolated stores in dangerous neighborhoods with no easy way to get out.

In a major urban upheaval, many of those storekeepers will be among the worst casualties with families being burned alive on the upper floors of their stores and cell camera videos showing up on the internet of Korean women being dragged out of buildings and raped in the streets.

Of course, due to the close-knit nature of Korean families, we can expect a reaction of extreme anger by wealthy Korean suburban relatives of the people whose burning businesses and violated wives and daughters get videotaped and show up on the internet. We can expect that lots of Korean money will get poured into an angry response to widespread inner-city rioting. However, that kind of furious Korean counter-reaction will show up in the political realm days and weeks after the riots, not in armed response at the time of the riots.

Visions of the owners of Daewoo and Hyundai and LG paying for guns and heavy weapons to attack inner-city thugs in American cities are fantasy, though seeing suburban Los Angeles Korean businessmen spend a lot of money on ammunition and food for those who can help trapped Koreans may not be. We won't see anything like Mogadishu-style efforts to help trapped business owners, but as Matt pointed out, the police will respond to those with money and power, and I would not be at all surprised if wealthy Koreans demand help for inner-city relatives under siege, and pay lots of money to vigilantes if the police can't help. (Remember, while Koreans may show external respect for law enforcement, the assumption in Korea is that police are corrupt or at least corruptible, since money talks in Korea in ways it doesn't in America.)

Apart from direct tactical action to save relatives, seeing tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars of Korean money poured into punishing the rioters after the fact, or helping Korean refugees if society breaks down completely, are very realistic scenarios. I have Korean relatives who are still furious at the Communists six decades after some of their relatives were dragged north by retreating North Korean soldiers. A post-riot political system will have to deal with some seriously pissed-off Koreans with a lot of money and a lot of willingness to punish enemies.

Again, this may sound strange to those who do not realize how many inner-city businesses are Korean-owned. Combine the dynamic of small inner-city stores owned by recent Korean immigrants with the fact that many have wealthy extended families who immigrated earlier, and there's a recipe for major, major post-riot problems for whoever in government gets blamed for not stopping the riots.

Similar things could probably be said about the Indian and Pakistani immigrant communities; I don't know enough about their inner-city businesses to comment.

Bottom line is reconstructing the post-riot political situation will be no picnic.

I've been reading this thread and going back and forth on whether to write something. I think Matt Bracken has made some important points that are getting missed and that we need to hear.

Matt, thanks for posting this. We can debate how likely or unlikely a major urban breakdown may be, and many will dismiss your premise. They can't (or at least they shouldn't) dismiss your point of what would happen ***IF*** a major urban breakdown does happen, regardless of what caused it.

The differing experiences of SCalGal and buffaloguy in disasters show an important part of the problem. When flooding happened in the upper reaches of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, or when a tornado struck Joplin, buffaloguy is right that most Midwestern rural and small-town people remained calm and helped each other. However, New Orleans was a wake-up call — that simply isn't going to happen in some of our major urban areas.

I think most Americans who have spent generations living in a First World urban environment have no idea how quickly our own emergency response teams believe things would fall apart in case of a major disaster. Rioting and breakdown of law and order in our cities is expected when the government cannot provide necessary services.

For the moment, let's change Matt's premise to something that has nothing to do with politics so people are less willing to dismiss it.

I may know more than a little bit about plans for a New Madrid Fault earthquake scenario. (Hint: My community is a pre-designated staging area for disaster response.) The worst earthquake ever to hit the United States was not in California but rather in southeast Missouri two centuries ago. Geologists believe we've had two other massive quakes that were as bad or worse around the years 900 and 1400, and unfortunately, because small quakes are rare, we don't even have a very good idea where the fault lines are located.

If another New Madrid quake were to happen today, millions of people in multiple urban areas would be affected. St. Louis, Memphis, and several other second-level urban areas would be destroyed by the initial quake, aftershocks, and subsequent flooding. Seven million people would be homeless. Virtually every bridge crossing the central part of the Mississippi River and the southern part of the Missouri River would be destroyed. Many gas and oil pipelines would be severed, leading not only to local infernos such as what happened with the fires that destroyed San Francisco but also fuel shortages and supply problems all over the Midwest. All Mississippi River barge traffic north of Arkansas would be halted, at least temporarily. We would see urban chaos in St. Louis and Memphis and probably several other areas that would make the New Orleans hurricane response look like a picnic, and economic chaos would last for years in the region and for months on a national level.

