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Rand posited only the collapse in Atlas Shrugged, and that collapse was incomplete at the end of the novel. Civilization's subsequent rise was not a part of her narrative, only a promise that there would be a new economic morality that was built around different core principles that had proven successful in the past before the corruption set in, when people got good and tired of poverty and starvation, that is.

It's fiction, of course, and it's a bit of a mystery to me why people should expect more out of it than that. Nevertheless, it contained some parts that were not Rand the theorist expounding, but Rand the observer recalling what she'd seen in Russia as a young student. Those, to me, seem the most persuasive parts of the novel, the bum's narrative of events at the Twentieth Century Motor Company being particularly brilliant in that regard.

What will fail is the question, and what will work? Rand took her post-fall communities back to subsistence farming and a barter/theft economy, which is about as low a level as is likely to be experienced here in the United States, in my opinion. Within that model, however, economics works perfectly well. She felt, and I agree, that it wasn't too far from the beginnings of the country past the point where everything had to be imported from Britain. She felt, and I agree, that the more laissez-faire economic model present at the time was responsible in large measure for the country's success, and that subsequent attempts to layer government control had fallen to the temptation of thinking that the control was the economy.

But the economies of the time weren't really isolated villages surrounded by farms, they contained local banking, local currencies, trade with neighboring regions, local defense, in short, all those things that we tend to over-idealize a bit these days as a golden age. What we sometimes don't like to recall is the failure rate of all of these but it's there in the records if we care to look.

The significant difference is in regional communication, which is the reason we have a continental economy and the reason Rand focused her novel around the Taggart trains. There was such communication before the trains, of course - the story of the Erie Canal is little less than astounding - but the national economy as we know it would be critically affected if train transportation were to fail between regions and truck transportation were to fail within them. Poorly crafted energy policies could do that; in fact, may already be doing so.

And so the focus will be on the local, which is why location out of the cities and toward small towns that have associated agricultural or fishing activities may be at a premium. I think most preppers agree on that issue. But the cities won't be empty, and as long as it is economically advantageous to run oxcarts full of grain down broken asphalt, someone will do so. But not from Topeka to Los Angeles.

What Rand posited that I do feel is likely under these circumstances is a breakdown of central authority, and I agree with her that it is unlikely to die easily or peacefully. There is very little actual violence in Atlas Shrugged, far less than I think will happen if people actually do start to starve. But we've seen breakdowns of central authority before in history. Once Rome fell and the empire split, the economic status of the independent manors changed very little; those endured through feudalism to the restoration of central authority under the Merovingians. Village life did not need central authority, but it was much more limited than the cosmopolitan empire provided. There were free cities, there was private banking, currencies, and eventually transportation. Some of this stuff took until the Renaissance to fully recover. A thousand years give or take a little.

I'd suspect that our own experience is likely to be much quicker, only because so much of this will not have to be re-invented, but merely restored. But the people who ate during all of this were near the manors and villages. Just some rambling thoughts.