Here is some secondary source media coverage and primary source original info on what disaster planners think is a moderate scenario. A moderate quake would be bad enough — a quake like what happened in 1811/1812, or those around the years 1400 or 900, would be far worse. Planning for worst-case scenarios is far more difficult and would involve a need for National Guard and likely federal military response rather than a primarily civilian response.

http://www.lex18.com/news/study-paints-grim-new-madrid-quake-scenario1

https://www.eeri.org/projects/earthquake-scenarios/new-madrid-earthquake-scenarios/

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/poster/2011/20110516.php

Those who want to dismiss Matt Bracken's scenario of what would cause urban chaos cannot dismiss the fact that in a major disaster, no matter what causes it, much of what Bracken warns would happen is going to happen and there's nothing anyone will be able to do about it for several days and possibly for several weeks. If a major disaster hits multiple cities at the same time or spreads to several major cities over a short period of time, the response time will extend from weeks into months, and could escalate to the point that the government loses the ability to bring things under control for a much longer period than that.

Bottom line: He's not talking fantasy. He's talking the reality of what happens when urban infrastructure breaks down. The only question is how long it will take to get help, and things get worse the longer things go on.

338 posted on Wed Sep 05 2012 17:21:49 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by Louis Foxwell: “Your facts are not in dispute. What is in dispute is the racist notion that the ghetto will rise up in violence when the gravy train stops. That is outrageously false.” (Post 325): “I am appalled that Freepers can be lulled into this mind set. This is the stock and trade of the democrat party. Theirs is the culture of fear that uses black violence to sell welfare. Welfare is the greatest single enemy of the black culture. It denies the common humanity if its recipients. It denigrates and slanders. It perpetuates itself and demands absolute obedience to its benefactors.”

A full-scale nationwide race war would surprise me greatly. That kind of theorizing belongs on Stormfront, not conservative websites.

I don't see Matt Bracken doing that, but worrying about what would happen with a major urban breakdown is a legitimate concern, and in America's inner city, race will be a major factor in any breakdown.

Louis Foxwell, you've been on Free Republic for a long time. We agree on the tremendous damage that welfare has done to the black community. I agree that a slow dismantling of the welfare state (i.e., welfare to workfare) can and has worked when it has been tried. The question is whether our economy has gotten so bad that the end of the welfare state will be a quick collapse rather than a planned phase-out, and what would happen in the event of a quick collapse.

Economic collapses have happened before which have made pre-existing bigotry much worse. Look at the Great Depression in the United States and how competition for scarce jobs exacerbated ethnic and racial problems. Look at the Weimar Republic in Germany and how Jews were made scapegoats. It is not unrealistic to ask what will happen if we can't get our own economy under control.

I hope you're right that a rapid collapse of the welfare state won't lead to violence; I hope even more that we never need to find out because we're able to have a slow transition process.

There is some evidence you are right and some that you're wrong.

I'm white. My wife is Korean. I've lived in inner-city communities, both black and Hispanic. I've served in what was once a white church in an inner-city neighborhood that successfully made the transition to become predominantly black, reflecting the makeup of the community. Matt Bracken is absolutely right about skin color becoming an identifier of a potential target and I know firsthand what it means to be identified as a target because of my skin color.

However, let's not paint urban minorities as evil. Especially, let's not underestimate the ability of responsible leaders within urban minority communities to organize their own groups trying to stop violence.

Let's look to history.

In Mayor Daley's Chicago during the riots of the 1960s, neighborhoods generally didn't burn if the Democratic Party's precinct captains reflected the ethnicity of their neighborhoods. Following Martin Luther King's assassination, minority leaders in those neighborhoods went house-to-house saying, “Why burn what we have? That makes no sense.” On the other hand, changing neighborhoods where the precinct captains were older white men hanging onto power by delivering minority voters exploded into race riots because the community structures that Daley relied on to deliver votes fell apart when terrified white residents fled mixed neighborhoods.

Matt will probably say that lack of food is a more powerful motivator of bad behavior than an explosion of rioting because of the shooting of Martin Luther King, and he's right. It will be harder for minority leaders to control the behavior of wild teenage gangs than it was in the 1960s because our nation has gotten worse in many ways over the last half-century.

However, the power of an angry white-haired grandmother in the minority community, or an older man who is a respected community leader (often but not always due to church leadership), is far from being irrelevant.

Such people can't prevent “wilding” by young gangs, but they can respond to outbreaks once they start, and some of those responses can be effective in ways that people outside the community cannot be.

However, having major social consequences in our urban areas if our government welfare system falls apart would not surprise me at all. That is especially true if a collapse of the welfare system comes following a major economic shock caused by a natural disaster beyond the government's ability to promptly repair.

Today, that's not going to happen. Our economy can take a major blow, get up, and start hobbling around. It won't be pretty but the bills will still be paid.

Five or ten years from now, I'm not so sure.

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